Literature and the Arts: Interdisciplinary Essays in Memory of James Anderson Winn 9781644533116, 9781644533123, 9781644533130, 9781644533147

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Laughter from on High: The Arts of Contempt in Restoration England
2 Staging Davenant; or, Macbeth, the Musical
3 The Arts of Memory in Absalom and Achitophel: Dryden’s Response to Milton and Marvell
4 Peacocks and Rainbows: Visual Spectacle and Allegorical Performance in Albion and Albanius
5 “The Dyrham Decades”: The Cultural Connections of an English Country House, 1690–1720
6 Domenico Scarlatti: “Jesting with Art”
7 Queen Anne’s Other Women
8 Anne Donnellan: Friend of the Arts
9 Responding to Emma in 1816: Reviewers, Readers, and “Opinions”
10 Elizabeth Rivers and Christopher Smart: Eighteenth-Century Poetry across Time and Form
Selected Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Lit­er­a­ture and the Arts

Lit­er­a­ture and the Arts Interdisciplinary Essays in Memory of James Anderson Winn

EDITED BY ANNA BATTIGELLI

Newark

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Winn, James Anderson, 1947–2019, honouree. | Battigelli, Anna, 1960– editor. Title: Literature and the arts : interdisciplinary essays in memory of James Anderson Winn / edited by Anna Battigelli. Description: Newark, DE : University of Delaware Press, [2024] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023009472 | ISBN 9781644533116 (paperback) | ISBN 9781644533123 (hardback) | ISBN 9781644533130 (epub) | ISBN 9781644533147 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Art and literature. | LCGFT: Literary criticism. | Festschriften. Classification: LCC PN53 .L527 2024 | DDC 700—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023009472 A British Cataloging-­in-­Publication rec­ord for this book is available from the British Library. This collection copyright © 2024 by the University of Delaware Individual chapters copyright © 2024 in the names of their authors All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact University of Delaware Press, 200A Morris Library, 181 S. College Ave., Newark, DE 19717. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. References to internet websites (URLs) w ­ ere accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor University of Delaware Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. udpress​.­udel​.­edu Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press

Contents Acknowl­edgments Introduction

vii 1

ANN A B AT T IGEL L I

1

Laughter from on High: The Arts of Contempt in Restoration ­England

16

S T E V EN N. Z WICK ER

2

Staging Davenant; or, Macbeth, the Musical

31

AM ANDA E UB ANK S WINK L ER

3

The Arts of Memory in Absalom and Achitophel: Dryden’s Response to Milton and Marvell

47

PAUL H AMMOND

4

Peacocks and Rainbows: Visual Spectacle and Allegorical P ­ erformance in Albion and Albanius 65 ANDRE W R . WAL K L ING

5

“The Dyrham ­Decades”: The Cultural Connections of an ­English Country H ­ ouse, 1690–1720

86

DAV ID HOPK INS

6

Domenico Scarlatti: “Jesting with Art”

102

CEDRIC D. RE V ER AND II

7

Queen Anne’s Other ­Women

131

PAUL A R . B ACK SCHEIDER

8

Anne Donnellan: Friend of the Arts

151

EL L EN T. H ARRIS v

vi • Contents

9

Responding to Emma in 1816: Reviewers, Readers, and “Opinions”

182

PE T ER S ABOR

10

Elizabeth Rivers and Christopher Smart: Eighteenth-­Century Poetry across Time and Form

199

MEL IS S A SCHOENBERGER

Selected Bibliography 219 Notes on Contributors 225 Index 229

Acknowl­edgments An edited volume is a collaborative effort. It was a ­pleasure to work with so many sharp minds bound together by gratitude for James Winn’s scholarship, friendship, and passion for the arts. Cedric Reverand, Andrew Walkling, and Amanda Eubanks Winkler ­were particularly helpful in discussing the shape of the volume. Generous support from the following made pos­si­ble the inclusion in this volume of color plates: the University of Michigan’s Department of E ­ nglish Language and Lit­er­a­ture, Boston University’s Center for the Humanities, Binghamton University’s Harper College Advocacy Council Faculty Development Endowment, SUNY Plattsburgh’s Office of the Provost, Eric Jager, Cedric Reverand, and anonymous donors. Archives, libraries, and private individuals who provided copies and permissions to reproduce art are mentioned separately within chapters. Ethel Facteau and Mila Su at SUNY Plattsburgh’s Feinberg Library obtained books through interlibrary loan with lightning speed. Paul Johnston read drafts and supported the proj­ect. The readers at the University of Delaware Press w ­ ere unfailingly insightful. Working with them added cheer to the tasks involved in book production. It is our collective hope that the essays in this volume help highlight some of the many scholarly paths opened by James Winn’s brilliant work on lit­er­a­ture and the other arts.

vii

Introduction ANNA BATTIGELLI The essays in this volume ­were written in memory of James Anderson Winn, whose prolific ­career enriched our understanding of the affectively power­f ul intertwining of lit­er­a­ture and the arts during E ­ ngland’s long eigh­teenth ­century (1660–1815). As a literary scholar, a flutist, and an indefatigable advocate on behalf of the humanities, he lived by his claim that “much of what humanists study originates in ­performance, and all good teaching ­ought to be alert to the living excitement of arts and ideas, e­ ager to dramatize that excitement through fresh performative gestures.”1 His training in classical ­music made him particularly well suited to the study of eighteenth-­century ­England, which, as John Brewer reminds us, in­ven­ted “our modern ideas of ‘high culture.’ ”2 Winn’s teaching and scholarship ­were replete with literary, artistic, and musical examples, fully in keeping with the multimedia liveliness of Restoration stage spectacle. Students ­will remember his rapid-­fire repetition of the series “beat, bit, bet, bat, boat, bought,” which he used to illustrate the descending overtones of pitch in this sequence of vowels. He demonstrated the poetic deployment of this descent by reciting John Milton’s description of Satan’s cosmic fall in Book 1 of Paradise Lost.3 His ­performance of Milton’s words encouraged students to move beyond merely comprehending poetry to experiencing it. His teaching included sensational acoustic and visual tours of London that explored its history, politics, and lit­er­a­ture through its paintings, ceiling frescoes, architecture, stage settings, dance, songs, and texts. For him, awareness of the interplay of the arts was essential to a full understanding of Restoration and eighteenth-­century culture. His work was always interdisciplinary, and though he did not use the word “intermedial,” he anticipated recent claims within intermedia studies that individual 1

2 • Anna Battigelli

media are rarely discrete categories.4 His goal was that students absorb the artistic activities of eighteenth-­century culture with p­ leasure and understanding. Like Walter Pater, he encouraged an awareness that ­every art has “its own peculiar and untranslatable sensuous charm . . . ​its own special mode of reaching the imagination.”5 He also insisted, however, that a text or any work of art be experienced not in isolation but in its transformative engagement with other texts and art forms. Winn argued that a coherent history of Restoration stage production—­plays, musicalized theater, oratorios, and full opera—­required understanding how Restoration artists engaged with the arts collaboratively, combining text, ­music, dance, and stage spectacle, including elaborate stage machinery. He also pointed to the shared conventions shaping both rhymed heroic drama and the Italian operas produced in ­England by George Frideric Handel and ­others: both showcased exotic settings, royal characters facing threats to their authority, stage spectacle, and the super­natural.6 Citing ­these commonalities, he proposed a “unified, less categorical account of the wide variety of dramatic forms in this period.” Winn’s revised history offered “an alternative to both the standard view of E ­ nglish theatrical history, in which the rhymed heroic play is seen as a brief, failed attempt to import French literary conventions, and the standard view of ­European operatic history, in which the stubborn E ­ nglish ­resistance to opera suddenly yields to the unique genius of Handel.”7 As Andrew Walkling has noted elsewhere, “Winn’s effort to embrace ­those non-­traditional aspects of theatrical ­performance that often go unremarked by literary scholars represents an impor­ tant step ­toward a genuine acknowl­edgment of the totalizing entertainment . . . ​ that Baroque theatre represents.”8 For Amanda Eubanks Winkler, it is precisely “this efflorescence of multiple kinds of media and the intersection among them during the Restoration period . . . ​[that] made its culture distinct: dramatick opera was but one manifestation of a larger impulse.”9 In his history of the often-­strained relations between ­music and lit­er­a­ture, Unsuspected Eloquence (1981), Winn drew parallels between poetic analy­sis and ­music theory. He acknowledged affinities between the syntactical parallelism of Alexander Pope’s rhymed couplets and the tonal modulations of Joseph Haydn’s string quartets, where “a note or phrase we first hear in one tonal context suddenly reveals a new meaning in another context.”10 He noted that eighteenth-­ century writers linked poetry and painting, drawing on Horace’s ut pictura poesis to produce the “ ‘visually centered sensationalist aesthetics’ promulgated in Joseph Addison’s famous series of Spectator essays on the ‘­Pleasures of the Imagination.’ ”11 But even as he traced the overlapping of the arts, he also expressed concern for the growing divide throughout the eigh­teenth ­century between poetic and musical practice, a divide that led John Hollander in the twentieth ­century to declare that ­music and poetry “have become utterly dif­f er­ent as ­human enterprises.”12 Though both Joseph Addison and Alexander Pope wrote St. Cecilia odes, for example, “both criticized the absurdities of the Italian opera.”13 When

Introduction • 3

Pope asked that poetry imitate m ­ usic’s “nameless graces which no method seeks,” he betrayed an ignorance of eighteenth-­century ­music, which was far from unmethodical—­its methods ­were taught through rules and structured exercises.14 ­Later, when Romantic poets replaced rhetorical structure with organic form or associative meaning, they similarly departed from Romantic composers’ use of a methodical semiotics of the passions. Steeped in both m ­ usic and lit­er­a­ture, Winn urged literary scholars and o­ thers to remove disciplinary barriers by becoming familiar, as he was, with the lived practice of other arts. It was his hope that we might reconsider Romantic literary and text-­bound assumptions b­ ehind concepts such as “original genius” and return to more productive concepts of artistry that acknowledge the long apprenticeship and mastery of tradition required for any artistic development. Virtuosity, he argued, was not “some mesmerized automatic communication of emotion.”15 He asserted that we benefit from appreciating the intertwining of the arts and from understanding them as performative practices requiring long study. Seeing the relationship between artists as both collaborative and warily competitive might also help us better comprehend the complex and even contradictory movements within the historical shift from mimetic to expressive concepts of art.16 His attention to the interplay of the arts was particularly revelatory in his biographies of artists and historical figures. Both John Dryden and His World (1987) and “When Beauty Fires the Blood”: Love and the Arts in the Age of Dryden (1992) pre­sent Dryden as an astute reinventor of E ­ nglish culture in the aftermath of Reformation and civil war.17 Winn unearthed the many levels of Dryden’s mind in large part by examining Dryden’s informed and active engagement with composers and p­ ainters. On a personal level, Dryden felt both mesmerized and irascible when collaborating with artists: he gleefully used the arts to elevate and ennoble his stage productions, even as he insisted possessively on writing’s superiority to the other arts. On a poetic level, he grumbled about the technical challenges of composing lyr­ics for ­music in ­English, a Germanic language whose many monosyllables, consonants, and infrequent rhymes complicated the task of writing lyr­ics.18 On a polemical level, he equated disregard for the arts with ­political negligence. He praised Henry Purcell for composing m ­ usic “with so ­great a Genius, that he has nothing to fear but an ignorant, ill-­judging Audience” and commiserated with the p­ ainter Sir Godfrey Kneller, doomed to work in the artistically unengaged court of William III: “Thus in a stupid Military State / The Pen and Pencil find an equal Fate.”19 Winn read Dryden’s genuine praise for ­these artists as implicit criticism of ­political leaders and citizens who enfeebled the nation through their neglect of the arts—­and with that neglect ­limited the capacity for complex thought facilitated by the arts. By drawing on the arts, Winn also radically revised our understanding of Queen Anne in Queen Anne: Patroness of the Arts (2014).20 That volume’s beautiful illustrations and companion website with musical examples helped replace

4 • Anna Battigelli

the portrait of a dull, uninspiring monarch with that of an intelligent ­woman alert to the power of the arts. Her beautiful, well-­trained voice, deep familiarity with court theater, and attention to artists, particularly Handel, helped her support the arts in both court ceremonials and public cele­brations. Like her ­predecessor, Elizabeth I, Anne drew on ­political theater. She ­adopted Elizabeth’s motto—­semper eadem—­and proclaimed her heart to be “entirely ­English,” an echo of Elizabeth’s claim at Tilbury to “have the heart and Stomach of a King and of a King of ­England too.”21 Six months a­ fter her inauguration, Anne choreographed a royal pro­gress to Bath also echoing Elizabeth’s pageantry. Like Elizabeth, she revived the royal touch, the laying on of hands to cure t­ hose suffering from diseases such as scrofula. Winn notes that, on her way to Bath, she was received at Oxford with verses by students including the nineteen-­ year-­old Heneage Finch, who fused the artistic power of the muses with the military power of soldiers, creating a fitting iconography of female military and domestic power: Our Muses hear the ­Battles from afar, And sing the Triumphs, and enjoy the War. This now, but soon the quivering Spear they’l weild, And lead the shouting Squadrons to the field.22

Finch’s fusion of the muses with Amazonian militarism helped create a language supporting a w ­ oman’s monarchical authority. Much ­later, Nahum Tate similarly depicted Anne’s monarchical power by portraying her well-­trained voice exerting a calming effect on a restless and unsettled citizenry: But Doubly Blest who saw and heard her Speak! They heard the Spheres, and saw the Morning break: A presence so Angelic as could Charm And Malecontents of all their Rage disarm; Accents that Storms of Discord could Dispel, While Softer They than shedding ­Roses fell.23

In Tate’s hyperbole, Winn detected a feminized appropriation of the Aeneid’s first simile, through which Virgil compares Neptune’s abating of the ocean’s stormy waves to the power of an orator calming crowds. His biography similarly highlights Anne’s understanding and successful deployment of the performative power of art. The multimedia cele­bration of the British victory at the ­Battle of Blenheim, for instance, can be found in sermons, paintings, tapestries, church anthems, poems—­and in the splendor of Blenheim Palace, built at the Queen’s request by John Vanbrugh to commemorate John Churchill’s most famous

Introduction • 5

victory. Even as court patronage gave way to civic and commercial forces, the Queen played a significant role in shaping a national self-­understanding that required the arts for its full expression. Not coincidentally, it was during the eigh­teenth ­century that ­English lit­er­a­ture, ­music, and painting received systematic analyses for the first time.24 Winn consistently demonstrated that eighteenth-­century artists ­were alive to the power of art to both reflect and shape real­ity, and that their audience was similarly quick to approach the arts as both performative ­pleasures and critical lenses through which to better understand a rapidly changing world.25 As the engine of the arts shifted away from the court to more commercial entities, new urban spaces emerged for the public consumption of art, such as concert halls, art galleries and exhibit halls, clubs, reading socie­ties, coffee­houses, circulating libraries, ­pleasure gardens, printshops, and ale­houses. Each provided access to the arts for a citizenry interested in the social, aesthetic, and ­political uses of the arts. Prints and engravings w ­ ere increasingly available for purchase, periodical essays offered tutorials on taste and judgment, and miscellanies and anthologies such as Vicesimus Knox’s Elegant Extracts volumes compiled edifying excerpts. Jane Austen could signal the social aspirations of the self-­improving farmer Robert Martin in Emma by having him read excerpts from Knox’s volumes aloud to his ­mother and s­ isters in his tidy parlor. At all levels of society, lit­er­a­ture and the arts played a defining role for a nation and citizenry in search of an identity. One has only to think of the performative power of the printed ballad—­what one scholar calls “the ultimate intermedia cultural artifact”—­which could transform environments by stimulating critical or satirical commentary, signaling p­ olitical allegiance, and even inciting recitation, song, and other, more rowdy action.26 A song or tune could migrate from ballad to ballad opera or play, transforming genres; text and ­music ­were infinitely mutable, circulating “beyond traditional generic categories.”27 Within the rough-­ and-­tumble sphere of eighteenth-­century politics, b­ attles over representing the nation ­were waged through art, from the court-­inspired masque to street politics, with its pageants and public ceremonies.28 If we turn to the eigh­teenth ­century’s characteristic sociability, we see that friendship was almost unimaginable apart from its expressive self-­definition through the arts. One has only to think of the many friends who celebrated their shared artistic interests by exchanging or commissioning works of art, or performing ­music together. The members of the Kit-­Cat Club sat for Sir Godfrey Kneller. Ignatius Sancho received a bust of Laurence Sterne from his friend, the sculptor John Nollekens.29 Alexander Pope memorialized friends through his verse epistles. The indefatigable Handel played ­music late into the night in his friends’ drawing rooms. ­Women and men commissioned portraits of their friends. Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, commissioned a small gold and enamel “friendship box,” now in the National Portrait Gallery, with

6 • Anna Battigelli

miniature portraits of her, Elizabeth Montagu, Mary Delany, and Mary Howard, Lady Andover, to whom she left the box in her w ­ ill. Attending to friendship helps us see w ­ omen’s intellectual and artistic activities more fully.30 Scholars such as Elizabeth Eger acknowledge that both eighteenth-­century arts and public discussions of the arts highlighted w ­ omen’s roles as “cultural standard ­bearers of considerable influence.”31 As Eger explains, ­women emerged in eighteenth-­century discussions of art as full participants in the nation’s cultural and social pro­g ress. She points to Richard Samuel’s painting Portraits in the Characters of the Muses in the T ­ emple of Apollo (1778), reproduced on the cover of this volume, as depicting key members of the Bluestocking circle as both “real and symbolic figures.”32 Significantly, an engraving of the painting, published in advance of the painting’s exhibition at the Royal Acad­emy, perhaps to drum up interest, replaced the figure of Apollo with that of Britannia, an acknowl­ edgment of the nation’s reliance on the arts for full self-­expression.33 By depicting real-­life artists as muses both interacting with one another and representing national culture, Samuel pointed to ­women’s roles within the arts. Samuel’s attention to t­hese roles and, more generally, to the collaborative interaction between the arts represents an approach to the arts that James Winn both appreciated and advanced. The chapters of a memorial volume cannot pre­sent a comprehensive view of their topic, but we hope that ­these essays pay tribute to Winn’s informed interdisciplinary methodology, ­whether they do so through intermedia studies, through searching out the intertwining and overlapping of the arts, or through studies of how the mind—­itself an ultimate medium—­collects, rearranges, re-­ sorts, and reshapes memories, narratives, news, propaganda, and artwork. Steven N. Zwicker examines the laughter provoked by the satirical strain of the Restoration’s fierce p­ olitical b­ attles over the tropes and pictorialism of Restoration satire. The series of charged literary transactions he traces remind us that the unresolved aesthetic legacy of the ­English Reformation animated a ­great deal of Restoration lit­er­a­ture. He considers the ­battle over art as it seeped into discussions of rhyme, which Opposition poets viewed as excessively artificial. Dryden’s cheeky rendering of John Milton’s blank verse epic Paradise Lost into operatic rhymed couplets in The State of Innocence—to say nothing of Dryden’s dedication of his opera to Mary of Modena, an iconic figure representing Catholicism’s inroads into ­English ­political life—­was one such attempt to reclaim literary authority from a solidly Puritan antiestablishment figure such as Milton. Andrew Marvell’s immediate response, “On Mr Milton’s Paradise Lost,” uses rhyme parodically to lambast Dryden,34 and Milton’s own preface to the 1674 edition of Paradise Lost similarly dismisses rhyme derisively. Zwicker notes that the Earl of Rochester mocked Dryden’s rhymed drama in The Rehearsal Transpros’ d, perhaps angered by Dryden’s description of him in the preface to All for Love as “this rhyming judge of the twelve-­penny gallery.”35 Fi­nally, Jonathan Swift mocked Dryden’s literary pretensions by depicting him in The B ­ attle of

Introduction • 7

the Books as dwarfed by his armor, lamely attempting to join the ancients he so revered. We see in ­these parodic ­presentations and repre­sen­ta­tions the vehemence with which Dryden’s allegiance to the Stuarts—­and ­later his unrelenting public conversion to Catholicism—­complicated and animated his readers’ responses. The aesthetic derision of laughter became a response to Dryden ­because his work, with its not infrequent manifestation of baroque splendor, celebrated literary artifice in ways that discomfited his Whig contemporaries.36 A dif­fer­ent discordant engagement with humor emerges from Amanda Eubanks Winkler’s account of her pioneering collaboration with Richard Schoch examining the modern audience’s experience of Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. Eubanks Winkler and Schoch brought scholars and actors together at the Folger Theatre in Washington, D.C., in fall 2018 to produce William Davenant’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The resulting production confirmed Eubanks Winkler’s claim that dramatic opera functions through its intermediality, as the special effects—­sonic, visual, and verbal—­caused by stage machines, trapdoors, dance, song, and script compete with one another syncretically to create inventive interpretive possibilities.37 Eubanks Winkler reports that, at first, the seemingly discordant ele­ments of Davenant’s adaptation seemed unworkable. For example, the director Robert Richmond worried that the jubilant m ­ usic that John Eccles composed for the witches’ songs did not properly mimic their malicious intentions. But the audience responded positively to the dissonant spectacle of malevolent super­natural beings singing jaunty ­music while signaling malice through their grotesque gestures. Like Samuel Pepys, who found Davenant’s production “one of the best plays for a stage, and variety of dancing and m ­ usic, that ever I saw,” the modern audience appreciated its ­music and spectacle, seeing the irony of upbeat sounds conveying evil.38 For Eubanks Winkler, the audience’s receptivity to an aesthetics alien to its own time provides evidence of Gertrude Stein’s concept of “syncopated time”—­a moment in which past and pre­sent are both operative. Paul Hammond traces Dryden’s use of memory as it ranges through historical poems, epics, and propaganda as vital to his work as Historiographer Royal. Dryden’s historiographical role drove him to shape national self-­understanding, in large part by “shaping the nation’s collective memory.” Absalom and Achitophel is a key moment in Dryden’s effort to preserve cultural myths and national concepts vulnerable to corruption. In this b­ attle—­waged through the mind’s intermedial capacity to collect, reject, repurpose, and reorder memory—he turned to Milton’s Paradise Lost, appropriating Miltonic language to overturn or invert Miltonic ideology. Where Milton feared tyranny, Dryden feared lawless individualism. By deploying Miltonic language in his own Stuart mythmaking, Dryden disabled the tropes of Whig rhe­toric. His Achitophel corrupts key terms of public discourse, such as “religion,” “commonwealth,” and “liberty” by transforming them into mob-­inspired shouts and cries. Hammond finds a quieter and more personal appropriation of Opposition poetry in Dryden’s responses to the

8 • Anna Battigelli

works of Marvell, his most brilliant ­political and literary rival. Keenly aware that Marvell, both a member of Parliament and the leading Whig polemicist, skillfully opposed his work as Historiographer Royal point for point, Dryden echoed and inverted Marvell’s work throughout his c­ areer. Hammond observes Dryden reworking the “Horatian Ode” in both Absalom and Achitophel and most remarkably in Threnodia Augustalis (1685), his elegy for Charles II. In the latter poem, Hammond finds linguistic and prosodic echoes of Marvell’s “Horatian Ode” at the very moment depicting the transfer of power from Charles to his b­ rother James. Dryden’s transposition of Marvell’s language celebrating the chief regicide into language signaling the ongoing nature of monarchy was a form of controlling and preserving royalist memory and history. A dif­f er­ent affective approach to national mythmaking is discussed by Andrew Walkling, who considers stage machines and settings used in Dryden’s operatic spectacle Albion and Albanius. Walkling’s point of departure is the liminality of ­English society, in which rational empiricism coexisted side by side with belief in the super­natural. As he puts it, “the affective power of astonishment continued to wield substantial influence” even as the empirical methods of the Royal Society gained ground. As illustration, he offers two related events: the first is the production of Albion and Albanius, with its super­natural deities inhabiting recognizable London spaces, and the second is the celestial phenomenon of ice halos off the coast of France meticulously recorded by Captain Christopher Gunman. Gunman’s depiction of three suns surrounded by three rainbows somehow reached Dorset Garden as the com­pany was producing Dryden’s baroque theatrical allegory. By their account, the drawing inspired the design of the large machine on which the goddess Iris enters the stage. The stage directions within the opera’s printed text specifically link Iris’s machine to Gunman’s observations. Walkling’s term for this blending of the otherworldly and worldly is “diegetic supernaturalism.”39 Walkling’s discoveries of two copies of Gunman’s illustrations unearth new ways of understanding the use of Gunman’s observations in the production. He notes that Gunman’s empirical description of celestial phenomena could coexist with the play’s artistically ­imagined religious understanding of concepts of kingship. Albion and Albanius was forced to close upon the Duke of Monmouth’s invasion, thereby losing revenue desperately needed to cover the cost of its elaborate stage effects. Yet this loss of revenue does not indicate dramatic failure. That the play’s detractors mocked its peacocks and rainbows suggests that they registered the astonishment and won­der evoked by its diegetic supernaturalism. David Hopkins looks at a po­liti­cally resonant material space in which lit­er­a­ ture and the arts w ­ ere experienced by turning to the baroque mansion Dyrham Park, built between 1691 and 1702 by the statesman and amateur violinist William Blathwayt. Blathwayt’s interactions with three men—­his friend Sir William ­Temple, his steward and secretary Giles Jacob, and his musically gifted son, John Blathwayt—­reflect the breadth of ongoing cultural activity at Dyrham

Introduction • 9

Park that occurred while Blathwayt worked as secretary of state to William III. Blathwayt’s interest in Epicurus, an interest he shared with T ­ emple, is reflected both in the books in the Dyrham library and in the inscriptions placed over the Orangery and the south front of Dyrham Park. His Williamite affiliation is reflected in the statue of Neptune celebrating William of Orange’s naval success. Yet Blathwayt’s library also held John Dryden’s anti-­Williamite translation of The Works of Virgil. Blathwayt’s secretary Jacob was significantly chastised by Alexander Pope for his literary pretenses in The Dunciad (1728), but Blathwayt’s library held the very books that Pope defended against the pollutions of Grub Street. Blathwayt’s son John achieved renown on both the harpsichord and organ, performing in ­European cities, attending operas by Domenico Scarlatti, purchasing two Cremona violins for his ­father, and taking lessons from Bernado Pasquini, the friend of Arcangelo Corelli. He even accompanied Corelli. Back in London, he sang tenor solos and patronized musicians. William Blathwayt’s placement of a Horatian inscription in a south-­facing pediment—­his utere mecum—­ invites visitors to Dyrham Park to experience the estate’s abundant aesthetic ­pleasures with him in all their contradiction, perhaps as a tonic to the polarization of p­ olitical life.40 The range of cultural activity at Dyrham Park telegraphs culture and status, but it also suggests the arts’ therapeutic power to soothe and even unite souls wearied by the estrangement born of ­political divisions. Cedric D. Reverand reminds us of Domenico Scarlatti’s definition of his sonatas as “ingenious Jesting with Art” as evidence that Scarlatti’s sonatas must be seen as well as heard. The sonatas are technically challenging miniatures, short pieces of no longer than six minutes. But they are also a form of ­performance art, with technically demanding notations that force the performer’s technological proficiency to become vis­i­ble. Scarlatti’s musical notation on his scores, particularly his instructions regarding cross-­handed passages, makes the visual spectacle of the performer’s bodily expression, as hand leaps over hand, an essential part of the musical p­ erformance. Together with the fast tempos, abrupt key changes, and elaborate passage work that sometimes crashes into chords, the cross-­handed passages force audience members to notice the performer in the act of producing ­music. That Scarlatti used tone clusters that ­didn’t become common in classical ­music ­until the twentieth ­century makes his work particularly memorable. The Italian-­born composer who worked for two Spanish kings became wildly p­ opular in E ­ ngland. Leading musicians formed a Scarlatti cult enthralled by the virtuosity evident in both the auditory experiences and the visual spectacles Scarlatti created. Turning to eighteenth-­century plays, Paula Backscheider explores a dif­f er­ent form of ­performance by reviewing Queen Anne’s twin attention to both theater and the war effort. Backscheider notes two aspects of drama performed during Anne’s reign: many plays ­were written by war veterans interested in supporting the war effort, and ­these plays highlight the increasing role of ­women within an expanding military infrastructure. The Duke of Marlborough viewed w ­ omen as

10 • Anna Battigelli

necessary for his restructured military; he had them care for the wounded, perform as surgeons, forage for food, cook, clean, sew, carry gear and munitions, set up camps, repair sails, mend clothes, and serve as sex workers. The “camp-­ followers” in plays by war veterans Colley Cibber, George Farquhar, and Charles Shadwell depict ­women performing this work. Backscheider details other military work historically performed by w ­ omen, including gathering firewood, making soap, serving alcohol, providing directions to the many foreign soldiers in the E ­ nglish army, and peddling wares of use to soldiers. By pairing Queen Anne’s vis­i­ble support for both war and theater with less vis­i­ble work performed by w ­ omen in the camps, she reveals the varied roles w ­ omen played in Marlborough’s military. Ellen Harris sheds new light on Anne Donnellan’s artistic activity by tracing how her financial acumen helped support her interest in the arts. Spurned by her f­ amily as a financial drain when she refused to marry, Donnellan nevertheless lived in­de­pen­dently and eventually established a ­house­hold through shrewd investments that allowed her to participate in musical, artistic, and literary activities. A talented singer who attended operas and concerts in London from childhood, she participated in ­family concerts from an early age. In London she also met her lasting friend Mary Delany, who often accompanied Donnellan’s singing at the keyboard. Donnellan’s wise investments permitted her to infuse her friendships with art. She commissioned both a painting of herself to give to Delany and a painting of Handel (now lost) that she left to the British Museum. Before purchasing a harpsichord, she had Handel vet it, and he sometimes accompanied her at the keyboard when she sang. She was appreciated for her m ­ usic criticism, which is preserved only in the admiring descriptions of her correspondents, but her literary criticism is extant in letters. She was a part of Jonathan Swift’s circle, corresponded with both Edward Young and Samuel Richardson, and sang for Alexander Pope. Her early focus on moral character in lit­er­a­ture may have been of interest to Richardson, with whom she corresponded as he composed Sir Charles Grandison. When she disposed of her art collection in her ­will, she specified that portions of the profits from its sale go to charities. Some of the paintings listed in the auction cata­log suggest a Jacobite sensibility, and many demonstrate Donnellan’s interest in both ­women artists and British artists. Handel’s participation in the musical events she sponsored and his bequest of fifty guineas to her at his death suggest that he valued her hospitality and friendship. Harris shows how attending to ­women’s friendship helps reveal the extent and range of their artistic activities. Peter Sabor turns to Jane Austen’s novel Emma, which received eight reviews within the first year of its publication. Yet as Austen turned her eyes to her readers—­including members of her f­ amily whose opinions she recorded—­she must have been startled by the varied opinions they formed of Emma. Sir Walter Scott drew a parallel between Austen’s realism and the precision of Flemish ­painters, but he damned and praised si­mul­ta­neously by concluding that realism,

Introduction • 11

which delighted with its precision, was “not often elegant, and certainly not ­grand.”41 Some reviews praised Emma, while o­ thers compared it unfavorably to Pride and Prejudice. It was immediately translated into French and discussed in two French reviews, had two notices in German periodicals, and was even mentioned admiringly in a ­Russian piece on British ­women writers. Sarah Harriet Burney, the half ­sister of Frances Burney, applauded Austen’s depiction of Mr. Wood­house’s valetudinarian selfishness, but Maria Edgeworth quit reading ­after the first volume. The Prince Regent, oblivious to the mockery of Austen’s dedication, was one of Austen’s most loyal fans, purchasing her novels and having them bound in calfskin with gilt edges. Friends praised Mrs. Elton and Miss Bates, but they found Emma ­either, as Sabor observes, “a remarkable new creation or e­ lse unbearable.” ­Others found the novel’s plot too static. The distance between the public ceremonial mode of Stuart court masques and the private dialogic mode of the domestic novel could not be greater. Austen’s irony, wit, and undercutting of Emma’s judgment shown in her painting of Harriet Smith demonstrate that she was as astutely aware of the socially performative role of the arts as ­earlier writers, though she was arguably more skeptical than they w ­ ere of the efficacy of the visual arts in shaping shared public worlds.42 Fi­nally, Melissa Schoenberger examines the per­sis­tence of eighteenth-­century poetry within the modern engravings of Elizabeth Rivers (1903–1964), who used Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno to knit ­those engravings together. Rivers claimed that “­every art, in its making, discloses a way of looking at the world,” a statement in keeping with the observation by Walter Pater with which this introduction began.43 In their recursive dynamic with Smart’s lines, Rivers’s engravings contrast the cruel sterility of urban modernity with the vital abundance of the natu­ral world. Smart’s lines provided Rivers with analogues for both despair and hope as her stark engravings move between cold cityscapes and luscious vegetation. Through this dynamic, Rivers traces the way a ruined world can be transformed and regenerated through artistic remaking. Her stunning engravings are enriched by Smart’s prophetic lines, even as they intensify and enrich ­those lines. The experience of moving between image and text, between Rivers and Smart, and fi­nally between viewer and artwork signals the productive and regenerative remaking that Rivers hoped to evoke. For Schoenberger, Rivers’s engagement with Smart is a kind of translation born of the need for tools not available elsewhere for her art. She cites Winn’s observation that art on its own cannot repair devastation but that its sharing can remind us of the moral responsibilities of ­those who teach and write. His view of the arts as the province of the general public, not specialists, reminds t­ hose of us who teach that sharing the arts with o­ thers is central, as he put it, “to fulfilling our responsibility to the humanities—­and thus to humanity.”44 Fulfilling that responsibility to the humanities and to humanity itself was at the heart of James Winn’s c­ areer. He inspired students, scholars, and readers with his erudition, his interdisciplinary deftness, and his love of lit­er­a­ture and the

12 • Anna Battigelli

other arts. W ­ hether used to evoke laughter or awe, to forge community bonds or rebuke ­political enemies, to gracefully acknowledge or sharply satirize ­political differences, to establish exclusive sites of personal friendship or forge an expansive national identity capable of containing opposing mentalities, the arts provide an indispensable means of understanding a rapidly changing world. Throughout his productive ­career, James Winn helped students of the long eigh­ teenth ­century move beyond text-­bound readings of lit­er­a­ture to experience how the interplay between lit­er­a­ture and the arts reflects and shapes culture. His legacy continues. We hope ­these essays extend that legacy by contributing to the ongoing proj­ect of understanding, appreciating, and experiencing lit­er­a­ture and the arts in a world that needs them now more than ever.

