Gender Matters : Discourses of Violence in Early Modern Literature and the Arts [1 ed.] 9789401210232, 9789042037748

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Gender Matters

169

Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft

Begründet von Alberto Martino und in Verbindung mit Francis Claudon (Université Paris-Est Créteil Val de Marne) – Rüdiger Görner (Queen Mary, University of London) – Achim Hölter (Universität Wien) – Klaus Ley (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) – John A. McCarthy (Vanderbilt University) – Alfred Noe (Universität Wien) – Manfred Pfister (Freie Universität Berlin) – Sven H. Rossel (Universität Wien)

herausgegeben von

Norbert Bachleitner (Universität Wien)

Redaktion: Paul Ferstl und Rudolf Pölzer Anschrift der Redaktion: Institut für Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, Sensengasse 3A , A-1090 Wien

Gender Matters Discourses of Violence in Early Modern Literature and the Arts

Edited by Mara R. Wade

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2014

Cover image: Weiber Regiment nimmt kein gut End. Image 9 from Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, Proverbii verificati… . Augusburg: Kolb, 1718. Courtesy of The Rare Book & Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, Emblematica Online Digital Collection. Le papier sur lequel le présent ouvrage est imprimé remplit les prescriptions de “ISO 9706:1994, Information et documentation - Papier pour documents Prescriptions pour la permanence”. The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. Die Reihe “Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft” wird ab dem Jahr 2005 gemeinsam von Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam – New York und dem Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin herausgegeben. Die Veröffentlichungen in deutscher Sprache erscheinen im Weidler Buchverlag, alle anderen bei Editions Rodopi. From 2005 onward, the series “Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft” will appear as a joint publication by Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam – New York and Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin. The German editions will be published by Weidler Buchverlag, all other publications by Editions Rodopi. ISBN: 978-90-420-3774-8 E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-1023-2 © Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2014 Printed in The Netherlands

Table of Contents

Mara R. Wade Introduction Gender Matters: Discourses of Violence in Early Modern Literature and the Arts

5

1. Women Warriors, Fact and Fiction Judith P. Aikin The Militant Countesses of Rudolstadt When an unruly army stops by on its way through, it’s time to call on a woman for help.

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Elizabeth Oyler The Woman Warrior Tomoe in Medieval and Early Modern Japanese NŇ Plays

43

2. Violent Women, Violated Men Helmut Puff Violence, Victimhood, Artistry: Albrecht Dürer’s The Death of Orpheus

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Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly The Eroticization of Judith in Early Modern German Art

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Julie Singer For Palle and Patrie: Re-gendering Violence from Benedetto Varchi to Marguerite de Navarre

101

Marcus Keller Framing Men: Violent Women in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron

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3. Violence and the Gendered Body Politic Catharine Gray Tears of the Muses: 1649 and the Lost Political Bodies of Royalist War Elegy

133

Brian Sandberg Calm Possessor of his Wife, but Not of her Château: Gendered Religious Violence in the French Wars of Religion

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Lori Humphrey Newcomb The Law Against Lovers: Dramatizing Civil Union in Restoration England

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4. Gender in Print Elizabeth Black One Gender in the Legal System? An Examination of Gender in a Trio of Emblems from Pierre Coustau’s Pegme (1560)

197

Tara L. Lyons Prayer Books and Illicit Female Desires on the Early Modern English Stage

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Gerhild Scholz Williams Romancing the News: History and Romance in Eberhard Happel’s Deß Teutschen Carls (1690) and Deß Engelländischen Eduards (1691)

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5. Gender and Violence on the Stage Susan Parisi Transforming a Classical Myth in Seventeenth-Century Opera: the Story of Cybele and Atys in the Libretti of Francesco Rasi and Philippe Quinault

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Curtis Perry Gismond of Salern and the Elizabethan Politics of Senecan Drama

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Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich “Drabs of State vext”: Violent Female Masquers in Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women

295

6. Virtue and Violence Carmen Ripollés Death, Femininity, and the Art of Painting in Frans Francken’s The Painter’s Studio

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Lisa Rosenthal Masculine Virtue in the Kunstkamer: Pictura, Lucre, and Luxury

331

Anne J. Cruz The Walled-In Woman in Medieval and Early Modern Spain

349

Carl Niekerk Violence, Gender, and the Construction of the Other in the Story of Inkle and Yarico

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Notes on Contributors

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Mara R. Wade Introduction Gender Matters: Discourses of Violence in Early Modern Literature and the Arts Gender Matters interrogates the intersection of gender and violence in the early modern period, cutting across national traditions, genres, media, and disciplines. Gender is a complex component of the early modern social imaginary, and the investigation of historical gendered practices and depictions can inform current debates in important ways by revealing the trajectory of the discourses surrounding both gender and violence. Through its interrogation of socially constructed categories of difference, the volume explores the intersectionality of multiple frameworks of gender construction and their expression as violence.1 In this collection, early modern social norms, processes, and representations are scrutinized for their role in shaping the discourses of gendered violence in various media. Concepts and methodologies developed in one scholarly field enrich the interdisciplinary discussions of gender and violence in the whole collection. Such a framework is necessarily also comparative and addresses the complexity of the broader topic as well as the critical space between the disciplines. By engaging several levels of discourse, the volume advances a holistic approach to understanding gendered violence in the early modern world. The convergence of discourses concerning literature, the arts, emerging print technologies, social and legal norms, and textual and visual practices leverages a more complex understanding of gender in this period. By opening the debate concerning violence in literature and the arts beyond a single national tradition, Gender Matters engages with multivalent aspects of both female and male gender constructs, mapping them onto depictions of violence.

1

“Intersectionality” is a theoretical paradigm that asserts that markers of difference, such as gender, race, class, religion, and so on, are interrelated and are not independent of one another. This is an approach first used in feminist studies and often employed in cultural studies, economics, sociology, and gender studies. See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality.

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I. The Critical Approach While the approaches in this volume necessarily vary, the topic of gender and violence remains consistent, revealing unsuspected congruencies across geographies and disciplines. Although the papers here are organized into thematic clusters according to one possible model for cohesive presentation, their inherent intersectionality becomes evident in the Neostoic themes informing the papers by Perry and Ripolles, for example. The lines between fact and fiction are equally blurred in the juxtaposition of the countesses of Rudolstadt who really lived, and the fictional figure of Tomoe. Similarly, in the relatively new genre of the novel, newspapers figure prominently and punctuate the various violent acts, romantic alliances, and adventures, further conflating fact and fiction. This holds equally true for the early Italian report of the murder of Alessandro de’ Medici and its French reworking by Marguerite de Navarre. Both the ‘framing’ women of the Heptaméron and the emblematic frames in Coustau’s emblems rely on similar narrative strategies, while Atys’ self-emasculation stands in stark contrast to Orpheus’ imminent demise at the hands of gigantic women. The interrelatedness of the papers presented here emphatically confirms the inherent unity of the overall topic and showcases the rich rewards of a comprehensive study of violence and gender in the early modern period. This volume demonstrates the currency of discourses of gender and violence as powerful tools of analysis both over time and across cultures. The critical aperture through which scholarship investigates literary and cultural discourses changes over time, sometimes profoundly, and new theoretical lenses and innovative critical approaches produce new assessments. Sometimes they shed new light on often well known cultural artifacts, and at other times they illuminate previously ignored subjects of inquiry. Thus, in one sense this study is synchronic with its presentation of a broad cross section of examples of violence in the early modern world, while it can also be considered diachronic in that the range of discourses covers the late middle ages through the eighteenth century, from geographically widely separated locations whose cultural chronologies only infrequently align neatly with one another. Through the unifying lens of gender and violence the contributions to this volume comprehensively address a wide scope of diverse issues, approaches, and geographies from late medieval Japan to the European Enlightenment. While the majority of essays focus on early modern Europe, they are broadly contextualized and informed by integrated critical approaches pertaining to issues of violence and gender. By investigating historical texts and images from across the humanistic disciplines, this collection of essays contextualizes gendered acts of violence

Introduction

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and helps to define both feminist and masculinist literary and artistic discourses. While violence is often a theme in modern cultural analysis, particularly in the aftermath of 9/11, very often these interpretations take place at some remove from historical debates about the context of that violence.2 Gender Matters widens the angle of the modernist perspective to include a broad cross section of early modern cultural analysis. The present volume is important precisely because the essays parse the representations of both men and women, seeking to advance gender beyond its usefulness as a tool only of feminist analysis. That this volume investigates images treating both violence to women and men and violence by women and men further distinguishes its analytical thrust. This collection of essays seeks to complicate discourses of gendered violence in their historical contexts; it seeks to destabilize entrenched thought about gender and suggest new ways of shaping critical discourse from a historical perspective. By defining a tight thematic focus and yet offering a broad disciplinary scope for inquiry, the present volume brings together a wide range of scholarly papers investigating a cohesive topic—gendered violence—from the perspectives of French, German, Italian, Spanish, English, and Japanese literature, history, musicology, art history, and cultural studies. This broadly situated compendium addresses the compelling need for an overarching, interdisciplinary study of gender-coded violent behavior that can be used in dialogue with other publications. In the field of German Studies, to cite but one example, there are publications focusing on gender and violence that complement the studies offered here. The three volumes of essays on Women and Death in German Literature, Art and Media after 1500 offer a much needed, comprehensive overview of women, death, and thus necessarily also violence, from 1500 to the present day.3 In these volumes there is a strong focus on feminist cultural analysis of the portrayal of death and women. While a small number of the essays from the Women and Death series treat the early modern period, there is no overlap among those volumes and the present one, especially as Gender Matters expands the focus beyond the German-speaking world. Gender Matters can also be seen to complement the chronological coverage of another volume of essays, Contemplating Violence (Engelstein and Niekerk, 2011), with its focus on Germany from 1789 to 1938. Although gender theory does inform some of the articles in Contemplating Violence, a comprehensive examination of gendered violence is 2 3

See, for example, Plate and Drew for the analysis of literary discourses and gender concerning 9/11. http://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/women-and-death/ These three volumes resulted from the multi-year project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the same name in the UK, headed by Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly and Sarah Colvin.

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not at its core. That volume also treats only German topics. And with its interrogation of multiple cultures and disciplines as well as of masculinist and feminist discourses, Gender Matters balances the narrow focus on violence against women offered by the monograph The Power of a Woman's Voice in Medieval and Early Modern Literatures: New Approaches to German and European Women Writers and to Violence Against Women in Premodern Times (Classen 2007). The state of research for German studies is similar for that of other national traditions as well. By moving beyond the exclusive focus on German culture as circumscribed in these earlier studies, Gender Matters contextualizes phenomena of gender-coded behavior, especially violent acts, in a much broader pan-European context, including comparative nonWestern examples from Asia and European colonies. The tight focus on early modern culture also provides a platform from which to engage in discourses of violence and gender outside the time period considered here. There is a noticeable dearth of comparative research treating violence and gender in the early modern period, and this volume initiates a sustained interdisciplinary treatment of the topic from a historical perspective. Gender Matters offers a good starting point for a comparative European cultural study of gender and violence, one also informed by non-Western perspectives.

II. Case Studies of Gendered Violence The contributions have been divided into five groups reflecting more closely related studies of the common theme. “Women Warriors, Fact and Fiction” opens the volume with papers by Judith Aikin and Elizabeth Oyler studying respectively representations of historical females of heroic proportions at German courts and of a fictional heroine from Japanese literature.4 These sharply contrasting undertakings set the tone for the entire volume with its focus on gender constructs and militant gender articulation. Aikin explores the productive tensions between the sword and the pen as equally meritorious instruments in defense of the realms as employed by three militant countesses of Rudolstadt. Compared to modern Judiths, these German women’s valiant efforts spared their lands much destruction from ‘friendly’ troops during the wars afflicting them in the 16th and 17th centuries. Oyler’s study of the woman warrior Tomoe in Japanese NŇ 4

See the book by Eleonora Stoppino, who also participated in the conference. Her research traces the character of the warrior woman, from the amazon to Bradamante, reading the tensions among the representations of women as fighters, lovers, and mothers.

Introduction

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dramas underscores both similarity and difference in the discourses surrounding militant women in Europe and Asia from approximately the same time period. The legendary Tomoe was known for her strength and bravery. Although scholars treat her as if she were historical, there is no evidence of Tomoe’s actual existence, attesting to the strong pull of the powerful cultural imaginary and the feminization of the memorial act. The section “Violent Women, Violated Men” juxtaposes new readings of the Judith figure across a range of German art works, exploring the nuances in the portrayal of a violent woman, with a sophisticated reading of a print by Dürer depicting the moment when Orpheus, labeled the first homosexual (“der erste Puderan”), is about to be torn apart by women. These readings by Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly and Helmut Puff, respectively, elicit new meanings from their materials, thereby contributing both new methodologies and interpretations to the debates concerning early modern gender, especially that of female violence. Moving from the visual arts to textual depictions, Julie Singer interrogates the first Italian report of the violent murder of Alessandro Medici, comparing it to its near contemporary rewriting in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron. The Italian context of the violence with its emphasis on incest, sociopathy, and sexual deviance stands in stark contrast to the French rewriting of the crime as a defense of female virtue and country. Returning to the theme of female violence against men, Marcus Keller’s contribution continues the focus on the Heptaméron with his reading of the rare appearances of murderous women in Marguerite de Navarre’s work. By demonstrating the structural framing function of two particular tales within the larger work, he underscores the duplicity of ‘framing’ women and violence against men, In “Violence and the Gendered Body Politic” physical bodies and the body politic become the sites for competing discourses of nation, religion, and armed conflict. Gray explores the Tears of the Muses as a poetic compendium written by a militant group of royalists in Commonwealth England who transformed the tragic, but not particularly valorous, death from the pox of a ranking young nobleman into a statement of manhood cut down in his bloom by a feminized body politic of England. In contrast to the poetic articulation of masculine norms in England, Sandberg provides a careful reading of sixteenth-century French documents outlining a space for female property ownership and inheritance during the Wars of Religion.5 Although mixed-confessional marriages are often cited as evidence of confessional coexistence, this case indicates that such marriages could agitate sexualized religious politics and instigate gendered confessional violence during the religious wars. Returning the focus to English literature, 5

In this context see also Sandberg 2004.

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Newcomb reads the law against lovers and shows that Davenant records surprising continuities between the Commonwealth ‘re-formation’ of marriage and the Restoration’s first embrace of libertinism, clarifying why the Interregnum cumulatively produced something like a ‘sexual revolution,’ with all the ironies of such revolutions for women. These articles confirm that close readings of gendered human bodies often reveal political and social tensions in the civic body. “Gender in Print” presents the readings of gender across various genres: emblems, newspapers and novels, and prayer books. Papers by Elizabeth Black, Tara Lyons, and Gerhild Scholz Williams respectively explore the intersection of gender and violence in popular and emerging print genres of the early modern period. Black analyzes a cluster of French emblems in Coustau’s Pegma depicting feminized, corrupt judges. She focuses in particular on the striking use of a framing device in two of the emblems from the beginning and end of the emblem, positing that Coustau’s ambiguous depiction of females addresses unresolved issues in his attempt to incorporate Roman law into the French legal system. Lyons explores prayer book illustrations that stage gender and desire in early modern England. Starting from her analysis of suggestive images of women and death from of A Book of Christian Prayers (1578), Lyons explains that scenes of women holding a prayer book on the English stage might not be a reference for them to disavow carnal desire but rather to satisfy it. Turning from the religious imprints to the popular press, Scholz Williams examines the role of news and newspaper reading in late seventeenth-century German novels. Characters in these novels received and read news of all kinds, and often learning of impending wars and other forms of violence advances the plot of the novel, leading to new adventures and romantic involvements. These papers contribute to discussions about gender and genre in new and important ways by exploring gender portrayals as a function of genre and also by interrogating the intended audiences of these genres. The popularity of these genres—prayer books, newspapers and novels, and emblem books—ensured that the gendered norms presented there were widely circulated and thus had great currency in the early modern period. Three contributions comprise “Gender and Violence on the Stage” with readings of Senecan drama in England, sexual violence against men in Italian and French opera, and violent female masquers. Curtis Perry interprets the rise of Senecan tragedy and the violence depicted in such dramas relying on the example of Gismond of Salerne, a play performed before Queen Elizabeth in 1567-1568. In his analysis the topicality of the play presents the fears of the members of the Inns of Court that Elisabeth might have been lapsing into a secretive form of rule away from the institutions of counsel and that these men used the play to position themselves as worthy male servants of

Introduction

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their female monarch. Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich treats the Jacobean court masque, with her study of Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women, in which female players incite violence at a wedding masque, thereby exposing ruptures in the patriarchal authority at court and in marriage. By studying two moments in the masque’s history—that of its first performance under James and that of its later publication in 1657—she suggests that at its printing the violent women masquers of the Jacobean court were believed to represent the feminizing influence responsible for the dissolution of the monarchy. Shifting the focus on gender in performance from England to the continent, Susan Parisi investigates the transformation of the Ovidian myth treating the theme of Cybele and Atys, as Italian (1616) and French (1676) operas. According to the myth Atys is unfaithful to Cybele, and to punish him she drives him to madness and self-emasculation, and then transforms him into a pine. Both operas expand the role of physical love in the story, while, on the one hand, the Italian libretto raises Atys to heaven to contemplate the sublime and, on the other, the French version has Atys defy the goddess by committing suicide. These studies of violence on the early modern stage—in the form of Senecan tragedy, the court masque, and opera—suggest that in spite of geographical and other differences gendered discourses were consistently employed to address social and political unease. The early modern stage was a crucible for gender and violence. The volume concludes with the section entitled “Virtue and Violence.” The first two contributions interrogate very different aspects of gender in the Dutch cabinet painting. Carmen Ripolles takes up the theme of female virtue and violence in the painting The Artist’s Studio by Frans Franken. She complicates the Neo-Stoic message of overcoming death through constantia with an emblematic reading of the central figure of Fortuna, positing that according to the logic of these paintings creativity occurs only by annihilation of the female. Continuing the interrogation of cabinet and kunstkamer paintings, Lisa Rosenthal explores the portrayal of male bourgeois civic and humanistic virtues as positioned against the representation in the paintings of dangerous female powers to which men are susceptible. Moving the the discussion from a focus on art to one on literature and from Northern Europe to Iberia, the contribution by Ann Cruz explores the theme of the walled-in, or immured, female in Spanish literature. Cruz uncovers examples of literally walling-in, or enclosing with bricks and mortar, unruly women as a form of civic punishment, tracing the voluntary enclosure of divinely inspired females to the forced entombment of women perceived to be out of control. The final essay in the collection shifts the focus to the New World, with Carl Niekerk’s analysis of Gellert’s popular eighteenth-century German version of the story of Inkle and Yarico as a parable of European colonization. He questions the assumed anti-

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colonial thrust of this tale, demonstrating that by coding Europe masculine and the Americas feminine a geographic hierarchy emerges that reflects an ambiguous stance toward violence. Extreme violence against women occupies a prominent position in the textual and pictorial narratives of the period (Wade 2010), whereby the violent subjugation of women perceived as transgressive was justified by unbending definitions of (male) virtue.

III. Acknowledgments While these scholarly essays originated in a conference, the volume presents significantly more than a collection of conference papers. Gender Matters originated in a special initiative at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign funded by the Mellon Foundation, which is thanked here for its strong support of early modern studies through the conference and the many related events leading to the publication of this volume. The organization of both the conference and the published volume involved detailed scaffolding of the work to plan the papers and requesting participants to write to a specific topic, revise after much interaction, and edit carefully to produce a coherent body of study. The grant for this conference involved hosting Professor Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, Oxford University, for two weeks, during which time she taught courses, had research meetings with faculty and graduate students, and presented public lectures. In the graduate seminar “Violence, Death, and Gender in Early Modern German Literature” graduate students Jacob Baum, Renata Fuchs, Nikolas Jentzsch, Whitney Kay, Paul Meyer, Mary McLain, and Kathleen Smith, contributed to lively discussions of violence, gender, and the warrior woman both in the seminar and at the conference. Having a female major in the US Army in the seminar certainly informed our perspective in a concrete way. The conference itself was designed to achieve several goals: 1) to position prominently the research of early modern scholars at the University of Illinois; 2) to link a scholar from the University of Illinois with an external speaker with similar research interests and thereby foster interaction; 3) to provide a forum for younger scholars; 4) to highlight tier-one scholarship; and 5) to showcase broadly interdisciplinary research concerning the early modern period in the humanities and fine arts. The conference also presented two full-length concerts of early music. The ensemble Arte Bella,6 comprised of Charlotte Mattax, harpsichord and director, Sherezade 6

http://www.sherezadepanthaki.com/PerformingGroups/ArteBella/tabid/60/ Default.aspx

Introduction

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Panthaki, soprano,7 and Benjamin Hayek, viola da gamba, presented L’Amour vengé: Love and Revenge in Cantatas and Airs of the Baroque. The vocal ensemble Gravitación in conjunction with Tudor Voices presented funerary music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with two motets for the funeral of Anne of Brittany, Queen of France (1514), by Jean Mouton (c.1459-1522) and Costanzo Festa (c.1490-1545) as well as Heinrich Schütz’s (1585-1672) Musikalische Exequien commemorating the funeral of Prince Heinrich Posthumus of Reuss (1636).8 Both works were introduced and analyzed by Professor Herbert Kellman of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Professor Gregory Johnston, University of Toronto, presented a scholarly paper on the acoustic world of the early modern period with “Sound Phenomena and Musical Practice in Funerary Contexts in Seventeenth-Century Germany.” In addition to the Mellon grant awarded through the University of Illinois’ College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, numerous other campus units contributed funding to this highly successful initiative. All of the participants, performers, and presenters worked together in advance of the conference to integrate their presentations with the theme and to share their papers. Significant time and space was dedicated to interaction at the conference so that participants had the opportunity for intellectual and social exchange. Nevertheless not all papers presented at the conference are included here. For example, without the performances the musicological papers lacked the key component to which they were closely linked. Thus, this volume presents select conference presentations that have been substantially expanded; the authors conscientiously aligned their arguments to the themes of gender and violence, allowing for a comprehensive integration of the whole for presentation here. That such a large undertaking was not the work of a single person is clear. For her infallible good cheer, outstanding organizational skills, and dedication, I would like to thank Molly Markin, now at Leipzig, for her work as my assistant before, during, and after the conference. For their editorial assistance at various stages in preparing these papers for publication, I would like to thank Kathleen Smith, Whitney Kay, and Regine Kroh, who served as my graduate assistants at different points during this period. A special thanks is extended to my colleagues in early modern studies at the University of Illinois who gave generously of their knowledge by presenting their work, by chairing sessions, and by serving as respondents to panels. Most especially, I extend congratulations to the “younger scholars” who presented at the conference and who have all earned the PhD and now hold 7 8

http://www.sherezadepanthaki.com/ http://www.gravitacion.org/Home_Page.php For Tudor Voices, see: http://danielcarberg.com/Tudor_Voices.html

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academic positions. Such outstanding conference experiences position the next generation of scholars for success; their accomplishments confirm that the University of Illinois invests well in its faculty and students.

Introduction

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Works Cited Bielby, Clare, and Anna Richards, eds. 2010. Women and Death 3: Women´s Representations of Death in German Culture since 1500. (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rochester, NY: Camden House. Colvin, Sarah and Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, eds. 2009. Women and Death 2: Warlike Women in the German Literary and Cultural Imagination since 1500 (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rochester, NY: Camden House. Drew, Julie. 2004. “Identity Crisis: Gender, Public Discourse, And 9/11” in Women And Language 27.2: 71-77. Engelstein Stefani and Carl Niekerk, eds. 2011. Contemplating Violence: Critical Studies in Modern German Culture. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik, 79. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Fronius, Helen and Anna Linton. 2008. Women and Death: Representations of Female Victims and Perpetrators in German Culture 1500-2000. (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rochester, NY: Camden House. Plate, Liedeke. 2008. “Bearing Witness: Gender And The Poetry Of 9/11” in Women´s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 37.1: 1-16. Sandberg, Brian. “‘Generous Amazons Came to the Breach’: Besieged Women in the French Wars of Religion,” Gender and History 16 (2004): 654-688. Stoppino, Eleonora. 2012. Genealogies of Fiction: Women Warriors and the Medieval Imagination in the Orlando furioso. New York: Fordham University Press. Wade, Mara R. 2010. “Reading Rape: Gendered Discourses of Sexual Violence. Grimmelshausen and the Sack of Magdeburg,” Ethik Geschlecht - Medizin. Körpergeschichten in politischer Reflexion. Internationale Frauen- und Genderforschung in Niedersachsen, ed. Waltraud Ernst. (= Focus Gender, Vol. 14). Münster: LIT Verlag: 17-39.

Women Warriors, Fact and Fiction

Judith P. Aikin The Militant Countesses of Rudolstadt When an unruly army stops by on its way through, it’s time to call on a woman for help. The woman ruler in armor was a popular metaphor for the sort of leadership such women provided during wartime, especially in the writings and illustrations associated with the “querelles des femmes” debate over gender roles. This essay examines the wartime actions of three countesses of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt and the portrayals of them by their admiring contemporaries as “militant” and “heroic.” In all three cases, their militancy was not needed against attacking enemies, but instead against the throughmarches and quartering of supposedly friendly troops. The widow Katharina die Heldenmütige (Katharina the Heroically Brave) governed Rudolstadt as her dower territory during the mid-sixteenth-century Schmalkaldic War; another widow, the Regent Aemilia Antonia, ruled Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt for her underage son during the last few years of the Thirty Years’ War and the chaotic years that followed; and her daughter-inlaw Aemilia Juliana, who acted as ruler’s consort, participated in her own way in the principality’s defense during the campaigns against the Ottoman Turks, who were invading the Holy Roman Empire beginning in the 1660s.

In the context of an examination of the intersections of gender and violence in early modern Europe, it is appropriate to pay attention to the role women leaders may have played in times of war, that is, state-sponsored violence and the defense against it. Indeed, this issue was often the sticking point in those particular tracts of the “querelles des femmes” (the debate over the status of women) that argued about whether women were qualified to rule principalities and kingdoms. Those polemicists who wrote against women holding positions of political leadership used the issue of defense as their trump card. Women, they stated, were unable to fulfill one of the primary responsibilities of a ruler: military leadership and strategy in response to demands from the emperor or other feudal overlord, in response to an enemy attack, or when faced with an approaching army demanding the right to march through or be quartered in the principality. Those polemicists who wrote in favor, in contrast, argued that women were fully capable of effective leadership in times of war. These writers, most of whom dedicated their treatises to actual or prospective female regents and rulers, offered multiple examples of militant women leaders

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from the Bible and from history.1 A frequently cited example was Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, regent for her young son after she was widowed, who personally led her 70,000 troops against a Roman legion in 269 A.D. An engraving of this female general, dressed in armor and brandishing a spear, appeared in a popular collection of examples of “femmes fortes” (strong women) that had continuing impact on the iconography employed to support this view during the seventeenth century (Fig. 1).2 Such admired examples offered a metaphorical format, at least, for the actions that women leaders of the period did take to protect the people who depended on them. This study examines three instances of countesses in the small Thuringian principality of Schwarzburg, all resident in the town of Rudolstadt, south of Weimar, who took protective action on behalf of their subjects when foreign armies threatened the physical and economic security of their little land. The first of these countesses, “Katharina die Heldenmütige” (Katharina the Heroically Brave), a widow whose dower residence was in Rudolstadt, acted within the events of the mid-sixteenthcentury Schmalkaldic War. The second, Aemilia Antonia, served as regent of the secundogeniture principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt for over fifteen years in the mid-seventeenth century. The third, Aemilia Juliana, consort of the ruling count of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt in the second half of the seventeenth century, was active in her own way during the various campaigns against the invading Ottoman Turks. The three women differed in the form their “militancy” took, but each was seen as the figurative sword and shield of the land in contemporary and later accounts and images. The combativeness with sword or pen on the part of each of these women achieved a level of protection that existing agreements and local militias had failed to provide.

1

2

On the “querelle des femmes” as it dealt with women rulers, see Schlombohm. On the roles and activities of women rulers, regents, and consorts, see Wiesner, and Wunder. Zenobia, engraving published in Pierre Le Moyne, La Gallerie des femmes fortes, in various editions from 1647 through 1668. The most frequently found edition was that which here serves as the basis for a reproduction of the engraving: Leiden: Elsevier, 1660. It seems likely that an exemplar of this book was available to the seventeenth-century countesses of Rudolstadt.

The Militant Countesses of Rudolstadt

Figure 1 “Zenobia,” engraving published in Piérre Le Moyne, La Gallerie des femmes fortes (Leiden: Elsevier, 1660). Courtesy of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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In the early modern period, German-speaking lands were still to a large extent subject to the practices and laws of feudal relationships that dated back to the Middle Ages. Every one of the some 350 principalities and free cities owed allegiance to some other entity—to the Holy Roman Empire and to one or more of the various duchies and other powerful states. The laws of feudalism required not only at least nominal military contributions when an army had to be raised, but also access for any armies sponsored by the Emperor or other feudal overlord that needed to march through or wanted to stop for a short rest during their transit or—worst of all—demanded to be allowed to remain for a winter or other extended period. During such mandated quartering of troops (“Einquartierung”), housing, food, and other supplies had to be made available to the officers and soldiers, as well as to their horses, wagons, and supply trains. After all, such armies had to be selfsupporting in this age before the establishment of a professional military. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, officers and soldiers alike lived off the land, plundering and pillaging where they were insufficiently supported through voluntary or obligatory contributions of the locals. The result for the host land was often disastrous and always onerous and expensive; the imminent arrival of such an army, even when it was composed of “friends,” not “enemies,” was therefore greeted with dread. In this study, I confine my discussion of militant countesses to actions they took during the stopovers and through-marches of such supposedly benign armies, in large part because Rudolstadt, the town on which I am currently concentrating my research, was seldom troubled by anything more serious. Similar cases of “militant” behavior and militant iconography connected with women regents and rulers can of course be found in context with threats and attacks from enemy armies in many other principalities and kingdoms of early modern Europe.

Katharina die Heldenmütige The story of Katharina die Heldenmütige has come down to us in the liveliest of styles as recorded in 1788 by poet Friedrich Schiller, who was a history scholar at the nearby University of Jena and a frequent visitor to Rudolstadt, where he was wooing his future wife, Charlotte von Lengefeld. Schiller published his rendering of the story in the October 1788 issue of the Teutscher Merkur, a popular literary journal.3 As Schiller relates, Katharina’s 3

Friedrich Schiller, “Herzog von Alba bei einem Frühstück auf dem Schlosse zu Rudolstadt, im Jahr 1547,” is readily accessible at the Project Gutenberg website and elsewhere (http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/schiller/rudolst/rudolst.htm). On this

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heroic action took place following the disastrous Protestant defeat at the battle of Mühlberg in 1547, at which the Catholic emperor, Charles V, and his general, the Spanish Duke of Alba, had captured the leader of the Protestant forces, Johann Friedrich, Elector of Saxony. The victorious imperial army, led by the Duke of Alba, was passing through Thuringia and had stopped in Saalfeld, just a few miles from Rudolstadt, the dower residence of Katharina, née Countess of Henneberg-Schleusingen, widow of Count Heinrich XXXIV of Schwarzburg. Katharina (1509-1567), who was known for continuing in her dower territory the ardent pro-Lutheran policies she and her husband had introduced to the entire land in 1533, must have sided with the defeated elector. But like other imperial counts of Schwarzburg, she always attempted to remain on good terms with the emperor, even during confessional conflicts. In this instance, she had had the foresight to obtain from the emperor a Sauve Guarde (letter of protection), a guarantee of security that was supposed to keep the army out of the portion of Schwarzburg territory she controlled, as Schiller relates. In exchange, she had promised to provide beer and bread at bargain prices at the bridge across the Saale River leading to Saalfeld. Canny in the unruly ways of armies, she had also had the foresight to have the bridge dismantled so that the way into her little land was rendered very difficult. With these measures she thought to ensure the safety of her subjects and their possessions. Thus she was confounded when she received a request from the Duke of Alba that she should host him for breakfast. She graciously if reluctantly invited him to her castle in Rudolstadt, despite her reservations. The festive breakfast took place on June 26, 1547. And indeed, just as she had feared, the soldiers in his train stole some cattle from her subjects. She was called away during the meal to hear the messenger who brought the evil tidings, and before she returned to her guests, she quietly had her servants arm themselves. When her guests laughed at her demand for redress, she called in the armed servants, and once they were placed about the room, she repeated her demand with enhanced militancy: “Fürstenblut für Ochsenblut!” (Princes’ blood in exchange for oxen blood!) The dramatic event is depicted in a painting that still hangs in the palace in Rudolstadt, narrative and its genesis, see Förster-Stahl. An ephemeral blog by feminist scholar Virginia DeMarce from 2002 abstracts the crucial events in English: “There’s something that appeals to me about a countess who, when she heard that Alba’s troops had broken the imperial safe-conduct and had started plundering the villages of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt and stealing the farmer’s oxen, closed the gates of her castle, had Alba and his officers who were drinking in the dining room surrounded by her armed retainers, and threatened that if he didn’t make it stop, ‘Oxblood would be paid for by the blood of princes’.”

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one of several nineteenth-century artifacts of the reception of Schiller’s little narrative (Fig. 2).4

Figure 2 “Katharina die Heldenmütige,” oil painting by Wilhelm Lindenschmidt the Younger (1829-1895). (Photo courtesy of the Thüringer Landesmuseum Heidecksburg, Rudolstadt)

Katharina’s bloodthirsty battle cry threatening the life of the general proved to be effective strategy, and Alba complied with her demands, commanding his soldiers to return the purloined cattle and henceforth to leave the 4

The painting, exact date unknown, is attributed to the Munich history-painter Wilhelm Lindenschmidt the Younger (1829-1895). It currently hangs in the Schwarzburg History room of the Heidecksburg Museum in Rudolstadt and appears on-line at the museum website at: www.heidecksburg.de/cms/pages/de/ ausstellungen-museen/dauerausstellungen/schwarzburgische-geschichte/bilder galerie.php. Other signs of interest in the nineteenth century included a three-volume historical novel authored by von Guseck, and a section in Milde’s proto-feminist work Der deutchen Jungfrau Wesen und Wirken (first published in 1869 but perhaps not incorporating a reference to Katharina until an edition of 1890), where Katharina is listed among examples of active and combative women throughout history whose deeds are to be admired and emulated by modern women.

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Schwarzburg citizens and their possessions untouched during their sojourn through the land. The later bloody reign of the Duke of Alba in the Netherlands, as imperial regent there, only enhanced the stature of Countess Katharina, who received the sobriquet “die Heldenmütige” (the Heroically Brave) from her subjects and contemporaries. Schiller referred to the general she had bested as “den fürchterlichen Herzog von Alba” (the fearsome Duke of Alba). Schiller cites three sources for his narrative, including an account in the popular Adels Spiegel of 1591 written by Katharina’s contemporary Cyriacus Spangenberg, who claimed that he had heard the anecdote directly from her: “Hierbey wil ich [...] zum Beschluß nur noch eine männliche behertzte That einer deutschen Fürstin erzelen/ wie ich die aus derselben eigen Munde Anno 1552. gehöret.”5 Schiller’s account conforms to that of Spangenberg in nearly all particulars.6 Nevertheless, Schiller makes it clear that he had initially found the narrative in another source, a seventeenth-century chronicle of the events of the sixteenth century that he had been examining during a sojourn in Rudolstadt, Schwarzburg Church Superintendent Justus Söffing’s Res in Ecclesia et Politia Christiana gestae ab anno 1500 ad an. 1600, published in 1670.7 He had only found this account confirmed when he later explored Spangenberg and an early seventeenth-century work.8 Examination of Söffing’s version shows why Schiller’s account, so close to that in Spangenberg, could claim the later chronicle as its primary source. Although this work was by a Rudolstadt author, who probably would have had oral tradition as well as the Adels Spiegel to draw on, it merely quotes Spangenberg’s account almost verbatim. Indeed, this German narrative in 5 6

7

8

Now in closing I want to relate one more manly deed of high courage by a German Princess, as I heard it told by her own lips in 1552. Spangenberg’s Adels Spiegel can be accessed on the web (http://digi.ub.uniheidelberg.de/diglit/drwspangenberg1591), but it can also still be found in the original in the Historische Bibliothek in Rudolstadt, almost certainly the very copy that Schiller consulted. The account of Katharina’s deed is to be found in the lengthy section on “Weiber-Adel” (noblewomen). Schiller gives the date 1676, but as this particular volume of a multi-volume history of Christianity was published already in 1670, he must have been mistaken. Söffing authored the chronicle for use in the schools in Rudolstadt, where the official court printer, Caspar Freyschmidt, published the various volumes between 1670 and 1678. The chronicle thus incorporates local history in several instances, including this account of the events of 1547. See Söffing: 1670. Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to examine the account in the other source cited by Schiller, Mausolea manibus Metzelii (1638). As Förster-Stahl pointed out, Schiller made several errors in his citations, for instance giving the year 1738 for the latter work and naming the wrong author (Förster-Stahl 2005: 164). A careless Schiller also provided the wrong page number for Spangenberg’s version, in spite of the correct citation in Söffing, and even got the date of Söffing’s book wrong.

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the midst of a Latin text book is in the vernacular precisely because it constitutes a quotation from an existing work. Söffing’s chronicle is no longer to be found in Rudolstadt but has been preserved in Wolfenbüttel and in several other libraries, an indication that its distribution extended far beyond Rudolstadt.

Aemilia Antonia By the seventeenth century, Rudolstadt was residence to the secundogeniture principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt (see Fleischer 1996 and 2000). During the Thirty Years’ War, troop movements and quartering were once again a burden for the little land, one that another countess battled with diplomacy and the pen, not the sword. Aemilia Antonia, née Countess of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst (1614-1670), consort of Count Ludwig Günther I of Schwarzburg, was widowed in 1646 and thereafter served as regent for her son during his long minority. In her portrait, she appears selfconfident but not at all militant (Fig. 3).

Figure 3 “Aemilia Antonia von Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt,” oil painting by an unknown artist, ca. 1650. (Photo courtesy of the Thüringer Landesmuseum Heidecksburg, Rudolstadt)

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Although we hear of no heroic deeds on her part, we know that she likewise worked to obtain imperial letters of protection and that she used her pen to try to obtain reparations for the damages nevertheless left behind by unruly armies. Her letters to Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III in 1647 requesting a Sauve Guarde (letter of protection) were successful in protecting Rudolstadt, although outlying areas continued to suffer from the looting of unruly armies, and Swedish troops did some minor damage when passing through the town. After this event, Aemilia Antonia wrote a letter to Queen Christina of Sweden to demand reparations, but this missive appears to have gone unanswered. Although Rudolstadt survived the Thirty Years’ War without direct military attacks, the extent of the material damages caused by the war was indeed massive; it has been demonstrated that the principality’s debts due to the required war contributions, together with the high costs of feeding various armies that passed through or were quartered there at various times, reached 50,000 Reichsthaler (Fleischer 2000: 169). The usual sources of revenue during peacetime, such as mining and forestry, went idle during the war, and the production machinery fell into disrepair. The economic situation of the territory during her regency was therefore dire, and thus Aemilia Antonia’s successful efforts at economizing and at jumpstarting the foundering state economy, as well as her provision for the education of her son and of his future bride as responsible and skilled leaders, constitute her lasting legacy. Nevertheless, in one funeral sermon after her death in 1670, she is called “die Schwartzburgische Judith” and her activities as a widow charged with leadership of her land during wartime are equated to the deeds of the biblical Judith, likewise a pious woman whose patriotism saved her land when it was under military attack. The sermon’s author and preacher was the same Justus Söffing who had admired Katharina’s deed in his chronicle. Furthermore, in the anonymous funerary biography that is attached to the series of sermons and other memorial texts, Aemilia Antonia is labeled “eine Landes-Mutter im Schwartzburgischen Israel” (a Mother of her country in Schwarzburg, the latter-day Israel) in context with the heavy burden she bore as regent during wartime.9

9

Söffing’s sermon mentioning Judith, preached on February 22, 1671, is the fifth in the collective volume titled Unverwelckliche Myrten-Krone. The funerary biography, titled “Ehren-Gedächtniß Vom Christ-Gräflichen Lebens-Lauff,” was drafted or at least edited and approved by her daughters and daughter-in-law, as is clear in one of Aemilia Juliana’s letters to her eldest sister-in-law, Sophia Juliana. This letter is preserved in a large packet of her letters to Sophia Juliana in the Thüringisches Staatsarchiv Rudolstadt, Geheimes Archiv A. III. 52, [unnumbered letter 354].

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Aemilia Juliana The third “militant” countess of Rudolstadt, Aemilia Juliana of Barby and Mühlingen (1637-1706), was orphaned at the age of six and raised in Rudolstadt by Aemilia Antonia, who was her maternal aunt and godmother. In 1665, when Aemilia Juliana married her foster brother, Albert Anton of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Aemilia Antonia also became her mother-in-law. Although Aemilia Juliana, too, never wielded a sword or led armed men into a violent confrontation, she was likewise depicted as militant defender of her people in funerary imagery following her death in December 1706. An ode titled “Das Schwartzburgische Trauer-Schild” (Schwarzburg MourningShield), written and delivered in her honor by Pastor Christopher Helm in January 1707, constructs a metaphorical shield for her to bear into the afterlife. He defends this rhetorical choice by explaining how her efforts served to guard her subjects from harm. It was her prayers and songs, which she wrote herself and communicated personally to God, that had been her weapons, he declared. A sample of his verses will suffice to show his employment of military imagery in his depiction of her deeds: Wer unsre Heldin kennt/ wie tapffer Sie gerungen/ Und wie vor manchen Riß sich Ihr Gebeth gestellt/ Wie offt Ihr Glaubens-Arm den Stärcksten selbst bezwungen/ Wenn allgemeine Noth sich in das Land gesellt; Der muß/ zu Dero Lob/ auch dieses noch bekennen/ Daß es nicht halb genug an Schild und Wappen sey; Wir müssen allen Pracht ein leeres Stück-Werck nennen/ Denn es kömmt kein Vergleich Aemilijens Tugend bey. [Anyone who knows our heroine, and how bravely she fought, And how her prayers covered many a breach in our defenses, And how often the strong arm of her faith defeated even the strongest enemy Whenever catastrophe troubled everyone in the land; Such a person has to confess, in her praise, this as well: That mere shield and coat-of-arms do not go far enough; We must term all such splendid monuments hollow stucco, For there is no image that matches Aemilia’s (manly) virtue.]10

10

Christopher Helm, “Das Schwartzburghische Trauer-Schild,” printed pamphlet included as first item in the packet of letters of condolence received following her death that are preserved in the Thüringisches Staatsarchiv Rudolstadt, Geheimes Archiv B II, 4a, Nr. 9 under the title “Condolenz-Schreiben wegen d. Ableben der Gräfin Aemilie Juliane geb. Gräfin von Barby u. Mühlingen. 3. XII. 1706.”

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Nor was this the only instance of this metaphorical representation of Aemilia Juliana as militant defender of her people. In addition, the image of an armed woman modeled on the Roman goddess of wisdom Minerva appeared in the lavish funeral decorations erected in Aemilia Juliana’s honor. This figure, one of the four female allegorical figures representing Aemilia Juliana’s accomplishments and virtues that appeared in an enormous “illuminated” painted tableau at the west end of St. Andreas church, wears a helmet and holds both sword and shield (Fig. 4).

Figure 4 Detail of “Tugend” from the funerary painting, as recorded in an engraving by Johann Christian Marchand in the memorial volume, Schwartzburgisches Denckmahl einer ChristGräflichen Lammes-Freundin (Rudolstadt: Heinrich Urban, 1707). (Photo courtesy of the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, Halle, Signature Pon Wh 860, 4o)

But at her feet there is also a basket containing books. The explication that accompanies the engravings of the funeral decorations in the large volume containing all the funerary honorifics relates that this figure represents virtus, in German Tugend (in the ancient sense of manly strength). The explication also tells us that the titles of some of the works Aemilia Juliana had authored

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and published in Rudolstadt are engraved on the seven books that tumble from the basket at Minerva’s side, thus making clear the nature of her heroic deeds demonstrating virtus: her weapons are the pen and the printing press. And the verbal metaphors for this type of militancy emerged once more in the final funeral sermon honoring the deceased following a month of sermons and memorial speeches. In this sermon, preached on New Year’s Eve 1706 in the Stadtkirche St. Andreas, pastor Heinrich Christoph Ludwig portrayed Aemilia Juliana to the Rudolstadt congregation as “die Mauer um deine Gränzen” (the fortifications around your borders; Schwartzburgisches Denckmahl 1707: 341). Aemilia Juliana, whose formal portrait depicts her as a pious woman of formidable character (Fig. 5), is best known today for her two hymns that are included in the Lutheran hymnal, one of which Johann Sebastian Bach used as the basis for a chorale. In fact, she was among the most prolific authors of the second half of the seventeenth century, having penned nearly 700 original devotional song texts and a similar number of rhymed and prose prayers, many of which were published during her lifetime in devotional books she had compiled and prepared for publication herself. A large number of these songs also appeared in Lutheran and Pietist hymnals published outside Rudolstadt during her lifetime and in the two centuries after her death. Her family published several editions of “complete works” in the eighteenth century that included previously unpublished material from her manuscripts; three manuscript books also still survive, and they include some original songs that never did appear in print.11 Aemilia Juliana, unlike her two female predecessors in Rudolstadt known for their leadership during wartime, did not rule alone; her husband, Count Albert Anton, was a capable ruler who took charge of military matters in the principality, reinforcing fortifications and restructuring the militia during the initial push of the Ottoman Turks into central Europe in the 1660s, as well as handling the diplomatic arrangements with the emperor and the various dukes and generals whose troops seemed from this time on to be perpetually on the move. But he was happy to delegate other activities to his consort, and through this division of labor, Aemilia Juliana likewise assumed a role deemed crucial for their success. Her praying, singing, authoring, and publishing activities were seen, at the time and in the context of her funeral, as the reason for the principality’s continued well-being in spite of warfare, troop-quartering, and through-marches, as well as various natural disasters.12 11

12

On the devotional songs and books of Aemilia Juliana see Aikin. I am currently writing a book on her life and works titled Aemilia Juliana: A Woman’s Life in Early Modern Germany. This view is made clear in several of the sermons and in the biography preserved in the enormous commemorative volume that memorializes her and her family through

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Figure 5 “Aemilie Juliane von Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt,” oil painting by court painter Seivert Lammers, ca. 1692. Displayed in the Thüringer Landesmuseum Heidecksburg in Rudolstadt. (Photo and permission courtesy of Foto Lösche, Rudolstadt)

illustrations of the funerary decor in the church as well as through printed versions of the various speeches, odes, and sermons presented during the one-month period between her death and her interment in the city church, Schwartzburgisches Denckmahl (see also note 13). On the expectation that rulers’ consorts would contribute to the well-being of the state through their prayers, see Bepler.

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Although Schwarzburg was never under direct attack during Aemilia Juliana’s reign, the principality was regularly plagued with armies on the march through the territory, invariably demanding supplies, and sometimes asserting a right to long-term quartering. It has been calculated that between 1672 and 1676 alone, when Europe was once again threatened by advancing Ottoman Turks, the little principality was saddled by damages totaling 200,000 Gulden, the result of unwanted visits by such foreign troops. In 1676, for instance, an army from Braunschweig-Hannover was quartered there; the populace was going hungry as supplies were diverted to the troops, and the landed gentry mounted a rebellion against paying the costs assessed to them as their share. Between 1680 and 1700 such burdens were a constant fact of life: troops from Electoral Saxony and Sachsen-Gotha or Sachsen-Altenburg were nearly always present, and other armies stopped by that hailed from Pommerania (1683), Electoral Cologne (1685), Sweden (1692), Münster (1693 and 1698), Brandenburg (1698), Braunschweig (1698), and Poland (1699). Imperial troops made an appearance in 1694 (Fleischer 1996: 40; Fleischer 2000: 187-188). On the occasion of one such through-march, probably in the mid-1670s, Aemilia Juliana penned a sequence of three rhymed prayers, one for use “When a march through our land is rumored,” another “During the Through-March,” and a third that she dubbed “Sigh of thanks, after the Through-March.” The first displays her maternal concern for her subjects as well as for the principality when she reacts to the first rumors of an approaching army:

The Militant Countesses of Rudolstadt Als von einem Marsch durch unser Land geredet wurde. Von einem Durchmarsch wird geredt/ Hilff GOTT/ wenn es dein Wille/ Daß solcher wohl vorüber geht/ Und läst uns feste deine Hand/ Damit wir all’/ mit Leut und Land/ In guter Ruh verbleiben.

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When a march through our land was rumoured. A Through-March is rumored, Help, GOD, if it is your will, That it pass by without harm. And may your hand keep us safe, So that we, together with people and land, May retain our peaceful way of life.

The second similarly pleads for God’s help as the through-march begins: Bey dem Durchmarsch. GOTT/ weil du willlt/ daß unser Land Vom Durchmarsch wird berühret/ So bitt ich/ daß/ durch deine Hand/ Es werde ausgeführet/ Damit es leidlich komm davon/ Und gebe dir gleich Danck zum Lohn/ So bald du es befreyest.

During the Through-March GOD, because it is your will that our land Is afflicted by a Through-March, I plead that, through your hand, All takes place in such a way That the land comes through unscathed, And I’ll give you thanks in exchange, As soon as you liberate the land.

Finally, in her expression of gratitude as the army eventually departs, she also pleads for continued help dealing with the damage left in the wake of the “uninvited guests”: Danck-Seuffzer nachdem der Durchmarsch vorbey. GOTT Lob! daß unser Land befreyt Von unerbetnen Gästen; Ersetz den Schaden mit der Zeit/ Der dir bekannt am besten: Wirff ihme dafür Segen zu/ Und laß es mit uns/ in der Ruh/ Dich loben/ und dir dienen.

Sighs of thanks after the Through-March GOD be praised! that our land is freed Of its uninvited guests; Mend the damage at that time Which you deem right. Send your blessings in exchange, And in peace let the land, along with us, Praise you and serve you.

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She must have used the three texts as the basis for her own prayers on behalf of her land not only during this instance, but also during the others that were to follow. As far as I know, these were not published during her lifetime, although they did appear in print eight years after her death, taken (along with hundreds of other prayer and song texts that make up the material for the volume) from her personal manuscripts (Aemilia Juliana Geistlicher Brautschmuck: 617-618).13 However, she did publish and disseminate to her subjects and others the two songs that she wrote for use in the context of quartering, and she probably intended that these texts should be used simultaneously by herself and the populace in private homes on a daily basis, thus forming a particularly powerful plea for divine aid. The pair of songs appeared in a devotional handbook for general use that she published in 1699, but may already have been available in one of the broadsheets disseminating her songs that were printed during the 1680s and 1690s.14 The first song, to be sung “During Quartering,” calls on God for deliverance from the burden imposed on the land and its people: Bey Einquartierung. Ein Lied. Im Thon: Nicht so traurig/ nicht so sehr. [1.] Grosser GOTT! HErr Zebaoth! ach entlöß uns doch der Bande/ schaff uns Beystand in der Noth! treib das Kriegs-Volck aus dem Lande: denn das Land-Volck seufftzet sehr/ geht nach Brodt schon mit Beschwehr.

2. Herr/ gedencke unser doch/

13

14

During Quartering. A Song. To the tune: Not so sad, not so very. 1. Great GOD! Lord Zebaoth! Oh, liberate us from our bonds, Provide us with support in our time of trouble! Drive the war-folk from the land: For the land-folk sighs due to its suffering, Finds sufficient bread only with great difficulty. 2. Lord (Jesus), think about our plight,

The other volume of this massive two-volume set published in 1714, Der Freundin des Lammes is a reprinting of a work Aemilia Juliana had previously published anonymously herself under the title Täglicher Morgen- Mittag- und Abend-Opffer in 1699 (see note 12). [Aemilie Juliane von Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt], Täglicher Morgen- Mittag- und AbendOpffer, p. 471-472. This work was an expanded version of a book of the same title she had published in 1685. Several anonymous broadsheets preserving her songs can be found in the Forschungsbibliothek in nearby Gotha. I have not yet found these songs for use during military quartering in a broadsheet, however.

The Militant Countesses of Rudolstadt und nimm durch dein Blut und Sterben von uns dieses schwehre Joch/ unser Land laß nicht verderben/ schick ihm Seegen und beschehr/ daß es geben kan noch mehr. 3. Heil’ger Geist/ hilff von der Bürd uns und unserm Land und Leuten/ hilff darbey/ daß niemals wird/ bey so schwehren Kummer-Zeiten/ in dem Rad das Mehl verzehrt/ noch der Oelkrug ausgeleert. 4. Nun/ nimm/ mein GOtt! weg die Last/ damit unser Land beladen; ach! der du die Kräffte hast/ GOtt ersetze allen Schaden; so soll dir für Lieb und Macht stetig werden Danck gebracht.

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And take, in the name of your blood and death, From us this heavy yoke, Don’t let our land be devastated, Send it your blessings and provide That it may have still more to offer. 3. Holy Spirit, lift the burden From us and our land and people. In so doing, help us so that never, During this time of hard suffering, May the flour ground in the mill be used up, Nor the oil jug be completely emptied. 4. Now take, my God! away the burden, With which our land is encumbered; Oh! You who possess the power, God, replace what was damaged; Then we will, in return for your love and power, Constantly offer you our gratitude.

The second song, “Song of Thanks, when the land is once again freed from the war-folk,” offers thanks for God’s intervention, as the first two of the four strophes show: Danck-Lied/ wenn das Land wieder von dem Kriegs-Volcke befreyet. Im Thon: Allein GOtt in der Höh sey Ehr. [1.] Das Land ist von dem Volcke frey/ GOtt Lob! es ist geschieden/ nun hört man nichts/ als Danck-Geschrey/ ich ruffe mit hienieden: Mein GOtt/ der hat uns wohl getröst’t/

Song of Thanks, when the land is once again freed from the war-folk To the tune: All Honor alone to God on high. 1. The land is liberated from the warfolk, God be praised! It marched away. Now one hears nothing but grateful shouts, And I call out from down here among the rest: My God, who has consoled us well,

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Judith P. Aikin wie unsre Väter er erlöst/ ist er mit uns gewesen. 2. In GOttes Hand ist Krafft und Macht/ er hat es jetzt erwiesen/ das Kriegsvolck hat er weggebracht/ er sey dafür gepriesen/ Strick ist entzwey/ und wir sind frey/ der Arm des Höchsten steht uns bey/ uns hilfft der beste Helffer.

Who has saved us as he did our forefathers, He was here with us to offer support. 2. In God’s hands lie strength and power, He demonstrated that just now. The war-folk he has sent away, May he be praised for that. Bonds are torn asunder, and we are free, The arm of the Almighty stands by us, The best Helper of all is helping us.

Designed to be sung using popular Lutheran hymn melodies, these songs for private, small group, or congregational singing introduced specific pleas related to a current event in an easily adopted format that empowered those who sang them. The underlying Lutheran texts were appropriate, in a generalized way, to the content of each new text Aemilia Juliana provided, and reusing their melodies would have evoked memories of the originals at the same time that their content was applied to a specific context. Such a song became a fortress against the troubles that beset the populace, armor against the threats posed by an unruly army that had stopped by. Aemilia Juliana also created matching prose prayers for these songs that would have doubled the basis for private and perhaps even congregational supplications for divine aid under such circumstances. Their language repeats some of the material in the song texts, but at times constitutes a more colorful evocation of the disasters that her devotional texts were designed to alleviate, as the prayer for use during quartering shows: Ein Gebet. Ach! mein Erretter, JEsu! ein grosses Heer bedecket unser Land. Es ist allenthalben ein Krieges-Geschrey und grosser Jammer. [...] Jesu! Jesu! stehe uns bey! sey nicht ferne von einem ieden unter uns; eile, uns und den Unsrigen zu helfen! [...] Hilf uns von diesen Kriegs-Völkern, daß sie nichts Feindseeliges anfangen! Lasse durch sie den armen Unterthanen ihr Mehl im Rad nicht verzehret, ihr Oelkrüglein nicht ausgeleeret, und ihr Vermögen nicht genommen werden; sondern lege selbst in Speise, Trank und Geld deinen reichen Seegen, diese grosse Menge Volk, Roß und Mann zu sättigen. [...]15

15

A Prayer. Alas! my Savior, Jesus! a great army covers our land. Everywhere there is war-clamor and terrible wailing. [...] Jesus! Jesus! stand by us! Be not distant from any

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Her concerns focus not only on the possibility of looting, but also on the likely insufficiency of the principality’s supply of food and fodder for the populace as well as for the troops and their livestock. Although the principality of Schwarzburg did not come under direct attack from enemy armies during Aemilia Juliana’s reign, there were belligerent armies and even battles in the vicinity that elicited many songs and prayers from her pen, including a sequence of songs for wartime published in her 1699 devotional handbook as well as other songs not published until after her death. The beginnings of several of these songs are indicative of the urgency of the topic: “Man hört von vielem KriegsGeschrey” (We hear rumors of the sounds of war), “Mein Gott/ mein Hertz sich sehr entsetzt” (My Lord, my heart is horrified), “Herr/ heiß das Schwerdt zu hören auf” (Lord, command the sword to cease), “Ach Herr/ schon deines Volckes doch” (Alas, Lord, do protect your people). In many cases, the songs seem to derive from the context of the Turkish invasions that reached their acme in the siege of Vienna in 1683. She also penned at least six songs that celebrate the arrival of peacetime. Aemilia Juliana, as her husband’s partner in providing protection to the populace in times of crisis, such as quartering and through-marches as well as threatening battles in the vicinity, had no problem presenting herself in military terms, as can be seen in a painting that she commissioned around 1690 from court painter Seivert Lammers. This mural from the King David room in the nearby summer palace in Leutenberg depicts her face on a body cloaked in antique armor as David’s bosom friend Jonathan, while her husband’s portrait tops David’s similarly clad body (Fig. 6). Aemilia Juliana’s figure is clearly modeled on the engraving of Zenobia from Le Moyne’s Gallerie des femmes fortes (Fig. 1), and she is thus depicted as fulfilling an analogous role. Although the identities of the biblical personages are clear from the context, this panel has always been titled “The Partnership between Albert Anton and Aemilia Juliana.”16 Thus the

16

one of us; hurry to help us and our family and subjects! [...] Protect us from these warlike hordes so that they do not initiate anything malicious! Do not let them use up the milled grain of our poor subjects, nor empty their oil jugs, do not let the soldiers take the property of our subjects; instead, bless abundantly the food, drink, and money, in order that this great horde of people, horses, and fighting men can be satisfied. [...] “Der Bund zwischen Albert Anton und Aemilie Juliane,” fresco by Rudolstadt court painter Seivert Lammers (1647-1711) from the “König David Saal,” a public room in the nearby Leutenberg palace, ca. 1690. Other murals in the sequence likewise employed portraits of Schwarzburg family members superimposed on historical paintings depicting events from the life of the biblical king. The murals were destroyed in a fire in the 1930s, but this photograph survives (along with several others) in the archives of Foto Lösche, Rudolstadt.

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friendship of the two biblical heroes becomes the cooperation of ruler and consort in joint defense of their land, and Aemilia Juliana’s devotional, authorship, and publication activities qualify as her sword and shield against the disasters her people faced.

Figure 6 “Der Bund zwischen Albert Anton und Aemilie Juliane,” fresco by Seivert Lammers from the “König David Saal” in Leutenberg, ca. 1690. The murals were destroyed in a fire in the 1930s, but this photograph survives. (Photo and permission courtesy of Foto Lösche, Rudolstadt)

With Aemilia Juliana, we have come full circle, for Schiller’s direct source for his account of the militant deed of Katharina die Heldenmütige was a chronicle dating from Aemilia Antonia’s and Aemilia Juliana’s period of active patronage in Rudolstadt. The Latin-language history book that Rudolstadt Church Superintendent Justus Söffing wrote for use in Schwarzburg schools and published in 1670, Res in Ecclesia & Politia Christiana Gestae, which later drew Schiller’s attention to this story, would have been read with considerable interest by Aemilia Juliana, who was fluent in Latin. And because this Spangenberg quotation and another passage that praises the church-building during wartime of Aemilia Antonia, her husband, and her Oldenburg ancestors were both written in German, the older woman, whose Latin does not appear to have been as strong as that of her daughter-in-law, would also have been a targeted reader. Indeed, it

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seems likely that Söffing included the account of Katharina’s deed as a compliment to and inspiration for both of his patronesses, who followed in their sixteenth-century predecessor’s footsteps as protectresses of Rudolstadt. The three countesses of Rudolstadt whom I have labeled “militant” did not spill blood, but each acted boldly and effectively on behalf of the populace she had in her care. Katharina, Aemilia Antonia, and Aemilia Juliana differed in the form their “militancy” took, but each was depicted as the sword and shield of the land in contemporary accounts. That this behavior was admired, not criticized as unfeminine, is clear in the public praise that each woman garnered from subjects, advisors, pastors, painters, and in Aemilia Juliana’s case a proud husband. Whether the militancy of such women rulers of the early modern period in Europe was actual or metaphorical, it found abundant expression in the portrayals of them by their contemporaries, as these three examples show.

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Works Cited Aikin, Judith P. 2002. ‘Der Weg zur Mündigkeit in einem Frauenleben aus dem 17. Jahrhundert. Genesis und Publikationsgeschichte der geistlichen Lieder der Gräfin Aemilie Juliane von Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt’ in Wolfenbütteler Barock-Nachrichten 29: 33-59. Bepler, Jill. 2002. ‘Die Fürstin als Betsäule--Anleitung und Praxis der Erbauung am Hof’ in Morgen-Glantz, Zeitschrift der Christian Knorr von Rosenroth-Gesellschaft 12: 249-264. Fleischer, Horst. 1996. Vom Leben in der Residenz. Rudolstadt 1646-1816. Rudolstadt: Thüringer Landesmuseum Heidecksburg. Fleischer, Horst (ed.). 2000. Die Grafen von Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. Albrecht VII. bis Albert Anton. Rudolstadt: Thüringer Landesmuseum Heidecksburg. Förster-Stahl, Heide. 2005. ‘Schillers heldenmütige Katharina’ in Blätter der Gesellschaft für Buchkultur und Geschichte 9. 157-172. Guseck, Bernd Carl Gustav von. 1868. Katharina von Schwarzburg. Leipzig: Ernst Julius Günther. Helm, Christopher. 1706. ‘Das Schwartzburghische Trauer-Schild’ in the Thüringisches Staatsarchiv Rudolstadt, Geheimes Archiv B II, 4a, Nr. 9 under the title “Condolenz-Schreiben wegen d. Ableben der Gräfin Aemilie Juliane geb. Gräfin von Barby u. Mühlingen. 3. XII. 1706.” Milde, Karoline. 1869. Der deutchen Jungfrau Wesen und Wirken, Winke für das geistige und praktische Leben. n.p. Schiller, Friedrich. ‘Herzog von Alba bei einem Frühstück auf dem Schlosse zu Rudolstadt, im Jahr 1547.’ On line at: http://gutenberg. spiegel.de/schiller/rudolst/rudolst.htm (consulted 19.12.2011). Schlombohm, Christa. 1981. ‘Die Glorifizierung der Barockfürstin als „Femme Forte“’ in Buck, August et al. (eds.) Europäische Hofkultur im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. Hamburg: Hauswedell: 113-122. Schwartzburgisches Denckmahl einer Christ-Gräflichen Lammes-Freundin/ nehmlich Der Hochgebohrnen Gräfin und Frauen/ Fr. Aemilien Julianen/ Gräfin zu Schwartzburg und Hohnstein. 1707. Rudolstadt: Heinrich Urban. Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Aemilia Juliana von. 1699. Täglicher Morgen- Mittagund Abend-Opffer/ bestehend in Gebet/ Seufftzern und Geistlichen Liedern. Rudolstadt: Heinrich Urban. ——. 1714a. Der Freundin des Lammes Geistlicher Braut-Schmuck Zu Christlicher Vorbereitung Auf die Hochzeit des Lammes/ In Lieder/ Gebete und Seuffzer abgefasset und mitgetheilet. ——. 1714b. Der Freundin des Lammes Täglicher Umgang mit Gott. Reprint of Täglicher Morgen- Mittag- und Abend-Opffer. Rudolstadt: Heinrich Urban.

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Söffing, Justus. 1670. Res in Ecclesia et Politia Christiana gestae ab anno 1500 ad an. 1600/ in schola provinciali Rudolstadio Schwarzburgica propositae. Rudolstadt: Caspar Freyschmidt. ——. 1672. Unverwelckliche Myrten-Krone. Rudolstadt: Caspar Freyschmidt. Spangenberg, Cyriacus. 1591. Adels Spiegel. Historischer Ausfürlicher Bericht: Was Adel sey und heisse, 1. Theil. Schmalkalden: Michel Schmück: 455b-456a. On line at: http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/drwspangenberg1591 (consulted 19.12.2011). Wiesner, Merry E. 1998. Gender, Church, and State in Early Modern Germany London: Longman. Wunder, Heide. 1998. He is the Sun, she is the Moon: Women in Early Modern Germany. Cambridge: Harvard.

Elizabeth Oyler The Woman Warrior Tomoe in Medieval and Early Modern Japanese NŇ Plays Two genres—recitation of Heike monogatari (‘Tales of the Heike’), Japan’s great war tale, and the nŇ drama—tell the story of Japan’s most recognizable woman warrior, Tomoe. Although both arts emerged from a mixture of popular and elite narrative and dramatic practices, Heike recitation and nŇ enjoyed the patronage of medieval and early modern shogunates, under whose protection their repertoires were refined. This essay examines versions of Tomoe’s story from both within and outside of official repertoires. It focuses on the ways in which Tomoe’s anomalously gendered character is feminized within official repertoires, while it conversely becomes a springboard for resistance to such reduction in two extracanonical nŇ plays about her battlefield heroics.

Japan’s ‘age of the samurai’ encompasses its medieval and early modern periods, roughly the late twelfth through mid-nineteenth centuries. This era is conceptualized as an age of men, and for good reason. Although the classical age that preceded it was a high point for women’s rights to own and deed property, marry and divorce at will, and maintain their own households, their privileges began to erode after the establishment of the first shogun’s office in 1192, and continued to be whittled away well into at least the nineteenth century.1 Women’s contributions to belles lettres also seemingly went on hiatus: artists of the stature of Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shonagon for the most part disappeared from the literary scene until the modern era.2 The actual changes were gradual, but the shift from the aristocratic to the warrior-dominated world that so altered gender politics is generally seen as a result of the Genpei War of 1180-1185, which brought the warrior class to power. The first prolonged civil conflict to affect both provinces and the capital city in over 400 years, the war represents a watershed event in cultural memory. Japan’s great medieval war tale, the Tales of the Heike (Heike monogatari ᖹᐙ≀ㄒ) and the numerous works derived from it—including a

1 2

For a discussion of women’s legal rights during the medieval period, see Tonomura 1990: 592-623. Authors of The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari ※Ặ≀ㄒ) and The Pillow Book (Makura no sŇshi ᯖⲡ⣬), respectively. Both works were written at the height of the classical period, around 1000 CE.

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large number of plays of the nŇ ⬟ theater—commemorate both the events and the primary characters of the war. 3 Among the Genpei War characters appearing also in the nŇ, none is more provocative than Tomoe, the woman warrior. She appears across the variants of the Tales of the Heike, in the canonical nŇ play Tomoe, and in several extracanonical nŇ plays, two of which are discussed below: ‘The Living Tomoe’ (KonjŇ Tomoe ௒⏕ᕮ) and ‘Tomoe in Her Time’ (Genzai Tomoe ⌧ᅾᕮ).4 She is the only woman warrior given sustained narrative attention in pre-modern Japanese literature and culture, and she is always identified as the ‘woman warrior’ (onna musha ዪṊ⪅), which draws attention to the unusualness of her situation in specifically gendered terms. In the context of a society increasingly stripping women of legal rights and identifying them as subordinate members of their husbands’ households, the appearance of a woman warrior is predictably problematic, since she embraces roles that exceed the limits of “the feminine.” By simultaneously representing the active and assertive military woman in a male’s role and the conventional self-sacrificing, supportive female, she is a paradox requiring explanation, which is precisely what readers find in literary works about her. The urge to resolve or sustain this paradox is one key difference between canonical and extracanonical versions of her story; the terms in which this divergence are drawn tell readers much about the reconfigurations of gender occurring in samurai culture and the role of canonization in defining the limits of those configurations.

Tomoe in the Canon: Tales of the Heike and the nŇ Tomoe The Genpei War is among the most popular subjects of Japanese history, in large part because it marks the emergence to power of one of Japan’s most recognizable characters: the samurai. At the head of the samurai order sat the shogun, a newly-politicized military post.5 The medieval age that followed the war witnessed the establishment of two successive shogunal 3

4 5

Gunki monogatari ㌷グ≀ㄒ. This category is broader than a genre, referring generally to any narrative work from the late classical through early modern periods taking battles and/or warriors as its subject. Others include: ‘Tomoe and Yoshinaka’s Wife’ (Midai Tomoe ᚚྎᕮ) and ‘Tomoe Retreats In Yoshinaka’s Robe’ (Kinukazuki Tomoe ⾰࠿ࡎࡁᕮ). Literally ‘great general.’ The term had been used to designate the leader of a military expedition up until this time. Pre-medieval shoguns were appointed on a temporary basis; after completion of their missions, they returned to their civilian positions. For a discussion of the history of the term, see Saeki 1997.

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offices and significant but gradual attenuation of aristocratic control of government affairs. By the late medieval era, central authority under the shogun had deteriorated, and provincial warlords had amassed enough territorial power to cripple the second (Ashikaga) shogunate. From the midfifteenth through mid-sixteenth centuries, there was intermittent warfare both in the provinces and in the capital. By the end of the sixteenth century, however, a succession of three powerful warlords regained control over the entire country. The third of these, Tokugawa Ieyasu, established a dynasty in 1600 that would last until 1868. The period under the Tokugawa comprises Japan’s early modern period, an age marked by rapid urbanization and commercial growth as well as official isolation from continental and European contact. Thus the ‘samurai age’ in reality describes a number of unique situations, all nevertheless held together by the concept of the warrior class as a coherent, meaningful socio-political entity. Seeing the Genpei War as a point of departure was essential to imbuing the samurai and the shogun with cultural significance, and throughout the long samurai age, the Genpei War remained a vital source in evolving literary, political, and cultural discourses. Of the cultural products most closely linked to the Genpei War, the Tales of the Heike and nŇ are the best known and have continued to occupy vital positions in Japanese cultural canons. What we refer to as the Heike today consists of approximately eighty variant texts. These range in style from histories intended to be read as such, to transcriptions of a recitational performance tradition known as Heike biwa, or solo chanting of the Heike to the accompaniment of the biwa (‘lute’ ⍇⍈), an art practiced by blind, semior pseudo-religious male reciters known as biwa hŇshi (‘biwa priests’ ⍇⍈ἲᖌ). Scholars broadly divide the Heike variants into two lineages: the recited-text lineage and the read-text lineage. Generally speaking, the readtext lineage variants adopt a historical style and tone, progress steadily to resolution of the war, and celebrate the establishment of warrior rule, while the recited-text lineage works linger over stories of individual minor characters, are more episodic, and tend toward the eulogistic. The roots of the Heike variants are complex, but the eulogistic tenor and other characteristics of the recited-text lineage suggest its strong ties to the practice of religious memorial ritual; records indicate that episodes from it were indeed performed in memory of the war dead on appropriate occasions by no later than the fourteenth century. The cultural significance of the Heike as text and performance practice was profound from the early medieval period onward. The earliest datable variant was recorded in 1309,6 and the best-known performance text, the 6

The EngyŇ-bon, whose colophon mentions the date of composition.

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Kakuichi-bon, contains a colophon dating it to 1371. Although the few extant early references to Heike performance are found in the diaries of nobles, performance of the tale—or at least parts of it—seems not to have been limited to the upper classes; certainly by the late medieval period, evidence shows that it was being performed in the provinces for mixed audiences. This represents an important development in culture and literature. Until the medieval age, all currently extant historical and literary texts were produced by and for the aristocracy. The Heike and works contemporary to it represent an important shift: people of all classes and all geographical regions were gradually gaining a familiarity with a body of stories involving historical characters that would later form the basis for shared cultural identity across what had formerly been social and geographical barriers. NŇ emerged in a similarly complex milieu, and likewise has a strong religious ritual component. The product of shogunal patronage of a regional acting troupe, the nŇ developed from the incorporation of traditional acting and dancing techniques honed under the direction of troupe leader Zeami Motokiyo (ca.1363-ca.1443), who had been educated and patronized from his youth by the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358-1408). Zeami was probably the first of his family to attain literacy, and his brilliance as a playwright and theorist—as well as his ability to please warrior-class patrons—helped ensure his art a place of long standing in the Japanese canon. A significant number of the plays he and later generations of artists wrote featured characters from the Genpei War. Zeami himself favored a type of play we know as ‘dream’ nŇ (mugen nŇ ክᗁ⬟), which enacts the suffering and journey toward Buddhist enlightenment of a soul still tied to earthly existence even after death; most of the Genpei pieces fall under this rubric. The best-known works of the extant nŇ repertoire, and indeed the vast majority of works in the approximately 250-piece canon (codified during the early modern period), are dream nŇ. Dream nŇ and the recitational Heike texts operate within similar ritual and narrative contexts, particularly in the case of nŇ plays about characters from the Genpei War. Both recount the stories of the heroic dead to assuage them, and in so doing simultaneously quiet the war’s demons and create a palatable historical narrative that justifies the rise of the victorious warrior class. Both arts were performed for a wide range of audiences, including warrior-class patrons (among them the shogun and his closest advisors) as well as commoners. They emerged significantly after the war— during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—and both bear the marks of the age in which they were created, through their nostalgic and romantic images of an earlier age. Like canonical nŇ, recited Heike received the patronage of first Ashikaga and later Tokugawa shoguns and reflected the

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tastes and concerns of these patrons.7 My engagement with the Heike here focuses on Tomoe’s incarnation in the representative text of the recitational repertoire, the Kakuichi-bon. Throughout the late medieval and early modern period, this was the text used by the performers who enjoyed shogunal patronage; it remains the basis for the extremely reduced performing art receiving official government support even today. Tomoe’s story and characterization in the Heike variants are fairly consistent, with several expansions and one contradiction, as we shall see. In both the Heike and the canonical nŇ play, Tomoe’s character follows a trajectory from gender polysemy and multiple identity to rigidly defined gender roles appropriate in the warrior age. In the Heike from the Kakuichibon, Tomoe appears suddenly, in a story embedded in the account of the battlefield death of her Lord, Kiso Yoshinaka: Fair complexioned and with long hair, [Tomoe] was of exceptional beauty. As a fighter she was a match for a thousand ordinary men, skilled in arms, able to bend the stoutest bow, on horseback or on foot, ever ready with her sword to confront any devil or god that came her way. She could manage the most unruly horse and gallop down the steepest slopes. Lord Kiso [Yoshinaka] sent her into battle clad in finely meshed armor and equipped with a sword of unusual size and a powerful bow, depending on her to perform as one of his leading commanders. (Watson 2006: 83-84; Kajihara and Yamashita 1993: 128)

As he senses the nearness of his defeat, Yoshinaka orders Tomoe to leave the battlefield because it would not do to have a woman at his side when he dies—it is clear that this will be his final day. She hesitates momentarily, but then acquiesces to his order and flees to his homeland—but only after displaying her military prowess in one final fight against a warrior “renowned for his strength,” Onda no Moroshige: Tomoe charged into the midst of Onda’s men, drew her horse up beside his, and, abruptly dragging him from his [saddle], pressed his head against her pommel. After holding him motionless for a moment, she wrenched off his head and threw it away. Then she threw off her helmet and armor and fled… (Watson 2006: 86; Kajihara and Yamashita 1993: 132)

In other words, she performs the masculine military act, then takes off her male costume to return to her “natural” state.

7

The Ashikaga held the shogunal office throughout the medieval and warring states period, from 1336-1573. Following a brief period with no stable shogunal house, Tokugawa Ieyasu established his headquarters in the city of Edo (present-day Tokyo) in 1603, and his heirs ruled until 1868, for the duration of Japan’s early modern age.

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Many of the Heike’s nearly eighty variants expand her story. Some lengthen the narrative of her final battle, but all invariably also cast her in roles that emphasize a femininity conventional in medieval and early modern warrior culture: she is explicitly identified as Yoshinaka’s lover, she returns to their homeland entrusted with his keepsakes and his story (that is, of his battlefield heroics and death), she becomes a nun to pray for his soul in the afterlife. In all cases her links to Yoshinaka are intensified and personalized through their explicit or implicit sexual relationship, while her military identity remains fundamentally unchanged.8 And all variants cast her as a keeper of memory and a teller of Yoshinaka’s tales, precisely by virtue of her intimate connection with him. In the most protracted version,9 she is captured by the enemy’s men and forced to marry one of his generals, who believes she will produce children as prodigious as herself. She in fact becomes the mother of another hero, and after the death of both husband and son, she (again) becomes a nun to pray for the souls of her male dead. The narrative of her life beyond the battle resembles those of bereft women from the Heike and many other medieval narratives: she is her lord’s; she guards his memory and preserves his keepsakes.10 Notably, all such expansions of her story are about her reversion to conventional femininity after she leaves the battle. This sort of characterization is even stronger in the canonical nŇ play Tomoe, which depicts her as a ghost tending the grave marker at the location where Yoshinaka was killed. The play opens with the arrival of the secondary character (waki ⬥), a traveling priest from Kiso, Yoshinaka’s homeland, who is on his way to the capital. Tomoe appears in disguise as a 8

9

10

The Genpei jŇsuiki (‘Record of the rise and fall of the Genji and Heike clans’ ※ᖹ┒⾶グ), thought to have been compiled in the late fourteenth to fifteenth centuries and the longest Heike variant, extends the description of her final battle, devoting special attention to the quality of her accoutrements. This is consistent with the general trend in the Genpei jŇsuiki toward drawing battle descriptions in relatively greater detail than the other variants. Generally categorized as a “read-text lineage” variant, the Genpei jŇsuiki in fact exhibits many characteristics more closely affiliated with the “recited-text lineage,” including its organization by named episode rather than dated entry. The story of Tomoe’s retreat to the east and forced marriage in fact constitute a separate episode (Tomoe’s retreat to the east) in that text. We find an unusual (if completely fictional) version of the woman’s role as protector in the extracanonical play Midai Tomoe, in which Yoshinaka sends Tomoe to his family to report his death and give them keepsakes. As she is reporting his death to Yoshinaka’s wife, enemy troops appear, wanting to arrest Yoshinaka’s heir. The play ends with Tomoe recuperating her warrior identity by fending off the attackers and leading Yoshinaka’s wife and son to safety. Like the two extracanonical plays discussed below, Midai Tomoe represents a complex and contesting use of traditional tropes.

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local woman. One early variant explicitly describes her as a miko ᕩዪ or ‘female shaman’ who cares for the grave (ItŇ 1989: 90; Brown 1998: 191-92). As the play progresses, she reveals that she is in fact the ghost of “the woman warrior Tomoe,” and she asks the traveling priest to pray for her release from suffering. This is the typical structure for a dream nŇ. The climax of the play begins with her brief reenactment of her final battle. She recites the following lines while performing a dance that mimes fighting: Thus she fought, felling the enemy one after another Till in one direction they were all driven back And fled away, leaving no trace behind. And fled away, leaving no trace behind. (Shimazaki 1993: 182; Sanari 1967: 2286-7)

Then with more deliberation and narrative attention, Tomoe casts off her armor, taking up Yoshinaka’s robe and keepsake sword, and retreats from the stage: Now it is all over, thinking thus, She returned to where she had left her lord […] Cutting the sash, her armor Quietly she discarded, there letting it lie, The fighting hat in the same manner She doffed and left at the same place His under-robe she pulled over her head, What he wore with the sword to his death, The dagger she hid in the folds of her robe, And from here, the province of ņmi, A Shigaraki hat covering her head, to Kiso, But for her tears, Tomoe, all alone, Escaped, her bitter remorse still remains as Earthly attachment. Absolve it with your prayer. (Shimazaki 1993: 182; Sanari 1967: 2287-8)

In keeping with the conventions of dream nŇ, Tomoe has appeared to voice the resentment that keeps her from attaining Buddhist enlightenment. In most nŇ plays of the warrior (shura-mono ಟ⨶≀ or nibanme-mono ஧␒┠≀) category to which Tomoe belongs,11 that resentment stems from a battlefield 11

A shura-mono refers to a piece in which the primary character is suffering in the Ashura realm after death. Nibanme-mono are, literally, ‘Second Position Pieces,’ meaning that they would be performed as the second in a full program of five pieces. Although nŇ performances today seldom include a full program, during the late medieval and early modern periods, the five-piece program was the usual format for nŇ.

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death. Those who die on the battlefield become trapped in the Ashura realm, where they are fated to fight ceaselessly against an undefeatable, supernatural enemy. Most plays of the warrior category involve heroes from the Genpei War, and they are among the best-known pieces in the canon. Scholars have often remarked that the play Tomoe more strongly resembles plays of the ‘abandoned woman’ (katsura-mono [‘wig pieces’ 㨆≀], or sanbanme-mono ୕␒┠≀) category: 12 although identified as a ‘woman warrior,’ Tomoe barely enacts her combat, and she expresses her lingering attachment in the highly conventional idiom of an abandoned woman: she dresses herself in her lover’s clothing, and she lovingly handles his keepsakes.13 Further, rather than a sword, she carries a halberd, a weapon used specifically in martial arts training for women during the early modern period;14 the actor playing her wears a mask symbolic of a beautiful woman;15 and in numerous allusive ways suggests other canonical female roles. Most importantly for our discussion of nŇ as a placatory art, she is a female shaman guarding Yoshinaka’s grave, and her final dance dressed in male garb suggests the shirabyŇshi ⓑᢿᏊ, a type of itinerant female performer prominent during the early medieval period (Brown 1998: 18991). She is a keeper of memory and a performer. Although scholars often treat her as if she were historical, there is no evidence of Tomoe’s actual existence. Her very name bespeaks, rather, a symbolic function: the word tomoe refers to a figure, which is linked to a number of gendered ideas (Fig. 1).16

12

13

14

15 16

I have translated this as the ‘Abandoned Woman’ category for ease of comprehension. These feature women who have been abandoned by lovers or otherwise left behind; their resentment generally stems from their attachment to their departed lovers. Many of the plays with the richest literary textures and thought to best embody the ideals of nŇ are of this category. Her appearance as a ghost with a grudge complicates this characterization: she would not be haunting Yoshinaka’s grave if she did not bear him rancor. By portraying her as an abandoned woman instead of a warrior stripped of her potency, the play subtly shifts her rancor into a more conventional form. For comparable nŇ plays about abandoned women, see Matsukaze, Izutsu, or Nonomiya. It is impossible to know whether the actor carried a halberd in performances during the medieval period, but certainly it had become a convention by the end of the early modern period. Generally the zŇ ቑ mask, the most common for shite who are beautiful abandoned women. A recent study by Yamashita Hiroaki is one notable exception; he discusses the symbolic nature of her name and stresses the significance of her association with water. See Yamashita 2003: 253-8.

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Figure 1 Single tomoe, double tomoe and triple tomoe.

Derived from a pictogram of continental origin for a whirlwind or whirlpool, the tomoe is ubiquitous in a number of cultural contexts from earliest times in Japan. A triple tomoe constitutes the insignia of Yoshinaka’s tutelary deity, the masculine god of war. It is also a talisman representing water, found frequently ornamenting the endtiles of roofs to ward against fire. In Japanese culture as in the west, water is conventionally a feminine element, and in the context of Genpei War narrative, it is further associated with Benzaiten, the patron deity of performing artists, including the biwa hŇshi.17 More provocatively, two tomoe make up the yin-yang sign, which is often construed as a balance between male and female elements (Herbert 1967: 150). Tomoe’s status as a woman warrior can be mapped onto this oppositional pairing associated with her name. She is the symbolic embodiment of both the feminine and masculine, in and for a warriordominated society, where masculinity increasingly became equated with 17

Benzaiten is conceptualized as a manifestation of the Naga Princess described in the Lotus Sutra. The daughter of the sea-dwelling dragon king, she presented a jewel to the Buddha and immediately gained enlightenment. The Dragon King and the Naga realm appear prominently in late medieval discourse about the Genpei War: the child sovereign who was drowned during the final battle of the war, taking with him to the bottom of the sea the sacred sword, one of three royal regalia, was thought to have been an incarnation of the Naga King who appeared briefly on earth to reclaim the sword for the dragon realm, from which it had been taken in the mythological past by the hero Susano-o.

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military action and femininity with memorialization. The fact that this has gone unremarked upon in scholarship is perhaps due to what becomes of Tomoe in the Heike and nŇ. The story these arts tell is about clarifying gender ambiguities, setting up the symbolic duality to fall apart into a “real” Tomoe, a conventionally feminine woman who goes off to mourn a man.

Tomoe Outside the Canon: ‘Tomoe in Her Time’ and ‘The Living Tomoe’ The extracanonical nŇ plays about Tomoe complicate this characterization of the woman warrior, as the works ‘Tomoe in Her Time’ and ‘The Living Tomoe’ demonstrate. Both are set in the heat of battle, from which Yoshinaka will send Tomoe away. These two plays resemble each other to the extent that large portions of the texts are in fact identical, and they challenge the canonical versions in differing and provocative ways that disrupt the paradigm described thus far. ‘The Living Tomoe’ and ‘Tomoe in Her Time’ are ‘realistic’ nŇ (genzai nŇ ⌧ᅾ⬟), in comparison to the canonical dream nŇ Tomoe. Realistic nŇ are set in real time, and their characters are living (historical or fictional) people, never ghosts or spirits. Generally speaking, realistic nŇ more closely resemble theater as we know it in the west and were among the direct precursors to the early modern performing arts of kabuki ḷ⯙ఄ and bunraku ᩥᴦ puppet theater in Japan. Both ‘The Living Tomoe’ and ‘Tomoe in Her Time’ appear to have been written around the beginning of the early modern period in response to the canonical play Tomoe.18 Each opens with Yoshinaka calling Tomoe to his side to tell her that this day will be his last. He then commands her to leave. Where in the Heike she had simply wavered, here she responds: “Since we left our home in Kiso, I haven’t been apart from you for a minute. Having reached this point, do you think me a stranger?” (Haga and Sakaki 1987: 686; 806-7). Yoshinaka now admits that he does not want to suffer the humiliation of having other people remember him as someone who died with a ‘woman warrior’ at his side. Tomoe replies: “I beg forgiveness for compelling you to repeat yourself, but you are about to die—what do you care what other people hear about you? I intend to share your pillow in death, to accompany you to the world beyond” (Haga and Sakaki 1987: 686; 807). Yoshinaka concedes that her loyalty is unparalleled, but commands her to return home with his keepsakes and pray for him in the afterlife. 18

Several lines are identical, suggestive of direct borrowing.

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In ‘The Living Tomoe’ her complaint continues: They say, “There are many things that a warrior must forget; on the battlefield forget your home, your family,19 and yourself; when confronting the enemy, fight as to end your life there.” I now know this is my fate. What other people should not hear about you, my lord, is this: You have discarded Tomoe! (Haga and Sakaki 1987: 807).

Both plays reconfigure the earlier canonical story remarkably. The previously mute Tomoe now responds to Yoshinaka’s order by voicing her grievance, and she does so in the idiom of a warrior: she identifies herself as someone who has chosen to serve her lord at the expense of home and family—she in fact juxtaposes herself with the wife and children that constitute family. She further deeply resents his order to leave him at this critical moment. In other words, when she speaks, she speaks to him, not about him; this is dialogue, not narration, and certainly not memorial narration. Where this portrayal of Tomoe contradicts the better-known versions, it specifically addresses the characterization of the feminine as the passive speaker of memory. As a warrior, too, the extracanonical Tomoe confounds expectations. In both ‘The Living Tomoe’ and ‘Tomoe in Her Time’, she engages the enemy with a passion equal to that in the most elaborate Heike versions, and far fuller than that found in the canonical Tomoe. ‘The Living Tomoe’ has the longer description: She pushed forward, sweeping away the enemy in all four directions; at the vanguard, she fought on. Thinking this would be her end, she used up all the secret arts of “one warrior worth a thousand,” defending him, she fought, sweeping them away; the number of men who fell was too great to count. (Haga and Sakaki 1987: 808)

Wishing to take her prisoner, the warrior Edanohara Tameshige engages her, but “she grasped the collar of his armor, pulled him close, pressed him against the pommel of her saddle, twisted his neck and ran her sword through it” (Haga and Sakaki 1987: 809). Tomoe next shows the head to Yoshinaka, then: She decided to stop, to live out her life, and so she snuck away from Awazugahara, discarding her armor and helmet; her rancor a thin, summer robe, and setting out among the moors of Kiso, this worthless troth; her destination unknown. (Haga and Sakaki 1987: 809)20 19 20

“family” in this context means “wife and children” (ጔᏊ). This passage includes two puns involving syntactical play typical of the nŇ. I have translated “urami mo natsugoromo” as “her rancor a thin, summer robe,” but the phrase also includes “the rancor gone” (“urami mo na[shi]”). The “worthless troth”

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In ‘Tomoe in Her Time’ the encounter with the enemy is similar, as is her retreat, to a certain point. However, instead of discarding her accoutrements, she “grasped her halberd, gripped the reigns, and mounted her horse. Setting out among the moors of Kiso, this worthless troth at its end, her destination unknown” (Haga and Sakaki 1987: 687). Several things are striking here. First is the extended battle description. Although it follows the general Heike account, it is much more specific and colorful than the canonical nŇ play Tomoe. She moreover identifies her connection with Yoshinaka as a “worthless troth.” While such punning on Yoshinaka’s name is an almost inevitable result of the penchant in nŇ for wordplay, it nevertheless also undermines the story told in other versions. And in all canonical accounts, Tomoe dresses as a warrior only so that she can doff her armor and become what she really is: a woman. Battlefield deaths of women are not narratable, and that is why Tomoe is compelled to leave the field.21 In contrast, the extracanonical plays find Tomoe fighting with uncontainable fury, and then leaving, quickly. She acts, in other words, as a warrior; the climax of the play is her heroic battle scene, not her mournful retreat guarding Yoshinaka’s keepsakes. Second, the endings of both plays are ambiguous. In ‘The Living Tomoe’ she follows Yoshinaka’s order and apparently lets go of her rancor; but her end remains unknown. A reversion to the feminine, or at least to a feminine as memorializer, is not clear. Even more notable is ‘Tomoe In Her Time’— rather than casting off her armor and sneaking away in (presumably) female garb, she almost defiantly mounts her horse, halberd in hand, and disappears – her anger and her complex identity intact, her troth with Yoshinaka “at its end.” The disappearance that abruptly concludes her story starkly contrasts the Heike variants and the canonical nŇ, in which she keeps coming back— even after death—as the guardian of Yoshinaka’s memory.22 Her unwillingness to relinquish control of her fate is remarkable. Unlike in the canonical play, here she is not returning to relive or remember this particular story.

21

22

is “yoshinakari chigiri,” which includes her lord’s name (Yoshinaka) and implies the obvious: her troth to him has been worthless. In ‘The Living Tomoe’ Yoshinaka urges her to think of prolonging her life as a memento of him; the play then briefly notes that Yoshinaka’s other woman warrior, Aoi, had been killed in battle earlier. Given that in both the only Heike variant in which Aoi appears and the one extracanonical nŇ about her, Aoi’s story is elided or repressed, mentioning her here is provocative: battlefield deaths of women warriors are not narratable, and that is why Tomoe is compelled by her lord to leave. Aoi is the main character (shite) of the extracanonical play The Fall from Kurikara. Although as the shite of the nŇ Tomoe, she in fact is the subject of her story, that story is clearly her reversion to the feminine memorializer.

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Conclusion The extracanonical Tomoe plays interpret her character in ways that resist the kind of reduction of feminine roles we see in the canonical nŇ play and, for the most part, the Heike variants. Interestingly, however, the line that ends both plays, “her destination unknown,” is found first in one Heike variant: the earliest text, the EngyŇ-bon of 1309. We see it nowhere else, but here it suggests that very early on, Tomoe’s story was that of a warrior; she shared the fate of her comrades. That version of the story was then quickly overwritten in the Heike tradition and in canonical nŇ. The allusion to a less feminized future for Tomoe in extracanonical works thus suggests an attempt to resurrect an older, perhaps more authoritative version of (the fictional) Tomoe’s story.23 By quoting the older work, the extracanonical plays imply that the belief in a real Tomoe whose story might be told had been naturalized. While contesting the canon by referring to an older text, these versions portray her complex, unconventional gender configuration as positive, heroic, and less fictional. Even more interesting, however, is that this resistance to a reduced femininity is articulated in terms suggesting what is most constrictive in the gender bifurcation Tomoe embodies in the canonized nŇ, where men act and women speak only to remember men who act. ‘The Living Tomoe’ and ‘Tomoe in Her Time’ contradict the older versions specifically first in their denial of the limitation of female speech to memorial narrative and, second, in the restriction of military action to the masculine subject. In both plays, Tomoe voices her own concerns, and in ‘Tomoe In Her Time’ she enacts not capitulation to the gender norms spelled out in the canonical versions, but rather insistence on an identity that confounds them. She remains a woman warrior. The implications for the memorial arts of this delineation of the masculine and the feminine in the person of Tomoe are profound. While these are not the only ways masculinity and femininity were viewed during the medieval and early modern periods, this particular bifurcation illuminates some cultural and political parameters delineated by the patrons of these arts. In Heike and nŇ—both favorites of the warrior class—this set of gender roles is increasingly elaborated upon in stories about the foundational event of the ‘warrior age.’ Memorable men fitting other conventional paradigms of masculinity were lionized, but precisely as 23

The EngyŇ-bon is the representative text of the “read-text lineage.” Its textual authority rests in part on its “historical” tenor; that it contradicts the canonical version while simultaneously seeming to be less elaborated upon by storytellers further complicates its relationship to the much later canonical nŇ.

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representatives of a dying, courtly age.24 Indeed, one might argue they were aligned with the newly reorganized category of the feminine. And although many aspects of Tomoe’s “femininity” are not unusual for women of earlier periods, memorial works about the Genpei War give increasing attention to the role of memorializer, a task highlighted only after the rise of the warrior class. Perhaps more important, however, is what this means in the metatheatrical context of narrative arts: the memorial act itself—which as we have seen has strong religious overtones—is feminized. This suggests an assertion of a gender paradigm by warrior patrons that inherently defined their superior relationship to other social groups, including performers and the religious institutions with which those performers often maintained affiliations. In the political context of Ashikaga Japan when both arts emerged, control of both established Buddhist institutions and the emerging Zen sects was an ongoing project for the new shogunate. Control of powerful religious institutions had always been a concern for the earlier aristocratic government, and many of the shogunate’s methods of control followed patterns similar to those already in place. The emerging performing arts of Heike recitation and nŇ added another dimension to the relationship, however, and provided a new context for articulation of that power relationship. Warriors were the subjects of stories in the stewardship of religious figures, whose role is to vouchsafe the centrality of warriors’ stories. Within these narratives, women mirrored the extratextual narrators as they took the tonsure and honored their male dead. The feminine and the religious were then subtly conflated within the context of the warriorpatronized performing arts. The result was the construction of an implicitly hierarchical gender paradigm in social as well as political realms: religious roles resembled wifely roles, and both were fundamentally about securing military male subjectivity. Tomoe’s fate in the canonical nŇ and recitational Heike is the most profound illustration of this tendency. There are further effects of the fixing of gender roles that we associate with the canonization process for the memorial arts as well. Defining the subject of the rise of the warrior class as the military male creates the situation in which the medieval (and, in somewhat different form, the early 24

Particularly members of the defeated Taira clan—Atsumori, Tsunemasa, Tadamori, and Shigehira—are but the most prominent examples. As masters of the courtly arts of music and poetry, the deaths of these men became metaphors for the ending of the aristocratic age. The magnetism of this paradigm is evident as well in narratives of the death of the Minamoto general Yoshitsune, who, after becoming estranged from his brother, the shogun Yoritomo, is increasingly depicted in late medieval and early modern narrative and drama as erudite, musically talented, fair-complexioned and weak.

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modern) era becomes the ‘samurai age.’ The ‘warrior’ thus becomes the telos of evolving masculine identity: earlier iterations are formative and laudable—and their loss lamentable—but they are also weak, and, as the early modern age gave way to modernity and negotiations with western powers with their own constructions of gender and history, they were increasingly seen as “effeminate.” The construction of such a historical narrative was only fully realized in the modern age, but its roots lie in part in the complex relationship between warrior patronage and canonization of memorial arts, and the central importance of gender in describing the relationships between patrons and the arts they sponsored. It is important to bear in mind that these stories kept being reanimated and reworked in the various genres that flourished in the medieval and early modern period, including the nŇ and kabuki theaters, and that often alternative stories like those told in the extracanonical nŇ exist beyond the borders of the official repertoires. For whom, by whom, and in response to whom they were created is unclear, but extant extracanonical works outnumber canonical ones ten to one, which confirms their significance as sources for identifying challenges to the canon. They in themselves complicate the historical narratives they retell, and the places where they contradict the better-known versions provide a key to excavating the specific tensions being worked through both in the canon and in late medieval and early modern society more generally.

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Works Cited Brown, Steven T. 1998. ‘From Woman Warrior to Peripatetic Entertainer: The Multiple Histories of Tomoe’ in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 58 (1): 191-2. Haga Yaichi and Sakaki Nobutsuna (eds). 1987. KŇchû YŇkyoku sŇsho. vol. 1 Tokyo: Rinsen shoten ( reprint of Hakubunkan, 1913-15 edition). Herbert, Jean. 1967. Shinto: The Fountainhead of Japan. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. ItŇ Masayuki. 1989. YŇkyoku zakki. Tokyo: Izumi sensho. Kajihara Masaaki and Yamashita Hiroaki (eds). 1993. Heike monogatari ge. Vol. 45 of Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Saeki Shin’ichi. 1997. ‘ChŇteki izen’ in Kokugo to kokubungaku 74 (11): 94-102. Sanari KentarŇ (ed.). 1967. YŇkyoku taikan, vol. 4. Tokyo: Meiji shoin. Shimazaki Chifumi (tr.). 1993. Warrior Ghost Plays from the Japanese Theater. Ithaca, NY: Cornell East Asia Series. Tonomura, Hitomi. 1990. ‘Women and Inheritance in Japan’s Early Warrior Society’ in Comparative Studies in History and Society: 592-623. Watson, Burton (tr.). 2006. Tales of the Heike. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Yamashita Hiroaki. 2003. Ikusa monogatari to Genji shŇgun. Tokyo: Miyai shoten.

Violent Women, Violated Men

Helmut Puff Violence, Victimhood, Artistry: Albrecht Dürer’s The Death of Orpheus Albrecht Dürer’s drawing The Death of Orpheus (1494)—after an Italian model image— takes up the rarely-depicted Ovidian theme of Orpheus’ death at the hands of women for having introduced homoeroticism to Thrace. From the vantage point of gender and sexuality as categories of visual analysis, this chapter argues that the egregious tensions evident in the image—tensions between homage to Italian Renaissance art and a condemnation of Italian sexual mores—are constitutive for a conception of the male artist as an exceptional victim figure.

Albrecht Dürer’s drawing The Death of Orpheus (1494 depicts a moment replete with violence: the imminent killing of Orpheus at the hands of women (Fig. 1)1 Two women standing with agitated dresses tower over a crouching, nearly naked man. In calm symmetry, these women have raised their clubs in front of his horror-filled eyes. It is as if Orpheus’ musical performance has been interrupted. The lyre, his instrument, lies idle, prominently placed in the foreground but out of reach of the man attacked. His singing has died down—a singing that, as connoisseurs of the Orphic legend know, had the power to move rocks, plants, beasts, humans, and gods. Soon, mere noise, the muffled sound of the clubs hitting a human body, will fill the air, permanently replacing the sweet sounds of musical performance. Stark contrasts are at work in the background with its highly symbolic landscape. Arid and florid elements alternate. A thicket shrouds the violent deed against the open landscape while a young fig tree leans towards its neighboring trees without reaching them. Two trunks are in line with two male figures: Orpheus and an infant boy who is fleeing the scene of killing. Around the tall, aged tree a banderole is tied bearing an inscription: “Orfeuß der Erst puseran” (Orpheus, the first sodomite). The German puseran, derived from the Venetian buzerar, is a derogatory term for a sodomite.2 According to ancient lore, Orpheus had turned to the 1

2

Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, Der Tod des Orpheus (The Death of Orpheus). Cf. Roettig 2001: 134-35; Roettig 2007: 146-48. This contribution is based on Puff 2006 and Puff 2008. My gratitude goes to Tristan Weddigen who has provided me with excellent pointers. See Boerio 1856: 112 (s.v. buzarà, buzarada, buzarar, bùzaro, buzarona). According to Renward Cysat (1545-1614), city scribe in Lucerne, Switzerland, pulscherun translates

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love of men after Eurydice’s “second death” (gemina nece), introducing the male-male eros to Thrace—the region from which Orpheus is said to have come (Ovid’s Metamorphoses 46).3 At any rate, ancient, medieval, and Renaissance versions of the Orphic myths have Orpheus, the lover of Eurydice, embrace the love of young men (Puff 2006: 74-80).

Figure 1 Albrecht Dürer. 1494. Der Tod des Orpheus (The Death of Orpheus). Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, (Courtesy of the Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin)

3

as sodomita; see Staub, Schweizerisches Idiotikon; s.v. pulscherun. Translating puseran as “lover of boys,” as Strauss suggests, does not capture the word’s defamatory tone. See Strauss 1974: 220-21. The main source for “Orpheus sodomita” are books ten and eleven from the Metamorphoses, though the earliest literary reference to his love relationship with a man appears in Phanocles’ Loves (3rd c. BCE). See Alexander 1988.

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It is striking that the writing appears in front of a lush section of leaves. The scroll is also positioned high above the violent scene, its proximity to heaven suggestive of divine approval. The scene is one of multiple reversals: clothed women-warriors are about to kill a defenseless, almost naked man; the tamer of beasts and the standard-bearer of civilizing forces is a victim of the bloody excess that he, according to legend, had helped overcome (Münzer 1939). The puseran’s desire is marked as sterile: the boy runs away, the plants seem to recede from the scene; overall, signs of fertility contrast with signs of lifelessness.4 Dürer’s drawing portrays same-sex eroticism as sodomy, that is, through the lens of retribution. At the same time, Orpheus, his body, and his story take center stage. I seek to investigate this paradox here. The naked male figure may well spark a discussion of the following kind: who are the women in the frame? How can we read their violent action? More specifically, how are we to approach these women’s murderous attack in an image that is, as I argue, centered on men, their dealings and desires? The vast body of Orphic mythology does not determine the answer to these questions. Dürer did not merely illustrate the Orpheus myth. While copying the image from a revered source, he activated the scene in an original manner. The drawing is signed as Dürer’s and dated. To be sure, 1494 was a momentous year in the artist’s formation. The twenty-three-year-old had mastered the Franconian art practiced in his native Nuremberg by the likes of Michael Wolgemut and others. He had absorbed the art of Martin Schongauer, the brilliant engraver, while in Alsace. He had perfected his command of illustrations when contributing woodcuts to Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools, first printed in Basel in 1494. The Death of Orpheus marks yet another artistic encounter. In this drawing, Dürer incorporated Italian Renaissance imagery into his vision—imagery that in its playful monumentality drew inspiration from the art of the ancients (Grote 1998: 44-51).5 The Death of Orpheus is one drawing among several Dürer based on Italian model images from the year 1494. When confronted with Renaissance art, the artist from Nuremberg was interested above all in copying mythological themes—scenes that had gained currency in Italy during the late fifteenth century. With regard to two of Dürer’s three known drawings in this vein, the models are known, namely Bacchanal with Silenus and Battle of the Sea Gods, two celebrated engravings by Andrea Mantegna (Martineau 1992: 280, 285-86).6 With regard to The Death of Orpheus, the 4 5 6

This description is largely taken from Puff 2006: 73-74. In a different drawing in 1495, Dürer produced a drawing after Antonio Pollaiuolo on the mythological theme of “The Rape of the Sabine Women” (1495). See also the introductory remarks, p. 274-76. These prints were frequently copied among Italian artists, see p. 281-82 (Giovanni Antonio da Brescia, “Bacchanal with

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exact model may be lost. It is likely to have been by Mantegna’s hand as well. Historians of art assume that in The Death of Orpheus Dürer took as his model an image now lost, probably by Mantegna, and re-worked it for the Hamburg drawing.7 Certain Mantegnesque features in Dürer’s image bespeak his influence, most prominently the relief-like representation of the women figures. An anonymous print of The Death of Orpheus, issued in Ferrara and possibly based on the same image by Mantegna, provides us with a basis for a tentative comparison, however.8 Compared to Mantegna’s Bacchanal with Silenus or Battle of the Sea Gods, this print is mediocre, and, today, few critics consider it Dürer’s model.9 It is likely that the anonymous Ferrarese image was based on the same Mantegna which—if this assumption is correct—does not survive. We know that Mantegna deployed Orphic imagery. The Death of Orpheus is among the mythological motifs illustrating the spandrels in Mantegna’s frescoes for the camera picta in Mantua’s Ducal Palace (Welles 1989-90: 113-144). Similar to the aforementioned engravings from his hand, the artist executed this composition in the manner of an ancient sculpted relief, though the design is different from the one we know through Dürer’s drawing (Semmelrath 1994: 71-72, illustration 23). We do not know for certain when, where, or how Dürer got access to Italian art (Simon 1971-72: 21-40). Possibly, this encounter occurred before his trip across the Alps in late 1494, though most critics have posited his stay in Italy as the time of the images’ making.10 Whatever the answer, the 1494 drawing has long been viewed as a decisive turning point in Dürer’s oeuvre. The seventeenth-century German art critic Joachim von Sandrart described The Death of Orpheus as a work that showed him to be a master of his craft, or “Kunst Probe” (von Sandrart 1925: 317). According to David Price, engaging these artistic models “caused the medieval scales to fall from Dürer’s eyes” (Price 2003: 71). In The Death of Orpheus, Price contends the artist began “portraying the drama of the classical body” (ibid. 72); the

7 8 9 10

Silenus,” n. 76) as well as p. 287-90 (two copies of “Battle of the Sea Gods,” n. 8081). For Dürer’s “copies” see Bartrum 2002: 144-47. Cf., however, Rosasco 1984: 19-41, especially p. 23-24. Ferrarese Master, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, Inv. 22. See Hofmann 1985: 176, n. 386. For example, Ekserdjian 1998: 144-49. Cf., however, Bonnet 2001: 70 with reference to Winkler 1936: 44. Luber 2005 has questioned whether Dürer travelled to Venice twice and whether the first trip in 1494-95 really took place. While it is not important to my argument whether Dürer did or did not have first-hand contact with Venetian Renaissance artists in 1494, the pictorial and textual evidence speaks against Luber’s revisionist thesis.

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classical male body, to be precise.11 While copying, Dürer imprinted his facture on these model compositions. To some degree, this is true of all the drawings in question. Yet it is particularly the case with The Death of Orpheus. In the words of Heinrich Wölfflin: “The engraving12 is not simply copied, but transposed form by form into the language of modeling lines developed by Schongauer, and this is no small achievement”(Wölfflin 1971: 52).13 By contrast, Erwin Panofsky posited a transposition of a different kind. In The Death of Orpheus, he claimed, Dürer had achieved an image “more classical in spirit than […] his direct Italian sources” (Panofsky 1955: 35). Both critics claim that the artist surpassed his models, though the point of reference differs markedly. With Wölfflin, the drawing’s Germanness is at stake. In Panofsky’s description, Dürer appears as an artist transcending the confines of his country of origin. Be that as it may, Dürer’s drawing is a work of translation. It pays homage to ancient as well as Italian art at the same time that it testifies to Dürer’s masterful hand. Among other possible changes to his source, the scroll with its German is prominent. It likely is Dürer’s addition to the composition.14 He also provided the murderous scene with a background, the forest, as if fearing that “without such a frame, the figures would be lost in space” (Grote 1998: 49; tr. H.P.). It is Ovidian in spirit in that according to the Metamorphoses plants wandered to congregate around the bard, providing shade during his performance (Ovid, Metamorphoses, X.85-109, X.147; XI.1-79). By comparison, the anonymous print from Ferrara features a single tree placed off-center; the viewer gazes at a cityscape as a visual counterpoint to the violent scene of killing. Intriguingly, Dürer’s own draftsmanship may be most evident in the background forest with its multi-layered visual commentary on the scene in the foreground.15 An inspection of the original in the Hamburger Kunsthalle shows that, arguably, the thicket of plants, tree 11

12

13 14

15

For a critique of the notion of rupture between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance or the medieval and the Renaissance Dürer, see Schuster 1978: 7-24, and Puff 2006: 82-85. While it is very well possible, if not even probable, that Mantegna’s lost Death of Orpheus was an engraving, like Bacchanal with Silenus or Battle of the Sea Gods, the medium is not certain. The book was published in German in 1905. With gratitude to Patricia Simons for supplying me with this quotation. We cannot decide with absolute certainty whether the scroll is Dürer’s. The fact that the Ferrarese print based on the same Mantegna lacks this element, may make it likely, however. As is, the banderole with its design reminiscent of the Gothic style does not concur with Mantegna’s visual repertoire. Where Mantegna used scrolls, they have a monumentalizing character in the manner of the ancients. Furthermore, the German text on the banderole must be Dürer’s. On this question, see Anzelewsky 1983: 15-28, 220-22, here 17-18, 22.

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trunks, and leaves contains the thrust of his invention. One can infer, for example, that Dürer applied several inks to his drawing of the forest, refining its texture several times. In fact, while the motif of The Death of Orpheus remains unique in his oeuvre, the artist used a very similar background again, namely in Hercules at the Crossroads (Sonnabend 2007: 8990).16 This 1498 engraving shares several important features with The Death of Orpheus: a fleeing boy, a clothed female attacker, a castle in the background, not to speak of the relief-like execution à la Mantegna. Focusing on the nameless female agents of death in lieu of the famous male victim of assault means to work against the pull of the image. By all measures, Orpheus is at the center: his beautiful body, his sweeping gesture, his facial expression command the beholder’s attention. His lyre, the instrument of the singer’s spell over the world, is centrally positioned in the scene’s foreground. In its isolation, the lyre is elevated to signify, namely as an attribute of the arts.17 The artist’s monogram, AD, and the year of the drawing’s completion, 1494, were positioned on a perspectival line connecting Dürer’s trademark signature, the musical instrument, the singer, and the multi-layered background. The figure of Orpheus may even be said to be suspended between the lyre and another signature element, a book with musical notation hung up in the thicket above the scene of the killing— possibly a record of his singing or a source of inspiration for future bards.18 Orpheus’ features may be said to resemble Dürer’s. One can marshal the long hair as a sign to that effect—an extravagant hairdo Dürer cultivated against the fashion of his day and which, along with the beard he sported, occasioned ridicule among his friends.19 But Orpheus may in fact bear, as Antoinette Roesler-Friedenthal has argued, the features of Andrea Mantegna (Roesler-Friedenthal 1996: 149-85). Mantegna circulated Orphic motifs, among them Orpheus’ killing, on several occasions. Whether the likeness in question is meant to represent Mantegna or Dürer is hard to establish beyond a reasonable doubt. More importantly, it may not matter. What matters is that The Death of Orpheus foregrounds the figure of the artist. More accurately, the drawing depicts the artist as victim of a violent act.

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19

See also Anzelewsky 1983: 66-89, 231-39. In the Ferrarese print, the instrument depicted is a lute, not a lyre with its ancient associations. On the question of representations of Orpheus’ instrument, see Welles 1989-90: 121-31. Cf. Osthoff 1971-72: 40-41. Osthoff claims to be able to decipher the notation and the text depicted. After several hours with the original drawing in Hamburg, I decided that these are mere scribbles. Dürer 1956: 254 (Letter by Lorenz Beheim to Willibald Pirckheimer from March 19, 1507). See also Koerner 1993: 169.

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It is noteworthy that among the few resonances this image had in Dürer’s oeuvre, the male figura in this drawing with its striking contraposto reappears in a religious context. Orpheus’ posture is akin to that of Christ carrying the cross in Dürer’s Large Passion (1498-99).20 The 1494 drawing thus appears linked to a series of visual experiments that fuse the artistfigure with figurations taken from a Christian iconographical register. After all, Dürer merged his own traits with Jesus’ in the Karlsruhe Man of Sorrows of 1493; in the 1518 drawing of Dürer as a sick man; and six years after The Death of Orpheus, in the self-portrait from 1500. These and other images have strong resonances with the iconography of Christ.21 In The Death of Orpheus, the main register referenced is not Christian, however; it is mythological. In contrast to the male artist, the two women are literally relegated to the sidelines, as if they were framing a center. One of them is positioned in front of Orpheus, with her back to the viewer. She whose hold on the ground is tenuous barely obstructs our visual access to the attacked. At any rate, the horizontal axis on which the women are placed rubs against the image’s vertical line, forming a cross of sorts. To mark the gendered asymmetries, the gaze emerges as a masculine attribute: Orpheus looks in terror at one of the women; the putto fleeing the scene looks back. Conversely, the only woman whose face we can see has her eyes cast down. This gesture is common among Dürer’s women—a striking sign of inwardness, concentration, or possibly modesty as she is about to deal a deadly blow.22 What is more, the physical proportions further signal differences in the portrayal of men and women. Compared to the two attackers, Orpheus’ body is not only rendered with some attention to anatomical detail, it is disproportionately large. If the musician were to stand up, his body would tower above that of the two females. In this image, gendered asymmetries and inversions have therefore entered into an intricate pas de deux: female clothing vs. exposure of the male body; the women standing vs. the crouching position of a man; female modesty vs. the male gaze directed outward; female assertion of weapons vs. male frailty and vulnerability; a male figure of many attributes as opposed to two female figures whose only attribute is the instrument of killing. Many critics have described the women attackers in Dürer’s image after Mantegna as maenads, the mythical followers of Dionysus or Bacchus. Ancient artists and vase painters depicted women as Bacchantes who, in a drunken frenzy, act in rituals of wantonness and aggression. Their exultation 20 21 22

Albrecht Dürer: Die Druckgraphiken im Städel Museum, p. 126 (n. 57); Schuster 1978: 724, here 8-13. See Koerner 1993: 63-79 and passim. This choreography of the gaze resembles that in the Ferrara print.

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is captured by gyrating bodies and excessive bodily movements. They figure as female companions to lecherous satyrs, their loose hair and upward gaze signaling abandonment—an abandonment with strong connotations of eroticism. They often “carry the thyrsos, a pole wreathed with ivy and topped with a pine cone, which served as both a magic wand and a weapon” (Reid 1993: 258). Among other doings, maenads, the followers of Dionysus, were credited with having torn Apollonian Orpheus to pieces. Ancient vase paintings of Orpheus’ violent death in fact predate the story’s literary manifestations (Guthrie 1993: 33-34). Books ten and eleven of the Metamorphoses tell the story of how the poet’s singing was interrupted by “a frenzied band of Thracian women, wearing skins of beasts” and taking cruel revenge on Orpheus, “the man who scorns us [women]” in a scene redolent with orgiastic frenzy (Ovid Metamorphoses 249). In 1905, Aby Warburg gave a lecture in which he issued a challenge to received notions about Renaissance art’s relation to antiquity. Its effect on the visual arts, he claimed, went beyond reviving classicism. The ancients also provided artists with important models for the expression of excessive emotions—a dual effect he synthesized in the famous “pathos formula” or Pathosformel, first coined in this context (Warburg 1992: 125-135). Dürer’s drawing The Death of Orpheus furnished Warburg with the example to prove his case. He linked Greek vase paintings to Dürer’s 1494 drawing. Many art historians have followed Warburg in infusing the language of ancient myths when commenting on Dürer’s drawing. Erwin Panofsky, for instance, describes the scene as follows: “[T]hey burst upon their victim with the fury of genuine maenads”—a description that has had a long echo in art criticism since (Panofsky 1955: 32). I hope to issue a cautionary note. The female figures in The Death of Orpheus are only distant relatives to the unbridled, infamous ancient women. They lack the visual accoutrements that would have allowed connoisseurs of ancient mythology to identify them as maenads. The thyrsus has metamorphosed into a club; its tops are strangely split, as if to express the tensions inherent in the composition. The ecstatic upward glance has been replaced by an almost modest comportment. What is more, the scene depicted differs from Ovid’s account. Neither the plants gathered around Orpheus nor the instruments with which he is attacked are a mere illustration of the Ovidian tale. Nothing alludes, for instance, to the fate awaiting the women of Thrace who, according to the Metamorphoses, will themselves be turned into plants.23 It also is not the final scene from Angelo Poliziano’s Fabula di Orfeo, a pastoral drama written for the Gonzaga court in 23

The literary model for the composition must be sought in Ovid since his is the first account motivating the murder by having Orpheus turn to male youths after Eurydice’s death.

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Mantua.24 In its final Act V, the maenads’ attribute, the thyrsus, is mentioned, Orpheus’ severed head is brought onto stage, and the play culminates in a feast of wanton drunkenness (strange as it may seem to the modern reader, this drama, the first secular stage play with a mythological plot of the Italian Renaissance, was written for the carnival season). In the context of Dürer’s drawing, or for that matter the lost model image on which it is based, the descriptor “maenad” may derive less from a reading of this particular enunciation than from a desire to forge links between the narrative horizon of the ancients and their Renaissance retellings, as Panofsky’s commentary on Dürer’s piece proposes. Admittedly, questioning the descriptor “maenads,” as suggested here, runs a considerable risk. So far, we lack a systematic study of maenads in Renaissance art. More research is needed to compare maenads as represented here to other maenadic configurations, as in Bartolomeo di Giovanni’s The Wedding of Thetis and Peleus, for example (Brejon/Thiébault 1981: 148).25 To be sure, maenads surfaced, or should I say re-surfaced, frequently in the visual vocabulary in Italy during the quattrocento. In a variety of media, the works of Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, Filippo Lippi, Sandro Botticelli, and Andrea Mantegna include women with waving garments, as if blown by the wind, some of them directly copied from ancient sarcophagi and other available sources (Dobrick 1979: 114-27; Luchs 1980: 369-71).26 In Della pittura Leon Battista Alberti recommends females with clothes billowing in the wind for their gracefulness (Alberti 1956: 81). Chosen for aesthetic or kinetic effect, Renaissance “maenads” sometimes have little in common with their ancestors in ancient mythology. As imports without a cultic or religious resonance in contemporary culture, these figures acquired new roles and functioned in a variety of contexts (Henig 1997: 28-29). In the first volume of the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute, for instance, Frederick Antal and Edgar Wind present an example of a sixteenth-century mannerist artist, Baccio Bandinelli, who imported an ancient maenad into a Christian scene. When portraying the emotional turbulence of a deposition from the cross, the artist re-circulated an ancient maenad figure as a model for a mourning woman under the cross. “This proves,” the authors conclude, “that the Bacchic frenzy of Roman or late Greek antiquity [...] could be

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See Poliziano 1988, and Lord 1931. The date of the first performance is the subject of scholarly dispute. The terminus ante quem is 1483, the terminus post quem 1471. For an attempt at reconstruction of the performance, cf. van Nevel/Huelgas Ensemble 1998 [1982]. On the artist, see Hughes 1997: 175-76. With regard to Mantegna, see Simon 1971-72. From a gender perspective, see Lindner 1987: 282-303.

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transposed by the early mannerist artists into an expression of religious ecstasy” (Antal and Wind 1937: 71).27 Obviously, the case is different with the murder of Orpheus. There, maenads have traditionally played their frantic part, dismembering Orpheus. Yet in The Death of Orpheus, the maenad-like women killers seem to have lost at least some of the transgressive force they wielded in ancient art. Even compared to Mantegna’s maenads in Mantua’s Camera degli Sposi with their loose hair and exalted expression, their frenzy is toned down. This interpretation gains further credibility, if we bring the representation of women in Dürer’s Hercules at the Crossroads to bear on our reading of The Death of Orpheus. In this engraving produced four years after the Orpheus drawing, the standing female figure is, without a doubt, modeled after the attackers in The Death of Orpheus, though now she stands in the picture’s center. Her agitated dress, her posture, and the raised club are clearly modeled after the earlier image. Here, however, there is little doubt that this female figure is to be read as the counterpoint to the seated nude who is attacked. While the latter represents a life of leisure, luxury and lust, the former emerges as a defender of the virtuous path associated with the vita activa.28 Describing the women in Dürer’s drawing as maenads may thus risk blinding us to the specific dynamics at work in the Orpheus image. Let us therefore return once more to the scroll in The Death of Orpheus. When depicting the death of Orpheus, Dürer placed an inscription above the scene of murder, Orfeuß der Erst puseran—“Orpheus, the first sodomite,” or rather, “Orpheus, the first bugger.” On the one hand, the scroll’s text takes up narrative threads circulated by Ovid and others: Orpheus, the mythical inventor of male-male eros in Thrace (though in the formulation on Dürer’s piece the region where Orpheus supposedly introduced the sexual practice is not mentioned, leaving us with a claim that is potentially much larger, namely the overall invention of “sodomy”). On the other hand, Dürer’s inscription contains an insult, addressed to a contemporary German audience and directed at Italians; after all, the foreign word puseran, like the model for the drawing, originated in Italy, playing into the perception that was widespread in pre-Reformation Germany of an Italianità infested with sodomy (Puff 2003: 124-166). Dürer’s drawing with its German text on the pictorial surface thus reveals tensions in the Renaissance’s resuscitation of the ancient past, Germans’ relationship to their southern neighbors, and Dürer’s reverence for Mantegna’s art. It is difficult to reconcile the signs of 27 28

See also Zänker 1998: 301-11. This is so despite the ambivalences that both images exude. See Saslow 1986: 33: “Whether Dürer intended to elevate or satirize homoerotic love is open to debate.” Sonnabend makes a similar observation in his description of “Hercules at the Crossroads” (Sonnabend 2007: 88).

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Orpheus’ greatness as an artist with the vituperative tone of “Orpheus the first bugger.” If one were to interpret the drawing as a straightforward “moral allegory” against same-sex love between men, as Fedja Anzelewsky has done with reference to Mantegna, the visual celebration of the musicianpoet would remain unaccounted for (Anzelewsky 1983: 28). At best, the twist offered here is ironical. It was Edgar Wind who proposed that we read the piece in the register of “the mock-heroic,” a concept he coined when seeking to come to terms with this image’s tensions (Wind 1938-39: 20618).29 But the challenge offered by the scroll is stronger than mere irony, satire or parody. Puseran is anything but a term of jocular endearment. It is a word used in the city of Treviso’s anti-sodomy law as a vernacular term for the sodomite.30 It must have been a well-worn insult on the streets of Venice during the sixteenth century, judging from the prosecutions before the urban institution entrusted with the containment of speech, the Avogaria di comun, in whose proceedings the epithets “buzerar/buzerona” appear regularly (Horodowich 2008: 99,104, 106, 125). It had migrated north of the Alps long before Dürer translated Mantegna’s art into his own artistic idiom. The earliest known reference to puseran north of the Alps can be traced to court proceedings before the Swiss city of Lucerne. In 1414, the city’s council cleared an innkeeper called Antonius Diener of the reputation of having “buggered” a man while in Italy; the term recorded in this context is pûlscherûnet. Two more times, in 1422 and 1433, the council issued a ruling protecting Diener’s reputation after he had been publicly defamed as a pulscherun or ketzer, that is, male-male “sodomite.” Interestingly, in all of the records in this case, an Italian connection surfaced.31 The term is also highlighted in Felix Hemmerli’s canon law treatise De Matrimonio of 1456 (“On Matrimony”, Hemmerli 1535: 200va-202vb). Its opening anecdote stages a conversation between two clerics, one from Italy and one from the German lands—a conversation that breaks down when the Northerner equates Italians with “[macarelli sive] busurones.”32 The word’s coinage is 29

30 31 32

Rosasco 1984 has resuscitated this interpretation by providing new contexts in contemporary humanist culture. The claims the author makes about the drawing as a response to the persecution of male-male sexuality in Savonarola’s Florence are farreaching and would merit a refutation I cannot provide in the context of this chapter. For a more extensive discussion of the problematic assumption that the drawing is humorous in character, see Puff 2006: 80-81. Quoted in Crompton 1981: 18. Staatsarchiv Luzern (StALU), Ratsprotokolle (RP) 1, 270v; StALU, RP 3, 77r; StALU, RP 1, 424r/v. See also Puff 2003: 112-13, 233 (with further literature). Ibid., 200vb: “Dicuntur autem macarelli sive busurones viri sodomitae contra naturam peccantes in Italica lingua quoniam propter crimins enormitatem hoc

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therefore not Dürer’s, as has repeatedly been claimed.33 Rather, puseran is a well-documented barb against a sodomite—a term whose Italian overtones seek to locate the origins of this sin in Italy (with its ancient, Orphic heritage). Martin Luther and Protestant pamphleteers deployed the word frequently when insinuating links between the state of Christianity and depraved sexual mores in Italy.34 Put differently, the scroll’s text provides something of a rationale for the attack; the women’s brutal assassination parallels a violent verbal insult on the level of action. As a result, the killing resembles an execution, a punishment deserved.35 Possibly, this is why in the drawing’s backdrop to the left of the thicket we get a glimpse of human habitation in the distance—an element much more prominent in the Ferrara print where the background offers a view of a city on a hill; the scene in the foreground has implications for the sexual order of human society, or so we are led to imagine. Rendered as pulscherunen, same-sex eroticism spelled conflict and destruction, similar to the biblical story of Sodom.36 Whereas depictions of Sodom have the city’s destruction stand in for the sexual activities that were its cause—a cause often deemed unrepresentable—Dürer shows the moment before the killing, thus ever so cautiously making homoerotic desire imaginable. While acknowledging homoerotic desire, the image works towards generating a sexual order posited as foundational—an order focused on cross-sex love and reproduction, an order from which Orpheus had departed. This is, however, not the end of the story—women taking revenge for an attack on their sexual rights, hoping to restore an economy of sexual desire that, due to Orpheus’ turn to homoerotic love after Eurydice’s final parting, had disadvantaged them. The murderesses are what women have often been projected to be: handmaidens. Not only do they seem to execute a sentence that originates elsewhere, though it would be hard to say where. They also literally lend their hand to a vision of the artist as martyr. One of the inversions operative in this composition is the elevation of the artist through a violent killing. I suggest approaching the interstitial relationship of

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nephas horrendum in nostro latino non habet proprium vocabulum sed accomodatum: licet sit antiquissimum.” See, for instance, Panofsky 1955: 32; Götz 1965: 142-43; Anzelewsky 1983: 26. See, for instance, Luther 1910: 310: “die Bepstlichen und Cardinalisschen keuscheit und heisst auff Welsch Puseronen, nemlich die Sodomitische und Gomorrische keuscheit.” See also Holenstein 1991: 122-25. The same point is made in passing by Orgel 2004: 488. Albrecht Dürer, Virgin Mary with Christ, the so-called Haller-Madonna (with The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah on the back of the panel). See Nürnberg 13001550: Kunst der Gotik und Renaissance, 276-78.

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martyrdom and artistry with a passage borrowed from René Girard. “Because the victim is sacred, it is criminal to kill him—but the victim is sacred only because he is to be killed” (Girard 1977: 1). Such double signification—Girard speaks of “ambivalence” (ibid.)—may capture how ineluctably the hero’s killing and artistic heroism are wedded in this image. In Dürer’s Death of Orpheus a male artistic subject is constituted through a double recourse to an ancient mythological figure and allusions to a Christian iconographic horizon, with the figure of the victim serving as tertium comparationis.37 Viewed thus, the lyre and the song book come to resemble relics. These objects will invoke the singer’s artistry for those unable to hear him. If we follow Caroline Walker Bynum, sacrifice was not merely the essential paradox of religion in general, as Girard’s analysis has it (though this critic’s gaze never strays very far from Catholicism). Christ’s sacrifice gained particular urgency in theology and religious practice of the late Middle Ages, when the crucifixion became the pivotal moment not only for human salvation but also for tackling the divine presence in human affairs (Bynum 2007: 292-42). This paradox—defined not as a “contradiction but denial of it by the simultaneous assertion of opposites”— “was at the heart of fifteenth-century Christianity,” Bynum posits (254). Viewed from this angle, victimhood has the potential to ennoble the archpoet or artist. To be sure, this poignant triangulation of violence, victimhood, and artistry is not Dürer’s invention. It must already have been part of his source. Yet he was drawn to this configuration. If the reading proposed here is persuasive, he magnified the tensions inherent in the image. “Clearly, the Renaissance did not simply rediscover the myths of the ancients, which, at least as a body of stories as distinct from literary texts, were not lost,” writes Stephen Campbell in a recent monograph on Renaissance Mythological Painting—an assessment most pertinent to the figure under consideration here, Orpheus (Campbell 2006: 251). Orphic tales circulated long before the bard’s presence as a mythological figure increased markedly during the fifteenth century and thereafter. Campbell offers “cultural identity” as an explanation for the appeal of mythology around 1500 (ibid.). Italian paintings with mythological scenes, he contends, authorized “the modern courtly tradition of ennobling love and refined conduct” (ibid. 252). In fact, Orpheus was something of a poster-child for the absorption of ancient mythology into courtliness. After 1494, courtly culture, with its entrées royales, pageants, and later, operas, would claim 37

Note that Poliziano uses the term, “vittima” (victim), in his 1480 masque when “una baccante” offers the head of Orpheus as a sacrifice to the God Bacchus: “Euoè! Bacco, accetta questa vittima” (Poliziano 1988: 157, l.308).

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Orpheus as an emblem so vigorously that by the early eighteenth century the legend of his turning to man-youth love had become a subtext and almost vanished from circulation; apparently, this story had the potential to taint the courtly project.38 Campbell’s answer does not apply to Dürer, however, especially not the Dürer of 1494, who was anything but a court artist. Dürer’s grasp of the subject is personal. At least this is how many critics have responded to the challenge of making sense of The Death of Orpheus. As early as 1905, the same year of Warburg’s landmark piece, Wölfflin wrote the telling sentence: “We shall not discuss whether Dürer had any personal interest in the subject [of the drawing],” obliquely referring to Dürer’s putative sexuality—a topic that has re-surfaced repeatedly since (Wölfflin 1971: 52; Holzberg 1981: 67-68; Mende 2003).39 Klaus-Peter Schuster seems to concur, ascribing a “confessional” quality to the drawing—a confessionalism specified as the moral anthropology of Christian humanism: after all, it is the human condition to be struggling between a life of vice and a life of virtue (Schuster 1978: 23-25). By “personal,” I do not refer to the artist’s possible inner conflicts in 1494, the year of his marriage, a question I have skirted altogether. By “personal,” I mean Orpheus as a paragon of the artist—a mirror-image borrowed in order to construct the artist figure at the seams of victimhood. From a different angle, the Italian Renaissance themes the artist took up in the year 1494 were not entirely foreign to his artistic vision. The scene depicting the ancient poet-musician’s final moments fits almost seamlessly into the interests Dürer harbored in scenes of gendered tensions and sexualized violence.40 His engagement of these themes spans the whole decade preceding the date of his The Death of Orpheus and continuing well after 1494. Sexual antagonism apparently had much appeal for the young Dürer who drew his inspiration from a variety of sources, ancient 38

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There are exceptions. Duke Cosimo I of Tuscany had Agnolo Bronzino paint a portrait of him as Orpheus. See Simons 1997: 20-55, and The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence 2002. See also Langedijk 1976: 33-52; Harris 2001); Berger 2008: 30-52. The following volumes are devoted to the history of the Orpheus myth: Strauss 1971; Warden 1982. A treatment of Dürer’s sexual aesthetics from the vantage point of a history of sexuality remains a desideratum. Such a discussion would have to historicize notions of sexuality and sexual expression, while resisting the application of modern day sexual categories on the past. A good starting point is Eberlein 2003: 58-62. Among others, Youth Kneeling before an Executioner (drawing, c. 1493), The Ravisher or a Young Woman Attacked by Death (engraving, c. 1495), Hercules (woodcut, c. 1496-97), Lovers and Death (engraving, c. 1498), Hercules at the CrossRoads (engraving, c. 1498), The Temptation of the Idler (or The Dream of the Doctor) (engraving, c. 1498), The Rape of Europa (drawing, c. 1494-95), The Execution of St. Catherine.

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mythology, as in The Death of Orpheus, among them. In its emphatic eclecticism, Dürer’s The Death of Orpheus after an Italian model thus remains emblematic for mythology’s malleability during the Renaissance.

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Works Cited Primary References Alberti, Leon Battista. 1956. On Painting (tr. J. R. Spencer). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Dürer, Albrecht. 1956. Schriftlicher Nachlass, vol. 1 (ed. H. Rupprich). Berlin: Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft. Hemmerli, Felix. 1535. ‘De matrimonio,’ in Septimum volumen tractatuum doctorum iuris. Lyon: Dionysius de Harsy: 200va-202vb. Luther, Martin. 1910. ‘Warnung an seine lieben Deutschen,’ in Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. 30:3.Weimar: Böhlau: 278-320. Ovid. 1999. Metamorphoses IX-XII (ed. D. E. Hill). Warminster: Aris and Phillips. ——. 1986. Metamorphoses (tr. A. D. Melville). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Poliziano, Angelo. 1998 [1982]. La Favola di Orfeo (1494), Paul van Nevel/Huelgas Ensemble. Paris: SEON. ——. 1988. Stanze; Fabula di Orfeo (ed. Stefano Carrai). Milan: Mursia. ——. 1931. A Translation of the ‘Orpheus’ of Angelo Politian and the ‘Aminta’ of Torquato Tasso (tr. L. E. Lord). London: Humphrey Milford. von Sandrart, Joachim. 1925. Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675 (ed. A. R. Peltzer). Munich: G. Hirth. Staatsarchiv Luzern (StALU), Ratsprotokolle (RP) 1, 270v; StALU, RP 3,von 77r; StALU, RP 1, 424r/v.

Secondary References Alexander, Katherina. 1988. A Stylistic Commentary on Phanocles and Related Texts. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert. Antal, Frederick and Edgar Wind. 1937. ‘Some Examples of the Role of the Maenad in Florentine Art of the Later Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries’ in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 1: 71-75. Anzelewsky, Fedja. 1983. Dürer-Studien: Untersuchungen zu den ikonographischen und geistesgeschichtlichen Grundlagen seiner Werke zwischen den beiden Italienreisen. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaften. Augustyn, Wolfgang. 2006. ‘Orpheus exemplum intelligentiae—Vermittlung der Antike im französischen Späthumanismus’ in Hiley, David and Gosbert Schüßler (eds) Echo: Studien zur Kunstgeschichte und Musikwissenschaft zum Gedenken an Helmut Schwämmlein. Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner: 11-39.

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Bartrum, Giulia (ed.). 2002. Albrecht Dürer and His Legacy: The Graphic Work of a Renaissance Artist. London: The British Museum Press. Berger, Karol. 2008. ‘Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, or the Anxiety of the Moderns’ in The Hopkins Review 1: 30-52. Boerio, Giuseppe. 1856. Dizionario del dialetto Veneziano, 2nd ed. Venice: Premiata tipografia di G. Cecchini. Bonnet, Anne-Marie. 2001. ‚Akt‘ bei Dürer. Cologne: Walther König. Brejon de Lavergnée, Arnauld and Dominique Thiébault. 1981. Catalogue sommaire illustré des peintures du musée du Louvre. Paris: Editions de la Réunion des musées nationaux. Bynum, Caroline Walker. 2007. Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Campbell, Stephen J. 2006 [2004]. The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella D’Este. New Haven: Yale University Press. Crompton, Louis. 1981. ‘The Myth of Lesbian Impunity: Capital Laws from 1270 to 1791’, in Licata, Salvatore J. and Robert P. Petersen (eds). The Gay Past: A Collection of Historical Essays. New York: Harrington Park Press: 11-25. Dobrick, J. Albert. 1979. ‘Botticelli’s Sources: A Florentine Quattrocento Tradition and Ancient Sculpture’ in Apollo 210 (August 1979): 114-27. Eberlein, Johann Konrad. 2003. Albrecht Dürer. Reinbek: Rowohlt. Ekserdjian, David. 1998. ‘Mantegna’s Lost ‚Death of Orpheus,‘’ in Liebenwein, Wolfgang and Anchise Tempestini (eds) Gedenkschrift für Richard Harprath. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag: 144-49. Girard, René. 1977. Violence and the Sacred (tr. Patrick Gregory). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Götz, Oswald. 1965. Der Feigenbaum in der religiösen Kunst des Abendlandes. Berlin: Mann. Grote, Ludwig. 1998. Albrecht Dürer: Reisen nach Venedig. Munich: Prestel. Guthrie, W. K. C. 1993. Orpheus and Greek Religion (ed. L. J. Alderink). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Harris, E. T. 2001. Händel as Orpheus: Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Henig, Martin. 1997. ‘Et in Arcadia Ego: Satyrs and Maenads in the Ancient World and Beyond’ in Studies in the History of Art 54: 23-31. Hofmann, Werner. 1985. Hamburger Kunsthalle. Munich: Prestel. Holenstein, Pia. 1991. Der Ehediskurs der Renaissance in Fischarts ‚Geschichtklitterung.‘ Bern: Peter Lang. Holzberg, Niklas. 1981. Willibald Pirckheimer: Griechischer Humanismus in Deutschland. Munich: Wilhelm Fink.

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Horodowich, Elizabeth. 2008. Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hughes, Graham. 1997. Renaissance Cassoni: Masterpieces of Early Italian Art: Painted Marriage Chests 1400-1550. London: Art Books International. Koerner, Joseph Leo. 1993. The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Langedijk, Karla. 1976. ‘Baccio Bandinelli’s Orpheus: A Political Message’ in Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 20: 33-52. Lindner, Ines. 1987. ‘Die rasenden Mänaden: Zur Mythologie weiblicher Unterwerfungsmacht’ in Barta, Ilsebill, Zita Breu, Daniela HammerTugendhat, et al. (eds) Frauen, Bilder, Männer, Mythen: Kunsthistorische Beiträge. Berlin: Reimer: 282-303. Luber, Katherine Crawford. 2005. Albrecht Dürer and the Venetian Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Luchs, Alison. 1980. ‘A Maenad from Pisa in the ‘Primavera’’ in Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 24: 369-71. Martineau, Jane (ed.). 1992. Andrea Mantegna. London: Royal Academy of Arts. Marx, Barbara. 2004. ‘Orpheus als Herrschaftsfigur der Renaissance’ in Zenck, Claudia Maurer (ed.) Der Orpheus-Mythos von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart: Die Vorträge der interdisziplinären Ringvorlesung an der Universität Hamburg. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang: 119-132. Mende, Matthias. 2003. ‘Wer war Dürers Kuschelhase?’ in Die Welt, February 26, 2003. On line at: http://www.welt.de/print-welt/article 420380/Wer_war_Dürers_Kuschelhase.html (consulted 13.03.2009). The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Münzer, F. 1939. ‘Orpheus,’ in Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. 35. Stuttgart: Metzler: cols. 1200-1316. Mundt-Espín, Christine (ed.). 2003. Blick auf Orpheus: 2500 Jahre europäischer Rezeptionsgeschichte eines antiken Mythos. Tübingen: Francke. Nürnberg 1300-1550: Kunst der Gotik und Renaissance. 1986. Munich: Prestel. Orgel, Stephen. 2004. ‘Ganymede Agonistes’ in GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies 10: 485-501. Osthoff, Wolfgang. 1971/1972. ‘Das Musikbuch auf Dürers Zeichnung ‘Der Tod des Orpheus’’ in Anzeiger des Germanischen Nationalmuseums: 40-41. Panofsky, Erwin. 1955. The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Price, David Hotchkiss. 2003. Albrecht Dürer’s Renaissance: Humanism, Reformation, and the Art of Faith. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Puff, Helmut. 2006. ‘Orpheus after Eurydice (according to Albrecht Dürer)’ in Dufallo, Basil and Peggy McCracken (eds) Dead Lovers: Erotic Bonds and

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the Study of Premodern Europe. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press: 71-95. ——. (forthcoming). ‘Orfeuß der Erst puseran: Eine Zeichnung Albrecht Dürers im Kontext der Orpheustradition ’ in Limbeck, Sven and Andreas M. Thoma (eds) Sodomie zwischen 1200 und 1600: Geschichte, Bilder, Konzepte. Sigmaringen: Thorbecke. ——. 2003. Sodomy in Reformation Germany and Switzerland. Chicago: University of Chicago. Reid, Davidson Jane. 1993. Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300-1990s. New York: Oxford University Press. Roesler-Friedenthal, Antoinette. 1996. ‘Ein Porträt Andrea Mantegnas als Alter Orpheus im Kontext seiner Selbstdarstellungen’ in Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 31: 149-85. Roettig, Petra. 2001. ‘Tod des Orpheus, 1494’ in Von Dürer bis Goya: 100 Meisterzeichnungen aus dem Kupferstichkabinett der Hamburger Kunsthalle. Hamburg: Hamburger Kunsthalle: 134-35. ——. 2007. ‘Tod des Orpheus, 1494’ in Prange, Peter (ed.) Deutsche Zeichnungen 1450–1800, vol. 1. Cologne: Böhlau: 146-48. Rosasco, Betsy. 1984. ‘Albrecht Dürer’s ‚Death of Orpheus‘: Its Critical Fortunes and a New Interpretation of Its Meaning’ in Idea 3 (1984): 1941. Saslow, James. 1986. Ganymede in the Renaissance: Homosexuality in Art and Society. New Haven: Yale University Press. Schröder, Klaus-Albrecht and Maria Luise Sternath (eds). 2003. Albrecht Dürer. Vienna: Albertina. Schuster, Klaus-Peter. 1978. ‘Zu Dürers Zeichnung ‚Der Tod des Orpheus‘ und verwandten Darstellungen’ in Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen 23: 7-24. Semmelrath, Hannelore. 1994. Der Orpheus-Mythos in der Kunst der italienischen Renaissance: Eine Studie zur Interpretationsgeschichte und zur Ikonologie. Cologne, Ph.D. Simon, Erika. 1971-72. ‘Dürer und Mantegna, 1494’ in Anzeiger des Germanischen Nationalmuseums: 21-40. Simons, Patricia. 1997. ‘Homosexuality and Erotics in Italian Renaissance Portraiture’ in Woodall, Joanna (ed.) Portraiture: Facing the Subject. New York: St. Martin’s: 20-55. Sonnabend, Martin. 2007. Albrecht Dürer: Die Druckgraphiken im Städel Museum. Frankfurt am Main: Städelmuseum. Staub, Friedrich. 1896. Schweizerisches Idiotikon: Wörterbuch der schweizerdeutschen Sprache, vol. 4. Frauenfeld: Huber. Strauss, Walter A. 1971. Descent and Return: The Orphic Theme in Modern Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Strauss, Walter L. 1974. The Complete Drawings of Albrecht Dürer, vol. 1. New York: Abaris Books. van Nevel, Paul. 1998 [1982]. Huelgas Ensemble. La Favola di Orfeo (1494), CD Paris: SEON. Warburg, Aby. 1992. ‘Dürer und die italienische Antike,’ in Ausgewählte Schriften und Würdigungen (ed. D. Wuttke). Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner, 3rd ed. Warden, John. 1982. Orpheus: The Metamorphoses of a Myth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Welles, Elizabeth B. 1989/1990. ‘Orpheus and Arion as Symbols of Music in Mantegna’s ‚Camera degli Sposi‘’ in Studies in Iconography 13: 113-44. Wind, Edgar. 1938/1939. ‘’Hercules’ and ‘Orpheus’: Two Mock-Heroic Designs by Dürer’ in Journal of the Warburg Institute 2: 206-18. Winkler, Friedrich. 1936. Die Zeichnungen Albrecht Dürers, vol. 1. Berlin: Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft. Wölfflin, Heinrich. 1971. The Art of Albrecht Dürer (tr. Alastair and Heide Grieve). London: Phaidon. Zänker, Jürgen. ‘Mänaden unterm Kreuz: Die Metamorphosen der Magdalena bei Antal/Wind und bei Picasso’ in Klein, Peter K. and Regine Prange (eds) Zeitenspiegelung: Zur Bedeutung von Tradition in Kunst und Kunstwissenschaft: Festschrift für Konrad Hoffmann zum 60. Geburtstag. Berlin: Reimer, 1998: 301-11. Zenck, Claudia Maurer (ed.). 2004. Der Orpheus-Mythos von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Die Vorträge der interdisziplinären Ringvorlesung an der Universität Hamburg. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly The Eroticization of Judith in Early Modern German Art The story told in the Book of Judith is an exciting tale, at the heart of which are violence, sexuality, and the inversion of gender roles. The version of the Judith story that early modern Germans (including Luther) knew and translated is not the Septuagint but the Vulgate. The latter is not only much shorter but makes Judith much less eloquent than in the Septuagint where it is clear that her tongue is her sword. In the Vulgate and therefore in Luther’s translation her weapon is her seductive beauty, working on Holofernes through his gaze. His desire, his male gaze, brings about his downfall, not the sword of her tongue. The heroic Judith who kills for a good cause and saves her people has problematic aspects: she is a widow, which means that she is sexually experienced, but her sexuality is not under masculine control. She is also the rare example of a female killer who lives on after her deed. But what is not narrated in the Bible story is exactly what happened between Judith and Holofernes in the tent. This article argues that Luther’s Bible translation strongly indicates sexual congress, even if it does not say so outright. Early modern dramatists, who frequently depicted the Judith story on the stage, simply go straight from the banquet to the beheading, but contemporary German artists pick up the hints given in the text and indicate by visual means an erotic connection between Judith and Holofernes. This explains why German artists, in contrast to Italian ones, eroticize Judith. Artists such as the brothers Barthel and Hans Sebald Beham (1525, 1547), Conrad Meit (1525), Hans Baldung, and Cranach the Elder also show the role that eyes and the gaze play in the plot.1

According to the traditional distribution of gender roles, man is empowered by society to bear arms, to use violence, and to take life. Indeed, bearing arms, fighting, and killing have traditionally constituted the very definition of masculinity. Taking life is what man does. Giving life, in contrast, is what woman does, and she is therefore supposed to espouse peace. Her participation in war should, accordingly, be confined to healing the injured and mourning the dead, so it is only to be expected that literature and art should depict men fighting and women mourning and healing. But literature and art depict again and again something that, according to the gender roles just mentioned, ought not to exist at all, namely, the woman warrior. Not only is war depicted as an armed goddess, but the Western tradition is full of myths about and representations of warrior women— warlike queens of antiquity, Amazons, Valkyries, biblical warrior women, modern saints such as Joan of Arc, and tales about historical female 1

A much more extensive treatment of the Judith theme in German literature and art from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries can be found in Watanabe-O’Kelly 2010: 112-144.

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combatants. Out of all of these, one figure is represented again and again in early modern German literature and art, illustrating both the contradictions inherent in the warrior woman but also the way in which she is instrumentalized in a variety of causes and contexts. This is the biblical figure of Judith. Her story is told in the apocryphal Book of Judith, of which more than a third tells of the expansionist ambitions of the Assyrians under Nebuchadnezar led by the general Holofernes.2 Only the Israelites resist and blockade the mountain passes against him. Symbolic of their resistance is the fictitious Israelite city of Bethulia which is said to be of particular military and strategic importance. Holofernes lays siege to it and cuts off the water supply, so that the inhabitants are dying of thirst. They decide that they can hold out for only five more days before they have to surrender, so they give God five days in which to help them. Here the virtuous, rich, and beautiful widow Judith enters the story. She has been mourning her dead husband Manasseh for three years and four months and is horrified that the citizens are even thinking of surrendering to Holofernes. She summons the two elders of the city and reads them a long lecture, for eloquence is one of Judith’s salient characteristics. She accuses them of putting God to the test, trying to bind him as though he were a human being. She also accuses them of lacking trust in God, when they, as the descendants of Abraham and Jacob, should trust him implicitly. When the elders have left, Judith puts on sackcloth and ashes and, in the prayer of a true warrior queen, calls on God to “break the strength [of the Assyrians] by thy might and bring down their power in thy anger. send thy wrath upon their heads” and “give to me a widow the strength to do what I plan” (XI, 21). She then dresses herself seductively, takes her maid Abra with her, puts some food in a bag and leaves Bethulia. She is captured and taken to Holofernes, who is immediately smitten with her beauty. She deceives him by telling him that she has come to betray her own people, and he is dazzled as much by her eloquence or, as it is called, “wisdom of speech” (XI, 21) as by her beauty. She manipulates him into allowing her to leave his camp unchallenged whenever she wants by saying she has to go out into the desert to pray. On the fourth evening, Holofernes can wait no longer. He invites her to dinner in his tent, she pretends to be delighted, lies down at his feet on some soft fleeces and he is moved, so says the Bible, with great desire to possess her. Holofernes, however, drinks too much and falls into a deep 2

The English translation of the Bible used here is The Holy Bible. Revised Standard Version. 1966. London: Catholic Truth Society. The Book of Judith can be found on pp. 434-448. Quotations in the text are accompanied by chapter and verse numbers.

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sleep. Judith prays for strength, cuts Holofernes’s head off with his own sword with two strokes, tumbles his body out of the bed and pulls down the canopy of the bed. She brings the head to her maid Abra, they put it into a bag and leave the camp. When Judith arrives at Bethulia, she shows the Israelites Holofernes’s head and the canopy of the bed “under which he lay in his drunken stupor” (XIII, 15), but, she stresses, “it was my face that tricked him to his destruction, and yet he committed no act of sin with me, to defile and shame me” (XIII, 16). Judith then issues a series of orders to the Bethulians on how they should display the head and set about vanquishing the enemy. Again, her eloquence is striking. The Assyrians in the meantime have discovered the headless corpse and are distraught. The Bethulians pull their courage together, rush out of the city, attack and defeat their enemy and bring Holofernes’ own silver vessels, beds and furniture to Judith as trophies which she presents to the temple. She leads a processional dance, singing a great 17-verse song recounting her deed and praising the Lord. Judith remains a chaste widow for the rest of her life and is honoured by the Bethulians as their liberator. This is an exciting tale, at the heart of which are violence, sexuality and the inversion of gender roles: the woman is the military commander plotting the overthrow of the conquering army, the men of Bethulia are fainthearted and have to be shown how and when to fight; the men ostensibly run the city but the eloquent woman has to teach them how to pray to God for help, how to use words as a weapon, and how to praise God when victorious. In the central episode in Holofernes’ tent the woman is the killer and the man is the victim because the woman is able to use reason—usually connoted a male quality—while the man is overcome by his sexual desires and his love of alcohol. The story as just related is the version set down in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Bible. But the Judith story that early modern Germans knew comes from the Vulgate, that is, St Jerome’s fourth-century Latin translation, for such authoritative and widely used German translations of the Book of Judith as Leo Jud’s Zurich Bible, completed by at least 1529, and Luther’s Bible, completed by 1534, are based on the Vulgate (Lähnemann 2006: 301; Lähnemann 2002: 107-126). The translation in Luther’s Bible, which is not actually by Luther himself, is not only much shorter than the version in the Septuagint, but some central aspects of the figure of Judith are different, and crucially alter the way she is represented (Lähnemann 2006: 302). One of the most striking characteristics of the Judith of the Septuagint is her eloquence, as we saw, but in the Vulgate and therefore also in Luther’s Bible, her speeches are much shorter and her eloquence is presented differently. In the Septuagint, when she is praying for strength to go out and smite the enemy, she says: “By the deceit of my lips

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strike down the slave with the prince and the prince with his servant; crush their arrogance by the hand of a woman” (IX, 10) and a few verses later: “Make my deceitful words to be their wound and stripe” (IX, 13). It is clear from these two quotations that Judith’s tongue is her sword. In Luther’s version she is rather a deceiver whose main weapon is her seductive beauty, working on Holofernes through his gaze: “Straffe jren hohmut durch jr eigen schwert / Das er mit seinen eigen augen gefangen werde / wenn er mich ansihet / vnd durch meine freundliche wort betrogen werde” (IX, 10).3 His desire, his male gaze, is the chief agent of his downfall, not the sword of her tongue. Lähnemann points out that even the references in the Vulgate to the manly (“viriliter”) actions of Judith have been excised in the Lutheran version, and she is turned instead into a benefactress. Her manly actions have become a “wolthat” or good deed (Lähnemann 2006: 303). The Old Testament image of the manly woman with the sword, whether real sword or tongue, is softened and diminished for good reasons. The heroic Judith who kills for a good cause and saves her people has deeply problematic aspects. She is a widow, which means that she is sexually experienced, but her sexuality is not under masculine control. She is childless, so her sexuality has not been tamed by motherhood. She is a seductive and irresistibly beautiful temptress, so she resembles Eve. She is deceitful, duping Holofernes in order to destroy him, so she resembles Delilah. Like Delilah she emasculates a supposedly strong man. Like Salome, she is a clever woman manipulating a weak man through his passions, and her reward and trophy is a man’s head. But worst of all: after her murderous deed Judith does not die. Where other women who kill are made safe by dying or being killed, Judith is the rare example of a female killer who lives on after her deed and whose transgression—the killing of a man—is not wiped away by death. So how is it possible for this dangerous woman to remain a heroine and a liberator? One way to do this is to turn her into an allegory. Judith conceived as a real woman is, at least to the male mind, a terrifying figure. As an allegory, she can be made acceptable as a heroine (Uppenkamp 2004: 5; Kobelt-Groch 2003, 2005; Gorsen 1980: 69-81). Judith is therefore presented by later writers and commentators as a personification of courage, of resolution, and of trust in God. She represents chastity and humility, she stands for God’s providence and his care for his Chosen People, and she 3

Punish their pride with their own sword, so that he will be entrapped through his own eyes when he sees me and will be deceived by my friendly words. Quotations from Luther’s Bible translation are taken from D. Martin Luther. 1972. Die gantze Heilige Schrifft Deudsch. Wittenberg 1545. Letzte zu Luthers Lebzeiten erschienene Ausgabe (ed. Hans Volz and Heinz Blanke). Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. The Book of Judith is in volume II: 1674-1698.

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demonstrates that God can even use a weak woman as his instrument (Hammer-Tugendthat 1997: 347). She is a prefiguration of the Virgin Mary who vanquishes the devil. She stands for the ecclesia militans, the Church Militant. In his Preface to the Book of Judith, Luther gives us yet another allegorical interpretation: Denn Judith heisst Judea das ist das Jüdisch volck / so eine keusche, heilige Widwe ist / das ist / Gottes volck ist jmer eine verlassene Widwe. [...] Holofernes heisst /Prophanus dux / vel gubernator / Heidnischer / Gottloser oder vnchristlicher Herr odder Fürst [...] Bethulia (welche Stad auch nirgend bekand ist) heisset eine Jungfraw. An zu zeigen / das zu der zeit die gleubigen, fromen Jüden / sind die reine Jungfraw gewest [...] Da durch sie auch vnüberwindlich blieben sind.4

Judith as God’s Chosen One—her name after all means Jewess—stands as a pars pro toto for all of the people of Israel (Sommerfeld 1933; Straten 1983: 140). In yet another manoeuvre, the Judith story can be politicized: a prime example from Italian art is Donatello’s sculpture of Judith and Holofernes in Florence (Uppenkamp 2004: 42-54; Bredekamp 1993: 99-115). Germans, on the other hand, politicized Judith on the stage. Sixt Birck did so first, taking the Zurich Bible as the source for his German and Latin dramas of 1534 and 1537 respectively (Lähnemann 2006: 322-325). The titles of his two plays show their contemporary political purpose. The title of his German Judith announces that it will show how a community should act in times of war5 and Lähnemann shows how much emphasis Birck places on the scenes in Bethulia (which in this play stands for Basel, the city in which the play was written and performed) and how he downplays the idea of Judith as a widow because as a widow she would fit less well into Birck’s vision of a patrician family. His Latin Judith, written and performed in Augsburg, configures Bethulia this time as the Free City of Augsburg and, as the title suggests, employs a great deal of republican rhetoric. In addition, Birck makes clear that the Assyrians in the Latin play are to be understood as the Turks.6

4

5 6

For Judith means Judea, that is, the Jewish people who are a chaste holy widow, for God’s people is always a lonely widow […] Holofernes is a heathen godless or unchristian lord or prince, that is, [he represents] all the enemies of the Jewish people. Bethulia (a city that is not known anywhere) means a virgin to indicate that at that time the pious believing Jews were the pure virgin because they were never conquered. Die gantze Heilige Schrifft Deudsch: 1675. Sixtus Birck 1534. Sixtus Birck 1537.

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Luther set his seal of approval on the Judith story as suitable material for drama in his preface to the Book of Judith in his Bible translation: Vnd mag sein / das sie [die Juden] solch Geticht gespielet haben / Wie man bey vns die Passio spielet / vnd ander Heiligen geschicht. Da mit sie jr Volck vnd die Jugent lereten / als in einem gemeinen Bilde oder Spiel / Gott vertrawen / from sein / vnd alle hülffe vnd trost von Gott hoffen / in allen nöten / wider alle Feinde etc. 7

Joachim Greff, in his play of 1536 based on Luther’s translation, configures Judith as Faith, that is, Protestantism, and Holofernes as Pride, that is, Catholicism. 8 In this work, Holofernes represents the Pope, but the Assyrians also indicate the Turks. The Judith story continued to be popular dramatic material throughout the later sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century with Judith plays by Hans Sachs in 1551, Martin Böhme in 1618,9 Martin Opitz in 1635 (Wade 1987: 147-165),10 Andreas Tscherning (1646), and Christian Rose (1648).11 But these allegorical and political interpretations of the tale should not distract our attention from the central episode in the text in which gender constructions, sex, and violence are closely connected. This is revealed if we examine not so much what is narrated in the Bible story but what is left out. The Book of Judith is structured in such a way that we begin with a bird’s eye view of the whole terrain and are made aware of the wider geographical 7

8 9 10 11

And it may be that they [the Jews] acted out such a literary work, in the same way that we act out the Passion and other sacred stories, so that their people and young people should learn, as in a common picture or show, to trust in God, be pious and hope for all help and comfort from God in all hours of need and against all enemies. Die gantze Heilige Schrifft Deudsch: 1675. Joachim Greff 1536. Scenes from this are reprinted in Lähnemann 2006: 453-467. Martin Böhme 1618. See Wade 1987: 147-165. Opitz’s work is a translation into German of an Italian libretto by Andrea Salvador and Marco Gagliano (1626). Andreas Tscherning, Martin Opitzen Judith/ Auffs new aussgefertiget; worzu der vördere Theil der Historie sampt den Melodeyen auf iedwedes chor beygefüget von Andreas Tscherning. Rostock 1646; Christian Rose, Holofern [...] allen des Teutsch-Landes Friedens-Störern und Blutgierigen Kriegern in einem lustigen Schauspiel zur anderen Probe der Rhetorischen Mutter-Spraache vorgestellet. In welchem (nebst vielen wol-merklichen Lehr-Puncten und Seufftzerlein / die in bedrängten Zeiten zugebrauchen) auch etzlich anmutige concerten / von 3 Stimmen / sampt einen Basso Continuo / sein mit-einverleibet / so dem Werck leichsam eine Seele geben! Hamburg, 1648. Lähnemann 2006: 299-415 provides a detailed discussion of Judith dramas up to and including Opitz’s libretto. Older accounts of German literary treatments of the Judith story are: Baltzer 1930 and Purdie 1927. Modern feminist analyses are to be found in Jacobus 1986: 110-136, and Stocker 1998.

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and political context, before the narrative narrows the focus down successively until it is fixed on two people alone in a bedroom, of whom only one comes out alive. The biblical narrative goes to some lengths to emphasise the bedroom as the locale of the killing of Holofernes. In the Revised Standard version we read: “So Judith was left alone in the tent, with Holofernes stretched out on his bed, for he was overcome with wine” (XIII, 2). Luther’s Bible states: “Vnd Judith war allein bey jm in der Kamer. Da nu Holofernes im bette lag / truncken war vnd schlieff” (XIII, 2-3).12 This moment in the tent is the central event in the story, the hinge on which the whole plot turns. So how do early modern German dramatists depict it? In his German Judith drama of 1534 Sixt Birck simply leaps over the vital moments. After a banquet at which a lot of wine has been consumed and music has been played, Holofernes says: Kumb her du aller schönstes weib Thail mir hinnacht dein stoltzen leib. Judith: Ja Herr ich thuon das hertzlich gern Alles dar ir von mir begern. Holofernes: Ich bin des weins worden zuo voll Der kopff der ist mir worden toll. (Birck 1534: 138)

Holofernes and Judith send their servants away and the tent is closed. Seconds later, Judith appears with Holofernes’ head. Judith’s maidservant Abra asks in amazement: Mein fraw wie hond irs griffen an Das ir hond mögen bston den man? Judith: Da er dort schnarchlet in dem wein Erwuscht ich bald den thegen sein. In zwayen straychen heüw ich ab Den kopff, den ich dir geben hab. (Birck 1534: 139)

The servants’ departure and the bloody deed follow upon each other within seconds. In 1536 Joachim Greff gives us a far more detailed picture of Holofernes and Judith’s dinner, depicting a very flirty and seductive Judith, who loses no opportunity to flatter and make up to Holofernes. They wash their hands simultaneously at the same basin, she brings him more to drink, she calls him “lieber Herr” (dear lord) and, in an interesting inversion, she even eats an apple proffered by Holofernes, thus making a direct link to Eve

12

Judith was alone with him in the chamber. Because Holofernes was now lying in bed and was drunk and asleep.

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(Lähnemann 2006: 379, 463). In 1551 Hans Sachs too depicts Judith as a seductress: Holofernes: Judith, ich hab geschickt nach dir, wann du hast Gnad funden bei mir, mit mir zu essen das Nachtmal Mit andern Herrn in grosser Zahl. Ich hoff, du wer’st dich nit beschwern. Judith: Du teuer fürst, von Herzen gern. Größer ehr ward mir nie antan. Wie könnt ich gröer Freude han? Alls, was dir lieb ist, wil auch ich mit allem Willen fleissen mich.13

In his play, the banquet is not shown at all; rather, in a short scene in front of the tent, the servants relate Holofernes’ drunkenness. Judith prays for strength and immediately we see her coming out of the tent with the head. So in all these plays, the central episode in the tent is simply left out. We are supposed to believe that, seconds after he has gone into his bedroom, Holofernes has fallen into such a deep sleep that, old soldier though he is, he never even notices Judith taking his sword down from the bedpost and raising it up over her head to kill him. Luther’s version, much more clearly than the Septuagint, makes it perfectly plain that Holofernes is inviting Judith to dinner in order to have sex with her: “Denn es ist ein schande bey den Assyrern / das ein solch Weib solt vnbeschlaffen von vns komen / vnd einen Man genarret haben” (XII, 12).14 By telling us that “Holofernes was now lying in bed and was drunk and asleep” rather than telling us: “Because Holofernes was drunk he went to bed and fell asleep,” Luther’s Bible draws our attention to what must have just happened between the two principal characters. After she has killed him, Judith pulls the corpse out of the bed and takes the canopy of the bed with her. In Luther’s Bible, however, the word given for canopy is “Decke” which in German means both ceiling and blanket, so the translator may have meant the reader to understand that Judith took the canopy with her. But anyone reading it, unless they knew the Greek, would assume that a 13

14

Holofernes: Judith, because you have found favour with me, I have sent for you to have dinner with me and with a large number of other gentlemen. Judith: Oh gladly, dear Lord! I have never been accorded a greater honour. How could I have a greater joy? I will exert myself to give you everything you want. (Sachs 1987: 690) For it is a shame on the Assyrians if we let such a woman go without sleeping with her and [so let her] make a fool of a man.

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blanket was meant and that the trophies Judith takes with her are Holofernes’ head and the blanket from his bed. When she comes back to Bethulia she not only hangs Holofernes’ weapons up in the temple, she also hangs up the canopy (again translated as “Decke”) “she had taken from his bed” (XVI, 23). This repeated mention of what the normal reader would take to be a blanket directs our attention to what must have happened in the tent before Judith kills Holofernes and almost forces us to bring sex into the story, even where it is not expressly stated. The very fact that, when Judith comes back to Bethulia, she says‚ “I have not been defiled” (XIII, 20) introduces the idea to our minds too. So the Judith story turns on a sexual episode that is not narrated in the Bible but is very strongly suggested in Luther’s translation. Now, if early modern dramatists simply leap over this part of the plot, what about contemporary artists? In the visual tradition depictions of Judith fall into a number of iconographic types: the chopping off of Holofernes’ head (Fig. 1), Judith and Abra stuffing the head into the sack (Fig. 2), Judith and Abra returning to Bethulia (Fig. 3), and Judith holding the severed head up like a trophy (Fig. 4). This means that, of the three main elements which are central to the Judith story—violence, gender constructions, and sex—only two are commonly represented. Violence at its most extreme and transgressive—a woman hacking off a man’s head—can be shown in all its gory detail. The inversion of masculinity and femininity which the story exemplifies can also be shown: the strong woman with the sword, the weak man deep in sleep, the supposedly weak woman who can control her fear and her emotions, the supposedly strong and rational man who gives way to his desires. But what about the depiction of sex, in a story in which the main driver of the action is the irresistible attraction that Holofernes feels for Judith? He is after all lured into a trap by his desire for the sexually experienced widow Judith. Is it really the case that this central aspect of the plot cannot be represented at all? On the contrary, German artists, and they alone, are able to indicate by visual means the erotic connection between Judith and Holofernes which cannot be presented on stage. In a print dating to 1547 after a work by his brother Barthel Beham, Hans Sebald Beham depicts the naked Judith sitting in a niche (Fig. 5).

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Figure 1 Dirck Volkertsz Coornhert after Maarten van Heemskerck, Judith killing Holofernes, 1551

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Figure 2 The illustration to Hans Sachs’s play Wie Judith dem Thirannen Holoferno das Haupt abschlug vor der Stat. Bethulia, 1564

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Figure 3 Jan Collaert after Marten de Vos, Judith returning to Bethulia, c.1541

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Figure 4 Jacob Matham after Hendrick Goltzius, Judith triumphant, c.1588

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Figure 5 Hans Sebald Beham after Barthel Beham, Judith with the head of Holofernes, 1545

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In one hand she holds a sword, in the other Holofernes’ head. Her nakedness indicates chastity and innocence, but his beard touches her thigh, her hand his hair and she gazes almost tenderly down at him. If his eyelids were not lowered, the pair would be looking deep into each other’s eyes. A picture like this stands in direct contrast both to those depictions that show Judith holding Holofernes’ head up like a trophy and also to those where it looks as if she is holding the head as far away from herself as possible in disgust. In Hans Sebald Beham’s picture Judith and Holofernes are alone together in a separate space, just as they were alone together in the tent. Judith’s nakedness together with the tender way she is touching his hair are also found in an ivory statuette by Conrad Meit from dating to 1510-15 in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich. In a print of 1525 (Fig. 6) Barthel Beham shows Judith and Holofernes in the pose of Phyllis riding Aristotle, a motif in which the woman dominates the man and the order of the sexes is inverted. At the same time, the posture of the two naked figures suggests that a sexual act has just taken place between them (Uppenkamp 2004: 83). The sword between Judith’s thighs points to Holofernes’ genitals and yet again indicates an erotic connection between the two figures (HammerTugendthat 1997: 363-364). Judith’s hand in Holofernes’ hair reminds us of the Sebald Beham print (Fig. 5), but also of Samson and Delilah, a couple with whom Judith and Holofernes are often linked. In this picture our gaze is also directed to the two heads, both with lowered eyes. Gazes and eyes are another important motif in these depictions of the Judith story. Hans Sebald Beham returned to the motif of Judith and Holofernes in another engraving that is remarkable for its composition (Fig. 7): the phallic woman with the sword between her legs, the parallel forms of the sword and her right leg, hair and hand, and then the horizontal arm, which links the three heads. Here again it is the eyes that strike us: the three pairs of human eyes and the fourth pair, Judith’s nipples. The dead gaze of Holofernes, like that of a Medusa, stares at Judith’s naked breasts, Abra’s suspicious gaze looks over at Judith, and she looks back towards the place where the deed—bloody as well as sexual—took place. In none of these pictures is Judith depicted as triumphant. She is thoughtful, lost in her own inner world.

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Figure 6 Barthel Beham, Judith riding Holofernes, 1525

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Figure 7 Hans Sebald Beham, Judith and Abra with the head of Holofernes, 1531-35

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Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) depicted Judith several times. In his painting in Schloß Grunewald in Berlin we see a very young Judith. Her fingers are curled in Holofernes’ hair in an almost tender gesture and the expression we see on her face is not one of triumph but of seductive tenderness. Cranach’s better-known painting of Judith in the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart represents a more resolute Judith, but it is again the eyes—her eyes, his eyes—which direct and hold the eye of the beholder. Her eyes indicate the seductress; his eyes look straight out at us. This emphasis on eyes and on the gaze can be directly linked to a verse in Luther’s translation. When Judith leaves Bethulia, she prays: “Das er mit seinen eigen augen gefangen werde / wenn er mich ansihet” (IX, 10).15 The gaze represents his desire for her and it is this gaze that makes her murderous deed possible. The gaze is what the visual artists depict and, by depicting it and by showing Judith and Holofernes in physical contact with one another, they are able to indicate the central aspect of the story, the sexual act, without making it explicit. These artists have read their Lutheran Bible carefully and so direct us to what that version suggests by means of the reference to the eyes and the blanket. Italian artists never depict Judith in this way, indeed never depict her naked at all. This is a specifically German tradition, in which the central erotic event of the Judith story is recognised and conveyed by indirect means.

15

That he may be ensnared by his own eyes when he gazes on me.

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Works Cited Primary References The Holy Bible. Revised Standard Version. 1966. London: Catholic Truth Society. Birck, Sixtus. 1534. Iudith Ain Nutzliche History/ durch ain herrliche Tragœdi/ in spilßweiß für die augen gestelt/ Dienlichen/ Wie man in Kriegßleüfften/ besonders so man von der ehr Gots wegen angefochten wirt/ umb hilff zţ Gott dem Herren flehend rüffen soll. Augsburg: Philip Ulhart, 1539. ——. 1537. Iudith Drama comicotragicum. Exemplum Reipublice recte institutae. Unde discitur, quomodo arma contra Turcam sint capienda. Augsburg: Philip Ulhart, 1539. Böhme, Martin. 1618. Tragicomoedia. Ein Schön Teutsch Spiel/ Vom Holoferne vnnd der Judith. Wittenberg. Greff, Joachim. 1536. Tragödia des Buchs Judith inn Deudsche Reim verfasset. Wittemberg : Rhau. Luther, D. Martin. 1972. Die gantze Heilige Schrifft Deudsch. Wittenberg 1545. Letzte zu Luthers Lebzeiten erschienene Ausgabe (ed. H.Volz and H. Blanke). Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Rose, Christian. 1648. Holofern . . . allen des Teutsch-Landes Friedens-Störern und Blut-gierigen Kriegern in einem lustigen Schauspiel zur anderen Probe der Rhetorischen Mutter-Spraache vorgestellet. In welchem (nebst vielen wol-merklichen Lehr-Puncten und Seufftzerlein/ die in bedrängten Zeiten zugebrauchen) auch etzlich anmutige concerten/ von 3 Stimmen / sampt einen Basso Continuo / sein miteinverleibet/ so dem Werck leichsam eine Seele geben! Hamburg: Rebenlein. Sachs, Hans. 1987. Lieder, Gedichte, Spiele. Essen: Phaidon. Tscherning, Andreas. 1646. Martin Opitzen Judith/ Auffs new aussgefertiget; worzu der vördere Theil der Historie sampt den Melodeyen auf iedwedes chor beygefüget von Andreas Tscherning. Rostock: Wilde.

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Secondary References Baltzer, Otto. 1930. Judith in der deutschen Literatur. Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter & Co. Bredekamp, Horst. 1993. ‘Donatellos Judith und Michelangelos Sieger als Marksteine subversiver Bildkunst’ in Gazzetti, Maria (ed.). Der Liebesangriff.“Il dolche assalto“. Von Nymphen, Satyrn und Wäldern. Von einer Möglichkeit über die Liebe zu sprechen, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt: 99115. Gorsen, Peter. [1980]. ‘Venus oder Judith? Zur Heroisierung des Weiblichkeitsbildes bei Lucas Cranach und Artemisia Gentileschi’ in artibus et historiae 1: 69-81. Hammer-Tugendhat, Daniela. 1997. ‘Judith und ihre Schwestern. Konstanz und Veränderung von Weiblichkeitsbildern’ in Kuhn, Annette and Bea Lundt (eds) Lustgarten und Dämonenpein. Konzepte von Weiblichkeit im Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Dortmund: Edition Ebersbach: 343-385. Jacobus, Mary. 1986. ‘Judith, Holofernes and the phallic woman’ in Reading Woman. London: Methuen: 110-136. Kobelt-Groch, Marion (ed.). 2003. “Ich bin Judith”: Zur Rezeption eines mythischen Stoffes, Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag. ——. 2005. Judith macht Geschichte. München: Wilhelm Fink. Lähnemann, Henrike. 2006. Hystoria Judith. Deutsche Judithdichtungen vom 12. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert, Berlin: De Gruyter. ——. 2002. ‘Virgo und Virago: Zwei frühneuzeitliche Judith-Figuren im Vergleich’ in Daphnis 31: 107-126. Purdie, Edna. 1927. The Story of Judith in German and English Literature. Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion. Sommerfeld, Martin. 1933. Judith-Dramen des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Juncker und Dünnhaupt. (Literarhistorische Bibliothek, Bd. 8). Stocker, Margarita. 1998. Judith Sexual Warrior. Women and Power in Western Culture. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Straten, Adelheid. 1983. Das Judith-Thema in Deutschland im 16. Jahrhundert. Studien zur Ikonographie—Materialien und Beiträge. Munich: Minerva. Uppenkamp, Bettina. 2004. Judith und Holofernes in der italienischen Malerei des Barock. Berlin: Reimer. Wade, Mara. 1987. ‘The Reception of Opitz’s Judith during the Baroque’ in Daphnis 16: 147-165. Watanabe O’Kelly, Helen. 2010. Beauty or Beast? The Woman Warrior in The German Imagination From the Renaissance to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Julie Singer For Palle and Patrie: Re-gendering Violence from Benedetto Varchi to Marguerite de Navarre The political and erotic intrigue surrounding the 1537 assassination of the Florentine duke Alessandro de’ Medici by his cousin Lorenzino inspired a number of contemporary accounts in chronicles, histories, short fiction, and tragedies. No eyewitness accounts of the assassination survive; this study focuses on the two texts based on personal communication with the assassin, namely Benedetto Varchi’s Storia fiorentina and the twelfth novella of Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron. In successive tellings of the story the assassination’s political context is continually recast, and the homosocial and homoerotic triangle at the heart of the original scenario repeated, echoed, and rewritten. The deployment and reconfiguration of the discourses of friendship, identity, masculinity, and virtue in these secondhand versions of the same event reveal the mechanisms by which Marguerite de Navarre is able to insert a female voice into the masculine power structure of the phallocentric narrative. By reframing the assassination within the storytellers’ debate, Marguerite normalizes gender roles, introducing an interpretive ambiguity that undermines the tale’s homoerotic subtext.

On the night of 5-6 January, 1537—the eve of Epiphany—the Florentine duke Alessandro de’ Medici, known as “il Moro,” slipped into the home of his kinsman and friend Lorenzino and awaited an unwilling lover. His amorous appointment, arranged by Lorenzino, was with a mutual kinswoman. But instead of the desired tryst, the duke had walked into a trap: surprised by Lorenzino and his accomplice Scoronconcolo, he was killed and his body concealed in the bed. Lorenzino escaped Florence, sheltered first by exiled republican Filippo Strozzi and later by François I of France, but was assassinated 10 years later in Venice. His act resulted not in a new Republic but in the creation of the Grand Duchy of Florence, under the dictatorship of Cosimo I de’ Medici. The tale of Alessandro’s assassination was grist for the sixteenth-century gossip mill, and provided the impetus for numerous retellings. The most basic details of Alessandro’s assassination are included in many sixteenthcentury Florentine historical texts, though due to the precarious political situation—and Cosimo’s repression of republicanism—many accounts, notably that of Guicciardini, are quite brief. Fuller retellings are to be found in the chronicles of Bernardo Segni, Filippo de’ Nerli, and Benedetto Varchi, none of which was published prior to the eighteenth century;1 in the twelfth story of the Heptaméron of Marguerite de Navarre; in histories by 1

Varchi’s chronicle was first published in 1721, Segni’s in 1723, and Nerli’s in 1728.

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Paolo Giovio, Scipione Ammirato, Girolamo Cardano, Guillaume Paradin; in political treatises such as Jean Bodin’s République; and even in a handful of English revenge tragedies.2 Despite the abundance of second- and thirdhand accounts, the history of this tale’s transmission is nonetheless best characterized as convoluted, as there exists no eyewitness account of the assassination: in its wake Alessandro was of course dead, and Scoronconcolo left no written record. Even Lorenzino, the author of an Apologia and numerous letters sent in the months following the attack, describes his motives and the aftermath of the killing, to the exclusion of the event itself—and his Apologia, like a number of the Italian chronicles mentioned above, was not printed for centuries afterward.3 Of necessity, then, the present study centers not on eyewitness accounts of the murder but on a restricted corpus of texts one might term “seconddegree narratives,” written descriptions of the assassination derived from or dependent upon (oral) firsthand accounts. In this group I include book XV of Benedetto Varchi’s Storia fiorentina, an official chronicle commissioned by Grand Duke Cosimo that treats events occurring from 1527 to 1538; the twelfth tale of Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron, a novella probably written in 1547 (Ferguson 2005: 97); and even Lorenzino’s Apologia, a text that, though written by a principal actor in the assassination, leaves unspoken the details of the event itself that must be presumed to have been included in any oral account. What emerges from a parallel reading of these texts, each one step removed from an eyewitness account of the murder, is a dynamic deployment and reconfiguration of “recombinant discourses,” themes that are common to at least two of the second-degree narratives but that interact differently as they are foregrounded, minimized, or eliminated depending on the text: discourses of republicanism, patriotism, tyrannicide, homoeroticism, castration, incest, loyalty and friendship are present in each text to varying degrees.4 The assassination’s political context is continually recast, and the homosocial and homoerotic triangle at the heart of the original scenario repeated, echoed, and rewritten in successive tellings of the story. Whereas Varchi’s chronicle lingers in the claustrophobic bedroom 2

3

4

For fuller inventories of sixteenth-century documents pertaining to the Medici assassination, see Bromfield 1972 and, more recently, the second appendix to MarieMadeleine Fontaine, ‘Les Enjeux de pouvoir dans l’Heptaméron’ in Perrier 1992: 13349 and 155-60. The English revenge tragedies are discussed by Bawcutt 2005: 412-23. Lorenzino’s Apologia, composed sometime between 1538 and 1548, survives in numerous manuscripts (Lisio’s 1897 edition was based on a comparison of ten codices) but was first printed only in 1723. I will also discuss the resounding absence of another discourse, that of “race” or ethnicity, from all accounts: given that “il Moro’s” mixed heritage did not go unnoticed in contemporary chronicles, I will argue that this detail’s omission from accounts of the assassination is significant.

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scene and details the relationship between Alessandro, Lorenzino, and Scoronconcolo, Marguerite de Navarre foregrounds the more typically asymmetrical triangle of Alessandro, Lorenzino, and the unnamed Medici woman, while Lorenzino’s Apologia, by omitting any details of the tyrannicide and seeking instead to convince its readers of the justice of the murderous act, triangulates between Alessandro, Lorenzino, and the public.5 Finally, this project proposes to construct yet another triangle, extending from Lorenzino to Varchi to Marguerite de Navarre. The royal woman recasts the tale’s political context, playing all sides of the homosocial triangle, finally giving woman a voice. But given the story’s dependence on overtly phallic imagery, one is obliged to ask whether such modifications are effected in order to convert the duke’s assassination into a tale that a woman can write. How, in the sixteenth-century West, does one write without a “thumb”? The story of Alessandro’s assassination is one of power and desire, seduction and betrayal. Lorenzino himself frames the murder as an act of patriotism in his Apologia. Yet a number of the Italian accounts, even those written by authors with republican sympathies, underline the assassination’s homoerotic dimensions. In contrast, Marguerite de Navarre, who knew Lorenzino and his sister Laudamia when they resided at her brother’s court (Ferguson 2005: 97, 99n9-10; Medici 1921: 42n1), reconfigures the interplay of sexuality and political power, apparently normalizing the discourses of gender and violence. Themes and language dominant in Italian accounts of the assassination—feminization, castration, the bed-trick—are eliminated or neutralized in Marguerite de Navarre’s retelling, shifted to a heteronormative focus on friendship, chastity, and love of family and country. The tale is traditionally regarded as a defense of feminine virtue (Bromfield 1972); Ian Morrison proposes prudence, rather than chastity, as the novella’s primary focus (1995). So was the assassination of Alessandro de’ Medici motivated by family honor or republican fervor? Odd as it may seem, the story is most sexualized in those texts in which a political motive, rather than the defense of family honor against the predations of a lustful tyrant, is overtly favored. The fullest and most sensational account of the assassination is that of Varchi, onetime republican and author of pederastic verse turned official historian to Cosimo I, who dedicates more than half of Book XV of his Storia fiorentina to the assassination and its aftermath. Varchi stands to provide a uniquely authoritative version of the events, as he claims to have heard the story directly, on separate occasions, from both Lorenzino and his accomplice Scoronconcolo. 5

On the “hidden obliquities” of the homosocial triangle, see Sedgwick 1985, esp. Ch. 1, “Gender Asymmetry and Erotic Triangles,” 21-27.