Notes 1 James Winn, The Pale of Words: Reflections on the Humanities and P ­ erformance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 3. 2 John Brewer, The ­Pleasures of the Imagination: ­English Culture in the Eigh­teenth ­Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), xvi. James Winn’s flute recordings include the following: James Anderson Winn, flutist, and Charles Rudig, harpsichordist, François Couperin, Concerts Royaux (recorded 1981, Musical Heritage Society [MHS] 4410, vinyl, LP); James Anderson Winn, flutist, Mark Zuckerman, Paraphrases for Flute Alone (recorded 1971, Mobart, Composers Recordings, Inc., American Con­temporary Series, SD 342, vinyl, LP and reissued on CD, 2010), NWRL342. His concerts can be found at the following sites: James Winn, flutist, David Kopp, pianist, Kacy Clopton, cellist, “­Music of C.P.E. Bach, Haydn and Martinu” (Rutgers University, November 4, 2009), https://­youtube​ .­com​/­watch​? ­v ​=­J ​_­zbW0NlH3I&t​=­28s; James Anderson Winn, flutist, David Kopp, pianist, J. S. Bach, “Sonata in b Minor for Keyboard and Flute,” BWV 1030; Franz Schubert, “Introduktion und Variationen Über ein Thema Ihr Blümlein Alle aus den Müllernliedern,” D. 802 and Gabriel Fauré, “Fantaisie,” op. 79, https://­ soundcloud​.­com​/­james​-­winn​-­flute​/­sets​/­music​-­of​-­bach​-­schubert​-­and​-­faure. 3 James Winn used this example in Unsuspected Eloquence: A History of the Relations between Poetry and ­Music (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), 3, 143. 4 See, for example, Scott A. Trudell’s useful overview, “Introduction: The Intermedia Restoration,” Restoration: Studies in E ­ nglish Literary Culture, 1660–1700 42, no. 2 (Fall 2018): 1–9. 5 Walter Pater, “The School of Giorgione,” in The ­Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, ed. Donald L. Hill (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 102. 6 Amanda Eubanks Winkler writes eloquently on this point in “The Intermedial Dramaturgy of Dramatick Opera: Understanding Genre through P ­ erformance,” Restoration: Studies in E ­ nglish Literary Culture, 1660–­1700, no. 2 (Fall 2018): 13–38. 7 James Winn, “Heroic Song: A Proposal for a Revised History of ­English Theater and Opera, 1656–1711,” Eighteenth-­Century Studies 30, no. 2 (Winter 1996/1997): 113–137 (113–114). See also Robert Hume, “The Politics of Opera in Late Seventeenth-­Century London,” Cambridge Opera Journal 10, no. 1 (1998): 15–43; Richard Luckett, “Exotick but Rational Entertainments: The ­English Dramatick Operas,” in E ­ nglish Drama: Forms and Development, ed. Marie Axton and Raymond Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 123–141;

Introduction • 13

Judith Mil­house, “The Multimedia Spectacular on the Restoration Stage,” in British Theatre and the Other Arts, 1660–1800, ed. Shirley Strum Kenny (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1984); Curtis A. Price, M ­ usic in the Restoration Theatre (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1979); Andrew R. Walkling, ­English Dramatick Opera, 1661–­1706 (London: Routledge, 2019); and Walkling, Masque and Opera in E ­ ngland, 1656–­1688 (London: Routledge, 2017). 8 Walkling, ­English Dramatick Opera, 34. 9 Eubanks Winkler, “Intermedial Dramaturgy,” 14. 10 Winn, Unsuspected Eloquence, 267. 11 Winn, Unsuspected Eloquence, 196. Winn quotes W. K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criticism: A Short History (New York: Vintage, 1957), 263. 12 Quoted in Winn, Unsuspected Eloquence, 1. 13 Winn, Unsuspected Eloquence, 200. 14 Winn, Unsuspected Eloquence, 208–210. 15 Winn, Unsuspected Eloquence, 201. 16 This transformation has been traced recently by Roger Mathew Grant in Peculiar Attunement: How Affect Theory Turned Musical (New York: Fordham University Press, 2020). Grant uses the term “affective attunement” to describe the theory of art that replaced mimesis. For him and ­others, the turn to “affective attunement” provided “a corporeal, immediate, nondiscursive explanation of m ­ usic’s affective power” (14). 17 James Anderson Winn, John Dryden and His World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987); Winn, “When Beauty Fires the Blood”: Love in the Arts in the Age of Dryden (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992). 18 John Dryden, preface to Albion and Albinus: An Opera, in The Works of John Dryden, ed. Earl Miner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 15:10. ­Unless other­wise noted, subsequent references to John Dryden’s work are to this edition. 19 John Dryden, “To Sir Godfrey Kneller,” in The Works of John Dryden, ed. William Frost and A. B. Chambers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 4:461, lines 51–52. 20 James Anderson Winn, Queen Anne: Patroness of Arts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 21 Winn, Queen Anne, 290. 22 Winn, Queen Anne, 253. 23 Nahum Tate, A Congratulatory Poem, on Her Majesties Happy Recovery, and Return to Meet Her Parliament (London, 1714). 24 Lawrence Lipking called this systematization “the ordering of the arts,” which took place through national histories of the arts, such as Horace Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting in ­England (1762–1780), Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses on Art (1769–1790), Charles Burney’s History of M ­ usic (1776–1789), John Hawkins’s A General History for the Science and Practice of ­Music (1776), Thomas Warton’s History of E ­ nglish Poetry (1774–1781), and Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Poets (1779–1781). Key studies tracing the emergence of the systematic ordering of the arts include Brewer, ­Pleasures of the Imagination; Jean Hagstrum, The S­ ister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and E ­ nglish Poetry from Dryden to Gray (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 130ff.; Lawrence Lipking, The Ordering of the Arts in Eighteenth-­Century ­England (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1970); Iain Pears, The Discovery of Painting: The Growth of Interest in the Arts in E ­ ngland, 1680–­1768 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988); Richard Wendorf, Sir

14 • Anna Battigelli

25

26

27

28 29

3 0

31

Joshua Reynolds: The ­Painter in Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). Theoretical interest in the use of the arts to frame vision and thought can be found in Peter De Bolla, The Education of the Eye: Painting, Landscape, and Architecture in Eighteenth-­Century Britain (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003); David Marshall, The Frame of Art: Fictions of Aesthetic Experience, 1750–­1815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005); and Jane Partner, Poetry and Vision in Early Modern ­England (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). An obvious example would be the use of the Claude glass to collapse “a temporally elongated scopic drive into an instantaneous ‘take’ ” (De Bolla, Education of the Eye, 111). The phrase is used by Sarah F. Williams in “An Intermedia Approach to Seventeenth-­Century ­English P ­ opular Song Culture,” in Open Access Musicology, vol. 1, ed. Daniel Barolsky and Louis Epstein (Amherst, MA: Lever Press, 2020), 66. See also Patricia Fumerton, “Not Home; Ale­houses, Ballads, and the Vagrant Husband in Early Modern E ­ ngland,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 493–518; Patricia Fumerton and Anita Guerrini, eds., Ballads and Broadsides in Britain (1500–1800) (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010). Sarah Williams notes that a p­ opular ballad tune such as “Cold and Raw” could find its way into Henry Purcell’s birthday ode for Queen Mary, and l­ ater into John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728) and Henry Fielding’s Don Quixote in E ­ ngland (1734), reshaping genres and its own identity in the ­process. See Williams, “Intermedia Approach to Seventeenth-­Century ­English P ­ opular Song Culture,” 61–84 (77). Paula Backscheider, Spectacular Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), xvi. Gretchen Gerzina and ­others have presented a more complete understanding of ­England’s past by reminding us of its Black communities, in part by exploring Black participation in the arts. See Gerzina, Black London: Life before Emancipation (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995). See also Gretchen Gerzina, ed., Britain’s Black Past (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020); Vincent Carretta, ed., Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-­Speaking World of the Eigh­teenth ­Century (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1996); Michael Bundock, The Fortunes of Francis Barber: The True Story of the Jamaican Slave Who Became Samuel Johnson’s Heir (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015); Jemma M. Gibbs, Performing the T ­ emple of Liberty: Slavery, Theater, and P ­ opular Culture in London and Philadelphia, 1760–­1850 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014). In­ter­est­ing work on eighteenth-­century friendship and the arts includes Sylvia Harcstark Myers, The Bluestocking Circle: W ­ omen, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-­Century ­England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); Elizabeth Eger, “Paper Trails and Eloquent Objects: Bluestocking Friendship and Material Culture,” Parergon 26, no. 2 (2009): 109–138; Stuart Curran, “Dynamics of Female Friendship in the ­Later Eigh­teenth ­Century,” Nineteenth-­Century Contexts 23 (2001): 221–239; and Janet Todd, ­Women’s Friendship in Lit­er­a­ture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980). Elizabeth Eger, “Representing Culture: ‘The Nine Living Muses of ­Great Britain’ (1779),” in W ­ omen, Writing and the Public Sphere, 1700–­1830, ed. Elizabeth Eger, Charlotte Grant, Clíona Ó Gallchoir, and Penny Warburton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 104–132. Eger emphasizes Samuel’s depiction of more than idealized cultural refinement; his figures w ­ ere “living ­women who practiced the arts they represent. Visitors to the Acad­emy’s exhibition would have

Introduction • 15

been familiar with their recent literary, visual and dramatic achievements” (108). Eger acknowledges that linking the real to the symbolic “runs ­counter to the instincts of con­temporary feminism,” but focuses on the comparison between “real ­women and muses” “as an assertion of the former’s artistic endeavour rather than as a portrayal of w ­ omen as the passive enablers of art” (108–109). 32 Eger, “Representing Culture,” 5. 33 For a full discussion of Samuel’s painting and the engraving produced by an engraver named Page in Joseph Johnson’s The Ladies New and Polite Pocket-­ Memorandum Book 1778 (London, 1777?), see Elizabeth Eger, Bluestockings: ­Women of Reason from Enlightenment to Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), chap. 1. 3 4 Andrew Marvell, “On Mr Milton’s Paradise Lost,” in The Poems of Andrew Marvell, ed. Nigel Smith (London: Routledge, 2013), 184, lines 47–48. Marvell’s commendatory poem appeared in the second edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost (1674). 35 John Dryden, preface to All for Love, in Works of John Dryden, 13:17. 36 See also Anna Battigelli, “John Dryden’s Angry Readers,” in Books and Readers in Early Modern ­England, ed. Jennifer Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 261–281. 37 Eubanks Winkler, “Intermedial Dramaturgy.” 38 Samuel Pepys, April 19, 1667, in The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 11 vols., ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 8:171. 39 John Dryden, Albion and Albanius, in Works of Dryden, 15:27. 40 Horace, Epistle 1.6, in Horace, Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica, ed. H. Rushton Fairclough (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929), 290. 41 B. C. Southam, Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage (New York: Routledge Kegan & Paul, 1987), 67. ­ oman Artist 42 See also Juliette Wells, “Intimate Portraiture and the Accomplished W in Emma,” in Art and Artifact in Austen, ed. Anna Battigelli (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2020), 189–205. 43 Elizabeth Rivers, “Modern Painting in Ireland,” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 50, no. 198 (1961): 175–183 (183). 4 4 Winn, Pale of Words, 124.

1

Laughter from on High The Arts of Contempt in Restoration ­England STEVEN N. ZWICKER

It may seem odd to begin an inquiry into the nature of Restoration laughter and scorn with Paradise Lost, that ­great and unsmiling poem of the 1660s, but Book 8 of John Milton’s epic provides us with one of the more in­ter­est­ing and troubling moments in the history of laughter: the contemptuous amusement that Raphael attributes to the “­g reat architect” who hides the secrets of his heavens in order to frustrate ­human understanding, and “perhaps to move / His laughter at their quaint opinions wide” (PL 8:77–78).1 “Quaint”—­scholarly annotation tells us that, circa 1667, the word meant something like our “ingenious,” but other meanings w ­ ere also available at the time that w ­ ere rather closer to the derisive sense we now have of that word, and indeed of the ­whole scene of God’s laughter.2 The laughter surely makes us pause over the passage, perhaps to reassess or remember a certain hardened vein of Milton’s polemical manner or character (or of God’s character, as if He could have one); but the laughter also predicts some impor­tant features of Restoration lit­er­a­ture, especially the intimacy between laughter and scorn. Not that Milton would have been pleased to be associated with that Restoration specialty of braiding together amusement, cruelty, and contempt, but the affinities between the Miltonic scene of divine laughter and the deep and brilliant vein of satiric imagination in Restoration lit­er­a­ture 16

Laughter from on High • 17

provide both a new understanding of Milton’s relation to Restoration literary culture—­the world of Dryden, Dorset, and Rochester, of Sedley and Mulgrave, of court satire and town lampoon—­a literary and ethical culture that, insofar as he noticed it, Milton professed to abhor, and an approach to the values embedded in the lit­er­a­ture of scandal and scorn. Milton may or may not have enjoyed the cruelties of Restoration satire, but the scene of God’s amusement in Paradise Lost with its ethical and theological implications seems to share both in the scorn—­the contempt and condescension— of Restoration laughter and in ­those all-­too-­familiar commonplaces of satire’s corrective powers, commonplaces written repeatedly into early modern theories of satire and laced through the satires themselves, no doubt to enhance the respectability of such laughter. Who would not want to be seen cleansing and healing, purging, curbing, and correcting while applying the lash, rather than simply flaying to the accompaniment of laughter? Of course, it is not exactly a flaying that God or his archangel administers, but the scene of imputed laughter at “quaint opinions wide,” and at the face-­saving scribbles with which the astronomers ­will, one day, hope to reconcile their observations to general theories, or hide the shame of building and unbuilding their useless models of heaven, is surely a humiliation. Perhaps the language surrounding the scene softens the force of God’s derision, for Raphael, like a good theorist of satire, covers over the cruelty of laughter with claims of its beneficence, its work on behalf of the social, or in this case the cosmological and theological, good. According to Raphael, a report of God’s laughter and contempt is intended to encourage fear and s­ ervice, to heighten admiration over understanding, to curb curiosity, and to redouble the importance of humility—­the importance, that is, of “low” wisdom. “Be lowly wise” (PL 8:173): the etymology of the word “­humble” brings us directly to Raphael’s meaning. The word derives from the Latin terms for “low” and for “earth”: humilier and humus.3 Raphael instructs Adam to cast his eyes down from the heavens to study what is beneath his feet. God ­will not divulge “his secrets to be scann’d” (PL 8:73–74)—­that is, etymologically, God ­will not divulge his secrets to be “climbed up to” (from the Latin scandere). He insists on humiliation, that is, on lowness: “Heav’n is for thee too high / Think onely what concerns thee and thy being” (PL 8:173–174), ­things of daily life, ­things at hand, ­things ­under foot.4 Thomas Hobbes had written that “the passion of laughter is nothing e­ lse but a sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmities of o­ thers. . . . ​It is no won­ der therefore that men take it heinously to be laughed at or derided, that is, triumphed over.”5 Of course Hobbes in this passage considers ­human, not divine, nature, whereof, according to Hobbes, we can know nothing at all since we merely proj­ect our own nature onto God. But in the passage from Paradise Lost, it is an archangel who proj­ects laughter onto God, and Milton uses God’s laughter to humiliate—­that is, to lower—­Adam in relation to divine mysteries.

18 • Steven N. Zwicker

We have been told that God’s laughter in Paradise Lost is an expression of power and omnipotence, and it is easy to understand how that works in ­those scattered moments when God the F ­ ather or His Son laugh contemptuously at the infernal powers.6 In t­ hose passages, we can see why divine amusement should be a conjunction of laughter and derision, perhaps echoing Psalms 2:4, “He that sitteth in the heavens ­shall laugh: the Lord ­shall have them in derision.” ­Those whom the Lord has in derision are the raging heathens, but if the Book of Psalms is the source of Milton’s language near the beginning of Book 8, why should Ptolemy or Copernicus or indeed Galileo be ranked among the raging heathen “who take counsel together against the Lord”?7 And why should the Lord hold Adam and his astronomical offspring in contempt, or why should man’s desire to scan the heavens provoke laughter? When Dryden adapted Paradise Lost for the stage in the spring of 1674, he diplomatically excluded this provocation. He was already a bit uncertain about contemptuous laughter, and he would, in his theoretical writings, make careful distinctions between the righ­teousness of satire and the savagery of outlaw lampoon.8 But the careful distinctions that Dryden unfolded in his theoretical writings w ­ ere not so stable in practice, and he had good reason to be n ­ ervous about laughing at his betters, laughter as it w ­ ere from below, as he was to be beaten for overstepping just such bounds.9 Dryden claimed that his portrait of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, in Absalom and Achitophel was so refined that even the duke laughed and approved, but could that have been so? And would Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, have laughed his way through the images of decay and distortion that Dryden fashioned for the earl with his pigmy body and a son “born a shapeless Lump, like Anarchy”?10 Dryden’s caricature of Shaftesbury, with its cruel particularity, though it is brilliant enough and fast, steers very close to or indeed crosses over the border that separates satire from lampoon, the former drawing self-­admiring approval from Dryden, the latter claims of his innocence. Of course, Dryden got as good as he gave, perhaps not in quality, but surely in quantity—he was the most maligned, the most lampooned and laughed-at figure in Restoration lit­er­a­ture.11 He received the envy of other poets, and the condescension of at least one of his aristocratic patrons, the Earl of Rochester, and from John Milton he received a mixture of both. Is t­ here a more suggestive site for such mixed emotions than the texts associated with Dryden’s “­humble” request to Milton for permission to “tag” his verses and turn Paradise Lost into a stage play? We do not have a direct witness to the scene, but it was reported by John Aubrey and ­later by Jonathan Richardson; and ­there is one additional witness to the request for “tagging” and turning Paradise Lost into a rhyming stage play: the commendatory verse that Andrew Marvell wrote for the 1674 edition of Paradise Lost.12 I pause over the scene and its texts ­because they take us deeper into the texts of Restoration laughter, surely into the texture of Restoration scorn.

Laughter from on High • 19

­Here is one version of the encounter between the laureate and the blind republican: “Mr Dryden . . . ​went to make a visit to Mr. Milton, and desire his leave for putting his Paradise Lost into rhyme for the stage. Well Mr. Dryden, says Milton, it seems you have a mind to Tag my points, and you have my leave to tag ’em, but some of ’em are so Awkward and Old Fashioned that I think you had as good leave ’em as you found ’em.”13 ­Whatever ­else we hear in this ­little piece of theater, it resonates with bits of language that would turn up in Marvell’s commendatory poem to Paradise Lost, perhaps without quite the sharp turn that Marvell would give to his idiom of points and tags and new fashions, but with sufficient edge. ­Here is Marvell, re-­creating the scene: ­ ardon me, mighty poet, nor despise P My causeless, yet not impious, surmise. But I am now convinced that none w ­ ill dare Within thy ­labours to pretend a share. . . . . ​[none of course, other than John Dryden] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Well mightst thou scorn thy readers to allure With tinkling rhyme, of thine own sense secure; While the town-­Bayes writes all the while and spells, And like a pack-­horse tires without his bells. Their fancies like our bushy points appear, The poets tag them; we for fashion wear. I too transported by the mode offend, And while I meant to praise thee must commend. Thy verse created like thy theme sublime, In number, weight, and ­measure, needs not rhyme.14

Of course, this is Marvell’s voice (with its own touch of rhyming irony), but it participates in something of Milton’s aggression in the “Note on the Verse” that he had added to the 1668 issue of Paradise Lost and that reappears in the second edition of 1674, where Marvell’s commendation was published.15 In his note, Milton had celebrated the antiquity and elevation of blank verse and mocked rhyme as “the invention of a barbarous age, to set off the wretched m ­ atter and lame metre; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets [i.e., John Dryden], carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many ­things other­wise, and for the most part worse than ­else they would have expressed them.”16 Milton engaged with rhyme no doubt partly in response to Dryden’s eloquent defense of rhymed verse in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy published in the late fall of 1667; and when Milton’s “Note on the Verse” reappears in 1674, now on the page just opposite Marvell’s commendatory poem, it is difficult not to think that it lay b­ ehind that poem, or

20 • Steven N. Zwicker

that Milton and Marvell ­were in collusion over the subjects of rhyme, con­ temporary fashion, heroic drama, and, of course, heroic drama’s now most famous modern practitioner and publicist, John Dryden; or indeed that Marvell was pre­ sent at the visit in February 1674, storing up the language of the encounter, and then turning around to make good use of it—­perhaps by April, certainly by July of that year when the second edition of Paradise Lost appeared. And what did the pack­horse, the drudge with tinkling bells, make of the interview with its mixture of permission and condescension? Well, we know that he adapted Paradise Lost as The State of Innocence, and the force and character of Dryden’s opera as commentary on Paradise Lost have been subjects of both appreciation and controversy,17 but ­whatever we think of the mood in which Dryden made his “transversion,” and ­whatever we think of its argument and affect, ­there can be no doubt that the dedication Dryden wrote for The State of Innocence offers a wonderful rejoinder—­with its own undercurrent of laughter— to Milton’s slighting permission: “you have my leave to tag ’em.” Perhaps Milton should have added, “But you do not have my leave to dedicate your adaptation of my poem, as you would.”18 Could Milton have ­imagined that his monument of reformed spirituality, of strenuous moral argument and spiritual, indeed physical rectitude, would be laid “at the feet of so Beautiful and Excellent a Princess,” as the now sixteen-­year-­old Roman Catholic Mary of Modena (known colloquially as “the Pope’s d­ aughter”), who had taken the hand of that most Catholic of ­brothers of that least pious, least spiritually reformed, least strenuous of all the Stuart princes?19 The interview between Dryden and Milton took place in February 1674, and Dryden says that it took him a month to fashion The State of Innocence from Paradise Lost. Herringman entered Dryden’s adaptation in the Stationer’s Register on April 17, 1674, and between mid-­April and midsummer of that year (when the second edition of Paradise Lost was published), Marvell and Milton had surely gotten a hold of a manuscript copy of The State of Innocence.20 When Dryden published the play text in 1677 he complained of the “many hundred Copies of it being dispersed abroad without my knowledge or consent.”21 Had Milton and Marvell colluded in answering Dryden’s opera? Doubtless between the publication of the second edition of Paradise Lost in the summer of 1674 and February 1677 when The State of Innocence fi­nally reached print together with its preface and dedication, Dryden had seen that edition of Paradise Lost outfitted with both the ­earlier “Note on the Verse” and the new commendation by that Martin Marprelate of our time, Andrew Marvell. Dryden had a very long memory, and he seems never to have forgotten an injury, though even in his long c­ areer he did not have quite enough time and energy to answer e­ very condescension and insult, and t­ here ­were many of them. But I do think he prepared the prefatory texts of The State of Innocence with the language and the insults of Milton’s “Note on the Verse” and Marvell’s commendatory poem ringing in his ear, not just in the fact of the dedicatee of The State of

Laughter from on High • 21

Innocence and her confessional identity and marital taste, but also in the exquisitely wrought excess of the dedication, the fantastic hyperboles, the purple idioms of adoration, the extravagance and indulgences—­the crypto-­Catholic language. So Dryden wrote of Mary of Modena, now second Duchess of York, ’Tis the nature of Perfection to be attractive; but the Excellency of the object refines the nature of the love. It strikes an impression of awful reverence; ’tis indeed that Love which is more properly a Zeal than Passion. ’Tis the rapture which Anchorites find in Prayer, when a Beam of the Divinity shines upon them: that which makes them despise all worldly objects, and yet ’tis all but contemplation. They are seldom visited from above; but a single vision so transports them, that it makes up the happiness of their lives. Mortality cannot bear it often: it finds them in the eagerness and height of their Devotion, they are speechless for the time that it continues, and prostrate and dead when it departs. . . . ​That extasie had need be strong, which without any end, but that of Admiration, has power enough to destroy all other Passions. You render Mankind insensible to other Beauties: and have destroy’d the Empire of Love in a Court which was the seat of his Dominion. You have subverted (may I dare to accuse you of it) even our Fundamental Laws; and Reign absolute over the hearts of a stubborn and Freeborn p­ eople tenacious almost to madness of their Liberty. The brightest and most victorious of our Ladies make daily complaints of revolted Subjects: if they may be said to be revolted, whose servitude is not accepted: for your Royal Highness is too G ­ reat, and too Just a Monarch, e­ ither to want or to receive the Homage of Rebellious Fugitives.22

It was a mercy that Milton did not live to hear this extravaganza. It’s not exactly that Dryden is writing p­ olitical allegory h ­ ere, but the language skates so breathtakingly close to the history of seventeenth-­century politics with its idioms of absolute rule and the subversion of fundamental laws, of revolt and revolution and rebellious fugitives, of servitude and liberty, that the dedication—­and surely Dryden’s laughter u­ nder his breath—­could have been understood only as a provocation and an act of contempt in a season of growing fears of popery and arbitrary government, fears heightened of course by the marriage of Mary of Modena and the Duke of York, and that would soon be blown into a full-­scale crisis over the Popish Plot and Exclusion. If the princess herself had read the dedication, perhaps she would not have understood the implications of ­every word, but ­others in the spring and summer of 1677 did, and none among them would have been more sensitive to Dryden’s language, more responsive to his daring, than Andrew Marvell, who had already written contemptuously of Dryden, and in the summer months of 1677 was writing his own Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government.23 Though Dryden would not have known of the secretive Marvell writing a pamphlet that linked and blasted Stuart inclinations to the religion of popes and the politics of Louis XIV, Marvell and Milton had long

22 • Steven N. Zwicker

stood against t­ hose confessional politics, and Dryden was aware of his position within that triangulation of authors and interests.24 The dedication of The State of Innocence is a wonderful example of mingling laughter and contempt ­under the breath. Somewhat, but only somewhat, more openly Dryden returned to that technique late in 1677 or early 1678 when he wrote a preface to another adaptation, this time of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, in the form of a play he called All for Love. In the preface to All For Love he addressed himself to his onetime patron, now turned contemptuous rival and ­enemy, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, though nowhere in the preface does he identify Rochester by name. They had begun—­well, if not as pals, then with a certain decorous collegiality recorded in Dryden’s Dedication to Marriage-­a-­ la-­Mode (1673). ­There he lavishly thanked Rochester for the “amendment” his play received from Rochester’s “noble hands,” and for the “favour, of being admitted into your Lordship’s Conversation,” indeed for all of Rochester’s gallantries, “Delicacy of Expression, and the Decencies of Behaviour.”25 Soon enough Dryden would come to a dif­fer­ent opinion of ­those decencies of be­hav­ior; even by the end of the dedication of Marriage-­a-­la-­Mode Dryden had slipped into a dif­fer­ ent tone, not exactly mocking the aristocrat’s literary ambitions, but registering the competition that Rochester might threaten should he proceed from a few “Papers of . . . ​Verses . . . ​to a Scene or Play.” “Your Lordship,” Dryden cautions, “has but another step to make, and from the Patron of Wit, you may become its Tyrant: and Oppress our ­little Reputations with more ease than you now protect them.”26 To exactly ­those idioms—­patronage, talent, and tyranny—­Dryden returned, and with considerably more edge, and surely more contempt and anger in the preface to All for Love (1677/78), where he mocked Rochester’s patronage, laughed at his literary pretensions, his “smattering of Latin,” his “wretched affectation,” his restless folly, “needlessly expos[ing] his nakedness to public view”—­perhaps an allusion to one of Rochester’s more notorious frolics.27 And ­there is much more in the preface, perhaps more anger than laughter, though the l­ ittle allegory that Dryden wrote of Roman tyrants pretending to literary triumph is a wonderful comedy of Restoration letters, amateur and professional: We who write, if we want the Talent, yet have the excuse that we do it for a poor subsistence; but what can be urg’d in their defence, who not having the Vocation of Poverty to scribble out of meer wantonness, take pains to make themselves ridicu­lous? Horace was certainly in the right, where he said, That no man is satisfied with his own condition. A Poet is not pleas’d ­because he is not rich; and the Rich are discontented, ­because the Poets w ­ ill not admit them of their number. Thus the case is hard with Writers: if they succeed not, they must starve; and if they do, some malicious Satyr is prepar’d to level them for daring to please without their leave. But while they are so ­eager to destroy the fame of ­others, their ambition is manifest in their concernment: some Poem of

Laughter from on High • 23

their own is to be produc’d, and the Slaves are to be laid flat with their ­faces on the ground, that the Monarch may appear in the greater Majesty. Dionysius and Nero had the same longings, but with all their power they cou’d never bring their business well about. ’Tis true, they proclaim’d themselves Poets by sound of Trumpet; and Poets they w ­ ere upon pain of death to any man who durst call them other­wise. The Audience had a fine time on’t, you may imagine; they sate in a bodily fear, and look’d as demurely as they could: for ’twas a hanging ­matter to laugh unseasonably . . .’Twas known beforehand that the Monarchs ­were to be Crown’d Laureats; but when the shew was over, and an honest man was suffer’d to depart quietly, he took out his laughter which he had stiffled; with a firm resolution never more to see an Emperor’s Play, though he had been ten years a making it. In the mean time the true Poets ­were they who made the best Markets, for they had Wit enough to yield the Prize with a good grace, and not contend with him who had thirty Legions: They ­were sure to be rewarded if they confess’d themselves bad Writers, and that was somewhat better than to be Martyrs for their reputation. Lucan ’s example was enough to teach them manners; and ­after he was put to death, for overcoming Nero, the Emperor carried it without dispute for the best Poet in his Dominions: No man was ambitious of that grinning honour; for if he heard the malicious Trumpetter proclaiming his name before his betters, he knew ­there was but one way with him.28

The writing displays a wonderful fluency, a mastery of tone, of irony and contempt; what’s missing from the scene, as from Nero’s theater, is laughter—­suppressed at the emperor’s play­house where unseasonable laughter was a “hanging ­matter,” and reserved in the preface to All for Love ­because Dryden ­couldn’t quite manage the elevation necessary for contemptuous laughter—­that “sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmities of o­ thers”—­though he comes close as he derisively comments on Rochester’s satiric gifts, “For my part, I would wish no other revenge, e­ ither for myself, or the rest of the poets, from this rhyming judge of the twelve-­penny gallery, this legitimate son of Sternhold, than that he would subscribe his name to his censure, or (not to tax him beyond his learning) set his mark.”29 Of course, Rochester had no trou­ble setting his mark; he held neither his tongue nor his laughter. He mocked (and in more than one place) the pretense and noise of heroic drama and sneered at Dryden’s failures of originality, and the laureate’s mere industry—­“Five hundred Verses e­ very morning writt / Proves you no more a Poet than a Witt.”30 But his funniest and most provocative address to Dryden came in a letter to Henry Savile: “You write me word that I’m out of favour with a certain poet whom I have ever admired for the proportion of him and his attributes. He is a rarity which I cannot but be fond of, as one would be of a hog that could fiddle, or a singing owl.”31 What Rochester achieved was slightly beyond Dryden’s reach in the preface to All for Love, for Rochester was

24 • Steven N. Zwicker

able to combine equability and derision in his sly profession of the admiration or affection experienced by a wit entertaining himself with the spectacle of a fiddling hog or a singing owl—­the imagery wonderfully combining visual and aural ridicule. Is t­ here a touch of the laughter of Milton’s God h ­ ere, a glimpse, according to Rochester, of utterly misplaced species ambition? Of Rochester’s poetics of laughter and scorn, t­ here is a deep field, perhaps most obvious in the Scepter lampoon, that daring assault Rochester committed on the sexual and ­political reputation of Charles II. The poem is famed for its comic and obscene bluntness, its contemptuous address to a court rule by sexual politics— Nor are his high desires above his strength, His Scepter and his Pricke ­were of a Length, And she may sway the one, who plays with th’other Which makes him ­little wiser, than his B ­ rother.32

But neither the charge nor the obscenity would have shocked; o­ thers had and would make similar arguments and accusations. What might have surprised is Rochester’s republican outburst with its derisive coupling of Louis XIV and Charles II—­“I hate all Monarchs and the Thrones, they sitt on, / From the Hector of France to the Cully of Brittaine” (lines 14–15)—­but even more, the courtier’s circulation, his publication, of gossip about Charles II’s fading, indeed feminized, sexual capacities, The painefull tricks of the laborious Nelly, Imploying hands, Armes, Fin­gers, Mouth and Thighs To rayse that limbe, which she each Night enjoyes. (lines 37–39)

The date of the lampoon is likely late 1673 when the King may no longer have been in his sexual prime, but the details of an ardent and acrobatic Nell Gwynn raising the King’s desires would have surprised, perhaps astonished, if not by Rochester’s contempt then certainly by his betrayal of intimacies. Harold Love notes of t­ hese lines that since Rochester was a gentleman of the bedchamber, he would have slept ­there in a truckle bed and “may well have been an auditory witness to such episodes in the royal four-­poster.”33 To be a witness and perhaps not only an auditory witness was one ­thing, to humiliate by publication is quite another. And what gives ­these lines and the ­whole lampoon additional frisson is knowledge of the “­mistake” Rochester made, no doubt drunk, in passing a copy of the verse to the King himself, perhaps, as Frank Ellis argues, to deliver a “warning to Charles of the necessity to discard ‘the most dear of all dears,’ the French spy Louise de Keroualle, newly created Duchess of Portsmouth. This is where Rochester’s real affection may come in.”34 But it is difficult to believe that the King would have taken instruction in this m ­ atter—­least of all from the humiliation exacted by Rochester’s verse—or that affection was the emotion that

Laughter from on High • 25

stirred in Rochester as he wrote and circulated this scandalous portrait of an aging King dependent on “The painefull tricks of the laborious Nelly.” Frank Ellis’s comment belongs to that species of satiric theorizing that figures satire as correction, insisting on its elevated moral character, its commitment to improvement, perhaps a way of thinking about satire that displays the kind of false consciousness T.  J. Clark describes as ideology in The Painting of Modern Life. For Clark, the sign of ideology is “a kind of inertness in discourse: a fixed pattern of imagery, a syntax which seems obligatory, a set of permitted modes of seeing and saying; each with its own structure of closure and disclosure unthinkable. . . . ​A nd ­these ­things are done . . . ​as it ­were surreptitiously.”35 That is, the ethical argument of satire insists on its practice ­under false pretenses, obscuring for us—­under permitted modes of seeing and saying, u­ nder obligatory gestures—­its energies, its urgencies, its cruelties. ­There seems then a tremulous connection between the “real” work that derision and laughter perform (humiliation, exposure, triumph over o­ thers) and the socially acceptable work that satire is reputed to perform. Dryden, for one, worked very hard to delineate the ethical character of satire. He was in a position where it was impor­tant to do so, situated rather precariously at the edge of a social world to which he had clung for a long time, and often reminded of just that precariousness. The dignity of classical theories of satire was a shield against accusations of cruelty and contempt—­charges, Dryden says more than once, that do not apply to him. Did he know better, or does he pretend this to himself? And did Rochester think, when he wrote satire, that he was performing a kind of community s­ ervice?36 He did not return so openly to the politics of the king’s bedchamber ­after the event of the Scepter lampoon, but he visited a number of other sites of social and sexual transgression where he performed with remarkable wit and cruelty. Out of his social inferiors, Rochester made a carnival of humiliation; t­ hese are the cheats and poseurs; the bawds, buffoons, and whores; the easy fools and mere fiddles of his longer satires where his sketches combine cruel particulars and humiliating imagery. The verse displays a kind of hauteur ­toward ­those whom we might suppose beneath Rochester’s notice, beneath his contempt, but clearly enough Rochester had the poetic time of day for t­ hose knights of the elbow from the Ramble; for the aging hostess in Timon; or for the dinner party in that poem with its wonderful sendup of the Jonsonian guests—­ Halfwit, Huff, Kickum, and Dingboy—­and their cele­bration of Restoration theater; or at the attempts at seduction in Tunbridge Wells where Rochester catches so perfectly the fumbling efforts of the poem’s fops and fools: The would-be witt, whose business was to woo, With hat remov’d, and solemn scrape of Shoe, Advanceth bowing then genteelly Shruggs And Ruffl’d fortop into order Tuggs And thus accosts her: Madam, methinkes the weather

26 • Steven N. Zwicker

Is grown much more serene, since you came hither. You Influence th’ heavens, but should the sun Withdraw himselfe to see his rays outdone By your bright eyes; They would supply the Morn And make a day, before the day be born. With mouth screw’d up, conceited winking eyes, And breasts thrust forward; Lord! sir, she replyes, It is your goodness and not my deserts Which makes you show this learning, witt, and parts. Hee puzled bites his nailes, both to display The sparkling ring, and think what next to say.37

No won­der Rochester was drawn to the play­house: ventriloquy was among his most accomplished arts. He seems to have taken considerable ­pleasure in projecting himself down-­market, inhabiting ­those ­nervous bodies and risible voices so far beneath his own aristocratic manner, and his contempt. Rochester conducted satiric warfare above and below his station—­kings and their mistresses, whores and prentices, all subjects of contemptuous laughter. He also wrote with g­ reat assurance about his own social kind. The most productive of ­those campaigns was waged against John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave; from ­those skirmishes came half a dozen poems including cruel lampoons like My Lord All Pride, character sketches, ironic monologues, and the brilliant and baffling Epistolary Essay from M. B. to O. B., a Chinese puzzle of a poem in which Rochester seems so relentlessly to humiliate Mulgrave, and yet draws a figure of the arrogant earl that has more than once been mistaken for Rochester himself. He seems h ­ ere to practice a reflexive art whereby the satirist holds a cruel and comic mirror aloft to his victim, perhaps to himself as well—­not for Rochester an unknown game: I’m none of ­those who think themselves inspird Nor write with the vain hope to be admird: But from a Rule I have (upon long Triall) T’avoid with care all sort of self deniall; Which way so er’e desire and fancy lead, (Contemning Fame) that path I boldly tread. And if exposing what I take for wit, To my dear self a ­Pleasure I beget No ­matter tho the cens’ring Criticks fret.38

Rochester was of course capable not only of brutal squibs and obscene lampoons but also of philosophical verse and of poems of considerable satiric ambivalence like Artemisa to Chloe, a verse epistle that seems to offer so many refractions of the satiric lens—­laughter and contempt for sure, but also a more attenuated and

Laughter from on High • 27

reflective style, a mode of satire that combines empathy with disdain. We are not too distant from the tonal range of satires like Marvell’s Last Instructions to a ­Painter, a poem that moves from sympathy, in the midst of scandal and scorn, to derision and contempt: think of the portraits of Henry Jermyn; or the Duchess of York; or Lord Clarendon with his imps sucking at the sacramental wart; or the night vision of the King attempting to rape the bound virgin Britannia.39 The argument of that scene has some affinity with Rochester’s “scepter” lampoon with its critique of sexual transgression as ­political malfeasance, and more. Though the mood of Marvell’s scene is dif­fer­ent, the tone apocalyptic rather than comic and contemptuous and the gender roles reversed, both poems display the affinities of cruelty and contempt in this lit­er­a­ture. What Marvell does not aim for is that laughter from on high that came so easily to Rochester. In the envoy to The Last Instructions Marvell returns to the King, and now dwelling within the conventions of panegyric address, he instructs the King to rid himself of scratching courtiers and embrace the country party. It’s as if, having crossed into the more daring and transgressive territories of satire, Marvell took cover at the poem’s close in the idea of satire as hopeful correction and reform. The uncomfortable fit between the envoy and the body of the poem exposes some of the slippage between satiric practice and satiric theory. Marvell understood both and was content to leave the difficulty of their reconciliation on display. No such slippage trou­bles the continuous and contemptuous tones of Rochester’s “scepter” lampoon; laughter indeed from on high, though it was not “quaint Opinions wide” that provoked Rochester’s laughter, nor was it astronomy that roused his scorn. John Wilmot and John Dryden—in literary histories they belong to the same world; John Milton to a quite dif­f er­ent world. But the distance among the three “libertines” may not have seemed so ­great to contemporaries or near contemporaries. If for example we rummage among Swift’s moderns in The ­Battle of The Books, we w ­ on’t be surprised to discover Dryden and Denham; Cowley, Oldham, and Behn; but w ­ e’ll also find John Milton t­ here. Why, we might won­der, did Swift place Milton among the moderns? Milton had announced his own allegiance to Homer and Virgil in that “Note on the Verse” that prefaces Paradise Lost in which he wants nothing to do with the “wretched manner and lame meter” of the moderns and condemns rhyme specifically as a device of modernity, insisting on his own distance from “that troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming.” And who had “longer conversed among the ancients” or had done more to make Virgil a living presence? Why ­wasn’t Paradise Lost sitting close by Virgil’s Aeneis on a shelf at St. James’s Library? Milton makes only a fleeting appearance in The ­Battle; ­there Swift places him among “the ­Horse, where ­every private Trooper pretended to be chief Command, from Tasso and Milton, to Dryden and Withers.”40 Perhaps in situating Milton among the moderns Swift was recalling the turbulent world of the 1640s where Milton surely participated in that “large Vein of Wrangling and Satyr much of a Nature and Substance with

28 • Steven N. Zwicker

the Spider’s poison”?41 But it is the epic poet and not the controversialist yoked to Tasso and Dryden. ­Whatever ­else he may have thought of Milton’s epic, and ­whatever ambivalences he entertained ­toward Milton, Swift surely caught his proximity to the moderns. About that other modern—­John Dryden—­Swift seems to have entertained no ambivalence at all. His most high-­spirited contempt and comedy are reserved for Dryden’s encounter with Virgil: the ancient all grandeur and diffidence; the modern, servile, and impotent. Swift ridicules Dryden’s claims of intimacy with Virgil and his outsized ambitions with a torrent of diminutions that altogether deny literary authority. Dryden on a gelding, Dryden as the “lady in a lobster,” Dryden’s utter “failure to mount”: images that combine wounding personal slights with an attack altogether on Dryden’s generative power.42 The image of the translator of Virgil with all the clatter of his ill-­fitting armor and the rustle of his self-­promotion is a wonderful comedy, laughter indeed from on high. “You may tag my verses”: so Milton is supposed to have allowed, with condescension, that other epic diminution. Do we hear as well in Swift’s scene an echo of Marvell’s contemptuous laughter, not at Dryden on a gelding but at Dryden as the pack­horse who “tires without his bells”? Laughter and contempt—­Restoration satirists had made a specialty out of that “malicious ­pleasure . . . ​which is testified by laughter.” Th ­ ose words are from Dryden’s Essay of Dramatic Poesy—­and he knew something of that ­pleasure—­but they echo far beyond the civility of an after­noon on the Thames, beyond the play­house, deep into Paradise Lost and deeper yet into the heart of (Restoration) scandal and scorn.

Notes 1 Milton’s poetry is quoted from John Milton: The Major Works, ed. Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 509; further citations with book and line number from Paradise Lost are included parenthetically in the text. 2 See, for example, the line notes in The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, ed. Stephen M. Fallon, John Kerrigan, and John Rumrich (New York: Modern Library, 2007), 499, “quaint: ingenious, wide”; or The Annotated Milton, ed. Burton Raffel (New York: Bantam Books, 2008), 433, where “quaint” is annotated “clever, ingenious.” 3 Oxford ­English Dictionary, online ed., s.v. “­humble, adj.,” https://­oed​.­com. 4 OED, s.v. “scan, v,” https://­oed​.­com. 5 Thomas Hobbes, The Ele­ments of Law Natu­ral and Politic, ed. F. Tönnies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 45. ­ nglish Laughter, 6 See Susanne Rupp, “Milton’s Laughing God,” in A History of E ed. Manfred Phister (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002), 48–49 and passim. 7 On Paradise Lost and the Book of Psalms, see Mary Ann Radzinowicz, Milton’s Epics and the Book of Psalms (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1989). 8 See, for example, the Discourse Concerning the Original and Pro­g ress of Satire. In his letter to Lord Rochester of May 1, 1673, Dryden claims to forswear lampoon as a most dangerous part of wit, though his cautions about lampoon hardly interfered

Laughter from on High • 29

9

10 11

12 13

14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24

with the writing of Mac Flecknoe (1676) or with the wicked characters in Absalom and Achitophel (1681). In late 1679, Dryden was beaten in R ­ ose Alley, an assault likely provoked by his association with the Earl of Mulgrave, whose Essay upon Satyr—by then in manuscript circulation—­had attacked the Earl of Rochester and the Duchess of Portsmouth. The “Rose-­A lley Abuscade” was described in the London Gazette for December 24–29 as well as in Domestic Intelligence for December 23. See James Winn’s discussion, John Dryden and His World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 325–329, and Edward Saslow, “The Rose-­A lley Abuscade,” Restoration 26, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 27–49. John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, in The Works of John Dryden, ed. H. T. Swedenberg et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 3:10, line 172. In his Discourse Concerning the Original and Pro­g ress of Satire, Dryden wrote that “more Libels have been written against me, than almost any Man now living.” Works of John Dryden, ed. H. T. Swedenberg, et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 4:59. For ­these accounts, see The Early Lives of Milton, ed. Helen Darbishire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932), 7, 296, 334, and Winn, John Dryden and His World, 264–265. The Monitor 1, no. 17 (1713); the story of Dryden’s visit to Milton was also told by John Aubrey, Brief Lives, 2 vols., ed. Kate Bennett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 1:663. Cf. David Masson, The Life of John Milton, 6 vols. (London, 1880), 6:708–710; and Morris Freedman, “Dryden’s ‘Memorable Visit’ to Milton,” Huntington Library Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1955): 10–21. The Poems of Andrew Marvell, ed. Nigel Smith (New York: Longman, 2007), 183–184. Paradise Lost, 2nd ed. (1674), sig. A3r–­v; Milton’s note appeared at sig. A4r–­v. John Milton: The Major Works, 355. See James Winn’s account of The State of Innocence in John Dryden and His World, 264–269. The opera was entered in the Stationer’s Register April 17, 1674, as “The Fall of Angells and man in Innocence, An Heroick opera,” and published early in 1677; an advertisement for The State of Innocence appeared in the London Gazette of February 8–12. See “The Authors Apology for Heroique Poetry; and Poetique Licence,” prefatory to The State of Innocence, ed. Vinton Dearing, in Works of John Dryden, 12:86. Having received permission to adapt Paradise Lost, Dryden remarked that it had taken him a month to write The State of Innocence. “The Author’s Apology,” in Works of John Dryden, 12:86. Works of John Dryden, 12:86. The dedication of The State of Innocence, “To Her Royal Highness, The Dutchess,” in Works of John Dryden, 12:83. On the dates of composition for An Account of the Growth of Popery, see The Prose Works of Andrew Marvell, 2 vols., ed. Annabel Patterson et al. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 2:185–187. When late in 1657 Dryden joined Marvell and Milton in the Protectorate’s Office of Foreign Tongues, he must have been aware of his j­ unior status in that com­pany; when the three walked together in the funeral cortège for Oliver C ­ romwell, the receipt for the amount of mourning allowed by the government indicates that Milton and Marvell received six yards of cloth while the grant to Dryden was

30 • Steven N. Zwicker

25 26 27 28 29 3 0 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

4 0

41 42

denied; see Hugh Macdonald, John Dryden: A Bibliography of Early Editions and of Drydeniana (Oxford: Clarendon, 1939), 4n6. Works of John Dryden, ed. John Loftis and David Stuart Rodes, 11:221. Works of John Dryden, 11:223–224. The episode of Rochester and Sedley “­running naked” was confirmed by Rochester’s own admission; see commentary in Works of John Dryden, 13:404. Works of John Dryden, 13:14–15. Works of John Dryden, 13:17. The Works of John Wilmot Earl of Rochester, ed. Harold Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), “An Allusion to Horace,” 72, lines 94–95. The Letters of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, ed. Jeremy Treglown (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980), 199–200. Works of John Wilmot Earl of Rochester, “A Satyr” (C text), 87, lines 10–13. Works of John Wilmot Earl of Rochester, 421. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester: The Complete Works, ed. Frank Ellis (New York: Penguin, 1994), 328. T. J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1985), 8. “A scandal was a­ fter all a sort of s­ ervice to the community”—so Saul Bellow wrote in Herzog (New York: Viking, 1964), 18. Works of John Wilmot Earl of Rochester, 53–54, lines 100–115. Works of John Wilmot Earl of Rochester, 99, lines 12–20. See Steven N. Zwicker, “Sites of Instruction: Andrew Marvell and the Tropes of Restoration Portraiture,” in Politics, Transgression, and Repre­sen­ta­tion at the Court of Charles II, ed. Julia Marciari Alexander and Catharine M ­ acLeod (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 134–137. A Tale of a Tub, The B ­ attle of the Books, The Mechanical Operation of the Spirit, ed. Frank H. Ellis (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), 111. Tale of a Tub, 111. Tale of a Tub, 116.

2

Staging Davenant; or, Macbeth, the Musical AMANDA EUBANKS WINKLER

In 1664, the curtain went up on William Davenant’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, performed at Lincoln’s Inn Fields by the Duke’s Com­pany. In keeping with Davenant’s interest in ­music and spectacle, the playwright incorporated changeable scenery and lavish songs and dances for the witches, giving additional dramatic weight to the “weyward ­sisters,” his term for the malevolent prognosticators. Davenant’s revision was a hit with Restoration audiences. The diarist Samuel Pepys went to see it many times, praising its “divertisement, though it be a deep tragedy” and calling it “one of the best plays for a stage, and variety of dancing and m ­ usic, that ever I saw.”1 In fall of 2018, I served as a c­ onsultant for a professional production of Davenant’s Macbeth at the Folger Theatre, Washington, DC. This production was a collaboration between the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Arts and Humanities Research Council–­f unded research proj­ect Performing Restoration Shakespeare (2017–2020), on which I served as international co-­investigator with the primary investigator, theater historian Richard Schoch.2 Davenant’s intermedial Macbeth was not sui generis; rather, it exemplified a larger Restoration-­era trend that adapted the Bard for late seventeenth-­century audiences. Shakespeare’s works ­were presented with lavish musical scenes, dance, special effects, updated language, and streamlined plots that addressed current ­political concerns. One of the premises of the Performing Restoration Shakespeare proj­ect is that ­these 31

32 • Amanda Eubanks Winkler

intermedial works can best be understood through p­ erformance, an approach that I think James Winn would have appreciated. A groundbreaking interdisciplinary scholar and an accomplished flutist, Winn was keenly aware of the insights that ­performance can provide. My essay analyzes the tension between historical knowledge and p­ erformance practicalities and the temporal distance between Restoration London and modern-­day Washington, DC, as the Performing Restoration Shakespeare team staged an unfamiliar version of Macbeth. I focus primarily on the ­music choices in the production and the critical reception before turning to a consideration of what we learned, and what ­others can learn, from our practice-­based research.

Practice-­Based Research A brief discussion of practice-­based research and the intellectual aims of Performing Restoration Shakespeare is necessary to understand the role the Macbeth production played in our larger proj­ect. As Stephen Purcell points out, t­ here is a lack of consensus about what practice-­based research or practice-­as-­research means, but Performing Restoration Shakespeare aligns neatly with Purcell’s capacious definition: “any scholarly work in which ­performance practice constitutes a major part of the research enquiry.”3 Indeed, p­ erformance was central to our proj­ect, as we used it to understand how Restoration Shakespeare worked in the theater then and how it might work in the theater ­today. Accordingly, our scholarly outputs include ­performances and text-­based forms. The Macbeth production, two workshops with scholars, actors, and musicians, and a ­performance showcase fall ­u nder the former category. ­T hese ­performances are partially preserved and documented through videos on the Performing Restoration Shakespeare YouTube channel and images and other materials on the Performing Restoration Shakespeare website.4 The second category includes essays (such as this one), articles, and an edited collection that brings together prac­ti­ tion­ers and scholars to reflect on the ontology of Restoration Shakespeare.5 In essence, the second category of output analyzes our experiences acting, singing, playing, rehearsing, and staging Restoration Shakespeare, interpreting action through words. Our approach both intersects with and diverges from Original Practices, a playing and production style developed by Mark Rylance (artistic director), Jenny Tiramani (designer), and Claire van Kampen (­music) at Shakespeare’s Globe, London, in the 1990s. Original Practices sought to replicate the spatial conditions, the costumes and makeup, the staging, the ­music and soundscape, the all-­male casting practices, and the acting style of the early modern ­English play­house. As I have explained elsewhere, the Original Practices proj­ect was deeply indebted to the early m ­ usic movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The early ­music movement sought to understand pre-1750 musical repertories through playing on period instruments (or replicas of them) and using p­ erformance styles

Staging Davenant • 33

developed through careful reading and analy­sis of historical treatises. Similarly, the team at Shakespeare’s Globe used the architectural space of a reconstructed Elizabethan theater and historical knowledge to understand past playing styles.6 Performing Restoration Shakespeare is also interested in the ways in which historical texts and ­music might communicate with ­today’s audiences, and what might be revealed through the act of p­ erformance. However, we resist claims that we can return to an “original.” ­Performance is, by its nature, unfixed and iterative. It unsettles, pushes against, and sometimes even subverts the text.7 Furthermore, the debates about historical musical playing styles in the 1980s and 1990s put to rest the notion that historically informed ­performances ­were inherently more “au­then­tic.”8 It is now widely acknowledged that historically informed ­performance is a useful heuristic, that something of the past might be heard in the pre­sent, but that this pastness is always framed and ­shaped by our own modern preferences and proclivities.9 Accordingly, Performing Restoration Shakespeare used the historical knowledge of our scholarly team as a point of departure rather than a set of instructions for p­ erformance. Although our approach is flexible, we did have some rules in place. To understand the intermediality of Restoration Shakespeare—­how m ­ usic, spoken text, spectacle, and movement work together to create meaning—we needed to retain ­those key ele­ments in our staging.

The Concept: Bedlam in Modern DC The intermediality of Davenant’s adaptation was precisely the ­thing that caused our director, Robert Richmond, the most anxiety. From early in its ­performance history, Shakespeare’s Macbeth had been performed with musical witches. The First Folio includes cues for two songs, “Hecate, Come Away” (act 3) and “Black Spirits and White” (act 4), as well as a stage direction that calls for a witches dance in act 4. The songs ­were taken from Thomas Middleton’s play, The Witch, prob­ ably sometime around 1613 or 1614, to capitalize on the acoustical possibilities of Blackfriars theater, while the dance may have been taken from Ben Jonson’s Masque of Queens as part of the vogue for importing ele­ments of the court masque onto the public stage (another example being Shakespeare’s Tempest [1610/1611], which includes a hymeneal masque).10 Davenant expanded upon ­these musical interludes, including two more songs, “Speak, ­Sister, Speak” and “Let’s Have a Dance.” Davenant was uniquely positioned to engage with m ­ usic and dance. He had worked with Inigo Jones on masques at the court of Charles I and had experimented with m ­ usic, dance, and changeable scenery in entertainments and opera in the 1650s.11 ­These experiences ­shaped his dramaturgy and his approach to Shakespeare adaptation ­after the Restoration.12 To Richmond, the adapted play, with its antiquated ­music and, in several scenes, rhyming heroic couplets, seemed very much of a par­tic­u­lar time and place. Thus, our director made the choice to set the play in 1666, a few years ­after the

34 • Amanda Eubanks Winkler

adaptation’s ­actual premiere. But the location was not the Duke’s Com­pany play­ house. Rather, it was Bedlam (St. Mary Bethlehem), the storied m ­ ental asylum. In Richmond’s staging, the despotic hospital director, who ironically doubled in the role of the saintly King Duncan, forced the residents of Bedlam to perform Macbeth for patrons. Richmond took obvious inspiration from Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade (1963), in which a play with m ­ usic is staged by residents of Charenton Asylum. Richmond’s decision to set Davenant’s Macbeth in Bedlam revealed a certain distrust of the stage-­worthiness of Davenant’s adaptation. Shakespeare’s play is timeless, but, according to Richmond’s thinking, Davenant’s playtext, with its jovial singing and dancing witches, is not. As my Performing Restoration Shakespeare colleagues Sara Reimers and Richard Schoch astutely observed, Richmond’s staging choices “can be summarized as a sustained effort to avoid or to neutralize the perceived strangeness of Davenant’s semi-­operatic drama, substituting in its place a more familiar realist aesthetic.”13

Shaping the Production: Practical Realities Richmond’s anx­i­eties over the sound of the witches’ m ­ usic also s­ haped the choices made by m ­ usic director Robert Eisenstein, for the two worked closely on the sonic profile of the production. Eisenstein had two settings of the witches’ m ­ usic from which to choose: one by John Eccles (ca. 1696) and one by Richard Leveridge (1702). Eisenstein had already performed the Leveridge score in an e­ arlier workshop with us, and he felt strongly that he wanted to tackle the more sophisticated score by Eccles. As the Folger was using my edition of Eccles witches’ m ­ usic for the production, I began liaising with the creative team in spring 2016, over two full years before the curtain went up. As Eisenstein had settled on the Eccles’s score, I supplied Richmond with the sound recording from a semistaged production of Macbeth performed by students at Yale ­under the direction of Judith Malafronte. The sound of the recording, and the audience’s laughter at the witches’ antics, did nothing to assuage Richmond’s fears. To put it bluntly, t­ here was a gap between Richmond’s expectations of the way witches should sound and the way they actually sounded in Restoration Shakespeare. We might say that Richmond was experiencing the disruption of syncopated time. ­Performance studies scholar Rebecca Schneider, borrowing a phrase from Gertrude Stein, has defined syncopated time as a space in which past and pre­sent are thrown together via temporal disruption, where “then and now punctuate each other.”14 It was precisely the incursion of past ­performance conventions into his twenty-­first-­ century production that gave Richmond pause. To assuage his fears and to help him understand seventeenth-­century musical and theatrical conventions for witches, I explained how witches ­were presented as eco­nom­ically marginalized, physically deformed, sexually suspect, and sonically deficient onstage and off in early modern ­England. Witches ­were often played for laughs and cross-­dressed

Staging Davenant • 35

actors took witches’ roles, including the role of Hecate in Davenant’s Macbeth. In terms of their m ­ usic, witches sang perverted versions of sacred musical forms, and halting rhythms and repeated notes suggested their ungainly movements. They typically danced jigs, Morris dances, or performed round dances back-­to-­ back and counterclockwise. Their m ­ usic used major keys extensively for their cele­brations of evil (Purcell’s minor key excursions for his witches’ m ­ usic in Dido and Aeneas are a notable exception to this rule).15 ­A fter my crash course on seventeenth-­century musical conventions, Richmond knew on an intellectual level why the witches in the Restoration adaptation of Macbeth sounded and behaved the way they did. Yet, he still had difficulty reconciling what he perceived as the witches’ “happy” ­music with the version of Macbeth with which he was most familiar. The violent and dark Bedlamite setting thus allowed him to introduce a consistently dark tone: although the witches sounded jovial, they would be the most disturbed patients in the asylum.16 The rest of the soundscape of the production, developed collaboratively with Eisenstein, also supported the themes of insanity, decay, and societal disintegration that Richmond wanted to explore. Only the witches’ ­music and a few act tunes survive from Eccles’s score, so Eisenstein set about finding additional period m ­ usic that supported Richmond’s dark vision for Macbeth. He also incorporated more modern sonic ele­ments played live by the band (drones, waterphone effects, harmonics on strings, bells, drumbeats). Other eerie, unsettling sounds w ­ ere supplied electronically by sound designer Matt Otto.17 The production concept and most of Bob Eisenstein’s musical compilation score ­were fixed before we ever set foot in the rehearsal room. We also needed to establish the ­parameters of our intellectual and scholarly collaboration with the production team and the Folger Institute, the library’s scholarly and research division, before we traveled to Washington, DC. As previously mentioned, we had mandated that the creative team had to use Davenant’s text (no Shakespearean substitutions), retain all the extant m ­ usic for the witches, and incorporate some kind of visual spectacle. Conversely, the producers also had specific demands of us. Our scholarly team comprised Richard Schoch, Claude Fretz, our postdoctoral fellow, and me, as well as six scholars from the fields of musicology and theater history. We had arranged with the Institute for the full team to be embedded in the rehearsal room for two weeks to collect data and observe, but producers worried that the scholars might disrupt the creative ­process, and they ­were insistent that the director must be the one in charge. To balance the creative team’s concerns with the needs of our scholars, we developed strict protocols for scholar/creative team interactions during the scholars’ two-­week residency. We scheduled two mini-­conferences, one for the theater/drama scholars and one for the musicologists, to provide historical information for the creative team. Via short talks, scholars presented their research on Restoration Shakespeare to the cast and crew—­these events ­were built into the rehearsal schedule, ensuring participation. We also encouraged scholars to develop research questions that

36 • Amanda Eubanks Winkler

could be answered only by seeing Restoration Shakespeare in p­ erformance and worked with the stage man­ag­er to schedule individual and group interview sessions with the actors, musicians, and production staff, so scholars could collect further data. Our Macbeth was an Equity production and scheduling sometimes proved difficult, as we had to limit ourselves to regular rehearsal hours. The scholars had been fully briefed on rehearsal room etiquette, and during the first few days scholars mostly observed and took notes. However, as relationships formed between the scholars and creative team, interactions became more informal, and scholarly input worked its way into acting, directorial, and musical choices. Members of the scholarly team made some valuable musical suggestions that ended up in the final production. And, a­ fter attending the mini-­ conferences, the director and the actors experimented with period gesture, so that the acting would better match the sound world created by the period score.18 The director ultimately de­cided to abandon stylized movements, although traces of historical gesture and dance lingered in the ­performance choices made by the witches. A final practical concern was how (and when) to rehearse the m ­ usic. Musical theater and opera are rehearsed differently than a fully spoken play. In the Restoration theater, ­music rehearsals for operatic works would have occurred in the ­evening, a­ fter the p­ erformances had concluded for the day—an acknowl­edgment that rehearsing t­ hese intermedial works took more time.19 Modern rehearsal schedules for a musical last four to six weeks, and Davenant’s Macbeth has the same components as a modern-­day Broadway musical. The Folger Theatre and the production team do not usually stage musical theater, and t­ here ­were bud­ getary constraints, so we had three weeks of rehearsal before technical rehearsals began. In an in­ter­est­ing turn of events, the wisdom b­ ehind Restoration rehearsal practices (and modern rehearsal practices for staging musical dramas) was better understood by all, a­ fter we experienced the ramifications of rehearsing Davenant’s Macbeth like just another play. Two of the three witches had substantial experience with opera and musical theater and ­were anxious about the lack of attention to the m ­ usic. Th ­ ese concerns intensified a­ fter they began working on act 2, scene 5, one of the witches’ big musical scenes. And the full cast, many of them untrained singers, needed to perform choral parts on the act 4 witches’ song, “Black Spirits and White.” Some of the cast rehearsed on their own time with Emily Noël, one of the witches, who had experience singing early m ­ usic with the Folger Consort, but the ad hoc nature of m ­ usic rehearsal caused considerable consternation, particularly at the beginning of the rehearsal p­ rocess.

Instrumental ­Music Although the witches’ scenes formed the musical centerpiece of the production, period instrumental ­music also served Richmond’s production concept, and

Staging Davenant • 37

t­ hese pieces also evoked the tensions of syncopated time, that “warp and draw of one time in another time.”20 From the moment audiences entered the theater, they heard Eisenstein’s band playing in a gallery above the stage, approximating the placement of musicians in Davenant’s play­house at Lincoln’s Inn Fields.21 Eisenstein also recapitulated the sound of the Restoration theater, as he selected a suite of instrumental ­music that played as the audience found their seats.22 The ­music served a clear purpose: to draw the modern denizens of DC into a Restoration sonic space. The historical illusion continued as the inmates of Bedlam and their cruel warden appeared onstage. The band played a g minor fantasy by Matthew Locke followed by a hornpipe from his Rare Theatrical manuscript to accompany the actors’ entrances, their curtseying and bowing for the audience, their abuse by the warden, their donning of costumes.23 This sequence also aligned with Restoration-­era theater practices, for instrumental m ­ usic sometimes accompanied onstage action or was used to set the scene.24 Thus, the combination of the players’ Restoration-­era costumes and the sound of Locke’s ­music summoned the “ghost” of the Restoration production, to use ­performance studies scholar Marvin Carlson’s terminology.25 But the tension between past and pre­sent kept reasserting itself, for the re-­ presentation at the Folger could not replicate what happened in the Duke’s Com­ pany production of Macbeth. We cannot shed our twenty-­first-­century subjectivity and experiences. Thus, the modern performers in our 2018 Macbeth w ­ ere imperfect surrogates for their Restoration-­era counter­parts. As Joseph Roach notes, “The fit cannot be exact.”26 And while the ­music sonically conjured the Restoration, our audiences prob­ably understood this interlude as replicating modern cinematic underscoring practices, rather than reproducing Restoration theatrical ones. The phenomenon of syncopated time worked differently in another instance, as the creative team adapted early modern ­music to modern musical practice. Instrumental musical cues ­were used to set the scene in the Restoration theater, but Eisenstein’s employed a Restoration-­era tune, “Long, Cold Nights,” which first appeared in Apollo’s Banquet (1690), in a distinctly non-­Restoration fashion, as a leitmotif. The leitmotif, a short motive or theme associated with a person, place, ­thing, or idea, was widely used by nineteenth-­century opera composers and is still employed by modern film composers. For instance, Darth Vader’s entrance in Star Wars is accompanied by “The Imperial March.” This theme is reused by composer John Williams throughout the movie series, even when Darth Vader is not on screen, to represent Vader and his evil. Thus, by using a leitmotif in his compilation score, Eisenstein was putting old wine in a new ­bottle, using a period tune in a more modern fashion. The “Long, Cold Nights” leitmotif introduced Davenant’s newly written scene for Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff set in Lady Macbeth’s chamber (act 1, scene 5).27 The domestic qualities of the theme and its association with Lady Macduff were further clarified in a l­ ater scene of Richmond’s devising. The director

38 • Amanda Eubanks Winkler

combined two scenes between Macduff and Lady Macduff in act 3 (scenes 2 and 6) into one, setting them in “Macduff’s homestead.” The ­couple speak to each other in heroic couplets, as befits their station and the gravity of their discussion. And yet the use of the leitmotif, Richmond’s realist staging, and his direction to the actors to not “let the couplets drive [the scene] too much” cut against the grain of Davenant’s version.28 In Davenant’s Macbeth, the ­couple’s nobility is revealed through poetic form (heroic couplets) and the content of their dialogue, as they debate issues of crucial import for a Restoration audience: justice, ambition, regicide, and usurpation. In the Folger staging, the politics of the Restoration were supplanted by an intimate domestic scene, complete with crying baby and plaintive leitmotif.29 The use of historical source material to an ahistorical end also undercut the complexity of Davenant’s Lady Macduff, as the leitmotif emphasized her role as wife and ­mother, her domesticity, over her p­ olitical agency. In its final iteration, the tune, now transposed from major to minor key, literally underscored Lennox’s news of the murder of Macduff’s ­family: Your ­Castle is surpriz’d, your Wife and C ­ hildren Savagely murder’d: to relate the Manner, ­Were to increase the Butchery of them, By adding to their fall the Death of You.30

Thus, a Restoration tune used in a non-­Restoration way elided the p­ olitical meanings of the past, while emphasizing the domesticity and victimhood of Lady Macduff—an emphasis that the director perceived to be more legible for his twenty-­first-­century audience than her p­ olitical agency. Strangely, Davenant’s version of Lady Macduff is more progressive than the Folger version of Lady Macduff. Although the use of the leitmotif was emotionally resonant, at the Folger her wings ­were clipped, her power constrained through sonic means, as her tune evoked hearth and home, not ­political debate.

Singing Witches In an oft-­cited passage from Gondibert, Davenant criticized the “descending of Gods in gay Clowds” and the “rising of Ghosts in Smoake,” for the “best Dramaticks; who in repre­sen­ta­tion of examples, believe they prevail most on our manners when they lay the Scene at home in their own Countrey, so much they avoid t­ hose remote regions of Heaven and Hell.”31 Gondibert was dedicated to his arch-­rationalist friend, Thomas Hobbes, which might have inflected Davenant’s rhe­toric; regardless, the playwright’s wariness about super­natural plot devices appears to have been genuine.32 However, just as he did not excise the ghost from Hamlet, he did not remove the super­natural from Macbeth: the

Staging Davenant • 39

witches are perfectly intact, although their m ­ usic substantially alters their characterization. They are not the same as Shakespeare’s weird ­sisters. As noted, Richmond had reservations about the jovial sound of the witches’ ­music and was determined to restore their eeriness, their danger. In his staging, the witches would be the most disturbed patients in the asylum. Richmond also de­cided to have them linger onstage even when Davenant’s play did not call for them to serve as a visual reminder of the relationship between madness and ambition. But their onstage presence was not entirely s­ haped by the directorial guidance provided by Richmond; it was also ­shaped by the information about Restoration-­era theatrical witchcraft and madness provided by the scholarly team. Actors playing the witches’ roles a­ dopted a grotesque gestural language as they sang and danced, a bodily language equally rooted in early modern ideas of witchcraft and early modern and modern notions of ­mental illness. Indeed, the ­performance choices of our witches ensured the presence of syncopated time, as they used their modern bodies to flesh out the Restoration-­era text. For instance, one of the witches, Emily Noël, has a beautiful lyric soprano voice, but through gesture and affect she worked directly against its sonic associations with virginity or angelic purity. Noël’s physicality assisted with this: she was five months pregnant when we began rehearsals, and she used her increasingly large belly as a prop, undermining ­stereotypes of the good, nurturing ­mother. Most memorably, she took the hand of Duncan’s corpse and used it to lasciviously caress her baby bump. Her ­performance choice was si­mul­ta­neously modern and early modern: “bad” or “demonic” ­mothers are still the stuff of nightmares and horror movies, but this anxiety threads through early modern discourses about witches as well. In a grotesque perversion of motherhood, the early modern witch “nursed” her demonic familiars with her own blood.33 Ethan Watermeier, our bass witch, similarly engaged with syncopated time, making ­performance choices with his modern body and voice that w ­ ere grounded in historical practices. In Davenant’s time and in Shakespeare’s adult male actors frequently played grotesque female roles, including ­those of female witches. This grotesque ­presentation of femininity reflected offstage discourses. Early modern screeds against witchcraft indicted female witches for being masculine or androgynous. The witch’s grotesque body also moved in unexpected or un­regu­la­ted ways, was connected to filth and vermin (through spell ingredients or her relationship with her familiars), and was often visibly handicapped or deformed. All ­these somatic signifiers provided early moderns with evidence of the witches’ spiritual deformity—­their outsides reflected their polluted souls.34 Accordingly, Watermeier de­cided that his witch was “on the spectrum” and had a malformed leg. The sound of Watermeier’s witch also reinforced his grotesque ­presentation of femininity—­his resonant, deep voice was unsettlingly juxtaposed with his harsh makeup and his blonde wig.

40 • Amanda Eubanks Winkler

The third witch, Rachael Montgomery, was the youn­gest of the three, and her thin alto voice caused some consternation among the production team; they wondered if she had the vocal ability to deliver a persuasive p­ erformance as an insane, evil witch. On the Restoration stage, many actors would not have had formal vocal training, but most of the performers who sang Eccles’s score ­were known for their vocal talents.35 The score is demanding, so the Folger’s decision to cast Montgomery, an inexperienced singer, had serious repercussions. Richmond sought to make up this perceived deficit by having the actor cut her hair short in an amateurish fashion and adopt an Irish accent to emphasize her Otherness. He also told her that she was the most mentally disturbed witch and should act and sing accordingly. Over the course of the rehearsal period, Montgomery developed a harsh vocal style and a grotesque habitus, choices that combined early modern expectations of theatrical witchcraft with modern ones. Act 2, scene 5 provides an excellent example of how the witches’ m ­ usic, the Bedlamite frame, and the juxtaposition of the early modern texts with modern ­performance practices ­shaped the syncopated time of our Macbeth. Davenant created this scene anew to provide the divertissement that Restoration theatergoers like Pepys craved and to draw a clear moral contrast between the virtuous Macduffs and the nefarious Macbeths.36 Lady Macduff and Macduff flee the bloodshed at court with their ­children and servants. They encounter the witches upon the heath and look on as the “weyward s­ isters” sing and dance two numbers in cele­bration of Duncan’s regicide: “Speak, ­Sister, Speak” and “Let’s Have a Dance.” “Speak, S­ ister, Speak” is a case study in the slipperiness of seventeenth-­century musical signification in the twenty-­first ­century. The witches’ melismatic “rejoicing” might evoke the sound of Handel’s oratorios for a modern audience, where such musical gestures are reserved for the praise of God, not the bleeding of kings. Our twenty-­first-­century audience’s understanding of the sacrilegious cele­bration of regicide did not significantly diverge from the way seventeenth-­century audiences would have heard the witches’ co-­option of sacred musical tropes. For Restoration audiences, the witches’ melismatic rejoicing about “good kings” bleeding would have signified their moral topsy-­turviness, their evil nature, even if urbane audience members like Pepys ­didn’t take witches or their powers too seriously.37 Regardless of the possibility that the audience at the Folger and in Restoration London might have heard ­these musical features in roughly the same way, our director was not comfortable with the “rejoicing”; he wanted the witches’ menace to be more clearly telegraphed. Thus, he amplified the witches’ perversion. The coven desecrated Duncan’s corpse and sang and danced around his body. Although Richmond hoped that his interventions would sufficiently darken the tone, the audience still laughed at the witches’ antics. The sound of their ­music, particularly when they gleefully exclaimed, “Now let us dance!” overrode the grotesque visuals. Indeed, Davenant anticipated and staged divergent

Staging Davenant • 41

responses to the witches’ singing and dancing. The Macduffs have radically dif­ fer­ent reactions to what they see and hear. Macduff is frightened by their “hellish Song,” but Lady Macduff is not. She reminds her husband that as a warrior he should be courageous: “This is most strange, but why seem you affraid? / Can you be capable of fears, who have so often caus’d it in your enemies?”38 ­A fter hearing the witches’ next number, “Let’s Have a Dance,” Lady Macduff remains stalwart, echoing Davenant’s ambivalence about the super­natural and its power. Indeed, the sound of the m ­ usic supports this ambivalence, as the witches are entertaining and menacing at the same time. As with their first song, their text gestures ­toward evil—­they “gain more lives by Duncan’s death”—­but their ­music employs jig rhythms and a major key.39 Modern audience members prob­ably ­were unaware of the rustic and sexual associations the jig possessed during the Restoration period, but they could hear that the ­music sounded jolly and they responded accordingly, with giggles and approving sounds. And yet, despite their jaunty musical divertissement, the witches do accurately prophecy the doom of Macduff’s ­family. They actually do possess power, for evil can lurk beneath an entertaining surface. Despite our audience’s laughter, they, like their early modern antecedents, understood the witches’ complex signification in the drama, constructed through text, ­music, and gesture. This comprehension is reflected in their comments on our audience surveys.

Audience and Critical Responses The survey we administered ­after our Macbeth ­performances revealed that the intermediality of Restoration Shakespeare was the most appealing feature of Davenant’s adaptation and that our audience did understand the ways it complicated and enriched the witches’ characterization.40 Although many of our survey respondents had reservations about the Bedlamite frame, they felt the madness worked in the witches’ scenes, where jolly m ­ usic was juxtaposed with violent and grotesque stage action. One respondent enthused, “­Those ­were my favourite weird s­ isters ever; having them from the perspective of m ­ ental health and witchcraft, representing a person’s inner psychosis throughout the play, was brilliant.”41 Another audience member mentioned “the stage vio­lence” and the “Folger Consort’s instrumental and vocal ­music,” suggesting that the combination of the two was particularly potent.42 One commentator clearly understood the witches’ menace: “I enjoyed the addition of the 17th-­century ­music to the production, and especially the witches’ pieces. To have them singing about murder in the style prob­ably most of us associate with Handel’s ‘Messiah’ was unexpected and so in­ter­est­ing.”43 The critics also found the intermediality of Davenant’s Macbeth to be the most successful ele­ment of the Folger staging. The critical response to the witches’ scenes and Bob Eisenstein’s compilation score was almost uniformly positive. For instance, Peter Tabakis, writing for DCist, praised the combination of

42 • Amanda Eubanks Winkler

spectacle, drama, and m ­ usic: “[It’s] modern and alive. It’s spectacular. Barreling action is amplified by a chamber ensemble that’s placed, literally, above the fray. A runaway plot and ceaseless soundtrack harmonize onstage. The result is operatic, if not cinematic, given the show’s use of shadows projected on makeshift screens.”44 The most negative review of the intermediality of the production came from the Washington Post. Some of the criticism in this review interestingly echoed many of the points made by critics from the eigh­teenth ­century onward, who largely viewed Davenant’s Shakespeare adaptations as frivolous debasements of sacred texts. The Post sent two critics to the production, theater critic Peter Marks and classical ­music critic Anne Midgette, to write a coauthored review. Marks ­didn’t see the point of resurrecting a Macbeth that desecrated the words of the eternal Bard, while Midgette shared our director’s concerns about an inconsistency of tone and the witches’ lack of musical menace: “to modern ears . . . ​[their ­music] sounded rather tranquil and jolly, creating a pastoral effect at some of the piece’s darkest moments.”45

Conclusions Staging Macbeth at the Folger made us confront the ­pleasures and pitfalls of resurrecting past playing styles, past Shakespeares. As practice-­based research, our production was a success. We learned that building in extra time for musical rehearsal, if pos­si­ble, is a good idea. Spectacle is impor­tant, even if shadows generated by arc lights and blood and gore take the place of changeable scenery. We learned that integrating substantial live m ­ usic into a production still conjures a strange perfection, even in a tragedy. In short, we learned that the dramaturgy of Restoration Shakespeare could appeal to a modern audience. Our production sold out for its entire run. And staging Macbeth allowed us, on a practical level, to understand Davenant’s wisdom: why he wrote what he did, why Restoration theatrical practices worked. Some of this Restoration magic still shone through in the witches’ scenes. By juxtaposing their jaunty tunes in major keys with horrific onstage actions, director Robert Richmond tried to bridge the gap between the early modern understanding of witchcraft and our modern notions of evil, and, for the majority of audience members and critics, he succeeded. But, ironically, his staging also revealed how ­little ­things have changed from the Restoration era to ­today—­modern strategies for portraying evil are still colored by the same set of prejudices about the disabled, the marginalized (of vari­ous kinds), and the poor. Indeed, it was precisely the deployment of ­these ­stereotypes in the Folger production that allowed the unfamiliar seventeenth-­century musical conventions to communicate with audiences ­today. Our production of Macbeth also taught us a ­great deal about best practices for scholar/artist collaborations, which I’ll share by way of conclusion. First,

Staging Davenant • 43

clearly state scholarly and artistic aims and share ­these goals with collaborators in writing. This was something we did, and our clarity of purpose allowed the production to serve our intellectual aims, while giving our scholarly team the opportunity to craft research questions that would be answerable through their participation in the rehearsal ­process. Second, if the proj­ect is bringing significant financial resources to the ­table, as we did, exert some control over the hiring of personnel, to make sure every­one on the team is ready to fulfill the intellectual goals of the proj­ect. Third, bring the scholars into the creative planning p­ rocess from the beginning. Although Richard and I met with the creative team before rehearsals began, it would have been more fruitful if all the scholars had been a part of ­those conversations. This would have allowed historical knowledge to more fully inform production choices. Fi­nally, arrange for robust and sustained interactions between the performers and scholars. The performers consistently said that they wanted more time with the scholarly team—­they suggested that in a ­f uture proj­ect we implement regular social hours ­a fter rehearsal, where scholars and performers might informally mix. This started to happen organically ­toward the end of the two-­week residency, but the actors would have preferred something more ­organized. None of ­these proposed “best practices” should be construed as a criticism of the Folger or our collaborators— we w ­ ere all charting new terrain with this production. I commend them for taking a chance on Restoration Shakespeare, and for embracing the discomfort of syncopated time.