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Varchi’s Lorenzino is, to put it bluntly, an effeminate sociopath. He is melancholic and “mingherlino” (puny), showing such substantial intellectual gifts that his cousin Alessandro bestows upon him the epithet “Filosofo” (Varchi 1963: 547). This may be a hint of Lorenzino’s ambiguous sexual identity, for in this period sexual “deviance” is often associated with erudition: “Throughout the Middle Ages and early modern period, sodomy was commonly portrayed in literature and sermons as a vice of aristocrats and the learned” (Rocke 1996: 134-5). Moreover, the young Lorenzino was “irrequieto, insaziabile e desideroso di veder male” (restless, insatiable, and eager to see evil, 547), showing a violent streak sufficient to earn him the nickname “Lorenzaccio” (549). Once protected by pope Clement VII, he reputedly lost the pontiff’s favor and was expelled from Rome because he decapitated the statues on the Arch of Constantine (548).6 Additionally, according to Varchi Lorenzino was sexually ambiguous and carried on his amorous activities “senza rispetto alcuno o di sesso o di età o di condizione” (with no respect for sex or age or condition, 547).7 Nonetheless he was able to ingratiate himself with his cousin Alessandro, securing the duke’s confidence with a combination of seductive speech: “si mise a corteggiare il duca Alessandro” (he began to court Duke Alessandro, 548-49) and complete submission: “si sottomesse al duca in tutte le cose” (he submitted himself to the duke in all things, 549). But if Lorenzino seemingly places himself in a subordinate and feminized position it is so that, according to 6

7

This statuary decapitation apparently seized many writers’ imagination and quickly became associated with Lorenzino, though the vandalism’s details were at times confused. In his description of Pisa’s church of San Giovanni, for instance, which he visited in July 1581, Michel de Montaigne claims to see the statues that Lorenzino decapitated: “Viddi la chiesa S. Giovanni vicina, ricchissima anche lei d’opere famose di scultura, e pittura. Fra gli altri d’un pulpito di marmo con spessissime figure tanto rare, che questo Lorenzo ch’ammazzò il duca Alessandro, si dice che levò le teste d’alcune di queste statuette, e ne fece presente alla reina” (I saw the nearby church of S. Giovanni, it too rich with famous works of sculpture and painting. Among the others a marble pulpit thick with the rarest figures, of which that Lorenzo who killed the duke Alessandro is said to have decapitated a few and presented the heads to the queen). The queen in question is Catherine de’ Medici. Montaigne goes on to note that one of Alessandro’s children lives in the vicinity of Pisa: “Il figliuolo naturale del detto duca vive qui: e lo viddi vecchio. Vive comodamente della liberalità del duca, e non li cale d’altro” (the natural son of the aforementioned duke lives here: and I saw him as an old man. He lives comfortably on the duke’s generosity, and wants for nothing else). de Montaigne 1983: 476. Andrew Brown remarks in the introduction of his English translation of the Apologia that both Alessandro and Lorenzino “enjoyed dressing up as women.” Apology for a Murder 2004: xv. This ambiguity is played up to even greater effect in Alfred de Musset’s Lorenzaccio (1834), which, building upon George Sand’s unfinished dramatic tableau Une Conspiration en 1537, takes Varchi’s chronicle as its primary source.

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Varchi’s depiction, the revenge Lorenzino exacts on Alessandro can become an act both of political liberation and of personal “remasculation.” To that end, the assassination scene becomes a parody of a heterosexual bedroom encounter. The seduction begins with whispers, as Lorenzino “favellò dopo cena nell’orecchio al duca” (spoke in the duke’s ear after dinner, 551) in order to lure the duke to his chamber. Then the ultramasculine Alessandro strips himself of his arms and waits in Lorenzino’s bed. The duke is an unwitting participant in a classic “bedtrick” common in Renaissance comedy: the mechanism by which one thinks one is going to bed with a certain person, but in the darkness of the chamber and the curtained bed, a different person has taken the intended’s place—a deception that typically goes undetected by its victim (Desens 1994: 11). While Alessandro expects to have his way with his (and Lorenzino’s) kinswoman, instead it is Lorenzino who arrives and runs him through. Having ensured that the duke will not regain access to his arms, Lorenzino opens the bed curtains and enters, asking the duke if he is asleep; but this entry into the bed space is already an attack, as “il dir queste parole, e l’averlo passato con una stoccata d’una mezza spada fuor fuora da una parte all’altra, fu tutt’uno” (saying these words, and running him through from one side to the other with a thrust of a half-blade, were all one action, 552). The duke tries to get away but Lorenzino “ve lo teneva rovescio aggravandosegli con tutta la persona adosso” (pushes him back onto the bed and lies atop him, using his weight to hold him down, 552-3). The implications are obvious: Lorenzino, having penetrated his adversary with a sword, is now making sure that he stays on top. But the duke fights back, biting his cousin’s thumb—one need not belabor the phallic point, though we will return to this thumb—hard enough to render Lorenzino impotent: the assailant can no longer “menar la spada” (draw his sword, 553). Scoronconcolo rushes to Lorenzino’s aid but hesitates to act, “non potendo ferire Alessandro, che non ferisse prima o insiememente Lorenzo tenuto abbracciato strettamente da lui”—Alessandro is embracing Lorenzo so tightly that it would be difficult to strike one without also harming the other. Scoronconcolo reacts by poking around with his sword between Lorenzino’s legs but all he succeeds in doing is “sforacchiare il saccone” (553). That is to say, he does nothing but poke holes in the saccone, the big sack—the mattress. So Scoronconcolo takes out a dagger and stabs the duke in the neck. He continues to strike “in tutto quel tempo che Lorenzo lo tenne sotto,” (while Lorenzino remains on top of him, 553); the duke never cries out and he never lets go of Lorenzino’s thumb. In Varchi’s version of events, then, the assassination is a high-stakes seduction: the winner comes out on top and the loser stains the sheets with

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his blood. Lorenzino’s plot depends on the duke’s incestuous desire— Varchi takes care to point out that the “bait” in Lorenzino’s trap is an aunt on his father’s side, and thus that she is a blood relative of Alessandro.8 While Varchi imputes the duke’s actions solely to lust—after all, he desires almost all women he encounters, be they “pulzelle o maritate o vedove, o nobili o ignobili, o giovani o attempate” (maids or married women or widows, noble or common, young or mature, 549)—another chronicler, Bernardo Segni, speculates that the duke’s endogamous advances are motivated by the desire to conceive a male heir of indubitable parentage: “un figliuolo certo” (1857: 314). Intending to go to bed with a kinswoman, Alessandro finds himself instead in a fruitless encounter with a kinsman; the would-be seducer falls victim to the theatrical device of the bed-trick, which is, in effect, a form of rape (Desens 1994: 116). The hitherto effeminate Lorenzino seems to remasculate himself through his brutal act and thereby retakes his rightful position. I should stress here that the figurative rape of another man does not feminize or queer Lorenzino, nor does it compromise his virility: as Michael Rocke notes, in Renaissance Italy “the act of dominating another male […] might well have reinforced it” (1998: 168). And yet that which reinforces one subject’s masculinity threatens to destabilize the larger social order, for as Jonathan Goldberg notes, acts of sodomy “emerge into visibility only when those who are said to have done them also can be called traitors, heretics, or the like, at the very least, disturbers of the social order that alliance—marriage arrangements— maintained” (1992: 19). Given the exiled republicans’ failure to capitalize on the temporary power vacuum in Florence, though, the destabilizing potential of the figurative rape is never actualized. It is perhaps noteworthy that the assassination takes place on the eve of Epiphany, a date that in Florence traditionally marks the beginning of carnival season. Thus we are left with the uncomfortable possibility that Lorenzino has righted no great injustice, but has merely staged a temporary carnivalesque counter-order.

8

Contemporary chronicles disagree as to the identity of the desired woman. Segni names her as Lorenzino’s sister, while Lorenzino alludes only to “miei fratelli” in his Apologia (231).

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Such a possibility does not seem to be acknowledged in the immediate aftermath of the murder, when republicans such as the exiled Filippo Strozzi hailed Lorenzino as the “new Brutus.”9 Varchi, too, in those heady days before Cosimo’s consolidated power inspired greater caution, composed verses “in lode e commendazione del TIRANNICIDA e del nuovo BRUTO TOSCANO” (in praise and commendation of the TYRANNICIDE and new TUSCAN BRUTUS, 580). But the tide quickly turned, and Cosimo, upon his triumphant progress through the streets of Florence that summer, was greeted by shouts of “palle, palle!” (balls, balls! Varchi 1963: 591 and Segni 1857: 328). Though the reference to the Medici arms is clear, these “balls” represent at once a consolidation of Medici power, a return to the status quo, and a reestablishment of the masculine order that had been disrupted only temporarily by the gender-ambiguous Lorenzino, half Brutus and half Judith. As we have seen, Varchi’s account of the assassination hinges on the language of sexual dominance, planned or figurative incest, and political subversion—as do, to a lesser degree, many of the other Italian chronicles. Likewise, in Marguerite de Navarre’s version of the “Lorenzaccio” story, there are close ties between sexuality—in this case, normative sexuality predicated on female chastity—and political power. But the protagonist’s (Lorenzino’s) role as political liberator is far more ambiguous, as in the novella political systems are subsumed to family honor. Indeed, the greater political ambiguity of Marguerite’s novella is highlighted in the Heptaméron itself, as the devisants (storytellers) debate the merits of the young nobleman’s actions: the women laud his defense of female honor, while the men condemn his treasonous act. Softening the tale’s homoerotic dimension, and especially its threat of incest, and reframing it so that male friendship is strongly differentiated from sexual desire, seem to tame the story’s republican potential. I would now like to consider why neutralization of the incest threat apparently neutralizes republican exemplarity as well, and Marguerite’s rewriting turns this story into one that provokes polarizing debates between men and women, not just about political systems, but about duty and honor. Marguerite de Navarre immortalized the assassination of Alessandro de’ Medici in the twelfth tale of her Heptaméron, a collection of short stories recounted by ten frame-narrators, which she left incomplete at her death in 1549. Yet despite her privileged position and access to a firsthand account of the murder, Marguerite’s primary narrative strategy is to depersonalize 9

This association with Junius Brutus is reinforced by the verse from Virgil (Aeneid vi.823, “Vincit amor patriae laudumque immensa cupido”) which, according to Segni (but not Varchi), Lorenzino left with the duke’s body (Segni 1857: 318).

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and decontextualize the events of 5-6 January 1537. The story’s narrator, Dagoucin, never names either Lorenzino or the duke; though the reader is provided enough information to identify them, the antagonists are referred to only as a duke of the Medici house and a gentleman (Marguerite de Navarre 1991: 90). Marguerite’s tale is a game of doubles, in which two men, made nearly identical through friendship, are brought apart through the conflict of their friendship with sexual desire, familial honor, and patriotic duty. The murderer, no longer a kinsman of the duke, is simply “un gentil homme que le duc aymoit comme luy-mesme” (a gentleman whom the duke loved as himself, 90). As the two men’s friendship develops, their identification with one another becomes complete: “et n’y avoit secret en son cueur qu’il ne luy declarast, en sorte que l’on le pouvoit nommer le second luy-mesmes” (and there was no secret in [the duke’s] heart that he did not declare to him, such that one could call him the second himself, 90). The use of so many masculine pronouns in that phrase, whose antecedents are not immediately obvious, reflects the convergence of the two identities. The duke attempts to use this extreme identification as a wedge between the nobleman and his family when he asks the nobleman to arrange a nocturnal meeting with his sister. When the friend refuses, the duke bites his nail in a fit of pique: “tout enflambé d’un courroux importable, mint le doigt à ses denz, se mordant l’ungle,” (91): this detail prefigures the importance of thumb-biting in the assassination scene and transforms the act from a figurative castration to a simple expression of rage. Lorenzo, incensed by the duke’s affront to his sister’s honor, resolves to “delivrer sa patrye d’un tel tyran” (deliver his homeland from such a tyrant, 92). So he hatches a plan, inviting the duke to his room for a false assignation. The duke anticipates the encounter with incorrigible lasciviousness and arrives in the chamber, ready to deflower the sister of his double. Lorenzo helps the duke disrobe but does not, as Varchi had insisted, remove his sword. This is no longer a struggle for the phallus but for family honor. Accordingly, in the Heptaméron account the murder is not a rape, but a swift execution of justice. Before his murderer’s arrival, the duke opens his eyes: “ouvrit son rideau et ses yeulx” (92)—he is not the passive rape victim of Varchi, already penetrated before he’s even aware of the attack. As in Varchi’s chronicle, the nobleman strikes first, surprising the duke who only pretends to sleep. His eyes open, the duke sees the sword coming at him; “desnué d’armes et non de cueur,” (stripped of his arms but not of his courage, 93), he tackles his assailant. In his own defense, he bites the gentleman’s thumb (93) and a melee ensues. The gentleman’s accomplice then enters the room and, as in Varchi’s account, finds the two men “sy liez ensemble qu’il ne sçavoit lequel choisir” (so entangled that he cannot strike,

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93). But his solution to the problem is quite different: while Varchi’s Scoronconcolo responds by poking around between Lorenzino’s legs, the anonymous gentleman’s accomplice simply drags the wrestling men off of the bed, away from sexual space and into the open, where he then has a clear shot at the duke’s neck. The duke dies and the nobleman and his servant conceal his body in the bed. Unlike any other contemporary account of the assassination of which I am aware, Marguerite’s novella finishes with a description of the emotional aftermath of the assassination, particularly in the nobleman’s “poor sister,” who is cleared of any complicity in the assassination plot. Certain elements of Varchi’s sexualized language are clearly present in the novella: the naked sword, the stripped duke, the thumb, the men all tangled up with each other. But in order to maintain the importance of licit and moral relations between man and woman, Marguerite cannot draw too much attention to the homoerotic friendship of the two men, nor to the sexuality of the encounter in Lorenzo’s bedchamber, nor to the blurred gender identities that characterize many of the early Italian narratives of the assassination: as David LaGuardia has persuasively argued, in the Heptaméron “the ubiquity of power and its effects, and the indefatigable desire of the characters, are predicated upon the fundamental difference of male and female” (1999: 114). So Marguerite emphasizes the act’s political character instead.10 According to the tale’s narrator, Lorenzino “pensoit mettre en liberté la chose publicque” (sought to liberate the republic, 93). This interpretation of the assassination is echoed in the other major sixteenthcentury French text to refer to it, namely Jean Bodin’s Six livres de la République (1576), in which the assassination of Alessandro de’ Medici is held up as an example of patriotic liberation.11

10 11

My reading runs counter to Ferguson’s, according to which Marguerite “seems to minimize political considerations” in this novella (2005: 98). Bodin reports that Lorenzino “fit semblant de vouloir luy suborner sa propre soeur, & la faire coucher avec luy pour le tuer, sans autre esperance d’empieter l’estat, & auec le danger extreme de sa vie, s’il n’eust eschappé soudain apres le coup (combien qu’il fut depuis tué à Venize): & n’esperoit autre fruict du meurtre de son proche parent & ami familier, que de rendre la liberté au peuple” (pretended to be willing to betray his sister and make her sleep with him in order to kill him, without any hope of usurping power, and with a great risk to his life had he not escaped right away – though he was later killed in Venice; and he hoped for no fruit to come from the murder of his close relative and intimate friend, except to give liberty to the people, 519). Bodin seems to follow quite closely the justifications Lorenzino provided in his Apologia – except, of course, for the mention of Lorenzino’s sister, who is notably absent from the assassin’s own account. Bodin 1961.

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Marguerite’s novella displays, in many ways, a refusal of the sensationalism and theatricality of Varchi. The story’s major players remain anonymous, at least in principle; the greater attention to the emotional context of the assassination leads to a less claustrophobic rendering of the story; and by omitting the fact that the duke and the gentleman are relatives, Marguerite’s narrator suppresses the tale’s intimations of incest.12 The latter fact may seem particularly unexpected, for Marguerite does not hesitate to bring together politics and (incestuous) sexuality elsewhere in the Heptaméron. As Carla Freccero has demonstrated in “Queer Nation, Female Nation: Marguerite de Navarre, Incest, and the State in Early Modern France,” incest often appears in the Heptaméron as a figure for nationbuilding. Moreover, the specter of incest is an undeniable presence in Marguerite’s other writings as well as in her personal life. Susan Snyder has analyzed the incestuous undertones of Marguerite’s 1531 Miroir de l’âme pécheresse in its “parsing out [of the author’s] relationship [with God] into a series of familial paradigms” (1997: 445), for, as Maureen Quilligan more succinctly puts it, “incest is the central trope of the poem” (2005: 39). Marguerite describes herself as God’s daughter, mother, sister, and wife, prompting Snyder to remark that the inclusion of sister in this list—the odd image among Marguerite’s web of familial relationships with God, the one unusual figure that stands out amid more traditional language—invites comparison to Marguerite’s relationship with her king and brother. Indeed, while both Snyder and Quilligan have rejected the insinuations of an actual incestuous relationship between Marguerite and François, a speculation indulged by Michelet (among others), “the royal pair did have a very strong sibling tie that overrode other more traditionally weighted social, political, and religious connections” (Quilligan 2005: 43). Incest, as desired by the duke and committed (figuratively) by Lorenzino, would seem to be a central component of the story of Alessandro’s assassination, titillating the audience as it provides a justification for homicide. The subject is certainly not off-limits for the sixteenth-century writer, and least of all, as we have seen, for Marguerite herself. Elizabeth Archibald has noted that Renaissance writers often explored “possible motives for committing incest, which might be pure lust but might also include revenge, envy, hatred, and greed” (2001: 236); and Quilligan argues, in specific reference to Cordelia’s speech in King Lear, that “authoritative female speech in the Renaissance is linked with, indeed may be enabled by, 12

Lorenzino’s Apologia also denies the two men’s familial relation, on the basis not of a lack of blood ties, but of Alessandro’s illegitimate background. Indeed, in the aftermath of the assassination, Alessandro’s offspring were excluded from the Medici bloodline.

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the discourse of incest” (2005: 1). It is therefore puzzling that Marguerite should write out of the story the very element that could at once have deepened her characters’ psychological verisimilitude and enabled authoritative female speech. Instead, sexual dynamics are normalized, familial allegiances realigned, and the resulting tale of friendship, loyalty, and chastity is told through the voice of the male narrator Dagoucin. By nominally eliminating the family relationship between the duke and his friend (and thus, by extension, between the duke and his friend’s sister, the object of his lust) and neutralizing the threat of incest, in this novella Marguerite makes for an easier, more clear-cut choice: virtue or state, family honor or political loyalty, blood or not-blood. Patriotism, at least in this instance, requires a denial of shared parentage (and hence of the risk of incest): the removal of kinship ties mitigates the allegation of disloyalty and shifts the novella’s balance of personal and political motivations. In this novella, in which so little indication is given of the duke’s mode of government beyond the parameters of his friend’s family, all politics is truly local. The characters’ anonymity, rather than encouraging a generalized reading to be applied to any tyrant, seems to discourage any broader application of the tale’s political lessons, turning the story instead into a parable of prudence and loyalty.13 As we have seen, Marguerite de Navarre and Benedetto Varchi recycle many of the same dramatic details, but their incongruent erotic triangles set the framework for two very different tales. To summarize the primary contrasts between Varchi’s and Marguerite’s secondhand accounts of the assassination, it is essential to question the two authors’ construction of sameness. Even though Varchi seems to queer Lorenzino for the benefit of his patron, the Grand Duke Cosimo—Lorenzino is thus an aberration from the otherwise honorable and virile Medici line—the assassin is nonetheless assimilated to his prey, not just as they wrestle on the bed but also in the earlier days of their friendship.14 A certain complementarity of lust seems to be in play, whereby even in their extreme difference from one another, Alessandro and Lorenzino, partners in seduction, become similar due to their all-consuming lust for sex, power, and blood. Marguerite, too, insists 13

14

However, I insist on qualifying the elimination of the characters’ family relationship as nominal because enough information is included to enable the reader to identify the story’s players. Their familial bond, though left out of the novella, was presumably known to a large segment of the tale’s audience. The ambiguity of Cosimo’s attitude toward his predecessor Alessandro, specifically in the context of Varchi’s Storia, remains unresolved. Brackett, for instance, claims in the same article that “no one was more determined to establish the worthiness of Alessandro as a prince than his successor Cosimo I” (2005: 318) and that Varchi “wished… to extol the virtues of his patron Cosimo I in part by denigrating Alessandro, his predecessor” (2005: 324).

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on the men’s fundamental sameness, though she maintains gender lines just as steadfastly as Varchi blurs them. In choosing to emphasize the men’s sameness, both authors foreclose the possibility of discussing Alessandro’s illegitimate birth and biracial heritage. Alessandro de’ Medici was the son of a Medici man (probably either Lorenzo II or Giulio, later Pope Clement VII) and a slave woman, Simonetta, who was married to a coachman in the family’s service. John Brackett argues, primarily on the basis of Alessandro’s portraits, that Simonetta was a black African; but as he notes, “it was his mother’s peasant status, rather than her Moorish or slave birth, which seems to have stoked the contempt of his critics” (2005: 303).15 Indeed, this omission from contemporary accounts seems quite odd, as in the Renaissance West “sexuality is a key part of what blackness means” (MacDonald 2002: 22). The legend of Cham’s illicit intercourse with his wife, in which this stereotype is at least partly rooted, would seem an obvious weapon to deploy against the aggressively lustful duke. Miscegenation was by no means unheard of in Renaissance Florence: Sergio Tognetti has estimated that as many as 30 percent of the foundlings left at the Innocenti and similar Florentine institutions in the fifteenth century were the offspring of slaves (many nonwhite) and wealthy fathers from the merchant class (2005: 220). According to Florentine statutes of 1415, a mixed-race child had the legal status of his father (Lowe 2005: 11); similar attitudes prevail over a century later, when it is not Alessandro’s ethnicity, but his uncertain parentage, that Lorenzino cites in his denial of the two men’s sameness. Lorenzino’s Apologia, composed at an uncertain date, avoids all details of the killing, passing instead from a justification of tyrannicide and of his specific act to a description of the aftermath of Alessandro’s assassination. The anxieties of gender, incest, and paternity, voiced to varying degrees in subsequent accounts, remain latent but unnamed in Lorenzino’s text. In the first portion of the Apologia Lorenzino first seeks to prove that Alessandro was a tyrant by comparing him to three classical exempla of tyranny: the impiety of Nero, the lust of Caligula, and the cruelty of Phalaris (Medici 1921: 207). A “filosofo” such as Lorenzino, as well as his learned audience, was surely aware that both Nero and Caligula are traditionally accused of incest (the former with his mother, the latter with his three sisters). Lorenzino proceeds to cite Hieron and Hieronymus of Syracuse (211), incorrectly identifying the tyrant Hieronymus as the son (rather than the grandson) of the good king Hieron. Again, the choice of a father-son pair is 15

Brackett also relies on Varchi’s physical descriptions of Alessandro, somewhat dubiously translated, to bolster his claim of the duke’s black African (rather than Moorish) ancestry.

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telling given Alessandro’s uncertain paternity. Moreover, Lorenzino follows this exemplum with a declaration dependent on the uncertainty of the Medici lineage: his tyrannicide was not an act of betrayal, he says, because he was unrelated to his victim: “nè lui era del sangue mio o mio parente” (213). According to the assassin, because Alessandro’s mother was married to a coachman, Alessandro was legally and morally the coachman’s son: “tanto che egli non aveva meco altro interesse, se non che era figliuolo d’un vetturale della casa de’ Medici” (such that he had no other connection to me, except that he was the son of a coachman of the Medici house). As in the Heptaméron, eliminating the possibility of a family tie also renders a charge of attempted incest unavailable, at least on a literal level; but thanks to the presence of Nero and Caligula, the idea lingers. Lorenzino repeatedly evokes the link between ancient tyranny and sexual crimes, which often included incest, and his most explicit reference to the assassination itself centers on Alessandro’s sexual deviance: he blames not his own treachery, but Alessandro’s “sfrenata libidine” (unbridled lust, 215), for the duke’s demise. Then, having established that Alessandro was a tyrant unrelated to him by blood or by nature, Lorenzino abandons his classical exempla and devotes the rest of his Apologia to a justification of his actions since the assassination. Lorenzino’s letters, like his Apologia, contain no explicit account of the assassination: the event itself is reduced to a few tantalizing details, most notably another reference to the killer’s thumb. Lorenzino explains in a letter to Francesco di Raffaello de’ Medici dated 6 February 1537 that he neither acted nor wrote immediately after the assassination due to “il sangue, che mi usciva in quantità straordinaria di una mano che mi era stata morsa” (the blood that flowed in an extraordinary quantity from my hand that had been bitten, 200). Thus the detail of the thumb poses, in literal fashion, the question of how to write an event. It is perhaps telling that the only details present in all three “seconddegree” accounts of the assassination are the duke’s lust and the killer’s bitten thumb. Both hint at the dynamics of deviant sexuality, feminization, and remasculation that lurk just beneath the surface of Lorenzino’s political act. The fact that these dynamics are most suppressed in the Heptaméron novella, despite the inclusion of the plot details that elsewhere signal their presence, further underlines the difficulties of female participation in such discourse. To revisit our guiding question, how does one write without a phallus/thumb? I posit that the unique structure of the Heptaméron, with its characters’ commentaries on the stories they have just heard, allows its author to step out of the tale’s triangulated erotic structure, continually reframing the novella’s erotic and political discursivities.

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Marguerite’s novella is followed (and in a sense repoliticized) by a rousing debate between the men and women who have been listening to the story, a debate that is nearly as long as the tale itself. Dagoucin, the narrator, frames his story as a cautionary tale against lust: before beginning his narration he warns that the story is being told “pour vous faire veoir comme amour aveuglist les plus grands et honnestes cueurs, et comme meschanceté est difficille à vaincre par quelque benefice ne biens que ce soit” (to make you see how love blinded the greatest and most honest hearts, and how meanness is difficult to defeat by any kindness, 89). To what, exactly, is he referring? The easiest and most obvious reading is that the duke is the one blinded by love, while it is Lorenzino whose “meschanceté” cannot be overcome. But could it be the other way around—is it Lorenzino’s love for family and/or country that has overcome his better nature, while the meanness of the duke’s lust is difficult to overcome? Either way, it seems that the reader is encouraged to choose a “hero” whose behavior displays, in effect, the lesser of two evils. So while Dagoucin attempts to clear up this ambiguity at the end of his tale, the other devisants still seize upon it and debate which is the true “hero” of the story. At first we are told that “les ungs soustenoient que le gentil homme avoit faict son debvoir de saulver sa vie et l’honneur de sa seur, ensemble d’avoir delivré sa patrie d’un tel tirant” (some admire Lorenzino’s defense of his life, his sister’s honor, and his homeland, 95) while others condemn his ingratitude in killing the one who had shown him so much kindness. This debate is quickly broken down along gender lines, as we are told that it is the women who deem him a good brother and citizen, while the men label him a traitor and disloyal servant (95). The ladies, we are told, allow passion to guide their arguments, “selon leur coutume” (as is their wont); Dagoucin notices this and seizes upon it, turning the discussion from a serious debate about loyalty and patriotism to a playful badinage on virtue and seduction. Your beauty is a weapon, he says; take care that your beauty doesn’t provoke any crimes as cruel as the one I’ve just recounted (95). While Ian Morrison has characterized this statement as a flattery of the ladies (1995: 62), in the context of the novella it is anything but: with a single deft sidestep, Dagoucin has cut off the ladies’ impassioned arguments against his preferred reading of the tale, and he has reframed murder as an act for which women are ultimately responsible. Even though the “pauvre seur” had been exonerated at the end of the novella, Dagoucin now invites us to surmise that she is some sort of belle dame sans merci whose unwillingness to submit to the duke’s will has led to a great man’s downfall. Thus, just as quickly as murder had been set up in the novella as an über-masculine act, committed in defense of the “chose féminine” and the “chose publicque,” in the post-narrative debate it is reassigned to the feminine. And as Ennasuite observes, the debate—and the

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story—“commencent par l’honneur et finissent par le contraire” (begin with honor and end up with its opposite, 96). Much has been made of the novella’s ambiguous stance vis-à-vis Lorenzino’s actions: which side of the devisants’ debate is “correct”? As Morrison perceptively notes, the moment in which the ladies are described as being guided as much by passion as by reason, “selon leur coutume” (95), marks a rare intervention of the frame tale’s narrator into the dialogue of the devisants; thus a voice of ultimate authority seems to be discrediting the ladies’ reasoning, and deciding the debate in the gentlemen’s favor. But once again, the text cloaks itself in ambiguity, for the resolution of the debate also depends on our definition of the novella’s theme and purpose. Is this a tale of passion or of reason? Dagoucin’s remarks set it up as a story of lust and betrayal, but in the capsule description of the story that Boaistuau added to his 1558 first edition of the Heptaméron, the tale is described as that of a man who “délivrant sa patrie d’un tel tyran, sauva sa vie et l’honneur de sa maison” (delivering his homeland from such a tyrant, saved his life and the honor of his house, 90). These two readings are evidently not incompatible, but depending on which we favor, the outcome of the devisants’ debate is altered. Read as a tale of lust, as Dagoucin frames it, the twelfth novella of the Heptaméron is indeed a caution against subsuming reason to passion; in this case the women are clearly the losers of the post-story debate. But were we to favor the political reading, whereby passion harnessed in conjunction with reason becomes a tool and a catalyst for a reversal of the political order, we can see that in the debate, the women come out on top after all. Their discourse is not solely driven by passion, after all, but is guided “autant par passion que par raison” (as much by passion as by reason, 95); the men are unable to overcome them and so must convert the heated debate into silly banter in order to maintain order. But it is a woman, Parlamente (whose only contribution to the preceding debate was a quick rebuttal of Dagoucin’s claim that female cruelty can do men to death), who regains control of the devisants’ discourse and tells the next story. In closing, it certainly seems that Marguerite de Navarre’s account of the assassination in some way normalizes both antagonists: Lorenzino is not an effeminate weirdo but a patriot committed to his family’s honor, and Alessandro, more than just a lustful tyrant, is a great man whose passion has led to his unfortunate downfall. But has Marguerite really “normalized” anything at all? As Carla Freccero notes in reference to sixteenth-century French nation-building, “normativity harbors queerness” (2004: 36); nowhere is this more visible than in the Heptaméron’s twelfth novella and in the debate that follows it, where Dagoucin’s remark suggests that beneath the veneer of honor and loyalty, Lorenzino has still perpetrated a markedly feminine act.

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In a way, this brings us full circle. For if we accept Dagoucin’s reading of Alessandro’s death—that it is brought on by lust and is therefore, at its core, caused by a woman—then women are relegated to the realm of passion. But assigning Lorenzino’s crime significance as a political maneuver, as the female devisants do, serves as yet another means of remasculation. The ladies’ interpretation of the tale, governed by reason and passion, allows for a more polyvalent reading which at once incorporates political action and defense of family honor. In this case Lorenzino is no longer a mere instrument, committing a crime of passion that was ultimately brought about by a woman; his treason stems from reason. Thus Dagoucin’s narration of the murder, and the ladies’ subsequent reaction to that narrration, in their own way reflect the broader project of remasculation which Varchi’s chronicle and Lorenzino’s Apologia so much more graphically undertake.

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Works Cited Apology for a Murder. 2004. (trans. A. Brown). London: Hesperus Classics. Archibald, Elizabeth. 2001. Incest and the Medieval Imagination. Oxford: Clarendon. Bawcutt, N. W. 2005. ‘The Assassination of Alessandro de’ Medici in Early Seventeenth-Century English Drama’ in Review of English Studies n.s. 56:225: 412-23. Bodin, Jean. 1961. Les Six livres de la République, facsimile of 1583 Paris edition. Scientia Aalen. Brackett, John. 2005. ‘Race and Rulership: Alessandro de’ Medici, first Medici duke of Florence, 1529-1537’ in Earle, T. F. and K. J. P. Lowe (eds) Black Africans in Renaissance Europe. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge: 303-25. Bromfield, Joyce. 1972. De Lorenzino de Médicis à Lorenzaccio. Paris: Marcel Didier. Desens, Marliss. 1994. The Bed-Trick in English Renaissance Drama : Explorations in Gender, Sexuality, & Power. Newark, DE : University of Delaware Press. Ferguson, Gary. 2005. ‘History or Her Story? (Homo)sociality/sexuality in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron 12’ in Ferguson, Gary and LaGuardia, David (eds), Narrative Worlds: Essays on the Nouvelle in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century France. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University Press: 97-122. Freccero, Carla. 2004. ‘Queer Nation, Female Nation: Marguerite de Navarre, Incest, and the State in Early Modern France’ in Modern Language Quarterly 65(1): 29-47. Goldberg, Jonathan. 1992. Sodometries: Renaissance Texts, Modern Sexualities. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. LaGuardia, David. 1999. The Iconography of Power: the French Nouvelle at the End of the Middle Ages. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press. Lowe, K. J. P. 2005. ‘Introduction’ in Earle. T. F. and Lowe, K. J. P. (eds), Black Africans in Renaissance Europe. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge: 1-14. MacDonald, Joyce Green. 2002. Women and Race in Early Modern Texts. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge. Marguerite de Navarre. 1991. L’Heptaméron (ed. M. François). Paris: Garnier. Medici, Lorenzino de’. 1921. Aridosia, Apologia, rime e lettere (ed. F. Ravello). Turin: UTET. Montaigne, Michel de. 1983. Journal de voyage (ed. F. Garavini) (Collection Folio). Paris: Gallimard.

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Morrison, Ian R. 1995. ‘La nouvelle 12 de l’Heptaméron de Marguerite de Navarre’ in Studia Neophilologica 67: 61-66. Perrier, Simone (ed.). 1992. L’Heptaméron de Marguerite de Navarre: Actes de la journée d’étude Marguerite de Navarre, 19 octobre 1991, Cahiers textuels 10. Paris: UFR “Sciences des textes et documents”. Quilligan, Maureen. 2005. Incest and Agency in Elizabeth’s England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Rocke, Michael. 1996. Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence. New York: Oxford University Press. ——. 1998. ‘Gender and Sexual Culture in Renaissance Italy’ in Brown, Judith C. and Davis, Robert C. (eds), Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy. New York: Longman: 150-70. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1985. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. Columbia: Columbia University P. Segni, Bernardo. 1857. Istorie fiorentine (ed. G. Gargani). Florence: Barbera, Bianchi e co. Snyder, Susan. 1997. ‘Guilty Sisters: Marguerite de Navarre, Elizabeth of England, and the Miroir de l’âme pécheresse’ in Renaissance Quarterly 50: 44358. Tognetti, Sergio. 2005. ‘The trade in black African slaves in fifteenth-century Florence’ in Earle. T. F. and Lowe, K. J. P. (eds), Black Africans in Renaissance Europe. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge: 213-24. Varchi, Benedetto. 1963. Storia fiorentina. 2 vols. Florence: Salani.

Marcus Keller Framing Men: Violent Women in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron This analysis of tales 1 and 70 of the Heptameron draws on the double meaning of framing and explores the complex relationship between violence and narration in Marguerite de Navarre’s collection of short stories. The female protagonists in the two novellas take revenge on innocent men by maliciously framing them and cruelly setting them up for their demise. Because of their significant position at the beginning and toward the end of the collection, these tales of violent women also frame the entire work and put the question of violence, male and female, into perspective. Finally, the multiple layers of the two stories’ narrative framing reveal that violence perpetrated by women is conditioned and therefore de-gendered by male cruelty. In the Heptameron, violent women, framing men, are always already framed by violent men.

The seventy-two tales that compose Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron provide a broad and colorful panorama of early modern gender relations. The prologue introduces the reader to the five ladies and five noblemen who tell the stories as an edifying and diverting pastime after they find themselves confined to a cloister for an unforeseeable time because of a natural catastrophe. The large majority of the tales are about lecherous monks, violent husbands, and respectable, often shrewd women who do their best to fend off aggressive male courting and protect their honor. Critics have therefore focused on the collection’s different aspects of misogyny and numerous cases of rape and violence against women. Some have investigated the inventive ways in which women seek to satisfy their sexual desires.1 Women as the source of violence, on the other hand, have received close to no critical attention. It is true, women who initiate violent acts without being forced to defend themselves are rare in Marguerite de Navarre’s collection but they add a significant facet to the work’s spectrum of womanhood and male-female relationships. In tales 1 and 70, the reader encounters two such female characters: a noblewoman married to a procurator and the Duchess of Burgundy. Each falls passionately in love with a virtuous young man and, for different reasons, is rejected by him. Both feel ashamed and humiliated by the unexpected rejection and accuse the young men of unduly pursuing and molesting them. In order to take revenge, they frame their supposed suitors as a threat to their honor and thus trigger a series of events that lead to the men’s tragic death. 1

See for example Cholakian 1991; Cottrell 1993; Freccero 1991; Glidden 1993.

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On the one hand, Tales 1 and 70 thus foreground framing as a rhetorical strategy that allows women to exert violence and wreak havoc. On the other hand, the Heptameron’s complex narration is structured by multiple narrative frames: the narrator of the prologue frames the ten storytellers or devisants who each tell one story a day. At the end of each tale, the group frames it by debating its meaning. A third layer of framing is created when, within a story, a narrated character tells a story about another character as is the case in novella 32 about an adulteress who is made to drink from the skull of her dead lover. In the following I will use the double meaning and the close connection of verbal violence and embracing narrative that the concept of framing suggests to explore what I propose is the most prominent and most effective strategy of female cruelty in the Heptameron. In fact, the procurator’s wife and the Duchess of Burgundy, through their meaningful position at the beginning and toward the end of the collection, strongly evoke the polysemy of framing: on the one hand they provoke the killing of the men they desire by setting them up, and on the other, as the main female characters of tales 1 and 70, they frame the Heptameron and the question of female violence. Marguerite de Navarre’s collection of novellas both embraces violent women and is embraced by them. A focus on framing as both a gendered form of cruelty and the narrative principle that structures tales 1 and 70 as well as the whole collection, then, allows for a productive approach to the issue of female violence in the Heptameron. As we will see, the lethal framing of men and other forms of violence perpetrated by women are always conditioned and relativized by male brutality, dissolved in a form of social or structural violence marked as male, and ultimately undone by female virtue.

Putting Female Cruelty into Perspective: Tale 1 The first novella of the Heptameron is told by Simontault, the sexually most agressive among the company’s five noblemen. As soon as he meets Parlamente—who, besides Oisille, is the most developped of the five female devisants and often considered the voice of the author—, Simontault begins courting her in the presence of her husband, but to no avail. Before he tells the first novella about a greedy, wicked noblewoman of low standing, he only thinly veils that Parlamente is the target of his story because of what he perceives as her cruel behavior toward him:

Framing Men: Violent Women in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron 121 Mes Dames, j’ay esté si mal recompensé de mes longs services, que, pour me venger d’amour et de celle qui m’est si cruelle, je mectray peine de faire ung recueil de tous les mauvais toures que les femmes ont faict aux pauvres hommes. (11) [Ladies, I have been so ill rewarded for my long and devoted service, that, in order to avenge myself on Love and on the woman who is so cruel to me, I shall do my utmost to collect together all the accounts of foul deeds perpetrated by women on us poor men. (70)] 2

The Heptameron’s first tale about violent woman is thus framed by a male narrator who intends to take revenge on a chaste woman for being impervious to his courtship. From the beginning of Marguerite’s collection, female virtue is at the root of the telling of female violence. Simontault, the rejected suitor, attempts to turn the tables on Parlamente and the other female members of his audience by telling the story of a woman who is shunned by her lover. Married to the procurator of the Duke of Alençon by the name of Saint-Aignan, she is described as “plus belle que vertueuse“ (11) [more beautiful than ... virtuous (71)]. Because of her beauty, the procurator’s wife is pursued by the Bishop of Sées who begins a longlasting affair with the lady under the approving eyes of Saint-Aignan. She then falls in love with son of the Lieutenant-General du Mesnil whom Simontault characterizes as “beau, jeune et honneste homme” (12) [goodlooking, well-bred young man (72)]. Maintaining a secret relationship with her young lover, the procurator’s wife is said to have “pour son proffict l’evesque et pour son plaisir le dict du Mesnil” (12) [the Bishop for profit, and young du Mesnil for pleasure (71)]. When du Mesnil finds out about the woman’s liaison with the Bishop, he leaves her, abhorred by her duplicity. The woman accuses du Mesnil of pursuing her improperly, convinces her husband to move to another town and shortly thereafter propagates that du Mesnil is maligning her and the Bishop in public. She frames du Mesnil by luring him into Saint-Aignan’s house without his servants. At the moment he enters her bedroom, the defenseless young man is gruesomely murdered by Thomas Guérin, a professional killer hired by Saint-Aignan. The procurator and his wife flee to England where they are wanted as well after having been sentenced to death in absentia in France. Saint-Aignan decides to return to France and, with the help of the sorcerer Gallery schemes to murder the Duchess of Alençon and his wife among others in order to reestablish a safe existence in France. His astute wife counteracts these plans by denouncing her husband at court. Saint-Aignan is immediately arrested along with the sorcerer. Both men avoid the death penalty thanks to the 2

I quote from Michel François’s edition and P. A. Chilton’s translation of the Heptameron.

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intervention of the Duchess who obtains from the King that they be put on a galley. At the end of the tale, Simontault refocuses on the woman: “Et la mauvaise femme, en l’absence de son mary, continua son peché plus que jamais et mourut miserablement” (17) [As for the depraved wife, she led a more immoral life than ever, once her husband was out of the way, and died a most miserable death (77)]. What is striking about Simontault’s exemplary tale of female cruelty is that it thrusts into two opposite directions: the revengeful narrator both essentializes and relativizes the procurator’s wife as a source of violence. The only main character who remains nameless, the woman is surrounded by and acts in a network of well identified men—Saint-Aignan, the Bishop of Sées, du Mesnil, Guérin the killer, and Gallery the sorcerer, among others. In contrast, Simontault deliberately typifies the lecherous lady as “la femme.” His tale revolves around her as the anonymous but gendered source of violence, implying that such cruelty could emanate from any woman. The two other women without a name in tale 1 are a young maid and an old servant who belong to Saint-Aignan’s household and become the only eye-witnesses of du Mesnil’s brutal murder. Saint-Aignan sees to it that the girl’s testimony is discredited by selling her off to a brothel in Paris; the old woman seeks refuge in a convent and becomes the key witness in the murder trial against Saint-Aignan. In Simontault’s story, womanhood is thus constructed as an anonymous, abstracted, and de-individualized state of being, divided into three ages. Of the three, the middle category, that is, the beautiful lady in her prime, is as desirable as she is dangerous to the courteous lover. While Simontault leaves no doubt about his sympathy for Du Mesnil during his narration, he emphasizes the paradigmatic status of Saint-Aignan’s wife by introducing her, as we have seen above, as a representation of women in general who perpetrate “les mauvais tours ... aux pauvres hommes” (49) [foul deeds on us poor men (70)] like himself. This generalization is echoed and even intensified by Simontault’s comments after he has finished telling his story. He closely associates “la femme” with Eve who in his eyes paved the way for all women “de tormenter, tuer et danner les hommes” (18) [to torture men, kill them and damn them to Hell (78)]. Not only are all women cruel, he seems to suggest, but the history of violence is also as old as humankind itself and at its origin is a woman. Curiously, only Parlamente, Simontault’s implicit target, and Oisille, the group’s matriarch, react to this misogynist attack and its crude essentialization. While Parlamente brushes off Simontault’s blanket accusation of women with an ironic remark provoking her suitor even more, Oisille takes Simontault’s story as a challenge to counter his example of a

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violent woman with the tale of a virtuous one, the collection’s second novella about the rape and murder of the devout wife of a muleteer. Instead of arguing against Simontault’s denunciation of women as the wicked and violent half of mankind, Oisille and the others put the first tale into perspective by telling other stories. Simontault’s exemplary story of female violence thus triggers the unfolding of the complex tableau of gender relationships that is the Heptameron. Yet, Simontault’s story and Oisille’s reaction during the debate are not the only narrative framing of the violent woman. Simonault’s case of archetypal female cruelty is already relativized within his story much in the same vein as Oisille’s attempt to put the procurator’s scheming wife into perspective by telling her story about the muleteer’s virtuous wife. It is curious that none of the devisants picks up on the attenuating circumstances Simontault grants—seemingly inadvertently—his prime example of a wicked woman. “La femme” is surrounded by mischievous and brutal men and thrives on their company. Taking his wife’s orders and encouraging her liaison with the Bishop, Saint-Aignan is described as spineless and cowardly, and he might well be responsible for his spouse’s interest in other men in the first place. Conspiring against his masters, the Duke and Duchess of Alençon, Saint-Aignan consults sorcerers and only after the killer he hired inflicted deadly wounds on du Mesnil, he violently finishes off the defenseless victim: “[il] donna d’un poignard qu’il avoit dix ou douze coups dedans le ventre de celluy que vivant il n’eust osé assaillir” [he thrust his dagger a dozen or so times into the body of the man on whom he would never have dared lay a finger had he been alive (74)]. We have to speculate about Simontault’s motivation to include this gruesome detail in his account. One of the scene’s rhetorical effects, however, is to relativize the actions of the procurator’s wife. In fact, after describing the young suitor’s murder, Simontault lets Saint-Aignan dominate the plot until his wife betrays his plans to kill the Duchess and herself. As the one who framed du Mesnil and instigated his murder but did not commit it, the woman remains free in a male society which, with the exception perhaps of du Mesnil who nonetheless had an affair with a married woman, is populated by shady sorcerers, wanton clergy, and professional killers. Only the King and his officials, remote from the reality of a noblewoman of low standing who married beneath her rank, play the role of neutral male figures who secure justice and order. While the presence of so many morally depraved men does not take anything away from the woman’s treacherous and ultimately murderous actions, it certainly sheds a critical light on them. Violence of all sorts—physical, sexual, verbal, and symbolic—is ingrained in the fabric of the tale’s society. While the men and the woman in Simontault’s story resort to different means of violence, they are all complicit and cooperate,

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pursuing their self-interest. Together they create an environment of genderindifferent violence that in turn affects men and women alike. The servant girl who is forced into a Parisian brothel falls prey as much as the young nobleman to the machinations of the procurator and his wife as much as to those of the young nobleman. It is equally significant that Simontault casts two women as the source of justice and clemency. The old servant woman testifies in du Mesnil’s murder case and the Duchess of Alençon, easily identifiable as the author, achieves that Saint-Aignan’s life be spared because of his previous service to the court, even though she was a target of his murder plot. What emerges from Simontault’s story then is a microcosmos in which the narrator himself undermines his declared purpose of presenting an exemplary case of female violence by imbedding it in an atmosphere of male brutality and relativizing it by even more examples of good deeds by women. As Parlamente’s curt response to Simontault and Marguerite de Navarre’s self-reference in the first tale remind us, a female author has ultimate authority about the framing and the rhetoric of this tale and the ones that follow.

De-Gendering Violent Women: Tale 70 Similar to the procurator’s wife, the Duchess of Burgundy submits to her desire for a young nobleman in tale 70. Raised by the Duke like a son, the impeccable man does not reciprocate the Duchess’s repeated advances because he has been in a secret relationship with the widowed Lady of Vergy, the Duke’s niece, for years. When she realizes that her affection is not mutual, the Duchess accuses the young man of threatening her honor and demands that he be removed from the court. Torn between his wife’s allegations and their refutation by his protégé, the Duke is convinced of the man’s innocence when the latter reluctantly discloses to him his relationship to the Lady. In order to pressure her husband into revealing the young man’s secret, the Duchess feigns being pregnant and close to death. Soon thereafter she encounters the Lady of Vergy at a court festival and hints that she knows about her love affair with the young nobleman. Shocked and distraught, the virtuous widow immediately retires from the feast, collapses in her home, and dies. Her suitor finds her just before she expires and, blaming himself for her demise, commits suicide. When the Duke discovers the death of the two secret lovers, he is so enraged by his wife’s lethal indiscretion that he kills her instantly with the young nobleman’s dagger, thus completing the gruesome outcome of this tragic tale. The structure of this long and complex novella is very similar to that of the first story. Even though, in contrast to the procurator’s wife, the

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Duchess never consummates the relationship with the man she desires, both women experience the same frustration of their passionate love that leads them to take revenge by framing the men as dishonorable suitors. Mirroring the narrative structure of tale 1, at the beginning and the end of tale 70, the Duchess plays a significant role while the middle of the tale is dominated by men. In both tales, a violent female character frames the narration, triggering and manipulating male action. As in tale 1, the husband succumbs to the woman’s pressure and becomes her partner in crime. In both tales the wickedness and violence of the heroine is put into perspective by examples of both male and female virtue, in tale 70 ideally signified by the virtuous secret lovers. Nonetheless, there are also significant differences between the two framing tales of the Heptameron. Whereas Simontault’s tale 1 about the prosecutor’s wife is put into a stark contrast with tale 2 about the rape and murder of the muleteer’s wife told by Oisille, in tale 70 the same kind of opposition is built into one and the same story, and it is only befitting that Oisille is its narrator: she casts the Duchess as diametrically opposed to the Lady of Vergy. Both women are positioned at the opposite ends of an imaginary scale of virtue. On this scale, the Duke and the young nobleman are placed between the two extremes of vice, incarnated by the Duchess, and virtue, embodied by the Lady, the Duke being positioned more closely to the Duchess and his protégé more in proximity to the Lady. In this constellation, women are framing men yet again. The Duchess’s viciousness and her obsessive and imprudent search for pleasure are counter-balanced by the chastity and honor of the Lady of Vergy. Another significant difference between tale 1 and tale 70 further elucidates the phenomenology of female violence in the Heptameron that we have outlined so far: the cruel woman is not only de-individualized and relativized, in the case of the Duchess she is also de-feminized and neutralized. Contrary to tale 1, the devisants, deeply moved by the tragic tale, completely ignore the role of the violent woman and, to the surprise of the modern reader, discuss who is more to blame for the tragic turn of events, the Lady of Vergy or her lover. Interested in the exploration of perfect love and polarized by it, the ten men and women do not seem even slightly interested in the role the Duchess and her husband play in the teasing out of the lovers’ secret and the death it provokes.3 Even more significantly, at the height of the ducal couple’s crisis, when the Duchess tries to find out the identity of the young nobleman’s beloved,

3

See Regosin 1999 for an analysis of tale 70 centered on the issue of secrets and their unveiling.

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she pursuades her husband to break his oath of secrecy by portraying herself as being one with him: Je pensois que vous et moy n’eussions que ung cueur, une ame et une chair... vous avez tant experimenté ma volunté estre esgalle à la vostre, que vous ne povez doubter que je ne soys plus vous-mesme que moy. (411) [once I used to think that you and I were as one heart, one soul, one flesh...You have tried my will and found it so equal to your own that you cannot doubt that I am more yourself than I am myself. (525)]

Of course, we can read these words as a skillful and effective rhetorical maneuver by the Duchess to move her husband. But her words, put into the Duchess’s mouth by Oisille, also strongly suggest that the violent woman is identical with a man, “one heart, one soul, one flesh.” Likewise, by giving in to her probing, the Duke demonstrates that he is receptive to his wife’s idea that they are identical. Telling her the secret, the Duke reciprocates what he takes as her love for him and becomes like her.4 By neutralizing and de-gendering the cruel woman in tale 70, Oisille completes the process of relativizing female violence she has initiated in reaction to tale 1. In both tales, women are only able to exert violence with the help of men in a world that is marked by male cruelty, the de-gendered default. Inversely, once the Lady of Vergy finds out that her lover betrayed her, she severs all ties with him and indeed with all humankind. “Fault-il maintenant que, en vous declarant mon mortel ennemy, mon honneur soit mis au vent, mon corps en la terre, et mon âme où éternellement elle demorera!“ (413) [“Now must I declare you my mortal enemy? Now must I throw my honour to the winds, my body into the earth, and my soul to its eternal resting-place?” (527)], she asks rhetorically shortly before she passes away without allowing her lover to talk to her once more. If we consider that the Duchess is transposed into the sphere of male and ultimately degendered violence and the Lady of Vergy sublimated into sainthood, and if we further take into account the death of both the Duchess and the Lady at the end of tale 70 and towards the end of the Heptameron, the narrative structure of Marguerite’s work has evolved toward two opposite yet related claims: while the agency of female violence has been vacated, the possibility of functional male-female relationships, not to mention the utopian idea of perfect love, has also been abandoned. At the beginning of the debate that

4

In her analysis focusing on female desire rather than violence, Cholakian comes to a similar conclusion when she states that Oisille “attributes ‘masculinity’ to the aggressive character that gives way to passion and actively seeks an outlet for it” (1991: 187).

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follows tale 70, Oisille, addressing the women in her audience, leaves no doubt about the purpose of her story: Il me semble que vous debvez tirer exemple de cecy, pour vous garder de mectre vostre affection aux hommes, car, quelque honneste ou verteuse qu’elle soyt, elle a tousjours à la fin quelque mauvays desboire. (418) [I think you should let it stand as an example to you not to fix your affection on men, for, however pure and virtuous your affection may be, it will always lead to some disastrous conclusion. (532)]

Nonetheless, despite the fact that female cruelty is relativized from the beginning and ultimately de-gendered in tale 70, its form is fundamentally different from male violence in the Heptameron. Whereas men kill with daggers, even themselves as suicides like the young nobleman in tale 70, women kill with words, be it that they eloquently frame their reluctant lovers or drive a competitor to death by inserting most skillfully and viciously a telling detail into their conversation like the Duchess who, by nonchalantly mentioning the Lady of Vergy’s yappy dog, signals that she knows about the Lady’s secret relationship. Furthermore, women’s cruel behavior depends on the complicity of violent men and only becomes effective in a society that is intrinsically violent and dominated by men. Marguerite de Navarre’s framing tales of female violence announce and embrace a narrative world that bears the imprint of unmitigated social violence, overwhelmingly committed by men and turned against both sexes. In the Heptameron, violent women, framing men, are always already framed by violent men.

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Works Cited Campangne, Hervé T. 2007. “Marguerite de Navarre and the Invention of the Histoire Tragique” in Winn, Colette H. (ed.). Approaches to Teaching Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron. New York: MLA: 91-96. Cazauron, Nicole. 1976. L’Heptaméron de Marguerite de Navarre. Paris: SEDES. ——. 2005. Variété pour Marguerite de Navarre. Paris: Champion. Cholakian, Patricia F. Rape and Writing in the Heptaméron of Marguerite de Navarre. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. Cottrell, Robert D. “Inmost Cravings: The Logic of Desire in the Heptameron” in Lyons, John D., and Mary B. McKinley (eds.). Critical Tales: New Studies of the Heptameron and Early Modern Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press: 3-24. Ferguson, Gary. 2005. “Paroles d’hommes, de femmes et de Dieu: Langage, genre et transcendance dans la Nouvelle 70” in Bertrand, Dominique (ed.). Lire L’Heptaméron de Marguerite de Navarre. Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal: 197-210. Frappier, Jean. 1976. “La Chastelaine de Vergi, Marguerite de Navarre et Bandello” in Frappier, Jean. Du Moyen âge à la Renaissance: Études d’histoire et de critique littéraire. Paris: Champion: 393-473. Freccero, Carla. 1991. “Rape’s Disfiguring Figures” in Higgins, Lynn A., and Brenda R. Silver (eds.). Rape and Representation. New York: Columbia University Press: 227-47. Glidden, Hope. 1993. “Gender, Essence, and the Feminine” in Lyons, John D., and Mary B. McKinley (eds.). Critical Tales: New Studies of the Heptameron and Early Modern Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press: 25-40. Kritzman, Lawrence D. 1995. “Marguerite de Navarre and the Rhetoric of the Gaze (l’Heptaméron: 70)” in Tetel, Marcel (ed.). Les visages et les voix de Marguerite de Navarre. Paris: Klincksieck: 67-78. Marguerite de Navarre. 1960. L’Heptaméron (ed. Michel François). Paris: Classiques Garnier. ——. 1999. Heptaméron (ed. Renja Salminen). Geneva: Droz. ——. 1984. The Heptameron (trans. P. A. Chilton). London: Penguin Classics. Mathieu-Castellani, Gisèle. 1992. La Conversation conteuse: Les Nouvelles de Marguerite de Navarre. Paris: PUF. Regosin, Richard L. 1999. “Leaky Vessels: Secrets of Narrative in the Heptaméron and Châtelaine’s Lament.” Mediaevalia 22: 181-200. Tetel, Marcel. 1973. Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron: Themes, Language, and Structure. Durham: Duke University Press.

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——. 1990. “De la Châtelaine de Vergy à l’Heptaméron 70, à Bandello (IV,5): Une réécriture” in Du Pô à la Garonne: Recherches sur les échanges culturels entre l’Italie et la France à la Renaissance. Agen: Centre Matteo Bandello d’Agen: 253-64.

Violence and the Gendered Body Politic

Catharine Gray Tears of the Muses: 1649 and the Lost Political Bodies of Royalist War Elegy This essay couples a collection of elegies from the end of the British Civil Wars, Lachrymae Musarum: The Tears of the Muses (published in two editions in 1649 and 1650) with earlier elegies to Royalist soldier-heroes, such as Sir Charles Lucas and Lord Arthur Capel. Though the subject of Tears of the Muses, Lord Henry Hastings, died of smallpox and may not even have fought in the wars, many of his largely Royalist elegists recast his peacetime death as a brutal military sacrifice for the King’s cause. Doing so allows them to address the intersecting material and ideological costs of the war—the relation between the real bodies sacrificed in civil conflict and the ideal political bodies that should give this sacrifice meaning. War elegies of the period use soldier heroes like Capel (and pseudo-heroes like Hastings) as figures for the breakdown of traditional corporate languages of state and nation in the face of violence done to royal and Royalists alike. Tears of the Muses in particular, however, highlights this breakdown by gendering it, opposing the idealized masculine body of the pseudo-hero Hastings to a widowed or degraded England, “Mother of Sins” (Brome 1650: 33). Despite his unheroic death from illness, then, Hastings becomes a tragic emblem of violent division, as his elegists dramatize the failure of the royal body, and its idealized masculine extensions, to represent the monstrous body of a feminized mother England.

In 1649, 1190 people died of small pox in London, but only one, Lord Henry Hastings, elicited a deluge of literary grief.1 Hastings died at the tender age of nineteen, and, apart from the pathos of his early death (he was even due to get married the following day) there was little to make it particularly memorable. Despite this relative lack of dramatic potential, however, Hastings’ death prompted two manuscript poems, two prophetic pamphlets, and—most important for this essay—two editions of a multiauthored book of 42 poems edited by Richard Brome, Lachrymae Musarum: The Tears of the Muses, printed in 1649 and 1650.2 Other critics have explained 1

2

This figure is taken from the table of deaths caused by smallpox and measles compiled by Charles Creighton. Though small pox and measles were considered different in cause, medieval and early modern medical and popular writings often commonly referred to them as “the pox,” and they were indexed together when counting deaths (Creighton 1873: 453-6). For the publications and manuscripts responding to Hastings’ death, see below, note 2. In addition to Tears of the Muses, Hastings’ mother, Lucy Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, composed a manuscript elegy, which she wrote on the flyleaf of her copy of Tears of the Muses, and Lucy Hastings’ old tutor, Bathsua Makin, also wrote an elegy for him, sending it to her former student (Brink 1992: 62; Stevenson and Davidson 2001: 246). Hastings’ maternal grandmother, Lady Eleanor Douglas

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Hastings’ rather unwarranted popularity as a corpse by his timing: he died only five months after the 1649 execution of Charles I, and so, the argument goes, the largely Royalist elegists of Tears of the Muses in particular use his death to reflect on the King’s fate.3 This essay, however, looks beyond the spectacle of the regicide. Situating both Charles’ execution and Tears of the Muses in a broader tradition of war elegy, it argues that the Hastings volume is part of a widespread shift in the way Royalist writers conceived of Britain, as they struggled to articulate the breakdown of the traditional language of the body politic in the face of the violence done to the real bodies of soldiers and civilians during and after the British Civil Wars.4 For Tears of the Muses identifies Hastings not just with the King but with a emotive poetic line of loyal soldier-heroes, such as Sir Charles Lucas and Lord Arthur Capel, all of whom were lauded in Royalist war elegies as centering forces for the cause, but whose sacrificed and broken corpses were also used as figures for the collapse of traditional, corporate ways of talking about Britain as a multi-kingdom state. Continuing the poetic exploration of this collapse, Tears of the Muses deploys gender to highlight a political split that violently severed the body of the King—and his male aristocratic extensions and stand-ins—from the feminized body of the kingdoms they should defend and define. Drawing on the earlier war elegies, that is, the Hastings volume uses gender hierarchy to emphasize civil conflict’s destructive effects on Britain’s relation to royal and Royalists alike, and, in doing so, it presents a national identity transforming under the gun of mid-century violence. Scholars of seventeenth-century literature have paid only passing attention to Royalist war elegies’ attempts to assimilate the wider violence of battle and its aftermath into their depictions of masculine heroism and the fate of the realm. In addition to seeing Tears of the Muses as reflecting on the regicide, previous critics of its poems and indeed Royalist elegies in general,

3

4

Davies, published two prose pamphlets in 1649, Sions Lamentation and And They Shall Look Upon Him, both of which compared Hastings’ death to biblical texts promising apocalypse and national renewal (Cope 1992: 147). For critics who have made the argument that mourning for Hastings operates as covert mourning for Charles, see Nigel Smith (1994: 287), James Loxley (1997: 199), Michael Gearin-Tosh (1981: 108), Lois Potter (1989: 192), Dennis Kay (1990: 205) and, more recently, John McWilliams (2003: 274). For scholarship interested in the way this period responds to the language of the body politic, see William Burns on a developing discourse of monstrosity (1999), and Schoenfeldt on the body politic as an increasingly contested discourse (2003). For the argument that the metaphor of woundedness came, in this violent period, to be “positively defining of identity—the identity of the soldier, or the nation” in a range of texts, see Sarah Covington (2009: 2). Covington does not deal with war elegies, nor with the relations between soldiers (and pseudo-soldiers) and realm.

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have rightly emphasized their polemical quality, analyzing how they mourn or perpetuate the Royalist cause.5 In doing so, however, these scholars have focused on the impact of the rhetorical rather than real wars on midseventeenth-century poetry. Even John McWilliams, whose recent analysis of Tears of the Muses notes Hastings’ role as a “Cavalier war hero” (2003: 280), moves quickly from this insight to a detailed analysis of the volume’s creation of a polemical community in print. The exceptions to this rule of skirting the wider violence of the period are Diane Purkiss and Jerome de Groot: though neither addresses the Hastings volume, both analyze the British Civil Wars’ effects on gender and political identity. In his analysis of Royalist poems on the regicide, de Groot in particular argues persuasively that the period’s political and military conflicts caused a “fear of disruption of various bodies—politic, state, individual, Royal” (2004: 164). While de Groot analyzes Royalists’ rhetorical strategies for containing this fear, however, this essay argues that there were widespread literary attempts to directly represent the disruptive effects of political violence, war elegies in particular focusing on the steep and intersecting material and ideological costs of war—the real bodies sacrificed to civil conflict and the fragmenting political ideals for which they were sacrificed. Royalist war elegies’ concern with the relations between the identities of soldier-heroes and that of the realm was made particularly pressing both by long-term ways of imagining political collectivity through bodily analogy and by the impact of mid-century violence on this corporate imaginary. The idea of the body as a standard against which to measure the polity’s health, briefly alluded to by de Groot, had its roots in both classical political philosophy and the Bible. The “body politic” became one of the dominant languages for state and national form in the Tudor and early Stuart periods.6 One variation on this theme of political embodiment particularly pertinent to the Hastings volume and other war elegies was the complex theory of the ruler’s two bodies, developed initially by medieval jurists eager to emphasize the monarchy’s quasi-mystical reach and longevity. This theory was an elaborate and sometimes inconsistent legal fiction holding that the king had 5

6

Andrea Brady (“Dying with Honour” 2006) and Susan Clarke (2005), for example, analyze Royalist elegies’ participation in the propaganda wars of the period; Loxley (1997), Robert Wilcher (2001), Potter (1989), Gearin-Tosh (1981) and Kay (1990) all stress the political engagement of elegies, tending to situate the poems along an axis of “defeatism and defiance” as McWilliams succinctly puts it (2003: 275). For a reading of elegies as polemical that also analyses their generic mutations after the regicide, see Nigel Smith (1994: 277). Studies of the body politic are numerous. On the development of ideas of the body politic from classical times to the seventeenth century, see, for example, Hale 1971. Hale in particular talks about the body as an “ideal” used to judge national health (1971: 20).

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an individual body, mortal and subject to infirmity, indivisibly yoked to a supra-personal body, perpetual and ubiquitous.7 The theory of the two bodies was influential and, in its early modern British context in particular, worked to give form to a complex ideological and territorial national whole. The British realm was potentially ideologically unstable, ruled by a “composite” government or mixed monarchy that comprised king, Parliament, and—after the establishment of Anglicanism— Church (Kantorowicz 1997: 225-9). It was also territorially fluid: as D. Alan Orr puts it, seventeenth-century Britain did not so much represent a clearly defined territorial state, as a “haphazard agglomeration” of kingdoms “held together by a single personal allegiance” to the Stuarts and the administrative reach of the government (Orr 2002: 143, 169, 48). The fiction of the supra-personal aspect of monarchal power in particular enabled royals to project their legal and political authority throughout both the mixed corporate state and the irregular geography of the British Isles, infusing the ideologically and territorially slippery Great Britain with fixed monarchal meaning. Up until the early seventeenth century, then, the linked personal and supra-personal bodies of the British king were not just legal but also political fictions, ideals aimed at both balancing the composite constitution and cohering the dispersed geography of the realm. The theory of the two bodies (or three or four, depending on how each kingdom was counted) helped to make the monarch a figure that not only cohered but also defined his or her state and kingdoms, and gender could play a key organizational role in this definition, not just in elegies such as those for Henry Hastings, but also in official publications. In particular, gender hierarchy and relations functioned as a medium for imagining both the continuity and union of the king’s bodies. In theory at least, dynasty was crucial to the relationship between king and kingdom, giving the monarch, through his family, perpetuity to match that of the body politic, and guaranteeing his role in the government and wider nation through blood inheritance (Kantorowicz 1997: 336, 380).8 Because of the importance of dynasty, royal marriage was emphasized both as a vehicle of succession and 7

8

For a full exposition of this theory, see Ernst Kantorowicz 1997. As D. Alan Orr argues, the theory of the king’s two bodies “provided a vocabulary for discussing the relationship of the king’s supra-personal power—his sovereignty—to his person” (2002: 45). For an astute analysis of the Restoration literary reconstruction and satire of the fiction of the two bodies, largely as commentary on Charles II’s public promiscuity, though also in response to the regicide, see Paul Hammond, 1991. For recent reflections on Kantorowicz’s theories, see the recent special issue of Representations, “Fifty Years of The Kings Two Bodies, edited by Lorna Hutson (2009). Though, as Howard Nenner (1995) has amply illustrated, royal inheritance was in reality often contested and vexed.

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as metaphor for the yoking of the king’s person to the multiple communities and geographies making up the corporate realm. In his bid to unify Scotland and England, for example, James I famously declared, “I am the Husband, and the whole Isle is my lawfull Wife” (qtd. in Goldberg 1986: 3). Similarly, in the publication accompanying his execution, Eikon Basilike, Charles I cast his wife, Henrietta Maria, as a model for the backsliding political nation: she would teach proper, spousal “love, and Loyalty” to the King’s subjects (2006: 74).9 The gendering of the political body or bodies ruled by the monarch was flexible and contingent, a rhetorical ploy rather than a fullyfledged theory in its own right, and it was thus open to manipulation depending on the historical context and the ruler in question.10 But in the hands of anti-Parliamentary satirists and Royalist elegists like those of Tears of the Muses, the traditional feminization of the realm and its political community could become one potent medium for imagining the mystical yoking of the king’s two bodies—or the nightmarish clash between a disorderly female national body and the masculine person of its monarch, Charles I.11 The theory of the two bodies may have been developed by jurists, but the language and images attached to it were disseminated in much looser and messier ways as part of the broader language of political corporality that filtered through into the wider culture of the period, including war elegies. However, by 1649 this language also encountered multiple challenges from the overlapping areas of constitutional change and political violence. At the start of fighting, Charles and his supporters still insisted that he was the “one head” of the body politic and that his personal and supra-personal bodies were indivisible: the king’s subjects owed allegiance “not to the king onley as king, but to Our Person as king Charles” (Kenyon 1986: 18; Larkin 1983: 774). Parliament, however, notoriously split the personal and political bodies of the king: in Pym’s famous formulation, Parliament, as a political body, “hath the stamp of royal authority, although his Majesty, seduced by evil counsel, does in his own person oppose or interrupt the same” (Kenyon 1986: 227). By the time Tears of the Muses was published, the House of 9

10

11

Though this book was attributed to Charles at its publication, it is now widely acknowledged to have been partly or wholly ghost-written by John Gauden, Bishop of Exeter. Charles I and his followers in particular often present the realm as gender neutral or identified directly with its male king. A poem included in the 1641 Royalist collection celebrating Charles’ return from the Bishops Wars, for example, closely identifies king and realm: “for where he resorts, / He creates Kingdomes, too, as well as courts” (Eucharistica Oxoniensia 1641: d1v). For an astute discussion of the uses of the feminization of the realm in the Tudor period, including the development of masculinist models of early English nationalism, see Vanhoutte 2003.

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Commons had driven a further wedge between the King and his body politic: not only had it executed Charles in January 1649, but it had also abolished the monarchy and the House of Lords, and disinherited the King’s posterity. In fact, Parliament tested their new status as a sovereign power not just on the body of the King, but on the bodies of Royalist military leaders who had fought for him, whom they tried for breach of faith and treason in the wake of the particularly brutal Second Civil War. Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle were shot in August 1648 after the siege of Colchester, for example, while the Duke of Hamilton (who led the Scots’ invasion of England), the Earl of Holland (leader of the rising in Kent), and Lord Capel (another commander at Colchester) were all tried for treason and beheaded in March 1649 (Carleton 1992: 328).12 These multiple executions were not simply Foucauldian spectacles of state power, but legalconstitutional performances. As treason was by definition an act against a sovereign authority in this period, the handful of executed Royalists were turned into evidence of Parliament’s newfound status as the “supreme authority of this nation” (Gardiner 1906: 388). Charles’ execution was, then, the most politically profound example of a wider practice, in which Parliament used the bodies of fallen loyalists as proof texts of a relocation of sovereignty that severed governmental institutions from the person of the king and marked the fragmentation or death of the monarchal bodies politic. Indeed, as the elegies of the period illustrate most clearly, the violence of the wars and their aftermath put pressure on the political language of corporeal wholeness generally by evincing bodies, even regal ones, to be all too fragile, broken, subject to death and violent dismemberment. In the face of the above Parliamentary attacks on the literal and ideal bodies of Royalists and royal, followers of Charles were left with a number of troubling political questions: How might one imagine political allegiance or state form in the wake of the death of the King and multiple challenges to the language of corporate collectivity? Given the overlap or union between monarch and territorial realm, how could one define kingdoms severed from their king? And, most important for this essay, how could one represent the relation between those individual bodies who had suffered in

12

Lord Goring was tried for treason with Capel, Holland, and Hamilton, but was reprieved by Parliament; a fifth royalist, Sir John Owen, was tried for murder and breach of faith at the same time, but was also reprieved (Donagan 1994: 1159). In addition to the above, three leaders of the King’s Welsh armed forces were courtmartialed, though only one, Colonel John Poyer, chosen by lot, was shot in April 1649 (Carleton 1992: 327). After the siege of Pontefract, the Royalists Colonel John Morris and Cornet Michael Blackborne were tried for treason and hung in August 1649 (Donagan 1994: 1161).

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the violence of the wars and the lost, idealized political bodies—territorial and ideological—that should give this suffering meaning?

1649 and Royalist War Elegy In the context of the political crackdowns and renewed censorship of 1649, the Hastings volume built on images from other Royalist war elegies of the period to offer a covert way to address the political violence of the wars and the multiple questions it generated.13 Though we cannot be sure of the exact date of publication, Tears of the Muses was printed sometime after June 24, 1649, when Hastings died. 1649 was, of course, something of a bad year for the Royalists, and, as the above suggests, not just because of the regicide. Publications of the period registered the multiple losses of the Royalist cause in full. In particular, the wave of executions of Royalist leaders was accompanied by a wave of elegies that attempted both to defend against and meditate on the failure of the language of monarchal corporate wholeness in the face of civil violence and execution. Poems on Charles of course followed the regicide, but they were preceded and accompanied by elegies on Lucas and Lisle, published in September of 1648, and elegies mourning Capel, Hamilton, and Holland, published in March, April, and May of 1649—most of them published anonymously and formatted as small pamphlets or broadsides, cheap print geared to appeal to a broad audience.14 These elegies produced not just collective books elegizing singular dead, as in the volume on Hastings, but elegies about a collective, poems that honored a loyalist band of brothers. Lucas and Lisle, “brave Twins of valour,” were constantly mourned together, as were the military triplets Capel, Holland, and Hamilton.15 Elegies to these Royalist leaders were published alongside those to the dead King: Two Elegeis, published in April 13 14

15

For a useful summary of Parliament’s attempts to silence Royalist writers in 1649, see Wilcher (2001: 289). For elegies on Charles, see, for example, the collection Monumentum Regale (1649). For Lucas and Lisle, see An Elegie on the Most Barbarous, Unparallel’d, Unsoldierly Murder (1648), An Elegie on the Death of Sir Charls Lucas and Sir George Lisle (1648), Two Epitaphs (1648), and An Elegie on the Death of That Most Noble and Heroick Knight (1648). For Capel, Holland and Hamilton, see Two Elegeis (1649), Obsequies on That Unexemplar Champion of Chivalrie (1649), An Elogie and Epitaph (1649), and A Mournfull Elegy (1649). John Quarles’ Regale Lectum Miseriae (1649) also included elegies on both Charles and Capel, as did Vaticinium Votivum (March 1649), the latter often wrongly attributed to George Wither. For this reference to Lucas and Lisle as twins, see the broadside, An Elegie on the Death of Sir Charls Lucas and Sir George Lisle (1648). For poems on Capel, Holland, and Hamilton, see footnote 13 above.

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1649, coupled a poem on Charles with one on Capel, as did An Elogie and Epitaph published in May of that year.16 Capel was even pitched as epitomizing collective suffering: An Elogie and Epitaph argues that the “goare / That stream’d from Capell in’s Heroick fall” has written Royalist leaders’ “joynt suffering” (1649: 9). As the focus on “goare” here suggests, the mounting body count of 1648-9 forced Royalist war elegies to find ways of recasting heroic suffering as the medium for constructing a renewed, political body of Royalists that would defend or even outlast their King. To this end, the elegies draw from ideals of Christian martyrdom and classical civic virtue, producing blood and tears as bodily adhesives for a political identity under vicious attack. Executed Royalists are presented as the apotheosis of public-spirited loyalist resolve and, as brutal death is paradoxically pitched as the true test of political solidarity, blood becomes a signifier of adherence to the King’s cause. One poem on Capel declares he dared to “seal with blood” his allegiance to “his Sovereign” (Two Elegeis 1649: 7). A broadside on Hamilton, Holland, and Capel juxtaposes their “loyall bloud” spilled for Charles, to the “loyal teares” that should now be shed for Hamilton, assimilated—despite his erstwhile support for Parliament—into a widespread Royalist sacrifice. The elegies fuse the language of self-sacrifice to the language of political corporation, using the violently marked bodies of Royalist soldier-heroes to create a collective Royalist identity of mourning and continued militarism. Two Epitaphs even promises that Lucas’s death will spawn a dynasty of heroes. “[S]o many battailes” are the “off-spring” of the childless Lucas, it claims, that, like Elisha, the prophetic heir of Elija, his soldierly spirit will be redoubled on those Royalists who emulate him: “From Lucas Ashes Lucasses shall rise; / Heroes, who like Elisha shall inherit / In double measure, Noble Lucas’s spirit” (1648: 4, 6). As war-like Lucases rise phoenix-like from the ashes of military defeat, this elegy presents a dynastic perpetuity if not of the King then of his male followers, imagining a fantasied extension of the dynastic power of the royal person into the political and military realm of the Royalist war effort. The violently leaking bodies of these soldier-heroes thus become a medium for renewed political affiliation, the foundation of a corporate loyalism that will extend and support both personal and political monarchal bodies beyond defeat. This corporate loyalism is always under threat, however. Though the elegies perpetuate fantasies of wholeness, they are equally fascinated by the fragmenting effects of the political violence that is the very condition of their production. Despite their stress on blood, war elegies habitually 16

An Elogie and Epitaph also added “some streames of remembrance” for Hamilton and Holland (1649: title page).

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displace this violence onto the body of the state and realm, often shying away from depicting the spectacle of execution. Yet this very displacement emphasizes the wars’ destructive effects on traditional ideas of state and nation. Particularly after the regicide, the ideal monarchal constitution that might oppose Parliamentary tyranny is largely presented as always already lost, as soldier-heroes become emblems of governmental and national disaster. “Obsequies offered up to the Memorie of […] Lord Capel,” for example, deploys vivid body politic imagery to imagine violence against the Royalist community as a logical extension of violence against Royal person. Capel’s brief embodiment of heroism after Charles’ death is like the last gasp of a headless political body: And as in Bodies, where the Head is lop’t From off the weeping stem, som Spirits dropt […] Contract the Joints and Hands, then make them spread As if they catch’t at the dislodging Head; So after this vast Ruin [the regicide], though the Frame Of Nature were both discompos’d and lame; Yet in this crippled Structure, there might bee Som starts and leaps, which low’d (brave Lord!) from Thee. (Vaticinium Votivum 1649: 56-7)

In an act of almost fetishistic substitution, this poem averts its gaze from the spectacle of Capel’s execution only to reinscribe this violence as ideology. While alive, Capel is a nightmarish emblem of the two bodies: he is both a temporary distillation of “The expiring” Charles’ personal “vigor” and the grasping “hand” of the dying public state, “this crippled Structure” (1649: 57). His death marks the end to even these evaporating or grotesque postregicidal bodies. Slipping between real executed bodies and corporate politics, the elegy presents idealized Royalist state forms of embodiment fragmenting in the face of the real violence done to royal and Royalists alike. As Royalists’ deaths are cast as registering, sometimes even causing, violent transfigurations in the monarchal kingdoms, fantasies of corporate loyalism clash with figures of government disintegration, and Capel and the others become synecdoches for a polity split from its king and rapidly either mutating into a body in pieces or shedding embodiment altogether. In one post-regicide poem, for example, John Quarles bemoans that Parliament has “Converted Monarchy into a State” (1649: 110). His language suggests a substantial transformation not of leaders but of government form: if the theory of the two bodies insists that the body politic is indivisibly united with the king—indeed mystically inheres in his person—these elegies create a counter image of an autonomous state that is moving towards reified abstraction. As government detaches from Charles to be imagined

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elsewhere, the king’s two bodies can increasingly be reunited only in a nostalgically evoked past or hoped-for future, and a monstrously embodied or disembodied state takes on a new and threatening life of its own.17 It is not just the state that has undergone a shocking transformation of identity in these elegies, however; images of particularly the English nation as community and kingdom are equally unstable, most pointedly when it comes to relations between Royalists and their realm. On the one hand, elegies identify loyalist heroes and England as twin victims of Parliamentary cruelty. On the other, they speak of Royalists’ alienation from a national body violently transforming under the pressure of war. An Elogie and Epitaph shifts uneasily between attacking the English political community—“Ye trayterous Nation”—and defining it sympathetically as a stormed garrison: Parliament has “ruin’d all the Bulworks of our Nation” (1649: 1, 2). This double-vision of nation as victim and perpetrator shades into an uncertainty as to the author’s inclusion in the community. Is he part of “our Nation”? Or distinct: “Ye”? The Royalist elegists’ struggle to coherently represent the failure of the political bodies they ideally defend reaches a peak in the poems on Charles’ death. Quarles’ elegy on the regicide in Regale Lectum Miseriae asks: “are my feet upon the English shore?” He then casts England alternately as a nightmarish dreamscape, a victimized body whose “masterveine / [was] Open’d of late,” and a guilty murderer: “And dost thou thinke, O England, to immure / Thyself in blood, and always rest secure?” (1649: 50-51). Juggling incompatible images of England, Quarles seems uncomfortably at odds with a kingdom that is both guilty murderer and innocent victim. As object of address and subject of reflection, this bloody, shifting England is presented as beyond the grasp of idealized embodiments of state and nationhood. Though these elegies cast Royalists’ relations to the monarchal realm as constituted by both association (as both become victims of the wars) and alienation (as England viciously turns on its loyal subjects), these twin poles of identification and difference both illustrate a breakdown in the language of the king’s two bodies and the complex territorial and ideological forms it should cohere. 17

For a more sustained analysis of the growth of the discourse of monstrosity in relation to both the human body and the body politic after the regicide, focusing on the work of physician John Bulwar, see Burns, 1999. In his compelling study of seventeenth-century treason trials, Alan Orr has argued that the King’s trial marked a shift in the “locus of sovereignty” and a detachment of “the legal constitutional order” from the person of the monarch (2002: 183). These elegies suggest that, in terms of the broader political culture at least, the shift in and depersonalization of sovereign power was carried out on a wider stage than Orr’s focus on legal trials allows and that it was crafted in response not just to the King’s trial but to war and its aftermath more generally.

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In the pressured context of 1649, then, these elegies foreground a collision between the real bodies sacrificed to the King’s cause and the idealized governmental and national bodies that should legitimate and justify these deaths. The executed Royalist leaders may have died for traditional ideas of king and country—and their complex inter-relation—but, in these poems at least, these same leaders are made to tell a different story of a painful transition in or disintegration of the language of political corporality under the pressure of the civil violence of battle and execution. It is this story of transition and disintegration that Tears of the Muses takes up. Published in the latter half of 1649, as the political situation became more grave for Royalists, the collection raises Hastings to the status of military hero; yet, in doing so, it employs gender hierarchy to intensify the splits and fragmentations already circulating in the above poems.

Tears of the Muses It might seem odd to link Hastings, with his unheroic death from illness, to the violence of the British Civil Wars and its loyal soldier-heroes. If so, this is an oddity produced by the elegies themselves, which work to enfold Hastings within the culture of masculine valor and self-sacrifice established by the pamphlet and broadside elegies on Capel and other executed leaders. Many of the contributors to Tears of the Muses had a particular stake in this culture for, as McWilliams has established, a number of them had experienced the armed conflict of the wars first hand (2003: 279).18 In fact, the elegists’ ties to the Royalist army were more extensive than McWilliams suggests: of the twenty-seven contributors listed at the start of the book in 1649, nearly half—at least thirteen men—had military connections or were stationed at various Midlands garrisons during the wars (A3v).19 Hastings 18

19

As McWilliams shows, Sir Arthur Gorges was involved in Royalist military activity (McWilliams 2003: 279). The clergymen Francis Standish, John Rosse, and John Cave were all accused of involvement in the Royalist war effort, and Thomas Pestel senior and junior were both at the Hastings’ family seat and Royalist garrison of Ashby (McWilliams 2003: 279-80). In addition to the two Thomas Pestels documented by McWilliams, Francis Standish and John Rosse were both at the Ashby garrison, as was William Pestel (another son to the elder Thomas Pestel), and Sir Aston Cokaine (Matthews 1988: 245, 244, 242; DNB). Cokaine also served under Hastings’ uncle, the Royalist Lord Loughborough, along with another elegist, the physician, Philip Kinder, who became Lougborough’s agent at Charles’s displaced Oxford court in the 1640s (DNB). Lord Falkland’s father corresponded with and fought alongside Loughborough (Bickley 1930: 90), while Robert Millward was cousin to a Colonel in one of Charles’ Derbyshire regiments, and was himself later imprisoned by Parliament for Royalist activity (Robbins 1938:

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was thus in part the focus of a local military network, who posthumously added him to their ranks by identifying him with the likes of Lucas and Capel. Hastings and his family also had direct connections to at least two of these soldier-heroes. Hastings may have fought on the King’s side at the Siege of Colchester alongside Capel and Lucas and under his uncle and namesake, Henry Hastings, Lord Loughborough—a notorious Cavalier who became Colonel-General of the Royalist forces in the Midlands early in the wars (Gearin-Tosh 1981: 110). Whether Hastings fought or not (and there is little evidence to suggest he did), Lucas and Capel had strong ties to the Hastings family: Lucas was a friend of Loughborough’s, “closely associated” with Loughborough’s Midlands campaigns throughout the wars (Hensman 1923: 130-1); Capel was a correspondent of Loughborough’s who helped him establish garrisons in Staffordhire and Leicester (Bickley 1930: 99-100; Sherwood 1997: 63-4). Perhaps because of these military connections, Tears of the Muses recalls the earlier elegies and their subjects: one of the elegies on Hastings repeats lines from an anonymous elegy to Capel, while another explicitly likens the dead Hastings to “brave Capel” (Brome 1650: 53, 81).20 Indeed, cementing this association between Hastings and victims of the wars, some of the poems turn Hastings into a loyalist martyr: in addition to Capel, Hastings is identified with his uncle, Loughborough; Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, one of Charles’ most influential advisors, executed for treason by Parliament in 1641; and Viscount Falkland, killed

20

LXXX; Nicholas 1861: 19). Edward Standish, a major in the King’s army, was taken prisoner after the fall of the Litchfield garrison, not far from Ashby, and Francis Standish was accused of taking up arms at Lichfield while it was besieged by Parliamentary forces (Newman 1981: 355; Matthews 1988: 245). John Cave was fined by Parliament for being at nearby Leicester, after it had fallen violently to the King’s forces and been put under Loughborough’s governorship (Matthews 1988: 233). Even Mildmay Fane, who pledged loyalty to the Commonwealth in 1643 after being imprisoned by Parliament, had been with the King’s war party at the start of war and organized a muster of Royalist gentry in Northamptonshire (DNB). The 1649 edition contains a “Postscript” with six additional authors listed, many of them young students of Westminster school (77). In the 1650 edition, these names are added to the list of authors heading the book, to make 36 in total (or 37 if Francis Standish, who is listed twice, is counted both times) (A3v). The broadside for Capel ends ‘Where thou art Fix’d a glorious Starre, to gaine / Neerer acesse, and wait on Charlles his Wayne” (Obsequies on That Unexemplar Champion of Chivalrie 1649). The poem to Hastings ends similarly: “Whither, Great Soul, th’art fled, and now dost raign / Above in Majestie, neer Charles his Wain” (Brome 1650: 53). Loxley argues that they are by the same author (1994: 170-2).

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fighting for the Royalists at the battle of Newbury, whose son contributed to Tears of the Muses (1650: 59, 81).21 More important, Hastings’ death is presented as a result of the violence unleashed by the military conflict through the repetition of tropes that structure the elegies for the likes of Lucas, Capel, and their fellow soldiers. The Royalist war elegies for executed military leaders present their deaths as vampiric feasts and demonic parodies of the Eucharist, harping on the blood-thirstiness and blood guilt of Parliament. One elegy for Capel, for example, urges Parliamentary soldiers to “paddle still in blood,” now their “thirstie dropsi’d Blades do range / On the whole stock of man”; another accuses, “Their thirsty Soules” are dry and “doe againe desire / More loyall bloud” (Vaticinium Votivum 1649: 56; A Mournfull Elegy 1649). Similarly, Marchamont Nedham’s poem on Hastings complains that death “swills none, of late, but streams of Noble blood” that drain England “Down to the dregs of Democracie,” while “J.B.” berates: “Was thy Thirst so great, / That onely, Noble Blood must quench [thy] heat?” (Brome 1650: 81, 51). In the elegies for Lucas and Capel, this thirst for blood shades easily into cannibalism, as the civic virtue of Royalists is pitched against the New and Old World man-eating barbarism of Parliament. The broadside An Elegie on the Death of Sir Charls Lucas casts Parliament men as savage strangers or barbaric Others by claiming they are worse than “Cannibals,” while another broadside on Lucas, An Elegie on the Death of that most Noble and Heroic Knight, professes they outdo “strange man-eating Anthropophagi” (1648). In Tears of the Muses, Hastings too is a “Martyr” to a country in danger of becoming coarsely popular or internally foreign, “where all / Must turn eith’r CountryCarl, or Cannibal” (Brome 1650: 34). John Joynes imagines a more extensive and pervasive barbarity at work in the dystopian present, enjoining Hastings to “call home / Civility to barb’rous Christendom” (1650: 29). Hastings’ elegists pitch him as a bastion of the monarchal constitutional order and, in doing so, recast his battle with smallpox as an extension of the bloody conflicts of the civil wars. Projecting the real violence enacted on Royalist soldiers and statesmen onto Hastings’s sick body, Tears of the Muses remakes him in those markers of a bellicose heroism under attack promoted by the earlier war elegies—blood and tears. What is at stake in this remaking is exactly the question that animates the earlier elegies of how to represent the relation between the violence experienced by those involved in the wars and traditional state and national forms. Hastings functions not only as a belated addition to the body of loyalist soldiers but also as a symbol of the lost ideal of the unified bodies of 21

On elegies for Wentworth, see Brady (English Funerary Elegy 2006: 102-107); for Falkland, see Loxley (1997: 87-88).

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monarch and body politic for which they fought, and the lost possibility of a fantasy of patrilineal dynasty that would reunite them. As Michael GearinTosh has argued, the wider, public relevance of the volume is indicated by a decorative leaf after the title-page, which shows the four crowns of England, Ireland, Scotland, and France that traditionally delineated the British monarchy and its political aspirations (1981: 108). In the absence of the executed Charles and his exiled son, this decorative leaf suggests, Hastings himself could become the centering force for the four crowns that make up the British realm. The elegies tease us with this possibility of renewed territorial and ideological coherence, as Hastings comes to stand for the dynastic claims of the person of the monarch through his royal lineage. This is established on the title-page, which declares him “heir-generall of the high born Prince George Duke of Clarence, brother to King Edward the fourth” (1650: title-page). And if this link to the ill-fated Clarence seems too Yorkist, other elegists are quick to present Hastings as a monarchal fusion: he is “A Stuart, Tudor, and Plantagenet” (1650: 64). This dynasty is largely patrilineal as well as being resolutely royal: though some elegies focus on the mourning of Hastings’ mother and wife-to-be, his “Royal blood” is consistently tied to his father and other male relatives: Hastings’ father is “copi’d in so brave a Son” (1650: 83), while Hastings’ line would have created a “Race of Hastings” and revived his “Grand-sires Images” (1650: 46). As in Two Epitaphs on Lucas, this patrilineal dynasty is even imagined generating a new era of heroism: one elegy states that Hastings’ issue would have renewed not only his own “great Race” or family but Royalist identity and masculine heroism in general: “Thou might be stem and Root of such a Race, / As might revive dead Vertue, and restore / To present view what th’Heroes did of yore” (1650: 46, 33). As race denotes a group connected by common descent in this period—whether that group is a family, nation, or species—political identity is imagined here as bodily, biologically reproduced.22 Casting nobles and war heroes as blood relations or a new political species, the elegy inscribes on Hastings a retroactive fantasy of a patrilineal Royalist “Race” that issues from a single, noble father or “Root.” Hastings and his dynasty, then, stand in for the natural body of the monarch and his heirs, and promise to revive and cohere past and future Royalist heroes through an imagined dissemination of royal blood. Unlike Lucas, however, Hastings’ royal blood and the worsening situation of late 1649 mean that he is given an even greater role in 22

For early meanings of the term race as lineage or genealogy in particular, see Hannaford (1996: 147). For a discussion of the development of the more modern idea of race as a marker of physical and cultural difference in this period, see Hall (1995). For a fascinating analysis of the competition and overlap between the two meanings within changing early modern ideas of Jewishness, see Adelman (2003).

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supporting the monarchal cause. For Hastings also comes to symbolize those institutions of government more properly associated with the lost monarchal body politic. He is an emblem, John Joynes argues, of “Church and Academy” and the “now quite ruined House of Peers” (1650: 28-9). He even becomes a blueprint for the union of personal dynasty and public institution that characterized much pre-revolutionary and early civil war political theory: for John Rosse, “Royal blood / Centred in Hastings” (1650: 64) and: […] he was, at these young years, A Synod, Commons, and an House of Peers. His pure, diviner Parts, shew him but lent The World, a Pattern for their Parliament; Where ev’ry Member, like a Loyal Soul, Assists each other, to compleat the Whole. (1650: 67)

For some of the elegists of Tears of the Muses, Hastings—while alive— emblematized the harmony of personal and public that should make up the many-membered mixed body of the ancient constitution of a multi-kingdom monarchy—or the ideal indivisibility of the king’s two bodies, in which royal claims to blood yoke ruler to corporate state. Hastings, then, becomes a symbol of the traditions of political embodiment with their extension of the king’s authority through space and time. At his death, he is offered as a lesson in the language of the two bodies, but a language of course, that, as in the earlier elegies, has been overtaken by the violence of historical events. For if some of the elegies in Tears of the Muses promote patrilineal dynasty as a legitimating trope of noble and royal, others insistently thematize the end of the Hastings line with the death of the only son and heir: Charles Cotton bemoans “His House is bury’d in his Funeral” (1650: 13), while Alexandre Brome says he died “Unwedded” because he was “A Genealogie / Unto himself” (1650: 71). The above emphasis on Hastings at the root of a race of heroes is even couched, as is much of the praise of his royal blood, in the subjunctive: this is what he would have done, had he lived. This harping on the end of the house of Hastings obviously recalls the timing of his death on the eve of his marriage. In the context of the military and political meaning that permeates the collection, however, Hastings’ personal circumstances take on public relevance. Indeed, Hastings’ planned marriage may have aided this public relevance, as it had promised to forge another link between Hastings and his monarch: Hastings’ wife-to-be was Elisabeth Mayerne, whose father, Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne, was physician to a succession of sovereign bodies, including James I and Charles I (Smith

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2003: 13; Gearin-Tosh 1981: 117).23 The politically crucial nature of the marriage and of Hastings’ own family makes him a particularly fit emblem for the end of the monarchal line. Given Parliament’s disinheritance of Prince Charles and establishment of a free Commonwealth, the emphasis on Hastings as a genealogical dead-end suggests a break in dynastic succession and its role in perpetuating the monarchal bodies politic more generally. Though the elegies link Hastings to Charles I, Prince Charles is conspicuous by his absence. If the pre-regicidal Two Epitaphs can still hope for a race of Lucases that might re-unite the king’s two bodies, Tears of the Muses obliquely insists on an unhinging of dynasty from the state, which is also an uncoupling of royal person from the public body that should ideally extend his power, and that of his heirs, across the monarchal realm. Hastings’ elegists render this split between royal person and body politic vivid by gendering it, presenting a clash between the male noble who nostalgically embodies the monarch’s dynastic power and a female realm that rejects him. Perhaps because Hastings’ death signaled the failure or foreclosure of his own, politically crucial marriage, they present this uncoupling of monarch from realm as itself a form of failed or foreclosed marriage. For if, in early Stuart theories, the gender hierarchy of marriage helps yoke the king to his kingdoms, Tears of the Muses inverts this dynamic to produce gender rebellion as initiating a brutal break in this union: drawing on contemporary pamphlet polemic that satirized the opposition to the King as a murderous “Mistress Parliament” or a lusty “Parliament of Ladies,” the elegies show Hastings’ dynasty violently interrupted by a counter, maternal lineage that produces not a Royalist “race” but, according to Nedham at least, a “Race of Stygian Monsters” (1650: 84).24 As past ideals and future possibilities are contrasted to present troubles, then, this contrast is highlighted by a feminization of Britain. England in particular is depicted as a “mad she” or even a monstrous, infanticidal sister of Saturn who violently rejects (or eats) the “noble branch” of the Hastings family (1650: 33). For one elegist, for example, “England” is:

23 24

He was also physician to Henrietta Maria and, later, Cromwell (Smith 2003: 13; Gearin-Tosh 1981: 117). See, for example, Mistris Parliament, her Gossiping (1648) and Hey Hoe for a Husband, or the Parliament of Maides (1647).

Tears of the Muses: 1649 and the Lost Political Bodies of Royalist War Elegy 149 […] Mother of Sins, Stepdame to Vertues, Nurse of Assasins A Soil that fosters Brambles, Shrubs, and Thorns; Slaughters the Lamb, and sets up Beasts with Horns, A Soil that nurses Briars, weeds, and Rape But starves the Olive, Fig-tree, and the Grape; Those Nobler Plants […] (1650: 33)

Mixing maternal, anti-pastoral, and apocalyptic (or religious anti-pastoral) images, this poem contrasts two systems of reproduction: the dynasty of the male noble and the barbarous reproduction of a feminized land that rejects it. This counter-myth still imagines political identities as biologically reproduced but, by identifying this maternal anti-pastoral landscape as “England,” it depicts a personified community that competes with and ultimately supplants the Cavalier hero who should ideally be its most exemplary national product and representative. Given Hastings’ role as, on one level, a stand-in for the King, this split between the body of the male noble and the body of monstrous mother England takes on greater weight: Tears of the Muses foregrounds a clash that severs king and state, king and kingdom, and cuts Royalist heroes loose from the community and land they and their monarchy should defend and define. Other elegies present England not as a bad mother or wife but a mourning widow. For John Benson, Hastings’ “Country’s tears” prove her “Widowed, ere Married” (1650: 53), while Thomas Pestel, junior, bemoaning the exile of the martial Loughborough, suggests that Hastings’ death has made “Widow’d England still more desolate” (1650: 59). These elegies do not treat England as a monstrous Other but instead as a weeping, sympathetic spouse. However, like the poems that present England as a “Mother of Sins,” they still dramatize a breakdown of the idea of the two bodies, both dead and violently redefined by Parliament. In the hands of these 1649 writers, then, the heterosexual hierarchy that should seal the marriage of king and English kingdom signals instead a breach in dynastic lines and corporate union. Hastings—despite his unheroic death from illness—becomes a tragic emblem of violent division, as the elegies dramatize the failure of the idealized royal body, and its male, aristocratic extensions, to unify or represent the monstrous body of a feminized nation. Or to represent this national body only in its failure. For, in some of the poems, Hastings epitomizes both lost utopia and the dystopia that creates that loss, both the peaceful unions of the monarchal past and the violent uprisings of the revolutionary present. In an elegy contributed by the young John Dryden near the end of the book, for example, Hastings’ diseased body is blazoned as a map of political breakdown:

150 Catharine Gray Blisters with pride swell’d; which th’row’s flesh did sprout Like Rose-buds, stuck I’ th’Lily-skin about Each little pimple […] […] rebel-like, with their own Lord at strife, Thus made an insurrection ‘gainst his Life. (1650: 90)

This image of a body besieged by its own grimly Petrarchan flesh may be almost comic, but it is an apt metaphor for a political body at war with itself, and one that threatens to turn Hastings himself into a monstrously embodied female, women being the traditional object of Petrarchan adoration—or, here, poetic indignation. In this elegy, Hastings represents not so much the ordered masculine state nostalgically mourned for or desperately hankered after in the other poems as the very feminized rebellion that—as loyalist pseudo-hero—he is supposed to counter. If the earlier elegies for executed Royalist soldier-heroes keep their bodies relatively intact, displacing wounding onto government or kingdom, gendered disfigurement here returns to mark the body of the male Royalist making him a grotesque illustration of the implosion of the language of Britain’s ideal political embodiment under pressure of civil violence. As a poetic form that attempts to imbue individual death with wider temporal or metaphysical meaning, the elegy is well suited to thinking through the relation between the material costs of war, in terms of lives spent, and the ideological costs, in terms of idealized state and national forms lost. Like the earlier 1649 elegies to executed Royalists, Tears of the Muses deploys the twin poles of identity (Hastings as pock-marked national body) and difference (England as strange or Other mother) to foreground these costs. The collection amply illustrates the breakdown of some of the key corporate language, with its attendant dynastic images, used to think through the relation of royal bodies and royal kingdoms in the pre-war period. This language and its images are shown to fail (the two bodies and the dynasty that links them) or to invert, coming to signal their opposite (the kingdom as wife), as the political fiction of the King’s personal and national bodies collides with the brutal facts of gun and ax. Or rather these facts enable a competing fiction: the creation of a Royalist pseudo-hero whose timely death is recast to expose the hollowness of one of the foundational languages of Royal power. If one of the questions facing Royalists in 1649 was how to represent the relation between those who suffered in war and the lost monarchal realm for which they suffered, the answer, in all of the elegies of 1649, is that the individual bodies of Royalist heroes (or pseudoheroes) gain meaning primarily through making this breakdown legible to readers and writers. Even Hastings, once he is inscribed with the marks of war, can come to signify the fragmenting effects of political violence on the languages of the monarchal bodies politic.

Tears of the Muses: 1649 and the Lost Political Bodies of Royalist War Elegy 151

This emphasis on fragmentation and division is perhaps not surprising: by 1649 the king’s two bodies were severed or dead—at least according to the leaders of the new Commonwealth. But the inability of all the 1649 elegies to reconnect these bodies, even imaginatively, suggests that Royalists, too, were thinking of civil conflict as a dynamic force that restructured the identities of individuals like Hastings, of the state, and even of England and, particularly given the decorative leaf of the four crowns in Tears of the Muses, the wider British Isles. What results from political violence’s restructuring force is hard for the elegists to imagine, however. For, as in the earlier 1649 war elegies, in Tears of the Muses Royalists’ relation to the feminized nation is highly unstable: is Britain a mourning widow of the monarch they can embrace? Or a monstrous Parliamentary mother they must reject? As the split between the two bodies is imagined as a profound gap between the king and his kingdoms, Britain—whatever she/it/they may be—is identified with the very political communities who mark her as a contested territory. Therefore, these poems not only signal an uncoupling of royal person and state, but also a transformation in— perhaps an invention of—national identity. Even for Royalists, this national identity separates from the monarchy and its corporate ideals to become located elsewhere, in images of widowed abandonment, monstrous autonomy, and savage foreignness. The 1649 elegies, then, present Britain in the painful process of being (re)defined by the horizontal political affiliations of groups like the elegists themselves. Unlike the earlier elegies to executed Royalists, however, The Tears of the Muses uses gender to highlight the divisions that drive this process and its far-reaching destructive effects on real bodies and embodied political forms. Mapping political divisions onto gender hierarchy, the collection represents a community of loyal survivors ultimately left dangling over a political and cultural void, suspended between, on the one hand, a dead King and his male stand-ins and, on the other, a feminized nation in the process of a dramatic, inescapable mutation into a not-yet-known.

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Works Cited Adelman, Janet. 2003. ‘Her Father’s Blood: Race, Conversion, and Nation in The Merchant of Venice’ in Representations 81: 4-30. Bickley, Francis. 1930. Historical Manuscripts Commission Report on the Manuscripts of the Late Reginald Rawdon Hastings Esq. Vol. 2. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office. Brady, Andrea. 2006. ‘Dying with Honour: Literary Propaganda and the Second English Civil War’ in The Journal of Military History 70: 9-30. ——. 2006. English Funerary Elegy in the Seventeenth Century: Laws in Mourning. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave. Brink, Jean. 1992. ‘Royalist Correspondent: Lucy Davies Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon’ in American Notes and Queries 5: 61-63. Brome, Richard. 1650. Lachrymae Musarum: The Tears of the Muses. London: n.p. Burns, William E. 1999. ‘The King’s Two Monstrous Bodies: John Bulwar and the English Revolution’ in Platt, Peter G. (ed.) Wonders, Marvels, and Monsters in Early Modern Culture. Newark: University of Delaware Press: 187-202. Carleton, Charles. 1992. Going to the Wars. The Experience of the British Civil Wars, 1638-1651. London and New York: Routledge. Clarke, Susan A. 2005. ‘Royalists Write the Death of Lord Hastings: PostRegicide Funerary Propaganda’ in Parergon 22(2): 113-130. Charles I [John Gauden]. 2006. Eikon Basilike with Selections from Eikonoklastes. (ed. J. Daems and H. F. Nelson). Plymouth, Ontario, and Sydney: Broadview. Creighton, Charles. 1965. A History of Epidemics in Britain. Vol. 1. New York: Barnes and Noble. Cope, Esther. 1992. Handmaid of the Holy Spirit: Dame Eleanor Davies, Never Soe Mad a Ladie. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Covington, Sarah. Wounds, Flesh, and Metaphor in Seventeenth-Century England. New York: Palgrave, 2009. De Groot, Jerome. 2004. Royalist Identities. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave. Donagan, Barbara. 1994. ‘Atrocity, War Crime, and Treason in the English Civil War’ in The American Historical Review 99(4): 1137-1166. An Elegie on the Death of Sir Charls Lucas and Sir George Lisle. 1648. [London]: n.p. An Elegie on the Death of That Most Noble and Heroick Knight. 1648. [London]: n.p. An Elogie and Epitaph. 1649. [London?]: n.p.

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An Elegie on the Most Barbarous, Unparallel’d, Unsoldierly Murder. 1648. [London]: n.p. Eucharistica Oxoniensia. 1641. Oxford : n.p. Gardiner, Samuel Rawson. 1906. Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625-1660. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gearin-Tosh, Michael. 1981. ‘Marvell’s ‘Upon the Death of the Lord Hastings’’ in Essays and Studies (New Ser.) 34: 105-22. Goldberg, Jonathan. 1986. ‘Fatherly Authority: The Politics of Stuart Family Images’ in Ferguson, Margaret, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers, (eds) Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press: 3-32. Hale, David George. 1971. The Body Politic: A Political Metaphor in Renaissance English Literature. The Hague and Paris: Mouton. Hall, Kim. 1995. Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Hammond, Paul. 1991. ‘The King’s two bodies: representations of Charles II.’ in Black, Jeremy and Jeremy Gregory (eds) Culture, Politics and Society in Britain, 1660-1800. Manchester: Manchester University Press: 13-48. Hannaford, Ivan. 1996. Race: The History of an Idea in the West. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Centre Press. Hensman, E.W. 1923. ‘The East Midlands and the Second Civil War, May to July, 1648’ in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (4th Ser.) 6: 126-159. Hey Hoe for a Husband, or the Parliament of Maides. 1647. London: n.p. Hutson, Lorna, ed. Representations “Special Forum: Fifty Years of The King’s Two Bodies” 106.1 (2009). Kantorowicz, Ernst H. 1997. The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kay, Dennis. 1990. Melodious Tears: The English Funeral Elegy from Spenser to Milton. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kenyon, J..P. (ed.). 1986. The Stuart Constitution, 1603-1688: Documents and Commentary. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Larkin, James F. (ed.). 1983. Stuart Royal Proclamations. Vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Loxley, James. 1994. ‘Marvell, Villiers, and Royalist Verse’ in Notes and Queries 239: 170-2. ——. 1997. Royalism and Poetry in the English Civil Wars: The Drawn Sword. New York: St. Martin's. Matthews, A.G. 1988. Walker Revised: Being a Revision of John Walker’s Suffering of the Clergy . . . 1642-60. Oxford: Clarendon Press. McWilliams, John. 2003. ‘A Storm of Lamentations Writ’: Lachrymae Musarum and Royalist Culture after the Civil War’ in The Yearbook of English Studies 33: 273-289.

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Mistris Parliament, her Gossiping. 1648. London: n.p. Monumentum Regale. 1649. [London.]: n.p. A Mournfull Elegy. 1649. [London]: n.p. Nicholas, Harris. 1861. ‘Life of Walton’ in Jesse, Edward (ed.) The Complete Angler. London: Henry G. Bohn: 1-24. Nenner, Howard. 1995. The Right to be King: The Succession to the Crown of England, 1603-1714. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Newman, P.R. 1981. Royalist Officers in England and Wales: A Biographical Dictionary. New York and London: Garland Publishing. Obsequies on That Unexemplar Champion of Chivalrie. 1649. [London]: n.p. Orr, D. Alan. 2002. Treason and the State: Law, Politics and Ideology in the English Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Potter, Lois. 1989. Secret Rites and Secret Writing: Royalist Literature, 1641-1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Purkiss, Diane. 2005. Literature, Gender, and Politics During the English Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Quarles, John. 1649. Regale Lectum Miseriae. [London]. n.p. Robbins, Caroline (ed.). 1938. The Diary of John Milward, Esq.: Member of Parliament for Derbyshire, September, 1666 to May, 1668. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schoenfeldt, Michael. 2003. ‘Reading Bodies’ in Sharpe, Kevin and Steven Zwicker (eds) Reading, Society, and Politics in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 215-43. Sherwood, Roy. 1997. The Civil War in the Midlands, 1642-1651. Gloucester: Alan Sutton. Smith, Nigel. 1994. Literature and Revolution in England, 1640-1660. New Haven: Yale UP. ——. (ed.). 2003. The Poems of Andrew Marvell. London and New York: Longman. Stevenson, Jane and Peter Davidson (ed.). 2001. Early Modern Women Poets: An Anthology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Two Elegeis: The One on His late Majestie, the Other on Arthur Lord Capel. 1649. [London]. n.p. Two Epitaphs Occasioned by the Death of Sr Charles Lucas, and Sr George Lisle. 1648. [London].n.p. Vaticinium Votivum or, Palaemon´s Prophetick Prayer. 1649. [London]. n.p. Vanhoutte, Jacqueline. 2003. Strange Communion: Motherland and Masculinity in Tudor Plays, Pamphlets, and Politics. Newark: University of Delaware. Wilcher, Robert. 2001. The Writing of Royalism, 1628-1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brian Sandberg Calm Possessor of his Wife, but Not of her Château: Gendered Religious Violence in the French Wars of Religion1 Gender conceptions and sexual categories shaped the social strife and cultural understandings of the French Wars of Religion of 1562-1629. This paper considers the dynamic gendering of religious conflicts in early modern France through an analysis of marriage alliances between Catholics and Calvinists. Mixed-confessional marriages such as that of noblewoman Paule de Chambaud seem to have provoked sex-specific physical violence and destabilized gender relations in southern French society. Although mixedconfessional marriages are often cited as evidence of confessional coexistence, this case indicates that such marriages could agitate sexualized religious politics and instigate gendered confessional violence during the religious wars.

Paule de Chambaud, a Protestant widow in Languedoc, prepared to remarry a Catholic nobleman in 1620, upsetting the delicate local balance between Calvinists and Catholics. The marriage plans stirred confessional politics and noble rivalries within this southern French region, exposing relationships between gender and violence in the period of the religious wars. A Catholic account of the ensuing conflict declared that Calvinist opposition to the match produced: the most bloody conclusion about which Europe will hear talk for all time; in their book, this marriage, however legitimate, cannot be so, since they have an interest there, and if force cannot prevent it, the following events and the charivaris will be so great and so bloody that all France will resound with its noise. (Charbonnel 1991: 7)2

The incredible hyperbole of this description suggests the deep significance of this mixed-confessional marriage for the inhabitants of southern France in the early seventeenth century. Gender conceptions and sexual categories shaped the social strife and cultural understandings of the French Wars of Religion of 1562-1629. Natalie Zemon Davis’ pioneering work on “religious riots” and disorderly women in sixteenth-century France provides the basis for investigations of 1

2

Research for this article was made possible by the generous funding of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the support of the Medici Archive Project. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Translations from French to English are my own.

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such gendered violence (Davis 1975a-d). More recent work by Kristen Neuschel, Sharon Kettering, and Annette Finley-Croswhite has shown that French noblewomen and urban women were clearly involved in religious warfare (Finley-Croswhite 1997: 127-154; Kettering 1997: 55-85; Neuschel 1996: 124-144). But no attempt at a comprehensive examination of the intersections of gender and violence in the religious wars has been made. In this essay, I explore the dynamic gendering of religious conflicts in France through gendered arguments for violence and gendered language in representations of violence. The main sources for this analysis will be contemporary printed pamphlets, published memoirs, and manuscript archival documents, which offer a window into the brutal pain and coercion inflicted during the religious wars by French people promoting religiouspolitical causes. Mixed-confessional marriages such as that of Paule de Chambaud seem to have provoked sex-specific physical violence and destabilized gender relations in southern French society. Sexualized religious politics and gendered religious violence infused the religious conflicts that disrupted France in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

“The Wedding Vows [...] Cast the First Seeds of All these Misfortunes” Widow Paule de Chambaud, a Calvinist noblewoman in southern France, entered into negotiations to re-marry sometime in 1619. Paule was the daughter of Jacques de Chambaud, a prominent Huguenot military commander in Languedoc in the late sixteenth century. Her recently deceased husband, René de La Tour-Gouvernet, had also been a Huguenot military leader until his death two years earlier. Despite these strong previous Protestant affiliations, Paule de Chambaud now chose seriously to consider marrying a staunch Catholic nobleman, Claude de Hautefort, vicomte de Cheylane. News of the widow’s marriage negotiations shocked and alarmed her neighbors. Paule de Chambaud lived in the small town of Privas in the Vivarais region of the province of Languedoc. Almost all of the inhabitants of the community were Protestants and the municipal government of Privas had been dominated by Huguenots since the 1560s. Paule de Chambaud’s apparent defection from Calvinist practice and her proposed intermarriage with a Catholic were bitterly disappointing to Privas Huguenots. Even more serious were the religious-political implications of her proposed marriage, however. Her deceased husband had been governor of the town and château of Privas, and this key military office would now presumably pass to her new husband if she re-married. The presumptive groom was not an

Calm Possessor of his Wife, but Not of her Château 157

ordinary Catholic—Claude de Hautefort was a prominent Catholic nobleman and the eldest son of a former Catholic League leader from the nearby Catholic town of Le Puy-en-Velay, an important center for Jesuits and Counter-Reformation missionaries. The horrified Calvinist residents of Privas protested against the proposed marriage and organized against this unacceptable transfer of the political control of their community to their confessional enemies. The town of Privas also held added religious and political significance for Protestants beyond its walls, since it was one of the Huguenot places de sûreté that had been guaranteed as a protected Calvinist center by the Edict of Nantes of 1598. The whole region of Vivarais gradually slid into civil warfare, which would eventually engulf all of southern France for most of the next decade (Sandberg 2010). One contemporary observer wrote that “the talk of marriage of the vicomte de l’Estrange [Claude de Hautefort] with the widow [Paule] de Chambaud, noblewoman of Privas, cast the first seeds of all these misfortunes” (Du Cros 1643: 22).

The “Guerre des amoureux” Attributing the religious warfare that consumed so many lives during the 1620s to one marriage seems a bit of an exaggeration, despite some accounts labeling the conflict a guerre des amoureux, or ‘war of the lovers’ (Denis and Foray 1994: 12-14). The complexities of the 1619-1621 mouvement de Privas, as the initial conflict was known at the time, reveal both the dynamics of confessional politics and gendered violence during this particular phase of the broader religious wars that devastated France from 1562 to 1629 (Richer 1621: 26-27; Sandberg 2010). The marriage did not occur immediately, and there were various efforts to resolve the impending crisis in Privas. Paule de Chambaud’s cousin, Joachim de Beauvoir du Roure, seigneur de Brison, widower of her sister and a prominent Calvinist in the region, proposed marriage. Brison had apparently been acting as an agent for Paule de Chambaud during the previous year, making at least one official appearance representing her as baronne de Privas by proxy.3 Paule refused Brison’s marriage proposal, however, forging ahead with her plans to marry Claude de Hautefort instead. One Catholic source indicates that the king approved of the proposed marriage, “believing that it would serve him well to put a Catholic lord in a town where the Holy Mass had not been said for sixty years” (Du

3

Archives Départementales [hereafter, AD] de Hérault, C 7053, fÜ 7.

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Cros 1643: 22).4 Claude de Hautefort reported to secrétaire d’état Paul Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain that he understood that the “king’s service coincides with the conclusion of my marriage.”5 Hautefort managed to slip into the château de Privas in late December 1619 to meet his bride. However, his rival Brison and the Huguenots of Privas immediately blockaded Hautefort in the château, and both sides called for military reinforcements (Mours 2001: 161-162). A Catholic source blames the seigneur de Brison for “starting the fire,” indicating that he had brought Protestant soldiers from surrounding towns and assembled 700-800 nobles in only forty-eight hours. In addition to Brison’s troops in Privas, “the whole town was in arms” (Charbonnel 1991: 7). Negotiations involving the mediation of Paule de Chambaud’s brotherin-law led to a temporary settlement of the crisis in which Hautefort agreed to leave Privas. Religious tensions remained high, however, as regional Protestants and Catholics accused each other of committing acts of violence. Calvinist soldiers reportedly crossed some of the Hautefort seigneurial lands, “where they did a great amount of damage.”6 Catholic troops sent by Claude de Hautefort’s father to aid his son soon clashed with some of Brison’s Huguenots and 35-40 of the Protestants were killed. Toward the end of January 1620, a judge and administrative official from Montpellier made new attempts at mediation in Privas, but they could not halt the escalation of provocations.7 On 20 March, Claude de Hautefort entered the château de Privas with a small group of twenty-five nobles, and married Paule de Chambaud a few days later (Mours 2001: 161-162; Denis and Foray 1994: 12-14). A Catholic account recorded that:

4

5 6 7

A July 1619 letter confirms that at the very least one of the Hauteforts—presumably Claude’s father, René de Hautefort—was in contact with secrétaire d’état Pontchartrain at this point. René [?] de Hautefort to Paul Phélypeaux, Seigneur of Pontchartrain, Boulogne, 31 July 1619, Bibliothèque Nationale de France [hereafter, BNF], Clairambault 375, fÜ 268-269. Claude de Hautefort, vicomte de Lestrange to Paul Phélypeaux, seigneur de Pontchartrain, Privas, 5 May 1620, BNF, Clairambault 377, fÜ 171-172. M. Masnau to Paul Phélypeaux seigneur de Pontchartrain, Aubenas, 9 January 1620, BNF, Clairambault 377, fÜ 117-119. For one report of the ongoing negotiations concerning Privas, see: Degeant to Paul Phélypeaux seigneur de Pontchartrain, Lyon, 13 January 1620, BNF, Clairambault 377, fÜ 121-123.

Calm Possessor of his Wife, but Not of her Château 159 the vicomte, comfortable with power in this occasion to demonstrate doubly his worthiness and to merit the title of good subject and courageous lover at the same time, pursued his plan with such luck that the marriage was consummated....There he was thus the calm possessor of his wife, but not of her château in Privas: the inhabitants were disputing it. (Du Cros 1643: 22-23)

Claude de Hautefort’s aggressive claim to sexual possession of his bride and political control of the town provoked an immediate reaction by his rival. The seigneur de Brison rushed to surround the château de Privas with a small Protestant army of 1500 men. According to a Catholic source, “Brison, stung by jealousy both over the authority that he was losing in the town and over other secret considerations threw himself into Privas with his friends, fanned the animosity of the people, summoned the most factional people in the area, and barricaded the château” (Du Cros 1643: 22-23). Brison’s siege of the château prompted diverse responses within the region. René de Hautefort de Lestrange mobilized troops to relieve his son, his new daughter-in-law, and their tiny besieged force. Calvinist representatives from across southern France met at Nîmes in an attempt to calm the situation and avert a full-scale civil war. Meanwhile, the powerful governor of the province of Languedoc, Henri II, duc de Montmorency had raised an army of 7000 infantry, 300 cavalry, and six cannons and was already headed for Vivarais. The duc de Montmorency issued a stern ordonnance in mid April calling for residents of Vivarais “to cut to pieces all those who, without His Majesty’s orders or my own, go about assisting the insolences of the residents of Privas.”8 Montmorency’s army arrived at Privas on 30 April 1620, and quickly forced a settlement, leaving a garrison of 50 Catholic soldiers in the château de Privas. The Catholic garrison in the château seems to have created new tensions within the community of Privas. Local Calvinists accused the garrison of committing “a thousand violent acts” (Mours 2001: 163; Denis and Foray 1994: 12-14). A Protestant assembly at nearby Uzès objected to the presence of the garrison on legal grounds, claiming that the garrison violated the terms of the Edict of Nantes.9 The consuls of Privas, heads of the municipal government, had already requested that the King “return the tower and walls of the town to us as that has always been” (quoted in Denis and Foray 1994: 12-14). The consuls’ complaints can be seen as typical actions of municipal leaders defending their community’s civic privileges. The wellestablished concept of the liberties of bonnes villes, or walled cities, remained 8 9

Ordonnance de Henri II de Montmorency, duc de Montmorency, Beaucaire, 17 April 1620, AD Ardèche, C 1049, fÜ 25. Archives Nationales, TT 273, Dossier 3, fÜ 6.

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prevalent in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, yet civic privileges clashed with religious politics throughout the French Wars of Religion (Wolfe 2000: 317-348; Chevalier). The semi-official publication entitled Mercure françois reported that: “the residents of Privas who were of the said religion [Calvinism] could not accept that the vicomte de Cheylane, their seigneur, was made captain and [that] Catholic soldiers [were placed] in the château and in the Tour du Lac.” The Calvinist inhabitants of Privas, according to this early French gazette, made “several complaints” to the Calvinist general synod and to the Protestant city governor at Montpellier, who supposedly “encouraged them to seek the means to deliver themselves,” promising aid (Richer 1621: 27-28). The consuls reportedly presented their grievances to the duc de Ventadour, the lieutenant general in Languedoc and senior royal official in the Vivarais region, but his investigation found that their complaints were “false rumors” intended to foment “rebellion” (Richer 1621: 28). The regional assembly of Protestants took an oath to support Privas, then in December 1620 a kingdom-wide Protestant assembly at La Rochelle sent deputies to Louis XIII with a whole list of grievances concerning abuses of Protestants and violations of the Edict of Nantes, including specific complaints about the situation in Privas (Denis and Foray 1994: 12-14). In late January 1621, the seigneur de Brison and the Calvinist residents of Privas again attacked the château de Privas, besieging the Catholic garrison. The isolated garrison commander, Saint-Palais, capitulated and marched his garrison out of the château. Huguenot townspeople then dismantled the château stone by stone. Brison began new urban fortifications to protect the Protestant community from an expected Catholic retaliation (Denis and Foray 1994: 12-14). The widening local conflict would involve Privas deeply in religious warfare for the next eight years. This fascinating case provides an excellent opportunity to reconsider the relationships between gender, marriage, honor, and violence during the final phases of the French Wars of Religion.

Mixed-Confessional Marriage in Southern France While the guerre des amoureux of 1619-1621 was a sensational affair, the marriage of Paule de Chambaud and Claude de Hautefort was not entirely exceptional. Ample evidence demonstrates that confessional intermarriage did occur in France during the religious wars, especially within the ‘Huguenot crescent’ where Calvinists and Catholics lived in close proximity to each other. The confessional nature of much of the historiography concerning religion in early modern Europe has arguably obscured

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confessional intermarriage and the possibilities of confessional coexistence until recently. New studies of confessionalization, religious identities, and kinship have emphasized interactions across confessional boundaries. Gregory Hanlon argues that “mixed marriages constitute the most telling evidence of interconfessional cooperation and association” (Hanlon 1993: 102-103). Keith Luria also offers a fairly positive view of cross-confessional intermarriage, but points out that “mixed marriages might illustrate the permeability of the confessional boundary, but they did not always create peaceful co-existence” (Luria 2005: 147-148). The bi-confessional city of Montpellier provides an intriguing case for examining mixed-confessional marriages, since the urban population was fairly evenly divided between Catholics and Calvinists in the late sixteenth century. Philip Benedict’s demographic study of the decline of the Huguenot community in Montpellier during the seventeenth century demonstrates that although this strongly Protestant community had maintained a significant Catholic minority throughout most of the religious wars, Montpellier’s Catholic population grew in the 1620s and Calvinists became a confessional minority (Benedict 2001). Benedict finds evidence of mixed-confessional marriages during the religious wars, but argues that gradually “this fluidity disappeared, as militant voices within the Catholic church gained the backing of the courts and the crown in imposing use of the phrase ‘so-called Reformed religion’” (Benedict 2002b: 54-55). Thus, Benedict suggests that Montpellier’s Protestant community declined largely as a result of Calvinist conversions to Catholicism and of Catholic immigration into the city. Marriages across confessional boundaries were always problematic, but mixed marriages among the nobility presented serious legal problems. Many royal military and administrative offices in early modern France were venal and effectively hereditary. Sarah Hanley demonstrates that “as major investors in many kinds of expensive office holding ventures, characterized by 1610 as ‘office mania,’ families sought parental control of marital unions to consolidate assets, extend networks, direct inheritance, and manage social reproduction” (Hanley 2003: 3). But, inheritance of an office depended on royal approval, and Protestants were increasingly denied permission to take up offices upon inheriting them. An interesting passage in the description of the mouvement de Privas in the Mercure françois points precisely to the legal dispute over noble privileges and inheritance: It is a great dispute to decide between the high seigneurs, ducs, comtes, and barons and the people of the said religion, which one can see in the preceding books between the town of Sancerre and their comte, and for those of Clermont-de-Lodève: these are particular facts. For the seigneurs claim that they do not prevent the exercise of the said religion in their towns and lands,

162 Brian Sandberg following the edicts. But touching on their ancient and immemorial right, which consists in the guard and conservation of their seigneuries, which only belong to them as high seigneurs, and cannot be allocated to their vassals. And to the contrary, those of the said religion say that they must have the guard of the said places, which has been given to them for their conservation, whereas having rendered themselves masters, by the troubles, where having conserved their seigneurs who were of their religion, from whom they have always had possession since the edicts. (Richer 1621: 27)

Cross-confessional marriages thus provoked serious legal arguments over seignorial rights and inheritance across France. Political crises erupted when seigneurial legal privileges clashed with provisions of the Edict of Nantes during disputes over the control of communities with a significant Calvinist population. During the French Wars of Religion, members of both confessions were struggling to establish confessional control over population centers and urban spaces. Calvinists were especially concerned to maintain their consistories’ disciplinary control over urban spaces in an attempt to establish or maintain a ‘Godly Community.’ The social disciplining activities of consistories were particularly concerned with Calvinist women (Benedict 2002a: 480-482). Catholics insisted on the necessity of conducting processions and performing communal ritual activities. Thus, Catholic communities—like their Calvinist counterparts in Privas—resisted changes in their town governors’ confessional identity through conversion, intermarriage, inheritance, or venal sale. The sacrality of urban space was at stake, after all. Marriages across confessional boundaries entailed the conversion of one or the other partner, since weddings were always presided over by a clergyman and conducted within his confession’s church. Paule de Chambaud presumably converted to Catholicism, since her marriage created such an uproar among local Protestants. If so, Paule’s pre-wedding conversion would have been representative of other mixed marriages in that women became marriage converts more often than men did (Luria 2005: 162-163). Barbara Diefendorf’s recent work on Catholic reform in Paris provides some clues as to Paule de Chambaud’s possible motives in converting to Catholicism. Diefendorf reveals women’s close involvement in Catholic renewal and religious foundations in the early seventeenth century (Diefendorf 2004). There is considerable evidence of the strength of Counter-Reformation missionary activities in southern France from the late 1590s to the 1630s, and many Protestant nobles converted to Catholicism during this period. The conversion of François de Bonne, duc de Lesdiguières from Calvinism to Catholicism in 1622 was well publicized. Yet, he continued to associate with some Calvinists and he acted as a

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mediator with Protestants negotiating during religious conflicts. Lesdiguières handled negotiations with Calvinists in Privas and other towns in Vivarais for a peace settlement in 1626.10 Much of the focus of gender history over the past decade has been focused on analyzing embodiment and fragmented bodies (Schulte 2006; Canning 1999). It is tantalizing to imagine fragmented souls alongside them but, unfortunately, no comprehensive examination of conversions has yet been done for the early seventeenth century.

Marriage Alliances and Conflict during the French Wars of Religion Early modern marriage alliances were meticulously detailed contractual affairs that often involved extensive and lengthy negotiations between the bride’s and groom’s families. James R. Farr suggests that “during the early modern period, authority and sexuality were defined in a moral order constituted by intersecting and reciprocally supportive ideologies of authoritarian politics, hierarchical social relations, reformed religion, and the law” (Farr 1995: 90). Historians have often examined “marriage strategies” as rational collective choices made by family units (or patriarchs) primarily through a calculation of potential gains in wealth and social status. The concept of “marriage strategies” then would represent a particular type of “family strategies” enacted by households to protect and advance their interests (Fontaine and Schlumbohm 2000; Hurwich 1998; Molho 1994; Bourdieu 1972). Members of both confessions championed patriarchal and institutional controls over marriage alliances during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (Delumeau and Roche 1990). In noble families, the ideals of patriarchal control of marriage extended beyond the immediate household to distant family relations and clients. So, it is not surprising to find that one of the captains in Claude de Hautefort’s regiment in 1628 was a certain seigneur de Chambaud, presumably one of his wife’s relatives.11 Catholic and Calvinist religious authorities attempted to define legitimate marriages and to restrict irregular partnerships through marriage contracts and notarial registration. Protestantism’s rejection of celibacy created a distinct notion of the sanctity of marriage among French Calvinists (Davis 1975a). While parents exerted extensive control over the choices of marriage partners, such control was not strictly patriarchal. Noblewomen certainly played important roles as marriage brokers, despite established notions of 10 11

AD Ardèche, B 71, fÜ 231v-232v. AD Hérault, B 22766.

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patriarchal domination over the household. During the religious wars, marriage alliances seem to have been negotiated in conjunction with complex religious agendas. Preferences for co-confessional partners have been documented and numerous cases of endogamous same-confession marriage patterns can be demonstrated for both Catholic and Calvinist noble families. Marriage alliances seem to have frequently been negotiated between families with similar religious politics as well as shared confessional identities. Other families opted to marry into families of the opposing confession, perhaps in hopes of influencing the mixed couple’s children. Perhaps such mixed marriages reflect a distinct marriage strategy maintaining preReformation marriage patterns despite subsequent confessional splits. Many families became confessionally mixed during the Reformation and religious wars, so any consideration of the construction of confessional marriage must consider the participants in marriage contracts and the possibilities of family orchestration of marriage strategies. Mixed marriages raised crucial questions concerning children’s religious practices, education, and confessional identification. Further, religious identities remained in flux throughout the religious wars, making clear determinations of confessional affiliations often problematic. All of these issues were especially acute in the southern French regions of Languedoc and Guyenne, the most significant regions of mixed confession populations in France. Southern French families were often divided by religion during the French Wars of Religion with different branches adhering to opposing confessions. Mixed-confessional extended families were not uncommon in southern France. The growing influence of the Counter-Reformation movement in southern France in the 1590s and early 1600s contributed to tensions over conversions and mixed marriages. James R. Farr argues that: From the wreckage of the late sixteenth century, France’s increasingly powerful and dominant elite embarked upon a systematic and extensive attempt to reorder its world. An authoritarian ethic emerged with the ‘new’ order, an order whose defining and interrelated characteristics were discipline of the passions (especially concupiscent), the reinforcement of social hierarchy, and the maintenance of patriarchy. This new order was voiced in the prescriptive moralistic literature of the age and was adopted by many men, especially in the increasingly powerful and wealthy legal community. (Farr 1995: 13)

Farr’s interpretation of powerful new patriarchal authority in early seventeenth-century France may be overly sweeping, but Catholic revival movements and conversion missions do seem to have shifted notions of family for both Catholics and Calvinists in southern France.

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Historians have long appreciated the role of marriage in forging peace agreements, but have been less willing to explore how marriage alliances at times promoted discord and conflict. Ed Muir, however, provocatively argues that “although marriages have traditionally been seen as a means of building group cohesion and especially as the way to finalize a peace among feuding families, such gatherings also brought out the potential for the feud to reemerge from the peace” (Muir 1998: 45). Even carefully crafted marriage contracts could be disputed during the early modern period. Jeffrey R. Watt shows how frequently problems arose with marriage contracts in seventeenth-century Neuchâtel, where “contract disputes represented the most common form of marital litigation heard before the consistories” (Watt 1988: 135). Similar disputes produced tensions within France during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Many dynastic mixed-confessional marriages and prospective alliances provoked controversies and even religious conflicts during the French Wars of Religion. The marriage of Henri de Navarre and Marguerite de Valois in 1572 had been brokered by Catherine de Médicis as part of a religious peace agreement. While the marriage ceremony was successfully staged in Paris, the wedding festivities brought many Calvinists to the predominantly Catholic capital, whose residents resented the seeming invasion of ‘unclean’ heretics polluting their city. A failed assassination attempt on Protestant leader Gaspard de Coligny and rumors of a Protestant coup d’état fueled tensions that erupted in the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Often overlooked in the horrifying bloodshed of the massacre was this mixed marriage’s role in producing outrage and opposition in contemporary religious politics. Successive marriages only further eroded patriarchal control, as widows often remarried multiple times during the chaos of the French Wars of Religion (Dupâquier et al 1981). James B. Wood’s research on the casualties among noble cavalry during religious wars suggests how warfare may have affected noble populations and remarriage (Wood 1996: 116-126). For example, Diane de Péruse d’Escars, the widow of Charles, comte de Maure remarried to Paul Stuer de Caussade, Baron of Saint-Mégrin in 1576. Following her second husband’s death, Diane remarried again to Paul’s brother, Louis de Peyrusse d’Escars, in 1579 (Le Roux 2000: 746). Diane’s third marriage to her second husband’s brother probably represented a fairly normal attempt to maintain the family’s inheritance. Remarriage could also reinforce broader familial and clientele relationships. Anna d’Este, widow of François de Lorraine, duc de Guise, married Jacques de Savoie, duc de Nemours in a union that strengthened existing religious and political connections within Guise clientele relations. These close ties would later help solidify Catholic League religious politics in the 1580s, as the duchesse

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de Nemours emerged as a key leader of the Parisian Catholic militancy (Richards 2003: 165-167). Clandestine marriage represented a particular threat to parental and patriarchal authority. The popular story of Romeo and Juliet highlights contemporary associations of clandestine marriage with disorder and violence precisely during the period of the French Wars of Religion. Sarah Hanley shows how Matteo Bandello’s—and later William Shakespeare’s— story of Romeo and Juliet impacted legal writing in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Hanley 2003: 18-19). The “invented marriage” of Bertrande de Rols and the “new” Martin Guerre reveals the social tensions surrounding marriages whose legitimacy was challenged (Davis 1983). Late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century Catholic reformers were concerned with implementing Tridentine reforms that attempted to deal with the problem of clandestine marriage (Sperling 2004: 67-108). The annulment of Henri de Navarre’s and Marguerite de Valois’s marriage in 1599 presented a powerful example of the dissolution of ‘improper’ mixed marriages. The crisis over the clandestine—though not mixed—marriage of the duc d’Orléans in 1626 reveals how tenuous patriarchal control over marriage was during this period. Abductions and forced marriages remained serious social issues, especially since the distinctions between elopement and coercion were difficult to establish. The story of Helen of Troy’s abduction provided a literary model for marriage alliance as a cause of warfare. Stuart Carroll analyzes rapt as a matrimonial strategy that could produce violence among French nobles (Carroll 2006: 241-243). Hanley argues that Gilles Le Maistre’s influence on rapt jurisprudence in the Parlement of Paris was significant (Hanley 2003: 5-12). Some women claimed that they had ‘eloped’ with men, who had then refused to marry them. Family members of women who ‘eloped’ could challenge the legitimacy of their marriages, arguing that the women had been ‘abducted.’ Either way, such ‘elopements’ and ‘abductions’ harmed women’s honor and often prompted retaliatory violence (Dean 1997: 3-36).

Gendered Honor, Family Status, and Civil Violence Natalie Zemon Davis’ studies of French society during the religious wars rightly focus attention on female honor and its role in marriage (Davis 1983). Discussions of honor conceptions during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries would have informed how the participants in the guerre des amoureux of 1619-1620 understood the marriage dispute and ensuing conflict. Michel de Montaigne, like so many of his contemporaries,

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associates women’s honor with marital obligations and duties, suggesting that “the touchstone of a good marriage, the real test, concerns the time that the association lasts, and whether it has been constant—sweet, loyal and pleasant” (Montaigne 1987: 842-849). Only limited sources are available to consider Paule de Chambaud’s honor specifically. Her honor does seem to have been at issue when Claude de Hautefort and Paule de Chambaud were involved in litigation seeking damages from Brison and others in the mid-1620s.12 Even after Brison had been assassinated, the couple was still seeking damages from Brison’s family and the inhabitants of Privas for the demolition of their château “which had been sacked, pillaged, and entirely emptied by their felony,” a 1630 document shows.13 Claude de Hautefort’s honor can be examined more directly. Claude discussed concerns about his honor in 1620. Claude indicated to the royal secrétaire d’état: I would never have embarked on so perilous affair without assisting myself with necessary means to subsist, for I am constrained to [pay] extraordinary expenses for the conservation of my life and my honor, which would have caused my total ruin if it were not for the assistance of His Majesty.14

Claude negotiated during autumn 1620 to assume the office of governor of the town of Le Puy-en-Velay, which his father had previously held.15 Thereafter, Claude could refer to himself as “Nous Claude dAutefort visconte de Lestrange & Privas gouverneur pour le roy de la ville du Puy,” having assumed new offices from his wife’s former husband and from his father.16 Claude de Hautefort’s and Paule de Chambaud’s actions can be interpreted through contemporary honor concepts that were highly gendered. Challenges to a married woman’s honor seriously threatened her family’s status in noble society. Stuart Carroll demonstrates how married women figured in precedence competitions between noble families, especially in parish churches (Carroll 2006: 234-253). Noblewomen’s entire households and entourages were implicated in daily assessments of women’s honor, as comparisons with Brandenburg noblewomen show (Nolte 2000: 704-721). Noblemen often retaliated against those who attacked or 12 13 14 15 16

AD Ardèche, E Depot 75 FF 1, fÜ ff 4. AD Ardèche, E Depot 75 FF 1, fÜ ff 35. Claude de Hautefort vicomte de Lestrange to Paul Phélypeaux seigneur de Pontchartrain, Privas, 5 May 1620, BNF, Clairambault 377, fÜ 171-172. Anne de Lévis duc de Ventadour to Paul Phélypeaux seigneur de Pontchartrain, La Voulte, 22 November 1620, BNF, Clairambault 377, fÜ 351-354. Ordonnance de Claude de Hautefort vicomte de Lestrange, Boulogne, 1 October 1628, AD Ardèche, C 1053, fÜ 27.

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challenged their personal or family honor. Seignorial justice promoted noble punishment of real and perceived crimes of murder, blasphemy, rape, and domestic violence. In the guerre des amoureux, upholding honor thus involved a widening violence of noble clienteles and entourages who participated in the punishment of offenders. Concerns over family status and honor shaped women’s and men’s participation in violence throughout the French Wars of Religion. Married couples often coordinated family approaches to religious politics during episodes of civil conflict. So, it is hardly surprisingly to read that the duc de Montmorency, who intervened to support the couple at Privas in 1619, relied on his wife’s assistance to fund his troops’ mobilization during at least one of the civil wars of the 1620s: “Monseigneur had made the last advance to his troops from the perfumed écus [gold coins] of Madame” (Charbonnel 1991: 168-170). Married couples seem to have routinely organized religious violence and funded warfare during the French Wars of Religion, providing one more concern over the potential of mixed marriages to produce conflict.

Conclusion This exploration of mixed-confessional marriages is part of a broader research project on gender and violence in the French Wars of Religion. In the book, I examine women’s agency and power through examinations of gendered status, honor, religiosity, and violence. Archival source limitations dictate a focus on noblewomen and urban elite women, although analyses of besieged women and gendered atrocities allow for some discussion of women among the urban poor and peasants (Sandberg 2004). This project’s findings should contribute to the growing historical literature on women and gender in the religious wars of early modern Europe. Issues of gender and power have emerged as key aspects of historical studies of early modern ruling women and regency governments (Schulte 2006; Crawford 2004; Cosandey 2000). Gendered forms of religiosity and lay activity can be seen in both Calvinist and Catholic women’s approaches to piety and the reformation movements (Diefendorf 2004; Rapley 1994: 613-631; Davis 1974a). Examinations of gender and agency reveal the possibilities available to noblewomen and urban women during severe social conflicts in the early modern period, such as the guerre des amoureux (Richards: 159-170). Claude de Hautefort finally took possession of his town of Privas in 1629 after it had been reduced to cinders in the aftermath of a siege. The triumphant Catholic troops seized Huguenot properties and transferred them to Catholic soldiers and commanders, especially Hautefort, in

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compensation for their military service in the religious wars of the 1620s.17 The once predominantly Calvinist community of Privas was gradually replaced by a Catholic-dominated population as the town was gradually rebuilt. The mixed marriage of Paule de Chambaud and Claude de Hautefort thus ultimately led to the Catholic reconquest of Privas and its lasting transformation.

17

AD Hérault, B 36, fÜ 252; AD Ardèche, E Depot 75 FF 1, fÜ ff 34.

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Works Cited Benedict, Philip. 2002a. Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism. New Haven: Yale University Press. ——. 2002b. ‘Confessionalization in France? Critical Reflections and New Evidence’ in Mentzer, Raymond A. and Andrew Spicer (eds) Society and Culture in the Huguenot World, 1559-1685. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 44-61. ——. 2001. ‘Faith, Fortune and Social Structure in Seventeenth-Century Montpellier’ in The Faith and Fortunes of France’s Huguenots, 1600-85. Aldershot: Ashgate: 121-149. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1972. ‘Les stratégies matrimoniales dans le système de reproduction’ in Annales ESC 27: 1105-1127. Canning, Kathleen. 1999. ‘The Body as Method? Reflections on the Place of the Body in Gender History’ in Gender and History 11 (November): 499513. Carroll, Stuart. 2006. Blood and Violence in Early Modern France. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Charbonnel, Louis de [?]. 1991. Les Commentaires du soldat du Vivarais. Ou se voit l’origine de la rébellion de la France et toutes les guerres que, durant icelle, le pays du Vivarais a souffertes, divisés en trois livres, selon le temps que lesdites guerres sont arrivées. Suivis du Voyage du duc de Rohan en Vivarais, l’en 1628; de la Relation de la révolte de Roure en 1670; Et d’une Anecdote extraite du journal manuscrit de J. de Banne, chanoine de Viviers. Valence: La Bouquinerie. Chevalier, Bernard. 1982. Les bonnes villes de France du XIVe au XVIe siècles. Paris: Aubier. Cosandey, Fanny. 2000. La Reine de France. Symbole et pouvoir. Paris: Éditions Gallimard. Crawford, Katherine. 2004. Perilous Performances: Gender and Regency in Early Modern France. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Davis, Natalie Zemon. 1975a. ‘City Women and Religious Change’ in Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Stanford: Stanford University Press: 65-79. ——. 1975b. ‘The Reasons of Misrule’ in Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Stanford: Stanford University Press: 97-123. ——. 1983. The Return of Martin Guerre. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ——. 1975c. ‘The Rites of Violence’ in Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Stanford: Stanford University Press: 152-187. ——. 1975d. ‘Women on Top’ in Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Stanford: Stanford University Press: 124-151.

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Dean, Trevor. 1997. ‘Marriage and Mutilation: Vendetta in Late Medieval Italy’ in Past and Present 157 (November 1997): 3-36. Delumeau, Jean and Daniel Roche (eds). 1990. Histoire des pères et de la paternité. Paris: Larousse. Denis, Lucien and Simone Foray. 1994. Le siege de Privas en 1629. Privas: Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie de Privas. Diefendorf, Barbara B. 2004. From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Du Cros, Simon. 1643. Histoire de la vie de Henry dernier duc de Montmorency. Contenant tout ce qu’il a fait de plus remarquable depuis sa naissance jusques à sa mort. Paris: Antoine Sommaville & Augustin Courbé. Dupâquier, Jacques, Etienne Hélin, Peter Laslett, Massimo Livi-Bacci, and Sølvi Sogner (eds). 1981. Marriage and Remarriage in Populations of the Past. London: Academic Press. Farr, James R. 1995. Authority and Sexuality in Early Modern Burgundy (15501730). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Finley-Croswhite, S. Annette. 1997. ‘Engendering the Wars of Religion: Female Agency during the Catholic League in Dijon’ in French Historical Studies 20 (Spring): 127-154. Fontaine, Laurence, and Jürgen Schlumbohm (eds). 2000. Household Strategies for Survival, 1600-2000: Fission, Faction and Cooperation (International Review of Social History Supplement 8). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hanley, Sarah. 2003. ‘‘The Jurisprudence of the Arrêts’: Maritial Union, Civil Society, and State Formation in France, 1550-1650’ in Law and History Review 21 (Spring): 1-40. Hanlon, Gregory. 1993. Confession and Community in Seventeenth-Century France: Catholic and Protestant Coexistence in Aquitaine. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press. Hurwich, Judith J. 1998. ‘Marriage Strategy among the German Nobility, 1400-1699’ in Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29 (Autumn): 169-195. Kettering, Sharon. 1997. ‘The Household Service of Early Modern French Noblewomen’ in French Historical Studies 20 (Winter): 55-85. Le Roux, Nicolas. 2000. La faveur du roi. Mignons et courtisans au temps des derniers Valois (vers 1547 -vers 1589). Seyssel: Champ Vallon. Luria, Keith P. 2005. Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in EarlyModern France. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press. Molho, Anthony. 1994. Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Montaigne, Michel de. 1987. ‘On Three Good Wives,’ in The Complete Essays (trans. M.A. Screech). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books: 842-849.

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Mours, Samuel. 2001. Le protestantisme en Vivarais et en Velay. Montpellier: Les Presses du Languedoc and Patrimoine Huguenot d’Ardèche. Muir, Edward. 1998. Mad Blood Stirring: Vendetta in Renaissance Italy (Reader's edition). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Neuschel, Kristen B. 1996. ‘Noblewomen and War in Sixteenth-Century France’ in Wolfe, Michael (ed.) Changing Identities in Early Modern France. Durham: Duke University Press: 124-144. Nolte, Cordula. 2000. ‘Gendering Princely Dynasties: Some Notes on Family Structure, Social Networks, and Communication at the Courts of the Margraves of Brandenburg-Ansbach around 1500’ in Gender and History 12 (November): 704-721. Rapley, Elizabeth. 1994. ‘Women and the Religious Vocation in Seventeenth-Century France’ in French Historical Studies 18 (Spring): 613631. Richards, Penny. 2003. ‘The Guise Women: Politics, War and Peace’ in Munns, Jessica and Penny Richards (eds) Gender, Power and Privilege in Early Modern Europe. London: Pearson Longman: 159-170. Richer, Estienne (ed.). 1621. Mercure François, ou suitte de l’histoire de nostre temps, sous le regne du Tres-Chrestien Roy de France & de Navarre, Louys XIII, vol. 6. Paris: Estienne Richer. Sandberg, Brian. 2004. ‘Generous Amazons Came to the Breach’: Besieged Women in the French Wars of Religion’ in Gender and History 16 (November): 654-688. ——. 2010. Warrior Pursuits: Noble Culture and Civil Conflict in Early Modern France. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Schulte, Regina (ed.). 2006. The Body of the Queen: Gender and Rule in the Courtly World. New York: Berghan Books. Sperling, Jutta. 2004. ‘Marriage at the Time of the Council of Trent (156070): Clandestine Marriages in European Comparison’ in Journal of Early Modern History 8 (May): 67-108. Watt, Jeffrey R. 1988. ‘Marriage Contract Disputes in Early Modern Neuchâtel, 1547-1806’ in Journal of Social History 22 (Autumn): 129-147. Wolfe, Michael. 2000. ‘Walled Towns during the French Wars of Religion (1560-1630)’ in Tracy, James D. (ed.) City Walls: The Urban Enceinte in Global Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 317-348. Wood, James B. 1996. The King’s Army: Warfare, Soldiers, and Society during the Wars of Religion in France, 1562-1576. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lori Humphrey Newcomb The Law Against Lovers: Dramatizing Civil Union in Restoration England To recover the centrality of gender institutions in seventeenth-century England’s emergent discourse of civil society, I suggest that William Davenant’s The Law Against Lovers (1662), a Restoration adaptation of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure that seems politically anodyne, becomes clearly topical once marriage is recognized as its driving concern. Davenant’s “Law” against lovers takes in the entire history of Commonwealth marriage legislation that, between 1641 and 1653, attempted to replace the Anglican marriage ceremony with a civil ceremony. By staging the failure of state control over matrimony, the play imagines marriage as a civil association nonetheless still tied, by public preference, to the Anglican rite. For readers today, the play offers a reminder—as modern states attempt to redefine the political conditions of lifelong partnership—that the institutions of gender are always under construction, for better and for worse.

I. The twenty-first century movement toward recognition of same-sex couples has focused new attention on marriage and other state-sanctioned partnerships as foundational to civil societies, a claim first advanced by feminist political theorists. At present, most historical accounts of civil society’s emergence in early modern Europe can still sidestep marriage, as though it were a strictly private institution.1 In 2004, historian Mary S. Hartman pointed out that the history of gender institutions remains to be “reintegrated into the history of civil society” and its conditions of emergence (Hartman 2004: 267). Although this gap is now closing, it can still be felt in histories of the English Interregnum, which show English women dramatically expanding their political, religious, literary, and military roles during this period of unprecedented upheaval while overlooking the simultaneous changes in marriage law. From 1642 to 1660, as government, church, press, and stage were disassembled by revolution and then reconstructed upon the Restoration, so, too, was marriage. The reimagining of marriage was essential, not incidental, to these swings of the national pendulum. To recover the centrality of gender institutions in seventeenth-century England’s emergent discourse of civil society, I suggest here that one of the 1

Important exceptions include Achinstein 2010, Ng 2007, Pateman 1988, Peterson 2004, and Shanley 1979.

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most baffling texts of the early Restoration stage, a play that seems politically anodyne, becomes clearly topical once marriage is recognized as its driving concern. The play is Sir William Davenant’s The Law Against Lovers, the first adaptation of Shakespearean drama to be performed after the Restoration of Charles II, in 1662. (It was first published in 1673, in Davenant’s posthumously collected works.) Professional drama had been fugitive since 1642, and was restored alongside the monarch, with just two theaters under his close control. The appropriate—at first, the only— repertoire for these restored theaters was the old plays that had been favorites before the overturning of the monarchy. Surprisingly, these plays were not performed unaltered, as though obliterating the lapse of time; instead they were rewritten to address, indirectly but compulsively, the recent disruptions. The Law Against Lovers, like other revivals of the early 1660s, embellishes pre-war plots with topical allusions to the recently defeated revolution. However, The Law Against Lovers has struck critics as an especially incoherent adaptation, dulling issues that were pointed in its models, and offering little to stabilize its fragile political moment.2 Indeed, nineteenth-century critic Charles Knight called The Law Against Lovers “a hash of two plays” (quoted in Kilbourne 1973: 51). Katherine West Scheil more tactfully explains how Davenant combined characters from two Shakespeare comedies: The Law Against Lovers is an “amalgamation [that] unites Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing with Angelo and Isabella from Measure for Measure, resulting in a bizarre and fascinating combination” (2003: 28). Both plays were on the skimpy list of fourteen Shakespearean plays that Charles II gave Davenant the right to perform (meanwhile his rival Thomas Killigrew had rights to 109 plays). Because John Fletcher’s comedies were preferred to Shakespeare’s, Measure for Measure and Much Ado About Nothing were of little value on their own. Instead, Davenant hybridized the two, adding innovations that later would become his signatures, including a love-and-honor theme, rhyming couplets, song and dance, and moving scenery. However, even Davenant’s biographer called this early amalgamation “ill-advised” (Edmond 1987: 172). Critics have been baffled by Davenant’s interweaving of the two comedies’ plots, other than to notice that the selected elements might resonate with recent events: a not-so-merry war (between men and women) from Much Ado; a harsh change of politico-moral regime after the exit of the Duke from Measure for Measure.

2

For representative readings, see Auberlen 2003, Dugas 2006, Gellert 1979 and 1986, Gewirtz 1982, Hook 1953, Marsden 1995, Murray 2001, Sorelius 1966, and Spencer 1963.

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Michael Dobson, the most influential scholar of these early Shakespeare adaptations, therefore diagnoses The Law Against Lovers as a Restoration working through of political trauma: Davenant, having survived to see his king restored, rewrites the English Civil War as a rambling tragicomedy, a “poetic dream” (1992: 34), in which no real threat to monarchy ever exists. While the Duke of Vienna in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure is an ambivalent figure whose absence creates more problems than he can resolve, the Duke of Savoy in The Law Against Lovers restores his authority effortlessly. By this reading, the play seems “perhaps the most disingenuously harmless of all the early Restoration theater’s dramatizations of the official perspective on the preceding twenty years” (Dobson 1992: 36). For Dobson and others, this sunny resolution of romantic conflicts bears no comparison to the searing expose of sexual hypocrisy in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. Even the hybrid’s title has been read as trivializing, reducing the civil war to a drawing-room battle between legalistic Roundheads on one side and dashing Cavalier lovers on the other. On the contrary, I argue, The Law Against Lovers in fact forcefully re-imagines the recent war, making the state’s meddling with gender institutions a primary cause of social rupture. The general usefulness of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (ca. 1604) for a royalist rewriting of the Interregnum is clear. The substitute Angelo, described as “precise,” fills in for the absent Duke of Vienna by imposing rigid punishments for sexual misdeeds on a permissive society, especially the young lovers Claudio and Julietta. Angelo’s attempt to seduce Claudio’s sister Isabella threatens the chastity of a novitiate; only the return of the Duke exposes Angelo’s hypocrisies and restores a degree of tolerance. (Problematically for modern audiences, the Duke has been masterminding the whole business in disguise.) However, once The Law Against Lovers mixes in Benedick and Beatrice from Much Ado, the ethical dilemmas of Measure for Measure are submerged in romantic shenanigans. The characters are integrated neatly enough: Beatrice is Angelo’s ward, and Julietta’s cousin; Benedick is Angelo’s brother, a libertine to his Puritan. However, Davenant departs from both his source plays in Act 5, when Benedick lays a toy-box siege to Angelo’s palace, hoping to “rescue Claudio from the Law” (Davenant 1673: line 2369). The siege is quite unnecessary, since the mild Angelo had been “Just now sending to declare Claudio’s Pardon,/ And . . . Juliet’s Liberty” (2372-3). Benedick gives up his attack when he learns that Claudio and Julietta’s lives were never at risk. Angelo tells him that “our offences to each other will/ Admit excuse, since the authority of mighty love/ Did sway us both” (2772-4). As Dobson notes, if the play was intended to bring Shakespearean problems of moral authority to bear on the memory of war, that purpose is

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blunted when everyone proves to have been well-intentioned throughout. He thus dismisses the play as “a Fletcherian variation on the plot of Measure for Measure which obviously parallels the history of the Commonwealth but which painstakingly defuses its every detail” (1992: 34-36). Admittedly, these parallels are handled very lightly. Davenant’s Angelo as ‘substitute’ is clearly Oliver Cromwell, but he propositions Isabella only in order to test her before revealing his love. He, not the Duke, claims Isabella’s hand at the end of The Law Against Lovers. As for the Duke, he returns in Act 5 blithely to explain, “I did my self a while depose” (2863), articulating a favorite Restoration fantasy of monarchic continuity. He then chooses to retire, leaving the governance of Turin to Angelo and Isabella, now married, promising that any trauma will be forgotten: “The story of this day,/ When 'tis to future Ages told, will seem/ A moral drawn from a poetick Dream” (2909-11). Given these apparent absurdities, The Law Against Lovers is easily dismissed as a slight allegory of the war projected unconvincingly into romantic comedy. It has not been recognized as a meaningful document of change—of revolution and restoration—in the institutions of gender.3 Yet its title signals a central interest in the regulation of gender: not, it turns out, the regulation of sexual desire that drives Measure for Measure, but the regulation of married love by the state.4 Historian Peter Lake has argued that Measure for Measure is Stuart drama’s most substantial reflection on Stuart attempts at a reformation of manners, proleptically staging “what would happen if power were to be entrusted to the godly” (2002: 622, 626). Similarly, The Law Against Lovers imagines, from the position of resurgent royalism, what happened while power, especially over marriage, was indeed entrusted to the godly party. Davenant’s play shows how, in 1662, royalists remembered the extent and efficacy of Commonwealth legal and moral reform, and looked toward an emerging Carolean social contract. This topical treatment of marriage, at the very opening of the restored theaters, asserts that gender matters: marriage under threat creates social crisis, while the due regulation of ‘love’ and its civil institutions proves the proper concern of a society restored to order. 3

4

The only previous critic to note the “new title” assumes that it reflects the period’s newly lax “moral attitude.” Davenant’s play takes Angelo’s law to stand “against lovers in general,” while Shakespeare had understood Angelo as standing only “against illicit lovers” (Kilbourne 1973: 50). However, critics have long noted that gender matters in many cultural phenomena underlying the production:the interest in women’s experience in Shakespearean drama, the introduction of professional actresses by Davenant, and the emerging reputation of Restoration culture as “peculiarly gender conscious” (Doody 1998: 58; Tomlinson 2005).

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The critics who insist that The Law Against Lovers suffers in comparison with Measure for Measure often note that Davenant never acknowledged this play’s debt to Shakespeare, despite emphasizing that tie in all his other Shakespearean adaptations. Davenant’s downplaying of his Shakespearean sources hardly means that he intended to plagiarize, a concern only beginning to emerge in this period (Kewes 2001). Scheil avers that Davenant “intended The Law Against Lovers to be received as a new play,” and notes that five diarists who saw the play in February 1662 did not connect it to Shakespeare (2003: 30). She is certainly correct that in 1662, especially for Davenant’s newly-licensed Duke of York’s Theater, the desperate need for material “outweighed any presumptions about improving Shakespeare’s plays or using Shakespeare as a selling point” (Scheil 2003: 37). However, we cannot generalize from fleeting diary entries that “theatre audiences would not have recognized the two source plays from Shakespeare” (Scheil 2003: 32). Shakespeare’s reputation had grown during the Interregnum, at least in the armchair experience of Royalists. Davenant claimed a pseudo-filial affection for Shakespeare, and the writings of aristocrats in exile, from Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen, to William and Margaret Cavendish, the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, evince deep reading in the First Folio, including the comedies (Baker 1953; Romack and Fitzmaurice 2006). Certainly this 1662 manuscript doggerel on London’s current stage offerings winked at Davenant’s use of older plays in The Law Against Lovers: Then came the Knight agen with his Lawe Against Lovers the worst that ever you sawe In dressing of which he playnely did shew it Hee was a far better Cooke then a Poet And only he the Art of it had Of two good Playes to make one bad (quoted in Hotson 1928: 247)

Here is one theatergoer who easily recognized Davenant’s ingredients as “good” pre-war plays, and implies that others did too. Davenant’s presentation of the play as his own rather than a pre-war revival may flag the topicality of the plot. Whether or not audience members recognized the tie to Shakespeare, the new title invited them to read the social and political order of The Law Against Lovers’s Turin in light of England’s recent past. So, too, did many textual details, such as the play’s reference to Angelo’s governance as a Commonwealth. The Law Against Lovers turns Shakespeare’s Jacobean comedy of sexual hypocrisy into a Carolean tragicomedy of marital disruption. In doing so, it reveals that gender institutions had been shaken deeply by the English revolution, and remained uncertain at the Restoration. The play’s title does not trivialize

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recent history, but focuses attention on its revision: an excessive regulation of gender, unambiguously associated with the Commonwealth’s programs of moral reform, sets “the Law” against “Lovers” with violent, indeed destructive, effects on society. To reverse that moral reformation, the play calls for the state to recognize marriage, on the terms preferred by its citizens, as essential to the health of the nation. While the play closes with the king commanding a series of marriages, the earlier action of the play defends marriage as negotiated by the social self-regulation of subjects, rather than by any governing institution. Marriages, in Davenant’s play, prove to be civil contracts, albeit made possible by a benign monarchy. One possible corollary, that such civil unions are regulated by women as much as by men and hence that women do have a (limited) place in civil society, is left submerged; English drama soon would embrace that issue (Staves 1979). Certainly women, as characters and for the first time as professional actors, are essential to the miniature civil society onstage: the play gives us both Isabella and Beatrice, expands the role of Julietta, and inserts a dancing Viola (the name, if not the dancing, drawn from Twelfth Night). Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure attempted to reconcile private morality to sexual desire while returning state and church powers to the status quo, which is to say, to men. As I show, Davenant’s rewriting allows both men and women characters to suggest frankly that church and state control of marriage is flawed, and that men and women individually determine the validity of marital contracts. Understood in this way, the play imagines marriage at the vanguard of an emergent British contractualism (admittedly, the crass conduct of marriage over the rest of the seventeenth century fell short of this ideal). Yet although the play acknowledges marriage as contractual, it ties this idealized contract to the marriage ceremony that had been de-centralized under Parliamentary rule. For audiences today, it offers a reminder—as modern states attempt to redefine the political conditions of lifelong partnership—that the institutions of gender are always under construction, looking both backward and forward, and that national and domestic contracts constitute one another, for better and for worse.

II. Davenant’s dialogue first uses the phrase “law against lovers” in reference to Isabella’s brother Claudio and his pregnant Julietta (the equivalent of Juliet in Measure for Measure). In both plays, this regrettably fertile couple occupies the heart of the plot. In Davenant, the “law” that threatens them is usually identified as the Commonwealth’s draconian 1650 act against adultery and other sexual transgressions, because it is specified that Claudio is sentenced

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to death and Julietta to “publick penance” (2065). All previous critical analysis of Davenant’s play has assumed that this topical reference sufficiently explains the title. Barbara Murray, for example, comments only that “the law against lovers, the Act of Parliament in 1650 making adultery a felony punishable with death, was not invoked after the Restoration,” so that the play can simply explore “ethical responses to such a lapsed Puritan law” (2001: 43). However, my fuller analysis of the play’s legislation of love and its bonds shows that the play’s unifying problematic is not this law alone, but broader questions about state regulation of gender institutions. The play’s action begins with Angelo having “reviv'd an old Law,/ Which condemns any man to death, who gets,/ Being unmarry'd, a Woman with Child” (183-5). Thus, in Davenant’s Turin as in Shakespeare’s Vienna, fornication is a capital crime, a harsh stance underlined by making the lovers fornicators only by the strictest legal interpretation. Indeed, the law imagined by Shakespeare is harsher than the Rump Parliament’s Adultery Act of 10 May 1650, in which the adultery of a married woman and her partner were felonies, but the philandering of “any man” single or married with a singlewoman merely fornication, subject only to three months’ imprisonment for each (‘Act’ 1650). However, details in Davenant seem to recall the 1650 Act. For instance, while Shakespeare’s criminals face decapitation, Davenant’s play, after an initial reference to beheading, imagines death by hanging, the method of punishment for common felonies. Over the course of Davenant’s play, the idea of a law against love is extended from the literal referent, a harsh punishment for premarital sex, to a broader regime of legal control that discourages marriage itself. Davenant’s “Law” against lovers becomes not just the Adultery Act, as previous critics have assumed, but the Interregnum’s entire history of marriage legislation, in all its inefficiency and unpopularity. The Interregnum legislation being pilloried expands beyond the 1650 Act for suppressing the detestable sins of Incest, Adultery, and Fornication (which was, after all, little enforced) to address the much more widely protested actions of various Parliaments and the Westminster Assembly that, between 1641 and 1653, gradually replaced the Anglican marriage ceremony with a civil ceremony. Davenant’s commitment to this topic is not subtle: the word ‘law,’ appearing 36 times in Shakespeare’s play, appears some 53 times in Davenant’s shorter adaptation. The title Law Against Lovers at its furthest extent could charge Parliament and the Protector with enacting a systematic repression of sexuality, but this play’s critique is not systematic, and neither was that legislation. Rather, the shift of marriage regulation from ministers to magistrates was recognized even at its time as ineffectual. Davenant does not parody the revolution by making this administrative farce its center; he draws on the history that

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made social practices such as marriage hotspots of resistance to the Parliamentary regime. Even after church marriages were declared ineffectual in 1653, a steady stream of surreptitious church marriages took place, whether as a supplement to the state-mandated “registry” or as an (illegal) alternative (McLaren 1974; Thomas 1978). Some of the couples who refused to bypass a church marriage may have been compelled by superstition, practical worries about the efficacy of the new system, or fear of the civic authorities (Osborne 1987: 116). Others, however, were resisting, more or less deliberately, the new political and religious order. The two plays thus reflect on two contrasting crises in the regulation of marriage in their respective historical moments.5 The divergence is clear from Claudio’s first scene in each play, when he explains his situation to his fantastic friend Lucio. In Measure for Measure, Claudio reports that he got “possession of Julietta’s bed” on the basis of a “true contract,” although they “lack” the public “denunciation . . . of outward order” (Shakespeare 1991: 1.2.143-7). As many Shakespeare scholars have noted, this gap reflects a crisis, peaking in the 1590s, about couples exploiting contradictions in English marriage law to marry without parental permission. Medieval England had seen the development of a dual system in which troth-plight was valid under common law even if marriage at church door had not been conducted. The contradictions in English matrimonial practice sharpened after the Reformation: Thomas Cranmer’s 1549 Prayer Book declared marriage no sacrament, but an essential church ceremony; yet common law still considered the verbal contracts called spousals to be sufficient. Having desacralized marriage, the English church moved to find other means of control. Tudor prayer books moved marriage ceremonies spatially from the church porch to the nave, emphasized the value of priestly blessing, and charged the so-called ‘bawdy’ courts with handling disputed bonds (Gillis 1985). Still, for all that the Church frowned on spousals without officiating priests, these ceremonies were upheld by legal theorists throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as late as Henry Swinburne’s Treatise of Spousals, published in 1686 (although written before Swinburne’s death in 1623). Further confusion arose from the two variants of spousals. One variant was the mutual plighting of troth with present-tense verbs – I do take thee— known as a de praesenti vow. In 1632, the Lawes Resolution of Woemen’s Rights confirmed that matrimony contracted in the present time was valid in “the civil and common law” requiring no “curious forme” of words, no fee, and 5

This account of changes in England’s legislation of marriage draws on Carlson 1994, Durston 1989, Gillis 1985, Ingram 1987, 1996, and 2000, MacCulloch 2003, Powell 1917, Sokol and Sokol 2003, Turner 2002, and Witte 1991.

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no further blessing before consummation (1979: 51, 53). The other variant was mutual troth plighted in the future tense—I will take thee-- a de futuro vow. This vow could yield a legally binding marriage if consummated, although such cases were often contentious. Controversially, under common law neither type of spousal required witnesses, although most couples sought them as a safeguard. The Church tended to treat verbal contracts as clandestine, and promised public support to those married in a church service. The Church must have chafed at the authority of witnesses, as when one sixteenth-century weaver witnessed a spousal saying “now I have done asmoche as ther goostly father could doo, and I take recorde of theis wor[d]s of you that stands bye” (quoted in Gillis 1985: 45). In fact, spousals were seldom secret, only private, in the early modern sense referring to a voluntary assemblage of family and/ or friends (Longfellow 2006). In the case of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, the “true contract” may be interpreted as either de praesenti or as de futuro; what gives offense is its secrecy. Shakespeare seems to imagine, through his fictional Vienna, an England where spousals suddenly have been discounted, as though theocracy had displaced couples’ ancient freedom to be wed in private circles. Fifty-eight years later, The Law Against Lovers evokes another, even sharper, upheaval in the status of marriage: the shift of marriage from church to state control, a process begun in 1641 and fully in place from 1653, when church weddings were declared invalid. While this process of secularization is easily dismissed as yet another misguided attempt at moral reformation by the so-called Puritans, the godly did indeed have grounds for arguing that English matrimonial practices lacked Biblical sanction. As we have seen, the Church of England’s close control of marriage was an innovation dating from the break with Rome (and mirroring the formal sacralization of marriage by the Council of Trent in 1547). Although no sacraments, weddings were a source of income and power for the Anglican church. And even the Elizabethan prayer book retained elements deemed sacrilegious by the godly, including an exchange of rings and the groom’s promise to “worship” the bride with his body. The solution laid out by the Westminster Assembly in 1653 was to move the wedding ceremony back out of the church and into a new public space. The form of marriage was still set out by the state, but it was merely a “covenant” sworn before the local Justice of the Peace, then recorded by a new secular authority, a locallyappointed ‘register’ whose sole function was to write marriages in a new non-church record. This civic administration of marriage was so unpopular that it was reversed six months after Charles II took the throne. The Law Against Lovers first invokes the Commonwealth attempt to redefine marriage by making quiet adjustments to Shakespeare’s lines about

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the bond of Claudio and Julietta. The “vows” held invalid by Angelo are now described as “sacred vows,” not secret but “seal’d with ….Witnesses” (273). Davenant has provided his pair with exactly the church sacrament and public testimony that Shakespeare’s couple lacked. What, then, is their lapse before the law of Turin? The omission is described first as a “ceremony” and then through the rest of the play as “forms”: they are “Marry’d … in sight of Heaven, though not/ With such apparent forms as makes the Law/ Approve” (414-6). The outspoken Beatrice repeatedly asserts that the couple is being punished “for neglect of form” rather than “the substantial part,” “such Vows/ As will stand firm in heaven.” Form is opposed to substance, law opposed to conscience, since their “spiritual marriage stands good in conscience, though ‘tis bad in Law” (586-601). It appears, then, that Claudio and Julietta have elected the outlawed church ceremony rather than the new civil ceremony, as many couples in the 1650s were prosecuted for doing. Indeed, Beatrice’s words are remarkably similar to the comment that Dorothy Osborne made in August 1653, when she heard of the new act: “they say noe other Marriage shall stand good in Law. In conscience I believe the olde [form] is the better” (1987: 116). In Davenant’s play, again exceeding the realities of the 1650s, the lovers are punished not for the omitted civil ceremony, but for the church marriage itself, as though the marriage ceremony itself constitutes fornication. Through this exaggerated response to the lovers’ technical misstep, Davenant gradually articulates Angelo’s newly enforced “law” as being opposed not only to irregular and secret “lovers,” as it was in Shakespeare, but to church marriage, and to love itself. If the Commonwealth state’s position was that private ceremonies must be replaced with public registration, the play implies that church marriage thereby becomes itself a capital crime, the crime of enacting privately what is properly the business only of the public state. Diarmaid MacCulloch has pointed out that the English Reformation Church moved marriage ceremonies into the churches to supersede private spousals (2003: 651). Davenant reverses that history, redefining church ceremonies as private, in contradistinction to the public civil ceremonies. For Claudio, Julietta, and their friends, a civil contract is a merely public “form”; irregular vows are “private” and therefore truer. Davenant’s titular charge against Commonwealth sexual regulation is widened by other changes from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure that have seemed formally and ideologically puzzling, such as the introduction of the anti-wooing Benedick and Beatrice, and the further plot twist of Benedick’s siege on Angelo’s palace. By doubling Claudio and Juliet with the marital refuseniks Benedick and Beatrice, Davenant underscores the endangered state of marriage in Turin. Early in the play, Benedick jokingly forms a “confed’racy against marriage” (1531-2). Initially, this rejection of marriage

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is claimed as a principle of liberty, defending the “Common-Wealth of “Mankind” (170) against social strictures. However, once Benedick learns that Claudio and Julietta have literally lost their “liberty,” his position on marriage changes. He worries that between his having “professed against the bonds/ Of Marriage” and Angelo’s “restraining the liberty of lovers” by imprisoning Claudio and Julietta, the Duke will return to “find no Children left/ In Turin” (191-5). Unless the condition of marriage is loosened from Angelo’s strictures, the dukedom will prove unable to perpetuate itself. Davenant thus rewrites Benedick’s mock-rueful “the world must be peopled” in Much Ado About Nothing as a concern of the individual state. Meanwhile, Beatrice repeatedly avers that the state’s failure to recognize sacred vows is morally faulty; she, Isabella, and Julietta form an axis of opposition to a secularization of marriage enforced by the state. Even before the merry war between Beatrice and Benedick turns to wooing, Beatrice convinces Benedick to form a coalition “Loves party” (2316). Its common cause is to defend lovers like Claudio against Angelo’s “law against lovers”; Benedick’s libertinism and Beatrice’s idealism find common intellectual ground in a commitment to private vows rather than public travesties of loveless marriage. Benedick’s growing worry that Angelo’s rule comprises the end of the world, for without lovers or marriage all procreation will cease, figures the Restoration as a recovery of society from self-annihilation. As Shakespeare’s Benedick concedes the “world must be peopled,” Davenant’s Benedick comes to realize that the “CommonWealth” of “Mankind,” or at least of Turin, must be allowed to marry if Turin is to survive. Scheil proposes that entrepreneurial thrift led Davenant to include a siege in his climax: he could then reuse the sets from The Siege of Rhodes, the operatic “entertainment” he had debuted in the last months before the playhouses reopened. But it is still necessary to ask how Davenant fitted this set piece into the plot, and how Benedick’s attack on the ducal palace could be made to figure the Revolution yet usher in the Restoration. Benedick’s siege imagines the Civil War as a conflict over the state regulation of love. Since Benedick loses the siege, but wins the liberty of Claudio and Julietta and the relaxing of Angelo’s rule, the Restoration is figured as a victory of both monarchy and Love’s party. As Beatrice observes, Benedick is “no Rebel” to love or monarch (2777). The coalition of Beatrice and Benedick thus asserts that the civil institutions including church marriage are necessary supports for the state, “civil associations” as described by Davenant’s friend Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common Wealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civil (1651). As Isabella acutely remarks in Act IV, “’tis an uncivil Law will not allow” Julietta the status of

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marriage (1744-5). Earlier Beatrice had emphasized that Juliet’s vows were sacred, but by Act IV they constitute a civil association as well.

III. The Anglican prayer-book wedding ceremony drew much criticism from fervent Protestants for “corruptions” such as the wedding ring (Carlson 1994: 47). Indeed, nonconformists often gave themselves away by altering the marriage ceremony: omitting to use a wedding ring, or the phrase about the groom worshipping the bride with his body. The status of the church ceremony was first reduced by the Westminster Assembly in the 1645 Directory for Public Worship, which substituted for the marriage service a short “solemnization” in which the couple tersely “promise and convenant” to marry. Sharon Achinstein has traced the wide-ranging debate leading to this section of the Directory, the last drafted by the Assembly. She notes that Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, spoke up to the subcommittee on behalf of church weddings: “Beg to take care of the manner of doing of it; it is of great consequence. I would be sorry if any child of mine should be marryed but by a minister” (quoted in Achinstein 2010: 250). The Directory opens its pages on “the Solemnization of Marriage” by nervously commenting that “marriage be no sacrament, nor peculiar to the church of God, but common to mankind” and therefore a civil matter, “of public interest in every commonwealth.” Nonetheless its conduct by a “lawful minister of the word” is “expedient” to furnish the couple instruction and prayer. Its status is shifted slightly from private toward public in that onlookers, described in the Anglican prayer book as “friends,” are in the Directory called a “congregation” whose “presence” at a marriage is now more necessary than God’s. Ominously, the Directory concludes in italics, the couple is to be pronounced man and wife “without any further ceremony” (Westminster 1650: s.p.). It became clear to the authorities that this legislation was not sufficient to displace the familiar ritual, and in fact fed a certain tendency of parishes to cling to the old prayer book. At the other extreme, plenty of sectarians “married by a simple declaration before their congregations. Such ceremonies amounted to public spousals and rendered the resulting marriages canonically acceptable and . . . legally binding” (Durston 1988: 49). Such irregular and unrecorded marriages were making chaos of property transfer. Furthermore, with the dissolution of the ‘bawdy’ (church) courts in 1646, the Commonwealth had no jurisdiction over illicit sexual activity (Achinstein 2010: 251). With all of these institutions protecting property transfer undermined, the Commonwealth found itself in a moral and

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financial panic. Stronger legislation was called for, but slow to emerge from committee. The Rump Parliament addressed the most obvious sexual irregularities in the 1650 Adultery Act, properly “An Act for the suppressing of the detestable sins of Incest, Adultery, and Fornication.” Finally, in 1653, the Barebones Parliament managed to enact “An act touching Marriages and the Registring thereof.” Marriage was decisively declared a civil ceremony, to be performed by a Justice of the Peace (JP) after an elaborate “certification” by a specially appointed “register,” who specially “published” the couple’s intention and inscribed them in a specially-purchased “book of good vellum.” These records bypass the involvement of the parish priest, and supersede the imperfect memories of witnesses to spousals. Most notoriously, the act said that “no other marriage whatsoever after 29th September…shall be held or accounted a marriage according to the laws of England” (Durston 1988: 48). The shoulder note was blunter: “no other Marriage shall be good.” With this clause, suddenly church marriage was not just an insufficient but an invalid proceeding—a claim that seemed to threaten the validity of earlier church marriages as well. In any case, the clause was flouted, whether deliberately or in ignorance: registrars found couple after couple claiming their church marriages were sufficient. In just one 1656 quarter sessions from a single Yorkshire parish, “the register was fined for fraud, a clergyman was fined for ‘illegally marrying’ a local couple, and a couple (presumably the same couple) was convicted of fornication” (Durston 1988: 50) It is perhaps the shock of this clause that The Law Against Lovers extends to nightmarish consequences. If marriage in a church without a civil ceremony is illegal, then was church marriage itself not felonious? The reality in 1653 was less clear-cut. September 1653 saw a run on wedding rings, as couples rushed to observe the traditional form before it was outlawed; and after its passing, many of all convictions found themselves conducting secret religious ceremonies out of a general sense that conscience demanded a bond in the eyes of God. A further bureaucratic challenge was maintaining the new procedure of registration outside church authority, a fantasy of state control that parishes could not actualize. Indeed, the whole Act seemed to invite circumvention, as selfappointed justices of the peace offered to marry couples the church would never have countenanced, such as bigamists. In 1657 two M.P.s testified that not one marriage in a hundred was in full compliance with the 1653 Act (Durston 1988: 57). The clause rendering church marriages invalid led to such outrage that when this law was renewed on Cromwell’s taking up the Protectorate in 1657, that particular sentence was struck. Yet for the brief period from 1653 to 1657, a church wedding was not only unnecessary but illegal, and up until the Restoration, marriage irregularities were rife, as

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couples, JPs, and ministers acted in knowing and unknowing violation of all these laws. Nor could the state crack down on faulty bonds; to invalidate so many existing marriages would cause further disruption. Not surprisingly, resolving marriage legislation was one of the first priorities of the Convention Parliament in July 1660. The act that Charles II ultimately signed in January 1661, just thirteen months before The Law Against Lovers debuted, was worded with a certain resigned permissiveness. It legalized any marriage “had or solemnized in England since 1st May 1642 before any JP, or pretended JP” (quoted Durston 1988: 49). Clearly, the registration of marriages had proven a farce. The Law Against Lovers, as a comic response to these disruptions of the gender system and indeed to the representation of authority, begins to make sense. While Shakespeare explores the vulnerability of a spousal without a church wedding, Davenant imagines the state’s opposition to a church wedding rather than a civil ceremony. These details are presented primarily from the viewpoint of Julietta, whom Davenant gives substantial scenes with Beatrice; it is signaled through language that is religious although nonsectarian, and it explores the period’s contested sense of public and private. We are first told that Julietta was married “in sight of Heaven” (414). In defending Julietta and Claudio, Beatrice stresses their mutual and sacred vows despite infelicities of “form”: The Law? is she not married by such Vows As will stand firm in Heaven? that´s the substantial part͒Which carries the effect, and must she then͒Be punisht for neglect of form? (586-90)

Even the libertine Lucio agrees that Juliet “has no blemish” in the eyes of law or religion, except that Turin now weighs “publick form” more than “private use” (1397, 1401). Beatrice insists “I would have my Cousins spiritual marriage stand good in conscience, though tis bad in law” (600-1), a logic used by many in the 1650s to justify clandestine church ceremonies. In contrast, the purist Isabella initially, like the 1653 Act, insists that Juliet’s marriage is “not good”: “Honour is publick treasure, and ’tis fit/ Law should in publick form dispose of it” (1761-2). But she, too, soon is persuaded that this bond is both holy and legal. Davenant is consistent in revising every Shakespearean comment about the marriage, and indeed adds additional references to the sanctity of this marriage. As the other characters assess the political problem, it becomes clear that the law’s most dangerous persecution is not of fornication, but of church marriage, which threatens the means of reproduction. Beatrice observes that because “the Governour/

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Has made a Law against Lovers,” “All the Midwives, Nurses, and Milkwomen are up in Arms” (562-4). While Julietta’s loss of liberty is an outrage, it symbolizes an even larger social threat.