Notes 1 Samuel Pepys, January 7, 1667, and April 19, 1667, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 11 vols., ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 8:7, 171. 2 Queen’s University Belfast, “Performing Restoration Shakespeare” (n.d.), https://­ www​.­qub​.­ac​.­uk​/­schools​/­ael​/­Research​/­ResearchinArts​/­ResearchImpact​/­Performin gRestorationShakespeare. 3 Stephen Purcell, “Practice-­as-­Research and Original Practices,” Shakespeare Bulletin 35, no. 3 (2017): 425–443. 4 Performing Restoration Shakespeare YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com​ /@performingrestorationshake3194. 5 Of par­tic­u­lar relevance for this essay are Sara Reimers and Richard Schoch, “Performing Restoration Shakespeare T ­ oday: Staging Davenant’s Macbeth,” Shakespeare Bulletin 37, no. 4 (2020): 467–489; Claude Fretz, “Performing Restoration Shakespeare ‘Then’ and ‘Now’: A Case Study of Davenant’s Macbeth,” Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 48, no. 1 (2022): 27–56; and many of the Macbeth-­oriented chapters in Performing Restoration Shakespeare, ed. Amanda Eubanks Winkler, Claude Fretz, and Richard Schoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023). ­ erformance, and the 6 Amanda Eubanks Winkler, “A Tale of Twelfth Night: ­Music, P Pursuit of Authenticity,” Shakespeare Bulletin 36, no. 2 (2018): 251–270. 7 As described by Caroline Abbate in her influential article, “­Music—­Drastic or Gnostic?,” Critical Inquiry 30, no. 3 (2004): 505–536.

44 • Amanda Eubanks Winkler

8 See especially Laurence Dreyfus, “Early ­Music Defended against Its Devotees: A Theory of Historical ­Performance in the Twentieth ­Century,” Musical Quarterly 69, no. 3 (1983): 297–322; Peter Kivy, Authenticities: Philosophical Reflections on Musical ­Performance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995); and Richard Taruskin, Text and Act: Essays on M ­ usic and ­Performance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 9 Taruskin famously made this point in Text and Act, but see also Tim Car­ter, “It’s All in the Notes?,” Early ­Music 41, no. 1 (2013): 81–82. For more recent articulations of the relationship between historical knowledge and musical p­ erformance practice, see John Butt, Playing with History: The Historical Approach to Musical ­Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), and Bruce Haynes, The End of Early ­Music: A Period Performer’s History of ­Music for the Twenty-­First C ­ entury (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). ­ usic and placement of musicians in 10 For a recent examination of the use of m Shakespeare’s theaters, see Ross Duffin, “­Music and the Stage in the Time of Shakespeare,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare, ed. R. Malcolm Smuts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 748–763, esp. 754–756. On the Middletonian musical interpolations in Macbeth, see Amanda Eubanks Winkler, ed., ­Music for Macbeth, Recent Researches in the ­Music of the Baroque Era 133 (Middleton, WI: A-­R Editions, 2004), vii. Stephen Orgel argued that the musicalized Macbeth preserved in the First Folio may have been adapted to suit the demonological and musical interests of James I; Orgel, “Macbeth and the Antic Round,” in Au­then­tic Shakespeare and Other Prob­lems of the Early Modern Stage (New York: Routledge, 2002), 160–161. 11 On Davenant’s intermedial aesthetic and his experiments of the 1650s, see Dawn Lewcock, William Davenant, the Court Masque, and the E ­ nglish Seventeenth-­ Century Scenic Stage, c1605–­c1700 (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2008). 12 Amanda Eubanks Winkler and Richard Schoch, Shakespeare in ­Performance: Sir William Davenant and the Duke’s Com­pany (London: Arden Shakespeare/ Bloomsbury, 2021). ­ oday,” 480–481. 13 Reimers and Schoch, “Performing Restoration Shakespeare T 14 Rebecca Schneider, Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment (London: Routledge, 2011), 2. 15 On musical conventions for witches, see Amanda Eubanks Winkler, O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note: M ­ usic for Witches, the Mad and the Melancholic on the Seventeenth-­ Century ­English Stage (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 18–62. 16 Reimers and Schoch observe that this tonal consistency is anachronistic, “Performing Restoration Shakespeare T ­ oday,” 482, as does Deborah C. Payne, “ ‘Damn You, Davenant!’: The Perils and Possibilities of Restoration Shakespeare,” Restoration and 18th ­Century Theatre Research 32, no. 1 (2017): 21–40, esp. 33. 17 For ­these observations, I have drawn on the “Macbeth Musicians’ ­Running Script,” which includes Richmond’s textual adaptations to Davenant, as well as all the sound and musical cues. I have supplemented this information with my notes taken in rehearsals and during previews, and the archival video of the dress rehearsal. 18 Andrew Walkling, a member of the scholarly team, suggested Matthew Locke’s The Rare Theatrical to Bob Eisenstein. Its use is described below. 19 On ­music rehearsals in the Restoration theater, see Tiffany Stern, Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 166. 20 Schneider, Performing Remains, 6.

Staging Davenant • 45

21 Pepys’s diary suggests that Lincoln’s Inn Fields had a m ­ usic room over the stage or placed musicians in a side balcony over the forestage; Michael Burden, “Where Did Purcell Keep His Theatre Band?,” Early ­Music 37, no. 3 (2009): 429–443, esp. 432. ­ usic, 22 In the Restoration theater, audiences would have heard the first and second m the spoken prologue, and then the overture and a “curtain tune” (sometimes t­ hese latter two terms are synonymous, sometimes they refer to separate pieces); Curtis A. Price, M ­ usic in the Restoration Theatre (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1979), 54–58. 23 “Macbeth Musicians’ ­Running Script,” 3. This was Locke’s Fantasie from his Suite in G minor and a Hornpipe from Locke’s manuscript, The Rare Theatrical, which is held by the New York Public Library, Drexel 3976. 24 Price, ­Music in the Restoration Theatre, 9–15. 25 Marvin Carlson, The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 7. 26 Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-­Atlantic ­Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 2. 27 “Macbeth Musicians’ ­Running Script,” 15–16. 28 Quotation taken from Reimers’s rehearsal notes as reproduced in Reimers and Schoch, “Performing Restoration Shakespeare T ­ oday,” 483. 29 “Macbeth Musicians’ ­Running Script,” 44. My argument aligns with the observations of Reimers and Schoch in “Performing Restoration Shakespeare T ­ oday,” 483–484. 3 0 “Macbeth Musicians’ ­Running Script,” 79. 31 William Davenant, A Discourse upon Gondibert: An Heroick Poem (Paris, 1650), 8. 32 On Davenant, Hobbes, and Gondibert, see Niall Allsopp, Poetry and Sovereignty in the E ­ nglish Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 26–56. 33 Gail Paster, The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern ­England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 244–260, and Deborah Willis, Malevolent Nurture: Witch-­Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern ­England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995). 34 On the witch and somatic/spiritual deformity, see Eubanks Winkler, O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note, 19–20. 35 For a list of singers who performed the witches’ roles in the Eccles’s version, see Eubanks Winkler, ­Music for Macbeth, 98. 36 Christopher Spencer speculates that the first twelve lines of “Speak, ­Sister, Speak,” may have been written by Shakespeare; see Davenant’s Macbeth from the Yale Manuscript: An Edition, with a Discussion of the Relation of Davenant’s Text to Shakespeare’s (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1961), 67. 37 Ian Bostridge discusses the increase in skepticism about witchcraft in Witchcraft and Its Transformations, c. 1650–­c. 1750 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997). 38 [William Davenant], Macbeth: A Tragedy (London: Printed for P. Chetwin, 1674), 27. 39 [Davenant], Macbeth, 27. 4 0 “Macbeth at the Folger: Audience Survey Results,” 2. 41 “Macbeth at the Folger,” 3. 42 “Macbeth at the Folger,” 2. 43 “Macbeth at the Folger,” 2. 4 4 Peter Tabakis, “­You’ve Never Seen Any ‘Macbeth’ Like the One at the Folger Theatre,” DCist, September 12, 2018, https://­dcist​.­com​/­story​/­18​/­09​/­12​/­macbeth​ -­restoration​-­folger​-­theatre​-­review.

46 • Amanda Eubanks Winkler

45 Peter Marks and Anne Midgette, “Two Critics Debate a Rare Rehashing of a Revised ‘Macbeth’: Singing Witches and All,” Washington Post, September 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­washingtonpost​.­com​/­entertainment​/­theater​_­dance​/­t wo​-­critics​ -­debate​-­a​-­rare​-­rehashing​-­of​-­a​-­revised​-­macbeth​-­singing​-­witches​-­and​-­a ll​/­2018​/­09​/­12​ /­da50bfdc​-­b69c​-­11e8​-­b79f​-­f6e31e555258​_ ­story​.­html.

3

The Arts of Memory in Absalom and Achitophel Dryden’s Response to Milton and Marvell PAUL HAMMOND Readers of John Dryden rarely reflect on the fact that, in addition to being Poet Laureate, he was also Historiographer Royal,1 with implicit responsibilities for shaping history, that is, for shaping the nation’s collective memory, in a way that would leave to posterity a certain idea of ­England and of the Stuart monarchy. He did this primarily through his poetry rather than through his occasional prose writings on con­temporary or historical subjects such as His Majesties Declaration Defended (1681) or The History of the League (1684). In Absalom and Achitophel (1681), Dryden engages explic­itly with the question of how the past is being, and should be, remembered; in so ­doing, he mythologizes the pre­sent in a way that seeks to control it, and to control how f­ uture ages w ­ ill recall this moment in E ­ ngland’s history. Although the Act of F ­ ree and General P ­ ardon, Indemnity and Oblivion of 1660 had endeavored to prevent ­people using memories of the Civil War to discredit their rivals and enemies, many writers during the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis feared that 1681 would be a repetition of 1641, that the massacre of Protestants in Ireland would be repeated as part of a Jesuit coup, and that the ­political

47

48 • Paul Hammond

upheaval would instigate a new civil war.2 Absalom and Achitophel also deploys fearful memories of the Civil War, but in a dif­fer­ent way, suggesting that the Whig opposition to Charles II and his Catholic b­ rother James risked reigniting the e­ arlier conflict. Dryden accuses the Whigs (or “Commonwealthsmen” as he calls them in his preface)3 of fomenting the kind of rebellious disorder that had led to open war just a generation e­ arlier. His poem plays afresh with memory and oblivion: some participants in the Exclusion Crisis are cast into oblivion by not being memorialized in the poem, ­others by having their proper names transformed into biblical names. And t­ here is another act of memory that shapes Dryden’s poem, as he weaves into its texture local engagements with John Milton and Andrew Marvell, two figures who had been co-­opted into the Whig cause. They too would find themselves transformed by the poem’s memory. Dryden uses the word “memory” four times in his poem. The first time is when he says that “the sober part of Israel,” looking backward with a wise affright, Saw seams of wounds dishonest to the sight; In contemplation of whose ugly scars They cursed the memory of civil wars. (71–74)

­ ere memory works in right-­thinking men who “knew the value of a peaceH ful reign” (70) to make them recoil from repeating the Civil War. The wounds of civil war are “dishonest,” that is, both “shameful” (OED 1) and “hideous” (OED 3),4 and h ­ ere Dryden is recalling Virgil’s phrase inhonesto vulnere,5 which is applied to Priam’s son Deiphobus, whom Aeneas encounters in his visit to the underworld. Briefly drawn into the contentions of Restoration ­England, the word “dishonest” (sufficiently unusual in ­these senses for its Latin resonance to be noted by attentive readers) forms part of Dryden’s reflection on the past misery of war and the sacrifice of one who dies fighting for his king.6 ­Later in the poem, Dryden weaves other fragments of the Aeneid into his commemoration of the Earl of Ossory, ascribing his death to “unequal Fates” (834), from Virgil’s fatis iniquis (referring to the gods allowing the Greeks to shelter inside the wooden h ­ orse),7 and echoing Virgil’s tribute to Marcellus, the lost heir to Augustus (844–845).8 The destruction of Troy quietly haunts the poem, suggesting a comparable fate for London, that second Troy, if the rebellious Whigs w ­ ere to gain the upper hand, and if the gullible London crowd ­were to demolish the walls of its constitution to drag in some monstrous new wooden ­horse. The subtle recollections of Virgil also seek out a par­tic­u ­lar constituency of readers with a classical training, so that this appeal to their cultural memory is also a gesture that consolidates a community of readers with shared memories and, Dryden hopes, shared values.9

The Arts of Memory in Absalom and Achitophel • 49

The three remaining uses of the word “memory” in the poem cluster around Titus Oates: His memory, miraculously g­ reat, Could plots exceeding man’s belief, repeat; Which therefore cannot be accounted lies, For h ­ uman wit could never such devise. Some f­ uture truths are mingled in his book, But where the witness failed, the prophet spoke. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . His judgement yet his memory did excel, Which pieced his wondrous evidence so well, And suited to the temper of the times Then groaning ­under Jebusitic crimes. Let Israel’s foes suspect his heavenly call, And rashly judge his writ apocryphal; Our laws for such affronts have forfeits made: He takes his life who takes away his trade. ­Were I myself in witness Corah’s place The wretch who did me such a dire disgrace Should whet my memory, though once forgot, To make him an appendix of my plot. (650–671; italics added)

Oates’s memory is both a creative and a destructive faculty, remembering t­ hings that never happened, and thereby destroying the lives of innocent men through his malicious fabrications.10 Oates’s memory threatens to become prophecy, an outcome that the poem seeks to prevent through this exposure of his mendacious memory. To dispel this prospect, at the end of the poem Dryden’s own narrative voice turns from memory to prophecy when he foresees a grateful nation acclaiming its rightful lord.  In his casting of con­temporary history into myth, Dryden, as we know, draws on Milton. “Absalom and Achitophel can be read as a par­tic­u ­lar, local, con­ temporary instance of the universal and timelessly recurring drama of Milton’s epic,” says Anne Davidson Ferry.11 Vari­ous echoes of Paradise Lost turn Milton’s own work against the Whigs, who would posthumously enlist him in their cause.12 In his engagement with Milton, Dryden is sharing the former’s language but putting it to a new use. As Mark Goldie reflects, A ­political language denotes something looser than a theory or ideology. It is an intellectual toolkit, a discursive field, an available resource for the work

50 • Paul Hammond

of legitimation. It is protean, malleable, and not prescriptive of par­tic­u­lar doctrinal, still less policy, outcomes. In use, it might lead to quite contrary positions, but ones which ­will be legible and plausible to their audiences, ­because operating within a common frame of reference and shared sources of value. Such resources lend authority to positions, if persuasively configured, but more fundamentally they make p­ olitical conversation pos­si­ble, by providing a common parlance.13

Dryden’s appropriation of Milton’s language begins in his preface “To the Reader,” where he says of Absalom that “ ’tis no more a won­der that he withstood not the temptations of Achitophel than it was for Adam not to have resisted the two ­devils, the serpent and the ­woman” (54–57). In the poem itself we are told that Absalom is so beautiful that “Paradise was open’d in his face” (30). Achitophel, “Hell’s dire agent” (373), “Disdain’d the golden fruit to gather ­free, / And lent the crowd his arm to shake the tree” (202–203). As for his followers, “Some had in courts been ­great, and thrown from thence, / Like fiends, ­were harden’d in impenitence” (144–145).14 ­Under the patronage of Slingsby Bethel, “The sons of Belial had a glorious time” (598).15 One could add many other examples of how Milton’s poem on the Fall of Man is made to contribute to the myth-­making of Dryden’s poem. Of course, t­ hese are primarily biblical allusions, and they work as such for anyone who has read Genesis but not Paradise Lost, and yet some details do specifically recall Milton’s poem. In re­spect of the lines just quoted, for example, the association of Edenic fruit with the golden apples of the classical Hesperides is made by Milton (PL 4:249); the fall of the rebel angels is narrated in Paradise Lost but not in the Bible; and the word “paradise” itself is never used in the Authorized Version of the Bible to refer to Eden. Sometimes one comes across evidence of Dryden carefully thinking about his poem with Paradise Lost open in front of him. In the poem’s first edition Dryden wrote that Achitophel “Assumed a patriot’s all-­atoning name” (line 179), and then for the second edition changed “Assumed” to “Usurped”; as Hannah Buchan observed, both the original reading and the revision recall Adam’s denunciation of Nimrod for “assuming / Authority usurped, from God not given” (PL 12:64–65), so when revising his lines on Achitophel for the quarto edition of his poem Dryden seems to have remembered Milton’s passage on Nimrod, looked it up, and made a slight alteration to his text. The new reading “usurped” of course now links Shaftesbury with the usurper Oliver ­Cromwell.16 In Eikonoklastes Milton had characterized Nimrod not only as “the first that founded Monarchy” but also as “the first that hunted ­after Faction.”17 For Dryden, Shaftesbury is a second Nimrod, a promoter of faction—­a word that Dryden uses seven times in his poem.18 But perhaps the most impor­tant re­spect in which Dryden engages with Milton in Absalom and Achitophel relates to Milton’s distinctive concern with liberty, a watchword of Milton’s prose writings in defense of the Commonwealth, and the focus of his extended meditation in Paradise Lost on the use and misuse

The Arts of Memory in Absalom and Achitophel • 51

of man’s freedom.19 One of the principal ideas in Dryden’s poem is that the Whigs and their followers have a fundamentally erroneous notion of freedom, a case that he formulates through an evocation of Paradise Lost: ­These Adam-­wits, too fortunately f­ ree Began to dream they wanted liberty, And when no rule, no pre­ce­dent was found Of men, by laws less circumscribed and bound They led their wild desires to woods and caves, And thought that all but savages w ­ ere slaves. (51–56)20

A closely parallel passage from the Epistle Dedicatory to All for Love (1678), addressed to the Earl of Danby, shows that Dryden was already thinking about the use and misuse of liberty, and the misappropriated rhe­toric of “liberty,” several years before the Exclusion Crisis broke; he expresses ­there a loathing to that specious Name of a Republick: that mock-­appearance of a Liberty, where all who have not part in the Government, are Slaves: and Slaves they are of a viler note than such as are Subjects to an absolute Dominion. For no Christian Monarchy is so absolute, but ’tis circumscrib’ d with Laws . . . ​And yet ­there are not wanting Malecontents amongst us, who surfeiting themselves on too much happiness, wou’ d perswade the P ­ eople that they might be happier by a change. ’Twas indeed the policy of their old Forefather, when himself was fallen from the station of Glory, to seduce Mankind into the same Rebellion with him, by telling him he might yet be freer than he was: that is, more fr ­ ee than his Nature wou’ d allow, or (if I may so say) than God cou’ d make him. We have already all the Liberty which Free-­born Subjects can enjoy; and all beyond it is but License.21

Verbal parallels suggest that Dryden had this passage in mind when writing his poem, since he writes in All for Love of the pre­sent constitution being “circumscrib’ d with Laws” while in Absalom and Achitophel the p­ eople are represented as following “laws less circumscribed”; in the Epistle, p­ eople think that if they do not have a direct part in government, they are slaves; in the poem, they think that “all but savages w ­ ere slaves.” The idea that Satan wished “to seduce Mankind” into rebellion “by telling him he might yet be freer than he was” might be deduced from the Bible, but Paradise Lost is a closer source: in book 1 Milton writes of “man by him seduced” (1:219); in book 9 the serpent incites Eve to take the forbidden fruit by suggesting that God intends to keep Adam and Eve “low and ignorant” (9:704), whereas by eating it they w ­ ill become “as gods” (9:710); therefore, he urges her, “freely taste” (9:732). Milton knew well enough that “liberty” and “freedom” are watchwords that can easily lead astray ­those who do not have a secure understanding of the imperatives of Christian obedience, and who are not sufficiently on their guard against the misuse of rhe­toric. Dryden

52 • Paul Hammond

agreed, albeit from an opposite ­political standpoint. In both the Epistle and the poem Dryden is recalling Milton’s crusade to define and to implement “liberty,” but casting that Miltonic liberty (which, he implies, is also Whiggish liberty) as mere savage license. H ­ ere Dryden seems to be recalling other Miltonic texts in addition to Paradise Lost, for his distinction between liberty and license echoes Milton’s “Licence they mean when they cry libertie” in a sonnet first published in 1673.22 Dryden’s reference to “Free-­born Subjects” also recalls the Interregnum rhe­toric of the free-­born En­glishman,23 and Milton himself in the epigraph to Areopagitica: “This is true Liberty when f­ ree born men / Having to advise the public may speak f­ ree.”24 Ironically, Dryden’s insistence that a Christian monarchy is circumscribed with laws is actually consonant with Milton’s claim in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates that no ­English king is above the law: How then can any King in E ­ urope maintain and write himself accountable to none but God, when Emperors in thir own imperial Statutes have writt’n and decreed themselves accountable to Law. And indeed where such account is not fear’d, he that bids a man reigne over him above Law, may bid as well a savage Beast. It follows lastly, that since the King or Magistrate holds his autoritie of the p­ eople, both originaly and naturally for their good in the first place, and not his own, then may the p­ eople as oft as they s­ hall judge it for the best, ­either choose him or reject him, retaine him or depose him though no Tyrant, meerly by the liberty and right of f­ ree born Men, to be govern’d as seems to them best.25

For Milton, the savage beast is the absolute ruler tyrannizing over his subjects; for Dryden, the savage is the lawless antinomian. ­Here Dryden has remembered not only Virgil and Lucretius but the postlapsarian Adam,26 who laments, Oh, might I ­here In solitude live savage, in some glade Obscured, where highest woods impenetrable . . . (PL 9:1084–1086)

This savage freedom is a life hidden away from the sight of the God against whom Adam has rebelled. Both Dryden and Milton write with an awareness of the etymological roots of the ­English “savage” in the Latin silva (wood),27 and Dryden’s imagery of woods and caves also glances at the Whig habit of tracing the original freedom of the E ­ nglish to German tribes who gathered in the forest to transact their ­political business, as described by Tacitus.28 The Whigs would lead man back into the state of nature, but it would be a Hobbesian state of war rather than a locus of lost freedoms. As Sir Roger L’Estrange warned, the opposition’s refusal to accept the king’s authority would “throw our selves back again into a

The Arts of Memory in Absalom and Achitophel • 53

State of Nature, and Dissolution,” a repetition of the Civil War, for “This was the Ruine of us, in our Late Confusions. The Faction . . . ​From Questioning the ­Legal Power of the King . . . ​proceeded to the Exercise of an Arbitrary Power, Themselves: From Asserting the Subjects Liberties, to the Invading of them.”29 Absalom himself admits that he has no justification “To take up arms for public liberty” ­because Charles “governs with unquestioned right,  / The faith’s defender, and mankind’s delight,” and so, implicitly, the ­battle cry of “public liberty” has no purchase in such circumstances where the King defends the laws of the state, and “heaven by won­ders has espoused his cause” (316–320). But this does not stop Absalom telling the p­ eople that “all your liberties a spoil are made” (704). Achitophel says to Absalom, “ ’tis the general cry / ‘Religion, Commonwealth, and Liberty’ ” (291–292),30 but in Dryden’s eyes all three keywords have been misappropriated. What is achieved by the “general shout” (60) and the “common cry” (783) is the corruption of the language of public discourse.31  It was not only Milton whose vocabulary and ideas engaged Dryden’s attention as he was writing Absalom and Achitophel: he was also recalling Marvell. But whereas the uses of Milton engage and rewrite a public memory by reconfiguring Miltonic ideas—­a form of public allusion that works all the more strongly when its sources are recognized by readers—­the recollections of Marvell are private memories, and part of a sotto voce dialogue with the poet and opposition pamphleteer who was also the author of the poem prefixed to the second edition of Paradise Lost (1674) which implicitly mocked Dryden’s dramatic adaptation, The State of Innocence (composed 1674, printed 1677).32 ­A fter his death on August 16, 1678, Marvell had been posthumously co-­opted into the rhetorical wars of the Exclusion Crisis.33 His An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government, published in the first days of 1678,34 had created a ­great stir, with Sir Roger L’Estrange rushing to answer it the following April,35 and many contributors to the ­political debate appropriating its language.36 Marvell’s Account was initially published anonymously, but some con­ temporary readers recorded an attribution to him on their copies,37 and it was reprinted in 1679 with his name on the title page, posthumously claiming him as a prominent Whig author just as the Popish Plot crisis developed.38 John Ayloffe used Marvell’s persona for his anti-­Stuart satire “Marvell’s Ghost,” which prob­ably began to circulate in manuscript in the months ­after Marvell’s death.39 Thus Marvell became both a Whig champion and a target of t­ hose who sought to discredit his allies. L’Estrange himself reflected on the reasons for reprinting Marvell’s tract, and on the canonization of Marvell by the Whigs: Now if a body should speculate upon the Reasons of Re-­publishing Mr. Marvells Pamphlet at this time, it would make the Preface longer then the Book, to

54 • Paul Hammond

recount them. First, ­there is money to be got by it, and that’s five and fifty reasons in one. Secondly, the Writing or Publishing of a Libell, is lookt upon by some to be the high-­way to preferment, as a prick-­ear’d Anabaptist said t’ other day . . . ​ Thirdly, as the designe gets ground, so it gathers confidence; and that which in 77. would have been worth two or three hundred pound to the Discoverer, may be worth twice as much now in 79. to the Publisher and Printer. ­There may be a fourth end in it, to Canonize Mr. Marvell (now in his grave) if not for a Saint, yet for a Prophet, in shewing how pat the Popish Plot falls out to his conjecture.40

John Nalson associated the Whiggish clamor against so-­called arbitrary government with frequenters of Conventicles and downright Hobbists, and reminded his readers that the preeminent Whig spokesman Marvell had served C ­ romwell’s government in the Office for Foreign Tongues: Who are they that cry out now against the Government, and talk of the g­ reat Danger of Arbitrary Power? Search the City, Examine the Countrey, Ransack the Coffee H ­ ouses, Frequent the Clubs: If you hear any Person inveigh against the Government, or Discourse of the Fear of Arbitrary Designs, you may pawn your Life on’t, you may find him in a Conventicle upon a Sunday, if he pretends to any Religion, or Reading Hobs’s Divinity, and Atheistical Princi­ples at Home. . . . Observe, It was by Clamouring against Arbitrary Government, that deluded the P ­ eople to Rebel, and Assist them with Power, which when they had got, you see how the Congregational ­People used it. Observe who are they that now make the outcry against Arbitrary Government, Andrew Marvel, Oliver’s Latin Secretary leads the Van, in a Libel, which wore that Name.41

Similarly, The Litany of the D. of B., which prob­ably circulated in 1680, warned the Duke of Buckingham—­one of the Whig leaders, and Dryden’s “Zimri”—­ against taking Marvell for a true friend.42 Elsewhere, one “Tom Tell-­Troth” wrote that he saw no reason to fear arbitrary government in ­England, even “having read over abundance of such ware as ­little Andrew Marvel’s Unhoopable Wit and Polity, and the ­Independent Comment amongst it, together with the Growth of Popery, &c.,” decrying “all this bustle they have made amongst us.”43 Yet another pamphleteer published a reply to this attack on Marvell in which “Tell-­Truth” defends his hero: “And ’tis no won­der you should fling a stone at Mr. Marvel’s Grave, for any whiffling Cur w ­ ill venture to beard a dead Lion: ’tis well known, that ­little Andrew (as you contemptibly call him) had Wit and Policy enough to silence the greatest Droll and Scribler that ever troubled the Nation.”44 To Whigs, being abused by Papists was an honor, and the anonymous broadside The Catholick Gamesters imagines the Pope and “the Mahometan Dons” lamenting that “Heretick Marvel late the World did tell” of their plots.45

The Arts of Memory in Absalom and Achitophel • 55

Another writer drew Marvell into his attack on L’Estrange, who had, he said, unwarrantedly deployed memories of the Civil War to terrify the p­ eople into obedience to the King: “How earnestly has he ­labor’d to revive the Memory of Forty, in contempt of the Act of Oblivion, and terrifi’d the ­people with groundlesse Apprehensions of a new Fanatick Warr . . . ​I doubt not therefore . . . ​ but some new Marvell ­will rise, to bridle the Intemperance of his Mercenary Pen . . . ​I ­shall leave him then to the Fate of Bayes, which he cannot long escape.”46 The allusion is to the near-­fatal attack on Dryden in ­Rose Alley on December 18, 1679.47 By the time Dryden came to write Absalom and Achitophel in the autumn of 1681, Marvell was a prominent figure in con­temporary polemic. Yet the only overt reference that Dryden makes to Marvell before Absalom and Achitophel occurs in His Majesties Declaration Defended (1681; published in June),48 where, observing the incompetence of a Whig pamphleteer, he asks why “does not some resenting Friend of Marvel’s, put up a Petition to the Soveraigns of his party” to transfer the stipend of this hapless writer to someone “who ­will not so notoriously betray their cause by dullness and insufficiency.”49 An innocuous reference, perhaps, but t­ here is a more stinging, if oblique, one e­ arlier in the same pamphlet, when Dryden says that when the Whig leaders de­cided that the King’s declaration had to be answered, “a certain person of Quality appears to have carried the majority of Votes, and to be chosen like a new Matthias, to succeed in the place of their deceas’d Judas.”50 Marvell had died less than two years ­earlier, so he is the obvious candidate for “Judas.”51 ­There seems to be a degree of caution in Dryden’s h ­ andling of Marvell’s memory h ­ ere: the explicit naming is inoffensive, the b­ itter accusation of betrayal oblique. Dryden would not have wanted to risk drawing attention to his past association with Marvell as they had both worked for ­Cromwell’s government; if John Nalson remembered that Marvell was “Oliver’s Latin Secretary,” o­ thers might remember that Dryden had held the same position. (Indeed, someone did remember that Dryden had published an elegy on ­Cromwell’s death, and maliciously reprinted it late in 1681.)52 Subsequently Dryden refers to Marvell with open contempt in the preface to Religio Laici in 1682 when he says that the sixteenth-­century controversialist Martin Mar-­Prelate “(the Marvell of t­ hose times) was the first Presbyterian scribbler who sanctified libels and scurrility to the use of the Good Old Cause.”53 In the “Epistle to the Whigs” prefixed to The Medal (1682) he says that he has read “your dead author’s pamphlet called The Growth of Popery.”54 The passages in Absalom and Achitophel that engage with Marvell are recollections of his “An Horatian Ode on ­Cromwell’s Return from Ireland,” first printed in the posthumous Miscellaneous Poems which appeared in mid-­ January  1681, though canceled from all but two surviving copies.55 To have known the poem, Dryden would have to have been an unusually privileged reader of the printed volume, or (more prob­ably) to have kept a manuscript copy of the poem from the days when he and Marvell worked alongside Milton in ­Cromwell’s

56 • Paul Hammond

office for foreign tongues.56 It is more likely that he had a manuscript copy of the poem as he also seems to have echoed the “Horatian Ode” ­earlier, in To My Lord Chancellor and Annus Mirabilis.57 The first recollection of the “Horatian Ode” occurs in Absalom’s speech confessing the virtues of James, Duke of York: “His ­brother, though opprest with vulgar spite, / Yet dauntless and secure of native right” (353–354).58 Compare Marvell’s lines on Charles I: “Nor called the Gods with vulgar spite / To vindicate his helpless right” (61–62).59 Not only do the rhyme words coincide, but this is the only example of the phrase “vulgar spite” in Dryden’s poetry.60 Secondly, Achitophel’s speech to Absalom includes this argument: “But when should ­people strive their bonds to break, / If not when kings are negligent or weak?” (387–388). Marvell, referring to the “ancient rights,” had used the same rhyme words: “But ­those do hold or break / As men are strong or weak” (39–40). A third verbal echo is found in Dryden’s account of Jotham (Viscount Halifax), who turned opinion against the Exclusion Bill in a debate in the H ­ ouse of Lords: “So much the weight of one brave man can do” (887). Marvell had said of C ­ romwell: “So much one man can do, / That does both act and know.”61 Fi­nally, in the passage where Dryden is weighing up con­temporary p­ olitical theories, we have ­these lines: To change foundations, cast the frame anew, Is work for rebels who base ends pursue, At once divine and h ­ uman laws control, And mend the parts by ruin of the ­whole. (805–808)

Dryden’s image recalls Marvell’s lines on ­Cromwell’s ambition “To ruin the ­g reat work of time, / And cast the kingdom old / Into another mould.”62 In this case the only specific verbal parallels are “ruin” and “cast,” but nearly twenty years l­ater, in Fables Ancient and Modern (1700), Dryden returned to t­ hese same lines in Marvell, echoed “cast” again, and additionally took over Marvell’s rhyme words: nature knows No steadfast station, but or ebbs, or flows; Ever in motion, she destroys her old, And casts new figures in another mould.63

By 1700 ­these images had acquired a reconfigured relationship to their Marvellian antecedents, as the revolution of 1688 had cast the kingdom old into another mold which was not at all to Dryden’s liking, and effected the triumph of the Whig cause, which he had tried to deflect in Absalom and Achitophel. ­There is, however, another, quietly ironic but very deliberate, use of the “Horatian Ode” that occurs in Dryden’s Threnodia Augustalis (1685), his memorial

The Arts of Memory in Absalom and Achitophel • 57

poem for Charles II.64 As he lay ­dying, says Dryden, the King entrusted every­ thing to his successor, his b­ rother James: All that on earth he held most dear He recommended to his care To whom both heaven The right had given And his own love bequeathed supreme command. He took and pressed that ever-­loyal hand, Which could in peace secure his reign, Which could in wars his power maintain, That hand on which no plighted vows ­were ever vain. Well for so g­ reat a trust he chose A Prince who never disobeyed. Not when the most severe commands ­were laid. (224–235)

­Behind this passage lie several lines of the “Horatian Ode”: How good he is, how just, And fit for highest trust: Nor yet grown stiffer with command, But still in the Republic’s hand: How fit he is to sway That can so well obey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The same arts that did gain A pow’r must it maintain. (79–84, 119–120)

As Dryden reaches the very moment of the peaceful transmission of power from one king to his lawful successor, he recalls the poem that had commemorated the forcible seizure of power from this King’s ­father, and his bloody death on the executioner’s block, a poem that Dryden had pondered four years e­ arlier as he contemplated the possibility of a violent end to the reign of the second Charles. The pindaric form of the Threnodia even allows Dryden to mix octosyllabic and hexasyllabic couplets as Marvell’s poem had done. The verbal echoes say that ­here, in James, is a ruler who is fitted for highest trust ­because he obeys his King, and uses military power to maintain constitutional rule. Marvell’s ­Cromwell had done the exact opposite. But t­ here is another quiet but insistent glance back to the Exclusion Crisis when Dryden says that ­those gathered round the ­dying King’s bedside showed “arbitrary grief, unbounded by a law” (62). Whereas Marvell and other Whigs had accused Charles of aiming at arbitrary government (that is,

58 • Paul Hammond

government by his own ­will, without ­legal restraints), Dryden says that it is only the ­people’s grief that knows no bounds. What work do ­these memories of Marvell perform in Dryden’s poems? Unlike the recollections of Milton, they are not allusions: the Miltonic references reach out to readers and invite them to rethink their idea of Milton, and to reexamine critically the Whig rhe­toric of liberty and the rights of the p­ eople. By contrast, the echoes of Marvell’s virtually unpublished poem remain within Dryden’s private world, and the poet does not expect readers to recognize their source. They indicate that Dryden is thinking of the con­temporary upheaval as a reenactment of the Civil War and Commonwealth in one par­tic­u­lar re­spect: that it once more threatens ancient rights through the exercise of force. Whereas Dryden’s own Heroic Stanzas on the death of C ­ romwell spoke of the Protector’s heaven-­sent “heroic virtue” (105), and attributed his achievements to a combination of “piety and valour” (148), Marvell’s ­Cromwell seems to be praised not for heavenly virtue but for Machiavellian virtù. Perhaps it was this pragmatism, or lack of princi­ple, in the “Horatian Ode” that rankled. The message of the extracts from the “Horatian Ode” is that justice and the ancient rights are powerless when countered by the military power of a ­Cromwell, and while Shaftesbury commanded no army he did have at his disposal the brute force of the London crowds who set ­little store by “rule,” “pre­ce­dent,” and “laws” (AA 53–54). Threnodia Augustalis marks the point at which the ancient rights have triumphed, as James succeeds according to the hereditary right that heaven has conferred upon him; he is still, as he had been in 1681, “opprest with vulgar spite, / Yet dauntless and secure of native right.” If for Dryden the “Horatian Ode” memorialized the ultimate abuse of trust, obedience, and loyalty, it is not difficult to see why he might have thought of Marvell as “Judas.”65 The recollections of Milton and of Marvell form part of Dryden’s demonstration of the fragility of key concepts and princi­ples when they are threatened by nominalism and ­populism: when “liberty” ­really means “license,” and when “law” and “right” are brushed aside by the crowd, ­ ings fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Th Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-­dimmed tide is loosed . . .