IV. That the status of church marriage is integral to Davenant’s adaptation is confirmed by the play’s obsession with rings– objects barely mentioned in Measure for Measure and Much Ado About Nothing. The presence of “Wedding Rings,” like “sacred vows” outlawed by the Commonwealth, imports memories of the Anglican prayer book into Davenant’s allegory of the revolution. When Claudio, in this version as scornful as Isabella of Angelo’s dirty bargain, and ready to die for love, tells Isabella to “be good to Juliet,” he “Gives her a ring,” “the fatal pledge of our first Vows” (1409). Though rings had long figured in spousals or precontracts, their strongest association in early modern England was with the Anglican marriage ceremony (Evans 1931,Taylor 1848). Here Claudio seems to join Juliet’s reading of their guilt as being for following the Anglican “form”; their “first Vows” “fatal” because they “pledge” with a ring. In doing so, they follow the language of the Book of Common Prayer: “so these persons may surely perform and keep the vow and covenant betwixt them made, whereof this ring given and received is a token and pledge” (Church 2003: 305). These words were, of course, omitted from all Interregnum “forms” of marriage, and thus references to rings became a Royalist shibboleth in the 1650s. As the “Cavalier Lasse” told her “zealous” suitor in one surviving Royalist ballad, registered in 1656, “No ring, no wedding” (Rollins 1923: 396-9). My interpretation of Claudio’s ring as a wedding ring is confirmed by four further references to rings in Davenant’s play, three of them explicitly called “wedding rings.” First Lucio, plotting against marriage with Benedick, promises to “Bring ill Poesies of Wedding Rings out of/ Fashion” (624). So Dorothy Osborne perkily told her suitor in 1653 that they must wait until church weddings came “in fashion againe”—and shortly afterward requested a ring (1987: 116, 164). Then Benedick tells Beatrice “I'm very loth to come within/ The narrow compass of a Wedding Ring” (1081-2). However, he then proves his love for Beatrice by stealing his brother’s signet to forge Claudio’s pardon (1087, 1094, 1096, 1469). (Angelo’s signet here functions rather like the Duke’s signet, which is the only ring mentioned in Measure for Measure.) The most gratuitous ring in Davenant’s play, and thus the most telling, is invoked by the girl Viola: “My Cousin Juliet has lockt her self in/ Her Chamber. I saw her through the Keyhole/ Weeping like Nurse when she lost her Wedding Ring” (1877-9). Here a

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character from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, in a play fusing Measure for Measure and Much Ado About Nothing, echoes Romeo & Juliet, condenses Shakespearean love stories into the loss of a “Wedding Ring.” The attribution to “Nurse” may link to Beatrice’s worry about “Nurses” without charges: if neither marriage nor fornication survives the war between libertines and precisians, there will be no procreation. Needless to say, when the end of the play marries off Benedick and Beatrice, Angelo and Isabella, Claudio and Juliet, much is hinted about the next generation. Still, the play also insists that Julietta must “end her Tragy-Comedy/ With Hymen the old way” (2788-9). The genre of comedy demands marriage, and in the old, godblessed form.

V. The Law Against Lovers is haunted by apocalyptic worries about human extinction, well beyond the disease of Measure for Measure, no doubt a symptom of the trauma of revolution that is otherwise unspoken in this society of restored royalists. Viola, the young girl singer, sings verses written by Lucio with the macabre chorus “Lovers go woo the dead, the dead!” (1131). At the end of the play, restored to reproductive bliss, Claudio reflects that “those who lost their youth” during recent events must “retire” to the “privacy” of “Deaths Closets” (2749-50). He thanks “Heaven that we have life, since we together/ May enjoy it” (2752-3): the implication is that his own freedom to marry helps to guarantee the enjoyment of future generations. So too the Duke, ordering the marriages that everyone wanted anyway, guarantees that the nation will continue, and, as Benedick more darkly puts it, that there will be more “cradles” as “barracadoes” in future wars (2899). Lucio earlier had reflected that a government opposed to love would have only “decrepid old Souldiers” (2421). At the end of the play, this dissident against marriage wonders if he should marry the fool’s dead grandmother. In Shakespeare, he was sentenced to marrying a punk; in this post-war play, the ultimate male fear is not sexual dishonor, but human extinction. In imagining Turin’s fresh start, the ensemble invokes mostly secular ideals, such as the notions of love and honor to be seen in later Davenant productions such as Gondibert, as the basis for a new civil society Angelo proposes a new ritual, forgiveness, which makes the “mortal substances of forms” like the bodies of Claudio and Julietta instead “resemble....immortall angels” (2761). The conflict over marital authority between state and religion is papered over as mutual vows enfold mutual forgiveness. The result seems not to re-consecrate marriage but to accommodate the period’s emerging

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marital contractualism to Davenant’s semi-secular religion of Love and Honor, in which vows and tokens retain power (Staves 1979, Maguire 1992, Kahn 2004, Worden 2001). Thus, surprisingly, state regulation is not entirely denied, or religious ceremony fully defended, at the end of the play. All of the couples accept the need to marry, and even to “register” (1409) publicly the vows initially made privately. They argue for mutual accommodation between sexual partners and, more broadly, between ideologies, as the formal requirement of tragicomedy, the genre to which they, and Davenant, imagine themselves restored. The tacit concession, not borne out by events after 1662, is that the church is vaguely relevant to moral control, but characteristically, Julietta remarks that ‘Honor’ would have justified forgiveness of Angelo even if ‘Religion’ did not (2759). Marriage remains precariously balanced as a private contract with very public consequences, a divine rite with a secular vocabulary, its ultimate authority the judgement of men and women in this genteel society. This conclusion registers the play’s indirections, evasions, and substitutions. The word “ceremony” does not yield neatly to “covenant” or “contract” to signal the shifting social grounds. Nor does Davenant make Claudio say to Julietta, “With my body I thee worship,” as he might if critique of Commonwealth marriage reform had sprung from orthodox Anglicanism. The play is never that explicitly nostalgic for the prayer book, leaving room for Davenant, probably a Catholic, to suggest another possibility: that Claudio and Julietta were persecuted for Catholic sacred vows (Aveling 1976). This play feels its way toward accommodation of religious difference through what is unsaid. In the end, the play comes to something like the same position on marriage as the 1662 reissue of the Book of Common Prayer, in its prefatory letter “Of Ceremonies: why some should be abolished, and some retained.” Although the keeping or omitting of a Ceremony, in itself considered, is but a small thing, Let al things be done among you, saith Saint Paul, in a seemly and due order; the appointment of which order pertaineth not to private men; therefore no man ought to take in hand, nor presume to appoint or alter any publick or comon Order in Christ’s Church. (Cummings 214-5)

The language here sustains the Interregnum’s new articulation of marriage as “publick”; it even seems to echo the 1645 “solemnization” of marriage as “common to mankind.” Yet this sentence, and indeed the entire epistle, never identifies marriage as the ceremony at issue; in both the acceptance of certain Interregnum changes, and the reticence about naming that acceptance, the 1662 prayer book is consistent with the strategies of Davenant’s play of the same year. The paradox is that the settled “Order in Christ’s Church” that “no man” should alter is not the work of ages, but the

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product of another committee’s negotiation, that is, Cranmer’s prayer book of 1549. The anonymous 1686 epistle “To the Reader” accompanying Henry Swinburne’s pre-1623 Treatise of Spousals similarly exaggerates the permanence of church marriage rites: “Divine Invocation and the Minister’s Benediction have ever in all Ages been accounted necessary to its right Celebration and Performance [sig. A3]. Yet Swinburne was born about 1560, and surely knew the instabilities of Anglican marriage law; his editor, too, could probably recall the turmoil of Interregnum marriage law. In hindsight, the play’s message about marriage should be clear to us. It charts the way toward a future of voluntary marital contract which, if still compulsorily patriarchal, procreative, and heteronormative, certainly shows that the politics of gender matter, in making sense both of this text and of historical change itself. The play also acknowledges that such contracts will be particular to the values of their time and place, however paradoxical those values may be. It defends the marriage of its day as both civic and holy, both private and public. Its marriage rites evolve within civic society, yet the civic will is that both material signifiers (wedding rings) and church authority be available as public guarantors of private bonds. Marriage bonds must be malleable, although experienced as timeless. Today, as Western societies revolt against the traditional heterosexual model of marriage, new kinds of couples seek the rites and tokens they deem traditional guarantors of their bonds. The World Gold Council advertises wedding rings to America’s same-sex couples with the slogan that “gold makes it a marriage”: crass enough (2011). Even in largely secular societies, same-sex couples agitate for their denominations to acknowledge their bonds, and thus to root the long history and deep significance of this most public and private of rites in the institutions they find most enduring. The actual provenance of these rites is immaterial; to reinvent marriage in the name of tradition is a deep social impulse, and a fundamental liberty.6

6

The author gratefully acknowledges the insights of Catharine Gray, Jerry Hagen, Craig Koslofsky, Joad Raymond, Amy Lou Smith, Elizabeth Tavares, and Helen Watanabe O’Kelly, and the patient encouragement of the editor Mara R. Wade.

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Longfellow, Erica. 2006. ‘Public, Private, and the Household in Early Seventeenth-Century England’ in Journal of British Studies 45: 313-334. MacCulloch, Diarmaid. 2003. The Reformation: A History. NY and London: Penguin Books. Maguire, Nancy Klein. 1992. Regicide and Restoration: English Tragicomedy 16601671. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marsden, Jean I. 1995. The Re-Imagined Text: Shakespeare, Adaptation, & Eighteenth-century Literary Theory. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. McLaren, Dorothy. 1974. ‘The Marriage Act of 1653: Its Influence on the Parish Registers’ in Population Studies 28 (2): 319-327. Murray, Barbara A. 2001. Restoration Shakespeare: Viewing the Voice. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses. Ng, Su Fang. 2007. Literature and the Politics of Family in Seventeenth-century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Osborne, Dorothy. 1987. Letters to Sir William Temple, ed. Kenneth Parker. London and Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Pateman, Carol. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Peterson, Belinda Robert. 2004. Marriage in Seventeenth-century English Political Thought. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Powell, Chilton Latham. 1917. English Domestic Relations, 1487-1653. New York: Columbia University Press. Rollins, Hyder Edward. 1923. Cavalier and Puritan: Ballads and Broadsides illustrating the Period of the Great Rebellion, 1640-1660. New York: New York University Press. Romack, Katherine, and James Fitzmaurice, eds. 2006. Cavendish and Shakespeare: Interconnections. Aldershot: Ashgate. ——. 2003. The Taste of the Town: Shakespearean Comedy and the Early EighteenthCentury Theater. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press. Shakespeare, William. 2008. The Oxford Shakespeare Measure for Measure, ed. N. W. Bawcutt. Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press. Shanley, Mary L. 1979. ‘Marriage Contract and Social Contract in Seventeenth-Century English Political Thought.’ Western Political Quarterly 32 (1): 79-91. Sorelius, Gunnar. 1966. The Giant Race Before the Flood. Pre-Restoration Drama on the Stage and in the Criticism of the Restoration (Acta Universitatus Upsalienis. Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia 4). Uppsala, Almqvist & Wiksell. Sokol, B. J., and Mary Sokol. 2003. Shakespeare, Law, and Marriage. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Spencer, Hazelton. 1963 [1927]. Shakespeare Improved: The Restoration Versions in Quarto and On the Stage. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co. Staves, Susan. 1979. Players´ Scepters: Fictions of Authority in the Restoration. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Swinburne, Henry. 1985 [1686]. A Treatise of Spousals, or Matrimonial Contracts. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc. Taylor, Jeremy. 1848. ‘The Marriage Ring: Part 1’ in C. P. Eden (ed.) The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor. London: Longman & Green. Vol. 4: 207-19. Thomas, Keith. 1978. ‘The Puritans and Adultery: the Act of 1650 Reconsidered’ in Donald Pennington and Keith Thomas, eds. Puritans and Revolutionaries: Essays in Seventeenth-century History Presented to Christopher Hill. Oxford: Clarendon Press: 257-82. Tomlinson, Sophie. 2005. Women on Stage in Stuart Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turner, David M. 2002. Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex, and Civility in England, 1660-1740. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Turner, James Grantham. 1987. One Flesh: Paradisal Marriage and Sexual Relations in the Age of Milton. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press. Westminster Assembly of Divines. 1650. A directory for the publique worship of God throughout the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland: Together with an ordinance of Parliament for the taking away of the Book of Common Prayer: and for establishing and observing of this present directory throughout the Kingdome of England, and dominion of Wales. London: Printed by T. R. and E. M. for the Company of Stationers. Witte, John, Jr. 1991. From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and the Law in the Western Tradition. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press. World Gold Council. 2011. ‘Gold Makes a Marriage’ advertisement in New York Times style section, 24 July: ST 15. Worden, Blair. 2001. ‘The question of secularization’ in A Nation Transformed: England After the Restoration, Houston, Alan, and Steve Pincus, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 20-40.

Gender in Print

Elizabeth Black

One Gender in the Legal System? An Examination of Gender in a Trio of Emblems from Pierre Coustau’s Pegme (1560) Pierre Coustau’s Pegma (1555) translated as Le Pegme (1560) addresses issues of legal theory as Coustau attempts to incorporate elements of Roman law into the French legal system. One striking element of the work is a framing device in which two of the illustrated emblems, the third from the beginning and the third from the end, employ the same image and come to the same conclusion about the role of women in society and their legal status. This article examines the import of the framing device, arguing that it is two-thirds of a series of three emblems in which Coustau attempts to resolve inconsistencies in women’s roles. He ultimately proposes to reduce women’s legal status to that of minors, but his language and examples reveal the difficulties of fixing women in an inferior role.1

Following Andrea Alciato’s early example of using emblems to discuss legal principles, Pierre Coustau, a jurisconsult from Paris, published his Latin collection, Pegma, in 1555 with the prominent Lyon publisher Macé Bonhomme. A full French translation by Lanteaume de Romieu appeared in 1560. The book contains 122 emblems, 95 of which have the classic tripartite structure of inscriptio, pictura, and subscriptio, to which is added a lengthy essay called a narratio philosophica. The other 27 emblems do not have any image. The narratio philosophica is not simply a gloss on the emblem in question; rather, as Valérie Hayaert has posited, [t]he narration of each emblem of the Pegme very often presents itself as the scene of a philosophical controversy very much like the “essai” in its form and whose point of departure is the emblem itself. (Hayaert 2005:71)

As Hayaert argues (2005: 79) creating emblems was not only a favorite pastime of legal scholars, but also their method of directly reinterpreting classical texts in order to develop legal theory for their own times. Hayaert (2005: 72) also sees Coustau’s emblems as mock trials, in which he creates a legal opposition for himself, and stages argument, counter-argument, and victorious conclusion.

1

My thanks go to Mara Wade, Daniel Russell, and Marcus Keller for their generous help in the development of this article.

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While the book deals with a wide variety of topics, the legal position of women has a prominent place. The trio of emblems in question in this article treats women and their role in society, and does indeed constitute argument, counter-argument and conclusion. The positioning of the first and third emblems of this trio also forms a framing device, highlighting women as a central concern for Coustau. Emblem 3, functioning as the opening argument in this particular mock trial is entitled “Le Senat d’Heliogabale. Contre ceux qui vivent souz l’Empire de leurs femmes.”2 It comes to the conclusion that women should not be allowed any role in public life, and that additionally they should be considered minors under the law, in order to limit their authority in the home. Emblem 70, here the counter-argument, is entitled “Sur Stesichore Poëte Grec. N’y en bien, n’y en mal, faut parler des femmes, selon Thucidide.”3 It debates whether women should ever be remembered in history and literature. The conclusion reached in the emblem is that, in fact, women sometimes undertake heroic acts, and therefore can serve as an example to others. Emblem 93, the resolution of the mock trial, is entitled “Sur le temps. Femme emperiere & femme gentdarme.”4 It revisits the themes discussed in emblems 3 and 70. It reaches the same conclusion as emblem 3, namely that despite some heroic deeds by some women, no woman should hold public office and all women should be considered minors, because otherwise they would exert too much influence over their husbands. The first and third of these three emblems share a common image (Fig. 1). This is the only repeated image in the book, and the emblems come to the same conclusion. Not only do these emblems share image and argument, but they are also symmetrically placed within the work. Of the 95 illustrated emblems, they are third from the beginning and third from the end. Thus the structure of argument, counter-argument and conclusion that Hayaert delineates is here played out across three distinct emblems, and Coustau’s views on women’s role in public life frame the book. Their proximity to the beginning and end of the volume, the symmetry, the repeated image, and the repeated conclusion, all demonstrate the importance of the argument about women to Coustau’s project. Furthermore, Coustau undermines his own arguments in two different ways. Firstly, while he is attempting to prescribe a universal principle by which to judge women, the counter-arguments he employs do not allow a universal law to be justified conclusively. Secondly, 2 3 4

Heliogabalus’ Senate. Against those who live under the authority of their wives (Coustau 1560: 16). All translations are my own. On the Greek poet Stesichorus. Neither good nor bad should ever be spoken about women, according to Thucydides (Coustau 1560: 284). On our times. Women rulers and women soldiers (Coustau 1560: 393).

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the ambiguity of Coustau’s own language leaves a careful reader with the impression that he is not fully convinced of his own case. One might expect a framing structure to occupy the very beginning and end of a sequence, yet Coustau places his framing emblems in third and third-from-last position. The theme of women’s legal status is subordinate to the theme of justice in general; the first two emblems of Le Pegme both treat the fundamental question of justice and its conspicuous lack in Coustau’s times. Justice is posited in emblem 1 as reigning over both peace at home and foreign wars, while in emblem 2 Coustau expresses dismay at the lack of justice among men of his time, even though they have been enlightened by God’s word. However, a concern for the feminization of men is also expressed within the first two emblems of the book, before it is mentioned in emblem 3, the first of the framing pair. Although the framing emblems about women do not open and close the book, the theme creeps in as an underlying anxiety from the very beginning. In other emblems, the feminization of men is equated with corrupt and ineffective judges. In emblems 1 and 2, a lack of justice is linked to effeminate men, a phenomenon linked in turn with too much contact with women. Coustau then takes up all of these themes in the framing emblems (3 and 93). He also returns to the lack of justice in his times in emblems 94 and 95 which close the sequence of emblems with images. I propose that so much emphasis is given to the role of women in public life not simply to confirm a binary gender division based on a Hippocratic idea of biology, but to combat a notion of women’s value to society based on individual merit which can be linked to the Galenic concept of male and female. Thomas Laqueur (1990) and Jonathan Clark (1991) have traced the emergence of a model of human anatomy based on Galenic medicine that vied for dominance in the early modern period with the binary Hippocratic model. According to Galen, women were simply men turned inside out. Masculinity and femininity thus existed on a sliding scale, which according to Laqueur could be climbed or descended, depending on changes in circumstances and behavior. The significance of these views was not limited to medicine. Both Clark and Laqueur insist on the social and cultural readings of the body. As Laqueur explains: To be a man or a woman was to hold a social rank, a place in society, to assume a cultural role, not to be organically one or the other of two incommensurable sexes. Sex before the seventeenth century, in other words, was still a sociological and not an ontological category (Laqueur 1990: 8).

The arguments Coustau chooses to address allow us to glimpse a different idea of womanhood, in which courageous behavior is not dependent on having a male body. His counter-argument in emblem 70, the second of the

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trio, gives evidence for a social role for women based on merit. Coustau then attempts to assimilate non-normative female behavior into the binary model, in order for the patriarchy (including the laws of primogeniture) to remain intact. Emblem 3 bemoans the fact that men do not have authority in their homes, and therefore cannot expect to be taken seriously as authorities in public life. The title refers to a senate of women convened by the Roman Emperor Heliogabalus, and the ensuing emblem mocks both the Emperor and the issues that may have been discussed by the women who made up his senate. It is described as […] un parlement de femmes, ou au paravant se faisoient les assemblées des matrones, ou il feit certains decrés ridicules touchant le reglement des femmes, de quel vestement elles s’abilleroient, à quelles personnes pourroient presenter le baiser, quelles pourroient aller en coche, quelles en hacquenée, quelles en litiere. 5

Coustau’s France is compared to Heliogabalus’ reign, because foreigners were apparently saying that Frenchmen were similarly governed by their wives. The emblem’s image shows seven women seated in an inverted V formation (Fig. 1). It is a reworking of one from Barthélémy Aneau’s Imagination poétique (Fig. 2), a work produced in 1552 by Macé Bonhomme, who also published Coustau’s Pegma three years later. Aneau’s emblem depicts gods, heroes, and satyrs, demonstrating the vertical hierarchy of reason which is replicated in the microcosm of man. The focus of the gaze of all (male) beings in Aneau’s image is upwards towards Jupiter, who represents God. In stark contrast, Coustau’s emblem depicts the inversion of the V, turning the focus back to earth and earthly concerns (Fig. 1). The central figure from Aneau’s emblem appears to be missing in Coustau’s version, showing that the women’s court lacks a stable focal point. The close framing of the figures excludes all suggestion of a world beyond the earth. In Le Pegme a similar image depicting figures in an inverted V formation is employed in three other emblems which all depict corrupt or ineffective judges.

5

[…] a parliament of women, where matriarchs used to assemble, where certain ridiculous decrees were made concerning rules for women: which clothing they would wear, which people could be greeted with a kiss, which could travel in a coach, which in a hackney and which in a litter (Coustau 1560: 18).

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Figure 1 Pierre Coustau, Le Pegme, 1560, p. 3: “Le Senat d’Heliogabale. Contre ceux qui vivent souz l’Empire de leurs femmes” (Heliogabalus´ senate. Against those who live under their wives´ empire) and p. 393: “Sur le temps. Femme emperiere & femme gentdarme” (On our times. Women emperors and women soldiers.) (Courtesy of the University of Glasgow, Special Collections.)

Figure 2 Barthelemy Aneau, Imagination poétique, 1552, p. 23: “Différence des raisonnables essences”. (The difference between reasonable beings.) (Courtesy of the University of Glasgow, Special Collections.)

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Emblem 31 uses the inverted V to represent judges who have bought their position. In emblem 64, it is used to condemn judges who sleep in court, and yet again in emblem 78, a diatribe against corrupt judges. Within this volume, then, the inverted V of human figures symbolizes power which is not merited by those who hold it. These unworthy figures are then generalized in emblems 3 and 93, which depict women in the same formation. The figures in the inverted V formation are unreasonable beings—the opposite of Aneau’s reasonable beings. In Aneau’s emblem, reason elevates man to the status of demigod. For Coustau, a lack of reason in the characters depicted undermines the legal system, which is the guarantor of the State. In emblem 3, Coustau claims that it is not reasonable for woman to have command over man, since woman, according to God’s law, should obey man: “Car il n’est raisonnable que celle qui par la loy de Dieu doit obeir à l’homme, aye commandement sur luy.”6 Therefore anything which contradicts God’s law must be unreasonable. Moreover, the last of the trio of emblems, number 93, concludes that it is the weakness of women’s minds which has led them to be barred from public life: Mais parrce que souvent il avient, que les femmes voire de nature aient esprits feminins, non sans cause noz peres ont clos le passage aux femmes de parvenir aux dignités: parce qu’elles ne semblent avoir ny de nature, ny de leur diligence, aucun aide au maniement des affaires.7

In emblem 3, the text addresses male judges directly as readers of the emblem, although the figures in the image are all female. The emblem leads the reader to identify the judge in two ways. First, since emblems which employ direct address often imply that the addressee is represented within the image, the reader may identify the judge with a representation of a woman, and imagine him sitting among the female judges. This is echoed in the emblem’s narratio, where the Emperor Heliogabalus is described as being effeminate, because he was under a woman’s authority. The second identification occurs at the end of the subscriptio verse in the original Latin emblem.8 Coustau chastises judges, “qui molli sedeas sub Amazone” (who

6 7

8

Because it is not reasonable that she, who by God’s law must obey man, have command over him. (Coustau 1560: 19). But because it often happens that women, by nature itself, have feminine minds, our forefathers not without reason barred women’s access to official positions; because they seem not to have any help from nature or from their own efforts in handling business (Coustau 1560: 396-7). Coustau did not translate the work into French himself. The translator, Lanteaume de Romieu, did not translate the Latin verses but created new ones in French, hence

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sit beneath a soft Amazon, Coustau 1555: ơ8v). Thus while the reader may initially identify the judge as one of the female figures in the emblem’s image, the final line of the poem suggests that one is to imagine a judge in the empty space in front of the women (Fig. 1). He will be beneath them, implying that a feminized man in terms of hierarchy is beneath women. While Amazons are considered to be masculine women, and their demonstrations of virility are legendary, the adjective “mollis,” of which the principal translation is “soft,” can also mean “unmanly” or “effeminate.” Therefore the masculine characteristic of the Amazons is negated by the qualifying adjective, and they regain a woman’s expected femininity. Furthermore, as Paul Allen Miller and others have discussed, “mollis” is used by Catullus and other Classical writers to indicate the idea of being receptive and penetrable (Miller 1997: 180-3). While the adjective “molli” here modifies “Amazone,” the interpretation of emblems often proceeds by a game of word association, and thus the idea of an effeminate judge is linked, albeit indirectly, with the idea of a submissive partner in a homoerotic liaison. On a visual level, if the judge is imagined in front of the women, he also becomes their focal point, just as Jupiter was the focal point in Aneau’s image (Fig. 2). Coustau describes the judge as the means by which women will attain their materialistic designs. The contrast between women’s purely material desires and men’s higher concerns with erudition and knowledge is made explicit in the final lines of the narratio philosophica, in which Coustau outlines that a woman’s aim is to influence her husband to such an extent that any inheritance which should go to her sons would instead go to her daughters. Emblem 3 therefore sets up a traditional binary model of gender difference, presenting all women as materialistic and incapable of sound judgment. In addition, they are a danger to the health of the State and a challenge to the laws of male primogeniture. Coustau favors granting women only the status of minors, implemented by Rome after the reign of Heliogabalus, an idea which he takes up again in emblem 93. Thus emblems 3 and 93 constitute the framing device, proposing similar arguments, while emblem 70 bridges the two. Emblem 70 deals less with women’s legal status than with their usefulness to society, discussing whether women should ever be memorialized in texts. Three classical references argue against talking about women: first, the poet, Stesichorus, who was thought to have been made blind by the gods for talking disparagingly about Helen of Troy’s beauty; second, Thucydides, a military historian who claimed that Nature the reference to soft Amazons not being found in the French version. However, he translated the narratio philosophica for this emblem faithfully.

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had hidden the deformed parts of man and thus argued that ideas about animals must also be kept obscure—this was to keep men from having base thoughts; and the third is Solon, an Athenian lawmaker who did not want to suggest the idea of patricide by legislating against it. The common theme in these analogies is the fear that men will imitate bad examples. Women are therefore compared with genitalia or the anus (the animalistic part of man, far from the seat of reason) and animals, which lack reason and are earthbound. Women’s actions are compared with patricide which should not be imitated. The image (Fig. 3) presumably shows the blind Stesichorus, as only he is mentioned in the title and the poem, although the phallic architectural feature in the background (unique to this emblem) suggests a reference to Thucydides and deformed body parts, perhaps an ironic comment that whatever is hidden will always be perfectly obvious. It also suggests that gender is an ever-present topic, which may sometimes only occupy the background, but can never be ignored.

Figure 3 Pierre Coustau, Le Pegme, 1560, p. 284: “Sur Stesichore Poëte Grec. N’y en bien, n’y en mal, faut parler des femmes, selon Thucidide.” / On the poet Stesichorus. Neither good nor bad should ever be spoken about women. (Courtesy of the University of Glasgow, Special Collections.)

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Emblem 70 counters the argument to keep women from public mention, citing Roman examples of worthy women being praised after their deaths, and explaining that many brave actions by women are rightly celebrated in literature. Such a departure from the totalizing condemnation of women in emblem 3 suggests a questioning of traditional gender roles on Coustau’s part. He then attempts to resolve the apparent conflict between emblems 3 and 70 in emblem 93, which will form the winning argument in his mock trial. Emblem 93 returns to the lesson found in emblem 3, that women should not be allowed to have any influence in public affairs. As mentioned previously, the two emblems share a common image. The title of the emblem refers to women holding public office; however the mnemonic function of these texts is designed such that when a reader sees the image in emblem 93, emblem 3’s conclusion about authority in the home should come to mind. The emblem proposes the following argument: Since women lack both vertu and sciences—manly strength and knowledge—a woman in charge will always ruin everything as did Semiramis in Babylon. Women are presented as avaricious and therefore unsuitable for public office (just as in emblem 3 they are materialistic). But Coustau says that it is his duty to mention some women from the distant past who in adverse times had enough vertu to help save their cities, and mentions specifically Debora (a prophetess and only female judge of premonarchic Israel, responsible for battle strategy), Judith (who beheaded Holofernes), Tomyris the Amazon Queen (who defeated Cyrus the Great, King of Persia), and the Roman virgin Clelia (who escaped slavery, and was eventually rewarded her freedom for her courage). Coustau recognizes that all four women accomplished great feats of war. Therefore, if any women from his times had such greatness of mind and quasi-divine strength, no-one would deny them access to public life: A telle grandeur d’esprits, & quasi force divine de nature, s’il y a quelcune de noz femmes qui se veuille conformer par le consentement je croi de tout le monde on luy donnera entrée aux honeurs & magistras: & pourra sans enfraindre les loix étre faite compaigne des conseils de la chose publique.9

As with the Amazons in the first of the three emblems, the temporal distance allows Coustau to dismiss his own examples as irrelevant to his time. He also seems particularly confident that no woman from his time 9

If any one of our women wants to conform to such greatness of mind by consent I believe she will be given access to the honors and magistrates of the whole world; and she will be able, without breaking the laws, to be made companion in public office councils (Coustau 1560: 396).

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would ever display such qualities. As was evident in emblem 2, pre-Christian reasoning can be dismissed as being unenlightened. In emblem 93, as in emblem 3, we see Coustau’s desire to come to his preordained conclusion regarding gender roles. However, a closer examination of the text reveals a measure of ambiguity in the language of Coustau’s arguments. This can be shown with a closer examination of the narratio in emblem 93, in which he draws together all the threads of this trio of emblems and develops his final conclusion. Coustau acknowledges that his blanket prescriptions do not in fact apply to all women. For example, he claims that “les meurs & ordonnances quasi de toutes les nations ont eloigné les femmes des gouverneurs & magistrats publiques” (the customs and laws of almost all nations have estranged women from public governors and magistrates, Coustau 1560: 17). Coustau observes that “almost all nations” have laws prohibiting women from public affairs. However, in emblem 3, he had implied that all nations agreed on this point. Another ambiguity occurs again in emblem 93: Mais parce que la question presente m’appelle aux femmes, qui quelques fois par grandes vertus & bienfais envers leurs pays ont éte renommées, il sembleroit que je feroie contre le devoir, si je ne rendrois temoignage deu a leur vertu. 10

Despite attempting to legislate against all women, he explains that sometimes women have earned renown through their great virtue and good deeds. Thus an absolute law does not fit all cases. In addition, “Clelia, par un nouveau fait de guerre illustra tout le sexe feminin, & donna un grand eguillon à toute la posterité des femmes, d’ensuivre sa vertu.”11 Clelia apparently brought glory to the whole of womankind, while as we have just heard, Coustau proclaims that only a few women are capable of attaining glory. In his conclusion, he claims that “souvent il avient, que les femmes voire de nature aient esprits feminins” (often it happens that women by nature itself, have feminine minds; Coustau 1560: 397). Nature’s universal character is therefore contradicted; women “often” have feminine minds by nature—but if it is women’s nature to have a feminine mind, one would expect that quality to be found in every woman, and not just often. Coustau also confounds what is attributable to nature and what is due to willpower. Although a feminine mind is supposedly a natural trait, Coustau posits Clelia 10

11

But because this question leads me to women, who sometimes by great virtues & deeds for their country have been celebrated, I would seem to be acting against duty, if I did not bear the witness due to their virtue (Coustau 1560: 395). Clelia, through a new feat of war, brought glory to the whole female sex, and gave a great spur to all her women descendants, to follow her virtue (Coustau 1560: 396).

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as an example that women can follow if they so choose, thus exerting their willpower over their nature. In contrast, however, the ability to use their willpower is denied, since “elles ne semblent avoir ny de nature, ny de leur diligence, aucun aide au maniement des affaires” (they seem not to have any help from nature or from their own efforts in handling business, Coustau 1560: 397). It can be seen from Coustau’s conclusion to this final emblem that while he gives the women of his day the choice to merit holding power, he then judges that it is best that legislation forbids them from doing so. However, he also indicates that the law would not determine whether a woman was fit for office. Thus Coustau is of the opinion that a woman who merits her place in public life would not be transgressing the laws designed to keep her from public life, suggesting that a woman with enough greatness of mind and strength can gain the legal status of a man, and that she is considered to be a man for legal purposes. Coustau is implying that the gender boundaries are not fixed, but in fact that worthy women could transcend biological womanhood and attain social masculinity. The surface impression of his argument is a firm engagement with a binary gender model. However, there is almost a complete lack of absolute statements, shown both by the repeated use of “seem,” and by an abundance of qualifiers such as “sometimes,” “perhaps,” and “often.” His final argument, far from being a bold statement about women’s role, states that “il ne semble étre convenable” (it does not seem to be fitting, Coustau 1560: 397) for women to exert influence in public life. It is also surprising that the one unquestionable argument from the first emblem of the trio, that it is God’s law that subjugates woman to man, does not find its place in the final emblem of the three. One insinuation from the example of Clelia is that women could follow her example, but do not want to. Coustau’s argument is placed in the context that no sixteenth-century women could possess the traits demonstrated by Clelia, Ruth, Debora, and Tomyris, an argument repeated from his discourse on the Amazons in emblem 3. In noting women’s change for the worse, he admits the fact that womanhood does indeed change, leading to the problematic notion of legislating uniformly for an unfixed entity. The feminization of men must be combated to create a clear distinction between men’s and women’s roles. It is as if the one-gender theory is to be fought at all costs to create clearly masculine men who distinguish themselves from women. Thus the fight against the onegender model does not depend on proving it to be untrue, but on a concerted effort to negate its effects. Men can become effeminized, but it is within their own power to avoid it. A clear binary model of gender can then be created. Ironically, there is only one example of a single gender successfully holding power in both the public and private domain, which is that of the

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Amazons. After Heliogabalus’s death, laws were enacted in Rome to reduce women to the status of minors, in order to stamp out any trace of female rule. Coustau recommends this course of action. Yet he explains that the Roman laws did not manage to eliminate all female influence, which should make us question why he believes it would work for France in the sixteenth century. He here demonstrates an underlying theme of the three emblems: that the legal system, even at its strictest, is in fact powerless in the face of certain widespread behaviors. The trio of emblems begins and ends with the concern that women in private have too much influence over men in the public sphere. The Amazons represent the unthinkable but logical conclusion that women wish to do away with men altogether. The legal system is apparently in jeopardy in the face of such influence. Thus the ideological struggle to legislate according to gender reflects Coustau’s concerns about the legal system as a whole. His arguments could well apply to the corrupt judges, the sleeping judges, or the judges who had bought their position. The positioning of emblems 3 and 93 as a frame for the book confirms that these arguments are central to his work. Yet Coustau is unable to identify women’s difference as located in the body. His final argument, which is repeated throughout these three emblems, is that women’s minds are the locus of gender difference. Thus, Heliogabalus is effeminate, and the corrupt and sleeping male judges can be depicted in the same way as the women of emblems 3 and 93. Coustau cannot reconcile the achievements of certain women with God’s law, which insists on a strict binary gender model. The argument that pre-Christian logic is unenlightened seems to be countered by the inclusion of positive pre-Christian models and the reference to pre-Christian philosophers. Thus Coustau’s legal arguments and language, which should be watertight, have a tendency to leak.

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Works Cited Aneau, Barthélémy. 1552. Imagination poétique. Lyon: Macé Bonhomme. On line at: http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/books.php ?id=FAN b& o= (consulted 30.11.2011). Clark, Jonathan. 1991. ‘Inside/Out: Body Politics Against Large Bodies’ in Daphnis 20: 101-130. Coustau, Pierre. 1560. Le Pegme. (tr. L. de Romieu). Lyon: Macé Bonhomme. On line at: http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/books. php? id=FCPa&o= (consulted 30.11.2011). ——. 1555. Pegma. Lyon: Macé Bonhomme. On line at: http://www. emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/books.php?id=FCPb&o= (consulted 30.11.2011). Hayaert, Valérie. 2005. ‘Pierre Coustau’s Le Pegme (1555): Emblematics and Legal Humanism’ in Emblematica 14: 55-99. Laqueur, Thomas. 1990. Making Sex. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Miller, Paul Allen. 1997. ‘Catullan Consciousness, the “Care of the Self,” and the Force of the Negative in History’ in Larmour, David HJ, Paul Allen Miller and Charles Platter (eds.) Rethinking Sexuality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 171-203.

Tara L. Lyons Prayer Books and Illicit Female Desires on the Early Modern English Stage In early modern culture, the image of a lady with a prayer book often denoted her faith, devotion, and chastity. However, an analysis of A Book of Christian Prayers (1578) and scenes from period dramas reveal that the prayer book was anything but a simple signifier or instrument of female virtue in the English imagination. This paper demonstrates that prayer books in dramatic texts do not always direct women to rise above the flesh through spiritual meditation but are sometimes used to help women achieve their fleshly desires. The anonymous Arden of Faversham (1592), William Rider’s The Twins (1655), and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1623) challenge the conception of the prayer book as a simple symbol of virtue when placed in a lady’s hands.

In early modern culture, the image of a lady with a prayer book often denoted her faith, devotion, and chastity (Sanders 1998: 57). We see this trope in the period in English paintings of women who held prayer books or devotional works to symbolize their virtue and sexual purity. Various paintings and engravings of Queen Elizabeth I depict a prayer book in her hands to underscore her chastity, learning, and self-government of mind and body (Montrose 2006: 30, 35). In the famous portrait of the thirteen-yearold Elizabeth (ca. 1546-47), the princess holds a small book of devotions below her waist (Montrose 2006: 30). The book of prayers not only signifies the princess’ spiritual faith but also highlights her role as an agent in protecting her virginity as she positions the book as a physical barrier between the viewer and her privy parts. While not all paintings with prayer books solely signified a woman’s purity, the motif was still being used in portraits of gentlewomen in the mid-seventeenth century. For instance, the Great Picture (1646) of Anne Clifford features a small book of devotions in Anne’s mother’s hand. Indeed, Margaret (Russell) Clifford holds the book before her womb, calling attention to her pregnancy with Anne and her virtue as a wife and mother (Brayman Hackel 2005: 225). The early modern stage also used prayer books to connote a female character’s purity and virtue. In Henry Chettle’s 1601 play The Death of Robert Earle of Huntingdon, stage directions indicate that Matilda, the newly-made widow, “enter […] reading on a booke” (D4r). Seeing the reading-Matilda in his dream, King John exclaims that “Divine Matildas Angell did appeare, / Deckt like a Vestall, readie for heavens quire” (D4v). Likewise, in The Revenger’s Tragedy (1606), written by Thomas Middleton and Cyril Tourneur, prayer books are central to Gloriana’s claim to chastity. After being viciously

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raped, Gloriana refuses to live in shame and uses her prayer books to communicate her reason for suicide and to signify her honor in death. However, when prayer books rest in the hands or laps of licentious female characters on the early modern English stage, these same books can take on a very different resonance. In dramatic texts, meditative reading over a book of devotions for some female characters provokes deception and lust. Prescriptive literature in the period urged women to govern their fleshly desires by reading devotional material, yet not all prayer books were alike, nor did they all uncomplicatedly promote female chastity. One English Protestant prayer book, A Book of Christian Prayers, published from 1569 to1608 by John Day and his son Richard Day, provocatively mocks female chastity and jests at the erotic penetration of English women as their fleshly bodies face death.1 While much of the text in this prayer book does urge women to suppress lascivious thoughts and emulate honorable figures, the border illustrations of the Dance of Death within the volume present female readers with visual examples of women taking part in illicit sexual acts. An analysis of A Book of Christian Prayers (1578) and scenes from period dramas will reveal that the prayer book was anything but a simple signifier or instrument of female virtue in the early modern English imagination. English conduct manuals for women generally agreed that women’s reading of religious devotions would discipline their “weak” and “wandering” minds and bodies. By emulating paragons of virtue in these books, English women could fashion themselves as chaste figures in their thoughts and in their actions. The necessarie, fit, and conueient education of a yong gentlewoman (1598), translated from Giovanni Michele Bruto’s Italian conduct book, proposes that women should read Christian texts and learn from accounts of devout women, so that they might gain wisdom and virtue (sigs. G6r, F4r). Prayer books and other devotional works were to provide women with appropriate and authoritative guides on denying the flesh and seeking salvation. While not specifically directed to a female readership—it addressed “All Christians”—Day’s A Book of Christian Prayers cites holy women throughout the text. Moreover, the prayer book explicitly figures these women as models, especially in their devotion. For instance, the note “To the Christian Reader” directs readers to fashion their prayers on those of Anna, who “was of a barre[n] woman made fruitfull” or like “Queen Hester” who “delivered her and her people” through prayer (sig. A3v). Women who transcended the appetites of the flesh and lived a life of the

1

Chew notes that the 1569 edition could be considered an entirely different publication, even though it too contains the Dance of Death border illustrations. The 1569 edition is titled Christian Prayers and Meditations (1944: 293).

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spirit are rewarded on earth and in the afterlife, according to Day’s prayer book. The illustrations within A Book of Christian Prayers also offer women visual paradigms of holy ladies they could emulate. The woodcut designs in Day’s editions are much more elaborate than those in other period prayer books. As Samuel Chew notes (1944: 293-294), the number of woodcut ornaments on almost every page established A Book of Christian Prayers as the Protestant prayer book “de luxe”; it was also called “Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book” because a full-page illustration of the praying Queen graced the book’s second page (Fig. 1). The woodcut image shows the monarch’s prayer book resting on her private altar as she meditates, and the 1569 edition even offers readers the text of the queen’s own devotions in the first person. By contemplating Elizabeth’s image and orisons in A Book of Christian Prayers, English women could appropriate the Queen’s posture and words, and likewise aspire to embody their ruler’s virtuous visage. The border illustrations vary throughout the text and editions, but the primary groupings all feature images of women that female readers could imitate. The Birth and Life of Christ border illustrations portray Mary and other biblical women of faith, and the Virtues are also represented by female figures. The emblem for Knowledge depicts a woman holding a book and taper (Fig. 2), and likewise, Wisdom reads or recites from a small volume (Fig. 3). The books in these two illustrations appear to be small quartos, the exact size of A Book of Christian Prayers. Thus, while women were reading their prayer books, they could imagine themselves in the visage of truly emblematic women. The Dance of Death border illustrations, the focus of this paper, present twenty-six woodcuts of women and forty-seven of men, and the images seem accessible to every class who might read the book. The Dance of Death series specifically displays the clothing and actions of English men and women of seventythree different social stations. With so many illustrations, usually paired with titles, descriptions, and rhymes for spiritual meditation, readers were directed to reflect upon the images and accompanying text in their time of prayer. Because the prayer book urged readers to contemplate these images in their devotions, it is likely that some of these border illustrations, such as the Dance of Death, were understood to prescribe proper social order and Christian behavior and not merely ornament the text. The Dance of Death’s primary message is that neither status nor gender will keep one from death’s grasp. In these illustrations, Death begins by escorting English men to their graves according to class hierarchy.

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Figure 1 A Book of Christian Prayers. London, 1578. (Courtesy of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

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Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 2, 3 A Book of Christian Prayers. London, 1578. (Courtesy of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

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First, Death summons “The Emperor”, then “The King” (Fig. 4), moving down in social rank and age until Death beckons the male infant. Thereafter, a similar procession takes place among the women, as Death first seizes “The Empress” (Fig. 5) moving through the ranks to “The [female] Foole.” The obvious implication is that death is the ultimate social leveler, but at the same time, the images also reinforce each member in his or her place in a clearly delineated gender and class hierarchy. Men appear first in the dance; women are second. Yet, for both genders, denial of the flesh and faith is the only means of preparation and salvation—and both men and women are invited to contemplate the transience of the flesh and visualize themselves, their rulers, and their neighbors in their last steps of life. Still, these morbid border woodcuts proffer a conflicting narrative about the necessity of virtuous living. While the memento mori tradition reminded both men and women to deny the lusts of the flesh, the illustrations in Day’s prayer book do not simply model chaste behavior or repudiate licentiousness. Instead, the Dance of Death illustrations revel in the pleasures of carnality. A Book of Christian Prayers contains many images coupled with pithy phrases that celebrate, jestingly, the loss of female chastity and offer women models for expressing illicit desires. While female figures on other pages of Day’s prayer book represent the Virtues of mankind, in the Dance of Death, women are creatures of the flesh, and these woodcuts direct readers, especially female readers, to meditate upon death as a sex act, a final but potentially pleasurable corporeal penetration. Day’s Dance of Death particularly genders this violence as well, further emphasizing the erotic, fleshly nature of the English women represented. In these illustrations, women, thought to be more susceptible to bodily desires, face their mortality differently than men. In fact, in the series, Death only carries piercing, phallic weapons when escorting women to their graves. In only a few of the forty-seven illustrations of male figures in the 1578 edition of the prayer book does Death threaten or assault victims with penetrative objects. In most cases, he gently leads dying men by the hand or tugs on their clothing. In just a few woodcuts, Death struggles with male figures. For example, Death and “The Capitaine” are involved in a physical altercation, but the skeleton does not attack with a piercing weapon. He does, however, carry a scythe when visiting the male infant, but the blade merely rests above Death’s shoulder—a stark contrast to the image of the female infant in which the skeleton looms above a cradle preparing to plunge an arrow into the baby’s body (Fig. 6).

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Figure 4 A Book of Christian Prayers. London, 1578. (Courtesy of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

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Figure 5, 6 A Book of Christian Prayers. London, 1578. (Courtesy of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

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Death also threatens to stab the “Aldermans wife” with an arrow that suggestively protrudes from his groin and points upward (Fig. 7), and both “the Judges wife” and “the Lawyers wife” are pierced with arrows, the former in the shoulder and the latter in the arm. Another Death skeleton thrusts a spear-like object through the stomach of “the [female] Creeple”; the text carries a subtle sexual undertone, highlighting both the corruption of the body and its affinity for erotic pleasure: “Be thou poore or disesed: Thou must with me be pleased.” Moreover, Death suggests his penetrative prowess when he says to “the Countesse”: “Countesse or what thou art: I strike thee with my dart” (Fig. 8). Perhaps in an allusion to Cupid’s arrow of love, the Dance of Death positions women as the objects of Death’s affection.2 The Dance of Death illustrations and the short couplets explicating the images reveal more erotic themes as Death woos young women to their graves. He says to “the Princes[s]”: “Princes of hye estate: [content] you I am your mate.” Furthermore, Death attempts to part the skirt of “the Young Woman” as the text below the illustration states, “Fine & prety in the wast: Come with me in hast.” Death tells “the Damosell”: “Fine, proper & neate: And all is but wormes meate,” punning on the flesh’s penetration by worms in the grave. The most overt threat of penetrative violence seems to be that of Death who points the sharp edge of a scythe at the shoulder of “the Mayde” while he says, “Fresh, gallant & gay: All must with me away” (Fig. 9). While other skeletons may carry a scythe in A Book of Christian Prayers, none physically threaten their victims with such a large phallic, piercing object. Yet, the Mayde literally looks Death in the eye and takes his hand. The Mayde is not the only figure who “accepts” Death’s hand (or other skeleton parts) in the series. Even when literally facing Death, these women are depicted as acting on their fleshly desires. The Queen, for instance, walks hand in hand with Death, gracefully accepting her fate without struggle (Fig. 10). Death looks into the Baroness’ eyes as he reaches his arm around her to lead her away. Death also places his arm around the Countess, as she makes an onanistic gesture by fingering the apex of her overskirt with her right hand and pointing to the proper place of penetration with her left (Fig. 8).

2

For further information on the relation between Cupid and Death see also Judith Dundas. 1995. ‘The Masks of Cupid and Death’ in Comparative Drama 29 (1): 38-60.

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Figure 7, 8 A Book of Christian Prayers. London, 1578. (Courtesy of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

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As mentioned before, many of the women seemingly welcome Death as a suitor, and two other images even show women grasping for more than his hand. The Duchess’ right hand holds a small flower immediately in front of Death’s groin with the flower’s stem protruding down between the skeleton’s thighs. The Duchess casually grasps the stem and is seemingly unaffected by her own imminent deflowering (Fig. 11). The Mayde with the scythe in her face seemingly reaches for Death’s genitals, as her hand extends near the skeleton’s pelvic region (Fig. 10). The questionable quality of carving and accuracy of perspective in these woodcuts might prompt us to question whether these suggestive images were really intended to portray what they do. Yet, for an early modern English audience schooled to recognize erotic imagery, we cannot discount that readers contemplating these images noted the sexual undertones, especially when other Dance of Death illustrations from the period were explicitly sexual, even pornographic.3 Indeed, the sex/death connection was not uncommon in the period. Allusions to orgasm as la petite mort, ‘the little death,’ were frequent even in England, and poets often played with the double meaning of the infinitive “to die.” The sex/death relationship seemingly relied upon conceptions of the early modern body and its sinful nature. Both sexual desire and death were inevitable consequences of being mortal and the sons and daughters of Eve. Hence, the object for Christian men and women was to deny the flesh, for only by dying to one’s earthly desires could the soul live on in heaven. And prayer books, on the one hand, implied that for women, this rejection of bodily desire was possible. As Day’s prayer book contends, female readers could transcend the flesh and live devoutly by emulating the virtuous women represented in the book’s text or illustrations. On the other hand, the Dance of Death series simultaneously reinforced women’s inescapable mortality and its connection to their ungovernable sexuality. For women of the period, the prayer books that were created to help them govern their lusts also mocked their attempts by suggesting that women could not even properly disavow their bodily desires when Death was near. The Dance of Death border woodcuts ultimately insinuate that women’s virtue is something to be poked fun at. Early modern plays also wrestle with this paradox and explore what effect, if any, a prayer book can have on the “weaker” or more desiring sex. The anonymous Arden of Faversham (1592) and William Rider’s The Twins (1655) reveal that prayer books are ineffective guides to virtuous behavior for lusty ladies. .

3

In Hans Holbein’s Alphabet of Death woodcut prints, the letter S figures Death erotically fondling a prostitute’s breast and genitalia (Montaiglon 1856).

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Figure 9, 10 A Book of Christian Prayers. London, 1578. (Courtesy of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

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Figure 11 A Book of Christian Prayers. London, 1578. (Courtesy of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

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Prayer books on the stage do not help female readers rise above the flesh through spiritual meditation but are merely props used by women to satisfy their concupiscence. These plays, like Day’s illustrations, compromise the notion of the prayer book as a simple symbol of virtue when placed in a lady’s hands and in doing so, reify notions of women’s inherent and even perverse fleshly natures. However, female characters on stage, unlike the ladies in Day’s illustrations, are allowed to defend their desiring bodies and even condemn the very models of virtue presented in devotional works that urged them to deny the flesh. In Arden of Faversham, Alice Arden and her lover, Mosby, scheme to kill Alice’s husband, Master Arden. Throughout the drama, Alice and Mosby often argue, and Alice’s prayer book becomes an instrument through which to manipulate her lover and achieve her own ends. To test Mosby’s love, Alice pretends to end their affair. She claims to have repented her sinful lusts and to have transformed “From tytle of an odious strumpets name, To […] Ardens honest wife” (Scene 8, lines 72-3). During her performance, Alice carries a prayer book to costume her role as the virtuous lady, and Mosby is clearly deceived. As soon as Alice enters the scene, Mosby senses a change in her demeanor and asks, “How now, Alice! What, sad and passionate? / Make me partaker of thy pensiveness:” (8. 45-6). Appearing as the pensive lady meditating upon her prayers, Alice tricks Mosby into believing she has truly changed her adulterous ways. In this scene, Alice appropriates the prayer book’s signification in her performance of virtue and exploits the book as a symbol of chaste devotion. Thus, the play does partly sustain the belief that books, like the one Alice holds, could reform the reading lady. Upon closer examination, however, placing the book in Alice’s hands during her deception suggests that women will even use instruments of spiritual devotion to obtain what they illicitly desire. Alice proves that she understands the book’s intents and purposes: to help her curb her fleshly appetite and live as a chaste wife. And, she deliberately rejects its guidance to elicit affirmations from her lover. By positioning a prayer book in Alice’s hands, Arden of Faversham challenges the notion that devotional works will help women govern their lusts and destabilizes the object’s signification as the book becomes a symbol of Alice’s corruption, not honor. Perhaps it is this less than virtuous image of Alice that Mosby comes to recognize later in the scene when he erupts into anger at Alice’s inconstancy. In response, the crafty adulteress yet again manipulates the prayer book’s meaning. Begging for Mosby’s forgiveness, Alice cries,

Prayer Books and Illicit Female Desires on the Early Modern English Stage 225 Look on me, Mosby, or I’ll kill myself; [. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .] I will do penance for offending thee And burn this prayerbook, where I here use The holy word that had converted me. See, Mosby, I will tear away the leaves, And all the leaves, and in this golden cover Shall thy sweet phrases and thy letters dwell, And thereon will I chiefly meditate And hold no other sect but such devotion. (8.111-122)

Here, Alice uses the prayer book to express her devotion not to God but to her lover. To demonstrate that she has not converted to a chaste life, Alice rips apart the object that moments before signified her newfound virtue. Additionally, she threatens to burn the symbol of spiritual devotion as one might destroy a heretical text to eradicate its influence and condemn its message. The prayer book here still serves as a symbol of devotion, but Alice threatens to set afire the book’s original contents and replace God’s words with Mosby’s “sweet phrases.” By threatening to worship Mosby in her revised prayer book, Alice confirms her decision to worship the flesh over the spirit. Indeed, Alice rejects the spiritual body of God for the fleshly body of Mosby. The prayer book’s authority as a holy text or one that would guide Alice in penance for her sins is here literally and metaphorically torn asunder on stage. In the eyes of the play, women like Alice are slaves to their ungovernable lusts. Even when wielding a text that seemingly would arm them against temptation, women are incapable of meditating on spiritual matters and resort to their sordid contemplations on bodily desires. Yet, if we consider that prayer books, through images like the Dance of Death, may have made the possibility of spiritual transcendence almost unintelligible for women, perhaps Alice is merely responding to these ideologies and even defending women for fulfilling their desires. For instance, in murdering her husband, Alice appropriates the Dance of Death motif to justify her actions. She asks, “Why should he [Arden] thrust his sickle in our corn, / […] / Or govern me that am to rule myself” (10. 82-84). Here, Alice defends the impending murder by likening Master Arden to a death figure wielding his sickle, ready to cut down the life of a young lady, much like that of the Mayde in A Book of Christian Prayers. Casting Master Arden as the Grim Reaper provokes Alice to express her desire for freedom—freedom from a marriage that she equates with death. For Alice, her illicit relationship with Mosby is life. As she ponders a few lines later, “what is life but love?” (10. 87). Perhaps then Alice’s numerous assaults on Master Arden might be viewed as libratory revenge against the husband who aimed to control her body and her mind. Alice asks, “Why should he […] govern me that am to

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rule myself” (10. 82-84). The implicit answer in the play is that Alice cannot govern herself, for she destroys those entities that try to do so. Just as Alice rips apart the prayer book that attempted to chasten her desires, she too destroys the man that attempted to do the same. Still, Alice may have learned something from her prayer book and death’s penetrative weaponry. When Master Arden is attacked, Alice demands, “give me the weapon” and plunges a knife into her husband’s body, exclaiming “Take this for hind’ring Mosbies love and mine” (14. 237-8). By killing her personal symbol of deathly oppression, Alice does what none of the women in Day’s A Book of Christian Prayers can; she takes Death into her own hands, turns the weapon around, and penetrates him. The Dance of Death motif seemingly appears as an analog to Arden of Faversham when Alice justifies her relationship with Mosby based on her husband’s representation as a death figure. If we understand Alice’s conception of her husband as the murderer of her fleshly delights, Alice does not reject her earthly lusts but tosses the prayer book aside to defend her desires with her own two hands. William Rider’s Twins, performed in London in the 1630s and published in 1655, also presents a lady using her prayer book not for devotional guidance but to entice a lover. The stage directions in one scene ask for “Charmia in her night gown, with a prayer Book and a Taper,” (sig. F2v) an image almost identical to the emblem of Knowledge in A Book of Christian Prayers (Fig. 2). Accoutered as an icon of virtue, Charmia’s thoughts are anything but governed and chaste, for in this scene she waits for her husband’s brother, Fulvio, to join her for a tryst. Earlier in the play, when tempting Fulvio to her bed, she promised, “next hour you see me, I shall look Smooth as a Bride that marries where she loves” (sig. B4v). Thus, when the time of consummation is near, Charmia uses her prayer book to appear in this bride-like visage of innocence and costume her appearance for Fulvio’s arrival. Much like the scene in which Alice Arden uses her book to appear virtuous for Mosby, Charmia also appropriates the image of the lady reading her prayer book to deceive her lover. Likewise, the prayer book’s signification is altered when used for lustful means and by an adulteress. It becomes a symbol of deception rather than one of spiritual and bodily virtue. This scene also exposes the book’s inability to help Charmia or other women tame their appetites. The prayer book in this scene merely affirms that for women like Charmia, fleshly desires are so powerful that even prayers to resist temptation are ineffective. With her prayer book in hand, Charmia asks God for “pardon” and knows that “Heaven […], hearst [her]” (sig. F2v). However, neither the prayer book nor heaven prove helpful for Charmia, as she confesses, “I have no power afore hand to keep it off: if it be so with other women, as tis with me, they’l eat the meat they long for,

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though death be in the sauce:” (sig. F2v). Charmia’s sexual appetite here finds its origins in the fleshly body; much like physical hunger for food, Charmia’s desire for intercourse with Fulvio is a bodily compulsion. Moreover, like a poisoned meal, committing adultery is understood to be dangerous and potentially lethal, at least to her soul. In this scene in which Charmia holds the book that should help her govern her lusts, The Twins affirms that women’s desire is ungovernable and self-destructive. While Charmia cannot temper her lusts, she does challenge the validity of existing models of virtue and specifically criticizes the mediums through which these exempla are presented. Searching for one honest lady like those presented in her prayer books, Charmia declares, “the universe of nature can’t pattern my Idea with a substance. I begin to think there’s not an honest woman” (sig. E4v). The protagonist also realizes that the image of a purely chaste lady contemplating her prayers or meditating the transience of the flesh in the memento mori tradition is also just that—an image or an illusion. She confesses, “they that daylie walk in Temples amongst monuments of dead, some wrought with gold, others as white as snow; they cannot tell what foulnesse is within: could you have thought I had been so corrupt, till I laid ope my heart unto your view” (sig. F1v). Here, Charmia ridicules those who interpret a woman’s honor merely based on her outward performance of virtue. She contemptuously charges herself and other women with concealing their inner sinfulness but also chastises those who commonly misread women in prayer, especially women meditating upon the corporeality of the flesh in death. Charmia, in fact, avoids going to the temple as she used to, for she wishes not to be read as something other than she is: a desiring woman of the flesh. Furthermore, she stops praying altogether, leading her husband to question, Where be your orisons, your devout prayers Worthy the lips and hearts of glorious Saints When they solicited heaven for sinfull earth? [. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .] where be those sweet dew’d raptures, Thy dayly meditations on heaven. (sig. C3v)

While Charmia’s rejection of her prayer books might signal her distance from the very guides that would help her amend her ways, she confesses that she has lost faith in idealized models of virtue, and her prayer books are deemed useless to real women of the flesh. The prayer book becomes a complicated signifier in this play, for it represents female deception but also elicits questions about the effectiveness of prayer books in leading women to virtue. While Charmia’s accusations against women’s honesty echo those within early modern misogynist

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discourses, Charmia asserts that the moral standards and ideals for women are impossible to embody. Because female chastity is unattainable, Charmia rejects the textual models and guides that promise relief from the onslaught of earthly temptations. Charmia does reinforce that women are weak when faced with carnal desires, yet at the same time, she repudiates the elevation of women as paragons of virtue, suggesting that these impractical models can lead women’s honor to its grave. In placing prayer books into the hands of lustful ladies, Arden of Faversham and The Twins both reaffirm and challenge the prayer book’s signification of a lady’s sexual purity and chastity. On the one hand, the dramas underscore the wayward paths these women choose in their reading and their lives. The implication is that women like Charmia and Alice fail to read their prayer books properly, with the intent of governing their minds and bodies with the books’ words and examples, and thus, both women fail to live virtuously. By using prayer books as props in ladies’ hands, the plays condemn these women’s illicit desires and illicit reading practices with one stroke. Ultimately, ungoverned reading and ungoverned lust are conflated and critiqued. However, both plays also refute misguided reading of women’s chastity and allow female characters to defend their sexuality—something Day’s Dance of Death excluded even from its borders. Men within these plays buy into appearances, trusting that the outward visage of the woman with her prayer book signifies her honesty. Male characters read the prayer book as a symbol that uncomplicatedly connotes virtue, rather than exploring the multiplicity of meanings such an object can wield. Moreover, male characters fail to acknowledge women’s ability to appropriate such a symbol for their own ends. In effect, the leading ladies in both Arden of Faversham and The Twins take advantage of these misreadings and simplified categorizations to achieve their desires. Perhaps then Hamlet, one of the most talented readers on the early modern stage and a man who trusts no appearances, can offer us a less ambiguous final reading of the praying lady with her devotions, although Shakespeare’s play suggests otherwise. In Act 3, Scene 1, Polonius directs Ophelia to “Read on this book, / That show of such an exercise may colour / Your loneliness” (3.1.44-46). The book that Polonius hands to Ophelia is understood to be a prayer book or a book of devotions. Polonius recognizes the irony in using a religious text to disguise his daughter’s deceptive purpose in the scene: to be an informant for the King. In fact, Polonius reflects on the ease with which such a virtuous appearance can be appropriated. He comments, “Tis too much prov’d, that with devotion’s visage / and pious action we do sugar o’er / The devil himself” (3.1.46-49). Thus, it is no surprise that Hamlet, who is already questioning what “seems”

Prayer Books and Illicit Female Desires on the Early Modern English Stage 229

to be in his rotten Denmark, refuses to accept Ophelia’s performance of prayer as indicative of her virtue. Unlike the men in Arden of Faversham and The Twins, Hamlet reads the image of a lady with a prayer book as a sign of her deceit and corruption. When he first sees Ophelia with her book, he calls her, “Nymph, in thy orisons” (3.1.89). While Hamlet’s words may not be intended as ironic, his consistent word play requires that we acknowledge that “nymph” was also a period euphemism for prostitute or whore.4 Likewise, when Hamlet commands Ophelia, “Get thee to a nunnery!” (3.1.121), he also implicitly suggests she go to a brothel, again playing on a term’s double meaning. Hamlet claims to see beneath the surface and recognize the fleshly nature of his ex-lover and all women for that matter, but this “inherent” sexuality is seemingly all that he sees when he looks upon Ophelia and her prayer book. Paradoxically, of the female praying ladies discussed in this paper, Ophelia may be the only one who is devoutly seeking God’s intercession while she holds a prayer book in her hands. While Hamlet hammers her with accusations about her pretended virtue, Ophelia’s words mirror those in a prayer book. She pleas, “O help him, you sweet heavens” (3.1.135) and asks that “Heavenly power, restore him” (3.1.143). Ophelia’s phrases might not be the most eloquent or deeply spiritual (Sanders 1998: 69); however, they reveal that for her, the prayer book may not only represent a stage-prop within the scene. While Hamlet claims to have “heard of [Ophelia’s or women’s] paintings well enough” (3.1.144), perhaps he has not quite learned how best to read them. The difficulty in assigning meaning to Ophelia’s prayer book in this famous scene reflects the very ambiguity surrounding women’s prayer book reading in the period. The image of the lady in her devotions is easily misread because the book in itself is a mutable signifier, used to reflect virtue and corruption, chastity and lustfulness. I would argue that the very prayer books women may have used, like Day’s A Book of Christian Prayers, also failed to provide women with consistent ideologies concerning their fleshly and spiritual natures. While female figures may be easily categorized as virtuous women in prayer books’ textual and visual models, female characters on the stage suggest such categorization is much too simple. A lady on a black and white page may easily be framed in a border illustration and depicted as ungoverned in her fleshly lusts even in death, but when these characters take the stage, they are offered voice and space to both enact their desires and defend them.

4

See definition of “Nymph” at Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed.

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Ultimately, the prayer book becomes in early modern visual and dramatic representation an ambivalent object that was imagined as not only a guide for female thoughts, but also a malleable symbol to be re-defined by women as well.

Prayer Books and Illicit Female Desires on the Early Modern English Stage 231

Works Cited Arden of Faversham. 2000. (ed. M. White). New York: W. W. Norton. A Booke of Christian Prayers. 1578. London. n.p. Brayman Hackel, Heidi. 2005. Reading Material in Early Modern England: Print, Gender, and Literacy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Bruto, Giovanni Michele. 1598. The necessarie, fit and conuenient education of a yong gentlewoman. (tr. W.P. London) (Early English Books) On line at: Bodleian Library: http://gateway.proquest.com (16 November 2011). Chettle, Henry. 1601. The Death of Robert Earle of Huntington. London. n.p. Early English Books. Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery. On line at: http://gateway.proquest.com (16 November 2011). Chew, Samuel C. 1944 . ‘The Iconography of A Book of Christian Prayers.’ in Huntington Library Quarterly 8.1: 293-305. Montaiglon, Anatole de. 1856. The Celebrated Hans Holbein’s Alphabet of Death. Paris: E Tross. Montrose, Louis. 2006. The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender, and Representation. Chicago: U of Chicago Press. “Nymph” Def. 2a . Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. On line at: http://www.oed.com (16 November 2011). Rider, William. 1655. The Twins A Tragic-Comedy. London. n.p. Early English Books Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery. On line at: http://gateway.proquest.com (16 November 2011). Sanders, Eve Rachele. 1998. Gender and Literacy on Stage in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Shakespeare, William. 1998. Hamlet. (ed. H. Jenkins) (The Arden Shakespeare). Walton-on-Thames, Surrey: Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd. Tourneur, Cyril and Thomas Middleton. 1996. The Revenger’s Tragedy. (ed. R.A. Foakes). New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Gerhild Scholz Williams Romancing the News: History and Romance in Eberhard Happel’s Deß Teutschen Carls (1690) and Deß Engelländischen Eduards (1691) During the last quarter of the seventeenth century the Hamburg journalist and writer Eberhard Werner Happel wrote a series of novels highlighting different historical periods and geographical areas. These narratives share a number of characteristics. In each, Happel presents historical, scientific, and/or geographical information while setting the stage for fictional yarns about loves lost and found, feuds between friends and relatives, and sex in various locales and with frequently changing partners. The Engellaendische Eduard and the Teutsche Carl (referred to here as Eduard and Carl), published in 1690 and 1691 respectively, advertised by Happel as “Europaeische Geschicht=Romane,” are of special interest here. In these novels, Happel conjoins his romantic tales with very current information about the seventeenth-century politics and culture, information he most likely excerpted from newspaper compendia such as the Theatrum Europaeum, the writings of Johannes Praetorius, and many other collections widely read and quoted by his literate contemporaries. Following the characters as they roam far and wide across the European land and cityscapes, the reader learns much about Happel’s Europe and the passions that govern the lives of seventeenth century men and women.

With the introduction of Part III of Deß Engelländischen Eduards (1691), Eberhard Werner Happel reaffirms what he has stated in other formulations in other novelistic writings, namely that he writes novels that join history and romance, fact and fiction, in order to delight and entertain his readers: Es bleibet aber der Author nicht nur bey der blossen Romanisirung; sondern ist bemühet [a3] / unter diesem Liebes= und Helden=Gedichte / auch die vornehmsten Handlung= und Verrichtungen so wol im Kriegs= als auch andern Sachen / grosse Feld= und See=Schlachten / Belager= und Eroberungen der Städten / wie sie mit der Warheit übereinkommen / ohne Zusatz / oder Jemanden Nachtheil / wie es einem Historico geziemet / Unparteyisch / und wie sie sich hin und wieder zugetragen / auf eine ebenmässige nicht unangenehme Manier/ mit einzuflechten (Eduard III: Vorrede).1

1

The author does, however, not leave to simple novelization, but strives to interlace into this fiction of love and heroes also the most sophisticated action and performance in war as well as in other situations, great field and naval battles, sieges and captures of cities, as they agree with the truth, without addition, or to somebody’s disadvantage, as is appropriate for a Historico. Unbiased, and, as has happened every now and then, in a harmonious and not displeasing manner.

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Should anything less than the truth have slipped into the narrative, he apologizes, stating that he has done everything he could to avoid such a misstep: So auch / wider bessers Hoffen / dieses Jahrs=Geschichten betreffend / etwas / das mit der Warheit nicht völlig übereinstimmete / eingeschlichen seyn solte / wolle der Günstige Leser solches keines Weges dem Authori, sondern denen sonsten für Authentisch gehaltenen Berichten und publiquen Schriften zumessen. (Eduard III: Vorrede)2

Finally, he is confident that his reasonable and independent reader is fully capable of distinguishing facts from fiction: “Dann / was Romanische Außziehrungen seyen / das wird ein jeder verständiger Leser selbsten von der eigentlichen Geschichte zu unterscheiden wissen” (The knowledgeable reader will be able to distinguish by himself novelistic adornments from the actual story, Eduard III: Vorrede). Happel’s historical romances (Geschicht=Romane) offer news from and about the real world interwoven with or—better—held together by tales of romantic entanglements. His information is gleaned from many sources, including newspapers variously identified as Zeitungen, Avisen, and Relationen.3 We, the contemporary readers, engage with these rather lengthy novels because we realize that Happel aims not only to entertain us with his convoluted yet appealing romances and tales of frivolous, sometimes violent familial complications, but that he wants us also to take note of the “hard news” of the day: the politics, wars, international treaties, royal and imperial weddings, births, and deaths taken from the pages of the Avisen and Relationen which, in turn, are collected in yearly compendia such as the Theatrum Europaeum or Johannes Praetorius’ Zodiacus tracts (Scholz Williams 2006: 125-29). Moreover, along with the yearly “Haupt- und Staatsaktionen,” Happel informs his readers about economics, the sciences, and preternatural wonders, all the while amusing them with the complications and confusions of noble loves lost and found. These he entwines with tales about the simple life, rude manners, and lax morals of the lower classes, specifically of the peasants, whom the noble men and women come across during their circuitous wanderings. In the (at times)

2

3

If, against better ambitions, in relation to this years’ stories, something crept in that does not correspond completely with the truth, the favorable reader should attribute this not at all to the author, but to those reports and published writings otherwise assumed to be authentic. See Behringer 2003.

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confusing structure of these novels, facts and fiction thus blend as romance unfolds, all before the panorama of history and politics.4 This article examines the interaction of politics and passion in the lives of several characters in two novels, Deß Engelländischen Eduards and Deß Teutschen Carls (referred to as Eduard and Carl). I will review the structural and interpretive challenges posed by the interaction of news and romance, politics and passion. We will see that the news influences the characters’ actions and the progress of their romances just as much as do the challenges of gender, culture, and class. Along the way, through Happel’s observations on the differences between peasants’ passion and noble love, there are glimpses of some of the assumptions about social class likely shared by Happel and his readers. The Engelländische Eduard deals primarily with the events up to the year 1690, the Teutsche Carl with the preceding year, 1689. Following the fictional meanderings of the novels’ male and female characters across Europe and parts farther East, the reader becomes immersed as much in Realpolitik as in the seventeenth-century culture of romance. The news items filling the novels’ pages are varied, wide ranging and far reaching.5 The on-going conflicts between France and England, England and Ireland, and France and Germany occupy center stage. Playing on the theatrum metaphor—“Die Welt ist und bleibt ein Allgemeines Theatrum und Schauplatz aller Welt=Händeln” (The world is and remains a general theater and stage for all world’s business, Eduard: Vorrede)—while simultaneously underscoring the staged quality of these novels, newspapers are regularly announced, brought into a room, and received with welcoming comments by the characters. News reaches the characters wherever they roam in search of adventure and romance, as they demonstrate their prowess in battle or in bed, are forced to flee predatory parents or relatives, or find themselves diverted from their travel routes by violent storms, seasoned and unscrupulous pirates, and the ubiquitous robbers. The news media broaden the mental horizon of the reader who, as is the case in these novels, is also the traveler.6 Along the way, Europe metamorphoses into an expansive matrix of geography and politics overlaid with a network of personal allegiances, faithful friendships, fiery passions, and cruel betrayals. Boundaries of gender, class, and nation

4

5 6

Research on Happel’s novels has begun only recently in earnest highlighting his versatility and writerly talents, see Egenhoff 2008; Schock 2011, Tatlock 1990 and 1995. See Note 3. “[N]eben den großen Unkosten / auch einer gefährlichen Rayse dahin / überheben / wann er uns dieselbe […] durch eine Beschreibung gleichsam vor Augen stellet” (Eduard III: 223). Adams 1983: 63.

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are crossed and re-crossed, sometimes easily and for pleasure, at other times with bewilderment and dangers.7 In these novels, travel is the domain of young men and women; the old or even middle aged, most often parents and other relatives, remain sedentary, unfit for the excitement of the road, of new lives, new loves, and new battles. They provide the voice of experience as they reminisce about their own travels and romances, all long past. On the one hand, young men’s travels, whether voluntary or involuntary, are often prompted by reading about political events in faraway places. At other times young men are compelled to search for lovers who are lost or presumed dead. Young women, on the other hand, generally travel for pleasure, to escape unwanted male attention, or, like their male counterparts, to find a missing lover or husband-to-be. Both genders’ travels are often complicated by political changes or by tribulations in their personal lives, requiring them to move to a different locale, occasionally disguised as a person of the opposite sex. It is a challenge for the contemporary reader to follow the vagaries of these novels’ plots through the many episodes intertwining politics, history, and romance, and fact and fiction. Still, the variations on the themes of separation, misfortune, and disguise (including but not limited to cross dressing) are presented with imaginative verve and narrative energy. In this, Happel’s novels reflect the seventeenth-century discussion about “true factual history and seemingly true fiction” that is considered the foundation of the novel (Vosskamp, 1973: 12-17). Happel’s Romanisierungen, or the fictional aspects of the texts, conjoined with the facts, with news and history and the impact of both on the actions and movements of the characters, direct the narrative evolution of these novels. Together they contribute to the narrative tension and direct the reader toward the eventual resolution, toward the “teaching moments,” which, along with the entertainment, constitute the value of these novels (Ibid. 60). In both novels the action unfolds around the two main characters, namely Eduard and Edmunda (Deß Engelländischen Eduards) and Carl and Cyclaste (Deß Teutschen Carls). Following the principle of employing history and fiction in constructing novels of “wahre beglaubigte Geschichte und mögliche wahrscheinliche Erfindung,” these texts are governed by three constants that serve to guide the lives of these characters and those of their friends and foes (Ibid. 11).8 First, all are avid consumers of newspapers. Second, news about the internal and external politics and conflicts that roil 7

8

This contributes to the creation of what Shapiro calls “discourses of fact” which construct a “culture of fact” insinuating impartiality, fidelity, and firsthand credible witnessing by the travelers (Shapiro 2000). Vosskamp cites Wilhem von Stubenberg, Birken, and Zesen.

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the European continent prompt them to move from one political and military arena to another, occasionally changing allegiances along the way. Finally, as they journey across Europe encountering strangers and distant “Others,” such as Tartars, Russians, Circassians, and Turks, they occasionally find themselves compelled to shed their prejudices. Or alternatively they find those prejudices confirmed, as is the case when they meet Frenchmen or Italians, instances offering Happel the opportunity to highlight his clearly anti-Welsch (that is, Italian or French) bias. Moreover, as the characters encounter members of the lower classes, most often peasants, Happel’s (and presumably his readers’) negative predispositions toward them clearly demonstrate seventeenth-century stereotyping. Peasants generally do not travel, but rather stay put, and when they do roam the countryside, they wreak havoc. They love foolishly; their passions for those beyond their social reach are always unrequited. The protagonists often find themselves struggling to extricate themselves from unwanted entanglements with them. These situations are invariably presented as funny, much as in the “Schwank” tradition in German literature. Such encounters play on contradictory emotions when the vigorous, if violent, sense of justice of the locals contrasts sharply with the courtliness and weak, if polite, defenses of the noble traveler. Peasant love, if unreciprocated, turns instantly into aggressive possessiveness. Furthermore, peasant love is oriented toward immediate sexual fulfillment and marriage in the village community. Noble love covers a much wider spectrum of emotional and physical responses and likewise an extended geographical expanse to be traversed prior to the appropriately happy ending. That said, incestuous, illicit, and violent desires are as typical among noble lovers as steadfast devotion persevering through long separations and encounters with all manner of temptations. The exception to these norms is the peasant girl Ursula, whose genuine faithfulness and resourcefulness are, in the end, rewarded, although not with the desired husband. We begin our considerations of the novels with Carl. Before we meet the title character, his childhood friend and companion Baldrich tells us his story, which is also his own: “Deß Carl und meiner Begebenheiten sind demnach dergestalt in einander verknüpffet / daß keine ohne die andere völlig mag begriffen warden.”9 But even such professed closeness does not privilege Baldrich to know who Carl really is, be it a baron, a knight, or a Reichs=Graf (Carl I: 335). For the time being, Carl travels disguised as the son of Talon, a wealthy English (Albion) merchant. Confirming Happel’s very strong pro-English point of view, Carl is described as in good standing 9

Carl’s and my incidents are accordingly involved with each other in such a way that none can be completely understood without the other, Carl I: 322.

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at the court of William of Orange. On the way to Paris he strikes up a friendship with the French Dauphin by saving the latter’s life. Given the strongly critical comments throughout the novel about the rapacious war of destruction and conquest carried out by Louis XIV in the Palatinate, this friendship is no small feat; French cruelties, broken treaties, and deceptions are described in great detail throughout both novels.10 Once in Paris, Carl meets Cyclaste, the daughter of the wealthy French merchant Valcour, who is also Carl’s personal banker. Predictably, Cyclaste falls in love with Carl, the supposed merchant’s son and heir. Carl, in contrast, seems less strongly moved by thoughts of romance. In fact, after they enjoy a pleasant time conversing and playing at Ringelreiten, a form of non-lethal jousting, he bids her good-bye without revealing his true identity: that he is not a merchant’s son but rather a scion of German nobility.11 After securing her parents’ permission, the lovesick Cyclaste travels to Albion to become Carl’s bride (Carl IV: 2).12 Because her father is descended from ancient French Protestant nobility, she feels certain that she brings the greater social prestige to the match and that, therefore, her active pursuit of Carl will not be taken amiss. This genealogical information about Cyclaste’s forbearers is important, as it assures her future happiness: the eventual marriage to Carl, not the merchant’s son but the member of German nobility, is acceptable only because of her illustrious genealogy.13 In the end, Cyclaste will thus indeed be Carl’s bride, albeit “an die lincke Hand,” indicating a marriage between two people of different social status (Carl IV: 367). As she travels across Germany searching for Carl, she witnesses the destruction visited by the French soldiers on the cities along the Rhine, on Bonn, Worms, Heidelberg, and Mainz, giving Happel the opportunity to condemn repeatedly the cruelty and treachery of the French troops in their war against these cities (Carl III: 342-378; IV: 25-65). Before Cyclaste finds Carl and thus the desired happy ending, Carl travels throughout the far reaches of Tartary, Muscovy, and Turkey. He narrowly escapes castration at the Turkish court as well as predictable 10

11 12 13

“Der Frantzosen Greuel in der Pfalz wird erzehlet” (Carl II: 313); Kayserliche(s) Commissions=Decret […] [336] Frantzosen den Stillstand vom 15. August 1684 nicht beachtet […] gegen alle Gött=Geist= und Weltliche Rechen / Münster= und Nimwegischen Friedens=Schlüssel (Carl I: 336). “[I]ch bin ein ehrlicher Ritter von dem besten Teutschen Adel” (Carl II: 189). N.b. Katholisch/Reformirt (Carl IV: 8). [Carl II: 43] “Valcour Adel aus Piedmont […] woselbst seine Vorfahren der Religion halben außgewiesen worden / und habe er sich endlich in Paris niedergelassen / auch mit Handelschafft ein Ehrliches gewonnen / bey jüngster Reformation aber habe er mit seinem gantzen Haus sich der Römisch=Catholischen Religion begeben müssen / jedoch nur nach dem äusserlichen Schein / weil er und die Seinigen annoch im Hertzen gut Reformirt wären.”

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marriage proposals by both a Circassian and a Tartar princess. Toward the conclusion of the novel, these noblewomen even follow him all the way back to Germany. Dressed in men’s clothing, they participate in a tournament hosted by Carl’s brother, Christian. Unhappily, they face and kill one another in a duel (Carl IV: 356). As they breathe their last, they install Carl as heir to their distant and wealthy lands. Here as elsewhere, and time and time again, men and women thus acknowledge Carl as incomparable and perfect in every way. In his person, the negative German stereotype finds a worthy counterweight. As one of the two women marvels: man hat uns von den Teutschen erzehlet / daß sie lauter ungeschickte grobe Leute wären / und nun finden wir an euch / mein Herr / ein rechtes Muster der Leutseeligkeit / der Höflichkeit / und der Tapfferkeit. (Carl IV: 254)14

Such a superior person must be reproduced the world over. Although the possibility of genetic selection is still many centuries in the future, Syrenia, wife of the sexually-compromised Tartar prince Melik, asks Carl for an heir: “gönnt mir einen Erben von Eurer vollkommenen Person […] ich verlange einen solchen Edlen und Tugend=reichen Sohn zur Welt zu bringen/ wie ihr seyd” (Carl IV: 295-296). As he blushes profusely and politely refuses her “modest proposal,” she reassures him that her husband supports her wish and even produces a note from him to confirm it. With that Carl relents; the child to be born to the Tartar princess will be in his perfect image. Though Syrenia’s initiative seems rather forward for seventeenth-century social conduct, the contemporary reader must consider that Happel is presenting these princesses from far-away lands to demonstrate their differences from German noblewomen. Indeed, his contemporary Christian Thomasius commends Happel for his sensitivity toward the sexual and cultural “otherness” of foreign women, insisting that what we would reject as sexual aggressiveness must not be taken amiss “ob es gleich unserem decoro zuwiederlieffe” (even though it would seem to contradict our sense of decorum, Thomasius 1689/1972: 737). While Carl is busy with the Tartars and Circassians, Cyclaste continues down her long road to marital bliss, one fraught with much danger, usually presenting itself in the form of predatory men. Thus it is with great relief that anxious readers learn that Cyclaste is by no means defenseless. Confronted by four drunken peasants wanting to do her harm (“sie unverschämter weise betasten wolten,” who shamelessly wanted to touch her, Carl IV: 12), she defends her virtue by attacking two of them with her sword, inflicting serious wounds. Stunned that a woman could look at blood 14

We have been told about the Germans that they are only a clumsy, rough people and now we find in you, dear sir, an example of affability, kindness and courage.

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without fainting, let alone inflict serious harm, the peasants bring charges against her before the local duke, accusing her and her companion Ursula, who purports to be Baldrich’s fiancée, of being men in woman’s clothing (“in Weibes=Kleidern verstellte Soldaten,” Carl IV: 13). An examination by “an honest woman” proves the peasants wrong. However, a further danger lurks in the person of the duke, who now becomes aggressively demanding of Cyclaste’s affection (“der ihr gewaltig um ihe Liebe anlage,” Carl IV: 17). He hosts a tournament for the hand of Cyclaste, at which she and Ursula, the peasant girl pining after Baldrich, participate disguised as knights. Crossing gender and class lines, they are supported in their ruse by Baldrich’s mother, who procures for them appropriate armor and a place to train. Much to the chagrin of the hapless knight, they beat him and his friends at their own game (Carl IV: 20). Ursula and an English girl also abandoned by her fiance Baldrich meet Cyclaste along the way, finding companionship in their common goal, namely searching for a husband-to-be. When Cyclaste reaches her goal, her marriage to Carl, the two peasant girls finally come face-to-face with their would-be-groom, Baldrich, Carl’s faithful companion. Alas, they find that, far from keeping his promises to at least one of them, he has lost his heart to a third, equally-unsuitable girl, the “fürstliche Prinzessin” Atrobinta, who is as much his social superior as he is for the two peasant girls (Carl IV: 363). Nevertheless he attempts to flee with his new love, disguised in “schlechten und unbekandten Kleider” (in simple and unknown attire) and he is mortally wounded. At this point Ursula and the English girl both recognize him as their long lost fiancé. Rather than taking revenge on him, they tear at each other’s hair in the furious assertion of their claims. Peasant girls, of course, always claw and tear, mostly at each other and always to the amusement of the novels’ more noble characters and, presumably, its readers. In all this uproar, Baldrich breathes his last, leaving behind three grieving women.15 The romantic aggressiveness of both peasant girls in the Teutsche Carl contrasts markedly with their courage and independence as they confront the potential loss of their would-be husband. Their passion is as immediate as it is ignorant of the social chasm that separates them from the object of their affection. Each time the traveling Cavalier Baldrich gets into trouble, he is assisted by a peasant girl (Bauern-Dirne) who, in a fit of passion, demands to be accepted not just as a lover, but as a bride. Fathers and other relatives tend to support such demands forcefully (Carl I: 9). The English girl who first saves Baldrich’s life remains nameless; the second to do so is the German girl named Ursula. She is as blunt in her sexual and marital 15

“[W]elcher darunter so unmächtig ward / daß er sich endlich auf die Seite warff / und seinen Geist auffgabe” (Carl IV: 365).

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demands as her unnamed English rival. Baldrich meets Ursula after his escape from the English girl on his flight from the French. He finds refuge in Ursula’s parents’ house and, because of the crammed quarters in the cottage, is forced to spend the night with the daughter. Not knowing how to extricate himself from this predicament without being killed by the French, he promises marriage. His attempts to flee are thwarted by Ursula’s passion, her vigilance, and his fear of her brothers until, that is, he has to choose between her and being taken prisoner by the French. At that point the choice is easy: as they take him away, he tells the French “in ihrer Sprache” (in their language, Carl II: 351) that Ursula is crazy. Happel clearly has problems with this character. Ursula’s love is described as coarse and forceful, yet passionate and faithful. When she meets Cyclaste, she shows herself to be a resourceful and ingenious companion, as apt in horsemanship as in impersonating a knight, and equally as well brought up as Cyclaste (Carl IV: 20ff). And indeed, at the end of their journey the two peasant girls are rewarded for their faithfulness, their steadfast love, and their good sense: they join Carl and Cyclaste’s household, leaving the rough and uncouth world of the peasant for the elegance of the court (Carl IV: 374). The story of the Engelländische Eduard also unfolds with the help of much gender confusion, cross dressing, and romantic mix-up as the tale follows the two main characters, Eduard and Edmunda, through the vagaries of their journey toward the expected happy ending. Hiding their sexual and social identities, they too run into trouble with all manner of peasants, robbers, and pirates. We first encounter Eduard disguised as the noblewoman Celinde, lost with his/her page in the Scottish woods near their destination of Edinburgh. There they meet the nobleman Sylvian, his wife and their two adult sons, who offer shelter from the hardship of the road. What seems at first a happy coincidence turns out in fact to be the opposite. All three men, the sons and their father Sylvian (“ein in Liebes=Händel nicht unerfahrener Cavallier,” a cavalier not inexperienced in matters of love) fall in love with the beautiful Celinde. Sylvian in fact would prefer to act immediately on his infatuation by seducing her under his own roof, but fears his wife’s wrath.16 Equally overcome with passion, the two sons attack Celinde in robbers’ guise as s/he journeys toward Edinburgh. In self-defense, she kills one of the sons. Rushing to her aid and hoping to be rewarded by her affection for 16

“[W]urde auch etliche mahl Sinnes aufzustehen / vnd sie in ihrem Bethe zu besuchen / hätte es auch ohne Zweifel gethan / wann er sich nicht vor der Albela scheuen müssen / mit Gewalt sich etwas unterstehen / war nicht rathsam” (Eduard I:19).

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his bravery against the attackers, Sylvian unknowingly kills the other son whom, in disguise, he does not recognize. Immediately horrified by what he has done, Sylvian violently denounces his fate and commits suicide (Eduard I: 31). This family drama, brought about by three men lusting after a woman who turns out not to be a woman at all, is the first instance of the inappropriate, even violent sexual desire of older men for young women, married women pining for attractive strangers, and the confusion over gender and social identities that lead to destructive passions and (sometimes) unhappy endings. After arriving in Edinburgh, Celinde abandons her disguise and reveals herself to be the English nobleman Eduard: beautiful, valiant, gentle, and very well educated. While the reasons for Eduard’s cross dressing remain a mystery until quite deep in the novel, the action itself, namely a “woman” fully capable of defending herself and even killing an attacker, is not in any way censored. The narrative merely acknowledges that a woman can be accomplished in the practice of sword and pistol. As we have seen in the Teutsche Carl, such skillfulness with weapons and on horseback is clearly as acceptable among well-bred women as it is among well-bred men.17 Placing the Celinde/Eduard episode at the very beginning of this novel effectively reemploys the narrative strategy already encountered in Carl: Happel’s fictional characters, male and female, navigate the challenges posed by global and local geographies and events with remarkable equanimity and flexibility, if without, to the reader, immediately obvious explanation. They roam the European continent, visiting foreign cities and strange lands to prove their valor, satisfy their thirst for novelty, test their loyalty, and seek out others equally peripatetic. Following the principle of partial and thus scintillating disclosure, Happel waits until the second book to explain why Eduard is in need of disguise. It turns out that the titular character’s fortitude is sorely tested by Hardiknut, the hostile father who has driven him away from his home court due to his preference for the younger son, the unprincipled and conniving Canut. At an especially precarious moment toward the end of the narrative, Eduard inadvertently kills his brother Canut during a nocturnal romantic muddle involving them both. Canut, in disguise, becomes the victim of mistaken identity (Eduard IV: 156-170). The terrified Eduard then flees not only the scene but also the country. Along the way, he seeks to distract 17

Edmunda, Eduard’s love interest, explains her skill at the sword with her innate fearlessness in which she differed from other women: “weil ich nun mit tapffern jungen Leuthen täglich umgienge / und den Degen ein wenig verstunde / kriegte ich nach und nach auch eine mehere Courage und Hertzhafftigkeit / daß ich mich nicht leichtlich für etwas entsetzete / noch/ nach Weiblicher Blödigkeit / eine Gefahr groß achtete” (Eduard IV: 338).