But while Dryden would certainly have agreed with Yeats that “the worst / Are full of passionate intensity,” he would not have said that “The best lack all conviction”: his poem not only mythologizes the villains but memorializes t­ hose who do retain their convictions in the face of that blood-­dimmed tide.66  Over the entrance to the chapel of the Holy Trinity at Staunton Harold in Leicestershire, built by Sir Robert Shirley in 1653, t­ here is an inscription that t­ here is

The Arts of Memory in Absalom and Achitophel • 59

no reason to suppose Dryden ever saw, but which might well stand as an epigraph to his poem. It reads as follows: When all ­things sacred ­were throughout ye nation E ­ ither demollisht or profaned Sir Robert Shirley Barronet founded this Church whose singular praise it is to have done ye best t­ hings in ye worst times And hoped them in the most callamitous. The ­righteous s­ hall be had in everlasting remembrance.67

Dryden could have wished no better memorial for himself.

Notes 1 Dryden was appointed Poet Laureate in 1668 and Historiographer Royal in 1670. See James Anderson Winn, John Dryden and His World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 528. 2 The Poems of John Dryden, ed. Paul Hammond and David Hopkins, 5 vols. (Harlow: Longman, 1995), 1:461. Quotations from Dryden’s poetry are taken from this edition and cited parenthetically throughout the rest of the chapter. 3 Poems, 1:451. The word had slid from meaning “­those with the best interests of the commonwealth at heart” (definition 1) to meaning by 1649 “adherents of the republican Commonwealth” (definition 2). See Oxford ­English Dictionary, online ed., s.v. “Commonwealth man, n.,” https://­oed​.­com. 4 OED, online ed., s.v. “dishonest, adj. 1,” includes “shameful” and “dishonest, adj. 3” includes “hideous,” https://­oed​.­com. 5 As James Kinsley notes, “Inhonesto vulnere” occurs in Aeneid, 6:497. See Poems, 1:461n72, which cites Kinsley, ed., The Poems of John Dryden (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958). 6 Dryden would return to the word “dishonest” when translating this passage for “The Sixth Book of the Aeneis,” 1:668. 7 Aeneid, 2:257; noted in Poems, 1:520. 8 Aeneid, 6:878–880; noted in Poems, 1:521, citing Reuben A. Brower, “Dryden’s Epic Manner and Virgil,” PMLA 55, no. 1 (1940): 119–138. 9 For the Latin hinterland of Absalom and Achitophel (hereafter AA), see Paul Hammond, Dryden and the Traces of Classical Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 105–116. 10 For an example of Oates’s defective and inventive memory, see Peter Hinds, “The Horrid Popish Plot”: Roger L’Estrange and the Circulation of P ­ olitical Discourse in Late Seventeenth-­Century London (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Acad­emy, 2010), 213–215. 11 Anne Davidson Ferry, Milton and the Miltonic Dryden (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 24. For Dryden’s appropriations of Milton across his ­career, see also John Robert Mason, “To Milton through Dryden and Pope: or God, Man and Nature: ‘Paradise Lost’ Regained?” (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1987). 12 For the Whig appropriation of Milton, see William Riley Parker, Milton’s Con­ temporary Reputation (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1940); George F. Sensabaugh, That G ­ rand Whig Milton (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,

60 • Paul Hammond

1952), esp. chap. 3; Nicholas von Maltzahn, “The Whig Milton, 1667–1700,” in Milton and Republicanism, ed. David Armitage, Armand Himy, and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 229–253. Whigs who used his ideas often avoided citing Milton by name to avoid the taint of regicide and republicanism. Paradise Lost (hereafter PL) is quoted from John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. Alastair Fowler, 2nd ed. (London: Longman, 1998). ­ olitical Thought,” 13 Mark Goldie, “The Ancient Constitution and the Languages of P Historical Journal 62 (2019): 3–34 (3). 14 For “impenitence,” cf. PL, bk. 11, line 816. 15 For the polemical application of “Belial” in con­temporary debates, see Poems, 1:501. 16 Hannah Buchan, “Absalom and Achitophel: A Patron’s Name or a Patriot’s?,” Yearbook of ­English Studies 7 (1977): 86–90. It is also pos­si­ble that in selecting “usurped,” Dryden was responding to the recent unauthorized republication of his “Heroic Stanzas” on the death of C ­ romwell ­under the title An Elegy on the Usurper O. C. by the Author of Absalom and Achitophel, Published to Shew the Loyalty and Integrity of the Poet (London: J. Smith, 1681). Absalom and Achitophel was first published on or around November 17, 1681; Malone thought that the Elegy was published in December 1681, and that the second, revised edition of Absalom was also prob­ably published before the end of 1681. See The Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works of John Dryden, 3 vols., ed. Edmond Malone (London: T. Cadell, 1800), 1:144, 142; Hugh Macdonald, John Dryden: A Bibliography of Early Editions and of Drydeniana (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), 5, 23. It is therefore conceivable that the Elegy was published between the first and second editions of Absalom and Achitophel and influenced the wording of Dryden’s revised text. The reprinting of the Elegy occasioned A Panegyrick On the Author of Absolom and Achitophel, Occasioned by His Former Writing of an Elegy in Praise of Oliver Cromwel, Lately Reprinted (London: Charles Leigh, 1681), dated by Luttrell December 19, 1681 (Macdonald, John Dryden, 225). 17 John Milton, Eikonoklastes (1649), in The Complete Works of John Milton, vol. 6: Vernacular Regicide and Republican Writings, ed. N. H. Keeble and Nicholas McDowell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 350. 18 Dryden uses “faction” or “factious” with reference to the Whigs in AA, lines 66, 140, 489, 514, 568, 919, and 973. 19 See Paul Hammond, Milton’s Complex Words: Essays on the Conceptual Structure of “Paradise Lost” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), chap. 14; Benjamin Myers, Milton’s Theology of Freedom (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006). 20 In Astraea Redux (1660), published before Paradise Lost, the idea of false freedom is already pre­sent: “The rabble now such freedom did enjoy / As winds at sea that use it to destroy: / Blind as the Cyclops, and as wild as he, / They owned a lawless salvage liberty, / Like that our painted ancestors so prized / Ere empire’s arts their breasts had civilized” (43–48). “ ’ Twas Monck whom Providence designed to loose / ­Those real bonds false freedom did impose” (51–52). 21 John Dryden, All for Love: or, The World well Lost (London: Henry Herringman, 1678), sig. A2v–­A3v. In this dedication Dryden also reapplies one of the opposition’s watchwords when he reminds his readers that “arbitrary” power can be exercised by the mob: “neither the Arbitrary Power of one in a Monarchy, nor of many in a Commonwealth, could make us greater than we are” (sig. A3r). 22 Milton, “Sonnet 12,” line 11, first printed in Poems, &c. upon Several Occasions (London: Thomas Dring, 1673), 57; cf. Hammond, Milton’s Complex Words, 194n143.

The Arts of Memory in Absalom and Achitophel • 61

23 E.g., [John Lilburne], A Declaration to All the Free-­Born ­People of E ­ ngland, Concerning the Government of the Common-­Wealth (London: George Horton, 1654); cf. Rachel Fowley, “John Lilburne and the Citizenship of ‘Free-­Born En­g lishmen,’  ” Historical Journal 47 (2004): 849–874. In The Free-­Born Subject: or, the En­glishmans Birthright (London: Henry Brome, 1679), Sir Roger L’Estrange contested this ele­ment of Interregnum and Whig rhe­toric by emphasizing that the free-­born subject is both “­Free in one re­spect; and Subject in another. Now how far he is Enfranchised by this Liberty, and how far ­Limited by that Subjection, ­will be the Question. You ­shall seldom or never find this expression used, but as a kind of ­Popular Challenge; and still in favour of the Free-­born, without any regard at all to the Subject” (1). This pamphlet also provides evidence that “priestcraft” was a term of abuse used against the court party, for L’Estrange, complaining that “the Kings Ministers and Friends [are] bespattered with Billingsgate Libels” says that in such cases “Religion it self pass[es] only for a Sham, a piece of Priest-­Craft” (13); so in the opening line of Absalom and Achitophel (“In pious times, ere priestcraft did begin”) Dryden is already using the Whigs’ polemical vocabulary against them (cf. Poems, 1:454). 24 John Milton, Areopagitica; A Speech of Mr. John Milton For the Liberty of Unlicenc’ d Printing (London, 1644), title page. 25 Complete Works of John Milton, 6:158–159. 26 See Poems, 1:460. 27 The connection is clearer in the spelling “salvage,” as in the quotation from Astraea Redux in note 20 above. 28 Tacitus, Germania, 7, 9, 11, in Agricola, Germania, Dialogus, ed. and trans. M. Hutton et al., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970); Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (London: HarperCollins, 1995), chap. 2; Goldie, “Ancient Constitution,” 12, 26–27. 29 Roger L’Estrange, Toleration Discuss’ d; in Two Dialogues, 3rd ed. (London: Henry Brome, 1681), 108. 30 The proximity of “cry” and “liberty” ­here may be another echo of Milton’s “Licence they mean when they cry libertie.” 31 Cf. Ferry, Milton and the Miltonic Dryden, 67. 32 If Dryden had attributed the satire “Clarendon’s House­warming” and one or more of the Advice to a ­Painter poems to Marvell, that would have provided him with another reason to take a jaundiced view of him, since Dryden had aligned himself with Clarendon against the Duke of Buckingham, and had written poems to Clarendon and his ­daughter Anne Hyde, Duchess of York; the Chancellor had arranged the payment of an outstanding debt from the King to Dryden’s father-­in-­ law which prob­ably facilitated his marriage (Winn, John Dryden and His World, 126–127). For Marvell and Buckingham, see Martin Dzelzainis, “Andrew Marvell and George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham,” Explorations in R ­ enaissance Culture 36 (2010): 151–169, and for Dryden and Buckingham see Dryden, Poems, 1:492–497. 3 3 For Marvell’s posthumous ­career among the Whigs, see Nicholas von Maltzahn, “Andrew Marvell and the Prehistory of Whiggism,” in “Cultures of Whiggism”: New Essays in ­English Lit­er­a­ture and Culture in the Long Eigh­teenth ­Century, ed. David Womersley et al. (Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 2005), 31–61; von Maltzahn, “Marvell’s Ghost,” in Marvell and Liberty, ed. Warren Chernaik and Martin Dzelzainis (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), 50–74; von Maltzahn, “Marvell and Patronage,” in The Oxford Handbook of Andrew Marvell, ed. Martin Dzelzainis and Edward Holberton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 43–60, at 57–58; and

62 • Paul Hammond

Mark Goldie, “Marvell and His Adversaries, 1672–1678,” in Dzelzainis and Holberton, Oxford Handbook, 703–721, esp. 708–709. Matthew C. Augustine reassesses the way that contemporaries represented the relationship between Milton and Marvell in “The Chameleon or the Sponge? Marvell, Milton, and the Politics of Literary History,” Studies in Philology 111 (2014):132–162. He points out (134n6) that one reader bizarrely attributed the attack on Marvell in S’too Him Bayes (1673) to Dryden; the use of the sobriquet “Bayes” would no doubt have caught Dryden’s attention, and he is highly likely to have read at least some of The Rehearsal Transpros’ d and its replies. 34 Nicholas von Maltzahn, An Andrew Marvell Chronology (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 195. 35 Von Maltzahn, Andrew Marvell Chronology, 203. Many subsequent allusions to An Account, or appropriations of its rhe­toric, are recorded by von Maltzahn, testifying to the widespread readership that Marvell’s tract achieved. 36 A week a­ fter Marvell’s death, L’Estrange sought to question Ann Brewster, whom he suspected of having supplied the anonymous Account to the press, but reflected that “if she be questiond, prob­ably shee ­will cast the w ­ hole, upon Mr Marvell, who is lately dead; and ­there the enquiry ends” (von Maltzahn, Andrew Marvell Chronology, 215). 37 Von Maltzahn, Andrew Marvell Chronology, 195. 38 For the publication of the new edition, prob­ably in the autumn of 1679, see The Prose Works of Andrew Marvell, 2 vols., ed. Annabel Patterson, Nicholas von Maltzahn, and N. H. Keeble (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 2:216–217. 39 Von Maltzahn, Andrew Marvell Chronology, 219. 40 [Sir Roger L’Estrange], The Parallel, or, An Account of the Growth of Knavery u­ nder the Pretext of Arbitrary Government and Popery. With Some Observations upon a Pamphlet entitled An Account of the Growth of Popery, e­ tc. (London: Henry Brome, 1679), sig. A2r–­v. 41 [John Nalson], The Complaint of Liberty & Property against Arbitrary Government: Dedicated to All True E ­ nglish Men, and Lovers of Liberty, Laws, and Religion (London: Robert Steel, 1681), 2, 5. 42 The Litany of the D. of B. (n.p., n.d.), single sheet; von Maltzahn, Andrew Marvell Chronology, 223. 43 A Letter to the Earl of Shaftsbury this 9th. of July, 1680. From Tom Tell-­Troth a Downright En­glishman (n.p., n.d.), 4. According to the OED, “unhoopable” is Marvell’s coinage in The Rehearsal Transpros’ d. 4 4 Tell-­Truth’s Answer to Tell-­Troth’s Letter to the Right Honourable the Earl of Shaftesbury, In Vindication of His Lordship; By as Down-­right an English-­man as Himself, Without Scandalous Reflections (n.p., n.d.), 3. 45 The Catholick Gamesters or A Dubble Match of Bowleing (London: William Marshall, 1680), single sheet. 46 [S. Amy], A Præfatory Discourse to A Pamphlet, Entituled, A Memento for ­English Protestants (London: for the Author, 1681), 17–18. 47 Winn, John Dryden and His World, 325–330. 4 8 Macdonald, John Dryden, 167. Th ­ ere are other pos­si­ble covert allusions to Marvell in Dryden’s writings at this period. (1) E. S. de Beer (“Dryden: ‘The Kind Keeper’: The ‘Poet of Scandalous Memory,’ ” Notes and Queries 179 [1940]: 128–129) suggested that Dryden’s comment in the Epistle Dedicatory to The Kind Keeper that “your Lordship has known that ­there is a worse Poet remaining in the world than he

The Arts of Memory in Absalom and Achitophel • 63

of scandalous memory who left it last” (The Kind Keeper, or, Mr. Limberham [London: R. Bentley and M. Magnes, 1680], sig. A2v; advertised November 1679: Macdonald, John Dryden, 122) refers to Marvell rather than to Richard Flecknoe, whom Dryden has just been discussing. ­There was indeed no reason for Dryden to consider Flecknoe’s memory “scandalous,” but several reasons for him to think that of Marvell. (2) Von Maltzahn suggests (Andrew Marvell Chronology, 203) that Dryden’s Preface to All for Love (1678; advertised March 21–25, 1678) reads in part as a correction to Marvell’s Account in its praise of the current government as one that provides “all the Advantages of Liberty beyond a Commonwealth, and all the Marks of Kingly Sovereignty without the danger of a Tyranny” (All for Love, sig. A2v). 49 [John Dryden], His Majesties Declaration Defended (London: T. Davies, 1681), 13. 50 Dryden, His Majesties Declaration, 3. 51 Von Maltzahn, Andrew Marvell Chronology, 226. 52 See note 16 above. 53 Poems, 2:102. Zachary Taylor seems to echo Dryden’s phrasing when he says of polemicists that “from their first Appearance to this pre­sent Age, they never wanted a Succession of Scurrility. Th ­ ere always have been Scorners that have fill’d the Chair, Psal. 1.1. from Martin Marprelate, unto Andrew Marvel.” See A Disswasive from Contention: Being a Sermon Preached and Designed for the Last Itineration of the King’s Preachers in the County Palatine of Lancaster (London: William Cadman, 1683), 13. Von Maltzahn (Andrew Marvell Chronology, 238) adds a similar phrase from a sermon in 1683 by Miles Barne. 5 4 Poems, 2:12. 55 For the publication of Miscellaneous Poems, see von Maltzahn, Andrew Marvell Chronology, 224. The following echoes of Marvell by Dryden are recorded ad loc. in Dryden, Poems, partly drawing on my article, “Dryden’s Use of Marvell’s Horatian Ode in Absalom and Achitophel,” Notes and Queries 233 (1988): 173–174. In addition, Kendra Packham suggests that Dryden’s portrait of Sir Edward Seymour as Amiel in AA 899–913 “engages in an oppositional dialogue with Marvell’s portrayal of Seymour in the Account” (“Marvell, P ­ olitical Print, and Picturing the Catholic,” in Dzelzainis and Holberton, Oxford Handbook, 558–578, at 569). 56 For their common employment, see Winn, John Dryden and His World, 79–83. Marvell’s “A Poem upon the Death of His Late Highness the Lord Protector” was originally planned to form part of Thee Poems to the Happy Memory of the Most Renowned Oliver, Late Lord Protector of This Commonwealth, by Mr. Marvell, Mr Driden, Mr Sprat, registered by Henry Herringman on January 20, 1659, but the poem was replaced by one from Waller when the book was eventually printed (von Maltzahn, Andrew Marvell Chronology, 56). 57 Poems, 1:64, 181–182. The echoes of Marvell in “To My Lord Chancellor” and Annus Mirabilis are disputed by Martin Dzelzainis in “Issues of Dating in Marvell,” in Dzelzainis and Holberton, Oxford Handbook, 317–336, at 323–324, concluding that the “Horatian Ode” did not circulate in manuscript; but Dzelzainis ignores the echoes in Absalom and Achitophel, Threnodia Augustalis, and “Of the Pythagorean Philosophy.” 5 8 Italics added ­here and subsequently. 59 The Poems of Andrew Marvell, ed. Nigel Smith (Harlow: Longman, 2003). 60 EEBO rec­ords no other examples of the phrase “vulgar spite” between 1640 and 1685. 61 Poems of Andrew Marvell, 277, lines 75–76. 62 Poems of Andrew Marvell, 275, lines 34–36.

64 • Paul Hammond

6 3 Poems, 5:534, lines 262–265. 64 Poems, 2:403. 65 It is also pos­si­ble that Dryden objected to Marvell’s backhanded defense of Milton in The Rehearsal Transpros’ d: The Second Part (1673), where he said, “It was his misfortune, living in a tumultous time, to be toss’d on the wrong side, and he writ Flagrante bello certain dangerous Treatises. . . . ​At His Majesties happy Return, J. M. did partake . . . ​of his Royal Clemency, and has ever since expiated himself in retired silence” (Prose Works, 1:417–418). Marvell’s words (especially the passive “toss’d”) deprive Milton of principled adherence to the cause for which he wrote, and ignore both Paradise Lost (1667) and Of True Religion (1673). Marvell’s passage in defense of Milton against Samuel Parker ends (1:419) by calling Parker “a Judas,” so perhaps Dryden de­cided that this term might be better reapplied to its author. For the closeness of Milton and Marvell circa 1654, see von Maltzahn, “Marvell and Patronage,” 50–51. Thomas Corns suggests (privately) that Dryden and Marvell might have been engaged in some form of contest for the role of Milton’s successor, in which case Dryden might have felt that Marvell’s defense of Milton was in effect a betrayal of the older poet. Dryden would also have known that Marvell was lying when he claimed that he “never had any, not the remotest relation to publick ­matters . . . ​­until the year 1657,” since his celebratory First Anniversary of the Government u­ nder O. C. was published in 1654; Marvell went on to say that when he served ­Cromwell’s government in the office for foreign tongues he considered this post “to be the most innocent and inoffensive t­ owards his Majesties affairs of any in that usurped and irregular Government” (Prose Works, 1:288); but no trace of such an attitude to C ­ romwell’s government is vis­i­ble in his adulatory A Poem on the Death of His Late Highness the Lord Protector, which was announced for publication on January 20, 1659, but did not appear. During his ­service as Latin secretary, Marvell had “to be discouraged from construing E ­ nglish citizens as ‘subjects,’ which formulation needed twice over to be corrected to ‘­people’ ” (von Maltzahn, “Marvell and Patronage,” 253). That choice of terminology suggests a devotion to protectoral power over the E ­ nglish p­ eople and would not have endeared him to Restoration Whigs, with their strong adherence to the rights of “the p­ eople,” a favorite Whig term that Dryden downgraded to “the crowd” in AA 765, 778. Ironically, Dryden shared Milton’s distrust of the ­English p­ eople, for which see Paul Hammond, Milton and the P ­ eople (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 66 “The Second Coming,” in The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (London: Macmillan, 1950), 211. ­ ngland 67 Nikolaus Pevsner, Leicestershire and Rutland, The Buildings of E (Harmonds­worth: Penguin, 1960), 238.

4

Peacocks and Rainbows Visual Spectacle and Allegorical P­ erformance in Albion and Albanius ANDREW R. WALKLING In the early spring of 2020, in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic that so completely upended h ­ uman existence at that time, I was out walking along the main street of the community of Johnson City, New York, on a bright, cloudless winter after­noon. Lost in thought, I was startled to be hailed by a man straddling a bicycle in the ­middle of an empty parking lot and gazing fixedly into the sky. “Look!” he said, pointing. “­There’s a rainbow all the way around the sun!” Somewhat taken aback at being accosted in this gritty part of town by a stranger, with not another soul anywhere in sight, and concerned that he might approach me and break the newly established rules of social distancing, I cautiously glanced up and, to my amazement, saw precisely what he was describing: the sun, slightly past its culmination but still high in the firmament, was entirely encircled by a faint rainbow—­possibly the rare phenomenon known as a forty-­six-­degree solar ice halo. For a moment I stared in admiration, taking care not to look directly at the bright orb in the center. Then, my brief sense of won­der subsiding as the rainbow began to fade from view, I resumed my passage down the nearly empty street, leaving the stranger to continue his exclamations.

65

66 • Andrew R. Walkling

My experience on that cold, solitary, somewhat surreal after­noon may not have been entirely unlike t­ hose of countless seventeenth-­century sky watchers who witnessed similar astounding celestial phenomena. Indeed, given the state of the world in 2020, I might have been forgiven for harboring a degree of tacit sympathy with one C. H., the author of a pamphlet entitled Astrological Observations, Or Doctrines Draw [sic] from the Late Circle about the Sun ([1672]). Writing about one such “Halos Circle,” observed in the sky above London on May 15, 1672, C. H. opined that “Historyes Antient Writers, and common experience in all Ages testifieth unto us that ­these Signes in the Heavens . . . ​are the assured fore-­runners of sterillity of the Earth, Pestilence, Famine, Warr, Alteration of Kingdoms, States and Empires, Laws and Customs, Winds Earthquakes, Inundations extream Heat, and drought, grievous Diseases and infirmityes, and such like horrid Evils___ from all which good Lord deliver us.”1 The pamphleteer’s par­tic­u ­lar aim was to demonstrate that, from this “remarkable and unusual Apparition . . . ​may rationally be Conjectured, that considerable Vengance is approaching ­toward the Enemies of ­Great Britain” at the height of the Third Anglo-­Dutch War.2 However, the febrile concoction of astrology, con­temporary events, and ­popular belief should not dim for us the genuine experience of won­ der and momentary cognitive disruption occasioned by the witnessing of such celestial occurrences. That the sun, “the very Glory of the Microcosme, and by Analogy of Dignity” possessing “a similitude to the most Potent persons of the Earth . . . ​should be thus prodigiously encompassed, and as it w ­ ere besieged by a Waterish Meteer, is m ­ atter of the highest admiration,” C. H. tells us, further reporting that both the phenomenon itself and its sudden disappearance a­ fter about four hours elicited “the ­great admiration of its Beholders, which indeed ­were very numerous, in and about the City of London (besides t­ hose in divers other places).”3 My objective h ­ ere is not to reinscribe certain seventeenth-­century biases ­toward a super­natural interpretation of natu­ral phenomena. Indeed, Restoration ­England occupied a distinctly liminal position with re­spect to the otherworldly and the miraculous. The kind of magical thinking that gave credence to celestial prodigies, occult meaning, and the spiritual under­pinnings of ­human events coexisted with the relatively new insights of Natu­ral Philosophy, whose prac­ti­tion­ers instead sought rational scientific explanations for what they witnessed. C. H.’s breathless prognostications—to say nothing of his fiery patriotic rhe­toric—­ would have been anathema to his more sober contemporaries such as the members of London’s Royal Society, which may help to explain why neither the author nor the publisher of Astrological Observations was willing to be identified, despite the pamphlet’s obvious progovernment stance. But it is impor­ tant not to lose sight of the fruits of this coexistence in an age of divine-­right monarchy: both Charles II and James II, throughout their reigns, promoted the growth of scientific knowledge, even as they exploited the performative value of the miraculous as a buttress to monarchical authority. This can be observed, for

Peacocks and Rainbows • 67

example, in the resumption of certain quasi-­divine ceremonies such as touching for the “king’s evil,”4 and also, as we ­shall see presently, in the use of spectacle in theatrical encomia designed to extol the virtue and potency of the king. Especially with re­spect to the practices of the Baroque stage, late Stuart E ­ ngland was a place where the affective power of astonishment continued to wield substantial influence. Both the liminality I am describing and the performative possibilities attached to the spectacular can be observed in the experience of a seventeenth-­century witness to another, even more dazzling, celestial phenomenon than that reported by C. H. in 1672. Captain Christopher Gunman (1634–1685) was commander of the royal yacht Mary, a 155-­ton vessel built at Chatham in 1677 and placed into the ­service of James, Duke of York.5 Gunman was an experienced mari­ner, and well connected: court-­martialed in 1682 for his part in the wreck of HMS Gloucester, he was reprieved at the behest of the Duke of York himself and allowed to resume his command.6 On March 18, 1684, Gunman and the Mary ­were docked at the pier at Calais on the northern French coast when, around an hour ­after sunrise, the captain observed a complex phenomenon consisting of multiple ice haloes and including a pair of “parhelia” (colloquially called “sun dogs”), bright spots or halos that appear on ­either side of the sun. Gunman’s description of what he saw was first relayed in print in 1808 when Walter Scott included what he characterized as an “Extract” from Gunman’s journal in the first volume of his Works of John Dryden. The passage, evidently supplied to Scott sometime ­earlier by the inveterate bibliographer Samuel Egerton Brydges, is given as follows: 1683–4, March 18th. It was variable cloudy weather: this morning about seven ­o’clock saw in the firmament three suns, with two demi-­rainbows; and all within one w ­ hole rainbow, in form and shape as h ­ ere pourtrayed: The sun ­towards the left hand bore east, and that on the right hand bore south-­east of me. I did sit and draw it as well as the time and place would permit me; for it was seen in its full form about the space of half an hour; but part of the rainbow did see above two hours. It appeared first at three-­quarters past six, and was over-­clouded at a quarter past seven. The wind north-­by-­west.7

As this excerpt seems to suggest, Gunman would have considered himself a man of logic and science. He was, for example, friends with the celebrated virtuoso John Evelyn and had spent his ­career steeped in the mathematical, astronomical, and meteorological niceties of navigation. He would have given scant credence to any theurgic implications of what he had witnessed, and his account, while gesturing ­toward the wondrous nature of the empyrean vision arrayed before him, betrays no hint of superstition. But in the liminal cultural space of late seventeenth-­century ­England, this did not mean that the spectacle in the sky over Calais could not also be deployed in the ­service of royalist allegory.

68 • Andrew R. Walkling

Indeed, Captain Gunman’s m ­ easured description of the stunning pa­norama of three suns embedded in a matrix of three rainbows all floating and shimmering above the ocean was enough to inspire a rather fantastical application of this celestial apparition, one that readily embraced its otherworldly implications. By some means or other, news of Gunman’s sighting reached the man­ag­ers of London’s patent theater com­pany, who resolved to employ it as a theatrical effect in John Dryden’s extravagant royalist opera Albion and Albanius. Known ­today principally for its unrestrained allegorical treatment of the history and politics of Restoration ­England and its ambitious French-­inspired score composed by Louis Grabu, Albion and Albanius would prob­ably have been most noteworthy to con­temporary audiences for its ostentatious visual ele­ments, in par­tic­u­lar a number of lavish theatrical machines. When the opera premiered at London’s Dorset Garden Theatre on June  3, 1685, following considerable delays that included a period of mourning a­ fter Charles II’s death in February, audiences ­were treated to a sequence of instantly recognizable scenic backdrops showing in succession: the Royal Exchange with the triumphal arches erected for Charles’s 1661 coronation pro­cession; Whitehall Palace and the River Thames; the town and ­castle of Dover with its famous white cliffs; and Windsor ­Castle surmounted by an aerial apparition of the interior of St. George’s Hall. The monumentalized realism of con­temporary ­English settings established through ­these topographical scenes was punctuated by a cavalcade of Olympian deities who descended in spectacular flying machines and ­rose up on large “scenic trap” devices, forming a sublime counterpoint to the worldly travails of the heroes Albion, Albanius, and Acacia—­metonymic allegorizations representing Charles II, his ­brother James, and the queen, Catherine of Braganza. The list of super­natural figures gracing the opera is breathtaking in its own right. The drama opens with the descent of Mercury, who is joined by Juno and Iris ­later in the first act. ­A fter a scene set in Hell at the beginning of act 2 that features Pluto and Alecto, the second part of the act brings Mercury again, and subsequently Apollo and Neptune, the latter accompanied by tritons and sea nymphs. In act 3, a group of nereids and tritons sing and dance, Proteus makes a spectacular shape-­shifting appearance, and the ­grand finale commences with Venus, who is ­later joined by Apollo and Neptune as well as the personified figure of Fame. The extraordinary spectacle, which necessitated a steep increase in ticket prices and left the United Com­pany (the sole patent com­pany that resulted from the merger in 1682 of the King’s Com­pany and the Duke of York’s Com­pany) in serious debt when the production was prematurely forced to close in the wake of Monmouth’s Rebellion, was the brainchild of Dryden and the actor/impresario Thomas Betterton. Dryden had begun exploring the dramatic potential of machine effects at the King’s Com­pany’s Bridges Street Theatre in the early 1660s, and Betterton’s assumption of managerial responsibilities over the Duke’s Com­pany t­oward the end of that d­ ecade led to the construction of Dorset Garden Theatre and the consequent rise of dramatick opera, at the time the most

Peacocks and Rainbows • 69

extravagant vehicle for stage spectacle many London theatergoers had ever seen.8 Betterton had visited Paris on several occasions, most recently in August and September 1683, and appears to have informed himself thoroughly about the technical aspects of Continental stage machinery with the aim of further refining its use in operatic settings back home. As Dryden put it in his printed preface to the folio-­format libretto available for purchase at Albion’s p­ erformances, “The descriptions of the Scenes, and other decorations of the Stage, I had from Mr. Betterton, who has spar’d neither for industry, nor cost, to make this Entertainment perfect, nor for Invention of the Ornaments to beautify it.”9 The machine effects in Albion and Albanius are of two basic types: traps that raise and lower performers from beneath the stage and flying apparatuses in which characters appear in the air above. Both categories of effect included simpler as well as more elaborate versions. In the case of traps, Neptune and a pair of nereids simply rise “out of the W ­ ater” of the Thames (2.2.141+) and “out of the Sea” at Dover (3.1.34+) respectively, while the villains Democracy, Zelota, and their followers “all sink together” (3.1.178+) ­after being hemmed in between two fires that have themselves arisen from under­neath the stage. ­These effects would have employed multiple small traps positioned at vari­ous locations around the stage. Prior to this, in act 1, Democracy and Zelota had already descended once into the nether regions, but in that instance they rode, sleeping, on “A double Pedestal” (1.1.170+), suggesting the use of a somewhat larger “scenic trap.” Similarly, in the opera’s final scene, Fame “rises out of the ­middle of the Stage, standing on a Globe . . . ​on a Pedestal” (3.2.0+). Dorset Garden also evidently had a very large scenic trap located at the rear of the stage: it is used twice in act 3, first for Proteus, whose cave comprising “several Arches of Rock work” adorned with shells and other decorations emerges from the sea (3.1.141+), and then for Venus, who rises out of the sea “sitting in a ­g reat Scallop-­shell, richly adorn’ d . . . ​drawn by Dolphins” and accompanied by Albanius and troupes of loves, graces, and heroes (3.1.189+). Venus’s machine is said to open to reveal the scallop shell and the seated characters; once they have disembarked “it closes and sinks.” The final disposition of Proteus’s sea cave is left unclear: at the end of his scene the character himself simply “descends” (3.1.156+), but by this time he has proceeded downstage to sing, in the p­ rocess engaging in a stunning visual effect where, seized upon by Albion and Acacia, “he sinks as they are bringing him forward, and changes himself into a Lyon, a Crocodile, a Dragon, and then to his own shape again.”10 The periodic eruptions of divine and allegorical characters from beneath the stage are complemented by the spectacular descents of gods from the clouds above. Apollo appears twice: once in act 2 riding his chariot drawn by flying ­horses “and a g­ reat glory about” him (2.2.128+) and again in act 3 as part of a hastily composed scene interpolated into the opera ­after Charles II’s death. ­Here, he occupies “a very large, and a very glorious Machine . . . : The figure of it Oval, all the Clouds shining with Gold, abundance of Angels and Cherubins flying about ’em, and playing in ’em” (3.1.200+). Within the machine Apollo is seated on a

70 • Andrew R. Walkling

golden throne, which afterward receives the apotheosized Albion into the heavens. Mercury also makes two appearances, at the beginning of act 1 and in act 2, scene 2, evidently both times attached to a s­ imple wire, a flying effect that Dryden in 1663 had called “swift Motion.”11 Of t­ hese, the first descent of Mercury is more notable b­ ecause the god, upon reaching terra firma, remains on stage throughout much of the act as Juno and Iris successively join him in their perches in the sky. Juno’s machine is often remarked upon: it consists of a chariot drawn by peacocks that emerges from b­ ehind the clouds and “moves ­gently forward, and as it descends, it opens and discovers the Tail of the Peacock, which is so Large, that it almost fills the opening of the Stage between Scene and Scene” (1.1.189+). The peacock machine evidently struck a chord—or was simply too expensive not to reuse—as it appeared again in two dramatick operas: The Fairy-­Queen in 1692–1693 and Brutus of Alba in 1696.12 Juno’s descent serves initially to offer a crucial prognostication of Albion’s return to his throne and a warning to the character Augusta (a personification of London) to renew her obedience to the restored monarch. The goddess is then joined in the firmament by her servant/messenger Iris, who relates Albion’s cross-­ Channel journey from Holland to ­England and his reception at Dover. The scene that Iris recounts would have been magnificent had it been staged, including as it does the nymph Batavia conducting Albion to the Dutch shore, his sea voyage escorted by Neptune and Venus, and his welcome from Archon (representing George Monck, ­later Duke of Albemarle) and the adoring multitudes, whose greeting rings out “like Peals of Thunder” that “ren[d] the Skies assunder” (1.1.226–227). Instead, we have Iris’s straightforward narration of t­ hese events, sung to a strophic triple-­time tune with continuo accompaniment punctuated by a brief two-­part violin ritornello. But the deity’s appearance in a machine featuring her signature rainbow theme—­layered as it is on top of (i.e., physically in front of?) Juno’s fan-­tailed peacock while soaring above Mercury and all the terrestrial characters assembled below—­offers its own resplendent visual ele­ment, and one whose description in the libretto explic­itly invokes both the nautical theme and the North Sea littoral setting: “Iris appears on a very large Machine. This was ­really seen the 18th of March 1684. by Capt. Christopher Gunman, on Board his R. H. Yacht, then in Calais Pierre: He drew it as it then appear’ d, and gave a draught of it to us. We have only added the Cloud where the Person of Iris sits” (1.1.212+). The vision of Iris seated on a rainbow—or rather “on a very large Machine” depicting a group of ice haloes, with a cloud evidently “added” by the Dorset Garden producers—­offers a win­dow into the mutually supporting operation of allegory and spectacle in Albion and Albanius. While largely sui generis in its peculiar admixture of allegorical modes, Dryden’s opera broadly echoes the conventions of Baroque mythological drama, a form that also includes allegorical prologues employing personification and direct panegyrical address. The cast of divine characters—­Mercury, Juno, Iris, Apollo, Neptune, Proteus, Venus—­intervenes in

Peacocks and Rainbows • 71

the affairs of the world to monitor and instigate the actions of the royal hero Albion and his companions, whose dialogues with the divinities function as a potent sign of their rarefied status among mortals. The gods, whose knowledge and vision transcend ­those of even the most exalted of earth’s denizens, offer advice, consolation, and, crucially, the prophecies that propel the story forward. They are thus not mere trappings but rather a vital component of the opera’s narrative apparatus, serving to confirm the higher truth ­behind the thrust of Restoration history and to demonstrate that Albion’s (and hence Charles II’s) fate is ordained by heaven. At the same time that the audience is swept up in the celestial ramifications of con­temporary historical events, it is treated to a further sensation of won­der derived from the opera’s visual spectacle. This is prompted both by the elaborate theatrical machines themselves and by the spellbinding experience of witnessing onstage a dramatically persuasive mingling of the mundane and the heavenly, an effect I have labeled “diegetic supernaturalism.”13 The connection between the allegorical and the spectacular is further intensified at the two junctures in the opera where the appearance of gods is not sequential but cumulative: in act 1, the piecemeal layering of Iris upon Juno upon Mercury; and in act 3 the ­grand finale that begins with Venus and proceeds to (re)introduce Apollo, Neptune, and Fame. In t­ hese two instances the physical piling up of gods within the three-­dimensional scenic space amplifies the force of diegetic supernaturalism, riveting and enthralling the audience with a profusion of won­ders that threatens to overwhelm the faculties. Such moments of heightened astonishment help to institute the opera’s distinctive allegorical technique, differentiating it from the accustomed forms of machine drama in which diegetic supernaturalism supports somewhat more attenuated and naturalistic storytelling practices and the audience’s experience of won­der is commensurate with t­ hose practices. Even within the exhaustively allegorized framework of Albion and Albanius, where the “mortals” are themselves metonymic avatars who circulate among an assortment of synecdochic and personified characters alongside the aforementioned Olympian figures, diegetic supernaturalism draws largely on conventional mythological motifs. Mercury’s self-­powered flight, Juno’s peacock chariot, Apollo’s horse-­drawn sun car, Neptune’s aqueous surfacings, Proteus’s miraculous shape-­ shifting, Venus’s floating shell, and even the wicked and demonic figures swallowed into the bowels of the earth all involve the abrogation of the laws of nature and physics, a hallmark of Baroque theatrical allegory, and all manifest the Classical milieu from which each divine attribute is derived. Iris’s situation, however, is more exceptional: while the producers of the opera could have shown her perched atop (or perhaps suspended beneath) a common rainbow, she is instead introduced in a machine representing a recent meteorological marvel, a ­thing actually seen and reported by a known con­temporary observer, and carry­ ing circumstantial associations to both the Stuart dynasty (through the royal yacht Mary and its o­ wner James, Duke of York) and a distinct geo­graph­i­cal