Romancing the News 243

himself by traveling from town to town, sightseeing and passing his time reading the news. Just as Eduard, disguised as Celinde, had to flee the advances of the lecherous Sylvian (Eduard I: 19), Edmunda is forced to flee from the illplaced affection of Hardiknut, Eduard’s father. She does so by disguising herself as a man, taking the name Emedund.18 These parallel cross-dressings confer on the lovers-to-be, Edmunda and Eduard, a de-gendered quality: they seem to slip in and out of gender roles with such skill and ease that it almost puts their gender identity into question. Whether in masculine or feminine dress, they are both always beautiful, attracting the passionate attention of members of the opposite sex. Accordingly, far from providing the protection desired their cross-dressing works so perfectly that it repeatedly gets them into troubling and potentially violent situations. Thus, when Edmunda metamorphoses from a beautiful woman into a beautiful man (“schöne[r] Mann”), she attracts much unwelcome attention from the opposite sex. On her flight from Hardiknut, s/he finds herself vigorously pursued by a nameless peasant girl who mistakenly thinks that helping the handsome stranger escape from an angry peasant mob will make the beautiful, and presumably grateful, stranger her husband. Edmunda/Emedund is deeply offended by the girl’s unseemly affection for a person far above her station, regardless of his/her actual gender. Yet, unable to flee without the girl’s help, Edmunda/Emedund acquiesces to her request of a kiss in hopes of temporary satisfaction. To little avail, as s/he soon finds out. Like the peasant girls in love with Baldrich, this girl faithfully waits for her “lover’s” promised return. Meanwhile, her mother alternately beats her for her foolishness and praises her for having sold her virginity so dearly.19 Trying to escape and wandering about the countryside not knowing which way to turn, Edmunda/Emedund is discovered by several of the peasants who suspect that s/he wants to evade the marriage promise. In spite of her/his valiant defense, they try to take her/him prisoner. Edmunda/Emedund seems destined to fare very badly until a local nobleman named Stilpo, much impressed by the stranger’s courage and ease with the sword, stops to liberate “him.” Not eager to give up, the peasants press their case at the ducal court where the girl, still in love with Edmunda/Emedund, asserts her right to “him” by placing a big “peasant 18

19

“[W]eil er eine nicht geringe Liebes=Flamme (ungeachtet er schon wol bey Jahren) in seinem Herzen gegen sie hegete / und / um solcher Ursach willen seinen Sohn Eduard, (dessen gegen Edmunden tragende Liebe ihme nicht allerdings unbekandt/) desto gehässiger ware” (Eduard III: 133). Because “sie ihr Pussilage so wohl angeleget / ware deßwegen nicht mehr so hart erbittert / als Anfangs” (Eduard IV: 23).

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kiss” on her/his lips. This affront prompts Edmunda to lose all decorum and hit the girl across the mouth hard enough to draw blood, much to the amusement of all present (Eduard IV: 233). Upon hearing of Edmunda/Emedund’s predicament, the duke pronounces her/him innocent of the peasants’ charges and free from the girl’s claim. However, Edmunda/Emedund’s relief about this positive outcome is immediately dampened when s/he discovers that Stilpo’s wife Serena presents a new romantic challenge. Instantly and without hesitation, Serena vigorously presses upon Edmunda/Emedund her obviously unchaste affection (Eduard 4: 270-271). Cornered in his/her bedroom and desperately trying to escape from Serena’s aggressive advances, Edmunda/Emedund tears open her shirt, revealing to the stunned Serena her “white breasts.” Only then does the lovesick wife regain her senses, moving swiftly from carnal desire for Emedund to fervent friendship for Edmunda. On Edmunda’s bed, the two women fall sleep in each other’s arms, where Stilpo later finds them. In a jealous rage he wants to kill Edmunda/Emedund. When the confusion is cleared up, Stilpo apologizes. Serena’s obviously guilty passion for the beautiful stranger, mistaken for a man, remains hidden and unpunished. In addition the servant girl who alerted Stilpo to his wife’s romantic predilection is forced to take her leave.20 Things turn out differently for Eduard’s father Hardiknut, whose unseemly desire for the much younger Edmunda and his equally blind love for his worthless son Canut started the whole drama: he dies suddenly and violently after being confronted with the truth about Eduard and Edmunda. It turns out that Eduard is not his son. Moreover, the fact that Edmunda, the object of his passion, is his daughter renders his desire for her incestuous. As a result, fear, horror, hate, fury, vengeance, and anger throw him into such a paroxysm that he falls down dead.

20

“Ob schon Serena an ihrem Gemahl sich ziemlich vergriffen / so muste desto weniger Stilpo Sünder seyn […] und bey seyner Serena sich außsöhnen lassen / […] Das Kammer=Mensch aber / […] muste / wiewol in gewisser Maß / unschuldig das Bad aussauffen / und in höchster Ungnad ihren Dienst quittieren […] so stünde auch noch dahin / ob einem in Diensten Stehenden zukommen könne / seiner Herrschafft Beginnen außzuspähen / und an den Tag zu bringen” (Eduard IV: 333).

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The novels end with weddings, or, where weddings are not an option, as is the case of Hardiknut and Baldrich, with death. The newlywed couples, now safe and comfortable at home, amuse themselves with “allerhand Zeitungen und Gesprächen,” (various newspapers and conversations) such as reports from Germany about the sea battle between the Dutch and the English, and about yet another victory of the Turks over the Germans (Eduard IV: 399400). As in the Teutsche Carl, Carl and Cyclaste host a large banquet where the guests are entertained with the latest news of the world.21 In both cases, the reader leaves the stage to the fictional couples in their fictional bliss and returns to the theater of news and politics of the real world.

21

“Als der Cavallier diesen Brief abgelesen hatte / forscheten die beyden Printzen / ob er nicht anders von neuen Zeitungen / zum Beschluß des Jahres / mitzutheilen hätte? Worauf sich dieser folgender Gestalt heraußließ: Am 9. Decembris ward der neugebohrne Königl. Printz von Protugal […] zu Lissabon getauffet.” This is followed by reports about a storm in Augsburg, and earthquake in Austria, and an imperial defeat at the hands of the Tartars and the Turks (Eduard IV: 370).

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Works Cited Adams, Percy G. 1983. Travel Literature and the Evolution of the Novel. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Behringer, Wolfgang. 2003. Im Zeichen des Merkur: Reichspost und Kommunikationsrevolutions in der Frühen Neuzeit. Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte. Vol. 189. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. Egenhoff, Uta. 2008. Berufsschriftstellertum und Journalistik in der Frühen Neuzeit: Eberhard Werner Happels Relationes Curiosae im Medienverbund des 17. Jahrhunderts. Bremen: Edition Lumiere. Theatri Europaei Continuati Dreyzehender Theil/ Das Ist: Abermalige Aussführliche Fortsetzung Denck= Und Merckwürdiger Geschichten. 1693. Frankfurt am Main: Merian. Happel, Eberhard Werner. 1691. Dess Engelländischen Eduards/ Oder so genanten Europäischen Geschicht-Romans, auf das 1690. Jahr. 4 vols. Ulm: Matthaeus Wagner. ——. 1690. Dess Teutschen Carls/ Oder so genannten Europäischen Geschicht=Romans auf das 1689. Jahr. Ulm: Matthaeus Wagner. Schock, Flemming , 2011. Die Text-Kunstkammer: Populäre Wissenssammlungen des Barock am Beispiel der »Relationes Curiosae« von E.W. Happel. Köln: Böhlau. Shapiro, Barbara J. 2000. A Culture of Fact: England, 1550-1720. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Tatlock, Lynne. 1995. Selling Turks: Eberhard Werner Happel's Turcica (1683-1690) in Colloquia Germanica 28, 3-4: 307-337. ——. 1990. Thesaurus Novorum: Periodicity and Rhetoric of Fact in Eberhard Werner Happel's Prose in Daphnis 19.1: 105-135. Thomasius, Christian. 1689/1972. Eberhardi Guerneri Happelii Africanischer Tarnolastin Freimütige, lustige und ernsthafte, jedoch vernunftsmässige Gedanken oder Monatsgespräche. Athenaeum. 697-806. Vosskamp, Wilhelm. 1973. Romantheorie in Deutschland: Von Martin Opitz bis Friedrich von Blanckenburg, Germanistische Abhandlungen. Stuttgart: Metzler. Williams, Gerhild Scholz. 2006. Ways of Knowing in Early Modern Germany: Johannes Praetorius as a Witness to His Time, Literary and Scientific Cultures of Early Modernity. Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate.

Gender and Violence on the Stage

Susan Parisi Transforming a Classical Myth in Seventeenth-Century Opera: the Story of Cybele and Atys in the Libretti of Francesco Rasi and Philippe Quinault This article examines the transformation of Ovid’s Cybele and Atys legend in the libretti of the first two operas on the subject: the Italian setting of 1616 by Francesco Rasi, who was also the composer, and the French version of 1676 by Philippe Quinault, set to music by Jean Baptiste Lully. Despite the obvious differences in national approaches, courtly conventions, and developments in the genre in the years between them, there are similarities in the two conflations of Ovid and Catullus with sixteenth and seventeenthcentury glosses and commentaries, as in writings of Cartari, Anguillara, Benserade, and Renoüard. Most strikingly, Rasi and Quinault both enlarge the role of physical love in the myth, render the goddess and nymph substantially human in their emotions, and give Atys new vigor. On the other hand, Rasi and Quinault deliver two opposing lessons to their respective audiences in their resolution of the drama. Rasi presents a humanistic view of an Atys who rises above his failings and is taken to Heaven to contemplate the sublime—as in the apotheosis of Orpheus in the published version of Monteverdi’s opera, a role Rasi had premiered. Quinault, projecting the attitudes of contemporary French court and salon society, has Atys, with his death by his own hand, defying the goddess, an ending which, in contrast to Rasi’s, emphasizes the message that one’s passions must not be curbed. The historical record corroborates that the opera and message met with approval from Louis XIV.

This study offers reflection on the transmission of a classical myth in two operas composed in the seventeenth century. It places in juxtaposition an early Italian opera, Francesco Rasi’s La favola di Cibele ed Ati of 1616 on Rasi’s own libretto, and a French opera, Jean Battiste Lully’s Atys of 1676 on a libretto by Philippe Quinault, the first (and only) extant operas before the late eighteenth century based on the tragic legend of the goddess Cybele and the object of her love, the Phrygian youth Atys. The classical tale explores themes of unrequited love, sexual transgression and guilt, death and transmutation. In the myth Atys is unfaithful to Cybele, and she, in punishment, drives him to madness and self-emasculation, and then transforms him into a pine.1 1

In an earlier article on the Rasi opera (‘Francesco Rasi’s La favola di Cibele ed Ati and the Cybele Legend from Ovid to the Early Seicento’ in Music Observed: Studies in Memory of William C. Holmes, ed. Colleen Reardon and Susan Parisi, I examined the work’s structural reliance on Claudio Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo (1607), and documentary evidence concerning the intended premiere, as well as some of the antecedent literary

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Obvious differences between the Rasi and Quinault-–Lully settings derive from their respective national approaches to opera, and from the broader developments of the half century that separates them. But similarities can be seen in the two works’ respective conflations of Ovid and Catullus, the principal classical sources, with such contemporary sources as translations and glosses of Ovid, mythographers’ manuals, and poems. In modernizing the myth to respond to current social and intellectual trends–– on the one hand the new favola in musica in early seventeenth-century Mantua, on the other hand Racinian tragedy, the legacy of the précieuses, and the milieu of contemporary court and salon society in Paris in the 1670s— both operas enlarge the role of physical love in the tale, alter the corporeal features of the goddess and nymph, rendering both substantially human in their emotions, and give Atys new vigor. As will be argued here, their authors also use the legend’s conclusion to deliver two opposing lessons to their respective audiences. The Cybele and Atys legend takes up just twenty-two lines in Ovid’s Fasti, and is prefaced by the question, “Why do Cybele’s priests castrate themselves?” Ovid tells us that Atys was a handsome Phrygian youth whom the tower-bearing goddess Cybele chose to be the guardian of her temple, demanding that he remain forever chaste, a condition Atys pledged to maintain. But Atys met the nymph Sangaride and broke his promise. The angry goddess exacted vengeance: the nymph perished and Atys went mad. He swore the Furies were torturing him, and crying out (in Frazer’s translation), “‘I have deserved it’ [...] he retrenched the burden of his groin, and of a sudden was bereft of every sign of manhood” (Ovid’s Fasti, book IV, lines 223-44). In the Metamorphoses, which devotes only three lines to the tale, Ovid makes reference only to Atys’ transformation into a pine tree. (Book X, lines 103–05.) Catullus’ “Atys” poem of ninety-three lines focuses on the aftermath of Atys’ self-mutilation, when waking from his madness, Atys weeps and regrets his castration, and fears that he will be Cybele’s “servant girl.” In contrast to Ovid’s Cybele, Catullus’ goddess is ruthless. It is she who releases her lion to attack Atys, who thereupon flees into the

and artistic treatments of the legend. Aspects of the latter discussion serve as a point of departure in the present essay. I am grateful to Mara R. Wade for the invitation to participate in the University of Illinois conference, which gave me the occasion to write this comparative essay, and for her encouragement of its publication. I am indebted to Catherine Gordon-Seifert for kind help regarding an interesting later source, and, as always, to my husband, Herbert Kellman, for insightful comments on various aspects of the study. I would also like to thank the University of Illinois Research Board and its Research Scholars’ Program, and the Newberry Library Renaissance Consortium, for support of this project.

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forest, “and there for the whole expanse of her [his] life was a handmaid forever.”2 Francesco Rasi (1574-1621) composed the libretto and music for La favola di Cibele ed Ati while in the service of the Gonzaga dukes of Mantua. In the 1590s Rasi had associated with humanist circles in Florence, where his father held a minor administrative post at the Medici court, and then had studied law at the University of Pisa, although he soon abandoned law for music and letters. Before his hiring by the Gonzagas in 1598, Rasi had traveled in Italy and Germany, and had visited Warsaw and Vienna. After he came to Mantua he continued to travel and was often a guest at other courts. Admired for his exceptional vocal talent, he sang in a number of staged entertainments, including the title role in Claudio Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo (1607). Rasi also composed a sizeable body of work: fifty-one songs and four narrative dialogues are extant, as are two collections of his poetry.3 The libretto of Cibele ed Ati is in the second of these, La Cetra di sette corde (Fig. 1), a collection Rasi dedicated to his employer, Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga.4 The music for the opera does not survive. On his at least seven trips to Rome, Rasi would have viewed private collections of antiquities, and certain of these may have aroused his interest in the subject.5 In Mantua he would have seen paintings of Cybele by Andrea Mantegna and Giulio Romano, and possibly by Peter Paul Rubens, who was his colleague at the Mantuan court.6 Probably Rasi was familiar with Giambattista Marino’s 128-line version of the Cybele and Atys story in his epic poem L’Adone, since the two men were personally acquainted and their approaches to aspects of the classical tale are similar.7

2 3

4

5

6 7

Catullus Poems 61-68, ed. Godwin, 49, 51. Catullus [Poem 63], ed. Goold, 90-97. For Rasi’s biography, see Kirkendale 1993: 556-603, and Parisi 1989: 477-87, 616-49. On Rasi’s compositions, see Porter, “Rasi, Francesco,” Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com La Cetra di sette corde. Rime del Cavaliere Francesco Rasi. The seven sections have a separate dedicatee; by the time of publication, the dedicatee of Cibele ed Ati was Ranuccio Farnese, duke of Parma. For details, see Parisi 2004. By the early seventeenth century, statues and altars to Cybele and Atys had been acquired by a number of cardinals and prominent Roman families, and excavations had identified others from the fourth century A.D. below the façade of St. Peters. See Vermaseren 1977, 1977-1978; and Parisi 2004: 365-68. For these paintings, see Parisi 2004: 369-72, and on Rubens in Mantua, see Parisi 2002: 251-63. L’Adone poema del Cavalier Marino […] con gli argomenti del Conte Fortuniano Sanvitale, et l’allegorie di Don Lorenzo Scoto (Paris: Oliviero di Varano, 1623), canto 5, stanzas 82-97. Marino worked on L’Adone for thirty years; on the poem’s circulation before publication, see Mirollo, 1963: 72. For connections between Marino’s and Rasi’s settings of the legend, see Parisi 2004: 374-76.

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Figure 1 Francesco Rasi, La Cetra di sette corde (Venice: Ciotti, 1619), frontispiece. Courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago.

Transforming a Classical Myth in Seventeenth-Century Opera 253

Figure 2 Vincenzo Cartari, Le Vere e nove imagini de gli dei delli antichi. (Padova: Tozzi, 1615), 188. Woodcut by Filippo Ferroverdi of a third century A.D. marble altar to Cybele and Atys. Courtesy of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Illinoi at Urbana-Champaign.

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In the adaptations of the legend written in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as those by Anguillara, Marino, and Rasi, and even Pierre Ronsard’s 170-line poem “Le Pin”—a reworking of Catullus’ “Atys”8—there is generally a greater preoccupation with the sensational and sexual aspects of the myth. In Rasi’s libretto, after the prologue which introduces the tale and speaks of a ruse by Cupid, traditional allusions from the legend recede into the background, where they intermingle with newly constructed dialogue and action.9 Working within the framework of the new favola in musica and its assembly of scenes and characters from the pastoral, celestial, and underworld realms, Rasi nevertheless has the goddess speak about physical love, and he writes (as does Marino) a lengthy love scene for Atys and the nymph Sangaride, and emphasizes physical details not in the classical versions. For example, in the first act when Atys promises to be faithful to Cybele, she instructs him to stay away, should he be aroused by “shiny, golden hair.” This leaves Atys to wonder if the goddess is tempting him.10 Although his final response is more determined than in Ovid (he will keep his will in check and bow to Cybele’s),11 a chorus follows, sung to Hebe, goddess of youth. In the 1571 edition of the mythography manual by Cartari, Hebe is depicted as a bare-breasted young woman accompanied by the message, “youth’s vitality does not usually encounter misfortune” (Fig. 3)—a message that reflects the turn of Rasi’s plot. In Rasi’s drama, a newly invented scene for Cupid introduces the idea that it is really he who controls the events, and who will “make Atys take into his heart a younger beauty” and “pour a little jealousy into Cybele’s heart.”12 In the extended scene in which Atys spies Sangaride (in Act 2), she is the more aggressive of the two, pleading with him to look at her, and when at first he resists, she adopts precisely the argument laid out in the commentary to Anguillara’s verses on the legend. 8 9

10

11

12

Whether Rasi knew Ronsard’s poem of 1569 is not known. For the poem, see ibid, 371-73, and for Rasi’s travel to France, see Parisi 2008: 275-305. In a prefatory note in the libretto, G. B. Ciotti, the publisher, mentions that Rasi modified the fable, especially toward the end, and that he departed from Ovid in order to give the tale a happy ending since it was to be sung in front of the prince to whom it is dedicated. Rasi 1619b, libretto, 11. Ati: “Perche dunque mi tenti? / E di mia fè dubbiosa / […]” Cib: “[…] ove si vede / Chioma d’or, che risplenda/ Beltà ch’i cori accenda, / Indi volgi il pensier non men ch’il piede.” Ibid. Ati: “[…] Con la mia man di libertate il freno, / A tuo voler s’ascriva.” Later Atys announces that he will go hunting and enjoy life, “fitting for my young age,” while the goddess is away in her celestial abode (libretto, 15). Ibid., 14-15: “Son dolce, e sono amaro / Di miele, e di veleno /[…]Farò, ch’n seno accoglia / Più gioven il bellezza Atti diletto, / E per entro ’l tuo petto / Verserò ’l fel d’amara gelosia.”

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Figure 3 Cartari, Le Imagini de i dei de gli antichi (Venice: Valgrisi, 1571), 57. Engraving by Bolognino Zaltieri of Hebe, goddess of youth. Courtesy of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Illinoi at Urbana-Champaign.

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This states: Nella trasformatione di Ati in Pino, si può pigliar essempio quanto è mal convenevole il matrimonio quando vi è gran differenza di età, come era fra Cibele madre de gli Dei, & Ati ancor giovinetto, e però non è maraviglia se ne seguono per cagione della gelosia di molti mali accidenti, come veggiamo tutto di avenire, e come avenne all’infelice Ati che si vuoltò all’Amore più convenevole ad esse della Ninfa Sagarithide. 13

In Rasi’s scene, Sangaride’s lines are: “Atys, look at me, I am the same age as you. The grander one for whom you spurn me is past the flower of years.”14 When she pleads for one hour alone with him, Atys is overcome and gives in. Rasi’s Act 3, the half-way mark in the drama, is a newly created scene for Mercury and Cybele in the celestial realm, in which Cybele is conspicuously shown more human than goddess as she rages against Atys, calling him “vain, disloyal, vile, ungrateful, evil, and a shameful example of meanness.”15 However, traditional operatic stagecraft follows. Although Mercury tells her to forgive mortals for their sins, she is not ready to do so, and he descends to the underworld as her messenger, delivering a didactic message to the audience not to ridicule the gods “or the kings on earth because […] their 13

14

15

“In the transformation of Atys into a Pine, one sees an example of how unseemly marriage is when there is a large difference in age, as there was between Cybele mother of the gods and Atys still a youth, and how it is no wonder that because of jealousy many bad occurrences follow, as we see all come to pass, and as happens to the unhappy Atys who turns toward a more seemly love with the nymph Sangaride.” From Le metamorfosi di Ovidio ridotte da Gio. Andrea dall’Anguillara, in ottava rima, 1588 ed., book 10 commentary, p. 190. A medieval antecedent for this pragmatic point of view exists in Petrus Bechorius, Ovidius Moralizatus, though further Christian moralizing follows in its commentary: “Nor is it good to wed a boy to an old woman, for he does not keep faith with her, but wants to dwell carnally with young women and nymphs…say, allegorically that the mother of the gods is the church which joins very beautiful boys to herself through the Catholic faith; because they do not keep the faith they owe her—that is because of the sins they commit—they castrate themselves spiritually by breaking the vow of chastity, so she is accustomed to change them into pines—that is, high persons—and take them specially as her own.” (Translation from Reynolds 1971: 351-52). Rasi 1619b, libretto, 20-21. Ati: “Ma perche d’altri io sono, / Esser tuo non poss’io / […]” Sang: “[…] Ati, deh mira / Egual ti son d’etate / […] Tù me scorgi à tuo senno / A me del voler tuo, sia legge il cenno / Altra più forse altera, / Per cui tù me condanni, / Non havra ’l fior de gli anni, / E sia teco men fida, e più severa / […] Lascia che nel tuo petto / Goda un’ hora beata / Quest’alma innamoratà.” Ibid., 23-24: “[…] Ah folle, ah disleale /[…] Vil negletto mortale /[…] quell’ingrato, ed’empio /[…] D’esecrabil viltà misero esempio. /[…] Hor si mi prende à scherno, / Che per mortal sembiante / Lascia me Diva amante?”

Transforming a Classical Myth in Seventeenth-Century Opera 257

right hands are ready to strike to avenge offenses and abuses.”16 When in the next act Pluto charges the Furies to obey Cybele’s commands, Rasi stresses physical details from the classical legend and as seen in the illustration of the Furies by Filippo Ferroverdi in Cartari’s 1615 edition (Fig. 4). Indeed, Rasi appears to be almost echoing the illustration, in referring to the Furies’ “horrid faces” and “viperous hair that disturbs [...] excoriates […] and tortures.” At this point Cybele, who is bitter and still furious, commands them to make Atys hate himself intensely and cause his own death.17 Act 5 opens with Atys in the pastoral world, flattering himself that a nymph has become aroused by his beauty as earlier a great goddess succumbed, but he suddenly believes himself surrounded by darkness and attacked by a wild beast. Rasi’s imagery continues to accentuate the sensational aspects of the classical tale, such as: “the wild beast […] opens its mouth with foaming teeth […] here the Furies are coming at me to tear my sex;” Atys imagines trees trembling and rivers of blood flowing from the mountains, and cries out that he knows the goddess’ rage and will expiate his sins.18 Rasi adds a newly constructed scene for Sangaride and an invisible Echo (a device that soon became popular in opera), for which the echo scene in Alessandro Striggio and Claudio Monteverdi’s Orfeo of 1607 would have provided a model. In the number of rhymed exchanges that he introduces, Rasi’s scene surpasses Striggio’s. There are ten such exchanges in all, among them: “Where is Atys?” Echo: “He’s dead.” “What did Atys do?” “He lied.” “Did he sin with his heart or his hand?”

16

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18

Ibid., 24-25: “[…] Non schernite mortali i Dei celesti, / Non men gli Eroi, non meno i Regi in terra, / Perche a la lor sembianza, essi ben sanno / Portar gioia, & affanno / Sicura pace; e perigliesa guerra / E contro ingiurie, ed onte / Han le lor destre a fulminar ben pronte.” Ibid., 26-27. Alecto: “[…] D’orribil face, e la viperea chioma, / Ch’agita l’alme, e le flagella, e doma.” Cib: “[…] Vindice Aletto, e’l tuo furor disfrena, / E fà […] che disperato / Ei se medesmo abborra. / Indi per doglia ria / A se ministro sia / De la sua propria morte.” Ibid., 28-30. Ati: “[…] Hoggi a la mia bellezza / Ninfa gentil s’accese, / Come dianzi gran Dea vinta si rese / […] Ma, che nel Ciel rimiro? / […] Com’hor la notte oscura, / Com’hor dispiega l’atro velo intorno? / […] Leone, […] come horribile scote / L’aspre terga vellose / Già già fervido d’ira / Ne le piaggie del Ciel gli astri diuora. / […] Ecco torma di belve / Aprir denti spumosi / Voragine fameliche, & ingorde. / Eccole à me, per lacerarmi il sexo / […] Oh me tremanle selve, / Versano i monti, giù fiumi di sangue. / […] Furie, men corre à vendicar mie colpe: / Conosco il fallo, e de la Dea lo sdegno.”

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Figure 4 Cartari, Le Vere e nove imagini de gli dei delli antichi (1615), 260. Woodcut by Ferroverdi of the three Furies. Courtesy of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Illinoi at Urbana-Champaign.

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“His hand.” “Will I see him again?” “Never.”19 In this moment, as Sangaride longs for the lover who will not return to her, her suffering is palpable and although she is a naiad, she, too, seems endowed with human faculties. If Rasi had wanted to prolong Sangaride’s feeling of loss, he could have inserted one of his solo songs at this juncture in the drama. From his extant published collections of songs, the solo song “Ahi, fuggitivo ben,” to his own text about an abandoned lover who laments, in a setting of nature, would fit very well here. As in the rhymed exchanges in the libretto, Echo’s melodic imitation of short segments of the vocal line would have been sung by a second singer, probably positioned behind the scenery.20 When Cybele in a stage machine—her carriage in the heavens—begins to pity Atys’ pain, Rasi has her pleading to Cupid for help, to which he accedes, telling her, “It was I who made a traitor of a faithful man. It will be I who will make you happy and him, too,” (and find Sangaride another lover).21 Atys asks for and receives Cybele’s forgiveness, and she bids him to ascend with her to the eternal realm.22 The epilogue is a conventional one, closing the opera with Cupid’s message, “My praises be heard” and the ballo “Cupid reigns.” As it turned out, Rasi’s opera was not staged in Mantua during the March 1617 celebrations of Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga’s marriage, as had been intended. The precise reason the work was not performed is not known. However, certain circumstances of the moment almost certainly played a role. The duke’s amorous liaison with a sixteen-year-old lady-inwaiting at court had produced a son in December 1616. Although Ferdinando wed Caterina de Medici in Florence two months later, his affair and the after-effects consumed the court for months. As I have discussed 19 20

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For full discussion of this scene and the parallels with Orfeo’s encounter with Echo in Alessandro Striggio and Claudio Monteverdi’s Orfeo, see Parisi 2004: 380-82. Rasi, “Ahi, fuggitivo ben,” Vaghezze di musica per una voce sola (Venice: Angelo Gardano, 1608): “Ahi, fuggitivo ben come sì tosto / sconsolati lasciasti / i miei desiri. / Deh, come sia ch’a’ miei dolori acosto, / di viver lieta più, lassa, desiri? / O valli, o fiumi, o poggi—O, tu riposti, / dolce loco pietoso a’ miei sospiri. / Se rimbombasti ai miei gravi accenti, / udit’, or prego, i duri miei lamenti.” Rasi 1619b, libretto, 32-33. Cib: “[…] Non so qual novo affetto / Cangi mia feritate / In occulta pietate […]” Cupid: “[…] Opra fù di mia mano, / Che’l tuo fedel ti divenisse infido. / Sarà pur’ opra mia, / Che tù contenta, ed ei beato sia. / […] A Sangaride poi / D’altro amator terreno / Con altra gioia appagherolle il seno.” Ibid., 34. Ati: “[…] L’errore in ch’io trascorsi / È stata anco mia pena, / Se quasi disperato à morte io corsi. / Dunque mi vaglia humil chieder perdono. / Ogni mio ben, d’amor, di te fia dono.” Cib: “Non più, ch’assai m’è chiaro / L’Error di pietà degno, / E quantò ti fù dura / La tua sofferta pena. / Hor per l’aria serena / Non men ti sarà caro / Messo venirne al sempiterno regno.”

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elsewhere, despite the popularity of Ovid’s tales and their adaptations in theatrical events, concern on the part of the court officials that the audience might associate Atys’ conflict with the duke’s predicament—caught between the young woman (alias Sangaride) whom he probably loved and with whom he had just had a child and the far more mature bride (alias Cybele)— remains a distinct possibility.23 The resolution of the drama that Rasi adopts in Cibele ed Ati is a humanistic view of an Atys who rises above his failings and is elevated to Heaven, as in the apotheosis of Orpheus, who in the final scene of Monteverdi’s opera is escorted to heaven by Apollo (this occurs in the version published in 1609, but not in the earlier version in which the bacchantes tear Orpheus apart, limb by limb [as in the Albrecht Dürer drawing analyzed by Helmut Puff in this volume]).24 In the 1670s, had Philippe Quinault read Rasi’s libretto, he might have seen in it a different meaning. By the act of conducting Atys to the celestial realm, where he will forego worldly pleasures and passions—among them, the license to procreate—in favor of contemplating the sublime, the goddess Cybele has in the end prevailed. She has (in a figurative sense) subjugated Atys into voluntary impotence. Quinault’s ending for the opera (and Lully’s) would invite a very different reading from its public, and it is to this work that we now turn. Philippe Quinault (1635-88) had been a successful playwright for twentythree years when he wrote the libretto to Atys. Although he came from a modest household, he had already at the age of eight served as a valet to the poet and playwright Tristan L’Hermite, and later he trained at the school of Philippe Mareschal, a master writer in Paris. In the early 1650s Quinault began to write his own plays. Having become a private secretary to Henri de Lorraine, duc de Guise in 1656, his work soon began to circulate at court. In 1670 Quinault became a member of the Académie Française, and in the following year he collaborated with Lully, Molière, and Pierre Corneille in the court divertissement Psyché. As court librettist, between 1672 and 1686 Quinault produced the texts for eleven Lully operas (tragédies en musique) and two ballets.25

23 24 25

Documentation on the Duke’s affair is in Sorbelli-Bonfa 1918: 11-29; Parisi 1987: 5591; and Parisi 2004: 384-88. On the ending of Monteverdi’s opera, see Solomon 1995: 27-47; Hanning 2003; Sternfeld 1986: 20-33; Whenham 1986: 35-41. Quinault also authored seventeen tragedies, tragi-comedies, and comedies, and a large number of poems, over sixty of which were set to music by his contemporaries. For his biography, see Norman 2002: 297-306, and Anthony, “Quinault, Philippe,” Grove Music Online.

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The Quinault–Lully Atys premiered before King Louis XIV’s court at Saint Germain-en-Laye on 10 January 1676, then enjoyed a successful first run of over a year in the public theater at the Palais Royal in Paris.26 The king was pleased with the work, and had it staged at Fontainebleau in late summer 1677 and again at Saint Germain-en-Laye in winter 1678; then during seven months of that year, the opera played to the public again at the Palais Royal.27 While stage adaptations of classical myths appealed to the taste of the time, they were not without controversy. Following criticism of the Quinault–Lully opera Alceste (1674) for taking liberties with the classical sources,28 Atys avoided all traces of comedy, was tighter in plot than the earlier Quinault–Lully operas, and centered on conflicts within characters that lead to their suffering and self-questioning. In its attention to inner struggles, Quinault’s Atys moved closer to the tragedies of Jean Racine and novels by female writers,29 though because it was an opera, expectations dictated that there also be spectacular divertissements incorporating dancing and supernatural elements. The stage designs by the workshop of Jean Berain for two such scenes in the opera are reproduced in figures 5 and 6. In the first, the Palace of Sleep of Act 3, the god Morpheus, accompanied by good and bad dreams, conveys to the sleeping Atys Cybele’s love and the warning not to betray her.30 The second, the final scene of the opera, shows the pine tree of Atys’ transformation. 26

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The French public’s response to opera was quite lively by this time. Its educated members read and discussed libretti outside the theater. Madame de Sévigné, for instance, who habitually quoted lines from operas in her correspondence, was still referring to Atys four years and thirteen years after the premiere; see Hibbard 1968: 156-57, 162-63, and Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal [1696]/1978: 509. In 1678 Atys was already parodied in a comedy playing at the Ancien Théâtre Italien; for details, see Grout 1941: 515-16. Parody sources for the opera into the early nineteenth century are listed in Schneider 1982: 365. On indecent parodies, see Gordon-Seifert 2002: 138. The opera saw a revival at court in January 1682, and in Paris in 1689-90, 1699-1700, 1708-09, 1725, 1738-39, 1747, and 1753. Scenes were performed at court in 1703 and 1713. See Norman 2001: 159, and La Gorce 1992: 54-56. Le Cerf de la Viéville referred to Atys as “the king’s opera,” though without explanation; see Rosow, “Atys,” Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy; and Isherwood 1973: 219. On the literary quarrel that began with Perrault 1674 and Racine 1675, Preface; see Buford 1989: 177-96, and the Introduction to Quinault 1994: ix-lxi. On public fascination with Racine’s tragedy Phèdre (1677) and Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette’s novel La Princesse de Clèves (1678), see DeJean 1997: 31-77, and see below note 77. Berain’s stage design for Act 3 resembles a contemporary illustration of a fictitious palace where dreamers dwell in the kingdom of sleep, found in the 1676 edition of Michel de Morolles’s Tableaux du temple des muses (Amsterdam: A. Wolfgank). In Le

262 Susan Parisi

Figure 5 Quinault–Lully, Atys. Stage design for act 3, scene 4, “Palace of Sleep: Arrival of good and bad dreams.” Drawing by the workshop of Jean Berain. Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, Cabinet des Estampes, Tb1.

Quinault’s alterations to the classical tale stem in large measure from prevailing literary-dramatic aesthetics and from conventions commonplace in a variety of genres, from the tragedies of Racine and the comedies of Molière, to the satirical verses of Isaac Benserade, and the novels of Madeleine de Scudéry, Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette, and Marie-Catherine Desjardins (de Villedieu), among others. In particular, affairs of the heart had a much larger role in plot development. In Quinault’s Atys, the principal characters are shown unable to control their passion, vacillating between self-love and loathing, motivated by jealousy and rivalry for the affection of another. Their confidants, by contrast, have their personal emotions well in check. Satisfying the public’s desire to see gallant young lovers on the stage, the lustful passion of Atys and Sangaride is emphasized at the expense of the relationship between the goddess Cybele and Atys. Grand Dictionnaire des Pretieuses ou la clef de la langue des ruelles of Antoine de Baudeau le Sieur de Somaize (1660; ed. Paris: P. Janet, 1856), vol. 1, p. 51, an expression listed for a bed (“lit”) is “l’empire de Morphée.”

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Figure 6 Quinault Lully, Atys. Stage design for act 5, scene 6, “Atys’s transformation into a pine.” Engraving by François Chauveau on a design by the workshop of Berain. Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, Cabinet des Estampes, Tb1.

264 Susan Parisi

There is also a fourth and new principal character, King Celenus, who loves Sangaride. She does not return his love but has been promised in marriage to him by her father. For the sake of propriety, the sexual intimacy between Atys and Sangaride is camouflaged in metaphoric language, and Atys’s selfemasculation is replaced by two offstage events: his murder of Sangaride (he has taken her for a monster while under the spell of the Furies), and then his suicide by a thrust of his dagger. At the French court, a visual reminder of the legend for Quinault and Lully would have been Rubens’ depictions of Cybele in his cycle “The Life of Marie de Medici.” In “The Birth of Louis XIII” in that series, Cybele’s portrayal, apart from her crown and staff, appears to be that of a woman, not a goddess, though her emblems and position, directly behind the queen, reinforce her role as guardian of the French realm.31 Of the literary renditions of the Cybele and Atys legend, a number of diverse examples were in circulation in the 1670s. Besides the earlier “Le Pin” by Ronsard, and a French translation of Ovid’s Fasti by Michel de Marolles, several French translations of the Metamorphoses were probably familiar to Quinault: that by Thomas Corneille;32 the illustrated edition in rondeaux by the court poet Isaac Benserade, financed by the king;33 the older translations by Nicholas Renoüard and the playwright Pierre Du-Ryer, with figures and historical and moral commentary;34 and a burlesque, Ovide en belle humeur, by the poet, composer, and instrumentalist Charles Dassoucy.35 Some of these works may have been catalysts for Quinault’s character portrayals. In their adaptations of the classical legend, Benserade and Renoüard, for instance, both give Cybele an entirely human dimension,

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On the cycle, see Saward 1982: 88; Millen and Wolf, 1989; and Johnson 1993: 44769. Les Metamorphoses d’Ovide traduites en vers françois par Thomas Corneille, Bk. 10, 1669. On Corneille’s collaboration with Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Lully, see Powell 2000: 278–83. Benserade, Metamorphoses d’Ovide en rondeaux imprimés et enrichis de figures par ordre de Sa Majeste et dediez à monseigneur le dauphin, 1676. The engravings are by Sébastian Le Clerc and François Chauveau. Benserade was court poet for ballets in the 1650s and 1660s; see Silin 1940. Les Metamorphoses d’Ovide traduites en prose françoise […] et enrichies de figures a chacune Fable avec XV Discours Contenants l’Explication Morale et Historique, trans. Nicolas Renoüard, 1651. A translation by Du Ryer was reprinted six times in the century. See Lancaster 1913: 175. L’art de peinture de C.-A. Du Fresnoy, traduites en françois, enrichy de remarques et augmenté d’un dialogue sur le coloris [par Roger de Piles], 2d ed., ed. Piles, 1673: 127, lists this translation as useful to artists; as cited in Goldstein 1967: 327-29. L’Ovide en belle humeur, de monsieur Dassoucy, enrichy de toutes ses figures burlesques, 1653. It does not, however, recount the Cybele and Atys legend. On Charles Coypeau (dit Dassoucy), see Powell 2000: 190-94.

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and, as in the interpretations of Anguillara in his ottava rima poem and Rasi in his opera, they cast her as an older, spurned woman. Quinault would certainly have been familiar with Benserade’s Metamorphoses en rondeaux, a project that had been the idea of Louis XIV and had occupied Benserade since at least 1673. In his “Atis en Pin” rondeau, Benserade seizes on the tale’s opposites: fire and ice (in the refrain); their parallel in Cybele’s love and Atys’ indifference; and Atys as a pliable youth and a rigid pine tree. He then invokes Orpheus, who, singing to the trees, recognizes a pine as the boy Atys36 and pities his misfortune, caused by Cybele, a much older, jealous woman (derogatorily called “la bonne femme”). The focus then returns to the opposition within Atys—his capacity for passion and his pretense of love: “Atis en Pin” Comme il arive assez que sans raison L’un est tout feu quand l’autre est tout glaçon, Cybele aimoit Atis, & cette Fée S’estant pour luy vainement attifée, En Pin changea ce tendre Nouriçon. Orphée un jour disoit une chanson, Entre les Bois attirez par le son Ce jeune Pin est reconnu d’Orphée, Comme il arive. Il plaint le sort de ce pauvre garçon, Blame Cybele, & son jaloux soupçon, La bonne Femme, elle en estoit coiffée, Luy qui d’ailleurs avoit l’ame échaufée, S’il ne l’aimoit en faisoit la façon. Comme il arive.37

A similar depiction of the goddess as an old woman is found in the commentary on the morals of the fables in the 1651 edition of Metamorphoses translated by Renoüard. There, Cybele is not referred to by name, but is the malicious “Vieille jalouze” who emasculates Atys, depriving him of his procreative powers (“turning him into this tree bearing only fruits without fruit”). Hence, in the interpretation it is she, not a guilty Atys, who is responsible for his mutilation: 36

37

In Ovid’s tenth book in Metamorphoses, Orpheus, having lost Euridice, plays his lyre in the company of twenty-four trees, each species named, including “the pine […] pleasing to the gods, since Atys, dear to Cybele, exchanged for this his human form and stiffened in its trunk.” Benserade 1676: 325.

266 Susan Parisi D’Atys changé en Pin, & Cyparisse en Cyprés Le Pin chery de la Mere des Dieux, nous dira qu’il fut autrefois le jeune Atys, auquel sa Vielle jalouze coupa les parties qui le faisoient homme, pour le changer en cet Arbre, lequel ne portant que des fruits sans fruit, du tout inutiles, ne nous represente, avec Adonis traitté de mesme, que des plantes steriles, ou des Fleurs don’t la beauté se fanit incontinent, sans rien porter qui donne de contentement. 38

In Quinault’s Atys libretto the classical legend is largely a backdrop; the allusions to it, except in the last act, are considerably more muted than in Rasi’s version. Quinault’s ground plan for the placement of these allusions—the legend’s five key events and the tailoring of their content— also differs substantially from Rasi’s. The first such event—Atys pledges to be faithful to the goddess—is distinctly different from Ovid’s as well as Rasi’s version. Cybele never obtains Atys’ pledge of love, even when the two are finally alone together in act 3, after Atys wakes from his terrible dreams in the sleep scene. She tries to obtain it then, but Atys gives her only his respect and gratitude.39 The legend’s second event—Atys and Sangaride make love—is drawn out over a series of scenes, though the audience learns of their intimacy only in the fifth act, from Cybele, who has spied on them and then tells Celenus that he, too, has been betrayed.40 In the course of the acts the emotional tension builds in these episodes as the young lovers confront their passion for each other and their feelings for themselves and others, especially as they are interrupted in their time alone together. In their progression, these vignettes portray the course of a seduction of the type found in popular dialogues and songs of seduction of the period.41 In their first encounter alone, Sangaride asks, “Is there a greater good than when love reigns?” to 38

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The pine, beloved of the Mother of the Gods, will tell us that it was formerly the young Atys, from whom his old, jealous lover cut off the parts that made him a man, changing him into this tree, which, bearing only fruits without fruit, useless in all, appears to us, along with Adonis treated the same way, as only sterile plants, or flowers whose beauty fades instantly, bringing nothing that gives satisfaction. Vol. 2: 124. Quinault, Atys, libretto, Act 3, scene 5 (lines 536-543). Atys: “Une grande Divinité /Doit s’assurer toujours de mon respect extrême.” Cyb: “Les Dieux, […] / [..] sont plus contents qu’on les aime.” Atys: “Je sais trop ce que je vous dois / Pour manquer de reconnoissance.” For the libretto, see Quinault 1999, vol. 1: 171-227, and Quinault 1992. Quinault, Atys, libretto, Act 5, scene 1 (lines 865–70): Cyb (to Celenus): “L’ingrat vous trahissait […] / […] Je m’y suis cachée à leurs yeux; / J’y viens d’être témoin de leur amour extrême.” On seduction dialogues and songs, see Gordon-Seifert 2004: 135–67.

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which Atys replies that since love causes too many tears, he resists it as much as possible.42 When they are next alone, Atys wishes Sangaride a “happy lot” with Celenus, which leads to her complaint of his indifference. But after he appeals to her sympathy, pretending he will die from love for her, her resistance fades. For a brief moment they both contemplate death, but then yield to their true desires. As others approach, disrupting the seduction, they conceal those feelings. Atys’ last line, however, signals his wish to maintain his independence (“Rien n’est plus aimable que la liberté”).43 Later, under the impression that Atys has jilted her for Cybele, Sangaride prepares to marry Celenus (Act 4). But when Celenus goes to summon her parents, she and Atys are alone together and Atys’ interrupted seduction of her resumes. They quarrel and she calls him a liar. But he again plays on her pity, and she gives in. Then they sing of their mutual passion, this time both affirming the necessity to love in secret.44 For the third event in the legend—the Furies drive Atys insane— Quinault, like Rasi, conflates physical details from various sources with newly invented occurrences, though the resulting events do not resemble anything in Rasi’s libretto. All of these incidents arise in the fifth act: After Cybele has commanded the Furies to fill Atys with savage anger, Atys takes Sangaride for a monster, and kills her.45 Cybele, out of spite, restores Atys to his senses so that he will suffer from the horror of his action,46 and Atys proclaims his desire to be with Sangaride in death.47 For the fourth key

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Quinault, Atys, libretto, Act 1, scene 3 (lines 67–84): Sang: “Quand l’Amour fait régner, est-il un plus grand bien?” / […] / Atys: “L’Amour fait trop verser de pleurs; / […] Je me défends d’aimer autant qu’il m’est possible.” Ibid., Act 1, scene 6 (lines 144-203): Atys: “Ce jour même un grand Roy doit être votre époux / […]” Sang: “L’indifférent Atys n’en sera point jaloux.” Atys: “[…] Je meurs d’amours pour vous, je n’en saurais guérir.”/ Sang: “[…] Si vous cherchez la mort, il faut que je vous suivre.”/ […] Atys, Sangr: “L’amour fit nous coeurs l’un pour l’autre.” Sang: “[…] On vient: feignez encore […]” Atys: “[…] Rien n’est plus aimable / Que la liberté.” Ibid., Act 4, scene 4 (lines 718-41): Sang: “Vous m’avez immolée à l’amour de Cybele.” […] Atys: “Ingrate, que vous m’offensez! / […] Je vais de la Déesse […] /M’offrir à sa fureux, puisque vous m’y forcez…” Sang: “Ah! demeurez, Atys, […] / Vous m’aimez […].” “Atys, Sang: “Aimons en secret […] / […] plus que jamais, en dépit des jaloux.” Ibid., Act 5, scene 3 (line 927). Atys: “Quel monstre vien à nous! Quelle fureur le guide!” Ibid., Act 5, scene 4 (lines 944-52). Cyb: “Achève ma vengeance, Atys, connais ton crime, / Et reprends ta raison, pour sentir ton malheur.”[…] Cybele montrant à Atys Sangaride morte: “Tu la peux voir: regarde.” Ibid. (lines 953-90). Atys: “Ah quelle barbarie! / Sangaride a perdu la vie! / […]” Cyb: “Les coups, dont elle meurt, sont de ta propre main. / […] Otez ce triste

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event—Atys emasculates himself—Quinault, contrary to Rasi’s story, has Cybele feel pity for Atys too late. Carried in from the wings, where he has stabbed himself, Quinault’s Atys remains defiant, telling Cybele as he dies, “I go to where Sangaride will be […] where you will never be!”48 Resolute to the end, Atys has not been compromised. Quinault keeps intact Ovid‘s fifth event—Cybele turns Atys into a pine tree that she will adore49— then turns the focal point away from the forlorn Cybele and back to Atys, as the goddess’ priests, the corybantes, and the water nymphs and woodland divinities, raise their voices to mourn his harsh death.50 In tone and in language Quinault’s libretto projects the milieu of contemporary French court and salon society. The confidantes of Cybele and of Sangaride are shown to have mastery over their own hearts, and they utter aphorisms about the realities of love to the principals in the style of the popular maxims of François La Rochefoucauld, such as: “Lovers who are indifferent are sometimes loved more than those who are constant;”51 or “Love is hardly happy when it is too timid;”52 or “A cruel inconstancy does not efface all the charms of a faithless man.”53 Similar maxims permeate Madame de Villedieu’s novel Les désordres de

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objet.” Atys: “[…] En fussiez-vous jalouse encore, / Il faut que je l’adore, / Jusques dans l’horreur du trépas.” Ibid., Act 5, scene 6 (lines 1002-09). Idas: “Il s’est percé le sein.” […] Cyb: “Ah! c’est ma barbarie, /C’est moy qui lui perce le coeur.” Atys: “Je meurs, l’Amour me guide / Dans la nuit du Trépas; / Je vais où sera Sangaride, / Inhumaine, je vais où vous ne serez pas.” Ibid. (lines 1013-22). Atys: “Je suis assez vengé, vous m’aimez, etje meurs.” Cyb: “[…] Atys, sois à jamais l’objet de mes amours: / Reprends un sort nouveau, deviens un Arbre aimable / Que Cybele aimera toûjours.” Ibid., Act 5, scene 7 (lines 1078-79). Tous: “Que le malheur d’Atys afflige tout le Monde. / Que tout sente, ici-bas, / L’horreur d’un si cruel trépas.” Fin du cinquième & dernier Acte. Ibid., Act 1, scene 4 (lines 115-24). Sang: “Pour vaincre mon amour […] / J’appelle ma raison, j’anime mon courage; / Mais, à quoi servent tous mes soins? / Mon coeur en souffre davantage, / Et n’en aime pas moins” Doris: “C’est le commun défaut des Belles. / L’ardeur des conquêtes nouvelles / Fait négliger les coeurs qu’on a troptôt charmés: / Et les indifférents son quelquefois aimés / Aux dépens des Amants fidèles.” Ibid., Act 4, scene 1 (lines 622-24). Sang: “Helas! j’aime […] helas! j’aime […]” Doris & Idas: “Achevez.” Sang: “Je ne puis.” Doris & Idas: “L’Amour n’est guere heureux, lorsqu’il est trop timide.” Ibid. (lines 649-59). Sang: “Trop heureux un coeur qui peut croire / Un dépit qui fert a sa gloire! / […] Revenz ma raison [...]” Idas & Doris: “Une infidélité cruelle /N’efface point tous les appas / D’un infidèle; / Et la Raison ne revient pas, / Sitôt qu’on la rappelle.”

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l’amour (1675).54 As has been clearly shown, in this period of liberal moral principles in France, women and men increasingly expressed their right to enter into amorous liaisons of their choosing, and into other arrangements such as trial marriages, half marriages, and similar compromises (Gibson 1989: 66).55 In Quinault’s libretto, in a central speech strategically placed in the first act, Atys in fact trumpets “liberté,” one of the slogans that had earlier been attached to the précieuses, whose values Molière had caricatured in Les Précieuses ridicules and Les Femmes savantes. To the French public in the 1660s and 1670s, “liberté” meant freedom from conventional marriage and absence of boundaries in amorous encounters. In Somaize’s satirical Grand Dictionnaire des Pretieuses ou la clef de la langue des ruelles, marriage is in fact defined as “the end of passion” (“Le mariage: L’amour finy”) and “the abyss of freedom” (“Le mariage: L’abysme de la liberté.”)56 Atys’ lines in Quinault’s libretto are “Let us love a thing of more durable value than beauty’s radiance. Nothing is more loveable than freedom” (i.e., one’s independence).57 Later, in the penultimate scene in Act 4, messages about the attraction of unbridled attachments are communicated in a divertissement. There, a chorus of divinities of springs and streams dances and sings: “All is sweet and nothing is costly when one desires to touch a heart; the wave insists on a way, and thus finds it,”58 followed by “[Love] is proud, it is obstinate; but such as it is, it charms; Hymen comes when one calls him, Love comes when it wishes.”59 Then a river god and a spring divinity 54 55 56

57 58

59

Discussion of the novel is in Beasley 2006: 156-66. Louis XIV’s first cousin, the Duchess of Montpensier, advocated liaisons without marriage in her writing of the 1660s; see de Montpensier 2002. Somaize 1661; ed. Paris: P. Janet, 1856, vol. 2: 172-73. About the first, Somaize (172) writes: “Les pretieuses ont donné ce nom au mariage parce qu’il semble que ses noeuds ne soient faits que pour en allentir la force et finir la tyrannie.” Lampooning the précieuses, he adds: “Parmy le commun des hommes, on se prend par les yeux; mais icy ce n’est que par les oreilles; ailleurs on soûpire, icy l’on écrit, et les langueurs et les transports qui servent aux amans d’interpretes ne sont autres icy que les vers et les billets, et l’on n’y languit jamais que sur le papier. Leur coustume generale est de s’unir seulement d’esprit, non de corps […]” (156) For work on the influence of the précieuses on the French language, see Ayres-Bennett 2004. I am grateful to Douglas Kibbee for bringing this work to my attention. Quinault, Atys, libretto, Act 1, scene 6 (lines 200-203). Atys: “Aimons un bien plus durable / Que l’éclat de la Beauté. / Rien d’est plus aimable / Que la liberté.” Ibid., Act 4, scene 5 (lines 776-79). “[…] Tout est doux et rien ne coûte / Pour un coeur qu’on veut toucher, / L’onde se fait une route / En s’efforçant d’en chercher, / […]” Ibid. (lines 804-7). “[…] Il [L’Amour] est fier, il est rebelle, / Mais il charme tel qu’il est; / L’Hymen vient quand on l’appelle, / L’Amour vient quand il lui plaît.”

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sing: “A fickle heart never remains in port for long, the moment it leaves it goes in search of storms,” to which a chorus of divinities adds, “Great calm is too dull. We prefer turbulence.”60 The next year, in Quinault’s libretto for his and Lully’s Isis, whose plot the public saw as alluding to the rivalry between the king’s then principal mistress, Athénaïs Marquise de Montespan, and his new mistress, Madame Marie-Elisabeth de Ludres, the catchword “liberté” appeared nineteen times in the libretto. Although he protested that no caricature had been intended, Quinault was subsequently removed from his court position for the next year and a half, and Isis was not seen in Paris again until 1704.61 There is much evidence that French monarchs in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries enjoyed many sexual pleasures outside of marriage. In the case of Louis XIV, besides Madame de Montespan, there were other women with whom he had intimate relations in the middle period of his reign. The king’s behavior was not clandestine, nor was it unexposed. The view prevailed that the king’s amorous comportment showed the public his “humanity,”62 and in entertainments for the court, from ballets and operas to poetry, his behavior was from time to time extolled, sometimes overtly, sometimes disguised. In the previously mentioned rondeaux by Benserade on the Metamorphoses (1676, the same year the Lully–Quinault Atys premiered), the names of Madame de Ludres and Louis XIV are in fact linked in three acrostics in the final three poems. In several of the other rondeaux

60

61

62

Ibid. (lines 814-26). “[…] Jamais un coeur volage / Ne trouve un heureux sort, / Il n’a point l’avantage / D’être longtemps au port, / Il cherche encor l’orage, / Au moment qu’il en sort.” Choruses: “Un grand calme est trop fâcheux, / Nous aimons mieux la tourmente.” In Isis, Act 3, scenes 3-5, Argus argues against amorous commitment, and when he sings “liberté,” the catchword is taken up by Syrinx and her nymphs in a chorus (lines 514-47), the word returning again and again in the scene—by one account uttered altogether 95 times. I am indebted to Patricia Howard for this observation; see Howard 1991: 60. In addition, the opening monologue by Hiérax in Act 1, scene 1 (lines 10-11) poses the question “As-tu peur de la liberté?” For the documentation that contemporaries thought Isis ( Io), vying for Jupiter’s attention, represented Louis XIV’s new mistress, Madame de Ludres, and that Juno represented Madame de Montespan, who had been the king’s mistress for a decade, see Isherwood 1973: 219-22. On the rivalry between the two women, see Sévigné, Correspondance, 2:543 (6 September 1677), 2:580 (22 October 1677), 2:619 (27 July 1678). Kaiser 1998: 131-61, especially 147-48. Another woman with whom the king had a liason in these months was Madame de Montespan’s maid, la Demoiselle des Oeillets, with whom he had a child around 1676. On the construction of Louis XIV’s image and on artists’ manipulation of that image, see Burke 1992, and the monograph by Cowart 2008.

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Benserade satirizes the institution of marriage, and comments on infidelity, the art of seduction, and jealousy.63 As in the Benserade rondeaux and various novels of the period,64 Quinault explores the emotions, and their nuances, of being enamored. For instance, when King Celenus seeks reassurance from Atys of Sangaride’s affection and Atys avoids the truth and replies that Sangaride’s heart will follow duty and fame (Act 2), Celenus responds that these qualities have nothing to do with love. This leads Atys to reply that Celenus loves with a love that is too delicate and too tender, and then he again champions detachment: “he who is indifferent [about love] enjoys a peaceful lot.”65 Later Atys is briefly uneasy about his disloyalty to Celenus (Act 3), but concludes that “physical love always outweighs all else.”66 The female characters in Quinault-Lully operas, except for the principals’ confidantes and servants, have been characterized as powerless, at the mercy of their emotions, and pawns of males.67 In Atys, however, Sangaride appears to have a somewhat mixed character. At first (in Act 2) she makes the self-effacing remark that “[i]n the eyes of Atys I shall always be without allure, and I accept it.”68 But later she defends herself aggressively when in their lovers’ quarrel in Act 4 she and Atys hurl insults at each other until declaring their mutual love. And by the end of that scene, as they sing together “let us love in secret, love one another more than ever, despite the jealousy of others,” she has become Atys’ co-conspirator and is as determined as he is to keep their liaison hidden.69 Cybele, by contrast, is portrayed not as an all-powerful goddess, but, as in Benserade and in Renoüard, a disconsolate, cruel, older woman, one who when her amorous pursuit of the adventuresome youthful Atys is thwarted, becomes a hopeless victim of her emotions. Although her servant tells her 63 64 65

66 67 68 69

For these rondeaux, see Silin 1940: 113-30. On the novels, beginning with Madame de Scudéry’s Artamène and Clélie, see DeJean 1997: 78-123. Quinault, Atys, libretto, Act 2, scene 1 (lines 260-89): Cel: “N’as-tu point remarqué comme elle était tremblante?” Atys: “[…] je n’ay rien remarqué / […] Son coeur suit avec soin le Devoir et la Gloire.” Cel: “[…] La Gloire et le Devoir […] / […] ne laissent pour moy rien à faire à l’amour.” Atys: “Vous aimez d’un amour trop délicat, trop tendre / […] Qu’un indifférent est heureux! / Il jouit d’un destin paisible.” Ibid., Act 3, scene 2 (lines 422-36). Atys: “Mais quoi, trahir le Roi! tromper son espérance? / [...] L’amour toujours emporte la balance.” Howard 1991: 57-72, and Howard 1990: 193-99. Quinault, Atys, libretto, Act 1, scene 4 (lines 126-27). Sang: “Toujours aux yeux d’Atys je serai sans appas; / Je le sais, j’y consens, […]” Ibid., Act 4, scene 4 (lines 740-41 ). Sangr, Atys: “Aimons en secret, aimons-nous; / Aimons plus que jamais, en dépit des jaloux.”

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that she can love without stooping as low as she has done, Cybele can only respond: “If Atys obliges me to stoop, a sweet inclination draws me down.”70 At the half-way mark in Rasi’s opera, it will be recalled, Cybele, having been betrayed, lashes out in anger at Atys to the god Mercury. At the same point in Quinault’s libretto, Cybele reacts more erratically, vacillating between one emotion and another in her monologue air with ritournelle, “Hope, beloved and sweet, Ah! Why do you deceive me?” which brings Act 3 to a close. In the recitative that precedes the air, she ruminates on how Atys mixes indifference and respect, how Sangaride is kindly, and Atys charms all, and she voices her suspicion about a friendship enlivened by so much ardor.71 Taking up the wistful melody, her sighs of “Ah, Helas” break up her thoughts, their musical underpinnings intensifying the mutability of her feelings. She fluctuates from anger at herself, to venting her jealousy, returns to the main sentiment, to Atys’s attraction for her, to remembering how she had once been in control of herself, and again to the pain in her heart.72 Contrary to Rasi’s Italian version of fifty years earlier, the device of a Cupid as a deus ex machina who resolves the love entanglements is nowhere to be found. In the end, Cybele is left rejected and she remains a jealous and vengeful woman; in the final act her regret for her own actions comes too late and is passed over quickly. The resolution of the drama in Quinault’s libretto does not have Atys emasculate himself nor, as in Rasi’s drama, after Cybele has forgiven him and they are reconciled, submit to being conducted by the goddess to the celestial realm. Instead, by his death at his own hand Quinault’s Atys in essence defies and triumphs over Cybele. How the French public might have interpreted this last element in the drama, we cannot infer from the few first-hand accounts that survive. There is one report that the novelist

70

71

72

Ibid., Act 2, scene 3 (lines 357-65 ). Melissa: “[…] Mais vous pouviez aimer, et descendre moins bas.” Cyb: “[…] On se fait, pour aimer, un plaisir de descendre. / […] Pour Atys, pour son coeur je quitte tout sans peine; / S’il m’oblige à descendre, un doux penchant m’entraîne.” Ibid., Act 3, scene 7 (lines 576-94). Cyb: Qu’Atys dans ses respects mêle d’indifference! / L’ingrat Atys ne m’aime pas; / […]. / Sangaride est aimable, Atys peut tout charmer, / […] / Ils se sont aimés dès l’enfance, / […] / Je crains une amitié que tant d’ardeur anime. / […] Je prétends m’éclaircir, leur feinte sera vaine.” Ibid., Act 3, scene 8 (lines 602-17): “Espoir […] Ah! pourquoi me trompez-vous? / […] Mille coeurs m’adoraient, je les néglige tous, / Je n’en demande qu’un, il a peine à se rendre; / Je ne sens que chagrins, et que soupçons jaloux, / […] Espoir […] / pourquoi me trompez-vous? / Helas! par tant d’attraits fallait-il me surprendre? / Heureuse si toujours j’avais pu me défendre! / […] le cruel Amour m’a fait un coeur si tendre! / Espoir […] / Ah! pourquoi me trompez-vous?”

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Madame de Lafayette did not like Quinault’s verses;73 other comments mention only approval of the scenery, the costumes, the dancing, and Lully’s tuneful melodies.74 Nevertheless, from the historical record and what we know of Louis XIV’s comportment in the mid 1670s we may conclude that the libretto’s final message—one’s passions must not be curbed—found at least one eager recipient.

73 74

In 1678 her probe of unconsummated passion in La Princesse de Clèves would incite public responses in Le Mercure Galant; see Vincent 2005: 199-205. The remark about Madame de Lafayette was by Charles de Sévigné, and the other comments by his mother, Madame de Sévigné; for translations, see Hibbard 1968: 156-57.

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——. 2008. The Triumph of Pleasure: Louis XIV & the Politics of Spectacle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dassoucy, Charles. 1653. Ovide en belle humeur, de monsieur Dassoucy, enrichy de toutes ses figures burlesques. 2d ed. Paris: P. David. DeJean, Joan. 1997. Ancients Against Moderns: Culture Wars and the Fin de Siècle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DuRyer, Pierre. 1655. Les Metamorphoses d’Ovide avec des explications sur toutes les fables. Paris: chez Antoine de Sommaville. Gibson, Wendy. 1989. Women in Seventeenth-Century France. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Goldstein, Carl. 1967. ‘Louis XIV and Jason’ in: Art Bulletin 49: 327–29. Gordon-Seifert, Catherine. 2002. ‘Heroism Undone: The Erotic Manuscript Parodies of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Tragédies en Musique’ in Austern, Linda Phyllis (ed.): Music, Sensation, and Sensuality. Aldershot: Ashgate: 137–63. ——. 2004. ‘Strong Men–Weak Women: Gender Representation and the Influence of Lully’s Operatic Style on French Airs Sérieux (1650–1700)’ in Musical Voices of Early Modern Women, Lamay, Thomasin (ed.) Aldershot: Ashgate: 135–67. Grout, Donald Jay. 1941. ‘Seventeenth-Century Parodies of French Opera’ in: Musical Quarterly 27: 211–19, 514–26. Hanning, Barbara. 2003. ‘The End of L”Orfeo: Padre, figlio, e Rinuccini’ in Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music 9, no. 2. http://www.sscm-jscm.org Hibbard, Lloyd. 1968. ‘Mme. De Sévigné and the Operas of Lully’ in Tischler, Hans (ed.) Essays in Musicology. A Birthday Offering for Willi Apel. Bloomington: Indiana University School of Music: 153–63. Howard, Patricia. 1991. ‘The Influence of the Précieuses on Content and Structure in Quinault’s and Lully’s Tragédies Lyriques’ in Acta Musicologica 63: 57–72. ——. 1990. ‘The Positioning of Woman in Quinault’s World Picture’ in La Gorce, Jérôme de and Herbert Schneider (eds) Jean-Baptiste Lully. Actes du colloque Saint Germain-en-Laye–Heidelberg 1987, Laaber: Laaber Verlag: 193– 99. Isherwood, Robert M. 1973. Music in the Service of the King. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Johnston, Geraldine. 1993. ‘Pictures Fit for a Queen: Peter Paul Rubens and the Marie de Medici Cycle’ in: Art History 16: 447–69. Kaiser, Thomas, E. 1998. ‘Louis le Bien-Aimé, and the Rhetoric of the Royal Body’ in: Melzer, Sara E. and Kathryn Norberg (eds) From the Royal to the Republican Body: Incorporating the Political in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century France. Berkeley: University of California Press: 131–61. Kirkendale, Warren. 1993. The Court Musicians in Florence during the Principate of the Medici. Florence: Olschki.

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——. 2008. ‘The Brussels–Mantuan Connection: Vincenzo Gonzaga’s State Voyages to the Low Countries in 1599 and 1608’ in Bouckaert, Bruno (ed.) Yearbook of the Alamire Foundation. Vol. 7, Leuven–Neerpelt: Alamire: 275–305. Passe, Crispijn van de. 1602. Metamorphoseon Ovidianarum typi aliquot artificiosissime delineati, ac in gratiam studiosae iuuentutis editi per Crispianum Passaeum, Zeelandum chalcographum. Cologne: s.n.; Rpt., New York: Garland Publishing, 1979. Perrault, Charles. 1674. Critique de l’Opera, ou examen de la tragédie intitulée Alceste. Paris: Claude Barbin & Louis Billaine. Piles, Roger de (ed.). 1673. L’art de peinture de C.- A. Du Fresnoy, traduite en françois, enrich de remarqueset augmenté d’un dialogue sur le coloris [par Roger de Piles], & de plusieurs figures d’Académie pour apprendre à désiner, gravées par S. L[e] C[lerc]. 2d ed., Paris: Nicolas Langlois. Porter, William V. ‘Rasi, Francesco’ in Macy, Laura (ed) Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians Online. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com Powell, John. 2000. Music and Theatre in France, 1600–1680. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Quinault, Philippe. 1677. Isis. Tragédie en musique. Paris: Christophe Ballard. Repr. in Philippe Quinault. 1999. Livrets d’opéra (ed. B.Norman). Vol. 1. Toulouse: Société de Littératures Classiques. ——. 1676. Atys. Tragédie en musique. Paris: Christophe Ballard. Repr. in Philippe Quinault. 1999. Livrets d’opéra (ed. B.Norman). Vol. 1. Toulouse: Société de Littératures Classiques. ——. 1992. Atys. Tragédie en musique. (ed. S.Bassinet). Geneva: Droz. ——. 1994. Alceste ou Le triomphe d’Alcide. Tragédie representée par l’Académie de Musique. (ed. W.Brooks, B.Norman, J.M. Zarucchi). Geneva: Droz. Racine, Jean. 1675. Iphigénie. Preface. Paris: Claude Barbin. Rasi, Francesco. 1608. Vaghezza di musica per una voce sola. Venice: Angelo Gardano. ——. 1619a. La Cetra di sette corde. Rime del Cavaliere Francesco Rasi. Venice: G. B. Ciotti. ——. 1619b. La favola di Cibele ed Ati. In La Cetra dei sette corde. Venice: G. B. Ciotti. Renoüard, Nicholas. Les Metamorphoses d’Ovide traduites en prose françoise…et enrichies de figures a chacune fable avec XV discours contenants l’explication morale et historique. 1651. Paris: Augustin Courbé. Reynolds, William Donald. 1971. The Ovidius Moralizatus of Petrus Bechorius: An Introduction and Translation. PhD thesis. University of Illinois. p. 351– 52. Rosow, Lois. ‘Atys’ in (ed) Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians Online. http:// www.oxfordmusiconline.com

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Saward, Susan. 1982. The Golden Age of Marie de’ Medici. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press. Schneider, Herbert. 1982. Die Rezeption der Opern Lullys in Frankreich des Ancien Regime. Tutzing: Hans Schneider. Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de. 1978. Correspondance (ed. Roger Duchêne). Vol. 3 [1696]. Paris: Gallimard. Silin, Charles I. 1940. Benserade and his Ballets de Cour. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University. Sternfeld, F. W. 1986. ‘The Orpheus Myth and the Libretto of ‘Orfeo’ in Whenham, John (ed.) Claudio Monteverdi: Orfeo, Cambridge Opera Handbooks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 20–33. Solomon, Jon. 1995. ‘Neoplatonic Apotheosis in Monteverdi’s Orfeo’ in: Studi Musicali 24: 27–47. Somaize, Antoine de Baudeau le Sieur de. 1660. Le Grand Dictionnaire des Pretieuses ou la clef de la langue des ruelles. Paris; ed. Paris: P. Janet, 1856. Sorbelli-Bonfa, Fernanda. 1918. Camilla Gonzaga-Faa. Bologna: Zanichelli. Symeoni, Gabriello. 1584. La vita et Metamorfoseo d’Ovidio, figurato & abbreviato in forma d’epigrammi. Lyon: Giovanni di Tornes. Tempesta, Antonio. 1606. Metamorphoseon sive transformationvm Ovidianarvm libri qvindecim, Aeneis formis ab Antonio Tempesta Florentino incise…Amsterdam: Wilhelmus Ianssonius; repr. New York: Garland Publishing, 1976. Vermaseren, Maarten J. 1977. Cybele and Attis: The Myth and the Cult. London: Thames and Hudson. ——. (ed.). 1977-78. Corpus Cultus Cybelae Attidisque. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Vols. III and IV. Vincent, Monique. 2005. Le Mercure Galant. Présentation de la première revue féminine d’information et de culture 1672–1710. Paris: Honoré Champion. Volpi, Caterina. 1996. Le immagini degli dei di Vincenzo Cartari. Rome: De Luca. Whenham, John. 1986. ‘‘Orfeo,’ Act V: Alessandro Striggio’s Original Ending’ in Whenham, John (ed.) Claudio Monteverdi: Orfeo, Cambridge Opera

Curtis Perry Gismond of Salern and the Elizabethan Politics of Senecan Drama This essay reads the Inns of Court play Gismond of Salern, performed before Queen Elizabeth in the late 1560s, as a response to constitutional turbulence associated with the early Elizabethan debates about the succession. The play, adapted from Boccaccio, focuses on unruly passion, first emphasizing the erotic desires of Gismond, princess of Salern, and then the tyranny of her father Tancred. The play’s authors emphasize Gismond’s effeminate passion tactically, in order clearly to distinguish between Elizabeth’s court and that depicted in the play. But at the same time, the play’s depiction of tyranny abetted by failed counsel offers a cautionary tale to Elizabeth, one that speaks, in the vocabulary of Senecan drama, to her peremptory handling of public debate concerning marriage and the succession.

The Inns of Court play Gismond of Salern was performed, before Queen Elizabeth, probably between 1566 and 1568. For this performance, each of the play’s five acts was written by a different member of the Inner Temple, one of London’s Inns of Court. The most prominent of the play’s authors was Sir Christopher Hatton—already a Gentleman Pensioner to the Queen by 1566, and later to become Lord Chancellor—who wrote act four. Robert Wilmot, who wrote act five of the original piece, recast the whole—mostly, it seems, for metrical and stylistic reasons—and had it printed as The Tragedy of Tancred and Gismund in 1591-92.1 A version of the play that apparently represents the collaborative Inns of Court play performed in the 1560s survives in two manuscripts in the British Library and is readily available in a photographic facsimile (Farmer 1970) and in John Cunliffe’s still-useful early-twentieth-century anthology of Early English Classical Drama.2

1

2

Most extant copies of this book are dated 1592, though there is one copy dated 1591 on the title page. See Murray 1938. Wilmot’s printed edition of the play offers abbreviated author names at the end of each act. Wilmot and Hatton are the only authors who can be identified beyond question. I agree with Steven May that the courtier poet Sir Henry Noel is likely too young to be the “Hen. No.” listed as the author of act two (May 2004). The printed edition contains a letter from William Webbe urging Wilmot to print his play that is dated August 8, 1591. But still, in the absence of any entry in the stationers register, one wonders if Wilmot’s actual decision to print wasn’t facilitated by Hatton’s death in November of 1591. I am primarily using the version of the play reproduced in Cunliffe 1912: 161-216; subsequent citations will be given parenthetically. In quoting from this edition, I have silently expanded contractions.

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The story upon which the play is based is a well-known and ofttranslated tale out of Boccaccio’s Decameron.3 The play’s authors seem to have used Boccaccio himself rather than any English version, though they have changed certain aspects of the source story for reasons presumably having to do with their own collective artistic vision and the occasion of performance. In order to reframe it as a play they have also borrowed a number of large and small elements from Italian neoclassical drama and from the tragedies of Seneca (Cunliffe 1906). The play, then, is a conspicuously learned production. This is presumably part of its purpose— to demonstrate the learning and ability of its authors and thus to represent the Inner Temple as a seat of humanist learning. The Inns of Court— London’s law schools, but also finishing schools for gentlemen with courtly aspirations of various kinds—were the sites of a distinct and selfconsciously classicizing literary subculture during the first fifteen years of Elizabeth’s reign, and it has been suggested that more than half of all the known translators of classical texts in this period were members of one Inn or another (Finkelpearl 1969: 20). More specifically, it is appropriate to see Gismond of Salern, and also the Senecan play Gorboduc that gentlemen of the Inner Temple put on before Elizabeth in 1562, as part of a revival of Senecan drama in the 1560s whose epicenter was the Inns of Court. Thus Jasper Heywood’s 1560 translation of Seneca’s Thyestes features a dream vision preface in which no less of an authority on English Senecanism than Seneca himself appears to the poet and tells him that his works will be appreciated by the learned men at the Inns (Heywood 1560: *8v).4 As Jessica Winston has recently argued, the popularity of Senecan drama in this milieu requires some explanation since—unlike the writings of other classical writers popular with early Elizabethans, like Cicero or Ovid— Senecan tragedy was neither a traditional source for political and rhetorical praxis nor a mainstay of humanist education in England at the time (Winston 2006). And yet at least seven Senecan tragedies were first translated into English between 1559 and 1567, and Gorboduc and Gismond were put on before the Queen during this same short period. Winston’s explanation is that politically ambitious and astute writers were drawn to Seneca partly because of who he was—an advisor to Nero, an orator, a politically active writer. He was, as Winston puts it, “a classical version of the sort of rhetorician and politician that those at the universities and Inns of Court were trying to become,” and so, she argues, translators and 3

4

The tale is the first story of the fourth day. Other English translations of this story are collected and discussed Wright 1971. See also Stallybrass 1991-92. For a reading of the play informed by the novella tradition, see Walter 2004. On the vogue for Seneca in the 1560s see Winston 2006.

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adaptors saw Senecan tragedy as participating in the tradition of the literature of advice to princes (Winston 2006: 40). But Senecan drama—with its extremities of violence and passion— makes for unusual advice literature. One might think of it as offering a carnival mirror for magistrates, perhaps, in which tyranny is shown in extreme and grotesque forms and suffering, too, is distended beyond the bounds of normalcy. Gismond of Salern offers a case in point. The title character, Gismond, is a young widow whose beloved husband has just died as the play opens. She returns to live with her father Tancred, and is at first so distraught over the death of her husband that she can do little else but curse fate and consider suicide. In time, however, she decides that she would like to remarry after all, and so she asks her aunt Lucrece to broach the subject with her father. Tancred, for reasons that are ultimately selfish, refuses to allow this, and Lucrece counsels her niece to obey. But Gismond cannot do that, and she falls in love with a visiting Count named Guishard. Conveniently enough, there is a long-forgotten secret passage into Gismond’s chamber through an ancient vault that opens some distance from Tancred’s castle, and Gismond sends word to her beloved of this unusual architectural feature by means of a letter hidden inside a hollow cane. This part of the story is framed by the figure of Cupid, who introduces the play with a long boastful speech about his irresistible power. Unfortunately for the young couple, Tancred catches them in the act. In an account whose incestuous implications are only thinly veiled, Tancred recounts how he went to his daughter’s chambers to “fede” himself with the “joy and pleasure” (4.2.46) of her company, witnessed the couple emerging from the secret vault, and then silently watched them make love. In an act of vengeance heralded by an appearance of the Senecan fury Megaera, Tancred has Guishard’s heart cut out and served up to his daughter in a golden cup.5 Gismond then fills the cup with tears, adds poison, and commits suicide by drinking down the grisly concoction. Tancred, chastened, agrees to bury the lovers in the same grave, and a cheery epilogue concludes the play by assuring its courtly audience that none of these things could ever happen in England: “Therefore ye may / be free from fere” (l. 23-24). Disclaimer notwithstanding, all parties involved with the composition, performance, and consumption of this play must have assumed that it should have some resonance with contemporary political issues. Political acumen and rhetorical delicacy are part of what the Inner Templars wish to display about themselves here, and we might again do well to think of 5

Stallybrass (1991-92: 318-21) points out that the method in which Guishard is murdered—he is strangled and then his heart is ripped out—resembles the public executions meted out to Elizabethan traitors.

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Gismond in comparison with Gorboduc, whose relation to the issue of Elizabeth’s potential marriage and the problem of succession was an open secret (Walker 1998: 196-221). In a sense, the play’s political topicality is confirmed by the epilogue’s oddly dissonant disclaimer, which probably serves (as such disclaimers frequently do) as an advertisement of political relevance.6 And only in a performance context that assumed a certain degree of political relevance would it even be necessary do disavow the superficially unlikely connection between Elizabethan England and the play’s exaggeratedly outlandish Salern. The most plausible extant account of the play’s immediate topical context is that offered by Marie Axton (1977: 56-8), who links the play to the contretemps surrounding the succession of Lady Catherine Grey. Grey, the younger sister of Lady Jane Grey, was the granddaughter of Mary Tudor, Henry VIII’s sister, and her royal blood made her for a time the presumptive heir to the childless, unmarried Elizabeth—and thus the focal point for early Elizabethan controversies about the succession. Elizabeth, appropriately wary of anyone who could make a claim to the throne, had made Catherine one of her maids of honor, presumably in order to keep an eye on her. But in the winter of 1560 Catherine secretly married Edward Seymour, earl of Hertford, and in 1561 her pregnancy made the match impossible to hide. Elizabeth had both of them imprisoned, and their marriage was subsequently declared invalid when the priest who had supposedly performed it could not be produced. This meant that Catherine’s son was illegitimate; a second son, conceived in the Tower of London and born in 1563 was likewise declared illegitimate. Catherine spent the remainder of her life in custody. But as a native, Protestant claimant with two male children she remained an attractive candidate to be heir for Englishmen concerned about Elizabeth’s childless state and about the very idea that the Catholic, foreign Mary Stuart might have a claim. In 1563, an M.P. named John Hales circulated a pamphlet concerning the succession and arguing Catherine’s case, and this in turn set off a minor pamphlet war over the next few years and triggered the Queen’s paranoia about conspiracy (see Levine 1996, Alford 1998, Doran 1996, and De La Torre 2001). Catherine herself was shipped out of London to avoid the plague in 1563, but kept under house arrest, first at her uncle Lord John Grey’s estate at Pyrgo in Essex and then at a series of other estates. Despite her own abject circumstances, she remained, for many, Elizabeth’s most viable successor until her death in late January 1568. As Levine has put it: 6

Patterson writes: “Disclaimers of topical intention are not to be trusted, and are more likely to be entry codes to precisely that kind of reading they protest against” (1991: 65).

Gismond of Salern and the Elizabethan Politics of Senecan Drama 283 A political forecaster living in England on 1 January 1568 might well have predicted that the end of the succession question was in sight. By 1566 the original confusion over the several candidates had cleared up, leaving Mary Queen of Scots and Lady Catherine Grey the only serious rivals, and by 1568 Mary seemed all but eliminated from the picture. One might have anticipated that whenever the next Parliament was summoned, it would be nearly one hundred per cent for an immediate settlement in favor of Catherine. (1996: 202)

Obviously, Catherine’s death put an end to that. Axton’s case for the relevance of this story to Gismond of Salern is both succinct and persuasive, linking Catherine Grey’s clandestine marriage to Gismond’s secret assignation with Guishard. Tancred’s unwillingness to allow his daughter to marry an acceptable suitor, she suggests, is a plot device “caused by a sovereign who will not allow the heir to the throne to marry an earl worthy to be her husband” (Axton 1997: 56).7 The play’s first chorus, a fairly conventional neostoic ode on the imminence of death and the fickleness of fortune, discusses the ephemeral quality of powerfulseeming political entities and laments “the fickle fote on which our state doeth stand” (1 chorus, 4). And that names the larger context of succession crisis: what would happen to “our state” if Elizabeth should die? The connection between the play and these fraught, early Elizabethan dynastic questions is confirmed, moreover, by the apparatus printed with Wilmot’s revamped version of the play in 1591-92. In particular, it is suggestive that an epistle from William Webbe is written from the Grey estate at Pyrgo where Catherine Grey herself was kept in 1563-64. In fact, Webbe, when he wrote this letter, was living at this estate and possibly serving as tutor to children who would have been Catherine Grey’s nephews and nieces. And Wilmot also dedicated the book to a Lady Anne Grey who was the wife of Henry Grey, Catherine’s cousin (Heale 2004). The late Elizabethan book in other words comes packaged as a Grey family artifact, and these framing devices likely were designed to serve as reminders of the play’s original political context. One more point needs to be made here about the factual record as it pertains to the problem of untangling the puzzle of the topicality of the play’s original performance: we do not know for certain if the play was performed before or just after Catherine’s death. Wilmot, in his dedicatory epistle to the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple printed in the 1591-92 edition of the play, seems to imply that the play was performed 24 years earlier—in 7

One of the changes that the Inner Templars make to Boccaccio’s story is the elevation in rank of Gismond’s secret lover: in Boccaccio she falls for one of her father’s servants. The change, as Axton suggests, brings the story in line with Catherine Grey’s circumstances and the question of diplomatic marriages.

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1567-68. And a sonnet to the Queen’s maids that is affixed to the play in manuscript and that seems to have served as a kind of prologue implies that the original performance venue was “by the pleasant side / of famous Thames at grenwich court” (163). An examination of the dates when Elizabeth was at Greenwich during the late 1560s suggests two possible dates for the earliest performance of the play: February 1566 and April 1568 (Murray 1938: 388). If the play was performed in 1566, Catherine’s presumptive claim to the throne would have been very much on the front burner. By the latter date, though, she had died. Since the play is on the whole quite critical of Gismond—the figure whose clandestine remarriage might remind us of Catherine’s plight—while celebrating her husband Guishard and ratifying their union, it seems quite possible that the play was composed after Catherine’s death and in support of the Earl of Hertford and their children, but this can only be circumstantial speculation. The delicacies of court performance can make for interesting tensions and incompatibilities. On the one hand, the play is written to be played before Elizabeth, and though a certain amount of topical relevance and even veiled advice was probably both allowed and expected, there is clearly a limit to what one could say about Catherine Grey or the succession crisis at such an event. At times, the play strains to distance Elizabeth from the action represented in the play. The epilogue is part of that, but the main tactic in this regard has to do with drawing a contrast between Elizabeth’s personal chastity and Gismond’s erotomania. Where in Boccaccio’s story the daughter, there called Ghismonda, defends her position well enough to accrue considerable sympathy, this play’s authors consistently emphasize instead her moral weakness. And the focus on eros as failed self-government is presumably also why the play’s authors decided to open with the specter of a tyrannizing cupid—to set up a moral framework in which Gismond’s erotic desire is criticized, in conventional stoic terms, as the failure to “subdue” (1.3.55) her passions with reason. This conventional gendering of passion allows the authors of the play to insert two choral odes that praise Elizabeth’s exemplary chastity as the antidote to the effeminate passions elsewhere on display: one, at the end of act three, praises women like the goddess Diana who remain chaste; the other—written by the elegant Hatton for the end of act four—extols gentlemen who “in virtue serve” chaste ladies without expecting any erotic compensation (4 chorus 35). Looked at from a certain angle, then, the play praises unmarried Elizabeth for presiding over a chaste court that is unlike Tancred’s Salern while offering honorable service to her. But this overtly laudatory perspective on the queen is always in tension with the play’s focus on tyranny, which I think does encode real concerns about succession and the monarchy regardless of the play’s actual date of

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production. We might begin to unpack this by noting that the play has two main actions—first Gismond’s passion, beginning with her uncontrollable desolation at the death of her first husband and ending with the discovery of her dalliance with Guishard and, second, Tancred’s insane, overtly tyrannical reaction to this discovery. The first of these sections is presided over by the figure of Cupid whose long monologue at the start of act one frames the play as story about love. Cupid reappears at the beginning of act three for another monologue, this time boasting about how he has made Gismond “burne with raging lust” (3.1.8), where he anticipates the deaths of the lovers and announces that he will “remount” to the heavens secure in his preeminence (3.1.26). Act four begins with the fury Megaera, who—like the fury at the beginning of Seneca’s Thyestes—is in charge of bringing vengeance into “the cursed house where Gismond dwells” (4.1.2). The fury presides over the play’s second movement, as it were, prompting Tancred’s rage and the extreme violence of the last two acts. These two movements—Gismond’s passion and Tancred’s—are designed to parallel one another. So, for example, the chorus at the end of act three advises that Cupid “geves poison so to drink in gold” (3 chorus 41) and likens erotic passion to a “slye snake” that lurks under pretty flowers (3 chorus 45). Megaera, at the beginning of act four proposes to throw a “stinging snake” into Tancred’s breast (4.1.38), and then Tancred gives his daughter Guishard’s heart in a cup of gold which she poisons. In act one Gismond describes her late husband as the “stay, / wheron was wont to leane my recklesse thought” (1.3.29-30), and Tancred offers to be, to her, “a doble stay / as father and as husband” (1.3.47-48). But in act four Tancred describes Gismond as “my stay” (4.2.19). Neither of them has a reliable “stay” to prop them up morally, and so there is a kind of structural continuity in the way the play imagines their disruptive passions. If the gendering of Gismond’s passion is conventional, the implication is that Tancred’s inability to rein in his own fury is likewise in some way understood as effeminate.8 And this gendering of unruly passion is complemented by the depiction of Guishard’s death, an account which emphasizes his stoic, masculine self-control in the face of terror. “When I ones beheld his manly face,” the messenger, Renuchio, declares, describing Guishard’s exemplarity,

8

Rebecca Bushnell (1990: 20-25) describes the tyrant in classical literature as a figure likely to be depicted following this logic as passionate and therefore effeminate.

286 Curtis Perry and saw his chere no more appalled with fere of present death, than he whom never drede did ones amove, my heart abhorred than to give consent unto so foul a dede, that wretched death shold reve so worthy a man. (5.1.83-87)

Effeminate passion, in this play, is associated with a brand of secret inwardness that is consistently represented in architectural terms and thus associated allegorically with the hidden spaces in which the designs of both Gismond and Tancred are carried out (see Walter 2004). The secret vault under Gismond’s room—a feature borrowed from Boccaccio in this case— is implicitly likened to the secret interior of Gismond herself, for when Cupid announces his plans to enflame Gismond, he does so in language that anticipates Guishard’s eventual recourse to her chamber via secret passageway: This royall palace will I entre in, and there enflame the faire Gismonda soe, in creping thorough all her veines within, that she thereby shall raise much ruthe and woe. (1.1.61-64)

Love creeps through Gismond’s veins as Guishard creeps into the castle, through a secret vault whose “mouth” opens into the bedchamber (3.3.62). The somatic language adds up to something like an allegory of a self vulnerable to passion: one lacking stoic self-mastery, permeable, and susceptible to secret promptings from hidden inward places. Act five likewise features an architectural correlative for Tancred’s interior space, though one that owes more to Seneca’s Thyestes than to the Decameron. When Tancred has Guishard murdered, the act takes place within “a strong turret, compact of stone and rock / hugie without, but horrible within” (5.1.61-62). In Thyestes, where Atreus murders his nephews in a secret grove at the heart of the magnificent and imposing family palace, the location is symbolic in the sense that it allegorizes what lies at the secret heart of the will to power. Here we might intuit something of the same idea in the connection between the imposing force of the turrets outside—its hugeness—and its horrible insides.9 The connection between this architectural space and the passions dominating Tancred’s bosom is likewise 9

Seneca, 2002-04, lines 641-82. The setting is not translated directly from Seneca, but the influence is unmistakable. Wilmot may also have had Oedipus 530-47 in mind: set piece accounts of the murky secret places in which crime takes place are a Senecan specialty.