72 • Andrew R. Walkling

setting (the ­English Channel / North Sea coast of northwestern ­Europe). What is more, the producers are at pains to draw attention to t­ hese associations, supplying readers of the libretto not merely with an anecdote but with one that is explicit as to time, place, and circumstance—­a rhetorical act that commandeers the conventional attribute of Iris in order to give it local and con­temporary currency. The goddess’s description of Albion’s sea journey thus assumes an air of immediacy that parallels and fortifies the opera’s ubiquitous scenic settings of Restoration London and its environs. It cements the allegory’s intimate temporal and topographical specificity, winding together the mystical and the contemporaneous and gesturing as if deictically: ­here, within the compass of our own experience, is where ­these momentous cosmic events have unfolded. To understand properly the intersection between Albion and Albanius’s realistic depictions of familiar terrain and the experience of supernaturally induced won­der that the opera’s producers sought to evoke, we require a clearer sense of what, precisely, Christopher Gunman witnessed on that moderately overcast March morning and how the extraordinary sight, with the addition of a cloud “where the Person of Iris sits” by the United Com­pany producers, might have served to generate the desired theatrical effect. Since 1808, when Scott’s Works of John Dryden was first published, our only known source of information on Gunman’s celestial phenomenon has been the passage quoted above, described as an “Extract from the Journal of Captain Christopher Gunman, commander of his Royal Highness’s yatch [sic] the Mary, lying in Calais pier, Tuesday, 18th  March,”14 accompanied by a monochrome woodcut illustration inserted into the quoted passage immediately a­ fter the words “in form and shape as ­here pourtrayed.” Scott’s acknowl­edgment that he was “favoured by Samuel Egerton Brydges, Esq.” with Gunman’s description and his p­ resentation of the title “Extract from the Journal . . .” in quotation marks along with the passage itself seem to indicate conclusively that he never saw the original. It is unknown w ­ hether Brydges had himself consulted Gunman’s a­ ctual journal and made the transcription he shared with Scott, or ­whether he, too, acquired the information from another party: such scraps of pertinent documentation circulated widely in the community of scholars during the late eigh­teenth and early nineteenth centuries, and what (from the title Scott provides) was likely a single sheet of paper may have passed through multiple hands, or even been copied several times over. The woodcut image printed by Scott (figure 4.1) is of par­tic­u ­lar interest, as it includes the ele­ments Gunman describes—­three suns, two demi-­rainbows, and a large circular rainbow encompassing the rest—­and seems to offer valuable details regarding their shape, placement, and relative size. The illustration, which is thirty-­six millimeters in dia­meter, shows the three suns festooned with thick setae of rays of varying length and, at the center of each, indistinct f­ aces—­a motif derived from heraldic practice, where it is known as “sun in splendor.” The suns are clustered beneath the lower demi-­rainbow, which curves g­ ently downward t­ oward the outer circle; at its apex it meets the

Peacocks and Rainbows • 73

FIGURE 4.1  ​The Brydges-­Scott reproduction of celestial phenomenon seen at Calais by

Captain Christopher Gunman from Albion and Albanius, ed. Walter Scott, in Works of Dryden (1808), 1:301. (Courtesy of Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections.)

upper demi-­rainbow, which curves upward in a similar fashion. The two demi-­ rainbows do not converge at the center point of the outer circle, but rather about one-­third of the way up from the bottom, leaving a large blank space in the upper half of the circle—­possibly the area where Iris’s “cloud” would have been positioned in the theater. In its printed, non-­theatrical-­machine form, however, the entire composition is somewhat bottom-­heavy, and it is difficult to parse from this rather crude rendering what Gunman actually saw in the firmament and what about it made the phenomenon seem worth recording. The Brydges-­Scott (for want of a better term) reproduction has continued to both inform and perplex scholars over the last two centuries—it is prominently reproduced in the relevant volume of the “California Dryden” edition, published in 1976,15 albeit without substantive comment or analy­sis. Perhaps this is b­ ecause, despite its puzzling qualities, the image does meet the criteria provided in

74 • Andrew R. Walkling

Gunman’s description and thus has been deemed to merit being taken at face value. But the image actually tells us ­little about Iris’s “very large Machine” in Albion and Albanius—­its conceptualization, how it was used, and, perhaps most importantly, what sort of effect it would have had on the high-­paying Dorset Garden audience. A proper attempt to assess such m ­ atters would require better information. Happily, Gunman’s journal has recently come to light in the Jarvis Collection held at the Lincolnshire Archives,16 providing an impor­tant new means to evaluate both the celestial phenomenon itself and its pos­si­ble application as a spectacular operatic stage machine. The journal reveals several ­things. First, we now know why Gunman and the Duke of York’s yacht ­were docked at Calais Pier in March 1684: they w ­ ere waiting t­ here to collect Laura Martinozzi, dowager duchess and former regent of Modena, who was traveling to ­England, presumably to assist in the latest pregnancy of her ­daughter Maria Beatrice d’Este, the Duke of York’s wife.17 Second, while the “Extract” supplied by Brydges to Scott in the early nineteenth ­century roughly reproduces Gunman’s journal entry, it is by no means a diplomatic nor even an entirely accurate transcription. The original reads as follows: The:18th: being Tuesday itt was variable Cloudy, weather, this morning about:Ѳ 7: Wee Did sie in the firmament Three sunnes, sorounded wth two Demy Rainebowes, and one w ­ hole Rainebow sorounding the sūnes, and the two Demy Rainebowes, and all in forme and shape as is hier ­under protracted, Thon sune ­towards the left hand bore:E: and thon on, or ­towards ye Right hand Bore:SE: of me, I did sett, and Draw itt as well as the tyme, and place would Permitt me, for itt was sien In itts full forme as is hier sett doune About the space of halfe an houer &c: butt part of the Rainebowe Wee Did sie aboue two houers, itt apired first att 34 : past:Ѳ6:And was over Clouded att 14 past:Ѳ 7: &c: the wind:N:b:w:18

We can note that Gunman’s original entry offers minor details not mentioned in the “Extract” (the first-­person plural “Wee Did see” stated twice; the three suns “sorounded” with the two demi-­rainbows), as well as slightly increased specificity (“and one w ­ hole Rainebow sorounding the sūnes, and the two Demy Rainebowes” in place of “and all within one ­whole rainbow”; “all in forme and shape as is hier u­ nder protracted” rather than “in form and shape as h ­ ere pourtrayed:”; the inclusion of the phrase “as is hier sett doune” immediately ­after “In itts full forme”). At the same time, however, its language in some places hints at a shade more hesitancy about what was seen (“thon [i.e., th’one] on, or ­towards ye Right hand” instead of “that on the right hand”; the insertion of an ambiguous “&c:” in two places). ­These linguistic nuances, which offer a more precise picture of Gunman’s frame of mind as he recorded his experience, w ­ ere effaced in the ­process of modernizing and transcribing the entry onto the “Extract” sheet upon which Walter Scott relied.

Peacocks and Rainbows • 75

More striking, however, is the visual evidence provided by Gunman’s manifestly painstaking ink-­and-­watercolor drawing of the celestial phenomenon he had witnessed (figure 4.2). Like Brydges’s transcription of the written text of the captain’s journal entry, the image as rendered by Scott or his publishers maps the essential contours of what Gunman had originally produced: a large circular rainbow enclosing two smaller rainbows, with three suns ranked horizontally beneath the lower arc. But in this case the original, when compared with the nineteenth-­century copy, is far more explicit, clear, and stunning. The two interior arcs situated within the encompassing circle are full inverse semicircles of the same shape and span. They are entirely ­independent of the encircling rainbow, not intersecting it at any point, and their vertices meet precisely at the circle’s center. This leaves less of an impression of a “blank space” in the upper half of the figure. The three suns are much smaller than ­those in the Brydges-­Scott reproduction and their rays and auras have a distinct lateral orientation. The “sun-­ in-­splendor” ­faces are gone, lending the entire image a more rational and less emblematic air. Gunman’s drawing also includes color, clearly depicting the circular formations as rainbow-­like, albeit with an emphasis on the central shades of the vis­i­ble light spectrum: blue-­green, yellow, and what may be a light orange that has faded over time. Perhaps the most telling detail of all, however, is Gunman’s conspicuously labeled designation of “The Horizon:” a solid ink line tangential to the large circular rainbow at its perigee. This crucial piece of information reveals the celestial phenomenon to be not merely something positioned indeterminately in the heavens, but rather one reared up upon the distant vanishing-­point, fantastically dominating the eastern sky while at the same time delicately balanced atop the sea like some evanescent ­bubble. Our understanding of what Gunman had “­really seen,” as the Albion and Albanius libretto puts it, might be enhanced by imagining one or two tiny ships perched on or just below the horizon line, dwarfed by the vast arcs soaring above them. Such an act of imagination, I would suggest, also allows us to envision more intelligibly what the producers at Dorset Garden may have had in mind for the appearance of Iris on her “very large Machine.” Conceptually, at least, the goddess is not merely airborne, as if riding through the sky in some flying chariot, but huge and majestic, a prodigy bringing momentous news of Albion’s return to his island realm. Iris, it should be noted, is the only divinity in the opera outside of the hastily added supplement to the third-­act-­concluding masque who discourses exclusively with other gods, never speaking directly to the mortal or other terrestrial (synecdochic and personified) characters below. Her language is entirely devoid of second-­person address or the imperative mood, and operates solely in the narrative past tense u­ ntil her final pronouncement, “Welcome Heav’n and Earth resound” (1.1.228). The evidence provided by Gunman’s ­actual drawing has several implications. As has already been noted, it offers a greatly clarified picture of Dryden’s and Betterton’s efforts to harness won­der in the ­service of allegory by providing the

FIGURE 4.2  ​Christopher Gunman’s ink and watercolor rendering of celestial phenomenon

from his journal. Jarvis Collection, Lincolnshire Archives, Lincoln, UK.

Peacocks and Rainbows • 77

Dorset Garden audience with a layered experience of mounting astonishment as first Juno and then Iris descend into view to advance the opera’s providential narrative and amaze the onlookers both on and off the stage. We still do not know precisely how this would have been accomplished: did Iris appear downstage from Juno, allowing the elder goddess to be seen through the gauzy light formations of the rainbow machine as she briefly introduced her newly arrived messenger-­servant in song? Or did Iris descend at the rear of the scenic space, which would have emphasized more effectively the colossal dimensions of her celestial appurtenance as it hovered above the Royal Exchange and perspective cityscape depicted on the painted backdrop? Juno, we should note, is said to have “move[d] ­gently forward” (1.1.189+) while descending, therefore potentially leaving the upstage space open for Iris, whose machine in all likelihood only shuttled straight down and up. On the other hand, the fact that the peacock’s tail on Juno’s chariot famously fanned out in the air to “almost fill[] the opening of the Stage between Scene and Scene” makes a downstage descent for Iris seem more probable, if less visually arresting. A second point arising from Gunman’s drawing is that we are now in a position to examine more thoroughly the specific attributes of the celestial phenomenon he witnessed at Calais on the morning of March  18, 1684. The lateral flanking of the sun by a pair of “parhelia” or “sun dogs” is a relatively common sight, one that is most con­spic­u­ous when the sun is close to the horizon; usually, the parhelia are connected by a circular “twenty-­two-­degree halo,” although none is vis­i­ble ­here. The circumstance in which a twenty-­two-­degree halo may be physically pre­sent but too dim to see is sometimes associated with the appearance of a larger “supralateral arc,” which is what Gunman seems to be depicting in the lower semicircle encompassing the three suns.19 Unlike a conventional rainbow, in which the redder hues are on the outside of the arc and the bluer hues on the inside, colored halos have their red side directed ­toward the sun, just as Gunman has drawn it. The upper arc in Gunman’s image, which touches the supralateral arc at its apex, may be a “circumzenithal arc,” although the extent of such arcs is normally considerably less than the nearly hundred-­eighty-­degree semicircle shown ­here. Beyond ­there being no sign of any twenty-­t wo-­degree halo and the fact that if the upper rainbow is a circumzenithal arc we would expect it to be rather shorter, several other aspects of the drawing remain uncertain. For one ­thing, ­there is no clear explanation for the large, full circle that encloses the entire phenomenon (it is not, for example, a “parhelic circle,” which runs all the way around the sky, but intersects with the sun and does not touch the horizon at any point). Even more consequentially, while Gunman explic­itly demarcates the horizon, he leaves unspecified how his two-­dimensional drawing is supposed to correspond to the sky’s three-­dimensional, dome-­like structure. A circumzenithal arc, as its name indicates, has the zenith—­that is, the highest point in the sky— at its center. Does that mean that the center of the half-­visible circle inscribed by the upper arc should be read as being directly overhead? And would this further

78 • Andrew R. Walkling

imply that the larger, encompassing circle is not just in the east, above the horizon, but also overhead and indeed partly to the west? Gunman’s description of the latter as “one ­whole Rainebow sorounding the sūnes, and the two Demy Rainebowes” does not furnish information sufficient to make an adequate determination, and we may surmise that his contemporaries who had not witnessed what he saw that day may have found themselves similarly unenlightened. All of this points to a significant degree of ambiguity regarding both what Gunman depicted in his journal and how the phenomenon was translated to the Dorset Garden stage and, from thence, into the perception and consciousness of ­those in the audience. The original drawing that Christopher Gunman sat and drew “as well as the tyme, and place would Permitt me” is prob­ably lost: rather like the work of con­temporary marine ­painters, whose practice it was to execute quick sketches in the heat of storm and b­ attle and then create polished versions of their seascapes l­ater on when calmer conditions prevailed, Gunman’s colored rendering, neatly positioned in the lower three-­fi fths of the page in his journal, most likely was crafted some hours or even days a­ fter the fact, once he had composed his prose description promising the repre­sen­ta­tion “hier u­ nder protracted.” Indeed, ­there is evidence of small pinpricks in the paper at the center of the large circle (the point at which the two semicircles meet) and of each of the individual semicircles, as well as of each of the small “sun dogs” flanking the central sun, indicating the use of a compass and hence making “protracted” the apt verb to describe Gunman’s meticulous geometrical drafting ­process. However, a ship captain’s official journal was not something that could be lent out to curious friends and acquaintances and so, as the Albion and Albanius libretto avers, Gunman “gave a draught of it” to the United Com­pany producers, who then “added the Cloud where the Person of Iris sits” (1.1.212+). The latter portion of this statement suggests a design p­ rocess meant to supply a suitable perch for the goddess in her machine, appropriately masked from the audience’s view by simulated nebulous billows such as ­were common in other theatrical devices at the time—­including at least one, for Apollo and his corps of angels and cherubim, in act 3 of Albion and Albanius. ­There is, however, another document now found in Captain Gunman’s journal that may shed some further light on the p­ rocess of adaptation by which ethereal celestial phenomenon was transformed into suspended wood, iron, and fabric theatrical machine: a loose sheet of paper containing another rendering of the drawing, and beneath it a moderately condensed version of the original prose description, copied out in Gunman’s hand. The paper was at one time folded into eighths; it is somewhat tattered along the edges and at the folds, and four of the octants, composing the lower half of the verso of the sheet, are soiled, especially at the creases. A double-­symmetrical pattern of w ­ ater staining indicates that the sheet was at one time folded twice lengthwise into oblong quarters, creating a tall rectangle suitable for docketing. However, an additional worn

Peacocks and Rainbows • 79

and soiled crease in the center of this rectangle shows that it was also kept folded in eighths for some length of time, and the pattern of soiling suggests that this last fold may be a double fold (that is, that it was bent both ways at dif­fer­ent times). Three of the four pos­si­ble external ­faces resulting from this configuration are written on: the writing consists of some calculations in ink and pencil (some of which are sexagesimal, with sums and differences involving the number ninety, suggesting that they may involve ­measurements of circular ­angles), and a penciled note referring to the availability of the 1698 second edition of Archibald Lane’s language primer A Rational and Speedy Method of Attaining to the Latin Tongue at Andrew Bell’s bookshop at the Cross-­Keys and Bible in Cornhill.20 The sheet appears to have been re­united with the volume only in the nineteenth c­ entury: it is accompanied by a note in a relatively modern hand on a separate slip of paper that reads, in part, “This is the original sketch for the Picture which you have” (a statement that, as we ­shall see, is prob­ably not accurate).21 The note’s unidentified author, who describes the celestial phenomenon as “The Parhelion,” seems to have known something of the historical context, as he mentions the fact that Gunman was “waiting for the Duchess of Modena,” a piece of information not provided on the sheet itself—­although he also misrec­ ords the date of the sighting as the 15th rather than the 18th of March, possibly the result of a careless reading of Gunman’s characteristic seventeenth-­century sideways “8.” This copy of Gunman’s description reads: “The 18th: March 16834 att 7 in the morning Was sien onboard His Royll: Highness yacht Mary in Calais piere Three sunes sorounded w th two semy Rainebowes, and one w[hole Rai]nebow[e] sorounding them all, in shape and forme as is hier protracted, thon sūne on ye left hand bore E: thon on the Right hand bore:S:E: and yt in ye midle wch was ye true sune bore:E:S:E: itt was sett and drawne As well as the time and place would pmitt by CG [.]”22 Noteworthy ­here, besides the general shortening of the text found in Gunman’s journal, are the substitution of the passive “Was sien” for the active first-­person plural “Wee Did sie,” the replacement of “Demy” with “semy” to describe the two rainbow-­like arcs, the unnecessary but nevertheless newly stated piece of information that “ye true sune bore:E:S:E:,” and the captain’s identification of himself by his initials at the end. The drawing on this separate sheet (figure 4.3) is similar in many re­spects to that found in the journal itself: it includes the labeled horizon line, and t­ here are the same telltale pinpricks in the paper at the center of each of the three rainbows as well as of the parhelia on ­either side of the “true sun.” The three suns are a ­little larger than t­ hose shown in the journal, and they have somewhat more expansive auras, highlighted by daubs of yellow watercolor; at the same time, the two semicircular arcs are slightly less thick, their coloring inclining more specifically ­toward yellow with only a hint of green on the outside. But the most remarkable difference to be seen in the single-­sheet image involves the numerous scribbles lightly penciled throughout the interior of the main circle that seem to indicate wisps of cloud.

FIGURE 4.3  ​Christopher Gunman’s second rendering of celestial phenomenon, with wisps of clouds added in pencil, possibly by another hand. Jarvis Collection, Lincolnshire Archives, Lincoln, UK.

Peacocks and Rainbows • 81

It is impossible to know for certain w ­ hether or not ­these are Gunman’s, but it feels unlikely, given the absence of such markings in the journal drawing as well as the lack of any mention of this ele­ment in his written descriptions (his “variable Cloudy, weather” from the journal entry—­a detail he did not copy onto the separate sheet—­would necessitate sketching clouds across the entire sky if showing atmospheric conditions had been his intent). Could ­these markings bear some relationship to the theatrical producers’ intriguing statement that “We have only added the Cloud where the Person of Iris sits”? And if so, might this tattered sheet of paper, subsequently turned to other seemingly unrelated purposes and re­united with Gunman’s journal only in the nineteenth ­century, represent a rare piece of surviving evidence from the Dorset Garden Theatre and the 1685 production of Albion and Albanius itself? As we have already observed, the conventional understanding of a “Cloud where the Person of Iris sits” would be a concentrated patch of cloud-­looking material, ­whether painted or three-­ dimensional, surrounding or merely supporting (but in e­ ither case deftly masking) a seat for the character to sit in. However, if Iris indeed rode upon a piece of nebulous m ­ atter situated somewhere in the upper half of her large rainbow machine, ­there would have been a good argument for sketching in additional clouds over the entire face of the machine, if only to enable the necessary masking cloud to blend in and hence avoid diminishing the visual effect of the three suns in the machine’s lower portion. The possibility is intriguing. W ­ ere James Winn still with us, he would no doubt caution against any hasty pronouncement that this sheet of paper certainly passed through the hands of the United Com­ pany’s producers and embodies some part of their distinctive vision for bringing Dryden’s opera to the stage; at the same time, I am confident that he would ­wholeheartedly welcome the tantalizing opportunity for further speculation that such a document pre­sents. The United Com­pany’s decision to stage Christopher Gunman’s vision as part of the first act of Albion and Albanius contributes on several levels to the opera’s diegetic supernaturalism, as well as to its p­ olitical message. Scholars have been quick to view Albion’s spectacular machinery as a financial burden that ultimately contributed to the venture’s failure; in ­doing so, however, they side uncritically with the most damning con­temporary criticism of the production. In a withering attack on nearly ­every facet of that production, the anonymous author of a squib entitled “The Raree-­show, from F ­ ather Hopkins” satirically quotes the comic actor and United Com­pany shareholder Cave Underhill lamenting the ruinous financial loss he has sustained as a result of the opera’s vast expense and sudden termination: D[amn] me says Underhill I’m out two hundred, Hoping that Rain-­bows and Peacocks would do; Who thought infallable Tom could have blunder’d, A Plague upon him and Monsieur Grabeu.23

82 • Andrew R. Walkling

Blame for the losses to the com­pany and its investors, the ventriloquized Underhill seems to be suggesting, must fall squarely at the feet of the show’s creative team, including John Dryden, Louis Grabu, and even “infallable” Thomas Betterton, whose “decorations, / And the Machines ­were well written,” as the preceding stanza has conceded.24 Th ­ ose machines, the poem implies, w ­ ere one of the ele­ments of the ill-­fated opera that could have been counted on to facilitate its success, notwithstanding its incompetent text and “dull” musical score. Yet, with the termination of the production ­a fter only six p­ erformances, even the splendid rainbows and peacocks, executed at enormous cost, are unavailing. A similar sentiment appears in another anonymous text, written about three years l­ ater, in which Dryden (­under the satirical guise of the arrogant and inept playwright “Bayes”) is faulted for his short-­lived operatic extravaganza: Bays! who with Rainbows, Flutes, & Peacock’s Tails The needy bankrupt Players has undone, In hopes that where the blund’ering [sic] Poet fails, The ­Painter or the Fidler would attone: But all in vain! the gaudy Proj­ect miss’d, And whilst the Furies sung, the Audience hiss’d.25

Dryden, Betterton, and their collaborators may well have regretted their decision to lavish such care and expense on an opera that fared so poorly in the event. But the chorus of condemnation for the supposed errors of the production’s creators needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The premature closure of the show, which led to the loss of shareholders’ investments, came in response to a dire national emergency, the invasion of the Duke of Monmouth. Dryden’s experiment in allegorization, however fatuous it may look to us in hindsight, is at once bold and highly sophisticated.26 Grabu’s pathbreaking musical score is nowhere near as bad as it has been caricatured. And if the Dorset Garden spectators did indeed hiss during the chorus sung by the Furies at the end of act 2, scene 1—­and specifically ­there—it could more plausibly be interpreted as exuberant audience participation at the precise moment in the opera when the cartoonish baddies (in Hell, no less) celebrate what they believe is their impending victory over the Stuart monarchy. The same throng may have responded very differently at t­ hose moments of musically accompanied diegetic supernaturalism that punctuate ­every other scene of the opera: with hushed awe at the dazzling spectacle playing out before their eyes. The explicit mention of peacocks and rainbows in the satires tells the story clearly enough: what r­ eally stuck with p­ eople who had seen Albion and Albanius was the machinery and the sense of amazement it generated, and in par­tic­u­lar the moment of cumulative epiphany in act 1 that is capped off by a stupendous vision of epochal historical change—­a vision deriving from

Peacocks and Rainbows • 83

one man’s solitary experience of gazing in awe at a wondrous, iridescent sign in the sky.

Notes 1 C. H., Astrological Observations (London, 1672), 5. 2 C. H., Astrological Observations, sig. A1r. 3 C. H., Astrological Observations, 5–6, 4. 4 For the classic exploration of this phenomenon, see Marc Bloch, The Royal Touch: Monarchy and Miracles in France and ­England, trans. J. E. Anderson (New York: Dorset Press, 1989). 5 For details of the Mary, see R. C. Anderson, comp., Lists of Men-­of-­War 1650–1700, Part I: E ­ nglish Ships, 1649–1702, Society for Nautical Research Occasional Publications 5 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1935), 33 (no. 580). Gunman was its first captain, although the ship continued in use u­ ntil 1727. See Cy Harrison et al., eds., “Three Decks,” https://­threedecks​.­org​/­index​.­php​?­display​_­t ype​=­show​ _­ship&id​=­5297, where an alternative burthen calculation of 142 tons is also given. This Mary was the second vessel of that name, its p­ redecessor—­presented to Charles II by the City of Amsterdam in 1660 and christened a­ fter the new king’s ­sister, the Princess of Orange—­having been lost at sea in 1675. For more on the first Mary, see C. G. ’t Hooft, “The First ­English Yachts, 1660,” The Mari­ner’s Mirror 5 (1919): 108–123. 6 See P. M. Cowburn, “Christopher Gunman and the Wreck of the Gloucester,” The Mari­ner’s Mirror 42 (1956): 113–126 and 219–229, and Claire Jowitt, “The Last Voyage of the Gloucester (1682): The Politics of a Royal Shipwreck,” ­English Historical Review 137 (2022): 728–762. The rediscovery of the wreck, accomplished in 2007 and verified in 2012, was publicly announced in June 2022: see http://­uea​.­co​ /­g loucester. 7 [Sir] Walter Scott, ed., The Works of John Dryden, 18 vols. (London: William Miller, 1808), 1:300–301n. ­ nglish Dramatick Opera, 1661–1706 8 For a discussion, see Andrew R. Walkling, E (Abingdon, Routledge, 2019), 60–81. 9 John Dryden, Albion and Albanius: An Opera (London: Jacob Tonson, 1685), sig. (b)2r; see Earl Miner, George R. Guffey, and Franklin Zimmerman, eds., The Works of John Dryden, vol. 15 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 11 (lines 11–14). Dramatic text is hereafter cited parenthetically in text by act, scene, and line numbers, with the plus symbol indicating a stage direction. 10 This par­tic­u­lar aspect of Proteus’s scene may not have required any traps: for instructions detailing how it could have been accomplished, see Nicola Sabbattini, Pratica di Fabricar Scene e Machine ne’ Teatri (1638), book 2, §§25–26, trans. John H. McDowell, in Barnard Hewitt, ed., The ­Renaissance Stage: Documents of Serlio, Sabbattini and Furttenbach (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1958), 37–177, esp. 128–130. While Sabbattini’s method does not utilize a trap, he offers no explanation as to how the actor, having been turned into an inanimate object, is supposed to get off the stage once that transformation has been effected. ­ nglish Dramatick Opera, 67. 11 See Walkling, E 12 Montague Summers suggests that Juno’s peacock machine was inspired by a similar effect in Pierre Corneille’s Andromède, a French tragédie à machines first performed in 1650 and presented in London by a traveling com­pany in 1662: see Summers,

84 • Andrew R. Walkling

ed., Dryden: The Dramatic Works, 6 vols. (London: The Nonesuch Press, 1932; rpt. New York: Gordian Press, 1968), 1:cxvi. Andromède, however, makes no mention of the peacock’s tail as a par­tic­u­lar feature of Juno’s machine, instead using the chariots of three deities (Juno, Jupiter, and Neptune) to fill the theatrical space. A peacock machine and a rainbow for Iris w ­ ere evidently planned for William Congreve and John Eccles’s Semele of ca. 1706 (which, however, was never staged). 13 Walkling, ­English Dramatick Opera, 20–22. 14 Scott, Works of John Dryden, 1:301n. 15 Miner, Guffey, and Zimmerman, Works of John Dryden, 15:28. ­ amily, JARVIS/9, Lincolnshire Archives, County Rec­ord 16 Papers of the Gunman F Office, Lincoln, UK. JARVIS/9/1 comprises papers of Christopher Gunman and his wife, Katherine; the subcategory JARVIS/9/1/A includes five volumes of Gunman’s maritime journals covering his entire c­ areer from 1662 to his death in 1685. I am very grateful to Rob Waddington of the Lincolnshire Archives for his friendly and generous assistance in 2013 when I first discovered t­ hese documents, and to the Jarvis/Birch f­ amily, descendants of Lt. Col. George Ralph Payne Jarvis, legatee of the extinct Gunman lineage, for kindly permitting me to reproduce the relevant images in this chapter. 17 From February 27 to March 24 the pages of Gunman’s journal are headed with some version of “On board his Roy:ll Highness Yacht Mary att Calais staying for the Dutches of Modina.” Duchess Laura had previously been in ­England in August 1682 when the Yorks’ short-­lived d­ aughter Charlotte Maria was born. In this l­ ater instance, Maria Beatrice suffered a miscarriage on May 8, 1684. 18 Lincolnshire Archives, JARVIS/9/1/A/5, March 15–18, 1683/4. 19 The supralateral arc is often confused with the rarer “46-­degree halo,” which appears in the same location relative to the sun, but is much fainter and forms a complete circle rather than an arc. ­ idow Elizabeth 20 Bell operated the bookshop between 1697 and 1720, and his w continued t­ here ­until 1724; the annotation in question is prob­ably not a bibliographical reference, since Lane’s Rational and Speedy Method was published both by John Harris at the Harrow in ­Little Britain and by Bell (who is listed second in the colophon). 21 Setting aside the unlikely prospect that the single-­sheet drawing represents any kind of “original sketch” of the celestial phenomenon Gunman observed, we may consider what might be meant by the phrase “the Picture which you have.” This prob­ably refers not to the image in Gunman’s journal but to the oil on canvas painting known as Perihelion (60 × 91 cm) that now hangs in a staircase at Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire, home to the heirs of the Gunman and Jarvis families (it has been assigned the cata­logue number DN67). The painting, which shows the harbor at Calais, the Mary, and Gunman’s celestial phenomenon, is dated “? c.1675” and attributed to the “circle of Henrick [sic] Danckerts” on the Paul Mellon Centre’s “Art and the Country ­House” website (https://­w ww​.­artandthecountry​ house​.­com​/­catalogues​/­catalogues​-­index​/­perihelion​-­1152). This is obviously not entirely correct: the date of the painting would have to be ­a fter March 18, 1684, when Gunman witnessed the celestial phenomenon (moreover, it might be noted that the Dutch topographical p­ ainter Hendrick Danckerts died in 1680, and therefore by no means could have executed the canvas himself). In fact, the rough date and attribution stand on much more uncertain ground than this: they are derived from a notation made by Oliver Millar in 1952, describing a painting he saw at Doddington Hall as “Harbour Scene: large picturesque

Peacocks and Rainbows • 85

22 23 24 25 26

canvas, remotely in the manner of Weenix, presumably painted in ­England, c.1675; not far from Danckerts” (Paul Mellon Centre Collection, Oliver Millar, Notebook VIII, 191–192). Martin Postle, the author of the “Art and the Country H ­ ouse” entry, connects Millar’s note with DN67, supplying the date and attribution by inference and further concluding that the painting “was commissioned by Captain Christopher Gunman.” This latter assertion seems problematic, considering that Gunman died of gangrene at Calais in March 1685 (https://­threedecks​.­org​/­index​.­php​?­display​ _­t ype​=­show​_­crewman&id​= ­966) and is unlikely to have commissioned a painting, while still serving at sea, during the one year he lived a­ fter his sighting took place—­ especially knowing that Albion and Albanius (which did not open ­until ten weeks ­a fter his death) was in preparation. In fact, t­ here is no good reason to believe that DN67 and the “large picturesque . . . ​Harbour Scene” mentioned in Millar’s notes have anything to do with one another at all. A more likely attribution would be to the prolific marine ­painter John Thomas Serres (1759–1825), which would allow us to redate the painting by over a hundred years, to the late eigh­teenth or early nineteenth ­century. My justification for this rather drastic revision in our understanding of DN67 is Walter Scott’s comment (Works of John Dryden, 1:301n) that “Mr Gunman, the descendant of the captain, has lately had a picture on the subject painted by Serres, the marine ­painter; which makes an in­ter­est­ing history-­piece. It represents the phenomenon in the heavens—­ the harbour of Calais—­and the yacht lying off it, &c. &c.” Scott’s statement, which establishes a terminus ad quem of 1808 for the painting, refers to Christopher Gunman’s great-­grandson James (1747–1824), the last survivor of the Gunman bloodline. As the inheritor of Christopher Gunman’s journal, where he was able to see and read about his ancestor’s extraordinary experience, James Gunman not only was much better situated to commission a painting, e­ ither from John Thomas Serres or from his ­father Dominic Serres (1722–1793)—­the former seems more probable—­ but also might be considered less likely to take such a step if his inheritance already included a late seventeenth-­century painting from the “circle of Danckerts” on the same subject. Lincolnshire Archives, JARVIS/9/1/A/5, March 15–18, 1683/4 insert. Wit and Mirth or, Pills to Purge Melancholy [. . .], vol. 5 (London, 1714), 111, lines 13–16. Wit and Mirth, 5, 111, lines 9–10. Hugh MacDonald, ed., A Journal from Parnassus (London: Oxford University Press for P. J. Dobell, 1937), 8–9. Andrew R. Walkling, Masque and Opera in ­England, 1656–1688 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 298; a more detailed investigation of allegory and dramatic structure in Albion and Albanius is currently in preparation.

5

“The Dyrham D ­ ecades” The Cultural Connections of an ­English Country ­House, 1690–1720 DAVID HOPKINS Dyrham Park is a g­ rand baroque mansion, situated eight miles north of Bath and twelve miles east of Bristol in southwestern ­England. The ­house was built between 1691 and 1702 by William Blathwayt (ca. 1649–1717), a prominent state official during the reigns of Charles II, James II, and William III, and replaced a dilapidated Tudor mansion on the same site. As William III’s acting secretary of state, Blathwayt was frequently absent during the construction of the ­house and laying out of its estate, but he supervised the ­process with punctilious care. Dyrham Park remained in the possession of the Blathwayt ­family for two and a half centuries, passing a­ fter the Second World War into public owner­ship. It is now administered by the National Trust and has been open to the general public since 1961. Many aspects of Dyrham Park and of the ­career of its builder have been the subject of scholarly inquiry over the years. Blathwayt’s professional life was documented in a major biography in the 1930s, which has been subsequently supplemented and updated by ­later research.1 A series of letters and accounts relating to his two sons’ travels on the G ­ rand Tour with their tutor M. De Blainville has been edited and published.2 The building, furnishings, and décor of Dyrham, the layout of its park and gardens, and the ­house’s fine collection of Dutch art 86

“The Dyrham ­Decades” • 87

and ceramics, all inspired by Blathwayt’s early residence in Holland, have been explored by a number of architectural and garden historians.3 But despite two scholarly articles exploring Blathwayt’s extensive book collection, l­ ittle attention has been paid to Dyrham Park and its literary and musical life during the ­house’s first two ­decades.4 The pre­sent chapter sketches some of t­ hese connections in two related ways, by both investigating the specifically literary and musical contents of the Dyrham library and exploring the contacts between Blathwayt and three figures with whom his life was closely connected: Sir William T ­ emple, the diplomat and man of letters u­ nder whom he served at the British Embassy in The Hague at the beginning of his ­career; the ­lawyer and miscellaneous writer Giles Jacob, who was Blathwayt’s steward and secretary between 1706 and 1711; and Blathwayt’s second son, John, a talented musician who was to become a significant figure in E ­ nglish musical life in the 1720s. Blathwayt’s connections with ­these three men, and the relationship between his artistic interests and theirs, w ­ ere rather dif­fer­ent in each case. T ­ emple was a writer, whose thinking may have had a direct influence on that of Blathwayt. John Blathwayt shared musical interests and activity with his ­father, and contributed directly to the musical life of Dyrham Park. Jacob, in contrast, is of interest not so much b­ ecause of any influence he exerted on the Blathwayts, or any par­tic­u­lar cultural or philosophical values he might be thought to have shared with them, but ­because of the way in which a writer who had worked in the country-­house environment of Dyrham could move, shortly afterward, into a milieu that might seem to be the very antithesis of the culturally elite world of ­Temple or the Blathwayts. To compare the literary interests of ­Temple and Blathwayt with t­ hose of Jacob is thus to remind oneself of the complex patterns of difference and connection that characterized the literary activities of late seventeenth-­and early eighteenth-­century E ­ ngland. Blathwayt’s literary and musical connections might suggest that he was perhaps less “dull” than his employer King William III supposed,5 qualifying suggestions that his artistic interests ­were exclusively focused on collecting and possessions and that he was more interested in “­things external” than “­things spiritual.”6 But before embarking on an investigation of the cultural dimension of Dyrham Park, a few preliminary words of caution may be in order. I wrote ­earlier of “the Dyrham library.” My phrasing was carefully chosen, since ­there are a number of uncertainties about precisely which books at Dyrham w ­ ere chosen by Blathwayt himself and about the extent and nature of his use of the large collection of books in the ­house. The bulk of the Dyrham library was sold off as part of a w ­ holesale ­house­hold retrenchment in 1912. One therefore has to rely on a series of e­ arlier inventories to determine the content of the library in Blathwayt’s time. As Anna Simoni observed, ­these inventories are partial and unsatisfactory in a number of re­spects.7 The ­later lists, dating from 1867,8 1871,9 and 1905,10 contain many items that w ­ ere published ­after Blathwayt’s death, and give no accurate account of the contents of the Dyrham library during its first two

88 • David Hopkins

d­ ecades. Even the detailed inventory of 1731, in some ways the fullest and most useful of the early cata­logues,11 was compiled over a ­decade ­a fter Blathwayt’s death. Three of the e­ arlier inventories—­one from 1691,12 another of 1698,13 in which Blathwayt himself lists a number of “Books I take with me” when away from home, and the list of items that Blathwayt bought from his ­uncle Thomas Povey in 169314—­rec­ord books that ­were certainly in Blathwayt’s own possession. But t­ hese lists are very short on bibliographical detail, and it is thus often difficult to be sure which works or editions are being referred to and the extent to which individual items overlap with, or differ from, items listed in other inventories. One cannot, moreover, always assume that b­ ecause the publication of a par­tic­u ­lar book anteceded Blathwayt’s death that the book was necessarily acquired before 1717. One also cannot be precise about how much and what kind of use Blathwayt made of the books we know he possessed. But his instruction that “stands for books in the arbours” of the wilderness above the parterres and terraces on the north side of the garden at Dyrham should be installed so that he might read “looking t­ owards Bristol on fine days”15 provides some indication of the seriousness of his reading life. And though it is pos­si­ble that some of his books may have been acquired primarily for purposes of display, Simoni was confident that Blathwayt “surely . . . ​used” his fourth folio of Shakespeare (1685) “to read, rather than to show off.”16 The sheer extent and variety of the Dyrham library does seem, at least in general terms, to indicate, as Simoni suggested, that Blathwayt “was by no means the dry pedant interested only in his work and his property, as he is so easily represented.”17 His library was in some ways typical of t­ hose of wealthy landowners of his period. But, as we ­shall see, it also bears the distinctive marks of his personal interests, experiences, and milieu. A number of other issues concerning the precise connections between Blathwayt and the figures with whom he associated remain uncertain. We have been told, for example, by Gertrude Jacobsen that the office of Blathwayt’s employer Sir William ­Temple in The Hague “was set up within the ­Temple ­house­hold” and was characterized, at least for most of the time, by “an intimate personal atmosphere.”18 But Jacobsen also suggested that “Sir William ­Temple’s relations with Blathwayt prob­ably never went beyond the kind of concern of a man for a youth who had started out in public life u­ nder his direction.”19 Nevertheless, circumstantial evidence can, if tactfully employed, allow us to speculate with some degree of confidence about the intellectual and artistic preoccupations that linked Blathwayt with his ­family and professional associates and that, therefore, formed part of the cultural environment of Dyrham Park in its early days.