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implied: “Into this uggly cave, by cruel hest / of King Tancred, were diverse servants sent, / to work the horror of his furious brest” (5.1.69-71). Since such architectural allegories for inwardness feature both in the first half of Gismond of Salern and in the Senecan play from which the author of this act—Robert Wilmot—drew his material, I think we can say that the “uggly cave” in which Guishard is murdered and mutilated has among its connotations the allegorical representation of Tancred’s “furious brest.” This symbolic vocabulary of interior space, because it represents at once the secret chambers within which the literal business of a corrupt state can take place shielded from view—secret assignations, torture and murder— and the hidden “uggly” hearts of those who would commit them, provides a potent and suggestive vocabulary for political corruption. Readers of Gismond of Salern will be reminded of similar proto-gothic representations linking the inner spaces of court with the corrupt interiority of its inhabitants in later plays like John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1614), Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling (1622), or William Davenant’s The Cruel Brother (1626-27). Indeed, since both Webster and Davenant—along with playwrights of similar sensibility like John Marston and John Ford— were associated with the literary culture of the Inns of Courts it is perhaps even possible to see Gismond of Salern as a founding text contributing to something like an Inns of Court dramatic tradition. The play can certainly be seen as an influence upon Webster’s play and John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s A Whore, and Michael Neill has suggested that Ford would have known Gismond as “one of the more celebrated amateur successes to have emerged from the Inns of Court in the generations preceding his own” (Neill 1988: 158; see also Marrapodi 1998). My sense is that this tradition, at least as derived here from Senecan tragedy and the novella tradition, involves a taste for super-sophisticated erudition, complex psychological portraits of (often eroticized) violence, gothic-seeming interior spaces such as the vault and turret here, and an abiding interest in political tyranny. Regardless of any speculative claims about the influence of Gismond on later drama, it is certainly worth noting that its authors, fusing Boccaccio and Seneca, created in the 1560s a vocabulary for court corruption that so vividly anticipates the techniques of later commercial drama. The authors of Gismond of Salern use these techniques to anatomize tyranny, too. I think we can make sense of their choice of material and get beyond any overly reductive reading of the play as a roman à clef (in which Gismond stands for Catherine Grey and Tancred for Elizabeth), by thinking of the play’s meaning in relation to the constitutional questions provoked, in the late 1560s, by Grey and the succession crisis. For early Elizabethan debates concerning succession contributed to something like a constitutional crisis (Alford 1998). This was the case not because constitutional change as

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such was being discussed as possibility, but rather because members of Elizabeth’s political classes felt that the Queen’s impulse to forestall debate about the succession threatened to undermine institutions like Parliament and the Privy Council designed to balance and moderate royal will within a polity that has been described as “monarchical republicanism” (Collinson 1986-87). The unsettled succession, Stephen Alford argues, combined with Elizabeth’s refusal to countenance debate after the dissolution of Parliament in January of 1567, encouraged MPs and councillors to consider alternatives, to plan independent action, and to disobey the Queen. Elizabeth believed that her imperium was ordained by God, unlimited by counsel; succession was the issue that which encouraged the queen to retreat back into her prerogative. (Alford 1998: 157)

This is the best context in which to understand Gismond’s political investments: we might accordingly recast Axton’s account of the play by saying that Gismond of Salern is a play in which a king’s efforts to control marriage and succession prove stifling and culminate in tyranny. There is no figure for Elizabeth herself in the play. Where she appears, as I have suggested, she is figured as a positive antitype to Gismond. But there is a pervasive sense that the play’s Salern has declined into its present circumstances from some lost golden age in the past, and there are hints that this sense of decline might capture at least something of the constitutional anxieties Alford describes. The point is not that Tancred is Elizabeth, then, but rather than Tancred represents an exaggerated brand of absolutist tyranny which Elizabethans saw adumbrated or pointed towards by the Queen’s retreat into prerogative. The second chorus, for instance, opens by comparing the “great decay” (2 chorus 4) characteristic of present age to “former times” (2 chorus 1) and uses this as a framework to compare Gismond to more steadfast women like Lucrece, Artemis, Penelope, and Portia. The comparison with Lucrece is especially suggestive, of course, given her association with the foundation of the Roman republic: the parallel sets up an associative link between the lost golden age and a more open and balanced political system. The play’s authors chose to name Gismond’s aunt Lucrece as well: she tries and fails to intercede with Tancred on behalf of her niece. Does the prevalence of this name, together with this particular character’s willingness to argue for a kind of domestic liberty, indicate advocacy for republicanism—or at least for monarchical republicanism—as opposed to what Alford calls Elizabeth’s imperium? Likewise, the Senecan “turret” that, in act five, is the allegorical setting for Tancred’s ugly acts, is given as part of a ruin. The passage is worth quoting at some length:

Gismond of Salern and the Elizabethan Politics of Senecan Drama 289 Here sometime was a goodly tower uprered, that foured in fame while fate and fortune served. But time doeth passé, and with her sway eke passeth all this same. For now the walles ben evened with the plaine, and all the rest so foully lyeth defaced, as but the only shade doeth there remaine Yet doeth that show what worthy work tofore hath there been wrought. One parcel of that tower even yet doeth stand, whome time could not forlore, fortune downthrowe, not length of yeres devour: a strong turret compact of stone and rock, hugie without, but horrible within. (5.1.49-61)

Though the general tone of this set-piece description resembles the account of Atreus’s palace in Thyestes, and indeed though many of the details of Wilmot’s act five echo Senecan tragedy very closely, this detail—that the turret is a last remaining part of a larger “worthy work” fallen to ruin—is not specifically Senecan in origin. But it does of course resonate with the “great decay” described in the second chorus and I do think it is designed by Wilmot to be part of the description’s allegorical significance. That is, in addition to representing the “uggly” interior life of Tancred the tyrant, it represents his tyranny specifically as emblematic of social decline. This represents, if not Elizabeth herself, what a once-great nation might all too easily become. Indeed, I think this is part of why the authors of Gismond of Salern turned to Senecan tragedy for their model. Seneca, who wrote from within the heart of Nero’s Rome, is readily associated with lost republicanism, triumphant tyranny, and the poetics of social decline. Recognizing this allows us to extend Winston’s basic argument about the appeal of Senecan drama to ambitious, learned young men writing in the 1560s. These men, I would argue, saw in Senecan drama not just another genre of literature advising princes, but also, and more importantly, an invaluable literary model for the representation of political imbalance and social degeneration. After all, the advisors in Seneca’s tyrant plays are singularly ineffectual, and wise counsel fails in Gorboduc. That Senecan drama proved so compelling during the 1560s may then say as much about the tensions of the moment— about the succession crisis and the anxieties attending the consolidation of Elizabeth’s reign—as about the political ambitions of those who composed and translated Senecan drama in this decade. Renuchio, the messenger who describes Tancred’s vile murders, is described in the play’s dramatis personae as a “gentleman of the privy chamber” (166). This could be a position of some importance—it had been,

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under Henry VIII, where the politics of privy chamber intimacy played a significant role in public policy—but what is striking about Renuchio is in fact his powerlessness.10 When describing Guishard’s death, as we have seen, he says “my heart abhorred than / to give consent unto so foul a dede”—but his consent is unnecessary, since deeds in question go off without a hitch. Part of the play’s depiction of tyranny, in other words, involves its insistence that the consent of subjects is unnecessary. Given Elizabeth’s choice to disband Parliament and to retreat into her own prerogative, it may also be significant that there is nobody in the play’s Salern with any authority that does not derive from intimacy. It is a play, in fact, full of allusions to the politics of intimacy (hence perhaps the three dedicatory sonnets to Elizabeth’s maids of honor) but completely lacking in any other counterbalancing source of institutional authority outside of the ruler’s tyrannical will. The significance of this becomes clear in the play’s depiction of Julio, Tancred’s captain of the guard, and the man who captures Guishard. As he goes off to do Tancred’s awful bidding, he declares his undying loyalty to his sovereign in a speech whose masochism seems to me to verge on selfparody. He promises to do whatever might be “assigned,” as if yow shall command even in this place my self, even but to satisfy your will, yea though unkindly horror wold gainsay, with cruell hand the lively blood to spill, that fedes this faithfull hart, I would not stay, but straight before your face wold fercely staine this blade in blood, that, at your royall hest, should largely streame even from the derest veine that serves the soule in this obedient brest. (4.2.133-42)

This seems unnecessarily elongated for an otherwise minor character’s profession of loyalty and also unnecessarily gory (and so, of course, proleptic) in its imagination of opening up the abject body. This is the kind of relationship between sovereign and subject that makes any excess on the former’s part possible. In the play’s Salern, presided over by a tyrant who is surrounded only by personal intimates and toadies, there can be no institutional or conciliar check on the horrors that can be committed at the royal hest.

10

On the privy chamber, see Starkey 1987. Walter (2004) likewise links Gismond’s obsession with secret interiors to the architectural structures governing the politics of intimacy in Tudor England.

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The play, in other words, while praising Elizabeth for her personal chastity, offers a critique of a style of government isolated from institutions of counsel and withdrawn into its own secret intimacies. Part of the point is that this is a style of government into which it was felt that the queen might be lapsing. Part of it, too, is that the play’s authors and the Templars more generally wish to present themselves to the queen as civil servants more in the mold of the men Christopher Hatton praises for serving with virtue than in that of Tancred’s abject and disempowered intimates. That is, by offering up this anatomy of tyranny to the Queen, the play’s authors not only recommend a more balanced style of government but also advertise their own suitability for service within it. This is, then, I suppose, a species of advice-to-princes literature after all. But Senecan drama as a form offers up its advice framed, always, by a profound fear of the capacity for rulers to disregard their subjects and to lapse into tyranny. The epilogue of Gismond of Salern may declare that its audience can be “free from fere,” but, we might ask, were the play’s authors?

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Works Cited Alford, Stephen. 1998. The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1558-1569. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Axton, Marie. 1977. The Queen’s Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession. London: Royal Historical Society. Bushnell, Rebecca. 1990. Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the English Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. Collinson, Patrick. 1986-87. ‘The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I’ in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library of Manchester 69: 394-424. Cunliffe, John W. (ed.) 1912. Early English Classical Tragedies. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ——. 1906. ‘Gismond of Salerne’ in PMLA 21: 435-461. De La Torre, Victoria. 2001. ‘‘We Few of an Infinite Multitude’: John Hales, Parliament, and the Gendered Politics of the Early Elizabethan Succession’ in Albion 33: 557-82. Doran, Susan. 1996. Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I. London: Routledge. Farmer, John S. (ed.). 1970. Gismond of Salerne, By R[obert] W[ilmot] and Gentlemen of the Inner Temple. 1912; rpt. New York: AMS Press. Finkelpearl, Phillip J. 1969. John Marston of the Middle Temple. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Heale, Elizabeth. 2004. ‘Webbe, William (fl. 1566?–1591)’ in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. On line at: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28935 (consulted 11.12.2011). Heywood, Jasper, trans. 1560. The Seconde Tragedie of Seneca Entituled Thyestes. London. Levine, Mortimer. 1996. The Early Elizabethan Succession Question. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Marrapodi, Michele. 1998. ‘Retaliation as an Italian Vice in English Renaissance Drama: Narratives and Theatrical Exchanges’ in Michele Marrapodi and A. J. Hoenselaars (eds) The Italian World of English Renaissance Drama: Cultural Exchange and Intertextuality. Newark: University of Delaware Press: 190-207. May, Steven W. 2004. ‘Noel, Henry (d. 1597)’ in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Online at http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/20234 (consulted 11.12. 2011).

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Murray, John. 1938. ‘Tancred and Gismund’ in The Review of English Studies o.s. 14 (56): 385-95. Neill, Michael. 1988. ‘‘What Strange Riddle’s This?’: Deciphering ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore’ in Michael Neill (ed.) John Ford: Critical Re-Visions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 153-79. Patterson, Annabel. 1991. Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England. 1984; rpt., Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. 2002-04. Tragedies (ed. and tr. J. G. Fitch) (Loeb Classical Library). 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Stallybrass, Peter. 1991-92. ‘Dismemberments and Re-memberments: Rewriting The Decameron, 4.1, in the English Renaissance’ in Studi Sul Boccaccio 20: 299-324. Starkey, David. 1987. ‘Intimacy and Innovation: The Rise of the Privy Chamber, 1485-1547’ in David Starkey et al. The English Court: From the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War. London: Longman: 71-118. Walker, Greg. 1998. The Politics of Performance in Early Renaissance Drama Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walter, Melissa. 2004. ‘Shakespeare's news: Autonomy, Authority, and the Symbolic Vocabulary of European Novellas in Early Modern England.’ Ph.D Thesis. University of Wisconsin. Wilmot, Roger (et al.). 1591. The Tragedie of Tancred and Gismund. London. Winston, Jessica. 2006. ‘Seneca in Early Elizabethan England’ in Renaissance Quarterly 59: 29-58. Wright, Herbert G. (ed.). 1971. Early English Versions of The Tales of Guiscardo and Ghismonda and Titus and Gisippus From The Decameron. 1937; rpt. New York: Kraus Reprint Co.

Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich “Drabs of State vext”: Violent Female Masquers in Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women Thomas Middleton’s commercial stage play Women Beware Women ends with a violent masque in which three female characters take control of the script and performance to murder their adversaries and destroy male royal authority. This negative representation of female masquers condemns women’s courtly performance at two politically different moments during the play’s composition and later publication. At its presumed performance, the play would have critiqued female masquers at the court of King James I. When Women Beware Women was published in 1657, Nathanael Richards’ misogynistic prefatory poem suggests that at least one reader used the play’s condemnation of female masquers to blame women for England’s recently dissolved monarchy.

By the time female performers appeared on the commercial stage in England in 1660, English aristocratic women had been performing for more than a century in court pageantry, where even silent roles enabled noblewomen to subvert models of female obedience and submission.1 I propose in this paper that imagined female bodies, as represented by boy actors on the commercial stage, can signify similar subversion. Through their representations of female masquers, commercial stage plays can engage in a cross-genre dialog with actual masques about the transgressive political power of female performers and authors. Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women, a commercial stage play composed during the reign of James I, features three female characters who use court masquing to incite violent revenge.2 Some literary scholars have interpreted the play’s inserted masque 1

2

Recent scholarship has revealed that women indeed performed in several private, rural, and courtly venues before the Restoration in England. S. Howard 1998: 26-45 discusses women’s dancing in court masques during the reign of Henry VIII. Elite women participated in court pageantry during the reign of Elizabeth I as well, and a few young women even played speaking roles in entertainments during the 1592 royal progress, as noted in Davidson and Stevenson 2007: 207-26 and Kolkovich 2009. Two essay collections, Women Players in England, 1500-1660: Beyond the All-Male Stage and Women and Dramatic Production 1550-1700, cite additional examples of early female performance in England. See Brown and Parolin 2005: 1-22 and Findlay and Hodgson-Wright 2000: 1-14 for an overview. McManus 2002: 1-17 and Lewalski 1993: 15-43 offer further discussions on the erotic and political power of women’s silent dancing at James I’s court. Thomas Middleton could have composed Women Beware Women any time between 1609, when one of its source texts was published, and his death in 1627. Recent

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as political satire that reveals corruption beneath the nobility’s apparent order, but the critical conversation has overlooked how the play blames female masquers for exploiting and augmenting this corruption.3 Women Beware Women condemns elite women’s participation in court performance by showing how masques afford them opportunities to corrupt court politics, usurp male authority, and expose faults in the patriarchal Stuart government’s façade of stability. In 1657, the printed playbook and its misogynistic prefatory poem heighten these anxieties and suggest that at least one reader used the play’s condemnation of female masquers to stoke fears about women who perform larger political roles. Women’s masquing would have been a topical issue at the play’s composition and presumed performance. As Leeds Barroll and Clare McManus have shown, James’ wife Anna intervened in court politics through masquing, and her masques’ emphasis on eroticized female bodies encouraged redefinitions of the ideal courtly woman (Barroll 2001: 74-116; McManus 2002: 18-59, 97-135). Even though Anna stopped performing as a masquer after Prince Henry’s death in 1612 and thus before Women Beware Women’s likely composition, other women continued to dance in court masques throughout her life and after her death. Like female playgoers and cross-dressed boy actors on the commercial stage, these women generated their fair share of criticism from anti-theatrical writers.4 The most notorious denunciation of female masquers appeared in print after Middleton’s play was written and before it was published, in 1633 during the reign of Charles I. This text, William Prynne’s Histrio-mastix, condemns all kinds of theatrical performance and fixates on the dangers of women’s increasing involvement in masques’ creation, costuming, and performance. Prynne explains that

3

4

critics usually date the play around either 1613-14 or 1619-23, with several favoring 1621. However, the evidence for any of these dates is sparse and inconclusive. See Dutton 1999: xx-xxi and Mulryne’s 1975 introduction to Women Beware Women xxxiixxxviii. I find it sufficient to consider Women Beware Women a Jacobean play. An earlier (1613-14) composition would bring the play into more direct conversation with Queen Anna’s masquing, although the play could still reflect upon the issues of female masquing and women’s influence on court politics after Anna’s death in 1619. For example, John Potter interprets the play’s inserted masque as converting conventional symbols of order, community, and harmony to those of sexual deviance and social corruption; Albert H. Tricomi calls the play “anticourt” and views it as a citizen’s critique of the decadent, corrupt court; and Laura Severt King proposes that the play and its masque represent the governing elite as brutal and damaging to the rest of society. More recently, Skiles Howard has suggested that Middleton’s satiric treatment of courtly dance in Women Beware Women and other plays “expressed an urban challenge to court power and policy.” See Potter 1982: 372-73; Tricomi 1989: 65-73; King 1986: 44-46; and S. Howard 1998: 133. On gender and anti-theatricalism as applied to the commercial stage, see J. Howard 1994: 22-46, 73-128; and Levine 1994: 10-25.

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mixed dancing in masques “irritates and ingenders noysome lusts, it occasions much dalliance, chambering, wantonnesse, whoredome and adultery, both in the Dancers and Spectators” (sig. Hh3). Especially because his work appeared soon after Queen Henrietta-Maria’s all-female play The Shepheard’s Paradise (1633), Prynne’s famous phrase “Women-Actors, notorious whores” was widely taken to refer to Henrietta-Maria (Prynne sig. Rrrrrr 4; McManus 2002: 209-10; Tomlinson 2005: 13). Histrio-mastix presents an extremist Puritan view of the theater, but a more moderate version of the same hostility toward female performers is visible in Women Beware Women.5 Middleton’s female characters, who cause exaggerated damage to courtly decorum, would have been played by boy actors, yet the play and later dedicatory poem emphasize these characters’ resemblance to actual women and imply a connection between the fictional representations and their historical counterparts. Although Middleton does not openly condemn female performance as Prynne does, his play employs similar rhetoric that expresses contemporary anxiety about the often-sexualized agency afforded female masquers. In doing so, Women Beware Women directs criticism away from the potentially effeminizing cross-dressed commercial theater and toward elite women’s court performance.6 Women Beware Women culminates in a complicated, female-centered antemasque and masque in which three women (Bianca, Isabella, and Livia) use writing and performance to murder audience members and each other. At the play’s beginning, Isabella and Bianca are both naïve young women entering marriages, and the wealthy widow Livia plays the role of bawd to enable their infidelity. She delivers Bianca to the lusty Duke and urges Isabella to engage in an incestuous relationship with her uncle. In the play’s final scene, the wedding banquet of Bianca and the Duke, Bianca stages an “Antemask” she has written. In it, characters representing marriage, youth, and erotic desire distribute cups to Bianca, the Duke, and the Cardinal, who is the Duke’s brother. Bianca aims to kill the Cardinal with a poisoned drink because she is afraid he might seek some of the Duke’s family fortune, but the performers mistakenly give the Duke the poison. In the main masque, Isabella plays a nymph unable to decide between two suitors, and Livia plays Juno, the marriage goddess who is to decide for her. Isabella and Livia kill each other, one of Isabella’s suitors falls into an open trapdoor, and the other is wounded by poisonous arrows and then runs himself onto the end

5 6

Tricomi’s suggestion the play was written for an audience with Puritan sympathies, if correct, could help explain the similar language between the two texts. See Levine 1994: 10-25 for an examination of the fear of effeminization and worry about cross-dressed boy actors in anti-theatrical pamphlets from 1579 to the closing of public theaters in 1642.

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of a sword to quicken his death. Meanwhile, the Duke dies from the poisoned drink and Bianca kills herself when she realizes the error. Even before this violent masque begins, two characters separately identify court masques as moments of vulnerability for authority figures and opportunities to unsettle order through violence. When Bianca says, “In time of sports death may steal in securely; / Then ‘tis least thought on,” she highlights the irony in turning a marriage masque into violent revenge and imagines an unsuspecting audience (5.2.22-23).7 Yet she also implies that court masques, promoted as celebratory events, provide ideal situations for subversion under the guise of submission to authority. Guardiano, Isabella’s father-in-law and the original deviser of the main masque, suggests the same when he explains the following: Here’s an occasion offered that gives anger Both liberty and safety to perform Things worth the fire it holds, without the fear Of danger or of law; for mischiefs acted Under the privilege of a marriage-triumph At the Duke’s hasty nuptials will be thought Things merely accidental. (4.2.159-65)

Words such as “liberty,” “safety,” and “privilege” represent the masque as a liberating space for its performers, while “anger,” “fire,” and “danger” suggest a hazardous occasion for its ruler. Like Bianca, Guardiano defines court masquing as an opportunity to enact improper behavior without legal repercussion. Both comments demonstrate that the play does not simply distort a genre that affirms royal masculine power, but identifies masques as already unstable rituals that could offer as much political critique as celebration. In Women Beware Women, the female characters especially seize the opportunity not only to criticize, but also to sabotage masculine royal authority. The Duke, who first appears in the play in a royal entry, represents this authority. His confused reactions to the masque reveal his vulnerability and the female-controlled performance’s destabilization of the political order. After reading the masque’s argument before the performance, he is overly conscious of the intended script and any deviations from it. After the unexpected antemasque, he protests, “But soft! Here’s no such persons in the argument” (5.2.65). His realization comes late, after the antemasque performers have already exited, and Bianca quickly silences him and calls in the main masque. Bianca as author has ignored the 7

All quotations from Women Beware Women, except where noted, come from the Revels Plays edition edited by J.R. Mulryne.

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male-sanctioned script of the main masque and directed the action in a destructive direction, and the Duke is not equipped to stop her. When masquers start dying during the main masque, the Duke issues a series of confused remarks: “What’s the conceit of that?” (5.2.120); “This swerves a little from the argument” (123); “this plot’s drawn false” (129); and, finally, “I have lost my self in this quite” (142). His obsession with following the masque’s original script and inability to understand the women’s changes underscore his impotence as an authority figure. The Duke’s comments additionally mark the moments when Isabella and Livia rewrite the masque to usurp the Duke’s already questionable control. Livia proposes the masque and offers to pay for it; she explains that she and Guardiano “once had a purpose / To have honoured the first marriage of the Duke / With an invention of his own” (4.2.202-4). The ambiguous pronoun “his” at the end of this passage likely refers to Guardiano, whom the play elsewhere credits with the masque’s authorship, but could alternately refer to the Duke. In either interpretation, the main masque’s plot and dialog are male creations, but the two central female performers take control of the script. The masque’s argument dictates only that Juno/Livia will choose a lover for the Nymph/Isabella. Isabella adds the release of poisoned incense that will kill Livia, and Livia adds a gift of “flaming gold” she will throw at Isabella (5.2.117). They both appropriate a typical masque trope, the giving of expensive presents using language of prosperity, for violent ends. The revenge masque evokes other Stuart masque conventions as well. It features standard characters—shepherds, nymphs, and figures from classical mythology—and spectacular effects, such as Livia-as-Juno’s elaborate descent into the action via stage machinery. This moment, along with the antemasque’s inclusion of the marriage god Hymen, recalls Ben Jonson’s The Masque of Hymen (1606), in which Juno and eight ladies descend from above. Bianca adopts another common feature of Jonson’s masques, the antemasque, to conceal her intention to poison the Cardinal. Although Jonsonian antemasques are usually comic and grotesque, Bianca’s version is grotesque only in its off-stage outcome and features mythological characters Hymen, Ganymede, and Hebe instead of common antemasque figures, such as drunkards, witches, and beasts. The play’s women become most dangerous and worthy of punishment when they perform off script. In fact, all three instances of female authorship or revision—Bianca’s antemasque, Isabella’s smoke, and Livia’s gold—end in murder. Until this point in the play, Livia has conformed to male desires; she has interrupted the institution of marriage and controlled female bodies because men requested her to do so. Her role in the masque as a marriage-maker is especially ironic because, although she has helped unite the Duke and Bianca, she has initiated the destruction of two

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marriages. The play figures her death as the just result of a woman’s transgressive behavior. As she dies, she says, “My own ambition pulls me down to ruine” (5.2.133), warning women not to threaten the status quo or to seek a higher social or political position. Furthermore, Isabella’s first speech to Livia in this masque refers to her as Jove’s wife, stressing her status as a queen consort and connecting her to Queen Anna. The play’s condemnation of Livia and exploitation of typical masque tropes together reveal subtle disapproval of women’s masquing at the Stuart court. The play’s explanations of the masque after its performance especially illustrate its negative view of female masquers. Men quickly step forth to explicate and revise the women’s performance. Hippolito explains the masque, then Guardiano’s written explanation is discovered, and finally, the Duke summarizes the action by noting that “great mischiefs / Mask in expected pleasures” (5.2.172-73). The Duke’s pun on “Mask” as both court entertainment and disguise illustrates the play’s awareness of its own political implications. The play suggests that the court masque is such a dangerous form because it can hide and uncover corruption. Hippolito, Isabella’s uncle and lover, describes the murders in the following way: “Lust and forgetfulness has been amongst us, / And we are brought to nothing” (5.2.146-47). He adds that Livia “in a madness for her lover’s death / Revealed a fearful lust in our near bloods, / For which I am punished dreadfully and unlooked for” (5.2.154-56). Hippolito’s central explanations of the tragic ending are “lust” and “forgetfulness.” As his lines reveal, “lust” is a woman’s fault, and he unfairly blames Livia for his punishment. Similarly, the tragedy has been caused by “forgetfulness,” or failure to remember one’s position and station.8 Hippolito attributes the post-masque destruction to dangerous female sexuality and, as Livia’s final words also suggest, to women reaching beyond their socially designated stations. In other words, women’s disruptions of the social and gender hierarchies inevitably breed tragedy in Hippolito’s eyes. Hippolito’s rhetoric here resembles Prynne’s claim that masquing causes “whoredome” and “lusts” and resembles “madnesse.” Similarly, although the play largely blames women for the corruption at court, Hippolito disavows their authorial acts by denying them a subject position (“we are brought”) and by later saying of Guardiano, “The plot was all his own” (5.2.163). No one acknowledges Livia’s key creative and financial role in producing the event. At the masque’s end, Women Beware Women claims that female transgression will be punished; however, the play also denies the full extent of these women’s authority and destruction. This simultaneous avowal and disavowal of 8

This particular definition for “forget” is cited in the Oxford English Dictionary, definition 5b.

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women’s violent insubordination exposes the play’s attempt but inability to contain these subversive women and the social upheaval they easily cause. The play’s main message is espoused by a female character who wishes, like tyrant kings in A Mirror for Magistrates, that other women will learn from her negative example. Before Bianca dies, she exclaims: […] Oh the deadly snares That women set for women, without pity Either to soul or honor! Learn by me To know your foes; in this belief I die: Like our own sex, we have no enemy, no enemy! (5.2.211-15)

Some critics have tried to rescue the play from its own misogynistic language by suggesting that it condemns not women, but society’s treatment of them.9 However, Bianca’s lines here and Hippolito’s earlier explanation clearly represent women, not men or society, as the enemy. The play does not blame Guardiano even though it acknowledges him as the masque’s author. Although it punishes Hippolito and the Duke through their deaths, it does not directly blame either man for his role in bringing about the women’s sins. The Duke’s few dying words express only shock at his death. He takes no blame for his own destruction, yet Bianca finds herself physically marred by the same poison and explains that “A blemished face best fits a leprous soul” (5.2.205). Like Livia and unlike the masque’s male victims, Bianca blames only herself for her ruin and serves to warn women that their destructive deeds will be punished more harshly and publicly than those of men. Although Livia, Bianca, and Isabella all die during their attempts to exact revenge, they together succeed in substantially and permanently disrupting the male-controlled court. Unlike the bloody ends of Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, The Duchess of Malfi, and many other revenge tragedies, no new generation of masculine rule emerges in this play to restore the government to its rightful order. Instead, the play ends with a few words from the Cardinal, who has revealed himself earlier in the play as easily persuaded to turn the other cheek when faced with immoral behavior. His final lines read: Two kings on one throne cannot sit together, But one must needs down, for his title’s wrong; So where lust reigns, that prince cannot reign long. (5.2.223-25)

9

Examples of the claim that Women Beware Women criticizes society’s treatment of women can be found in Barber 1969: 1-9 and Ziraldo 2004: 1-28.

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The Cardinal identifies a serious problem at court but speaks only in negative terms and offers no positive solution. He stresses that lust, defined a few lines earlier as a feminine characteristic, poses a direct challenge to state authority. The image of two kings on one throne may even offer a subtle allusion to Queen Anna, her separate court, and her influence over the Stuart government.10 The Cardinal’s lines underscore the play’s anxiety about female sexuality and performance. Although the play has tried to contain these women’s dangerous power, it cannot do so. Thirty years later, the printed playbook’s male-authored prefatory poem frames the play with an additional attack on women’s political power. At the beginning of the 1657 octavo, poet-playwright Nathanael Richards praises Middleton’s play for its accurate depiction of women: Women beware Women, ‘tis a true Text Never to be forgot: Drabs of State vext, Have Plots, Poysons, Mischeifs that seldom miss, To murther Vertue with a venom kiss. Witness this worthy Tragedy, exprest By him that well deserv’d among the best Of Poets in his time: He knew the rage, Madness of Women crost; and for the Stage Fitted their humors, Hell-bred Malice, Strife Acted in State, presented to the life. I that have seen’t, can say, having just cause, Never came Tragedy off with more applause. [A4]11

Richards is our only seventeenth-century critic of this play and provides our only evidence that the play was performed before the twentieth century. Richards praises Middleton’s accurate representation of women’s inherently destructive nature, and, like Middleton’s characters, he blames the play’s violent end on women. He stresses that their evil plots “seldom miss,” and their method (“with a venom kiss”) underscores a fear of women who use their sexuality to entrap and poison men. Although Richards praises the veracity of the play’s title, the play as he interprets it more accurately instructs men to beware women, whose madness and lust corrupt society’s values and destroy men.

10 11

For an excellent discussion of Anna’s English court as a separate, powerful entity from her husband’s court, see Barroll 2001: 36-73. I quote here from the original playtext rather than a modern edited version because I disagree with the editorial consensus to alter Richards’ punctuation and specifically to insert a comma between “State” and “vext” in the second line. This invasive emendation unnecessarily limits the range of meanings in the phrase “Drabs of State vext,” which I discuss below.

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While a performance of this play during James’ reign would have served as a critique of female masquing at the Stuart court, its 1657 publication allowed at least one reader to blame women who perform political roles for the civil war and recently dissolved monarchy. Richards perhaps looks both backward and forward as he interprets the play as a condemnation of female performance at the former Stuart court and as a warning against related evils: a feminized republic without a male head (like England since Charles I’s 1649 beheading) or a new version of male rule vulnerable to female influence in Lord Protector Cromwell. All of these potential interpretations collide in Richards’ repetition of the word “State,” a word that would have had multiple connotations in 1657, especially to a former royalist. Although Richards remains an obscure figure, his poetry collections and patronage circle show that he supported King Charles in the early 1640s. His friends Thomas Jordan and Thomas Rawlins, who wrote dedications to Richards’ The Tragedy of Messalina (1640), were royalists. Throughout his Poems Sacred and Satyricall (1641), Richards urges his readers to pray for Charles and insists that earthly kings, like the heavenly one, deserve respect and reverence. According to his poem “The Jesuite,” included in the 1641 collection, the two unforgivable sins committed by Catholics are lust (possessing a doctrine “to whore all”) and willingness to usurp royal authority (wrongly thinking “‘tis meritorious to kill kings”) (sig. D8v, E3). These two sins, lust and failure to remember one’s proper station, are the same two failings Hippolito condemns in Women Beware Women. Richards’ emphasis on the evils of male lust and necessity of female chastity in his works may help account for his apparent distrust of Henrietta-Maria. His play, The Tragedy of Messalina, includes a masque of whores dressed as queens and teaches that a woman’s lusty rule over men will destroy society. The character Messalina identifies masques as opportunities “to provoke desire,” and dies after asking, “Am not I onely Author of all ill?” (lines 542, 2580). Through Messalina, Richards condemns women’s involvement in the conception and performance of masques; more specifically, his play is a thinly veiled indictment of Henrietta-Maria. In 1657, Richards interprets Women Beware Women as conveying a similar condemnation of female masquers in an altered political climate. In his play and in his interpretation of Middleton’s play, women performers at court stand in for a larger concern about women’s disastrous influence on male rulers in the political realm. The two lines of Richards’ commendatory poem that best illustrate his anger at women who influence politics are “Drabs of State vext” and “Acted in State, presented to the life.” If we think of “State” as a government (either the republic or the previous royal government), then these lines connect sexually available women and those who perform in stately

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masques, recalling Prynne’s “Women-Actors, notorious whores.” The phrase “presented to the life,” like the label “true Text,” invites comparison between the play’s female characters and actual female masquers; Richards has already suggested that the most dangerous women are those who write and perform their own plots. His phrase “Drabs of State vext” carries multiple meanings, mostly because of the various connotations of and possibilities for “vext” (“vexed,” OED 1, 2). Most editors of Women Beware Women interpret this word as modifying “Drabs”; in this interpretation, the phrase refers to high-ranking whores of a disturbed state and suggests that these lusty women possess a troubled moral condition—an explicit message in many of Richards’ earlier poems.12 Richards could be blaming courtly women for the destruction of the monarchy by implying that these unstable “drabs” infected the previous government and caused its vexation and collapse. Alternately, by interpreting “vext” as distressed and irritated, we can invest the women with greater agency and envision a group of angry women deliberately tearing down their government. Finally, Middleton’s characters represent an already “vext” state, the period of civil wars that Richards would have likely seen as punishment for rebelling against Charles I. In Richards’ interpretation of the play, the presence of politically active women both reveals an already corrupt state and further threatens the state’s security. Women Beware Women poses a productive case study for the ways gender mattered in two politically different moments in seventeenth-century England. Richards’ prefatory poem illustrates the play’s participation in a dialog among commercial playwrights with ties to the court—a dialog that I suggest overlaps in surprising ways with anti-theatrical writing. The play’s presumed performance and later publication reveal a similar anxiety about women’s increasing involvement in court performance, demonstrating that this particular fear prevailed across different systems of government and that politically active women served as scapegoats for a wide variety of political problems.13

12

13

For examples of this editorial gloss, see Dutton 1999: 351, n.2; and Mulryne 1975: 3, n. 2. Richards’ Poems Sacred and Satyricall often demands female chastity, worries about whorish women, and analogizes various sins to lust. For example, “Sinnes Impudence” bemoans society’s lack of morality, explaining that sin “now in Triumph like a Drab of State / Branded with impudence; dare walke and prate, / Doe deeds of open shame; yet never blush, / Shrinke, feare, nor feele Revenge more than a rush” (sig. F4). In this poem, the “Drab of State,” or the whore of a great man living openly and without shame, stands in for unabashed sinning more generally. I would like to thank Carol Neely, Lori Newcomb, Catharine Gray, and Tara Lyons for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay.

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Works Cited Primary References Middleton, Thomas. 1975. Women Beware Women (ed. J.R. Mulryne) (The Revels Plays). London: Methuen. ——. 1657. Two new playes. More dissemblers besides women. Women beware women. London. Prynne, William. 1633. Histrio-mastrix. London. Richards, Nathanael. 1641. Poems Sacred and Saytricall. London. ——. 1910. Tragedy of Messallina, The Roman Emperesse (ed. A.R. Skemp). Louvan: A. Uystpruyst.

Secondary References Barber, Charles. 1969. Introduction in Middleton, Thomas, Women Beware Women (ed. Barber). Berkeley: University of California Press: 1-9. Barroll, Leeds. 2001. Anna of Denmark, Queen of England: A Cultural Biography. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Brown, Pamela Allen and Peter Parolin. 2005. Introduction in Brown and Parolin (eds) Women Players in England, 1500-1600:Beyond the All-Male Stage. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate: 1-23. Davidson, Peter and Jane Stevenson. 2007. ‘Elizabeth I’s Reception at Bisham (1592): Elite Women as Writers and Devisers’ in Archer, Jayne Elisabeth, Elizabeth Goldring, and Sarah Knight (eds) The Progresses, Pageants, and Entertainments of Elizabeth I. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 207-26. Dutton, Richard. 1999. Introduction in Dutton (ed.) Women Beware Women and Other Plays. Oxford: Oxford University Press: vii-xxxvii. Findlay, Alison and Stephanie Hodgson-Wright. 2000. Introduction in Findlay, Hodgson-Wright, and Gweno Williams Women and Dramatic Production in England 1550-1700. Harlow, Essex: Pearson: 1-14. “Forget.” Def. 5b. Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. On line at: http:// www.oed.com (14.12.2011). Howard, Jean. 1994. The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England. London and New York: Routledge. Howard, Skiles. 1998. The Politics of Courtly Dancing in Early Modern England. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. King, Laura Severt. 1986. ‘Violence and the Masque: A Ritual Sabotaged in Middleton’s Women Beware Women’ in Pacific Coast Philology 21(1-2): 42-47.

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Kolkovich, Elizabeth Zeman. 2009. ‘Lady Russell, Elizabeth I, and Female Political Alliances through Performance’ in English Literary Renaissance 39(2): 290-314. Levine, Laura. 1994. Men in Women’s Clothing: Anti-Theatricality and Effeminization, 1579-1642. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. 1993. Writing Women in Jacobean England, 16031625. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. McManus, Clare. 2002. Women on the Renaissance Stage: Anna of Denmark and Female Masquing in the Stuart Court 1590-1619. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Potter, John. 1982. ‘‘In Time of Sports’: Masques and Masking in Middleton’s Women Beware Women’ in Papers on Language and Literature 18(4): 368-83. Tomlinson, Sophie. 2005. Women on Stage in Stuart Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tricomi, Albert H. 1989. ‘Middleton’s Women Beware Women as Anticourt Drama’ in Modern Language Studies 19(2): 65-77. “Vexed.” Def. 1, 2. Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. On line at http://www.oed.com (14.12.2011). Ziraldo, Cristiana. 2004. ‘Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women: A Portrayal of Feminism or Misogyny?’ in Rivista di Letterature moderne e comparate 57(1): 1-28.

Virtue and Violence

Carmen Ripollés Death, Femininity, and the Art of Painting in Frans Francken’s The Painter’s Studio1 During the early modern period, male artistic creativity was often formulated by means of representing a painter depicting a female nude. This essay examines the complexities and paradoxes of this artistic discourse by focusing on an unusual example of the seventeenth century Flemish genre of painted “art cabinets,” Frans Francken’s The Painter’s Studio (c. 1623). By considering the intertextual dialogue between the paintings within the painting, as well as the action represented, and the style, I will try to reveal how in The Painter’s Studio the association between death, violence, and femininity put forward a notion of painting that, informed by the tenets of Neostoic philosophy, aims to annihilate women and the feminine in order to perform the creative act. Paradoxically, the prominent presence of the feminine in The Painter’s Studio, embodied in a sensual Fortune-model in the studio, points to the contradictions inherent in trying to simultaneously reconcile Neostoic misogynistic ideologies with an artistic discourse that considered the depiction of consummate female beauty as its most honorable task.

During the early modern period artistic creativity was regarded as a masculine activity. Not only were women banished from the practice of art, but men constructed a discourse by which the very act of creation was built in gendered binaries that opposed form to matter, culture to nature, reason to the body. Through their assumed superior reason and intellect men were allegedly able to shape and manipulate nature, transforming it into the finished artistic work (see Ortner 1974: 67-87). In the visual arts, many works of this period deal with the act of artistic creation, and this they often achieve by means of portraying a painter in the act of representing a female nude.2 Because women, as nature, were thought to be irrational, unruly, and

1

2

This essay originated in the seminar “Emblems: Their Development and Context in European Material Culture,” imparted by Daniel Russell and Mara Wade at the Newberry Library, Chicago (IL). I am grateful to them and all the seminar participants for their generous and encouraging comments in earlier drafts of this paper. I also wish to thank Lisa Rosenthal for directing my attention to Francken’s painting and for her helpful suggestions on a final draft of this essay. Nowhere is this notion more eloquently illustrated than in Albrecht Dürer’s Artist Drawing a Model in Foreshortening through a Frame Using a Grid System, an engraving included in the artist’s treatise The Teaching of Measurements. As it has been repeatedly argued, this image quite bluntly illustrates the notion that male creativity can transform material nature into intellectual culture. Needless to say, the suggestive nude in Dürer’s engraving, reclined over cushions and placed against a landscape,

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material rather than essential or endowed with a soul of their own, the female body came to stand metaphorically for the whole of nature itself, becoming a persuasive vehicle to claim painting as an intellectual rather than manual activity. Frans Francken’s The Painter’s Studio (Fig. 1) makes visible the complexities of this artistic discourse. The painting depicts what seems to be a painter’s studio.

Figure 1 Frans Francken the Younger. The Painter’s Studio. c. 1623. (Private Collection. Bilbao, Spain)

The space is loaded with canvases, objects, furniture, and figures. Six paintings cover the back wall, two others partially cover a fireplace on one of the side walls, and the chimney is decorated with another painting. Next to them, immediately in the foreground, a table with an open book, and a book and an armillary sphere directly face the viewer. On the opposite side, a young man is counting coins, pearls, coral, and jewels, all of them displayed on top of a richly decorated rug. He seems to be unaware of what stands for nature itself, only to be transformed by the scientific, rational, and masculine art of drawing. For an interpretation of this engraving, see Nead 1992: 11.

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is taking place in the middle of the composition. There, an elegantly dressed painter, probably Francken himself, has suspended his work to look out at the viewer.3 A group of characters surround him: a fashionable couple stands behind him, and a young student draws a dismembered sculpted head on the floor. The most interesting of the figures, however, is the nude female who, standing on a sphere and holding a fully blown cloak, serves as the model for the painter. In fact, the figure is almost identically replicated in the—we might assume—still-wet canvas. By the attributes she sports— the sphere, the blown cloak and her nudity—we can identify this female figure as Fortune, a personification that appeared frequently in the pictures of many of the emblem books which were published during the period.4 Fortune’s status within the painting is, however, ambiguous. Seemingly depicting a scene from everyday life, Francken’s painting is not the typical idealized allegory, and Fortune’s fleshy nudity in the studio seems shockingly real.5 As shall be seen in the course of this essay, this ambiguous figure and her “painted” double on the canvas are essential to understand Francken’s formulation of (male) artistic creativity, in which death and violence play an important role. By considering the intertextual dialogue between the paintings within the painting, as well as the action represented, and the style, I argue how in The Painter’s Studio the associations between death, violence, and femininity put forward a particularly gendered notion of painting, one that, informed by the tenets of Neostoic philosophy, aims to annihilate women and the feminine in order to perform the creative act.

A Neostoic Program of Death and Salvation Francken’s work can be considered an example of the genre of painted “art cabinets,” a genre of special significance in Flemish art from this period. As a consequence of the growing prosperity of Antwerp after the armistice between Spain and the Northern provinces (1609), a prosperous mercantile community started to assemble large collections of artworks. It is in this context that the genre of “art cabinets,” or Kunstkamer images, emerged as a 3

4 5

The painter has been identified as Francken himself through an engraved portrait of the painter by Van Dyck, engraved by Pieter Jode. As cited in Diaz Padrón 1992: 194. For an exhaustive analysis of Fortune in emblem books, see Kirchner. Francken treated the subject of Fortune on at least two other occasions, in the Allegory of Fortune (1615 -20) from the Louvre, and in the Allegory of Opportunity/Occasio in Honour of the Dimitri Family (1627) from the Hermitage Museum. For a discussion of the allegories just mentioned, see Mirimonde 1966: 129-144.

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particularly Flemish genre.6 Lacking written catalogues for these increasing collections, the “art cabinets” could function as visual documents or “images of the collections,” an aspect that was reinforced by the display of recognizable artworks, often with visible inscriptions identifying the painters (Stoichita 1997: 108). However, in many instances these depicted collections were also allegorical. Thus, in addition to sometimes representing real artworks in real galleries, these paintings typically displayed pictures that engaged a distinct iconographic theme. In The Self-Aware Image, Victor Stoichita argues that the nature of these art cabinets, with seemingly unrelated paintings covering the walls, invites the spectator to discover such themes by considering the intertextual relationships among the different paintings or “fragments” which constitute the painting as a whole (Stoichita 1997: 110-114). According to Stoichita, this “intertextual” reading is often suggested by certain elements that, within the painting, appear to have been clearly emphasized.7 In Francken’s Painter’s Studio, one such element is undoubtedly Fortune’s still-unfinished canvas, the one that centers the composition and that seemingly receives the attentive gaze of the visitors. Moreover, the centrality of Fortune’s canvas is underlined by the presence of her living counterpart, the model in the studio. Thus, in order to perform an intertextual reading we will need to consider Fortune’s canvas in dialogue with the other paintings. A close look at the paintings within Francken’s Painter’s Studio evidences a thoughtful process of selection. The central painting has been identified as The Death of Seneca, and the painting which decorates the chimney as Croesus and Solon. In addition, a Crucifixion and The Adoration of the Magi flank the central wall (Fig. 2).8 Taken together, all these paintings touch upon the theme of virtuous death and the promise of Christian salvation. The Death of Seneca and Croesus and Solon deal with the theme of death and Mercy. Seneca was forced to commit suicide by Nero, the brutal Roman emperor whom Seneca tutored.

6

7

8

Kunstkamer images have received much scholarly attention in recent years. Some accounts include: Filipczak 1987; Padrón, Royo-Villanova (eds) 1992; Stoichita 1997; and Honig 1998. For the implications of gender and mercantile desires in the genre, see the essay in this volume by Lisa Rosenthal. According to Stoichita 1997: 114, some of these clues are “The [painting the] ‘connoisseur’ is contemplating, the one not yet hanging on the wall, the first or the last of a sequence, the one that is placed in the ‘boureau’/altar.” These two paintings and their connection with Neostoic philosophy have been identified in Díaz Padrón 1992: 194.

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Figure 2 Frans Francken the Younger. The Painter’s Studio (detail). c. 1623. (Private Collection. Bilbao, Spain)

Continuing the theme of virtuous death, the story of Croesus and Solon narrates the encounter of the wealthy Lydian king Croesus with the Athenian wise man Solon. As recounted by Herodotus in The Histories, Croesus, who arrogantly thought his happiness depended upon his extraordinary wealth, learned from Solon that Fortune is ephemeral and unstable, and that complete happiness is only achieved at the moment of death, if one ends his life well.9 The religious themes depicted in the painting offer a counterpart to the ones just described: just as Seneca accepted his fate and committed suicide, Christ accepted the fate of dying on the cross for the salvation of humanity, an idea underlined by the theme of the Adoration of the Magi, a symbol of Christ’s love for humanity (Díaz Padrón 1992: 188). The themes of these paintings are undoubtedly related to the tenets of Neostoic philosophy, a movement of great influence in the intellectual and artistic circles of Antwerp during the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries.10 In fact, the birth of early modern Neostoicism can be largely credited to a Flemish scholar, the humanist philosopher Justus Lipsius (1547-1606). With his teachings and writings (especially in works such as De Constantia, Manuductio ad Stoicam philosophiam, and Physiologia Stoicorum), Lipsius restored the relevance of Stoic, and especially Senecan, philosophy to his contemporary context. In this sense, Lipsius’ Neostoic philosophy not only reconciled classic Stoicism with Christian faith, but also attempted to provide an intellectual comfort to those who were troubled in a moment of

9 10

In Solon’s view, a well-ended life could only be attained after living with moderate means and after receiving permanent honor after death. Saphiro 1996: 351, 358. For a discussion of the influence of Neostoic philosophy in Antwerp see Morford 1991.

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great political and religious turmoil.11 In Francken’s Painter’s Studio the existence of a Neostoic discourse is made obvious by the inclusion of the Death of Seneca, a theme that was perceived as a perfect example of tranquillitas animi or, to recall one of Lipsius’ most enduring concepts, constantia, a human quality that signaled the philosopher’s triumph over death (Stoichita 1997: 143).12 All the other paintings can be seen as functioning in dialogue with The Death of Seneca, a painting whose importance is signaled by its large format and prominent central display on the back wall. Croesus and Solon thematizes the idea of virtue’s triumph over death, for Croesus’ death was forgiven after he accepted Solon’s advice and recognized the fleeting nature of Fortune (Saphiro 1996: 354). More importantly, with the inclusion of the Crucifixion and the Adoration of the Magi, which strategically flank Seneca’s painting, the stoic theme is tied to a Christian view of the world which “stressed the importance of meditating on the end” (Stoichita 1997: 144). In this context, we might see Fortune’s canvas as a “thematization” of the painting as a whole through an “inversion.”13 We have seen how the aforementioned paintings within the studio symbolized the theme of tranquilitas animi or constantia. Defined by Lipsius as “the right and immovable strength of mind that is neither elated nor depressed by external or chance events,” constantia constituted the most effective cure against the unexpected adversities that Fortune ultimately represented.14 Thus, by directing our attention to Fortune’s inconstant and arbitrary nature through her depiction on the canvas, Francken reveals what seems to be the main theme of The Painter’s Studio: the praise for a constant and virtuous life that ultimately will lead to an equally virtuous and honorable death. 11

12

13

14

It has been suggested that Lipsius’ interest in Stoic philosophy arose as a consequence of a tumultuous life marked by the political and religious commotion of the civil war. This is especially evident in his treatise De Constantia, where he addresses this situation in the form a dialogue with his friend Longius. For a classic work on Lipsius’ biography and works, see Saunders. For an analysis of Lipsius’ reconciliation of Stoic philosophy and Christian faith see Papy 2004: 47-71. On Lipsius’ use of stoic philosophy as personal consolation, see Sellars 2007: 339-362. As Morford 1991: 184-185 explains, the theme of the death of Seneca had particular resonances in the Netherlands of Lipsius’ times, becoming “a source of inspiration to those who faced execution for their resistance to religious, military, or political tyranny.” Stoichita 1997: 127 suggests this idea in relation to two particular paintings: Jan Brueghel’s Allegory of Sight and Hyeronimus Francken’s Cabinet of Curiosity or Allegory of Painting. According to Stoichita, in these paintings, the themes of sight and painting are thematized through “inversion” by their inclusion of two images, The Restoration of the Blind Man’s Sight and Iconoclastic Asses, respectively. Lipsius as translated in Morford 1991: 162.

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Fortune, the Feminine, and Neostoic Philosophy The presence of Fortune in a painting so seemingly invested in Neostoic ideals could not be more fitting. The irrational, unpredictable, and disruptive Fortune is the reverse of the rational, constant, and provident superior divinity formulated in Lipsius’ writings. Stoics had already argued that the unpredictability of Fortune was completely subordinated to God’s superior force, and that, in reality, it only existed in one’s perceptions (SperbergMcQueen 1995: 393-394). However, as represented in this painting, Fortune could also point to the blind (and bodily) passions that could be an obstacle in the path of virtue. According to Neostoic philosophy, virtue could only be achieved after all emotions and passions were conveniently banished through the exercise of reason.15 And, in this sense, the fact that Fortune is a woman is not a coincidence. During the early modern period, the notion of Fortune became conceptually and figuratively associated with that of woman.16 Women, like Fortune, were thought to be disobedient, stubborn, and fickle, qualities that were also applicable to the capricious nature of Fortune (Thomson 2000: 31). Not surprisingly, this association was visually codified by means of representing Fortune as a seductive nude.17 Francken’s Fortune in the studio, with her alluring hair and sensual nakedness, is undoubtedly heir to this tradition. But, within the Neostoic ideology that the painting as a whole promotes, the conceptual and visual identification of Fortune with a female nude body could also have broader connotations. It has been suggested that Neostoic philosophy, especially as developed by Lipsius in De Constantia, is deeply misogynistic. Women in Lipsius’ thought are seen as carriers of emotions and blind passions that debilitate an otherwise masculine and emotionless society. Moreover, as implied by De Constantia’s significant absence of women, the ultimate way of controlling the disturbing female presence is to deliberately exclude women from society and even to 15

16

17

This attitude is clearly illustrated in Longius’ words to Lipsius in De Constantia: “What we need to free from, Lipsius, is not our country but our emotions; we need to strengthen our mind to give us tranquility and peace amidst turmoil and war.” Cited in Long 2003: 381. In his most celebrated political treatise, The Prince, printed in 1532, the Florentine thinker Niccolò Machiavelli stated that “Fortune is a woman and it is necessary in order to keep her under, to cuff and maul her,” explicitly equating the notion of Fortune with that of woman, and suggesting that only violent manliness could overcome her powers. See Pitkin (1984: 152) Although during the Middle Ages Fortune was represented as a somber figure, during the Renaissance her image was transformed into a female nude, partly as a consequence of her conflation with Occasio, a more approachable allegorical figure. For a discussion of this iconographic shift, see Kiefer 1979: 1-27.

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suppress the feminine (altogether).18 Significantly, rather than being absent, Francken’s Painter’s Studio might be described as being populated by women, especially in the lower left part of the composition (Fig. 3).

Figure 3 Frans Francken the Younger. The Painter’s Studio (detail). c. 1623. (Private Collection. Bilbao, Spain)

In addition to Fortune, preeminently displayed in the middle of the studio, the two paintings lying on the floor reflect upon the feminine and its dangers. The canvas directly on the floor is a violent depiction of rape by the centaurs. Although compositionally the scene recalls the theme of the rape of Deidamia at her wedding banquet, the presence of Hercules suggests that the painting represents the slaying of the centaur Eurytion.19 The day Eurytion was going to marry Deianeira, who had been Hercules’ lover, the hero returned to claim the bride, killing the centaur and taking Deianeira as his wife. In the painting, Hercules, armed with his lionskin and club, pulls the centaur’s tail to recover his lover, whom Eurytion is violently carrying off.20 18 19

20

These ideas are developed in Sperberg-McQueen 1995: 389-407. Although the painting has been identified as The Rape of Deidamia (Díaz Padrón 1992: 192), the presence of Hercules does not fit in that story, in which the hero is Theseus rather than Hercules. For an example of this other theme, see Peter Paul Rubens, The Rape of Deidamia (1636-37), at the Prado Museum in Madrid. Hans Rottenhammer’s Hercules, Deianeira and the Centaur Eurytion (c. 1600), at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, represents a very similar scene.

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At a basic level, this violent scene opposes the uncontrollable lust of the centaur, embodying the loss of self-mastery and indulgence in unrestrained passions, to the figure of heroic virtue that Hercules epitomizes. Already in Seneca’s writings, Hercules represented the stoic ideal of virtus, and the hero took on similar resonances for the Neostoics of the early modern period.21 But Hercules’ marriage to Deianeira did not have a happy outcome. In a later moment, another centaur, Nessus, tried to rape Deianeira. Hercules avoided the incident by killing the centaur with his poisoned arrow, but Nessus took revenge by telling Deianeira to use what now was his poisoned blood as a love potion, were she ever to need it. Compelled by jealousy when Hercules pursued Iole, Deianeira used the potion, ultimately causing Hercules’ death. The fatal consequences of this story obviously place Deianeira at the same moral level as the centaurs, for it was her loss of control and blind passion that caused Hercules’ death. Described in classical sources as a rather active woman (she drove a chariot and practiced the art of war),22 in Seneca’s Hercules Oetaeus Deianeira was cast as a character so blindly ruled by passion that she became the utmost example of how not to live a stoic life.23 In this sense, the inclusion of Hercules and Eurytion reinstates the praise for constancy and self-control put forward by the painting as a whole while at the same time it clearly associates the loss of self-mastery with the feminine. Moreover, the painting immediately above, which represents The Assumption of the Magdalene, introduces another aspect that seems to be inseparable from the feminine: the idea of lust as a “womanish vice” and the imperative need to contain it.24 Mary Magdalene’s glorification could only be possible after she renounced her past as a prostitute, in other words, after she overcame her sexual passions and rejected her feminine nature. Thus, even when “populated” by women, Francken’s painting seems to banish women and the feminine, for, in this ideology, they are inseparable from emotions, passions, and the body: Deianeira committed an un-stoic suicide after Hercules’ death and Mary Magdalene rejected her body to attain salvation. Even the woman who is visiting the studio seems to have been 21

22 23 24

Two of Seneca’s best-known works, Hercules Furens and Hercules Oetaeus, have Hercules as protagonist. In the early modern period, artists working in Neostoic circles often used Hercules as a character in political allegories. This was especially true in the case of Rubens, who treated the theme in several occasions. For a discussion of Rubens and Neostoic thought, see Morford 1991: 181-210, and especially, Rosenthal 1993: 92-111. Apollodorus (Library and Epitome, book i, 8:1). Significantly, according to Walcot 1984: 43 in Greek Deianeira would be translated as “man destroyer.” As discussed in King 1971: 219. Lisa Rosenthal 1993: 103 discusses this aspect of Neostoic philosophy in “Manhood and Statehood: Rubens’s Construction of Heroic Virtue.”

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conveniently contained within the parameters of what Neostoic philosophy considered being an acceptable woman, within marriage, “so silent and subservient as to be for all intents and purposes absent” (SperbergMcQueen 1995: 393).

Confronting the Feminine If, as we have seen, the presence of women in Francken’s cabinet paradoxically points to their ultimate absence, Fortune’s sensual body in the studio, conversely, seems to reinstate the reality of her existence. The emblematic status of Fortune, as personification, seems indeed to be oddly undermined by the realistic nature of the representation. The composition as a whole promotes effects of spontaneity and immediacy: the painter has just turned to the viewer, suspending momentarily his activity of painting, and the visitors, still in their street clothes, might just have entered the room. Furthermore, and following the typical style of Dutch and Flemish paintings of the period, Francken depicts the scene with utmost naturalism. Every surface and texture, from the garments of the visitors, to the sculpted chimney and the metal of the coins, is “realistically” represented. Similarly, Fortune appears to be “real” by the way she is depicted, as a fleshy, living model. The sphere she stands upon projects a credible shadow on the tiled floor, and her red cloak overlaps with the canvas, suggesting that she is occupying a real space. This naturalistic representation seems, in turn, to signal her “substantiality,” her “corporeality,” in other words, her “real” presence in the studio. The implications of this representation might be understood in reference to Francken’s successful career as a painter. In clear reference to his own biography, Francken has depicted himself as a flourishing artist: his clothes are expensive and lavish; a young pupil counts the material signs of the painter’s success, and another, practicing drawing near the ground, signals Francken’s status as a respected master.25 In addition, his fame and status are emphasized in this painting by the visit of an honorable couple that, recalling the story of Alexander the Great’s visit to Apelles’ studio, symbolizes the nobility and antiquity of painting.26 In this story, the nobility of painting was not only signaled by Alexander’s admiration for his painter Apelles, but also, as depicted in works such as Willem van Haecht’s Apelles 25

26

The most prolific of a whole generation of Flemish painters, Francken ran a flourishing workshop and became master of the St. Luke’s guild in 1605. Härting 1989: 221. They have been identified as Rubens and his wife in Díaz Padrón 1992: 194.

Death, Femininity, and the Art of Painting in Frans Francken’s The Painter’s Studio 319

and Campaspe (1630) (Fig. 4), by the fact that Apelles, in representing the consummate female beauty, was achieving what was considered the highest task of the painter’s art. As Eric Jan Sluijter has pointed out, the tradition of representing a painter depicting a beautiful female figure from life “had the purpose of underscoring the dignity of the art of painting.”

Figure 4 Willem van Haecht. Apelles Painting Campaspe. c. 1630 (Courtesy of Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague)

This was so because, in addition to the secular example of Apelles, the greatest painter of antiquity, the Catholic tradition represented Saint Luke painting the Virgin (Sluijter 2000: 108-109).27 However, instead of Campaspe and the Virgin, representatives of female pulchritude and grace, the model in Francken’s Painter’s Studio is a particularly living and fleshy Fortune, a figure, as we have seen, of dubious reputation. By representing himself depicting an especially sensual Fortune, Francken is re-appropriating this artistic discourse while reconciling it with his Neostoic ideology. Representing female beauty from a living model could be dangerously seductive, threatening the restraining attitude toward passions that Neostoic philosophy promulgated. The tension between 27

See, for instance, Maarten van Heemskerck, St. Luke Painting the Virgin (1602), at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem.

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sensory inspiration and sexual seduction that could be experienced from a living model was, in fact, a recurrent theme among Flemish and Dutch artists of the period. In works such as Jan Saenredam’s Allegory of Visus and the Art of Painting, for instance, the dangers of the sense of sight are suggested (although also challenged) through the theme of a painter depicting a female nude from a living model (Fig. 5).28 In the case of Francken, who takes a naked Fortune as a model, the danger seems all the more pressing. The iconographic shift that transformed Fortune from an undesirable monster in the middle ages to an attractive woman in the Renaissance emphasized not only Fortune’s feminine nature, but also the ambiguous contradictions inherent in her alluring body. Although the body of Fortune could be the locus that enabled men to imagine their power over the vagaries of chance, she could also use her body to entice men to follow her unruly path.29 The potential dangers of Fortune’s charming body are beautifully illustrated in an emblem from Theodor de Bry’s Emblemata (Frankfurt, 1592), where a Fortune-Venus provokes wild disaster on the right-hand side of the seascape (Fig. 6). In Francken’s Painter’s Studio, Fortune’s powers also seem to affect the lower part of the composition, more dynamic and unstable than the balanced and static upper part. This is especially evident in the left corner, where a gusting wind agitates the tablecloth and ruffles the pages of the books. The Hercules painting, precariously set on the floor, seems to partake of Fortune’s own instability as well, an aspect that is further realized by a beast-like Hercules incongruently slipping out of the frame (Fig. 7). It is tempting to see this witty hint as a sort of commentary on the part of Francken, about both Hercules and himself as an artist. The choice of the particular story of Hercules and Eurytion seems to suggest that the hero was not completely blameless, since his desire for Deianeira and later for Iole prompted his fate as much as Deianeira’s jealousy.

28 29

For a thorough discussion of this interesting print, see Sluijter 2000: 87-159. This notion is especially evident in those representations that conflated Fortune with the goddess of love, Venus. For a discussion of this conflation, see Kiefer 1979: 14. In the literary context, Fortune’s seductive powers were overtly exposed through her identification with a whore or strumpet. For a discussion of this identification in Shakespeare’s plays, see Young 2000: 61-63.

Death, Femininity, and the Art of Painting in Frans Francken’s The Painter’s Studio 321

Figure 5 Jan Saenredam after Hendrick Goltzius. Artist Painting a Nude Woman: Allegory of Visual Perception. 1616 (Courtesy of Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

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Figure 6 Theodor de Bry. Emblemata de Nobilitate et officio Heraldico. Frankfurt, 1593, 1. ‘HIS FORTVUNA PARENS, ILLIS INIVSTA NOVERCA EST’ (To these Fortune is a parent; to those a wicked stepmother) (Courtesy of The Rare Book & Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

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Figure 7 Frans Francken the Younger. The Painter’s Studio (detail). c. 1623. (Private Collection. Bilbao, Spain)

Hercules, in other words, succumbed to his sexual passions in a way that Francken, confronted with Fortune’s sensual body, does not.30 In this sense it is significant how Francken, proudly looking out at the viewer, seems to deliberately ignore Fortune’s piercing gaze (Fig. 8).

30

The theme of Hercules losing control was, paradoxically, a favorite during the period. Once again, Rubens seemed especially interested in this aspect of the Greek hero, for instance, in paintings like Hercules and Omphale (1606) at the Louvre, Paris; and The Drunken Hercules (1611), at the Alte Meister Gallerie in Dresden. See Rosenthal (2005).

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Figure 8 Frans Francken the Younger. The Painter’s Studio (detail). c. 1623. (Private Collection. Bilbao, Spain)

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According to Neostoic thought, especially as formulated by Lipsius, the same hierarchical binary opposition between feminine and masculine that was found in any realm of life was also inherent in the individual (SperbergMcQueen 1995: 392-393). Confronting but simultaneously ignoring Fortune’s attractive naked body, Francken performs the ultimate Neostoic act: the suppression of his own filthy and irrational feminine sexual desires.

Representing Fortune, Eternalizing Painting, Containing the Feminine Until now we have established the relevance of Fortune within Francken’s Painter’s Studio. As a concept, Fortune is the undesirable force that Neostoic philosophy strives to overcome. As a model in the studio, Fortune represents the body and the passions derived from it, in other words, the feminine nature that also needs to be rejected. If, as we have seen, Francken’s ultimate goal is to ignore and suppress Fortune, and by extension, the feminine, what is then the point of representing her on a canvas? In addition to recalling the story of Apelles and Campaspe, the central action of the painting is reminiscent of an emblem that appeared in Alciato’s Emblemata. Under the motto “Art aiding Nature,” this emblem depicts Mercury sitting on a cube and Fortune standing on her sphere (Fig. 9). The epigram explains the picture: As Fortune on her sphere, so Mercury sits upon his cube: he presides over the arts, she over chance events. Art is made against the force of fortune; but when fortune is bad, it often requires the help of art. Therefore, eager youths, learn the good arts, that have with them the advantages of certain fate.31

Francken’s debt to this emblem seems formally quite plausible: his model, the “living” Fortune in the studio, stands unsteadily upon a sphere while the painter, taking the place of Mercury, sits comfortably on a cubical stool.32 Moreover, the painting seems conceptually to illustrate the emblem’s notion that “art is made against the force of Fortune,” for not only is Francken 31

32

Emblem 99 as translated in Alciato's Book of Emblems, The Memorial Web Edition in Latin and English. On line at: http://www.mun.ca/alciato/e099.html (consulted 27.11.2011). For a more nuanced discussion of this emblem, see Panofsky 1966: 306326. It is worth noting that, in Flemish and Netherlandish contexts, Mercury, the god of reason and light, was considered the patron of painters. See Sluijter 2000: 136-137.

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painting despite Fortune’s “real” presence in his studio; he also takes her as his model. The significance of Fortune’s canvas is hence heightened by the narrative action and its relation to Alciato’s emblem. Thus, in addition to reinforcing the overall theme of the painting, Fortune’s presence ties the theme of virtue particularly to the art of painting. This is clear when we consider Alciato’s epigram once again: “When fortune is bad, it often requires the help of art. Therefore, eager youths, learn the good arts, that have with them the advantages of certain fate.”

Figure 9 Andrea Alciato. Emblemata. Antwerp, 1581, 98 ‘Ars naturam adiuvans’ (Art aiding Nature) (Courtesy of The Rare Book & Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

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Through the activity of painting, Francken is metaphorically controlling Fortune, turning her “living” presence into the framed and controlled lifeless matter of the canvas. At the same time, through his art, Francken is securing a “certain fate:” the eternal glory that he will ultimately achieve through the art of painting.33 As put forward by Francken’s Neostoic ideology, such a glory will only be possible after annihilating the feminine, not only embodied in Fortune’s fleshy body, but also in the painter’s potential emasculation, were he to succumb to his “feminine” sexual desires. In this sense, it is worth noting how, in tune with an enduring tradition of the history of art, Francken is also containing and regulating the female (sexual) body, transforming the sensuality of its raw material into a purely intellectual, and hence harmless, ideal nude.34 The final outcome of this banishment of the feminine, one that implies also the negation of the passions and emotions that make up the fabric of human life, is a masculine-only notion of painting that seems particularly disturbing in its reaffirmation of death (both physical and symbolic). Paradoxically, the lifeless matter that constitutes Fortune’s canvas in The Painter’s Studio takes the feminine (and by implication life, with its emotions and passions) as its subject in a way that ultimately questions and undermines the validity of such a view.

33

34

This theme seems to have been common among painters of “art cabinets.” Stoichita discusses it in relation to one of Van Haecht’s Art Cabinets. The relation of this theme with Neostoic philosophy seems clear in these words by Justus Lipsius, “You, poets, sing me now a verse which will never die. You, men of letters, study well what you see here and write it down. You, Philosophers, now is the time to discuss tranquility, constancy, life and death.” As mentioned in Stoichita 1997: 144, 146. The ideological implications of the female nude in the history of art have been thoroughly analyzed in Nead.

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Works Cited Díaz Padrón, Matías and Mercedes Royo-Villanova (eds.). 1992. David Teniers, Jan Brueghel y los Gabinetes de Pinturas. Madrid: Museo del Prado. Filipczak, Zirka. 1987. Picturing Art in Antwerp, 1550-1700. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Härting, Ursula. 1989. Frans Francken der Jüngere. Luca: Verlag Freren. Honig, Elizabeth. 1998. Painting and the Market in Early Modern Antwerp. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Kiefer, Frederick. 1979. ‘The Conflation of Fortuna and Occasio in Renaissance Thought and Iconography’ in Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 9-10: 1-27. King, Christine M. 1971. ‘Seneca’s Hercules Oetaeus: A Stoic Interpretation of the Greek Myth’ in Greece and Rome 18(2): 215-222. Kirchner, Gottfried. 1970. Fortuna in Dichtung und Emblematik des Barock. Stuttgart. Long, A. A. 2003. ‘Stoicism in the Philosophical Tradition: Spinoza, Lipsius, Butler’ in Inwood, Brad (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 365-392. Mirimonde, A. P. de. 1966. ‘Les Allégories politiques de l’Occasion’ de Frans Francken II’ in Gazette des Beaux-Arts 67: 129-144. Morford, Mark. 1991. Stoics and Neostoics: Rubens and the Circle of Lipsius. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. Nead, Lynda. 1992. The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality. London: Routledge. Ortner, Sherry. 1974. ‘Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?’ in Rosaldo, Michelle (ed.) Women, Culture and Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press: 67-87. Panofsky, Erwin. 1966. ‘Good Government or Fortune? The Iconography of a Newly-Discovered Composition by Rubens’ in Gazette des Beaux-Arts 68: 306-326. Papy, Jan. 2004. ‘Lipsius` (Neo-)Stoicism: Constancy between Christian Faith and Stoic Virtue’ in Blom, Hans W. and Laurens C. Winkel (eds.) Grotius and the Stoa. Assen: Royal Van Gorcum: 47-71. Pitkin, Hannah F. 1984. Fortune is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolo Machiavelli. Berkley: University of California Press. Rosenthal, Lisa. 2005. Gender, Politics, and Allegory in the Art of Rubens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——. 1993. ‘Manhood and Statehood: Rubens’s Construction of Heroic Virtue’ in Oxford Art Journal 16(1): 92-111. Saphiro, Susan O. 1996. ‘Herodotus and Solon’ in Classical Antiquity 15(2): 348-364.

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Saunders, Jason L. 1955. Justus Lipsius. The Philosophy of Renaissance Stoicism. New York: The Liberal Arts Press. Sellars, John. 2007. ‘Justus Lipsius’s De Constantia: A Stoic Spiritual Exercise’ in Poetics Today 28(3): 339-362. Sluijter, Eric Jan. 2000. Seductress of Sight: Studies in Dutch Art of the Golden Age (tr. Jennifer Kilian & Katy Kist). Zwolle: Waanders. Sperberg-McQueen, M. R. 1995. ‘Gardening without Eve: The Role of the Feminine in Justus Lipsius’s De Constantia and in Neo-Stoic Thought’ in The German Quarterly 68(4): 389-407. Stoichita, Victor I. 1997. The Self-Aware Image: An Insight in Early Modern MetaPainting (tr. Anne-Marie Glasheen). Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Thomson, Leslie. 2000. ‘Fortune, Occasion, Nemesis’ in Thomson, Leslie (ed.) Fortune: “All is but Fortune.” Washington DC: The Folger Shakespeare Library: 30-43. Walcot, P. 1984. ‘Greek Attitudes Toward Women: The Mythological Evidence’ Greece and Rome 21(1): 37-47. Young, Alan R. 2000. ‘Fortune in Shakespeare’s King Lear’ in Thomson, Leslie (ed.) Fortune: “All is but Fortune.” Washington DC: The Folger Shakespeare Library: 57-67.

Lisa Rosenthal Masculine Virtue in the Kunstkamer: Pictura, Lucre, and Luxury Pictures of art collections, or kunstkamer images, arose in Antwerp in the early seventeenth century as the city was recovering from the turbulence, violence, and iconoclasm of the Netherlands’ revolt against the Catholic Spanish Hapsburg Empire. Such pictures uphold the Counter-Reformation defense of images and make visible the claims to Neostoic and burgerlijke virtues among Antwerp’s elites, the audience for this new genre. Focusing on a few kunstkamer pictures, all connected to the workshop of Frans Francken the Younger, this essay asserts that these images celebrating the newly empowered mercantile elite also reveal cultural anxieties regarding the twin threats of art’s sensory powers and lucre’s dangerous allure, threats that were both coded as feminine.

In the early decades of the seventeenth century the city of Antwerp was in a precarious and paradoxical position. On the one hand, it was a city much diminished from its former pre-eminence as a major site of international trade. A sizable portion of Antwerp’s population had fled in the 1570s and 1580s during the violent and turbulent period of the Netherlands’ revolt against Habsburg dominion that eventually resulted in the Southern Netherlands’ firm alliance with the Catholic Spanish Empire, while the Dutch established an independent and predominantly Protestant Republic in the north. On the other hand, the economic revival that followed the end of violence occurred under conditions that favored the growth of trade in luxury goods, especially in works of art. These conditions were uniquely propitious for artists. Artists in Antwerp were called upon to produce altarpieces replacing those that had been destroyed in the waves of iconoclastic fury that had swept through the city before it was established as a Catholic stronghold and major center of Counter-Reformation thought. Works of art were also in increasing demand from the well-to-do urban elite who sought to distinguish themselves from those of lesser status through the accumulation and display of fine objects in their homes.1 It was in this period of revival that a new genre of painting arose and flourished in Antwerp: depictions of rooms full of art, now often referred to as kunstkamer images. A growing body of scholarship has proposed multiple frameworks for understanding these paintings’ forms of appeal and modes 1

Accounts of this history can be found in Geoffrey Parker 1979; Jonathan Israel 1995. On the growth of a moneyed urban elite in Antwerp see Hugo Soly 1991; and idem 1993.

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of efficacy for their audiences. Kunstkamer paintings have been seen in relation to the rapid growth of art collecting in Antwerp and new forms of status associated with it; to the shifting status of artists; to the rise of global as well as local art marketplaces; to the hermeneutics of the kunst- and wunderkammer as a theater of universal knowledge, and to the formation of Neostoic, Catholic, and burgerlijke virtues among Antwerp’s elites.2 In this essay I aim to foreground and make salient gender as an aspect of the multiple meanings and functions of this genre. Moreover, in keeping with the questions about gender and violence that are the central interest of this anthology, I propose here that intimations of violence are structurally inherent in the ideals that such pictures promote. Such pictures, I suggest, mobilize notions of masculine virtue associated with the rise of a newly empowered mercantile elite for whom the threats of art’s sensory powers and lucre’s dangerous allure were coded as feminine. The Archdukes Albert and Isabella in a Collector’s Cabinet c. 1621-1632 (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore) is among the grander and more sumptuous examples of this genre (Fig. 1).3 The painting is a collaborative work in which at least two hands have been discerned, Jan Brueghel the Elder and one or more of the artists who worked in the studio of Frans Francken the Younger, where many such kunstkamer pictures were produced between 1600 and 1625.4 At its center the picture depicts the Infanta Isabella of Spain seated on a chair while beside her stands her husband Albert with whom she jointly ruled the Habsburg Spanish Netherlands. The large room is full of the kinds of objects that were avidly amassed by collectors of this period seeking to display their wealth, erudition, and social status. Paintings crowd the walls, while works of sculpture, antiquities, and musical instruments share the space with a globe, maps, exotic warm-water shells and, on the table by the windows along the left, an early version of the barometer, a device renowned in the seventeenth century as a perpetual motion machine. In keeping with the conventions of such kunstkamer pictures, several elegantly dressed figures admire and appear to discuss the objects 2

3 4

For some of the relevant literature see Speth-Holterhoff 1957; Filipczak 1987; Díaz Padrón, Royo-Villanova (eds) 1992; Stoichita 1997; Honig 1998; van Suchtelen, van Beneden (eds) 2009. Oil on panel, 94 x 123.3 cm. See Mary Smith Podles 1983. Podles follows Speth-Holterhoff in attributing the work to Hieronymous Francken II, Frans Francken II and Jan Brueghel I. Eric Zafran (1988) names Jan Brueghel and Adriaen Stalbemt as the artists. On the Walters website the current attribution is to Jan Brueghel I and Hieronymous Francken II. On the Francken workshop see also Härting 1989 and idem: 1993. On collaboration as a practice in the Francken studio see Peeters 1999.

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on view, thus enacting the important social dimension of art collecting that allowed discerning art lovers to share their knowledge and good taste.5

Figure 1 Frans Francken II and Hieronymous Francken II. c. 1621-1632. The Archdukes Albert and Isabella in a Collector’s Cabinet. Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum. (Courtesy of The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore)

The depicted scene does not represent an actual collection but, as is most typical of this genre, a fictional assemblage constructed so as to convey a set of themes and allegorical motifs promoting the virtues of the arts and the legitimacy of the forms of knowledge gained through the sensory apprehension of the world. (One immediate indication that this is an imaginary collection is the grandiose scale of room, far exceeding the architectural norms of the period). The figures depicted here, and in other kunstkamer pictures, enact an ideal form of material, sensory desire: owning and viewing art is represented as an activity that upholds the civic, Catholic, and humanist virtues central to burgerlijke self-fashioning. However, the space of painted kunstkamer images can equivocate between the collector’s gallery and the artist’s studio, that is, between the economic functions of 5

See Honig 1998, chapter 6.

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consumption and production, while it also is figured as a domestic space that repeatedly engages sexual and marital themes. Thus the representation in kunstkamer pictures of private art collecting as an interlocking structure of stable political, spiritual, and social ideals is complicated by overlapping sexual and monetary discourses with their intimations of potentially destructive desires.

Art Lovers and Pictura’s Delights and Dangers The well-heeled art connoisseurs repeatedly depicted in paintings of art collections represent the lovers of art—liefhebbers der schilderijen—who occupied a newly established category in the Antwerp St. Luke’s Guild, the guild for painters, in the early 1600s. In their dress and elegant physical comportment they embody codes of civility that became increasingly important across the Netherlands as greater wealth necessitated finer representations of social distinction. These liefhebbers show themselves to be men (and to a lesser degree, women) of wealth and learning as they avidly engage with a wide array of artworks, objects of “natural wonder,” and instruments of scientific inquiry. While paintings like the Walters picture represent the humanistic values of the pan-European Republic of Letters, they also display specifically local civic identity: many of the kunstkamer pictures produced in Antwerp feature works of art associated with Antwerp’s fame as a center of the arts, especially painting. This theme is conveyed with special force in the largest of the depicted paintings, centrally placed like an altarpiece above the back sideboard. The picture is an allegory in the style of the Antwerp humanist painter and publisher of learned emblems, an artist praised in his own time as pictor doctus, Otto van Veen. The painting represents Pictura Rescued by Wisdom and Fame from Ignorance: Pictura, the personification of painting, is recognizable by the mask of imitatio on her right shoulder. She is gently supported by the winged Fame on the right, while behind her a helmeted Minerva decisively subdues the sprawling figure of Ignorance whose attribute is his long ass’s ears. His counterparts are in the painting propped diagonally against a chair, a picture that seizes our special attention as the only one that interrupts the otherwise strict rectilinearity of the composition. In this small picture an asseared figure and his animal-headed cohorts destroy paintings and musical instruments. This scene of violent iconoclasm stands in opposition to the liefhebbers’ discerning, humanistically-grounded appreciation of painting as a noble and virtuous instrument of knowledge. The Catholic defense of images intertwines here with civic pride: the sculpted figures over the doorway represent Mercury and Minerva who

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together were often invoked in the seventeenth-century defense of painting as a liberal art that can persuade and instruct its viewers. Here the two gods flank the personification of Antwerp’s river, the Scheldt, asserting the city’s fame as a flourishing center of the arts. The point is further underscored by the presence of the Archdukes who were avid patrons of the arts throughout their reign. We might understand the Archducal couple here as conveying not only the general notion of the elevated status of the arts supported by noble patrons, but also their particular esteem for such Antwerp artists as Jan Brueghel the Elder and their own court artist, Peter Paul Rubens. Owning, viewing, and discussing works of art are presented here as exemplary activities and as indications of social, civic, and moral excellence. The liefhebbers who collect and admire art are shown to be engaged in a noble enterprise that promotes wisdom and virtue, triumphs over ignorance, and upholds the Catholic value of images that iconoclasts would destroy. But even as the virtues of art, and of art lovers, can be rendered as mutually supportive, kunstkamer paintings also betray the anxieties about art as a desirable object of commerce and as a source of sensory delight against which its virtues must be continually won. Ignorance and iconoclasm are the enemies of art, but those who defend art’s values need also be wary of its allure. These dangers, and the kind of gendered coding in which they were articulated in the discourses about art, and about money, are also repeatedly and crucially at stake in many of the Antwerp kunstkamer images. In our example of the Walters picture, these dangers are alluded to in the three paintings at the left of the back wall, noteworthy in this image as works representing historia, or narrative pictures, the genre that occupied the highest position in Renaissance academic art theory. On the far left is a Judith and Holoferenes (recalling the night scenes of Adam Elsheimer). In the seventeenth century Judith was a multivalent figure, well represented in literary and visual traditions. Her significance could incline toward a masculine virago who abandoned her femininity when she wielded a sword and murdered a man, or toward a beautiful seductress who vanquished Holofernes not so much with her strength and cunning, as with her womanly wiles.6 Judith’s triumph over the leader of the Assyrian army as an effect of her beauty is underscored in this kunstkamer painting by the 6

On Judith in early modern thought see Helen Watanabe O’Kelly in this volume and Ciletti 1991. Rubens’ now lost Great Judith c. 1609, known from the surviving engraving by Cornelius Galle, established the seductive Judith as a familiar type in Antwerp; a few years later Rubens’ Judith with the Head of Holofernes c. 1616 (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig) more fully elaborated the figure’s erotic charge by depicting her bare-breasted and engaging the viewer with an unabashed gaze.

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placement of the Judith image next to one of Diana and Acteon.7 Holofernes and Acteon both fatally succumbed to the beauty of a woman, both of them demonstrating the weakness of men made subject to the disordering power of sensory appetites. In the world of the educated humanists who were the audience for such pictures, the most familiar defense against the dangers of indulging the senses was the notion of self-mastery developed in the philosophy of Justus Lipsius, the pre-eminent Neostoic scholar much favored by Antwerp’s elites.8 It is in this light that we might understand the resonance of the third narrative subject, an image of Abraham and Isaac. Here both father and son are exemplars of male adherence to divine and paternal law and to the requirements of duty: the son who obeys his father, and the father who obeys the command of God. The incipient violence of this tale is rationalized by infallible masculine authority. In overcoming his love for his son in order to carry out the most terrible command imaginable, Abraham demonstrates an absolute case of self-mastery. But Abraham’s selfcommand, his willingness to be ruled by his sense of duty, spares him from the need to enact the awful deed. Taken together, as the composition encourages us to do, these three subjects elaborate upon the specific conditions under which the rescue of Pictura can be secured: the love of art must not be fed by an unfettered lust for beauty. Instead the desirable body of Pictura, represented in the depicted allegory with breasts exposed to our view, must remain, as we see her here, allied with the armored body of Wisdom. In rendering Pictura as a partially undraped figure, the artists of this kunstkamer picture mobilize the wellestablished Renaissance trope of female beauty as a sign for Art, while also implicitly positing the ideal liefhebber as a desirous male. Hence art’s powers, both pleasurable and dangerous, are coded as feminine while the viewer’s necessary self-mastery is coded as an inherently masculine virtue.

Lucre, Luxury, and the Man of Virtue Over the course of the seventeenth century the allure of Pictura was increasingly understood to include not only the dangers of beauty as a spur to destructive sensory appetites, but also the morally-fraught enticements of 7 8

The depicted picture is in the style of Hendrik van Balen. On the Acteon myth in late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Northern art see Sluijter 2000. On Lipsius’ political and moral philosphy see Saunders 1955; Oestreich 1982; Laureys. et al (eds) 1998. On the connection between Rubens and Lipsius’ circle see Morford 1991.

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the marketplace. As is well noted in the scholarship on gallery pictures, among the factors that produced this genre in Antwerp was the vigorous emergence of an increasingly moneyed and politically powerful merchant class who comprised a new market for artists. This “commercial elite,” eager to display their status, contributed crucially to the booming sale of artworks especially from around 1600 to 1650.9 Owning a fine house and adorning it with an art collection were among the means by which men like the spice merchant Cornelis van der Geest, and the city burgomaster Nicolaas Rockox, established their civic stature. Both of these men’s celebrated art collections were in turn commemorated in kunstkamer pictures: Willem van Haecht’s Kunstkamer of Cornelis van der Geest c. 1628 (Antwerp, Rubenshuis) and Frans Francken II’s Large Salon in the House of Nicolaas Rockox c. 1635 (Munich, Alte Pinakothek). Such “portraits” of collections are not so much accurate inventories as they are ideal images that promote particular claims about the functions of art for the man of high standing. Francken’s Rockox picture depicts an elegant party in a room that includes several works known to have been in the Rockox collection (Fig. 2).

Figure 2 Frans Francken II. c. 1635. Large Salon in the House of Nicolaas Rockox. Munich, Alte Pinakothek. (Courtesy of the Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz / Art Resource, New York)

9

In addition to the literature cited in note 2 above, see Timmermans 2006.

338 Lisa Rosenthal

The view through the doorway on the left offers a glimpse of the Doubting Thomas triptych (c. 1614) Rockox commissioned from Rubens, which in fact was displayed not in the patron’s home, but in the family chapel in the Church of the Minorites. The largest, centrally placed work is another Rubens picture that Rockox owned, the Samson and Delilah (c.1609-10, London, National Gallery of Art) that we know was in Rockox’s home where, as seen here, it was positioned as a chimney piece. On the other side of the chimney, is a van Reymerswaele variant of The Banker and his Wife by the pre-eminent sixteenth-century Antwerp artist, Quentin Metsys. The Virgin and Christ diptych directly below represents a Metsys that was in the Rockox collection. This grouping invites us to see Rubens, Antwerp’s most celebrated artist of the seventeenth century, as the inheritor of Metsys’ renown in the sixteenth century.10 While Francken’s picture programmatically proclaims the glorious past and brilliant present of Antwerp’s tradition of painting, it also invites the viewer to contemplate the place of the arts in relation to Antwerp’s thriving mercantilism and culture of consumption. It has long been noted that the fashionable couples depicted in the image who dine, make music, and admire artworks personify the five senses, while the paintings arrayed behind them provide further commentary on this unifying allegorical theme.11 While the Doubting Thomas shows vision and touch as the means of apprehending spiritual truths, the moneylender counting coins shows vision and touch directed to material rather than spiritual aims.12 The central Old Testament scene of greed and veniality functions as an anti-type to the scene of civil sociability enacted before it, thereby legitimating by contrast the licit enjoyment of food, drink, music, and works of art in the sanctified space of the home. Antithesis, like that exemplified by the liefhebbers who view the depiction of iconoclasm, is one organizing rhetorical trope in this kunstkamer image. But Francken’s scene of feasting also recalls and stands in dialog with a broader array of contemporary images engaging the theme of the five senses. On the one hand are works like those by David Teniers (Fig. 3) that situate the theme of the senses in surroundings ranging from more to less decorous, recalling in the latter instance the sixteenth-century Netherlandish genre of bordello or tavern scenes, as well as the narrative of the Prodigal Son.13

10

11 12 13

This artist’s name has several variant spellings: Metsys, Massys, and Matsys. For an excellent account of his importance to the artistic culture of seventeenth century Antwerp see Pousão-Smith 2001, on the Moneychanger and his Wife, 175 ff. See Renger and Denk 2002. See Haeger 2004. See Klinge 1991.

Masculine Virtue in the Kunstkamer: Pictura, Lucre, and Luxury 339

Figure 3 David Teniers the Younger. The Five Senses, Brussels, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België. (Courtesy of IRPA-KIK, Brussels)

On the other hand, Francken’s picture specifically domesticates and lodges within the burger class the theme of the five senses developed in the celebrated series of paintings made for Albert and Isabella by Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder. The Sense of Sight in this series depicts a richly appointed kunstkamer in which vision is celebrated as the instrument of knowledge, faith, and learned forms of delight (Fig. 4).14 The Rockox painting thus complicates its antithetical structure with one of difference by degree as it posits its scene of merrymaking in an unstable position along a continuum extending from “low” (tavern and bordello) to “high” (courtly) spaces of sensual delight and material consumption. This complex allegory of the senses would have had particular valence for the construction of masculinity among the Antwerp elite, especially that class who were likely buyers of kunstkamer images. The “aristocratization” of Antwerp’s merchant elite over the course of the seventeenth century is a phenomenon well noted by historians. Men whose wealth had allowed them to retire from commercial enterprise increasingly sought patents of nobility, and those still in the marketplace sought the trapping of an aristocratic way of life. Conspicuous consumption served two purposes for the nouveaux riches. For one, it conferred social distinction: living like a noble could be a first step toward obtaining the patent. (In the particular case of Rockox it is 14

See Diaz Padrón 1992.

340 Lisa Rosenthal

worth noting that he came from an affluent, though not noble family. Rockox was knighted one year after he married Adriana Perez, the daughter of a wealthy merchant.) Second, it could function as an index of creditworthiness. As the historian Peter Mathias has stated: “If access to credit was the first rule for success in business, then credit-worthiness was the means to this essential end.”15 Credit-worthiness was built upon personal trust and confidence and personal reputation in a context of high business risk and weak institutional safeguards. In a society in which status was founded increasingly upon mercantile wealth, living well could function as an indication of fiscal solvency and acumen. Flemish painting had functioned as an instrument for promoting both social standing and entrepreneurial trustworthiness in a tradition extending back to the fifteenth century. Jan van Eyck’s portrait of the textile merchant Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife, for example, affiliates the businessman with the judicious display of luxury in order to help establish and uphold his reputation.16

Figure 4 Jan Brueghel I and Peter Paul Rubens. c. 1617. Allegory of Sight. Madrid, Museo del Prado. (Courtesy of Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York)

15 16

Mathais 1995: 13. See Carroll 1993.

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The Francken painting, in other words, develops its theme of appetite and material consumption within discourses regarding how to display and enact credit-worthiness. The ideal of masculinity that it proposes is of an upright man who would not be laid low by his lust and who would balance his pursuit of profit with the aims of faith. His position within a world of sociability demonstrates the trust accorded him by others—a quality essential to conducting trade—while his sensory enjoyment of fine food, drink, music, and of course, works of art, emulates the forms of gracious living of the nobility. The Rockox picture, in this reading, proposes that masculine virtue is not simply a state of absolute difference from veniality and vice but is achieved as a matter of degree requiring balance and discernment in acts of cultural and sensory consumption. Similarly, in another kunstkamer picture that stresses production, rather than consumption, balance is again at stake. Francken’s Painter’s Studio (Bilbao, private collection) depicts an artist at work at his easel painting an image of Fortuna, who, improbably, poses before him, fully nude, while balancing on a ball (Fig. 5).