Blathwayt and Sir William T­ emple William Blathwayt’s ­father died soon ­after he was born, and he was brought up by his u­ ncle Thomas Povey, a bibliophile and a government and royal official

“The Dyrham ­Decades” • 89

during the Cromwellian and Restoration periods. A ­ fter studying at the ­Middle ­Temple between 1665 and 1668, Blathwayt gained employment as a clerk in the ­English embassy at The Hague, where he learned Dutch, a rare accomplishment that, many years ­later, was to stand him in good stead during his period of ­service to King William III. Blathwayt was clearly a very talented linguist, and, in addition to his knowledge of Latin, French, and Italian—­fairly standard for a gentleman of his time—­had a good command—­far less common—of German, Spanish, Danish, and at least some Polish. The library that he assembled over the years abounded in grammars and dictionaries of many languages, accounts of travels, atlases, topographical manuals, and books describing the mores and histories of vari­ous foreign countries, and the lives and exploits of their most distinguished citizens—as well as Bibles in many tongues, and books on a variety of topics, including law, architecture, natu­ral history, astronomy, arithmetic, geometry, and ­horse­manship.20 As the resident E ­ nglish ambassador, Sir William T ­ emple’s distinguished diplomatic c­ areer is well documented.21 During his time in Holland, he became— as Blathwayt was himself ­later to become—­a close friend of William of Orange, whose marriage to Mary, d­ aughter of James II, he had helped to arrange. But ­Temple is perhaps more frequently remembered ­today for his literary activities than for his ­political achievements. He was the patron of the young Jonathan Swift, and the recipient of a celebrated and touching series of love letters from his f­ uture wife, Dorothy Osborne—­a collection that, ­after its first publication in 1888, established itself as a minor seventeenth-­century classic and was reprinted in several ­popular series, including Everyman’s Library.22 ­Temple is also well known for his role in the so-­called Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, the debate—­usually known in ­England as the ­Battle of the Books—­between ­those who believed that Ancient Greece and Rome had established standards in lit­er­ a­ture, art, architecture, and philosophy that would never be surpassed and t­ hose who thought that modern achievements in lit­er­a­ture, science, and scholarship had transcended ­those of the ancient world. In The B ­ attle of the Books (1704) by his protégé Swift, ­Temple appeared as the leading champion of the Ancients. ­Temple’s cultural stance, however, was more complex than the “Ancient” label might suggest, and he should not be dismissed as a merely nostalgic or reactionary worshipper of the Greek and Roman classics. His intellectual curiosity was extremely wide-­ranging, and included explorations of Nordic, Gothic, South American, and even Chinese thought, as well as that of the classical world. His frequently asserted convictions about the continuity of h ­ uman nature w ­ ere combined with a g­ reat sensitivity to historical change and cultural difference. ­Temple was one of a number of distinguished seventeenth-­century ­English writers who became interested in the work of the third-­century BCE Greek ­philosopher Epicurus. The Epicurean philosophy—as the associations of the term “Epicure” still suggest t­ oday—­had become associated from antiquity onward with an amoral hedonism, and the Garden, the supposed residence of

90 • David Hopkins

Epicurus and his disciples, with profligate debauchery. But a number of scholars in the seventeenth ­century had engaged in a radical revaluation of Epicureanism, arguing that the Epicurean philosophy, properly understood, far from advocating libertine excess, had been focused on the cultivation of ­simple, even ascetic, virtues—­virtues, moreover, that, in their rejection of worldly vanities, had much in common with the teachings of Chris­tian­ity.23 Such was the understanding of Epicureanism promulgated by the French ­philosopher Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655), and taken up by a number of E ­ nglish writers, including Walter Charleton, whose Epicurus’s Morals: Collected and Faithfully En­glished was published in 1655, and Thomas Stanley, who included a full and favorable account of Epicureanism in his History of Philosophy (1655–1661). Most of Epicurus’s writings have been lost, and his teachings are largely preserved in the accounts of ­later commentators, particularly Diogenes Laertius, and in the ­great poem De Rerum Natura (“On the Nature of Th ­ ings”) by Epicurus’s disciple, the Roman poet Lucretius. It is significant that a translation of book 1 of Lucretius’s poem by John Evelyn was published in 1656. The first known complete E ­ nglish translation of De Rerum Natura was also completed that year by the Puritan writer Lucy Hutchinson.24 Admirers of Epicureanism needed, of course, to play down t­ hose aspects of the philosophy (its mortalism and effective atheism) that ­were incompatible with their own religion. And admirers of Epicurus—­like French essayist Montaigne, whose work was a prominent influence on ­Temple,25 and who made frequent use of Epicurean thinking in his own work—­were seldom merely or purely that. William ­Temple, nevertheless, was one of several writers of the period for whom Epicurean teachings and imaginings ­were of prominent importance. His essay “Upon the Gardens of Epicurus” is an extended cele­bration of the Epicurean ideal of rural retirement and of “happiness” as the “chief good . . . ​and ultimate end” of h ­ uman life26—an ideal that serves as a necessary counterbalance or alternative to the demands of the world of business and public affairs. The essay has obvious personal resonance for both T ­ emple, who retired twice from public ­service, first (from 1670 to 1674) to his ­house at Sheen in Surrey and second (­after 1686) to his new estate, Moor Park, and also for Blathwayt, whose last years ­were spent in rural retreat at Dyrham. T ­ emple’s poems—­few in number, but of very respectable quality27—­include renderings of Epicurus-­influenced poems by Horace, including the g­ reat 29th Ode of book 3—an affirmation of sublime insouciance in the face of the vagaries of fortune—­and of Virgil’s celebrated Epicurean passage from book 2 of the Georgics praising rural contentment and the philosophical contemplation of the laws of nature. ­Temple’s Epicurean tastes seem to have been reflected in the contents of the Dyrham library. The library contained copies of the 1714 Life of Sir William ­Temple, of T ­ emple’s works and Memoirs, of Charleton’s Epicurus’s Morals, of the works of Diogenes Laertius and Gassendi, of several editions of Horace and Lucretius (in French and Latin), of Evelyn’s translation of book 1 of Lucretius,

“The Dyrham ­Decades” • 91

and of editions of Montaigne and of the works of Montaigne’s disciple and fellow student of Epicurus, Pierre Charron. Blathwayt also possessed a book on La Morale de Confucius, the Chinese ­philosopher who features prominently (and, for the period, very unusually) in ­Temple’s essay “Of Heroic Virtue.” Blathwayt seems also to have inherited something of ­Temple’s eclecticism in his responses to classical material. In his essay “Upon the Gardens of Epicurus,” ­Temple expatiates at length on the overlap between Epicureanism and Stoicism, the principal philosophical rival of Epicureanism in the ancient world. Both philosophical schools, ­Temple argues, agreed that wisdom was “the chief good . . . ​ and ultimate end of man,” but the Stoics located wisdom in virtue, whereas the Epicureans thought it lay in p­ leasure: Yet the most reasonable of the Stoicks made the ­Pleasure of Virtue to be the greatest Happiness; and the best of the Epicureans made the greatest P ­ leasure to consist in Virtue; and the Difference between t­ hese two seems not easily discovered. All agreed the greatest Temper, if not the total subduing of Passion, and exercise of Reason, to be the State of the greatest Felicity: To live without Desires or Fears, or t­ hose Perturbations of Mind and Thought, which Passions raise: To place true Riches in wanting ­little, rather than in possessing much; and true P ­ leasure in Temperance, rather than in satisfying the Senses; To live with Indifference to the common Enjoyments and Accidents of Life, and with Constancy upon the greatest Blows of Fate or of Chance; not to disturb our Minds with sad Reflections upon what is past, nor with anxious Cares or raving Hopes about what is to come; neither to disquiet Life with the Fears of Death, nor Death with the Desires of Life; but in both, and in all t­ hings e­ lse, to follow Nature, seem to be the Precepts most agreed among them.28

A similarly in­ter­est­ing blend of Epicurean and Stoic wisdom seems to be pre­ sent in the Latin inscriptions that Blathwayt had inscribed over the orangery and the south front at Dyrham: The orangery inscription reads “servare modum, finemque tueri / Naturamque segui.” Charles Cotton translated this as “To keep a mean, his end still to observe, / And from the Laws of Nature ne’re to swerve.” ­These lines also appear in T ­ emple’s essay “On the Gardens of Epicurus,” and had previously been quoted by Montaigne, in his essay “Of Physiogonomy.”29 The words are distinctly Stoic in spirit. They are taken from Lucan’s epic poem, De Bello Civili (commonly known as Pharsalia, a­ fter the ­great ­battle in which the poem’s action culminates), where they form part of the characterization of the poem’s Stoic hero, Marcus Porcius Cato.30 The phrase inscribed at Dyrham is followed in Lucan’s poem by the following lines: “patriaeque inpendere vitam / Nec sibi sed toti genitum se credere mundo” (“to give his life for his country, to believe that he was born to serve the ­whole world and not himself ”). Such lines w ­ ere especially resonant for men like ­Temple and Blathwayt, who spent significant portions of their life in public

92 • David Hopkins

s­ ervice. As Rupert Goulding has pointed out, the lines inscribed at Dyrham would also have had, for anyone acquainted with their source, a distinctly Whiggish and Williamite flavor, since they look out directly on the statue of Neptune, a feature of the Dyrham garden closely connected with William of Orange who was associated with the sea god by virtue of his having crossed the channel to invade ­England in 1688.31 But Blathwayt’s Whiggish sentiments w ­ ere by no means exclusive of other sympathies. One of the t­ reasures of his library (in the luxury large-­paper version, in which his name appears among ­those of the “second subscribers”) was the 1697 folio of John Dryden’s translation of The Works of Virgil. This was a major prestige publication, designed by its publisher, Jacob Tonson, to consolidate his reputation as the major literary publisher of his age. Tonson, a Whig and supporter of William III, had wished the book to be dedicated to the King. Dryden, loyal to his former master James II, refused to countenance this and, moreover, tucked into his translation references to usurpation and exile which, while in no way turning his version into any kind of s­ imple allegory of recent events, have notable Jacobite resonance.32 Tonson had his revenge by “doctoring” the engravings contained in the volume (which had been recycled from an e­ arlier translation of Virgil by John Ogilby) to give Aeneas, the poem’s hero, the unmistakable hooked nose of King William. But the private tension between publisher and poet in no way prevented The Works of Virgil from appealing, as Tonson had hoped, to a wide readership of the Good and the ­Great in the land, that extended right across the ­political spectrum. Recent research has shown that ­there ­were, in fact, more Whig than Tory subscribers to this high-­prestige publication, the quality and beauty of which clearly overrode any straightforward considerations of ­political loyalty.33 A second classical inscription at Dyrham is both less obviously p­ olitical in its implications—­though perhaps no less indebted to T ­ emple’s precedent—­and less obviously related to the original context from which it was taken. Over the pediment to the south face of the h ­ ouse is inscribed “his utere mecum,” words taken from the end of the sixth epistle of Horace’s first book. Horace’s poem, one broadly Epicurean in sentiment, consists of a series of recommendations to his addressee, Numicius, that are designed to elaborate its opening injunction, “nil admirari,” a phrase that may be roughly translated as “­don’t be fazed or over-­ awed by anything.” ­A fter counseling Numicius to manifest balance in the face of conflicting emotions, luxury, disease, pomp, gluttony, Horace concludes (in the translation of Philip Francis), “Farewel, and if a better System’s thine, / Impart it frankly, or make use of mine.”34 Horace’s “his” (“­these ­things”) refers, in the original Latin, to the advice he has offered Numicius ­earlier in the poem. But in the Dyrham inscription, it seems to refer to the ­pleasures of the ­house that surround potential visitors on their arrival—­the inscription is, a­ fter all, over what used to be the main entrance to the ­house. Horace’s phrase seems to have had a long history as a portable tag, which could be “applied” in circumstances very

“The Dyrham ­Decades” • 93

dif­fer­ent from ­those in which it had originally been used. The ­great sixteenth-­ century Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus, for instance, had deployed it in his manual on letter writing (De Conscribendis Epistolis) as one of several formulae with which someone might conclude a letter of consolation: “If you know any better words of comfort than t­ hose which I have given in my letter, then let me know; if not, make use of what I have said.”35 Blathwayt seems to have effected another “translation” of Horace’s sentiments in offering to share the Epicurean ­pleasures of his garden with visitors.

Blathwayt and Giles Jacob To turn from Blathwayt’s association with ­Temple, and with the classical learning he shared with his former employer, to his employee Giles Jacob is to move into a very dif­f er­ent literary landscape. Readers of literary histories of the period are familiar with the battleground between the classically grounded, “polite,” and “gentlemanly” literary elite, exemplified by such writers as Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift and their “Scriblerus Club,” and by Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele, editors of the fash­ion­able periodicals The Tatler and The Spectator, and the unruly inhabitants of “Grub Street,” the home, partly real, partly meta­phorical, of new-­style scholarly pedants and of hack jobbing writers and corrupt and venal publishers, such as Edmund Curll, who encouraged and supported their activities.36 “Grub Street” and its inhabitants ­were portrayed by the literary elite as a sordid and money-­grubbing crew who, both by the poor quality and pornographic nature of many of their writings and by their association with corrupt politicians (most notably Sir Robert Walpole), presented a real threat to civilization, genuine artistic standards, and morality.37 In accord with ­these beliefs, Pope’s mock-­epic poem The Dunciad, the product of his pessimistic ­later years, foretells the “universal Darkness” that ­will ensue, following the ultimate takeover of British culture by Grub Street and its presiding deity, the goddess Dulness. Giles Jacob’s work and c­ areer cast some doubt on the conventional binary division between the “polite” culture of the country h ­ ouse and the sordid commercial world of “Grub Street.” His work as a writer postdates his employment at Dyrham, and most of it postdates the death of William Blathwayt. But some of his formative years w ­ ere spent at the h ­ ouse, and he paid tribute to his former home on at least two occasions. In the preface to his 1717 publication The Country Gentleman’s Vade Mecum, Jacob attributes the origins of his book to his “Having, not long since, spent some Years in an Employment which requir’d my Residence in the Country, and wherein I had many leisure Hours; Being fixed in a fine H ­ ouse with most beautiful and delightful Gardens, and having besides the Superintendency of a large ­Family, and all domestic Affairs, the Management and Inspection of a considerable Estate, and all Country Business.”38 And in The Lover’s Miscellany (1719), Jacob included a poem “On the Water-­Works in

94 • David Hopkins

Mr. Blathwayt’s Gardens at Dirham in Glocestershire,” which celebrates the Dyrham gardens in verse,with diction that steers somewhat awkwardly between the practicalities of estate management— A fine Canal runs through diverts the Eye: ­Here large Jet D’Eau mounts ­Water to the Sky, Around are Pipes in Multitudes discharg’d, The Famous Works by Turn of Cock enlarg’d.

—­and the perceived demands of poetic sublimity, when describing the “two Ponds of Depth” on a hill in Dyrham Park which fill “all Beholders” “With Admiration.”39 Jacob’s most successful publications w ­ ere in the l­ egal field, and his New Law Dictionary, first published in 1729, went through five editions in his lifetime, staying in print (in successive revisions by ­others) for over sixty years ­after his death. Another of his ­popular ­legal publications, ­Every Man His Own ­Lawyer, reached a tenth edition by 1788. But Jacob had ambitions beyond his specialist field, and, it might be thought, somewhat beyond his capabilities. He wrote a play, Love in a Wood, or, The Country Squire (published in 1714, but never performed), a mildly obscene response to Pope’s Rape of the Lock in The Rape of the Smock (1717), a more openly pornographic Tractatus de Hermaphroditis (“Treatise on Hermaphrodites”) (1718), and two poems describing A Journey to Bath and Bristol and A Journey Back from Bristol to London (1717).40 His Lover’s Miscellany contains, as well as the poem on Dyrham, an imitation of John Philips’s The Splendid Shilling, a topographical poem, “Flamstead’s Hill, or Greenwich Park,” poems on the hot wells of Bath and Bristol, and a number of shorter songs and epigrams. Jacob’s volume of Essays Relating to the Conduct of Life (1717) was expanded in the third edition of 1730 with “Essays on Musick, Painting and Poetry,” and a collection of new “Poems, Tales, Epigrams, Translations, &c.” Perhaps Jacob’s most celebrated literary work was his Poetical Register, a pioneering attempt at a literary encyclopedia published in two volumes (1719–1720, reissued 1723), the first of which offers accounts of “The Lives and Characters of the ­English Dramatick Poets, with an Account of their Writings,” and the second of which is devoted to “An Historical Account of the Lives and Writings of Our Most Considerable E ­ nglish Poets, w ­ hether Epick, Lyrick, Elegiack, Epigramatists, &c.” This last work occasioned a quarrel with Alexander Pope. In book 3 of the first version of The Dunciad (1728) Pope emphatically includes Jacob among the Grub Street Dunces, calling him “mighty J—­b Blunderbuss of Law.”41 Pope’s main quarrel with Jacob targeted the latter’s literary overreaching, his failure to see the limitations of his own competence. Jacob assumes a lofty authority in essays that purport to set the world to rights about such subjects as “Choice of a Wife by a Man of Sense,” “Choice of a Husband, by a W ­ oman of Prudence,” “Management and Education of C ­ hildren,” as well as such topics as “Hope and

“The Dyrham ­Decades” • 95

Fear,” “Passion and Its Consequences,” “Prosperity and Adversity” and “Slander and Its Chief Consequences.” His treatment of all ­these ­matters—in which he implicitly offers himself as a rival to such classic essayists as Addison and Montaigne—is consistently platitudinous and complacent. In his Essays, Jacob expresses admiration for “the ­Great Sir william ­temple,”42 from whom he plagiarizes, without matching T ­ emple’s eloquence and insight, in his Poetic Register.43 In poems, moreover, like The Rape of the Smock, and “On a Gentleman’s Praising a Lady’s Breasts, but wishing them Larger,”44 as well as his treatise on hermaphrodites, Jacob descends into the smuttiness that Pope and his associates viewed as characteristic of Grub Street. And when he offers, in his poem “­Human Happiness,” his own equivalent of ­Temple’s vision of Epicurean retirement, his treatment becomes embarrassingly self-­parodic: In dear Retirement is a Life well spent, With moderate Fortune, but with ­great Content: One hundred Pounds a Year, or less would do For me, if single; and if married two; . . . Two Rooms my Mansion should have on each Floor, And with a ­Family is better Four, ­Convenient Offices, a Cellar deep, And t­ here a Stock of Wine, not g­ reat, I’d keep.45

Pope, whose sympathy for the plight of young w ­ omen trapped in the eighteenth-­ century marriage market is evident in his e­ arlier poetry,46 would have bridled as much as any modern feminist at Jacob’s advice that men marry w ­ omen with “some Wit, but l­ ittle say.”47 In light of such examples, it seems no surprise that no books by Jacob are listed in any of the inventories of the Dyrham library. Blathwayt would have had no need for Jacob’s basic law textbooks, and his artistic tastes ­were clearly far too judicious and discriminating to include any of Jacob’s literary works. A survey of the early contents of the Dyrham library shows that it contained a large amount of classical writing in Latin or Greco-­Latin editions.48 It also contained French translations of a number of classical authors,49 and substantial amounts of French lit­er­a­ture,50 as well as works by other major E ­ uropean writers.51 Among ­English writers, it contained works by Shakespeare (the fourth folio, already mentioned), Francis Bacon, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, John Milton, and Abraham Cowley (whose Works ­were listed by Blathwayt as one of the books that “I take with me” when away from home), as well as E ­ nglish translations from classical authors by John Ogilby, George Sandys, Sir Robert Stapylton. Some of Blathwayt’s books—­the Dryden Virgil (already mentioned above), the illustrated edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost of 1688, and what was possibly one of Blathwayt’s last purchases for his library, the sumptuous folio translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, edited by Sir Samuel Garth,52 w ­ ere clearly chosen with

96 • David Hopkins

g­ reat care. Though they are handsome productions, ­there is no reason to suppose that they ­were not read and valued for their substance as well as their physical splendor.

Blathwayt and His Son If Blathwayt stood at considerable cultural distance from his former employee, his artistic relations with his second son John are the closest and best documented of his connections with the three men on whom the pre­sent chapter is focused.53 William Blathwayt was a keen amateur violinist. His son John established himself from a very early age as an exceptionally talented musician. The small harpsichord on which he learned his keyboard skills is prob­ably the instrument recorded in 1710 in the Callico Room of the South Garret at Dyrham. The larger instrument acquired in 1704 from a “Mr Baptist”—­perhaps the Italian musician Giovanni Baptista Draghi—­was prob­ably installed in the vestibule at Dyrham when the extent of John’s talents had become apparent. John Blathwayt’s musical accomplishments are fully illustrated in the letters and journals describing his travels with his b­ rother William, accompanied by their tutor M. De Blainville, during their ­Grand Tour of 1705–1708. This correspondence rec­ords John’s repeated success as a recitalist, on both the harpsichord and the organ, in several ­European cities: Augsburg, Geneva, Venice, Rome, Florence, Milan, Turin, Amsterdam, and The Hague. John attended ­performances of operas by Domenico Scarlatti in Hamburg and by Alessandro Scarlatti in Venice. A copy of twelve arias from an operatic score by Alessandro Scarlatti, with whom John was said by the ­music historian Sir John Hawkins to have studied, was one of the items of sheet ­music that he collected on his travels, and shipped back to his ­father in ­England. John also had “the ­Whole of the Opera Xerxes” copied during the summer of 1707. Nora Hardwick assumed that this was Cavalli’s opera of that name (1654),54 but Penelope Cave suggests that it was more likely to have been the updated version of 1694 by Bononcini. When in Rome, John also seems to have been commissioned by his ­father to obtain “two Cremona violins,”55 to be sent back home via Livorno,56 and was a regular attender of concerts at the h ­ ouse of the celebrated patron of the arts, Cardinal Ottoboni, where he may have met Handel. He took lessons from the composer Bernardo Pasquini (1637–1710), a friend of the celebrated Arcangelo Corelli, and a con­spic­u­ous high spot in John’s musical travels occurred when he was invited by Corelli to accompany him on the harpsichord, and to make copies of se­lections from his work, for dispatch back to E ­ ngland. A ­ fter William’s death, John inherited all his f­ ather’s musical instruments. John Blathwayt’s musical activities continued long a­ fter his return to E ­ ngland, despite the demands of his ­career as an officer in the Guards that culminated in action at the ­B attle of Culloden. He was one of the founding directors of the Royal Acad­emy of ­Music, the ­organization designed to encourage the

“The Dyrham ­Decades” • 97

p­ erformance of Italian opera in London, and an impor­tant source of patronage for Handel. In 1725, John sang the tenor solos in the first ­performance of Maurice Greene’s cantata, Strephon and Chloe, and he was ­later the dedicatee of John Frederick Lampe’s book A Plain and Compendious Method of Teaching Thorough Bass (1737), and of the Six Concertos, in Seven Parts (Op. 2; 1740) by the distinguished Newcastle composer and m ­ usic critic Charles Avison (1709–1770).57 Avison was a pupil of Francesco Geminiani, who had himself been a pupil of Corelli, and whose association with John Blathwayt thus cemented the existing connections between Blathwayt and the finest Italian musicians of the day. In their dedications, Lampe pays tribute to John Blathwayt’s “elegant . . . ​Taste and sound Knowledge of musick” and Avison notes that Blathwayt’s “superior ­Performance and fine Taste in ­Music have long been admir’d.”58 Unfortunately, none of the musical scores dispatched back to E ­ ngland by John during his ­Grand Tour have survived. But ­there is one communication between ­father and son that relates significantly to an item in the Dyrham library, and thus forms a pleasing conclusion to this survey of the cultural life of Dyrham Park. Writing to his sons’ tutor M. De Blainville on January 3, 1707, William Blathwayt included the following remarks: I commend them [i.e., his sons] at the hour very seriously with my blessings, to use well their time that they ­will spend in Italy, on all that w ­ ill be the most Useful to them; and to the Youn­ger [i.e., John], particularly to devote himself also to his M ­ usic, and to acquire ­there the best Collection that he can and among other t­ hings to bear in mind the Composition of a good and new Te Deum, ­a fter that of Purcell, of which he ­will be able upon his return to make a pre­sent, as I very much hope, with re­spect, to the Queen.59

John Blathwayt was h ­ ere exhorted by his f­ ather to enjoy the excitements of the à-­la-­mode m ­ usic of Corelli and ­others that he would encounter in Italy. But it is also clear from William’s letter that ­father and son shared a loyalty to the older style of musical composition represented by the g­ reat E ­ nglish composer Henry Purcell. Purcell’s l­ ater works for the theater—­The Prophetess, or The History of Dioclesian (1690), King Arthur (1691), The Fairy-­Queen (1692), The Indian Queen (1695)—­include some of his best m ­ usic. But they are written in the hybrid manner nowadays described as “semi-­opera” that contains long stretches of spoken dialogue, thus requiring, for a complete ­performance, a full acting cast as well as a full complement of musicians. This difficulty seems to have been recognized from early on, and some of Purcell’s ­later m ­ usic acquired, from shortly a­ fter his death, an i­ndependent life in excerpted form, allowing some of his best songs and ensemble pieces to be experienced without the complex conditions necessary for full staging. The two-­volume posthumous collection Orpheus Britannicus (1698, 1702) gives par­tic­u­lar prominence to extracts from the stage works

98 • David Hopkins

of the 1690s, and a copy of this handsome large-­paper publication took its place beside the lavish folio editions of Milton’s Paradise Lost, Dryden’s Virgil, and Garth’s Ovid (and, of course, the Shakespeare fourth folio) as one of the most con­spic­u­ous and noteworthy items in the Dyrham library. The five publications, taken together, form a particularly apt and touching illustration of the literary and musical priorities that, together with the ­house’s architectural and horticultural glories, ­were evident at Dyrham Park during its first two ­decades. The estate and its tenants, gardens, and library demonstrate how the country ­house invited the interplay of the nation’s varied temperamental, stylistic, and p­ olitical sensibilities.

Notes 1 See Gertrude Ann Jacobsen, William Blathwayt: A Late Seventeenth C ­ entury ­English Administrator (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1932); R. A. Preston, “William Blathwayt and the Evolution of a Royal Personal Secretariat,” History 34 (1949): 28–43; Stephen Saunders Webb, “William Blathwayt, Imperial Fixer: From Popish Plot to Glorious Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly 25 (1968): 3–21; Webb, “William Blathwayt, the ‘Never-­Erring Minister,” ’ in The Age of William III & Mary II: Power, Politics and Patronage, ed. Robert P. Maccubin and Martha Hamilton-­ Phillips (Williamsburg, VA: College of William and Mary, 1989), 65–70. 2 See Nora Hardwick, ed., A Relation of the Journey of the Gentlemen Blathwayt into the North of E ­ ngland in the Year Seventeen Hundred and Three (Bristol, UK: N. Hardwick, 1977); Hardwick, The G ­ rand Tour: Letters and Accounts Relating to the Travels through ­Europe of the B ­ rothers William and John Blathwayt of Dyrham Park, 1705–1708 (Bristol, UK: N. Hardwick, 1985). 3 See J. A. Kenworthy-­Brown, “The Building of Dyrham Park, Gloucestershire for William Blathwayt between 1692 and 1702,” Connoisseur 149 (1962): 138–144; Michael Archer, “Delft at Dyrham,” National Trust Yearbook, 1975–6: 12–18; Anthony Mitchell, “The Park and Garden at Dyrham,” National Trust Yearbook, 1977–8: 83–108; Karin-­M. Walton, “An Inventory of 1710 from Dyrham Park,” Furniture History 22 (1986): 25–80; John Dixon Hunt et al., “Cata­logue: Garden Design in the Netherlands,” Journal of Garden History 8 (1988): 259–260; Ian Bristow, “The Balcony Room at Dyrham: A Seventeenth-­Century Decorative Scheme Reappraised,” National Trust Studies (1980): 140–146; Barbara Murison, “Getting and Spending: William Blathwayt and Dyrham Park,” History ­Today 40 (1990): 22–28; Alan Mackley, “Building Management at Dyrham,” Georgian Group Journal 7 (1997): 107–116; Rupert Goulding, “A Tutored Eye,” Apollo (2013): 29–37. On the Dyrham print collection, see Rupert Goulding, Dyrham Park and William Blathwayt (Swindon, UK: Park Lane Press for National Trust, 2017). 4 See Anna E. C. Simoni, “The Books at Dyrham Park,” Book Collector 32 (1983): 171–188, 283–295. 5 H. C. Foxcroft, ed., The Life and Letters of Sir George Savile . . . ​First Marquis of Halifax, 2 vols. (London: Longman, 1828), 2:226. 6 Jacobsen, William Blathwayt, 33. 7 Two undated inventories exist. See “Dyrham Library Inventory,” in Historic Country ­Houses of South Gloucestershire, D1799/E268 and D1799/269, Gloucestershire Archives, Gloucester, UK. Three of the o­ thers (D1799/E270, D1799/E272,

“The Dyrham ­Decades” • 99

and D1799/E273) are fragmentary and therefore of ­little use in establishing the contents of the library. 8 Gloucestershire Archives D1799/E274. 9 Gloucestershire Archives D1799/E261. 10 Gloucestershire Archives D1799/E275, a printed cata­logue of the books in the Dyrham Park library compiled by W. E. Blathwayt. A copy is also held at Dyrham Park itself. 11 Gloucestershire Archives 1799/E271. 12 Gloucestershire Archives 1799/E267. 13 Gloucestershire Archives 1799/E269. 14 Gloucestershire Archives 1799/E247. 15 William Blathwayt to his agent Watkins, July 8, 1704, quoted by John Dixon Hunt in “Garden Design in the Netherlands,” 259. 16 Simoni, “Books at Dyrham Park,” 173. 17 Simoni, “Books at Dyrham Park,” 173. 18 Jacobsen, William Blathwayt, 68. 19 Jacobsen, William Blathwayt, 52. 20 Blathwayt’s own early listing of his books gives prominence to a number of dictionaries. See Hardwick, ­Grand Tour, 22. 21 See K. H. D. Haley, An ­English Diplomat in the Low Countries: Sir William ­Temple and John De Witt, 1665–1672 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986). 22 The standard scholarly edition is that of G. C. Moore Smith (Oxford: Clarendon, 1928). ­ ngland (1650–1725) (Dallas: Southwest Press, 1934); 23 See T. F. Mayo, Epicurus in E Howard Jones, The Epicurean Tradition (London: Routledge, 1989). 24 See The Works of Lucy Hutchinson, vol. 1: The Translation of Lucretius, ed. Reid Barbour and David Norbrook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 25 For Montaigne’s influence on ­Temple from early in his ­career, see G. C. Moore Smith, ed. The Early Essays and Romances of Sir William ­Temple, Bt. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1930), xxii. ­ emple, ed. Samuel Holt Monk (Ann 26 Five Miscellaneous Essays by Sir William T Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963), 6. ­ emple “had l­ ittle or no 27 Pace Monk (Five Miscellaneous Essays, xxxii), who says that T talent for poetry.” Most of ­Temple’s poems w ­ ere included in Poems by Sir W. T. (n.p., n.d., [1670?]). ­ emple, Bart., 2 vols. (London: A. Churchill et al., 1720), 1.173. 28 The Works of Sir William T 29 Essays of Michael Seigneur de Montaigne . . . ​Made ­English by Charles Cotton, 3 vols. (London: T. Basset, 1685–1686), 3 (mispaginated as 329; actually 429). 30 Lucan, Pharsalia, 2.381–382. Montaigne preserves the application to Cato. 31 See Goulding, Dyrham Park and William Blathwayt, 56–57. 32 See Howard Erskine-­Hill, Poetry and the Realm of Politics: Shakespeare to Dryden (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 201–215; Paul Hammond, Dryden and the Traces of Classical Rome (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), chap. 4. 33 See John Barnard, “Dryden, Tonson, and the Patrons of The Works of Virgil (1697),” in John Dryden: Tercentenary Essays, ed. Paul Hammond and David Hopkins (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 174–239. 34 A Poetical Translation of the Works of Horace . . . ​by the Revd Mr. Philip Francis, 3rd ed. (London: A. Millar, 1749), 2.299. 35 See Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 25: Literary and Educational Writings, 3: De Conscribendis Epistolis; Formula; De Civilitate, ed. J. K. Sowards (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 164.

100 • David Hopkins

36 On the activities of Curll (­under whose imprint several of Giles Jacob’s works appeared), see Paul Baines and Pat Rogers, Edmund Curll, Bookseller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 37 The classic study of the subject remains Pat Rogers, Grub Street: Studies in a Subculture (London: Methuen, 1972). 38 G. Jacob, The Country Gentleman’s Vade Mecum (London: William Taylor, 1717), sigs. A3r–­v. 39 Giles Jacob, The Lover’s Miscellany (London: J. Roberts, 1719), 24–25. 40 Perhaps surprisingly—­g iven its mention of other ­great ­houses on the journey described—­this poem makes no reference to Dyrham. 41 The Poems of Alexander Pope, vol. 3: “The Dunciad” (1728) and “The Dunciad Variorum” (1729), ed. Valerie Rumbold (Harlow: Pearson/Longman, 2007), 96. 42 Essays Relating to the Conduct of Life (London: E. Curll, 1717), 25. 43 See Stephen Bernard, “ ‘A Faithful Register of Facts’: Giles Jacob and ‘An Historical Account of the Lives and Writings of Our Most Considerable E ­ nglish Poets’ (1720),” Notes and Queries 60 (2013): 72–79 (74). 4 4 Lover’s Miscellany, 31. 45 “­Human Happiness: A Philosophical Poem,” in Essays Relating to the Conduct of Life, 3rd ed. (London: J. Stephens, 1730), 130–132. 46 See particularly his “Epistle to Miss Blount, with the Works of Voiture,” first published in Miscellaneous Poems and Translations (London: Bernard Lintot, 1712). 47 “­Human Happiness: A Philosophical Poem,” 127–128, substituting “Harlot’s” for “Habit’s” in the fourth line, as corrected by hand in the British Library copy. 48 Including works by Apollodorus, Aristotle, Boethius, Caesar, Cicero, Claudian, Epicurus, Horace, Josephus, Livy, Lucretius, Macrobius, Marcus Aurelius, Plautus, Sallust, Seneca, Sophocles, Suetonius, Tacitus, Terence, Theophrastus, and Virgil. 49 Including Aesop, Aristophanes, Augustine, Diogenes Laertius, Homer, Horace, Lucretius, Ovid, Plato, and Plutarch. 50 Including works by Balzac, Bayle, Boileau, Bouhours, Charron, Dacier, Gassendi, La Fontaine, Le Moyne, Moliere, Montaigne, St Evremond, and Voiture. 51 Including Ariosto, Cervantes, Machiavelli, Tasso, and Tassoni. 52 Garth’s Ovid was published on June 6, 1717; Blathwayt died August 16, 1717. The “Eminent Hands” included Dryden, Pope, Gay, Rowe, and Addison. 53 In the account that follows, I am indebted to an unpublished paper by Dr. Penelope Cave, “Et in Arcadia: Dyrham Park, A H ­ ouse and F ­ amily Formed by Foreign Travel,” given at the University of York in 2016, to the online website relating to the University of Southampton’s proj­ect “­Music in Residence at Dyrham Park” (https://­sound​-­heritage​.­soton​.­ac​.­uk​/­music​-­residence​-­dyrham​-­park), to in-­house information sheets prepared by Mrs. Margaret ­Wills for the m ­ usic volunteers at Dyrham Park, to Nora Hardwick’s edition of the Blathwayt G ­ rand Tour correspondence (see note 2 above), to M. de Blainville’s Travels through Holland, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, 3 vols. (London: J. Johnston and B. Davenport, 1767), and to Elizabeth Gibson’s essay on “The Royal Acad­emy of M ­ usic (1719–1728) and Its Directors,” in Handel: Tercentenary Collection, ed. Stanley Sadie and Anthony Hicks (Basingstoke: Macmillan, for the Royal Musical Association, 1987), 138–164. 54 Hardwick, ­Grand Tour, 163. 55 See the memorandum (Gloucestershire Archives, D 2659/4) quoted in Hardwick, ­Grand Tour, 22. ­ ere actually prevented by 56 Penelope Cave reports that Blainville and the Blathwayts w flooding from ever getting to Cremona for the violins.