Figure 5 Frans Francken the Younger. The Painter’s Studio. c. 1623. (Private Collection. Bilbao, Spain)

342 Lisa Rosenthal

The artist who transforms Fortuna into an image embodies constancy, a quality valued as a key moral virtue in the Neostoic humanistic circles of Antwerp’s educated elites. Constancy as elaborated in seventeenth-century texts importantly entailed the capacity to resist base desires and appetites, but instead to be ruled by reason and faith.17 As in the Rockox picture, the overarching theme is elaborated in the pictures on display. At the left, the subject is Croesus and Solon, a subject drawn from Herodotus and Plutarch, in which the wise man Solon rebuked the King Croesus for mistaking his wealth for happiness. At the right is an Adoration of the Magi and in the center a Crucifixion, and a Death of Seneca, the guiding philosopher of Neostoicism. While the value of wealth is contrasted in these depicted pictures with spiritual and philosophical insight, coin reappears here in the sack of gold and jewels displayed upon the table positively denoting art’s monetary worth as an indicator of its virtue. The picture praises the artist’s capacity to control Fortune’s inconstancy by producing works of lasting worth. With the device of the aristocratic couple who appear to be the artist’s patrons or clients, Francken depicts the multiple productive activities of the studio as a site where laudable goods of value are made and sold, and as the workshop which trains the next generation of artists, thus perpetuating the fertile system. Francken draws here upon a well-established Renaissance tradition whereby the man of virtù strives to tame and master Fortuna’s inconstancy. In an early sixteenth-century Italian engraving, Fortuna, again balancing upon balls and holding a rudder, another one of her attributes, is seized by a man who flogs her into submission (Fig. 6).

17

For the interpretation of the picture as an allegory of constancy see the essay in this volume by Carmen Ripolles.

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Figure 6 Marcantonio Raimondi. Heroic Man Combating Fortuna. (Courtesy of The Trustees of the British Museum, London)

The violence of this image recalls the language of Machiavelli who asserted in his 1513 political treatise, The Prince, that “Fortune is a woman and it is necessary in order to keep her under, to cuff and maul her […].”18 Here in Francken’s painting she confirms that the burgerlijke ideal must be won against female forces, that men, especially men of trade, can only try to control as a condition for their often risky ventures. Fortuna in this context resonates not only with Neostoic morals but also with mercantile desires. These merchants were, of course, the same class who were eager to purchase art for their homes as long as Fortuna smiled upon them.

18

This passage is at the end of section 25 of The Prince. The translation is from Pitkin 1984. See also Trottein 2002.

344 Lisa Rosenthal

Threatened by the lure of excess expenditure, or the sterility of withholding, masculine virtue emerges in these works as a dynamic and unstable quality expressed through overlapping motifs of sexual and economic expenditure or restraint. Samson’s calamitous dissipation of lust stands in contrast to the licit consumption of fine goods enacted by the couples in the Rockox painting; the intimation of sterile hording in the van Reymerswaele Moneylender similarly contrasts to coin circulating in the marketplace as sign of painting’s praiseworthy value in the Bilbao picture.19 Art’s virtue, framed in kunstkamer images as its capacity to incite the beholder’s desire, exists in tension with the problem of marshalling and controlling material and mercantile appetites. Delilah and Fortuna were associated in the seventeenth century with dangerous and untrustworthy female powers to which men may fall subject. Their inclusion in these two kunstkamer pictures demonstrates the intertwining of sexual and mercantile discourses about appetite, waste, and the disastrous effects of loss of control. The conflation of sexual and economic desire was a long-standing motif in Northern art. In the sixteenth century the Antwerp artists Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer produced market scenes full of visual puns that invite comparison of the fish, fowl, and vegetables for sale to genitalia while intimating those exchanges between vendors and their clients might include an erotic element.20 Quentin Metsys satirizes the specifically feminine deceits that drive the combined system of economic and sexual desires in his Ill-Matched Lovers, c. 1520-25 (Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art), depicting a seductive woman who passes her victim’s purse to an accomplice in a fool’s cap. These pictures were produced in a culture uneasily accommodating the growing role of monetary exchange, a culture that remained troubled by notions of profit, especially as the result of usury, which still was viewed to a large degree in moralizing terms. The rise of a capital economy of surplus in the Southern and Northern Netherlands of the seventeenth century necessitated new attitudes: expenditure on goods, even, or perhaps especially on luxury goods, kept the economy running. But all of this was fuelled by the troublesome and difficult to control passion of desire.21 In Antwerp paintings had become a 19

20 21

On Flemish attitudes toward moneylenders see Murray, 2010. On the visual construction of masculine mercantile virtue see Vitello and Wolfthal, 2010 ‘Trading Values’. See Joachim Bueckelaer, Market Peasants, c. 1567 (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.) On market pictures in relation to the shifts in Antwerp’s economy from the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, and concomitant shifts in attitudes, see Honig: 1998, chapter 4. On the role of art in negotiating anxieties about the economy as dangerous seductress in the Dutch Republic see Ann Jensen Adams 1999.

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key commodity; pictures of art lovers consuming them thus performed an especially complex kind of cultural work. On the one hand, kunstkamer pictures could signify the robust health of Antwerp’s most lucrative kind of trade; on the other hand, such pictures needed to quell anxieties that their deceptive seductions could stoke unbridled and destructive appetites. In kunstkamer pictures what must be mastered, guarded against, and brought into a careful and judicious balance is not only the sexual threat of women, but also the enticements of risky, heedless behaviors in the marketplace, itself conceived of in this period as a seductress. As art’s value was increasingly linked to its place in a thriving local economy, its virtue, and the virtue of art lovers, required the support of an increasingly subtle and elastic set of arguments. While kunstkamer pictures aim to smoothly elide representation, possession, knowledge, and virtue, they do so not simply as a settled and triumphant claim but as a difficult and fraught ideal toward which the exemplary man—the Catholic, citizen, merchant, and lover of painting—must strive.

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Works Cited Adams, Ann Jensen. 1999. ‘Money and the Regulation of Desire: The Prostitute and the Marketplace in Seventeenth-Century Holland’ in Fumerton, Patricia and Simon Hunt (eds.) Renaissance Culture and the Everyday. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press: 229-253. Carroll, Margaret. 1993. ‘‘In the Name of God and Profit’: Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait’ in Representations (44): 96-132. Ciletti, Elena. 1991. ‘Patriarchal Ideology in the Renaissance Iconography of Judith’ in Migiel, Marilyn and Juliana Schiesari (eds) Refiguring Woman: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press: 35-70. Díaz Padrón, Matias and Mercedes Royo-Villanova (eds). 1992. David Teniers, Jan Brueghel y los Gabinetes de Pinturas. Madrid: Museo del Prado. Filipczak, Zirka. 1987. Picturing Art in Antwerp, 1550-1700. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Haeger, Barbara. 2004. ‘Rubens’ Rockox Triptych: Sight, Mediation, and the Justification of Images’ in Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek (55): 116-153. Härting, Ursula. 1989. Frans Francken der Jüngere: (1581-1642) Freren: Luca Verlag. ——. ‘“Doctrina et Pietas” Über Frühe Galeriebilder’, Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten te Antwerpen (1993): 95-133. Honig, Elizabeth. 1998. Painting and the Market in Early Modern Antwerp. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Israel, Jonathan. 1995. The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Klinge, Margaret (ed.).1991. David Teniers the Younger: Paintings, Drawings. Antwerp: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten: cat. no. 7. Laureys, M. et al (eds). 1998. The World of Justus Lipsius: A Contribution Towards his Intellectual Biography. (Proceedings of a colloquium held under the auspices of the Belgian Historical Institute in Rome). Bulletin de l’Institut Historique Belge de Rome 68. Mathais, Peter. 1995. ‘Strategies for Reducing Risk by Entrepreneurs in the Early Modern Period’ in Lesger, C. and L. Noordegraaf (eds) Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship in the Early Modern Times. Den Haag: Stichting Hollandse Historische Reeks: 5-24. Morford, Mark. 1991. Stoics and Neostoics: Rubens and the Circle of Lipsius Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Murray, James M. 2010. ‘The Devil’s Evangelists? Moneychangers in Flemish Urban Society’ in Vitullo and Wolfthal, Money, Morality, and Culture in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Surrey, UK and Burlington VT: Ashgate: 53-67.

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Oestreich, Gerhard . 1982. Neostoicism and the Early Modern State (tr. David McLintock). New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Parker, Geoffrey. 1995. The Dutch Revolt. Harmondsworth: Pelican. Peeters, Natasja. 1999. ‘Marked for the Market? Continuity, Collaboration and the Mechanics of Artistic Production of History Painting in the Francken Workshops in Counter-Reformation Antwerp’ in Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek (50): 58-79. Pitkin, Hannah. 1984. Fortune is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolò Machiavelli. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Podles, Mary Smith. 1983. ‘Virtue and Vice: Paintings and Sculpture in Two Pictures from the Walters Collection’ in The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery (41): 29-44. Pousão-Smith, Maria-Isabel. 2001. ‘Quinten Matsys and SeventeenthCentury Antwerp: An Artist and his Uses’ in Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp: 137-187. Renger, Konrad and Claudia Denk. 2002. Flämische Malerei des Barock in der Alten Pinakothek. Munich: Pinakothek-DuMont: cat. no. 858, 202-205. Saunders, Jason. 1955. Justus Lipsius. The Philosophy of Renaissance Stoicism. New York: Liberal Arts Press. Sluijter, Eric Jan. 2000. De ‘Heydensche Fabulen’ in de Schilderkunst van de Gouden Eeuw. Leiden: Primavera Pers. Soly, Hugo. 1991. ‘Economische en sociaal-culturele structuren: continuiteit en verandering’ in van der Stock, Jan (ed.) Stad in Vlaanderen: Cultuur en Maatschappij. 1477-1787, Brussels: Galerij van het Gemeentekredit: 31-44. ——. 1993. ‘Social Relations in Antwerp in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century’ in van der Stock, Jan (ed.) Antwerp, Story of a Metropolis: SixteenthSeventeenth Century Antwerp. Gent: Martial & Snoeck: 37-47. Speth-Holterhoff, S. 1957. Les Peintres Flamands de Cabinets d’Amateurs au DixSeptième Siècle. Brussels: Elsevier. Stoichita, Victor. 1997. The Self-Aware Image: An Insight in Early Modern MetaPainting (tr. Anne-Marie Glasheen). Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Suchtelen, Ariane van and Ben van Beneden (eds). 2009. Room for Art in Seventeenth-Century Antwerp. Zwolle: Waanders. Timmermans, Bert. 2006. ‘The Elite as Collectors and Middlemen in the Antwerp Art World of the Seventeenth Century’ in van der Stighelen, Katlijne (ed.) Munuscula Amicorum vol. 2 Turnhout: Brepols: 343-362. Trottein, Gwendolyn. ‘Battling Fortune in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Cellini and the Changing Faces of Fortuna’ in Cuneo, Pia (ed.) Artful Armies, Beautiful Battles: Art and Warfare in Early Modern Europe. Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill: 213-34.

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Vitullo, Juliann and Diane Wolfthal (eds). 2010. Money, Morality, and Culture in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Surrey, UK and Burlington VT: Ashgate. Vitullo Juliann and Diane Wolfthal. 2010. ‘Trading Values: Negotiating Masculinity in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe,’ in Vitullo and Wolfthal (eds). Money, Morality, and Culture in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Surrey, UK and Burlington VT: Ashgate: 155-196. Zafran, Eric. 1988. Fifty Master Paintings from the Walters Art Gallery. Baltimore: The Walter Art Gallery.

Anne J. Cruz The Walled-In Woman in Medieval and Early Modern Spain The medieval and early modern practice of emparedamiento or walling-in by lay religious women who voluntarily enclosed themselves in cells built onto churches or walls, has its origins in the ancient eremitic tradition. Unlike nuns, who led social lives within the convent, or beatas who remained uncloistered, the walled-in women [emparedadas] were viewed as spiritually heroic and valiant, as their sacrifice allowed them the time to devote themselves to God without the intrusion of daily rules, tasks, or social obligations. Yet walling-in was also applied to women as a form of punishment. This essay discusses the historical and literary examples of the phenomenon to posit that both voluntary and involuntary immurement reflected the social anxieties provoked by women’s perceived power and served as a means of control.

In 1992, workers demolishing a house in a small town in Extremadura, Spain found a stash of ten printed books and one manuscript hidden between its walls. All ten books had been placed on the Inquisition’s 1559 Index of Forbidden Books, as they dealt with heterodox themes such as astrology, exorcism, and pornography. The books included a treatise by Erasmus, and, most surprisingly, an edition of the Lazarillo de Tormes that had remained unknown until then.1 Another rare book or pamphlet found in the collection was that of a Portuguese translation of the prayer La muy devota oración de la Emparedada [The Walled-In Woman’s Very Devout Prayer], the only copy known of this prayer, which however, is mentioned in the Alcalá edition of the Lazarillo.2 Arthur Askins’ thorough study of its genealogy confirms that the prayer, which enjoyed wide circulation in the fifteenth century, is in reality a series of prayers and a legend explaining their origins.3 Attributed to Saint Bridget, the text, including prayers and legend, was apparently written in Latin in the fourteenth century and translated into English and several European vernaculars (Askins 240). The prayer’s popularity assured its persecution in Spain, as the Portuguese Inquisition had forbidden it in 1551.4 The text narrates Christ’s apparition to an 1 2 3 4

For a description of the books, see Torrico, 124-26. See also Cañas Murillo, 7-46. See Rico’s edition of the Lazarillo de Tormes, 37 n109. See Askins, who notes the great interest that these prayers still attract among some Catholics (247-48). See the Spanish translation by Carrasco González, introduced by María Cruz García de Enterría (ix-xlv). The Consejería de Cultura of the Junta de Extremadura published an undated facsimile, A muyto devota oracão da Empardeada. Em linguagem portugues

350 Anne J. Cruz

emparedada ‘in the land of Rome’ who asks Christ how many wounds he suffered during the Passion. Responding that he received 6,676 wounds, he promises that those who recite the prayers for an entire year will receive great blessings. A hermit who lives on the same mountain miraculously hears one of the prayers and runs to relate it to an abbess and her nuns; a multitude of devils then appears, one of whom tells him that the prayer had doomed them, and was such a favorite of Christ’s that wherever it was said, there would be no fear of lightning or storms, or of immediate death.5 The legend ends by stressing that one must fully believe in the prayers, else Christ’s promises will not come true. The most probable reason for the text’s condemnation is the heretical nature of the indulgences promised by the prayers; some critics, moreover, believe that they were taken to be incantations, and the small book itself, an amulet to be carried on one’s person (García de Enterría xxxviii). Ironically, the prayer of the emparedada, or walled-in woman, was itself ‘walled in’ by a very cautious owner—most likely a humanist converso or Jewish convert-who hurriedly hid his small library from the Inquisition.6 What was not so easily concealed was the female power associated with the prayer, despite the fact that the woman who recited it was evidently enclosed within walls. Both the text and its title need to be understood in the context of the period’s cultural and gender anxieties, since the text was believed to be a source of spells or magical pronouncements that, as described by the title, emanated from the prayer recited by a walled-in woman. My essay proposes that the historical and literary incidents of walled-in women, of which this prayer is but one, express the social anxieties that simultaneously contain and grant power to the emparedada. A brief excursus on the historical and literary significance of walls is useful at this point, since throughout history, walls have been constructed symbolically and literally for numerous purposes: to defend countries, to divide lands and property, to provide shelter, and to separate the sexes.7 These various functions are reflected in the etymology of the several lexical terms that in Spanish designate the material means of separation. While almena [battlement] comes from Arabic, muro [city wall] and muralla [defense wall] come from the Latin murus; whereas pared [house wall], comes from the Latin parietas. The etymological root of emparedada and emparedamiento, 5

6 7

‘Y sabe que en el mundo no hay cosa que tanto le agrade a Dios, y que a nosotros produce tan grande pesar, como rezar esta oración. Y más te digo: que donde esta oración esté no habrá miedo de los relampagos ni tempestades, ni de muerte súbita’ (Carrasco González 53). For a discussion of the book owner’s identity, see Torrico 126-32. The classical myth of Pyramus and Thisbe, for example, exploits the porousness of walls between lovers.

The Walled-In Woman in Medieval and Early Modern Spain 351

therefore, refers to the woman’s enclosure within a small space usually found within a dwelling. The term is translated into English as enclosure or, more ominously, immurement. The universal fascination with immuring as a means of punishment, mainly as a death sentence through starvation, is clearly evident in its many appearances in folktales and literary examples, the most famous being Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone and the episode of Ugolino in Dante’s Divine Comedy.8 The tradition of emparedamiento to which the Portuguese prayer refers, however, focuses not on the death, but on the life of the woman immured. Societies have long exploited the contradictory nature of walls both as a means to protect and even exalt women, and as a form of punishment against them. Indeed, women have always been ambiguously associated with walls: walled cities were often represented iconographically in the form of female figures; the title pages of political and civic treatises depicted women called almenadas [crenelated] wearing a crown in the shape of battlements.9 In the medieval period, the topos of the hortus conclusus [walled garden],10 derived from the biblical Song of Songs, was frequently applied to the Virgin Mary.11 The medieval romance Le Roman de la Rose secularized the theme of chastity by allegorizing human love and the pursuit of the beloved. In medieval Spanish literature, the most famous walled garden is that of Melibea in La Celestina, whose scaling by Calisto, her young lover, results in a fall to his death in the book’s critique of the courtly love tradition (Rojas 326). By contrast, in the adventurous picaresque tale La Lozana andaluza, published in 1528 by Francisco Delicado, the blood spilled by the protagonist when she jumps over a wall to escape from her mother’s house serves as a metaphor for the loss of her virginity and the commencement of her life as a prostitute (176).

8 9

10 11

Eastern European folktales abundantly relate stories of immurement; for examples, see Elsie. A modern tale of immurement is Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado. See, for instance, the title pages of Leonardo Lessius, De Justitia et Jure (Antwerp, 1617); Federico de Marselaer, Legatus ad Philippum IV (Antwerp, 1664); and Justus Lipsius, Opera omnia (Antwerp, 1637), References to the topos are extensive; see Stewart and, for modern applications, Aben and de Wit. ‘Hortus conclusus soror mea, sponsa, hortus conclusus, fons signatus’ [A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed] (Song of Songs 4:12).

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Emparedamiento or Voluntary Reclusion Studies of women living behind walls have centered primarily on cloistered nuns after the reforms instituted not only by the Catholic Reformation and the Council of Trent for the religious life, but also by reform-minded individuals for their orders, such as Saint Teresa of Ávila and Saint John of the Cross. Although efforts to enclose women religious were frequent during the middle ages, it is not until the Council of Trent that enclosure takes place systematically. During its 25th session (3-4 December 1563), the Council reiterated the cloistering of nuns initially begun in the late thirteenth century by Pope Boniface VIII.12 Trent’s intention was to keep religious women from contact with the outside world: The holy Synod, renewing the constitution of Boniface VIII., which begins Periculoso, enjoins on all bishops, by the judgment of God to which It appeals, and under pain of eternal malediction, that, by their ordinary authority, in all monasteries subject to them, and in others, by the authority of the Apostolic See, they make it their especial care, that the enclosure of nuns be carefully restored, wheresoever it has been violated, and that it be preserved, wheresoever it has not been violated; repressing, by ecclesiastical censures and other penalties, without regarding any appeal whatsoever, the disobedient and gainsayers, and calling in for this end, if need be, the aid of the Secular arm. The holy Synod exhorts Christian princes to furnish this aid, and enjoins, under pain of excommunication, to be ipso facto incurred, that it be rendered by all civil magistrates. But for no nun, after her profession, shall it be lawful to go out of her convent, even for a brief period, under any pretext whatever, except for some lawful cause, which is to be approved of by the bishop; any indults and privileges whatsoever notwithstanding. (Council of Trent: Session 25; Chapter V, p. 239)

In 1562, even before the Council’s 25th session, Teresa of Ávila began her reform of the Carmelite Order, which insisted on the nuns’ strict enclosure (Bilinkoff 1989, 132; Ahlgren 36). Life in the cloister has drawn the attention of numerous feminist critics who have revisioned female convents as sites of empowerment and negotiation for women (Arenal; Smith 22). More recently, historian Elizabeth Lehfeldt has pointed out that cloisters were not so impervious to outside forces, as nuns were not entirely cut off from society, enmeshed as they were in secular concerns such as lawsuits, property, patronage, and dowries (2). Moreover, nuns lived communal lives within the convents. Their orders replicated extramural hierarchical societies in their formation of clusters of social networks. The walls of the convent, 12

Boniface’s decree Periculoso was the first to require strict enclosure throughout the Latin Church (Makoski 1).

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therefore, most frequently served not to keep nuns in, so much as to keep worldly temptations out. In her book on the cloisters’ permeability, Lehfeldt does not deal solely with convents, since other communities of religious women abounded in medieval society. Consisting of unmarried, married, and widowed women, the lay groups that sprang up across Europe devoted themselves to good works such as caring for children, succoring the ill, helping at hospitals, and burying the dead. These communities permitted women to enter at different stages of their life, without committing to permanent enclosure. The Belgian beguines and the bizzoche in central Italy, for example, formed loose religious societies that did not take the formal vows of a religious order (Sensi 1-2). In the Low Countries, beguine communities appeared simultaneously with no apparent leader; called beguinages, at least 298 were established before 1565. Although most women lived in in convent-like surroundings, they resisted strict enclosure (Simons 47-48). Another kind of religious community unique to the Low Countries was the court beguinage, or dwellings grouped around a chapel or church, with houses for beguines who lived alone (Simons 51). In Spain, women who did not wish to profess as nuns but still sought to lead a holy life were known as beatas [blessed]. While some remained in a solitary state, others lived in communities called beaterios. Their social status and religious practices varied considerably, and by the seventeenth century, most had been absorbed into religious orders.13 The origins of these religious groups and, in fact, of the emparedadas themselves, may be traced to the biblical eremitical tradition: men and women’s flight to the desert to live a penitent life (Barbeito 186). The Old Testament relates the penitence of Moses and the prophet Elias, who was considered the founder of the Carmelite Order. Early Christianity counted among its most legendary hermits St. John the Baptist, St. Paul, called the first ‘hermit’ by St. Jerome, and St. Jerome himself. Although the church canons increasingly excluded women, surprisingly, there are almost 3,000 women listed in the history of the early Christian hermits who lived in the Egyptian desert.14 The singularity of this kind of life made it hard to distinguish between reality and fiction, as legends proliferated through the writings of hagiographers, who saw the eremitical life as a heroic and extravagant adventure (Barbeito 188). Numerous legends were disseminated about female saints who lived in caves in the wilderness. The repentant lives of both Mary Magdalene and the fifth-century saint, Mary of Egypt, have

13 14

See Weber’s review of Muñoz Fernández. King cites from Palladius’ Lausiac History. (n10); King’s essay first appeared in Fourteenth Century Mystics Newsletter 9 (1983): 12-25 .

354 Anne J. Cruz

repeatedly been narrated through hagiographies, paintings, and sculptures.15 Mary of Egypt’s penitence and contrition are symbolically adduced by her physical transformations in the anonymous Spanish medieval poem, Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca; She changed entirely into another / a figure with no clothes or robes; Her flesh, fair as a flower / has now lost its pristine shade And her hair, once so blond, / has become gray and soiled. Her ears, once white as dawn, / have turned black and flattened.16

The emphasis on the loss of the sinner’s physical beauty in the harsh desert atmosphere is contrasted with her spiritual purification. For medievalist Julian Weiss, the poem reinforces the negative associations of the female body long established by misogynist thought (85). He clarifies that the figure of the female hermit furnished varying modes of female spirituality, with the ascetic model rivaling the monastic (82). Nonetheless, the historical female hermit has remained a hazy figure. Because women’s penitential flight to the desert left men with little control over them, women who attempted to lead an ascetic life were encouraged to remain in towns, as so-called urban recluses. Medieval Europe saw a profusion of women recluses between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. In England, these enclosed women were called anchoresses, or female anchorites. The etymology of the word harks back to Medieval Latin ‘anachoreta’ in Middle English, meaning ‘ancor’ or hermit. The anchorite is defined as one who, for religious reasons, retreats from society in order to lead an ascetic, prayerful life. Similarly, anchoresses chose to withdraw from the world to live a solitary life of prayer and mortification. Unlike their male counterparts, however, most lived in cells attached to churches and followed the Ancrene Wisse, an anonymous monastic rule originally written for three sisters in the thirteenth century.17 England’s most famous anchoress is the fourteenth-century mystic Julian of Norwich, who wrote her visions of Christ’s appearances to her.18 Very likely a Benedictine nun, she lived in a small cell in the Norwich parish church. There is considerable slippage among the various types of lay religious women, from the early Christian hermits, to the English anchoresses and the 15 16

17 18

For studies of Mary Magdalene and Mary of Egypt, see Haskins, Ehrman, and Ward. ‘Toda se mudó d' otra figura / que non ha paños nin vestidura. / Perdió las carnes e la color, / que eran blancas la flor; / e los sus cabellos, que eran rubios, / tornaron blancos e suzios. / Las sus orejas que eran albas, / mucho eran negras e pegadas’ (vv.718-725). All translations in this essay are my own. The movement reflected a new religious sensibility among women (Gunn 51) See also Warren. Known as the Showings of Love and Revelations of Divine Love (Magill 3-4).

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Belgian beguines, and to the beatas and emparedadas of late medieval and early modern Spain. Even more confusing is the fact that some of these women at times came under the rule of third orders, or tertiaries such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and the Benedictines.19 In Spain, the confusion becomes greater, because the archival documents about emparedadas and beatas did not distinguish clearly between them. One historian claims that in Southern Spain, the differences between beatas and emparedadas are mere formalities, since the emparedadas lived within walls, next to convent and parish churches, and thus continued in contact with the world because they remained within the community (Miura Andrades 141). Yet unlike the beatas, who circulated freely in the community, the majority of Spanish recluses known as emparedadas carried out their enclosure in an even more ascetic manner than Julian of Norwich, whose cell appears luxurious by comparison. Spain’s walled-in women voluntarily shut themselves in a small space usually built against a church wall, but also in cemeteries, in small hermitages, hospitals, and even—and perhaps most appropriately— within the city walls. The cell typically had room only for a kneeling stool or prie-dieu, and a plank for a bed. The outside wall faced the street and had an opening through which she could be fed; an opening on the inside wall allowed her to hear mass and take communion.20 The townspeople would exchange food for prayers, and at times, the emparedadas would also make handicrafts for their sustenance. Most days, however, were spent in prayer and practicing physical discipline. Gregoria Cavero Domínguez’s exhaustive study, Inclusa intra parietes: la reclusion voluntaria en la España medieval, recounts the ascetic tradition in Spain, noting that recluses could be found across the country, from Burgos to Salamanca and from Oviedo to Seville (145). For her, the voluntary enclosure of lay women occurred most of all in the late medieval period and in an urban rather than rural setting. She calls their practice “solitary and heroic, audacious and provocative.”21 Cavero Domínguez goes on to say that for its contemporaries, the practice of walling-in did not seem have a somber, but rather a valiant side, which was not so extraordinary, but unexpected, with a defined element of

19 20

21

See the case of Catalina de Cardona (Barbeito 204-212). One of the few cells still in existence can be found in the town of Astorga and is located at the Church of Saint Marta. The cell has an inscription carved above the window: Memor esto juditii mei, sic enim erit et tuum. Mihi heri et tibi hodie (Ecclesiasticus 38:23) [Keep in mind my judgment. For so it shall be for you. Yesterday was my day, today is yours]. For a description of the space, see Cavero Domínguez, 181-183. ‘Solitaria y heroica, fue una actitud y práctica ascðetica audaz y provocadora’ (Cavero Domínguez 129).

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sociability.22 Yet, despite the similarities among the various communities of lay women, I believe that the emparedadas’ most significant difference is that of their physical enclosure and social isolation. Because beatas wished to practice charity, they were averse, at least for a part of their lives, to professing as nuns. Their relative freedom, even under tertiary rule, was often criticized as libertine, and the charismatic personalities of some, like María de Santo Domingo, from the town of Piedrahita, led them into trouble with the Inquisition. Labeled lascivious, her ecstatic trances and dances scandalized the court; she underwent four Inquisitional trials and was saved from the charge of heresy only by the Duke of Alba’s protection.23 Women’s appearance in public spaces was an issue throughout the early modern period. The presence out of doors of unmarried young girls created a constant state of male anxiety, evinced in manuals such as Juan Luis Vives’s Education of a Christian Woman: My opinion, or rather Christ’s opinion, is that young girls should be kept at home, should stay out of public [places], except for attendance at sacred offices, and be well covered, separated from the view of men (137). Both from a social and religious perspective, then, women lived under the threat, not only of their objectification, but of their corporeal disappearance. Paradoxically, the gendered social requirement of enclosing women, whether in a convent, the husband’s house, or in a brothel, gave impetus to the extreme enclosure favored by the emparedadas. Ironically, by selecting an ascetic life, these women also rejected the strict rules of religious orders, the hierarchical structure that formed part of the cloisters, and male religious’ control over their female convent charges. The practice of emparedamiento allowed them the time to devote themselves completely to God without the intrusion of daily rules, tasks, or communal obligations, while at the same time it surrounded them with an aura of saintliness that shielded them from the fears of female subversion and the need for their control. As we saw from La muy devota oración de la Emparedada found between the walls of the house in Extremadura, the emparedada’s spirituality was considered a powerful form of mediation with the divinity. Unlike the beatas’ choice of living by themselves or in beaterios, the emparedada’s living next to the church—indeed, within the actual church walls—protected them from any potential accusation of heresy or witchcraft. Despite their rejection of monastic orders, emparedadas were most often perceived as privileged holy 22

23

‘Para sus coetáneos el emparedamiento no parece que tuviera un character sombrío sino más bien valiente; más que extraordinario, sorprendente, con definida sociabilidad’ (Cavero Domínguez 131). María had confessed that she wore her hair long for its seductive power (see Bilinkoff 1996, 27).

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women: the fourteenth-century poet Gonzalo de Berceo’s last and most accomplished poem is dedicated to Santa Oria, an emparedada at the Monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla: She was walled in, remaining between walls Her life was devoted to suffering, as you can understand If you read her life, you will confirm it so.24

Although the hagiographic poem is obviously a propagandistic means of attracting donors to the monastery, we should remember that it is also a lyrical recounting of the visions of a young saint. Its economic function in supporting the monastery, therefore, need not detract from the emparedamiento or walling-in’s significance as the author’s intent to narrate her life as spiritually exemplary.25 The singular life of the solitary emparedada became ubiquitous from the middle ages to the sixteenth century.26 Records show that medieval towns had many emparedadas; in Pamplona, there were approximately 100, and in Seville, there was an emparedada in every parish church. Cavero Domínguez lists the number of towns and cities in southern Spain that harbored walledin women: Córdoba, Seville, Jaén, Úbeda, Jerez de la Frontera, Carmona, Écija, Utrera, Lebrija, and Cazalla, among others (153). The large numbers of emparedadas who lived in the churches of Córdoba are mentioned in that city’s Quaderno de instrumentos y noticias [Notebook of Documents and Notices] dated 1752, which dedicates a section to the ‘ancient churches and the walled-in women in them.’27 The notebook gathered the documents kept in the churches from the fourteenth century onward; its statements demonstrate that by the eighteenth century, the role of the emparedada was none too clear:

24 25

26

27

‘Emparedada era, yacía entre paredes. / Había vida lazrada qual entender podedes. / Si su vida leyerdes así lo probaredes’ (Berceo, Santa Oria, v. 24). The poem relates the life and visions of an eleventh-century anchoress who was enclosed in the Mozarabic monastery of San Millán and buried nearby. The poem tells of the girl’s birth as an answer to her parents’ prayers and of her mother’s vocation as an anchoress as well (see Lappin’s introduction to Berceo’s ‘Santa Oria’). Some of the emparedamientos included several women, such as the Casa de Santa María de Rebolleda in Burgos and of the tower of San Gil (Cavero Domínguez 147) For an in-depth study of the abundant sites of emparedadas, see Cavero Domínguez’s chapter 4, “Una experiencia en común” 123-162). I am grateful for having had access to this excellent study after I began my own research. ‘Iglesias antiguas de Cordova emparedamientos de mugeres en ellas. Inscripciones que en ella se hallan’ (180). The notebook is signed by Dr. Marcos Domínguez de Alcántara and Lic. Joseph Vazquez Venegas.

358 Anne J. Cruz From the city archives, we have construed that in all the parish churches and in some of the outlying provinces of this city of Córdoba, there were in the past decent walled-in women who withdrew there in order (it seems) to clean the churches, as documented in the testament that we find in the Archives of the municipal council of the Holy Church in this city.28

The testaments published in the notebook show that the emparedadas received monies for their prayers, but that they made donations to the churches for their construction: And in a book that we found in the archives of the building of the Parochial Church of San Andrés in this city, consisting of payment receipts from the year 1550 until 1599, on the saying of masses in the chapel founded in this church by Cathalina Hernández, the emparedada, it states that the said foundation was instituted by means of the will left by Cathalina Hernandez, emparedada, by the testament given on March 11, 1522 before the notary Gonzalo Ruiz, by Cathalina Hernández, walled in the houses called emparedamiento of San Andrés [year of 1522].29

As Cavero Domínguez states and the Córdoba notebook corroborates, many emparedadas belonged to the aristocracy and bourgeoisie; they were sufficiently wealthy to contribute funds to the churches in which they were walled in (Cavero Domínguez 194). As I have mentioned, the willful enclosure of the emparedada elevated her to an important social status in the medieval and early modern periods; the hagiographies of emparedadas such as Santa Oria consign a special value to their lives and celebrate their afterlives. Cavero Domínguez assigns them the characteristics of an independent spirit, a determined and indomitable personality, and a combative will, as they

28

29

‘De todos los archivos de papeles de esta ciudad de Cordova y su reyno certificamos q[ue] entre los muchos que hasta ahora tenemos vistos en esta caital, hemos deducido q[ue] en todas las Iglesias parrochiales de ella y algunas otras de sus cercanias huvo antiguam[en]te unos emparedam[iento]tos de Mugeres honestas que se recogian a ellos a fin (segun parece) de cuydar del aseo de las Iglesias como lo acredita el testamento que encontramos en el Archivo de el Cavildo de la S. Igl[esi]a de esta dicha ciud[ad]’ (180). ‘Y en un libro que encontramos en el archivo de la fabrica de la Iglesia Paroquial de San Andrés de esta ciudad formado de quentas dadas en visita desde el año de 1550 hasta el de 1599, sobre el cumplimiento de las misas respectivas a la cappilla que en dicha iglesia fundo Cathalina Hernandez la emparedada consta por la que se firmo en 6 de junio del año de 1586 que la referida fundacion se hizo por el testamento otorgado a los 11 de marzo del año de l522 ante el notario gonzalo ruyz por Cathalina Hernandez emparedada en las casas que dicen emparedamiento de san Andres [año de 1522].’

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observed society from their grilled window.30 Yet they sought to bury themselves alive before their time, substituting their own bodies for those of sinners. Their life within walls was limited mainly to eating and sleeping lightly, with long periods of fasting, meditation, nights of prayer, and physical penance (Cavero Domínguez 204; 209). Although much more research needs to be done regarding this phenomenon, what we do know is that the practice of emparedamiento was carried out mainly by women. As relational theorists have asserted, the abjection inherent in such behavior likely stems from masochistic tendencies to self- inflict pain. The voluntarism involved in enclosure should not detain us from weighing the psychological suffering that may have caused the emparedadas to choose this kind of life, one close to what Freud has called a ‘child’s deprivation of love and a humiliation,’ with the compensatory fantasy of religious righteousness that conjures God as the paternal figure (Kucich 93). Significantly, if the religious paradigm for emparedadas is removed, we are left only with a brutal form of punishment that evokes solitary confinement, the most extreme sanction still applied today after the death penalty.

Involuntary Confinement By the sixteenth century, compelled by the Catholic reformation and reinforced by Trent, most emparedamientos that housed several women had become beaterios, while solitary emparedadas had either died or abandoned their cell.31 Along with the narratives about voluntarily walled-in women, however, there had developed an opposite trend that spoke of the practice as a means of punishment. As in the case of the religious emparedadas, historical and fictional narratives ensured the circulation of their stories, but instead of elevating women, these narratives relate the phenomenon of walling-in as castigation, frequently for sins of the flesh. The practice had already inspired an ‘apology’ in late seventeenth-century Spain questioning whether women’s walling-in was voluntary or forced; this was followed in 1801 by a treatise that intended to respond to the question. Its author, Marcos Antonio de Orellana, gives examples of the many emparedadas that existed throughout the kingdom of Valencia, noting that their enclosure was

30

31

‘[D]e espíritu independiente y capacidad decisoria; no se deja dominar, a veces ni aconsejar, fácilmente. … La perspectiva de su ventana la hace crítica respect a su entorno’ (Cavero Domínguez 196). The 1566 Valencia synod states that first, emparedadas no longer be admitted; second, that they be visited by a priest; and third, that no masses be held in the cells save in case of imminent death (Cavero Domínguez 253).

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voluntary.32 The second part of the treatise, however, lists cases of both real and fictional emparededas forcibly enclosed for their supposed crimes. It concludes that there were two kinds of emparedadas: those who willingly enclosed themselves due to their religious devotion, and those who deserved to be walled in because of their misdeeds (Orellana 39). As an example of the latter, the treatise refers to the case narrated in the fifteenth century by the Valencian poet Jaume Roig, in his misogynist poem-novel Spill [ T h e Mirror] or The Book of Ladies, of a convent that was built in reparation for the horrifying sin of a countess. To satisfy her perverse desires, the countess disgraces her husband by entering a brothel, until she becomes a poor fisherman’s lover. The husband finally finds her selling fish, aged, and dressed in rags. When, infuriated, he tries to kill her, the townspeople save her; she repents and walls herself in to expiate her sins. The countess’s moral failure was also a social transgression, since she had not only dishonored him through her sexual excesses, but she did so with a man far below her station. Instead of having her walled-in, the husband gives her a dowry with which to found a Dominican convent.33 Although entering a convent inverts her stay in the brothel, it is the walling-in and her physical decline that makes certain her atonement. The poem, however, states that ‘today, neither walling-in nor punishment is used any longer’ [Ya oy no se vsa / emparedar ni castigar]. The treatise attributes the statement to the fact that since walling-in as a punishment was not made public but kept hidden from view, its practice seemed to have diminished. Another example given of enforced emparedamiento is that of the noblewoman Catalina de Guilettis, who received the punishment for having murdered her husband. Soon after her enclosure in Valencia’s new tower, she was garroted in public. Revealing his thought that walling-in was an acceptable punishment for women, since the offense to her family’s honor that she had committed remained private, Orellana comments that she would probably have preferred to remain walled-in to avoid the shame of public execution (36).34 32

33

34

In his 1801 treatise, Orellana cites from the previous apology (now lost) that the term emparedamiento is by its very nature horrendous; nonetheless, he confirms that the reclusionary status of most women was voluntary (8). Orellana’s treatise, now also lost, was expanded and published by Juan Churat y Saurí in 1887. ‘Pero por pena / de aquella vida / ya arrepentida / en vna coza / que solo goza / toscas paredes, / sin luz, ni redes, / quedo encerrada / emparedada / sola y reclusa. / Ya oy no se vsa / emparedar / ni castigar. / Su esposo el conde / que nada esconde / el dote dio / con que labró / este convento / y encerramiento / de henbras erradas / donde, encerradas / su incontinencia, da penitencia’ (El espejo, v. 7329:366-368). The modern penal system in Spain apparently still reflects this bias. According to Almeda, it is based on a sexist stereotype that reinforces the traditional role of

The Walled-In Woman in Medieval and Early Modern Spain 361

Despite the greater number of religious women who voluntarily submitted to emparedamiento, fictional examples and legends tend to relate the majority of the cases of walling-in as punishment or abuse. The telling of these walling-in tales has at its base the morbid attraction for the public of women’s abjection and vulnerability.35 The most garish literary description of an emparedada is surely María de Zayas’s La inocencia castigada [Innocence Punished]. As one of Zayas’s novelle from her second collection of frametales, Desengaños amorosos [Disenchantments of Love] (1648), the narrative conflates numerous issues of confinement. Plainly, the novel is about stripping a young woman of all her material and emotional attachments. The sin she is accused of is, again, one of the flesh , but as the title indicates, this time the woman is innocent. In Zayas’s world, however, the situational becomes the only real event. The novella is horrifying in its graphic and amoral detail. Inés, the young wife of the story, is pursued by a libertine neighbor, who hires a Moor to bewitch her into leaving her house spellbound every night to his bed. For involuntarily—even unknowingly—dishonoring her husband, she becomes the victim of her own family, since her brother and sister-in-law convince the husband to immure her: In the most distant room of the house, where not even the servants have any reason or need to enter, they either found or opened a hole by the chimney, for they – the husband, the brother, and his wife – were the only ones to rule there. … There, they thrust the poor, unfortunate Inés, leaving her only enough space to stand, for even if she wanted to she could not sit but could only crouch, as they say. They boarded her up, leaving only a window about the width of a half-sheet of paper for her to have air to breathe and receive some miserable food, so she would not die too soon, and neither her tears nor her protestations softened their hearts. (Zayas 424)36

35

36

women; the discipline and control are excessively severe, with an overdose of medication and lack of attention and assistance to women with families (27). Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) includes a case of literary emparedamiento that reflects the novel’s romanticism: Esmeralda’s mother immures herself in a tower to punish herself for her daughter’s abduction by Gypsies. ‘En un aposento, el último de toda la casa, donde aunque hubiese gente de servicio ninguno tuviese modo ni ocasión de entrar en él, en el hueco de una chimenea que allí había, o ellos la hicieron, porque para este caso no hubo más oficiales que el hermano, marido y cuñada, … pusieron a la pobre y desdichada doa Inés, no dexándola más lugar que cuanto pudiese estar en pie, porque si se quería sentar, no podia sino, como ordinariamente se dice, en cuclillas, y la tabicaron, dexando sólo una ventanilla como medio pliego de papel, por donde respirase y no muriese tan presto, sin que sus lágrimas ni protestas los enterneciese’ (Zayas 424).

362 Anne J. Cruz

After six years’ immurement, a neighbor finally hears her cries, releases her, and reports the case to the archbishop. Yet not only does Inés emerge covered entirely in her own filth and excrement, she can no longer see: She had become blind, whether from the darkness … or from crying. Her lovely hair, that before her enclosure shone as threads of gold, was now unkempt and white as snow. It was matted and so thickly covered with insects breeding in such quantities, that they seemed to boil. Her complexion was deathly pale, and her figure so gaunt and emaciated that her bones stuck out. … Her tears had dug two furrows down her face, from her eyes to her chin; her clothes, dissolved into ash, revealed parts of her nude body, barelegged and barefoot. Since she could not wash off her excrement, it had decayed on her flesh, her rotting thighs covered with sores and vermin that crawled all over that fetid place. (Zayas 428)37

Inés’s defiled body recalls the physical transformations undergone by the hermits in the desert, yet while their ascetic life purged them of their desire for any worldly temptations, Inés is contaminated by the symbolic signs of social impurity. Her name an indication of her sacrifice,38 she is forced into a uterine space only to emerge infantilized and dead to the world. Her blindness signals that she is powerless to own her recovered space. Although she is vindicated by the archbishop, who condemns her cruel family members to death, and her beauty and youth are restored, she never regains her agency or autonomy. Her continued lack of vision denotes her incapacity to distinguish difference, as her placement in a convent merely reassigns her to yet another enclosure.39 Julia Kristeva justifies defilement when she explains the abject as transcendent: ‘A wound with blood and pus, or the sickly, acrid smell of sweat, of decay, does not signify death … These body fluids, this shit are what life withstands, hardly and with difficulty, on the part of death’ (3). Kristeva’s notion of abjection aptly describes not only Inés’s contaminated body, but the corporeal state of the religious emparedadas, whose compulsion 37

38 39

‘€staba ciega, o de la oscuridad … o fuese de esto, o de llorar, ella no tenia vista. Sus hermosos cabellos, que cuando entró allí eran como hebras de oro, blancos como la misma nieve, enredados y llenos de animalejos, que de no peinarlos se crían en tanta cantidad, que por encima hervoreaban; el color de la muerte; tan flaca y consumida, que se le señalaban los huesos … desde los ojos hasta la barba, dos surcos cavados de las lágrimas, … los vestidos, hechos ceniza, que se le veían las más partes de su cuerpo; descalza de pie y pierna, que de los excrementos de su cuerpo, como no tenía dónde echarlos, no solo se habían cnsumido, mas la propia carne comida hasta los muslos de llagas y gusanos, de que estaba lleno el hediondo lugar’ (Zayas 428). Inés is Spanish for Agnes, in Latin, lamb. For an differing view of Zayas’s novella, in which Inés is liberated and her subjectivity claimed, see Rice.

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for containment, although played out on their enclosed bodies, releases them from their victimization. It is through the force of the emparedada’s desire for her living death, that she transcends death. I have said earlier that the walled-in woman’s self-inflicted punishment is compensated for by her aura of saintliness. Kristeva helps to understand the religious emparedada’s contradictory defilement by aligning it with ascetic mysticism: ‘[My body’s] wastes drop so that I might live, until, from loss to loss, nothing remains in me and my entire body falls beyond the limit – cadere, cadaver’ (3). In mysticism, the abject dissolution of the body allows for its union with the Godhead; because of the body’s defilement, the emparedada is closer to divine union than her cloistered sisters or the beatas. The emparedada’s prayer found in Extremadura celebrates Christ’s appearance to her as she hears his promises, yet the fear of heresy that led the little book to be placed on the Index resorts to the same kind of punishment so willingly taken up by willfully walled-in women. By contrast, those victimized in the same manner, but who have not voluntarily entered into a mystical contract with God, find the punishment unbearable. Although both types of emparedadas suffer equally, the religious woman who encloses herself is seeking a selfimposed level of spirituality rarely achieved by even the beatas or cloistered nuns. The walls that closed in on the voluntary and involuntary emparedadas in medieval and early modern Spain were often the same; what kept some from crushing their victim was the measure of the emparedadas’ desire for self-inflicted enclosure.

364 Anne J. Cruz

Works Cited Aben, Rob, and Saskia de Wit. 1999. The Enclosed Garden: History and Development of the Hortus Conclusus and its Re-Introduction into the Present-Day Urban Landscape. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. Ahlgren, Gillian T. W. 1996. Teresa of Avila and the Politics of Sanctity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Almeda Samaranch, Elisabet. 2007. ‘Ejecución penal y mujer en España: olvido, castigo y domesticidad.’ In Mujeres y castigo: un enfoque socio-jurídico y de género. Elisabet Almeda Samaranch and Encarna Bodelón González, eds. Madrid: Dykinson. 27-65. Ancrene Wisse: Guide for Anchoresses. 1993. Hugh White, ed. New York: Penguin. Arenal, Electa. 1983. ‘The Convent as Catalyst for Autonomy: Two Hispanic Nuns of the Seventeenth Century.’ In Women in Hispanic Literature. Icons and Fallen Idols. Beth Miller, ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 147-183. Askins, Arthur L-F. 2007. ‘Notes on Three Prayers in Late 15th. Century Portuguese (the Oração da Empardeada, the Oração de S. Leão, Papa, and the Justo Juiz): Text History and Inquisitorial Interdictions.’ Revista de Estudios Ibéricos 3: 235-266. Barbeito, María Isabel. 2002. ‘Mujeres eremitas y penitentas. Realidad y ficción.’ Via spiritus 9:185-215. Berceo, Gonzalo de. 2000. Berceo's 'Vida de Santa Oria': Text, Translation and Commentary. Anthony Lappin, ed. and trans. Oxford: Legenda. On line at: http://www.bibliotecagonzalodeberceo.com/berceo/lappin/ vidadesan taoria.htm/ (consulted 12.23.2011). Bilinkoff, Jodi. 1989. The Avila of Saint Teresa: Religious Reform in a SixteenthCentury City. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Bilinkoff, Jodi. 1996. ‘Charisma and Controversy: The Case of Maria de Santo Domingo.’ In Spanish Women in the Golden Age: Images and Realities. Magdalena S. Sánchez and Alain Saint-Saens, eds. Westport, CT: Greenwood. 23-35. Cañas Murillo, Jesús. 1996. Lazarillo de Tormes [Medina del Campo, 1554]. Mérida: Junta de Extremadura: 7-46. Carrasco González, Juan M., ed. and trans. 2005. La muy devota Oración de la Emparedada, Mérida: Junta de Extremadura,Consejería de Cultura. Cavedo Domínguez, Gregoria. 2010. Inclusa intra parietes: la reclusion voluntaria en la España medieval. Toulouse: Université Tolouse II-Le Mirail. Council of Trent: The Twenty-Fifth Session. 1848. J. Waterworth, ed. and trans. London: Dolman. 232-289.

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Delicado, Francisco. 1985. La Lozana andaluza. Claude Allaigre, ed. Madrid: Cátedra. Ehrman, Bart. 2006. Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend. Oxford: Oxford. Elsie, Robert. N.d. ‘The Legend of Rozafat Castle.’ Online at: http://www.albanianliterature.net/oral_lit3/OL3-06.html (consulted 12.15.2011). Gunn, Kate. 2008. Ancrene Wisse: From Pastoral Literature to Vernacular Spirituality. Cardiff: University of Wales. Haskins, Susan. 1993. Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor. New York: Harcourt, Brace. King, Margot H. N.d. ‘The Desert Mothers. A Survey of the Femenine Anchoretic Tradition in Western Europe.’ On line at: http://www. peregrina.com/matrologia_latina/DesertMothers1.html (consulted 12.20.2011). Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Leon S. Roudiez, trans. New York: Columbia University Press. Kucich, John. 2008. Imperial Masochism: British Fiction, Fantasy, and Social Class. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lazarillo de Tormes. 2005. Francisco Rico, ed. Madrid: Cátedra. Lehfeldt, Elizabeth. 2005. Religious Women in Golden Age Spain: The Permeable Cloister. Aldershot, UK; Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Lorris, Guillaume de, and Jean de Meun. 1999. The Romance of the Rose. Frances Horgan, ed. and trans. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Magill, Kevin J. 2006. Julian of Norwich: Mystic or Visionary? New York: Routledge. Makoski, Elizabeth. 1997. Canon Law and Cloistered Women: Periculoso and its Commentators, 1398-1545. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America. Miura Andrades, José María. 1991. ‘Formas de vida religiosa femenina en la Andalucía Medieval: emparedadas y beatas.’ In Religiosidad femenina: expectativas y realidades (ss. VIII-XVIII). Ángela Muñoz and María del Mar Graña, eds. Madrid: Al-Mudayna. 139-164. Muñoz Fernández, Ángela. 1994. Beatas y santas neocastellanas: ambivalencias de la religión y políticas correctoras del poder (ss. XIV-XVI). Madrid: Comunidad de Madrid. A muyto devota oracão da Empardeada. Em linguagem portugues (fasc. ed.) N.d. Mérida: Junta de Extremadura,Consejería de Cultura. Orellana, Marcos Antonio de. 1801. Tratado Histórico-Apologético de las mugeres emparedadas. Juan Churat y Saurí, ed. 1887. Valencia: Casa de Beneficencia.

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Quaderno de instrumentos y noticias que aseguran la existencia de las ordenes de Calatrava, Alcantara, S. Juan, Santiago, Monte Anges, Alemanes, o Teutonica, Templarios, y S. Pedro de Gumiel, en la ciudad de Cordova. 1752. Manuscript. Córdoba. Rice, Robin Ann. 2010. ‘Los modos de subjetivación de la mujer en La inocencia castigada de María de Zayas.’ Signos literarios, 11: 93-106. Online at: http://148.206.53.230/revistasuam/signosliterarios/include/ getdoc.php?id=231&article=151&mode=pdf (consulted 11.12.2011). Rojas, Fernando de. 1995. La Celestina. Dorothy S. Severin, ed. Madrid: Cátedra. Roig, Jaume. 1936-1937. El espejo. R. Miquel y Planas, ed., L. Matheu y Sanz, trans. (1665). Barcelona: Orbis. Sainsaulieu, Jean.1963. ‘Ermites.’ Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastique 15:773. Sensi, Mario. 2010. Mulieres in Ecclesia: Storie di Monache e Bizzoche. 2 vols. Spoleto: Fondazione di Centro Italiano di Studi Sull’Alto Medioevo. Simons, Walter. 2001. Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200-1565. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Smith, Theresa Ann. 2006. The Emerging Female Citizen: Gender and Enlightenment in Spain. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Stewart, Stanley. 1996. The Enclosed Garden: The Tradition and Image in Seventeenth-Century Poetry. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Torrico, Benjamín. 2010. ‘Hiding in the Wall: Lazarillo’s Bedfellows: The Secret Library of Barcarrota,’ in The Lazarillo Phenomenon: Essays on the Adventures of a Classic Text. Reyes Coll-Tellechea and Sean McDaniel, eds. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press. Vives, Juan Luis. 2000. The Education of a Christian Woman: A Sixteenth-Century Manual. Charles Fantazzi, ed. and trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ward, Benedicta. 1987. Harlots of the Desert: A Study of Repentance in Early Monastic Sources. Michigan: Cistercian Publications. Warren, Ann K. 1985. Anchorites and Their Patrons in Medieval England. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Weber, Alison. 1999. ‘Recent studies on women and early modern religion in Spanish.’ Renaissance Quarterly 52.1: 197. Academic OneFile. Web. 21 Dec. 2011. Weiss, Julian. 2006. The ‘Mester de Clerecia’: Intellectuals and Ideologies in Thirteenth-Century Castile. Woodbridge: Tamesis. Zayas, María de. 1973. ‘La inocencia castigada.’ In Novelas completas. María Martinez del Portal, ed. Barcelona: Bruguera. 402-432.

Carl Niekerk Violence, Gender, and the Construction of the Other in the Story of Inkle and Yarico The following essay discusses Christian Fürchtegott Gellert’s German adaptation in his Fabeln und Erzählungen (1746) of the story of Inkle and Yarico as published in Richard Steele’s Spectator (1711). As its point of departure the essay takes the story’s antiimperialist ideology, personified by the “noble savage” Yarico who unselfishly saves the shipwrecked English merchant Inkle. By problematizing the figure of the “noble savage”—a nineteenth-century term designed to illustrate the eighteenth century’s naïveté in dealing with other, non-European cultures—and in particular the gendered agenda associated with it, the essay seeks to demonstrate that the Inkle and Yarico story is emblematic for the West’s transition from an imperialist to colonial agenda. A comparison with Beryl Gilroy’s postcolonial version of the story (1996) shows that in particular the professed ideology of non-violence in Steele’s and Gellert’s versions is highly problematic.

A young British merchant suffers a shipwreck on a coast somewhere in the vicinity of Barbados.1 While most of the occupants of the ship are killed by “savages” upon reaching the coast, Inkle is rescued by a native woman named Yarico. She gives him fruits to eat, shows him a fresh water spring, brings him presents, and creates a home for him. Both live quite happily with each other for a while, and communicate in an invented language. Inkle tells Yarico stories about London and the miracles and luxuries of civilization. Then one day, Yarico discovers a ship on the horizon which eventually brings the two to Barbados. There, Inkle’s “merchant’s spirit” awakens, and he realizes the losses he has suffered because of the shipwreck. He brings Yarico to a slave trader and decides to sell her, increasing her price after he finds out that she is pregnant with his child. The story summarized here was first published in Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s Spectator in 1711;2 Richard Steele is assumed to be the

1

2

I use Gellert’s version of the story as the basis of my interpretation. All page references in the text refer to Christian Fürchtegott Gellert, Fabeln und Erzählungen. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, ed. by Ulrike Bardt and Bernd Witte: 70-74. Page numbers are followed by line numbers. The story was originally published on Tuesday, March 13, 1711, in issue no. 11 of The Spectator’s first year of publication. Steele’s version is loosely based on an

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author. It was translated into French as part of a comprehensive translation of The Spectator, and was then quickly translated into half a dozen other European languages.3 Christian Fürchtegott Gellert’s adaptation of the story for the first volume of his Fabeln und Erzählungen (1746) led to a second wave in the story’s reception. The popularity of Gellert’s version is confirmed by the fact that this version was not only translated back into English, but also into many other European languages as well. The impact of ‘Inkle and Yarico’ on European literature has sometimes been compared to that of Goethe’s Werther.4 The story was in particular popular as reading material for children; some contemporaries remarked that every school child knew it. Forty-nine different versions of the story have been documented, among them adaptations for the theater, ballet, and as a Singspiel (Price 1937: 139140); this is a conservative estimate that, for instance, does not include Dutch versions.5 Twenty-three of these forty-nine versions were originally written in German, by Gellert, Bodmer, Gessner, von Moser, and others; even Goethe considered adapting the story for a drama, and there is some evidence that Kleist read it when writing Die Verlobung in St. Domingo.6 It is likely that Daniel Defoe, when writing Robinson Crusoe, first published in 1719, and Johann Gottfried Schnabel, when writing the Wunderliche fata, a text first published in 1731 and better known today under its 19th-century title Insel Felsenburg, were aware of the story’s existence. With contemporary postcolonial theory in mind, I am interested in the Inkle and Yarico material because of its assumed anti-colonial ideology. The story is provocative because of its view of European/non-European relations. At least on the surface it appears to be highly critical of European colonialism. Many adaptations tried to soften the story’s polemical aspect, for example by inventing a sequel to the original story in which Inkle regrets his acts and seeks to reverse the situation. It is interesting to note that so many of the versions of the Inkle and Yarico story originated in Germany.

3

4 5

6

anecdote in Richard Ligon, A true & exact history of the island of Barbados (54-55), as is acknowledged in the original text. The bibliographical information is taken from Lawrence Marsden Price’s Inkle and Yarico Album. Some additional bibliographical information can be found in Felsenstein (ed.); see in particular the introduction (29); Felsenstein also reprints American and Caribbean responses to the story (259ff). See Max von Waldberg in a statement from 1899, quoted in Price (1). I became first aware of the Inkle and Yarico material in the mid 1990s through J.P. Guépin’s essay “Het roerend verhaal van het Indiaanse meisje Yarico en de Engelsman mr Inkle.” Guépin discusses a Latin version of the story by the Dutchman Jan Hendrik Hoeufft from 1783. Kleist quotes another text in Gellert’s Fabeln und Erzählungen verbatim in “Die Verlobung in St. Domingo.” See the editorial commentary in Heinrich von Kleist, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe (905).

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This seems to give some support to the thesis that Germans in particular were critical of European colonialism7—a thesis that I view with skepticism and that, as I hope that my following analysis shows, is highly problematic. In spite of the obvious and seemingly uncontroversial ideology underlying the story, a more nuanced reading is possible that problematizes some of its anti-colonial program. In order to understand the story’s ideological investments more fully, I propose a reading that takes the thematization of violence in the story as its starting point and relates it not only to the model of Otherness underlying the narrative, but also to its gendered subtext. That the story of Inkle and Yarico is read as an anti-colonial narrative has a lot to do with its unexpected violent ending: Inkle’s sale of his bride and child to a slave trader is an act of symbolic violence, predestining the woman and child to lives of misery that most certainly will include real violence. The reader experiences this moment in the narrative as a moment of rupture. Inkle’s act violates “reason” and our emotions; readers had expected a happy ending. In fact, a happy ending was anticipated in the story itself through the stories Inkle tells Yarico while away from civilization, in which he portrays London to her as a sort of promised land (72; ll.1-8). A deconstructive reading of the text must point out that the act of narrating a story is rendered highly suspicious in this text.8 Story-telling is associated with deceit, since it is through his stories of a better world that Inkle ties Yarico emotionally to his world view—it is Yarico, and not Inkle, who stares longingly at the horizon searching for passing ships (72; ll.9-12). While for Inkle the arbitrary nature of signs is self-evident, for Yarico, in contrast, there seems to exist no rupture between sign and reality until Inkle’s behavior, in the end, shows that such a rupture exists. The story perpetuates the idea that different cultures can have fundamentally different attitudes toward signs, and that through their ability to manipulate signs, Europeans have a fundamental advantage over those who see signs and the reality to which they refer as irrevocably linked,9 even though this idea is also questioned in the story, as demonstrated below.

7 8

9

See Berman, for instance (134ff). Every attempt that seeks to clarify the ideologies underlying the different versions of the Inkle and Yarico story on the basis of its narrative framing, like Florian Gelzer’s “Inkle und Yarico in Deutschland: Postkoloniale Theorie und Gattungsgeschichte im Konflikt,” (130-132), would need to take these text-immanent reflections on the functions of narrative into consideration. See Tzvetan Todorov (89-91). Stephen Greenblatt has criticized Todorov’s idea in Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (11, 99). Most cultural anthropologists today would follow Greenblatt and be skeptical about essentialist or homogenizing interpretations of other cultures.

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In spite of the critique of the act of story telling, it is paradoxically through his narrative that Gellert’s narrator hopes to expose Inkle’s barbarian act (“O möchte deinen Schimpf ein jeder Welttheil lesen!” 72; l.37). At the end of the story, the text aims to reinstate the readers’ trust in the power of words. The question must however be posed whether it does this or whether it has a function that is rather different from its surface ideology. Violence is not just thematized at the end of the story, but also at its beginning—something the reader easily forgets because of the story’s outrageous ending. We are reminded that America was “converted” (“bekehrt”) by means of the “sword” (“durchs Schwerdt” 70; l.33). But violence is not a privilege of the West. Inkle survives the shipwreck because he flees into the woods while “a band of savages” (“der Wilden Schaar”) brutally murders his countrymen (70; l.37-71; l.1). While the story’s narrative perspective idealizes Yarico, it does not idealize her cultural background; there is no doubt that Yarico’s tribesmen are primitive and prone to violence. In Yarico the story idealizes the individual who breaks away from her culture; similarly the story does not necessarily indict all of Western culture, just the actions of one of its representatives: the overly greedy British merchant Inkle.10 As an alternative to this world of violence—to both forms of violence— the story suggests the strategy of what Peter Hulme has termed “the ideal of cultural harmony through romance” in relation to the story of Pocahontas and John Smith.11 Supposedly, love is able to bridge the acknowledged disparity between Europeans and their Others. Postcolonial studies have taught us to be very cautious regarding such claims that aim to abolish colonial hierarchies but in reality may very well perpetuate them. One of the principal merits of Marie Louise Pratt’s seminal study Colonial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (1992), building on the work of Peter Hulme, is that it has made us much less naïve about the attitudes underlying the writings of Western intellectuals about non-European territories. Some writers are motivated by the desire to legitimate conquest, but far more often, European intellectuals, who see themselves as critical, develop a strategy of what Pratt calls “anti-conquest”: they “seek to secure their innocence in the same moment as they assert European hegemony” (Pratt 1992: 7). It is very much part of the ideology of European intellectuals that

10 11

Peter Pütz has made this point in “Die Herrschaft des Kalküls. Form- und Sozialanalyse von Gellerts »Inkle und Yariko«” (120). See Peter Hulme, p. 141. Hulme also discusses Robinson Crusoe (175ff) and the story of Inkle and Yarico (225ff) as variations on this theme.

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they claim to be on the side of the Others, the colonized, and yet, while making this claim, their texts ultimately legitimate colonization. In the case of the story of Inkle and Yarico the fact that violence emerges not just from the European side, but also from the native “savages,” demonstrates that the story’s ideology is more complex than a reading based exclusively on its harsh ending suggests. The fundamental ambiguity underlying the story of Inkle and Yarico has something to do with the construction of alterity in the story and in particular with the question how Otherness is linked to hierarchical ways of looking at the world. Interestingly, the Inkle and Yarico story is a text written before the invention of “race” in the later eighteenth century.12 Neither in Steele’s original version nor in Gellert’s adaptation are there references to racial characteristics. An esthetic category like beauty is not yet a privilege that distinguishes one race from another. In Gellert’s version, Inkle and Yarico are attracted to each other because of their mutual beauty and grace (“Anmuth” 71; l.13 and l.15). Later versions of the intercultural romance, for instance by Le Vaillant and Stedman, are far more explicit regarding the racial subtext of such relationships (see Pratt 1992: 88-100). Yarico is certainly described as naïve—she does not know how to dissemble (“Unwissend in der Kunst durch Zwang verstellt zu seyn” 71; l.16)—and yet she is also portrayed as open-minded and uninhibited. Through her actions, Yarico personifies an ideal of femininity that not only explains Inkle’s attraction to her, but also seeks to mobilize the text’s readers. In relation to Yarico’s femininity Gellert explicitly addresses the text’s German readership: the savage Yarico is not as “strict and German” as Gellert’s German contemporaries (“so streng und deutsch sind wilde Schönen nicht” 71; l.11). Gellert seeks to mobilize his readership for the story’s ideological agenda— whatever that may be—by adopting a rhetoric of liberation, in particular concerning the German middle class’s morals regarding gender expectations. This is remarkable within the context of Gellert’s oeuvre, since in other texts he propagates stereotypical gender expectations.13 The absence of the racial issue in Gellert’s version of the story does not mean, however, that the text resists articulating Western superiority. Hierarchies between the West and its Others are established in other ways. 12

13

See Sara Eigen and Mark Larrimore (eds), The German Invention of Race. As a concept, “race” does indeed not turn into a basic concept in anthropological debates until the later eighteenth century. This does not mean however that earlier thinking did not have “racist” traits, as, among others, the reader assembled by Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze shows (Race and the Enlightenment. A Reader). For such early discourses on “race” before the term’s popularization, see also Peter Fenves’s contribution on Leibniz and Wolff in Eigen and Larrimore (11-22). See, for example, Stephanie Hilger.

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The difference between Inkle and Yarico, and the worlds they both represent, are here presented in terms of gender. By making Yarico into the representative of the Americas, the story’s (male) authors feminize the continent, as noted by Susanne Zantop.14 It remains to discover how this is problematic, since Yarico is clearly meant to be an example of ethical behavior. First, it is important to realize that gender is only one of several hierarchical relationships in colonial contexts, or as the postcolonial theorist Ania Loomba states: “colonial sexual encounters […] often exploited inequities of class, age, gender, race, and power,” even if such encounters are “often embedded within a myth of reciprocity” (Loomba 1998: 158). Second, to be able to respond to such visions of intercultural harmony critically, we need to discuss “the crucial relations between [a multiplicity of] hierarchies, between different forces and discourses” (Loomba 1998: 240). I am inclined to add to this that such a critical discussion needs also to include an element of self-reflexivity: as a scholar in postcolonial studies with a Western background, I may be eager to find historical examples of reciprocal intercultural encounters that do not end in bloodshed, but the question remains to what extent narratives about such encounters point to a reality that actually existed, or whether they are meant to legitimate a reality that is the exact opposite of the situation portrayed in the story. The question must be posed whether the story of Inkle and Yarico is an example of “anti-conquest,” to use Marie Louise Pratt’s term, or whether the story, in the final analysis, serves to legitimate some form of conquest. In the eighteenth-century context a relationship determined by gender differences is by definition a hierarchical relationship. In some respects the relationship between man and woman is similar to that of a parent and a child. In fact, in Gellert’s version of the story Yarico is twice referred to as a child. Inkle relates to Yarico as an adolescent: “he understands his child” (“er versteht sein Kind” 71; l.42). In anticipation of England’s civilized world, “this child cries for joy” (“weint dieß Kind [vor Freuden]” 72; l.9). The relationship between Inkle and Yarico is a strictly hierarchical one, even though the two are connected by strong emotional ties. What is remarkable about drawing such an analogy between woman and child is that it completely ignores the physical aspect of Inkle’s relationship with Yarico, even though precisely this component epitomizes Inkle’s abuse of Yarico at the story’s end. In addition to the family analogy and to the imagery taken from a specifically Western ideal of the domestic sphere, there is another set of 14

See Susanne Zantop (121ff). The iconographic tradition of depicting the Americas as female (and nude) can be traced to the sixteenth century. See also Louis Montrose (177-217).

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culturally specific images projected onto Yarico. Yarico is a prototypical representative of the iconography of what literary scholars have long characterized as the “noble savage”. The image (or stereotype) of the “noble savage” has in particular been associated with the Americas and is as old as Columbus’ discovery of America. It was, remarkably, in the early days often accompanied by negative stereotypes—the image of the non-European other as a “dirty dog”—as Todorov has shown (Todorov 1992: 39, 49). The stereotype of the “noble savage” is particularly frequent in the early eighteenth century. “Noble savages” are not necessarily female, as the example of Friday in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe shows, but, one could argue, they are characterized by qualities the eighteenth century codes as “effeminate,” such as a lack of independence and a form of innocence that borders on what could be called extreme naïveté. In Robinson Crusoe, Friday needs Robinson to take care of him and to show him right from wrong. Friday also needs to be protected from other “savages,” his fellow tribesmen. Ter Ellingson has shown in a detailed study that the term “noble savage” can only be documented once in the seventeenth century, in a drama by John Dryden, The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards (1672), and once in the eighteenth century: Henry Mackenzie in his novel Man of the World (1787) speaks of the “savage nobleness of the soul” (Ellingson 2001: 5, 8). According to Ellingson, the term is essentially an invention of the midnineteenth century and serves to criticize the supposedly naïve idealization of an innocent state of nature among intellectuals in the eighteenth century; Jean-Jacques Rousseau is singled out in particular (Ellingson 2001: 297). In the eyes of the mid-nineteenth-century anthropologist, the eighteenth century’s naïve idealistic views of biological and cultural variation needed to be replaced by a “scientific,” race-based model of human diversity. Whether these highly interesting observations contribute to our understanding of the (early) eighteenth century remains to be seen. Even if the term “noble savage” did not exist, the iconography associated with the concept and the idea behind the term, one could argue, may have been common, in particular in literary texts and travel reports. In the case of the story of Inkle and Yarico, however, it is hard to claim that an idealization of nature as a whole is part of the text’s ideology. Although natural existence is idealized—Yarico cares for Inkle, away from civilization—this situation is the exception, not the rule. The reader should also not forget that members of Yarico’s tribe killed Inkle’s companions. While it is not clear whether Yarico herself needs protection from her “savage” countrymen, it is clear that she is hiding Inkle from them. While the text constructs the Other (Yarico) as noble and savage, it also questions the same attributes for other “savages” (this is no different in Robinson Crusoe).

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But if the “noble savage” is not part of a naïve, utopian ideal that Enlightenment thinkers projected onto nature, then what is its function? That the “noble savage” becomes a prominent literary figure in the early eighteenth century is typical for a transitional phase between a view of Others as inferior creatures, as half-animals or monsters—i.e. as creatures completely different from humans, as not having anything in common with humans—and a “rationalized” view of Others that seeks to explain biological and cultural differences through theories of climate, geography, and race.15 Seeing others as non- or sub-human legitimated conquest and eradication. But at the beginning of the eighteenth century, conquest is no longer the West’s highest priority; it is more interested in establishing colonial relations and in exploiting these colonies for commercial gain. The fact that there are some well-meaning “savages” who need protection from their tribesmen is an easy legitimation for the colonial enterprise. In the minds of Western intellectuals in particular, the West did not occupy other territories for economic gain but for a civilizing mission— i.e. to bring civilization and culture to those who needed and in particular, one can add, to those who deserved it. It is, in my view, no coincidence that in the story of Inkle and Yarico a woman is chosen to personify this need, and that the dynamic between the West and the rest of the world is read in gendered terms. It is possible to formulate at least three arguments for Europe’s colonial interference with the non-European world that show that gender matters in the story of Inkle and Yarico. While the story temporarily brackets Western gender roles, by allowing Yarico to take initiatives and to be the provider during Inkle’s exile in the wilderness and thus to occupy a “male” position, eventually the narrative restores the “natural” order of things. The main reproach the story makes against Inkle is that he should act as Yarico’s protector. However, he does not assume the expected male role, once the two return to the “civilized” world, or, as in Yarico’s case, encounter this world for the first time. Yarico is expected to assume her “female” duties and fulfill her “natural” destiny of becoming a mother. Inkle should resume his “masculine” and “fatherly” duties. A good man protects and provides for his wife and child, as the story’s end seems to suggest, but Inkle does not fulfill this role properly. “Patriarchy” is the “natural” order of things; the appropriate metaphor for the relationship between colonizer and colonized is that of a husband and father toward his wife and children, even if the woman is morally superior to the man, as the story of Inkle and Yarico suggests. The West has a 15

For a history of such an anthropological approach that seeks to understand biological and cultural differences rationally, see, for example, Margaret T. Hodgen, Michèle Duchet, and Werner Krauss.

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“male” duty to protect the women of its colonies; without this protection these women will fall prey to all kinds of abuse. In the words of Peter Hulme a desire for “cultural harmony” is part of the European ideology of looking at non-European cultures. The question must then be posed: who is able to mediate between cultures? Who is capable, in the words of Todorov, to function as “intermediary,” or, in the words of Greenblatt, as a “go-between”? (Todorov 1992: 101; Greenblatt 1991: 119ff). This figure must be someone in possession of both the linguistic skills and the cultural sensitivity to communicate meaningfully between conqueror and victim, or colonizer and colonized. Initially, in Europe’s conquest of the non-European world, the need for interpreters was satisfied by capturing or kidnapping “natives” in the hope that they would learn the conquerors’ native language and be willing to serve as interpreters (Greenblatt 1991: 106, 107). Later, “natives” were coaxed into such services by supposedly “gentler” means. Historically, the most prominent example of such a mediator or go-between is Doña Marina who functioned as a translator and interpreter between Moctezuma and Cortés when the latter conquered Mexico (Todorov 1992: 100-102; Greenblatt 1991: 141ff). In the story of Inkle and Yarico the task of mediating between cultures is also assigned to a native woman. This is, I would argue, no coincidence. A native woman does not pose the kind of threat or challenge to male authority that a native man would. The services Inkle seeks—water, food, a place to live—are also, according to Western standards, more closely associated with female gender roles than male. Only with the help of native women intermediaries can the West’s colonies survive. The fact that native women can serve this role of intermediary speaks against the idea that natives have a mimetic relationship to signs as Todorov claims (see footnote 9). Also historically, women played an important role in maintaining colonies in the Caribbean and elsewhere. It is interesting to read the story of Inkle and Yarico in the context of postcolonial writing on inter-cultural encounters in the same area. One example of such a post-colonial perspective is Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), a story that is as much a re-writing of the Inkle and Yarico myth as it is of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Wide Sargasso Sea is situated in Jamaica, not too far from Barbados, and also concerns a woman saving an English merchant, albeit more than a century later, in the first half of the nineteenth century. Through the fate of Antoinette Cosway, its principal character, Wide Sargasso Sea points to the crucial role of women in maintaining colonial societies once they were established, in spite of the women’s dependence on men to maintain their

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place in society.16 Men needed to remain mobile in order to be able to transfer their material gains back to their home country where the status associated with such wealth really mattered. Women therefore often provided stability to these colonial societies: they were the ones who remained behind and through whom possessions were passed from one generation to the other in the colonized economy.

Writing Back The Inkle and Yarico story is one of violence. It argues against the use of violence by Europeans in their encounters with the non-European world, but also tells them to be on their guard against the “primitive” violence of their non-European other. It is also very much a story about men and women. Yarico is shown as morally superior and yet vulnerable, and therefore in need of protection. Implicitly, the question is what the West has to gain from “the ideal of cultural harmony through romance,” not what the others can gain from it. It is not a story against colonialism; rather it is symptomatic of the transition from a phase of conquest and imperialism to a “kinder” phase of colonialism and as such offers an argument for more humane colonial policies. The West is needed because in the non-European world there are “noble savages” like Yarico who need its help. The Inkle and Yarico narrative, in its different versions, is highly illustrative for the double bind of many European intellectuals who sought to think through Europe’s relations with its non-European others critically. Precisely by positioning themselves as critical outsiders, well-meaning intellectuals—in spite of their critical ambitions—ended up speaking in favor of a European colonial presence and thereby directly or indirectly legitimatizing abusive practices. Precisely because the story shows how complex these issues are, it still deserves our attention. Yarico’s non-

16

See, for instance, Antoinette’s discussion with her servant Christophine about leaving Rochester (Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea: 109-110). The gendered dimensions of Jean Rhys’ story are worked out in more detail in John Duigan’s 1993 filmic adaptation of the novel. The film emphasizes that Edward Rochester comes to Jamaica as an idealist—a prime example of what Pratt describes as Western intellectuals’ attitude of “anti-conquest”—who opposes slavery and is willing to let his wife Antoinette Cosway at least temporarily take the lead in introducing him to Jamaican society and familiarizing him with native society. Gradually, Edward starts to feel insecure in particular concerning Antoinette’s family background, the insanity in her family, and her close friendships with the native population. He compensates for this insecurity by reverting to aggressive masculine and colonialist behavior, eventually taking her back to England to lock her up in the attic of his family’s estate.

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violence is a crucial part of her construction as Other, as a “noble savage.”17 In the versions of Steele, Gellert, and other eighteenth-century authors Yarico’s consistently non-violent character gives her moral authority over her European counterparts. And yet, there is something implausible, irritating, and maybe even belittling about Yarico’s non-violence. Because Yarico’s inability to be violent legitimates Western colonialism, the question must be considered whether it is possible to read the story as an argument for violence. In 1996 Beryl Gilroy (1924-2001), who was born in British Guyana but lived most of her life in Britain, published her version of the Inkle and Yarico story. It follows Steele’s version with one major exception. At the moment when Yarico discovers that she is going to be sold as a slave, she commits the one violent act of her life: she tears her child (who in this version has been born and strongly resembles Inkle) from her breast and “with a piercing scream” tosses him into the sea. “I watched,” Inkle comments, “the surf close over him [the child] and knew he was no more. She [Yarico] stared at the waves rolling over as if looking into a mirror of horrors, and then she smiled even as the slave driver unceasingly lashed her for her act of defiance” (Gilroy 1996: 94-95). This of course does not in any way change the tragic nature of the Inkle and Yarico material. Little is heard of Yarico after this scene. In the remainder of Gilroy’s story (95-160) readers witness Inkle’s slow metamorphosis from a wealthy plantation owner in Barbados to a political activist for the anti-abolitionist cause in England. But perhaps the idea of a violent Yarico is most effective in making readers question the exact ideological agenda of the Inkle and Yarico story. At the moment Yarico turns violent, she becomes an individual instead of an icon. In the context of Beryl Gilroy’s rewriting of the Inkle and Yarico story, violence becomes linked to self-determination. This does not mean that violence ever is a good thing. But it does mean that whenever a violent act takes place, its situational context, motives, and consequences must be questioned.

17

In spite of Ter Ellingson’s criticism, I favor continuing to use the term “noble savage” in literary and cultural scholarship, but in the knowledge that the concept and the imagery associated with it are part of a European construction of the nonEuropean world, that is historically determined and served very specific ideological functions. Any attempt to use the term as a philological construct alone (as a category of narrative analysis) in my view risks missing the complex ideological dynamics underlying the texts utilizing this kind of imagery.

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Figure 1 ‘Un Anglais de la Barbade vend sa Maitresse’; engraving by Jean-Marie Moreau le Jeune, accompanying Abbé Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissemens des Européens dans les deux Indes (Genève: Pellet, 1780), vol. 7 [opposite of title page]. Reproduced with permission of the Rare Book and Special Collections Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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Works Cited Berman, Russell A. 1998. Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. Duchet, Michèle. 1995. Anthropologie et histoire au siècle des Lumières. Paris: Albin Michel. Eigen, Sara, and Mark Larrimore (eds.). 2006. The German Invention of Race. New York: SUNY Press. Ellingson, Ter. 2001. The Myth of the Noble Savage. Berkeley a.o.: University of California Press. Eze, Chukwudi (ed.). 1997. Race and the Enlightenment. A Reader. Cambridge MA: Blackwell. Felsenstein, Frank (ed.). 1999. English Trader, Indian Maid: Representing Gender, Race, and Slavery in the New World. An Inkle and Yarico Reader. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Gellert, Christian Fürchtegott. 2000. Fabeln und Erzählungen. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1 (ed. U. Bardt and B. Witte). Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. Gelzer, Florian. 2004. ‘Inkle und Yarico in Deutschland: Postkoloniale Theorie und Gattungsgeschichte im Konflikt’ in German Quarterly 77.2: 125-144. Gilroy, Beryl. 1996. Inkle and Yarico. Being the narrative of Thomas Inkle concerning his shipwreck and long sojourn among the Caribs and his marriage to Yarico, a Carib woman. Leeds: Peepal Tree. Greenblatt, Stephen. 1991. Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World. Chicago and Oxford: Chicago UP. Guépin, J.P. 1994. ‘Het roerend verhaal van het Indiaanse meisje Yarico en de Engelsman mr Inkle’ in Neerlandica extra muros 33.1: 20-31. Hilger, Stephanie. 2001. ‘The Feminine Performance of Class in Christian Fürchtegott Gellert’s Leben der schwedischen Gräfin von G***’ in Seminar 37.4: 283-304. Hodgen, Margaret T. 1971. Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hulme, Peter. 1986. Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean. London and New York: Methuen. Kleist, Heinrich von. 1987. Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, vol. 2. Munich: DTV. Krauss, Werner. 1987. Zur Anthropologie des 18. Jahrhunderts. Die Frühgeschichte der Menschheit im Blickpunkt der Aufklärung. Frankfurt a.M. and Berlin: Ullstein. Ligon, Richard. 1657. A true & exact history of the island of Barbados. London: Humphrey Moseley.

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Loomba, Ania. 1998. Colonialism / Postcolonialism. New York and London: Routledge. Montrose, Louis. 1993. ‘The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery’ in Greenblatt, Stephen (ed.) New World Encounters. Berkeley a.o.: California UP: 177-217. Pratt, Marie Louise. 1991. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London and New York: Routledge. Price, Lawrence Marsden. 1937. Inkle and Yarico Album. Berkeley: California UP. Pütz, Peter. 1976. ‘Die Herrschaft des Kalküls. Form- und Sozialanalyse von Gellerts »Inkle und Yariko«’ in Bormann, Alexander, Karl Robert Mandelkow, und Anthonius H. Touber (eds.) Wissen aus Erfahrungen. Werkbegriff und Interpretation heute. Festschrift Herman Meyer. Tübingen: Niemeyer: 107-121. Raynal, Abbé. 1780. Histoire philosophique et politique des établissemens des Européens dans les deux Indes, vol. 7. Genève: Pellet. Rhys, Jean. 1992. Wide Sargasso Sea. London and New York: Norton. Todorov, Tzvetan. 1992. The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. New York: Harper Perennial. Zantop, Susanne. 1997. Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770-1870. Durham and London: Routledge.

Notes on Contributors JUDITH P. AIKIN (Ph.D. University of California at Berkeley 1974) is Professor of German Emerita at the University of Iowa. She has authored four books and over forty articles and chapters on German drama, opera, and devotional song of the seventeenth century. Currently, she is finalizing a book on one of the ruling countesses of Rudolstadt, Aemilia Juliana, Countess of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt (1637-1706). ELIZABETH BLACK is Assistant Professor of French at Old Dominion University in Virginia. Her primary research interests are sixteenth-century French literature, architecture, visual culture, and theories of space. She is currently studying literary, emblematic, and architectural depictions of the home during the French Renaissance and wars of religion. Dr. Black also cultivates an interest in French cinema and film theory, especially the intersection of architecture and film. ANNE J. CRUZ received her B.A, M.A., and Ph.D. from Stanford University. She is professor of Spanish and Cooper Fellow at the University of Miami, where she chaired the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures from 2003 to 2008. Currently, she is acting director of the Center for the Humanities. She previously taught at the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Illinois, Chicago. Her publications range from studies on Spanish Petrarchism, Cervantes, and the picaresque novel to the comedia and women’s writings. She has edited numerous collections, including Women’s Literacy in Spain and the New World (Ashgate, 2011) and the translation of the anonymous picaresque novel, The Life and Times of Mother Andrea (Tamesis, 2011). Professor Cruz is coeditor of Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal; and series editor of New Hispanisms: Cultural and Literary Studies, with Ashgate Press. CATHARINE GRAY is Associate Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Her publications include several articles on seventeenth-century women writers and politics in the journals ELH and ELR and her first book, Women Writers and Public Debate in Seventeenth-Century Britain (2008). She is currently working on her second monograph, "Unmaking Britain: Poetry, Politics, and War in the Seventeenth Century," which analyzes the effects of the ethical concerns and material realities of civil war on early modern poetic imaginings of state and nation.

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ELIZABETH ZEMAN KOLKOVICH is an assistant professor of English at Ohio State University, where she teaches at the Mansfield campus. Her current research interests include early modern English drama, court pageantry, and women writers. She is writing a book about the entertainments performed at aristocratic estates during Elizabeth I’s royal progresses, with special focus on how the genre represents gender and regional identity in performance and print. TARA L. LYONS is an assistant professor of English Literature at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. Her research interests include early modern drama, book history, and gender studies. She is currently working on a book project that constructs a history of the drama collection in the hundred years before the publication of Benjamin Jonson’s Works (1616) and William Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623). LORI HUMPHREY NEWCOMB is Associate Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urban-Champaign, with additional appointments in Gender and Women’s Studies, and the Unit for Criticism and Theory. Her Reading Popular Romance in Early Modern England (Columbia UP, 2001) traces the changing material form and social uses of an Elizabethan prose romance, Robert Greene’s Pandosto, through more than two centuries of reprintings and adaptations, one of which happens to be Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale. She has published articles on chapbooks, romances, repentance pamphlets, Shakespeare’s late plays, and early fiction by women. Her current research investigates popular literate practices in London’s first theaters, arguing that non-elite playgoers were trained for drama’s new complexity by their experiences as churchgoers during England’s long and contentious reformation. Many of these projects highlight modes of interpretation available to ordinary Englishwomen, against traditional denigration and neglect of women’s cultural activities. CARL NIEKERK is Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Comparative and World Literature, and Jewish Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His teaching and research interests include European perceptions of non-Europeans and the history of anthropology since the eighteenth century. His books include Zwischen Naturgeschichte und Anthropologie. Lichtenberg im Kontext der Spätaufklärung (Niemeyer 2005) and, most recently, Reading Mahler: German Culture and Jewish Identity in Fin-de-siècle Vienna (Camden House 2010).

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ELIZABETH OYLER is Associate Professor of Japanese in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Illinois. A specialist in medieval Japanese performing arts and narrative, she is the author of Swords, Oaths, and Prophetic Visions: Authoring Warrior Rule in Medieval Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2006) and articles about the Tales of the Heike and the nŇ drama. She is co-editing a volume of translations and studies of the nŇ, forthcoming from the Cornell East Asia Series. SUSAN PARISI is Visiting Associate Professor and Research Scholar in Music at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her research and publications have primarily centered on music and performance in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with particular reference to early opera, monody, spectacle and pageantry in Italian and Northern cities and courts, and the composers Monteverdi and Frescobaldi. She has edited four books, the most recent, The Music Library of a Noble Florentine Family: A Catalogue Raisonné of Manuscripts and Prints of the 1720s to the 1850s collected by the Ricasoli Family…, with introductory essays by Robert Lamar Weaver (Harmonie Park Press, 2012). CURTIS PERRY, Professor of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, is the author of Literature and Favoritism in Early Modern England (Cambridge UP, 2006) and The Making of Jacobean Culture (Cambridge UP, 1997) as well as of numerous essays and edited volumes on early modern British literature with an emphasis on literature's participation in political thought. He is currently at work on a book-length project with the working title “Shakespeare and the Resources of Senecan Drama.” HELMUT PUFF´S teaching and research focus on German literature, history, and culture in the late medieval and early modern period. He specializes in gender studies, the history of sexuality, and the Reformation. Recently, Helmut Puff has researched modes of seeing and visual culture in early modern Europe with a focus on German Renaissance art, especially Albrecht Dürer. His interest in the intersections between textuality, visuality, and spatiality, has led him to research the changing representations of ruins as well as the history of three-dimensional city models from the sixteenth century to the present. CARMEN RIPOLLÉS received the M.A. and PhD in art history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is currently an assistant professor of art history at Portland State University (Oregon). Her research focuses on issues of art theory, artistic identity, and art and material culture of the courts of early modern Spain and its dominions.

384 Contributors

LISA ROSENTHAL is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where she also holds an affiliated appointment in the Program in Gender and Women’s Studies. She is the author of Gender, Politics, and Allegory in the Art of Rubens (Cambridge UP, 2005) and co-editor of Early Modern Visual Allegory: Embodying Meaning, (Ashgate, 2007). BRIAN SANDBERG is Associate Professor of History at Northern Illinois University. His first book, Warrior Pursuits: Noble Culture and Civil Conflict in Early Modern France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2010), examines civil violence in southern France in the early seventeenth century. Sandberg is currently working on a new book project on “A Virile Courage: Gender and Violence in the French Wars of Religion.” GERHILD SCHOLZ WILLIAMS is Barbara Schaps Thomas and David M. Thomas Professor in the Humanities in Arts and Sciences, Associate Vice Chancellor and Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis. Her most recent books include the monograph Ways of Knowing in Early Modern. Germany: Johannes Praetorius as a Witness to his Time (Ashgate, 2006) and with Harriet Stone the translation On the Inconstancy of Witches: Pierre de Lancre’s Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et Demons (1612) (Arizona Center for Texts and Studies, 2006). JULIE SINGER is Assistant Professor of French at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research focuses on medieval French and Italian literature and medicine, the cultural history of science and technology, and disability studies. Her book /Blindness and Therapy in Late Medieval French and Italian Poetry/ was published in Boydell and Brewer’s Gallica series in 2011. MARA R. WADE is Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with appointments in Gender and Women’s Studies, Comparative and World Literature, Jewish Studies, Media Studies, Global Studies, European Union Center, and Library Administration. She is chair of the Society for Emblem Studies and serves on the editorial boards for the Renaissance Quarterly, Emblematica, and for Spektrum, the book series of the German Studies Association. With Thomas Stäcker, Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, she is the Co-PI for Emblematica Online, a digital research project funded jointly by the NEH and DFG: http://emblematica.grainger.illinois.edu/.

Contributors 385

HELEN WATANABE-O’KELLY is Professor of German Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. She works on early modern court culture, German literature, and gender questions. Among her books are Melancholie und die melancholische Landschaft (1978), Triumphal Shews. Tournaments at German-Speaking Courts in their European Context 1560-1730 (1992), and Court Culture in Dresden from Renaissance to Baroque (2002). She has edited The Cambridge History of German Literature (1997), Spectaculum Europaeum. Theatre and Spectacle in Europe, (1580-1750) with Pierre Béhar (1999) and Europa Triumphans. Court and Civic Festivals in Early Modern Europe with J.R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (2004). Her most recent book is Beauty or Beast? The Woman Warrior in the German Imagination from the Renaissance to the Present (2010).