“The Dyrham ­Decades” • 101

57 The Op. 2 concertos w ­ ere ­later revised and published as the first six of Avison’s Twelve Concertos, Op. 6. Th ­ ere is a modern recording of the latter by Pavlo Beznosiuk and the Avison Ensemble on the Naxos label (8.557553–54). 58 John Frederick Lampe, A Plain and Compendious Method of Teaching through Bass (London, 1737), 2; Charles Avison, Six Concerto’s in Seven Parts (London, 1740) [dedication], sig. a1r. 59 Hardwick, ­Grand Tour, 76. The Te Deum seems, in the event, not to have been composed.

6

Domenico Scarlatti “Jesting with Art” CEDRIC D. REVERAND II James Winn was both a student of literary studies and a musicologist, publishing scholarship in both disciplines.1 He was also an accomplished musical performer, which is not necessarily the case with musicologists, and, had he so desired, could prob­ably have been the principal flutist in a major orchestra. ­Those of us who are ­English professors, and, in this context, it would be fair to say “just ­English professors,” which would include many of the contributors to this volume, tend to think in terms of words and texts. James Winn also thought in terms of ­music. When the University of California Press published its multivolume edition of the works of John Dryden, a proj­ect that began when Winn was in high school, and ended some twenty years ­after his authoritative biography of Dryden was published, he remarked that, as impressed and grateful as he was by this monumental accomplishment, it was a shame that the California editors ignored m ­ usic. Dryden wrote numerous songs, the librettos to operas, or semi-­ operas: The Tempest (1667, with William Davenant), King Arthur (1691), two poems specifically designed for the musical cele­bration of St. Cecilia’s Day, first A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day (1687), and ­later Alexander’s Feast (1697), as well as a Secular Masque (1700) that was performed just ­after his death. Thanks to the California editors, we had the words. But not the m ­ usic. When Maximillian Novak and Jayne Lewis hosted a conference at UCLA in 2000 to celebrate the tercentenary of Dryden’s death, they included musical 102

Domenico Scarlatti • 103

events, thanks in part to Winn’s urging, with Winn himself performing and directing a small ensemble. UCLA supplied instrumentalists and a splendid chorus (I fondly remember the chorus singing excerpts from King Arthur, including Cold Genius complaining about emerging from a winter slumber). The volume resulting from that conference, Enchanted Ground: Reimagining John Dryden (2004), included an essay by Winn on Dryden’s songs, and also a compact disc so that readers could hear the ­actual ­music Winn was discussing. Similarly, but this time with new technology available, Winn’s authoritative biography, Queen Anne: Patroness of the Arts (2014), included hyperlinks allowing readers to consult a web page and hear ­music while following the corresponding scores that are in the text. Then, when, at the urging of Anna Battigelli, I edited an anthology of essays, Queen Anne and the Arts (2015), designed to complement Winn’s efforts to recover Anne’s reputation, James generously contributed an essay to that volume, and also insisted that all the essays on m ­ usic—­his, as well as essays by Amanda Eubanks Winkler and Estelle Murphy—­include audio clips to accompany the scores, which was somewhat challenging, since virtually all the m ­ usic discussed had never been previously recorded. Luckily, Boston is a major center for period instrumental ­music and musicians, and James, energetic and thorough as usual, recruited the musicians, rehearsed them, then edited and produced the recordings, which can be accessed on the publisher’s website by ­those reading the book. As a tribute to James’s commitment to m ­ usic, I would like to write about an intriguing, highly unusual baroque composer, Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757), whose name is certainly familiar to many ­music lovers, but who is still underestimated: he was far more daring and original than his better-­k nown peers.2 I begin by placing him in historical context, but then explain some of the ­things that make his keyboard ­music so strikingly original. H ­ ere, it is helpful to remember Scarlatti’s own definition of his sonatas as an “ingenious Jesting with Art,” ­because some of that originality is humorous. And, mindful of Winn’s lifelong interest in musical p­ erformance—­one of his last acts, only a few days before he died, was to mail to his friends a compact disc of his final public flute concert—­I go on to argue that some of that humor reveals itself in ­performance.3 First, a ­little background.4 This highly original composer also has a highly original backstory. For one ­thing, although born and raised in Italy, the son of composer Alessandro Scarlatti, Domenico was one of the few Italians ever to become a major Spanish composer, having spent most of his c­ areer serving as harpsichord tutor to the infanta Maria Barbara (first in Portugal, and then in Spain, ­after she married the man who was to become Ferdinand VI)—he even called himself “Domingo.” Knowing this, scholars have often commented on what they take to be Spanish motifs in his ­music, such as repeated notes reminiscent of mandolin strumming, fandango figurations, castanet rhythms, and so on. Also intriguing, in his own day, his pieces ­were published only in London, beginning with Essercizi per Gravicembolo, containing thirty pieces for harpsichord, in

104 • Cedric D. Reverand II

1738 or 1739.5 This was followed by Suites de Pieces Pour le Clavier, edited by Thomas Roseingrave, some forty-­two pieces (1739), basically in competition against the Essercizi collection (it was reprinted, with supplements, in 1754–1756). Roseingrave had heard Scarlatti play the harpsichord in Venice in 1710 and became obsessed, following the composer to Naples and Rome, and ultimately establishing a “Scarlatti cult” in ­England—­subscribers to his Scarlatti Suites included Thomas Arne, who composed Rule Britannia, William Boyce, who among other ­things wrote songs for Dryden’s Secular Masque, Jean-­Baptiste Loeillet, who introduced Arcangelo Corelli to London audiences, and Johann Christoph Pepusch, who is now best remembered for arranging the m ­ usic for John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera (1728). Charles Avison, another subscriber to Roseingrave’s Scarlatti edition, made orchestral arrangements of Scarlatti pieces, reassembling them as concerto movements, first published as Twelve Concerto’s in Seven Parts (1744). In short, Domenico Scarlatti, the Italian who became a Spanish composer, was best known in ­England.6 Not only did George Frideric Handel know him, but in 1708 or 1709, when both happened to be in Rome, he was pitted against Scarlatti in a keyboard contest between the two set up by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni: in what has to be considered a tactful judgment, Scarlatti was pronounced the winner on the harpsichord, and Handel the winner on the organ. For the rest of their lives, the two composers apparently praised one another. According to Handel’s first biographer, John Mainwaring, “Handel used often to speak of this person with g­ reat satisfaction,” and Scarlatti, “as oft as he was admired for his ­great execution, would mention Handel, and cross himself in token of veneration.”7 What is also unusual, if not downright strange, is that Scarlatti prospered while serving Maria Barbara during the reigns of Felipe V and Ferdinand VI, two totally mad Spanish kings—­Felipe, the subject of the recent London, and Broadway, hit Farinelli and the King, had the castrato Farinelli perform the same four arias for him ­every night, for ten years; he also lived backward, sleeping in the day, and “rising” at five in the after­noon, which made conducting governmental business a bit of a challenge for his administrators: he often went as long as a year and half without changing his clothes.8 And he once thought he had been turned into a frog. Ferdinand (Maria Barbara’s husband) was somewhat better, but still, he was a hypochondriac who spent much of his time para­lyzed by what was then called “melancholy,” which we would now call “depression.” And all this was during the height of the Spanish Inquisition; yet Scarlatti produced what Ralph Kirkpatrick described as “some of the gayest and happiest ­music ever written.”9 Equally unusual for a noted composer, since the first of his 550-­odd sonatas w ­ ere not published u­ ntil he was fifty-­three or fifty-­four, and since t­ here are no surviving autograph manuscripts of his sonatas, we are at a complete loss in determining the chronology. Did he start writing ­these pieces only in his fifties?10 I doubt it. Since Scarlatti, like Handel, Bach, and Telemann, was a practicing court musician, and as such an accomplished improviser, it is pos­si­ble that

Domenico Scarlatti • 105

he improvised pieces over his entire c­ areer, and we just happen to have the ones from his ­later years that w ­ ere transcribed at Maria Barbara’s behest. We may simply have lost thousands of pieces. Think of all the p­ erformances by George Shearing, Dave Brubeck, and Wynton Marsalis that ­were never recorded and are simply gone forever. At the same time, it is also pos­si­ble that, though published late in Scarlatti’s life, some of t­ hese w ­ ere improvisations that he had been working on for years. All this is distinctive, as is the genre for which he is best known. In an age of expansive oratorios, noble masses, operas, orchestral suites, cantatas, instrumental concerti, ­whole sets of keyboard partitas, suites, preludes and fugues, Scarlatti is known not for smashingly ­grand Baroque extravaganzas but for miniatures, his keyboard sonatas.11 Most of them take no more than six minutes or so to play, including repeats; one, K. 431, is a mere sixteen-­measures long (thirty-­two if you count the repeats). At a leisurely pace, it takes about a minute and fifteen seconds to play, with the repeats. That he confined himself to such a small scale has also, no doubt, affected his reputation. It’s easy to understand how Beethoven’s symphonies, or Wagner’s ring cycle, can be filled with significant musical material, but what can a composer possibly achieve in six minutes? One might note, however, that Vermeer has long been highly regarded, even though he never painted anything as large as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Scarlatti’s style is also distinctive; it is easy, upon listening, to ­mistake Handel for Telemann sometimes, or Telemann for Bach, or Bach for Handel. One can identify the styles of Couperin and Rameau from their characteristic French ornamentation, but it is hard to tell the one from the other. By contrast, Scarlatti sounds like nobody ­else but Scarlatti.12 His pieces are not suites, which generally consist of dance movements (sarabande, gigue, allemande, gavotte, courante), not preludes and fugues (he wrote but five fugues, including the so-­called “Cat Fugue,” K. 30). They are also not actually sonatas, a term we now employ to describe the genre Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven developed, but rather sonatas in the original sense of the term, instrumental pieces, that is, pieces without vocal parts. Each sonata has an A section, repeated, followed by a B section, repeated. ­A fter that, the structure is miscellaneous, to say the least. Motifs introduced in the A section can reappear in the B section, amplified, changed, or may not reappear at all, and the B section, in addition to revisiting motifs from the A section, can also introduce new material. The A section generally ends in the dominant, the B section in the tonic. And where the vast majority of classical m ­ usic ends with a major or minor chord, or, in the case of Beethoven, lots of chords, virtually ­every one of Scarlatti’s sonatas ends on ­either a single note, or an octave. That, in itself, is unusual, and seldom noticed.13 As that fact about the endings suggests, Scarlatti is also one of the most original of the baroque composers—­and this, I think, is only recently being properly recognized—­often employing musical ideas that one simply d­ oesn’t find in any other keyboard compositions of the period. Beside the supposed “Spanish”

106 • Cedric D. Reverand II

motifs mentioned before, Scarlatti also liked to change keys, frequently, often in alarming ways. Note the progression in K. 394 (figure 6.1, m ­ easures 74ff.): w ­ e’re at F major (74) before the rest (75), then F minor (76), Db major (77), Bb minor (78), F# major (79), Eb minor (80), Bb major (81), then a dissonance for two beats, leading to suspension at bar 82, then a Bb major chord on the third beat; instead of modulating to Eb, we now start alternating between Eb and Bb (84–85). This is unsettling, ­because we ­can’t know exactly where it’s ­going, or when ­we’ve arrived. As some indication that Scarlatti knew damned well that he was d­ oing something strange, note that where the F# major chord should have an A# for the third (bar 79), it has a Bb instead, and where the B major should have a D# for the third (bar 81), it reads Eb instead. I think that means he’s reading them not as chords, but as dissonances; the Eb in 81 and 82 is not r­ eally D#, a part of a B major chord, but rather part of the Eb major chord at 84 t­ oward which the ­whole passage is heading. And a­ fter it gets t­ here, by the way, it ­doesn’t stay long, but keeps on moving to other keys—­Bb major (84), F minor (86), C minor (87), Ab minor (87–88), and so on. ­There are also passages where the harmony keeps changing in one hand, in unpredictable ways, while the other hand ­doesn’t budge. Look at K. 84 (figure  6.2), starting around bar 19; the left hand keeps playing a G octave for nine ­measures, while the right hand keeps moving in open fifths, then in thirds, then in a dif­fer­ent pattern altogether (23), moving quickly from key to key. Indeed, it seldom stays in one place for more than two eighth notes, which means it’s not ­really fair to think of it in terms of establishing keys. Instead, it’s a firm G in the bass, with lots of harmonic shifting above, much of it dissonant—at m ­ easure 23, we actually have an Ab against the G, followed by an F# against the G—­which fi­nally gets to an insistent G major at 28. Nothing quite like that in Handel or Bach. Scarlatti also delights in tone clusters, which we ­don’t generally find in classical m ­ usic u­ ntil the early part of the twentieth c­ entury (actually, you find them a bit e­ arlier, in ragtime). In K. 175 (figure 6.3), for example, the chords in the second ­measure a­ ren’t r­ eally chords. Note that the second “chord” in the second m ­ easure has a D and an E playing si­mul­ta­neously, along with an A, a G#, and a B—­and, in passing, t­ here’s a C in the right hand. That’s only a glimpse of what happens a bit ­later, starting at 22, where we have tone clusters smashing away in both hands—­ even if you are not ­adept at reading ­music, you can recognize the tone clusters visually: the second cluster in the right hand of m ­ easure 25 has a G, A, Bb, C#, and D all at the same time, against a Bb, D, and E in the left hand. And if you go back to 22 and 24, you ­will see that the chords in the left hand have six notes, which, for most ­people, requires one fin­ger to be playing two notes si­mul­ta­neously.  Besides ­these musical innovations, Scarlatti also reveled in inventing technical challenges, and ­here is where much of the humor appears. Most p­ eople are generally

Domenico Scarlatti • 107

aware that this supposedly abstract medium can be humorous.15 Among the best-­known examples of humor in m ­ usic are Haydn’s “Surprise” Symphony (No. 94, 1791–92, figure 6.4), where the second movement, a­ fter tiptoeing evenly along in pianissimo quarter and eighth notes, suddenly erupts in a fortissimo chord (­measure 16) (as with all of Haydn’s named symphonies, the “Drumroll,” “The Clock,” “The Miracle,” “The Bear,” he had nothing to do with naming them). Then ­there’s Mozart’s “Musical Joke” (K. 522), which is filled with compositional gaffes, such as parallel fifths, incorrect modulations, discords, a cadenza that spins out of control, orchestration that would please PDQ Bach (two clunky, slow horns combined with nimble strings). Rather more subtly, t­ here is the first movement of Hayden’s String Quartet op. 50, no. 1 (1787, figure 6.5), which opens with a repeated Bb in the cello, eight straightforward quarter notes, not exactly a tricky motif. The opus 50 set of quartets was written for the King of Prus­sia, who happened to be a cellist. What better way to launch the king’s set of quartets than by giving him a completely unchallenging, dirt-­simple, cello line, a solo line, no less. Well, this is not exactly a howler, more of an inside joke, and one could reasonably suppose that the humor would likely elude anybody listening to the quartet t­ oday, and prob­ably many of the musicians performing it. But the joke is t­ here. Of course, t­ here’s also Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony (No. 45, 1772), which he wrote as a hint to his patron, Prince Esterhazy, that the musicians wanted to leave the summer retreat and return home: as the final adagio of the symphony unfolds, the musicians start leaving the stage, one ­after the other, leaving just two violins, Haydn and the concertmaster. Esterhazy got the hint. Scarlatti certainly has jokes like ­these—­l ike the tone clusters, or the odd harmonic progressions that ­don’t seem to pro­g ress—­but I am g­ oing to go one step further and argue that many of his jokes depend on the p­ erformance: you have to see the ­performance to get the joke. For instance, he was fond of writing rapid passages like this, in K. 29 (figures 6.6 and 6.7), a piece filled with cross-­handed work. Look at ­measure 21, where the right hand and left hand alternate on sixteenth notes, ­until 25, when the left hand starts playing above the right hand—­for the viewer, one hand seems to be on top of the other. I find this especially intriguing, ­because this would not be challenging if you simply played the upper voice with the right hand, and the lower voice with the left hand; all the cross-­handed work to follow could actually be played without crossing the hands. That Scarlatti specified hand-­crossings demonstrates that he was ­going out of his way to make this challenging for the performer. In one of the E ­ nglish eighteenth-­century editions of Scarlatti, the editor explains why Scarlatti was making the ­music difficult: his sonatas ­ ere expressly composed for the Practice of a very brilliant Performer, the w Infanta maria, to whom scarlatti was Master of M ­ usic; e­ very Opportunity

108 • Cedric D. Reverand II

was taken by the Author to introduce difficult and affected Passages, for no other use or reason than merely as extraordinary exercises for the eminent ability of his Pupil. To remove t­ hese Obstacles, which have, in some ­measure, obscured such admirable Lessons from Public Notice, and that they may, in f­ uture, be more readily understood by the Student, has been the principal Design of the pre­sent Editor.16

But, of course, difficulty was not the principal design of the performer. Performing according to Scarlatti’s annotations is not just difficult, but might also be slightly dangerous. It has been reported that Clara (Wieck) Schumann, in a public ­performance of one of Scarlatti’s cross-­handed extravaganzas, nearly fell off the piano stool.17 Such supposedly unnecessary technical tricks are actually an impor­tant, and inescapable, aspect of Scarlatti’s keyboard ­music, as Malcolm Boyd explains: Numerous passages could be simplified to produce the same effect with few or no alterations of the a­ ctual notes. To do so, however, would be to deprive the m ­ usic of two impor­tant qualities which, if they have ­l ittle to do with the intended sound, have a ­g reat deal to do with Scarlatti’s temperament and genius. One of them is the sheer physical engagement that the player experiences in performing the sonatas. No other keyboard ­music of the eigh­teenth c­ entury, and very l­ ittle of any other ­century, is so “choreographed” to employ the fin­gers, hands, wrists, arms, shoulders and even waist of the performer. This is m ­ usic to be played rather than listened to, and it is not surprising that Scarlatti enthusiasts tend to be themselves pianists or harpsichord players.18

We can see another humorous example of hand-­crossing in K. 27 (figures 6.8 and 6.9), and this time, the joke has to be seen: it cannot be heard. ­There is some early crossing of the hands at m ­ easures 4 and 5, but then, we get a w ­ hole series starting at 11. What we have is ten ­measures of the same pattern: the first seven ­measures are basically the same, except ­there’s a changed harmony on the second beat of the seventh m ­ easure (­measure 17), a­ fter which the hands keep crossing and the ­music transitions downward, by steps, from G, to F#, to E, ending on D (21). This is not difficult; t­ here’s plenty of time to reach the notes. What’s the joke? Look at the marking beginning at 10. For the first two ­measures, the left hand (“G” for “gauche”) is jumping from the low A to the high A, while the right hand (“D” for “droite”) is playing broken chords (arpeggios). But then, at 13, Scarlatti instructs the performers to switch hands so that the right hand starts leaping from the high A to the low A, with the

Domenico Scarlatti • 109

left hand playing the broken chords, for two ­measures, at which point (14) we go back to the left hand ­doing the jumping and the right hand playing the broken chords. You have to see this to get the joke, ­because the m ­ usic sounds exactly the same, but the hands keep switching. Incidentally, t­ here are several ­performances of this available on YouTube: I have yet to see a performer switch hands, although that’s what Scarlatti clearly indicates. Every­body prefers d­ oing it the easy way. K. 427 (figures 6.10, 6.11, and 6.12) pre­sents a dif­fer­ent sort of challenge, and dif­fer­ent sort of joke—­not crossed hands on this one. The tempo is marked “Presto, quanto sia pos­si­ble”—­this is the only such tempo marking in all the 550-­odd sonatas. ­A fter the first two ­measures, what we have is rapid passage-­ work, obviously, as rapid as pos­si­ble, with a note on e­ very sixteenth beat, with much of the tricky passage-­work in the left hand, moving relentlessly forward, in what feels like perpetual motion, but then suddenly coming to a stop with three crashing chords (13). That should be the cadence. But instead, we resume the speedy passage-­work for two m ­ easures, only to come to t­hose crashing chords again (16)—­K irkpatrick describes this as “the sudden cannon-­shot explosion of chords which punctuates the continuous rapid sixteenths.”19 To get to t­ hose chords, the performer has to jump, in opposite directions, with both hands, the left hand making a two-­octave leap down, to hit the bass note on the next sixteenth beat. Very easy to miss. I note, with a certain delight, that pianist Yuja Wang, renowned for her incredible technique, plays this piece as one of her showstopper encores. I would also note that this is ­really another version of the “Surprise” Symphony joke. As I remarked ­earlier, Haydn sets up a long, calm, pianissimo passage, then inserts an unexpected fortissimo chord (at ­measure 16, figure  6.4). Haydn had at his disposal an orchestra, with a wide dynamic range, allowing him to set up a contrast between very soft and very loud. Baroque composers ­were writing for the harpsichord, which has no appreciable dynamic range, meaning that baroque keyboard composers ­didn’t think in terms of soft versus loud. Instead, Scarlatti establishes a rapid patter of sixteenth notes that seems to throttle head-on, and then suddenly stops it, with a repeated chord. Same idea of a contrast, same idea of a sudden, unexpected, full chord. And, incidentally, in the second half of Scarlatti’s sonata, the sudden chord (31 and 33) is exactly the same as the surprise chord in the “Surprise” Symphony (G Major). ­These examples are rather fun, but nothing can quite match K. 120 (figures 6.13, 6.14, 6.15, and 6.16). Beginning at bar 6 (figure 6.13), ­there are some passages where the left hand is playing up in the treble, while the right hand is playing in the bass. A half-­dozen ­measures of that, but that’s only the beginning. Look at what happens starting at m ­ easure 14 (figure 6.14): the left hand is d­ oing a series of leaps up, and then down for four m ­ easures. Then, a­ fter a transition (­measures 17–18), the left hand resumes leaping from the treble down to the bass,

110 • Cedric D. Reverand II

and, just to make it trickier, the bass note is trilled. This goes on for three m ­ easures (19–21). But that’s just the setup. Look at what happens in the B section (starting at bar 37 in figure 6.15): that’s twenty left-­hand leaps in a row—­the longest is three octaves—­and, a bit l­ ater (bars 50–51 in figure 6.16), another eight leaps for good ­measure. Bear in mind that the performer generally looks before he or she leaps, which means the head ­will be looking for the next note, moving to the left as the left hand is finishing the move to the right, then turning to the right as the left hand moves to the left, which means head and hands are in constant contrary motion. K. 120 is so fiendishly difficult to play accurately that it is seldom performed in public, although ­there are several recordings available (recordings, of course, regularly avail themselves of multiple takes and sophisticated digital editing). As it happens, on t­ hose many CDs featuring selected Scarlatti sonatas—by Vladimir Horo­witz, Andras Schiff, Trevor Pinnock, Mikhail Pletnev, Ivo Pogorelich, Luigi Sgrizzi, Yevgeny Sudbin, Anthony Newman, Angela Hewitt, and Jean Rondeau—­I have yet to find K. 120, and I have only heard it performed live once, by harpsichordist Igor Kipnis, but that was at my instigation. When talking about baroque ­music, scholars deal with scores, with the niceties of ornamentation and expression, with ­performance, but in the abstract sense, that is, with how the piece should reflect a­ ctual period practices. But we often ignore the nitty gritty of ­performance itself, of what actually happens when a performer attempts to play some of this ­music in public. Bear in mind that we are talking about an age when ­there was no distinction between composer and performer. We are now accustomed to concerts where performers play m ­ usic written by composers; indeed, we sometimes choose which concerts to attend on the basis of the composers listed in the program. But Scarlatti, Handel, and Bach, in their own age, ­were all known as performers, who generally performed their own ­music, and, of course, improvised, a tradition that continued right on through Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt. The nearest modern equivalent would be jazz pianists, like Keith Jarrett or Chick Corea. In short, Scarlatti always had ­performance in mind. It is clear to me, at least, that a viewing audience is one of t­ hings Scarlatti also must have had specifically in mind, which we can deduce when we see him indicating hand-­crossings that are unnecessary, but funny, basically jokes for the audience at the performer’s expense. Commentators on Scarlatti sometimes suggest that something like this is happening. Janet Schmalfeldt, for instance, in the midst of a highly technical analy­sis of the structure of a Scarlatti sonata, refers to “the theatrical, even circus-­like atmosphere of so many of the sonatas.”20 I especially like her phrase “circus-­like atmosphere,” ­because it brings to mind not just what is ­going on in the three rings, but what is happening as the audience watches, well, tricks.

Domenico Scarlatti • 111

It might be appropriate, at this point, to quote Kirkpatrick at length, ­because he reinforces some of my main points: he is specifically recounting his strug­gles with the last sonata I discussed, K. 120, which, he says, has the wildest hand-­crossings of any Scarlatti sonata. Not only does the left hand continually cross over to the top of the instrument, but the right hand reaches down to the lowest bass. A times, both are en route at the same time, to the peril of the player, and optical confusion of the onlooker. The most difficult passages in this piece could perfectly well be played without crossing the hands, but the excitement would be lost. The player would no longer share the glorious dangers of the trapeze artist, and the hearer, or rather witness, would no longer hold his breath in astonishment. . . . ​My readers may allow me to confide that one of the most disappointing experiences of my life was the making of an absolutely note-­perfect phonograph recording of this piece. I found on hearing it that all sense of difficulty had dis­appeared. It felt like ­going down a ski jump in an elevator.21

What strikes me as impor­tant in this comment is Kirkpatrick’s emphasis not just on the fiendish difficulty of the piece, but also on the physical challenges it poses to anybody who would play it. His likening the player to “the trapeze artist,” obviously, is another version of Schmalfeldt’s circus ­metaphor. And I have to won­der—if you just hear the piece, or any of t­ hese pieces, they d­ on’t generally sound difficult: it is the ­performance that makes the difficulty vis­i­ble. All the Scarlatti examples I have cited are fast—in fact, almost all of Scarlatti’s sonatas are fast, which is another reason he has so often been underestimated. As W. Dean Sutcliffe explains, “Unfortunately, our cultural conditioning means that for us serious is cognate with slow. . . . ​Presumably the reason why speed kills is that it does not readily allow time for the perception of an unfolding musical plot.” Sutcliffe goes on to suggest that we need to look at Scarlatti differently: “If our conditioning suggests to us that the business of m ­ usic is above all emotional or ­mental expression, we can consider as an alternative the notion of ­music as bodily expression. In the case of Domenico Scarlatti, the simplest way of saying this is ­music as dance,” which seems to echo Boyd’s comment, quoted ­earlier, about Scarlatti’s m ­ usic being “choreographed.”22 Dance, like circuses, like trapeze acts, involves physically challenging efforts on behalf of the performer, but it also implies an audience. Notice that, in describing the challenges of K. 120, Kirkpatrick refers to the “hearer,” but immediately changes that to “witness,” a shift that nicely underlines my point, which I offer in recognition of James Winn’s lifelong interest in m ­ usic p­ erformance: to appreciate every­thing Scarlatti is trying to achieve, it ­isn’t enough just to hear the ­music. It has to be performed, and you have to see it being performed. In a way, we should try to imagine ourselves back in the eigh­teenth ­century, watching Scarlatti himself, or Maria Barbara, at the keyboard.

FIGURE 6.1  ​Domenico Scarlatti, Sonata in E Minor, K. 394, ­measures 71–86, with harmonic

sequences that are not actually progressions.

FIGURE 6.2  ​Domenico Scarlatti, Sonata in C Minor, K. 84, ­measures 16–32, an unchanging

bass note with harmonic shifting, and dissonances.

FIGURE 6.3  ​Domenico Scarlatti, Sonata in A Minor, K. 175, m ­ easures 1–27 (the A Section). Note the dissonant tone clusters.

FIGURE 6.4  ​Joseph Haydn, “Andante,” Symphony no. 94 (“Surprise”), ­measures 1–21. The

forte “surprise” chord is in ­measure 16.

FIGURE 6.5  ​Joseph Haydn, “Allegro,” String Quartet, op. 50, no. 1, in Bb Major, m ­ easures 1–18.

The dirt-simple cello line in the first two ­measures was to be played by the King of Prus­sia, who commissioned the piece.

FIGURE 6.6  ​Domenico Scarlatti, Sonata in D Major, K. 29, m ­ easures 1–25, (the A section), cross-­handed passages: “G” (gauche) indicates the left hand, and “D” (droite) indicates the right.

FIGURE 6.7  ​Domenico Scarlatti, Sonata in D Major, K. 29, continuation, m ­ easures 25–49 (the A section) with cross-­handed passages.

FIGURE 6.8  ​Domenico Scarlatti, Sonata in B Minor, K. 27, m ­ easures 1–16 (the A section).

Note that starting at ­measure 11, the left hand (G) keeps crossing over the right hand, but at 13, although the notes stay the same, the right hand (D) does the crossing. At 15 the hands again switch.

FIGURE 6.9  ​Domenico Scarlatti, Sonata in B Minor, K. 27, m ­ easures 17–32 (the A section), continuation of the cross-­handed passages.

FIGURE 6.10  ​Domenico Scarlatti, Sonata in G Major, K. 427, ­measures 1–12: “Presto, quanto sia possibile,” the only Scarlatti sonata with this tempo marking.

FIGURE 6.11  ​Domenico Scarlatti, Sonata in G Major, K. 427, ­measures 13–24, continuation of

“Presto, quanto sia pos­si­ble.” The “sudden cannon shot explosion of chords” is at m ­ easure 13.

FIGURE 6.12  ​Domenico Scarlatti, Sonata in G Major, K. 427, ­measures 25–39, continuation of

“Presto, quanto sia pos­si­ble.” The cannon shot explosion at m ­ easure 33 is the same G Major chord as the “surprise” chord in Haydn’s “Surprise” Symphony (see figure 6.4).

FIGURE 6.13  ​Domenico Scarlatti, Sonata in D Minor, K. 120, m ­ easures 1–12, Scarlatti’s most elaborate cross-­handed sonata.

FIGURE 6.14  ​Domenico Scarlatti, Sonata in D Minor, K. 120, m ­ easures 13–27, continuation.

Note the nine cross-­handed leaps by the left hand, starting at ­measure 14, followed by six cross-­handed leaps with the right, with trills, starting at ­measure 19.

FIGURE 6.15  ​Domenico Scarlatti, Sonata in D Minor, K. 120, m ­ easures 27–44, continuation. Note the twenty left-­handed leaps, beginning at ­measure 37.

FIGURE 6.16  ​Domenico Scarlatti, Sonata in D Minor, K. 120, m ­ easures 45–58, continuation with another eight left-­handed leaps, starting at m ­ easure 50.

128 • Cedric D. Reverand II

Notes 1 This essay is based on a paper I presented at the 1984 ASECS convention in Boston, “illustrated” by Igor Kipnis at the harpsichord, which, in turn, became the basis for the program notes in the booklet accompanying Kipnis’s CD. See Igor Kipnis, harpsichordist, The Virtuoso Scarlatti, CD (New York: Chesky Rec­ords, 1992); the CD contains fifteen sonatas, including most of t­ hose discussed in the pre­sent chapter. ­ usic (London: 2 As Malcolm Boyd observes in Domenico Scarlatti: Master of M Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986), “If originality w ­ ere the only criterion of genius, . . . ​ then Scarlatti would have to be judged a greater figure than e­ ither Bach or Handel” (207–208). More recognition of Scarlatti for his originality has been gradually coming his way, as indicated by W. Dean Sutcliffe’s The Keyboard Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and Eighteenth-­Century Musical Style (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), in which Sutcliffe makes a case for Scarlatti being so original that he belongs in neither the baroque nor the classical canon. In his opening sentence, Sutcliffe announces, directly, “Domenico Scarlatti does not belong.” His influence seems to be not so much on his contemporaries or immediate followers, as on p­ eople like Franz Liszt and György Ligeti. 3 I am quoting from Scarlatti’s preface to the Essercizi per Gravicembolo (London, 1739), as translated by Ralph Kirkpatrick, Domenico Scarlatti (1953; Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1983), 102. 4 The starting point for Scarlatti scholarship is still Kirkpatrick’s Domenico Scarlatti, which establishes most of the rather ­limited specific historical information we have about Scarlatti, as well as the standard Kirkpatrick (K.) numbering system now used to identify his sonatas. The chronology Kirkpatrick proposed for the sonatas, the pairing of the sonatas, and some of the biographical inferences he made about Scarlatti have all been challenged by subsequent scholars. See, for example, Joel Sheveloff, “The Keyboard ­Music of Domenico Scarlatti: A Reevaluation of the Pre­sent State of Knowledge in the Light of the Sources” (PhD diss., Brandeis University, 1970). ­ ngland that Scarlatti’s keyboard works had their earliest recognition 5 “It was in E outside Spain and it was only in E ­ ngland that his fame was preserved and that it continued to develop through the remainder of the eigh­teenth ­century. . . . ​In Italy Domenico Scarlatti was hardly more than a name. ­Little enough of his ­music was circulating t­ here in manuscript and nothing of his was published in Italy during the eigh­teenth ­century” (Kirkpatrick, Domenico Scarlatti, 124–125). As for the first publication, though Essercizi is in Italian, and Charles Burney thought it had been published in Venice, modern research reveals that it was actually published in London, by Adamo Scola, Vine Street, near Swallow Street, Piccadilly, over against the Brew­house (402). 6 It gets better, or weirder. Heinrich Schenker claims that “the profundity of Scarlatti’s m ­ usic, the earthy tang pervading its blossoming diminutions, place him very close to the g­ reat masters of German ­music.” See Schenker, “Domenico Scarlatti: Keyboard Sonata in D minor,” trans. Ian Bent, from The Masterwork in M ­ usic, 3 vols. (1925–1930; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 1:67–74 (67). 7 [John Mainwaring], Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel (London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1760), 59–62. 8 The anecdote about Farinelli singing the same four arias e­ very night for ten years, which is part of the basis for Farinelli and the King, was recorded by Charles

Domenico Scarlatti • 129

Burney, in The Pre­sent State of M ­ usic in France and Italy (London: T. Becket, 1771), 210. Although this story seems too colorful to be true, it has long been accepted, primarily ­because it is consistent with what we know about the rest of Felipe’s insane be­hav­ior. 9 Kirkpatrick, Domenico Scarlatti, 91. 10 In working out his chronology, which is the basis for the “K.” numbers, Kirkpatrick put the starting point close to the first publication, 1738–1739, which meant Scarlatti started composing his sonatas only when in his fifties. To explain this, Kirkpatrick relied on the Oedipal notion that he could only develop his distinctive style late in life, once he freed himself from the oppressive influence of his f­ ather Alessandro. As Sheveloff points out, this is sheer speculation: t­ here are no hard facts to support the idea. The sonatas certainly could have been written ­earlier. It seems to me that a practicing court musician and renowned improviser, which we know Scarlatti to have been, was unlikely to have had “writer’s block” for thirty years. Boyd, in Domenico Scarlatti, summarizes the many theories and possibilities of ordering the sonatas, but forewarns us that “a secure chronology for Scarlatti’s sonatas, without which it is impossible to form a clear picture of his development as a keyboard composer, has so far eluded all investigation and w ­ ill prob­ably do so ­unless a substantial number of manuscripts one day comes to light” (160). As for the number of sonatas, Kirkpatrick puts it at 555 (but he paired two, K. 204a and 204b, counting as one, to get to 555, a number easier to remember). Sheveloff puts it at 585 (which includes works he considers “spurious”), of which he regards 520 as “certain.” See Sheveloff, “Domenico Scarlatti: Tercentenary Frustrations,” Musical Quarterly 71 (1985): 399–436. ­ usic in the style of 11 In his e­ arlier Italian years, Scarlatti wrote orchestral and choral m his f­ ather, and wrote a small amount of choral m ­ usic on ceremonial occasions for the Spanish court, all of it competent, but neither original nor memorable. As noted above, Kirkpatrick has argued that it was only a­ fter he started working in Portugal, moving out from u­ nder his ­father’s shadow, that he began to write the highly original harpsichord ­music for which he is now remembered. However, it may well be that, when he wrote choral m ­ usic, he was simply thinking in a dif­fer­ent mode than when he improvised at the keyboard. See Boyd’s Domenico Scarlatti for a closer study of Scarlatti’s vocal m ­ usic. 12 ­There are two pos­si­ble exceptions. One is Antonio Soler (1729–1783), the other, the virtually unknown Sebastian Albero (1722–1756), but this could be a perfect example of the exception proving the rule: we are pretty certain that Soler was a pupil of Scarlatti’s, and Albero was an organist serving the court of Fernando VI while Scarlatti was tutoring Maria Barbara, which means he would undoubtedly have heard Scarlatti perform. It is also pos­si­ble that e­ ither Soler or Albero was the scribe responsible for the fifteen volumes of Scarlatti transcriptions in Parma (­they’re initialed “S” and “SA”). 13 ­There is considerable scholarly debate over what, exactly, is the form of the standard Scarlatti sonata. See Janet Schmalfeldt, “Domenico Scarlatti, Escape Artist: Sightings of His ‘Mixed Style’ t­ owards the End of the Eigh­teenth ­Century,” ­Music Analy­sis 38 (2019): 253–293. Much of the debate seems to be over ­whether this is actually a proto-­sonata form, which implies, as Sutcliffe puts it, that “classical sonata style . . . ​acts as the promised land” (Keyboard Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti, 320). The analyses are often hopelessly complex, filled with inconsistencies and contradictions: what he is supposed to be ­doing in one sonata does not occur in the next. To my mind, such overly intricate analyses only confirm Kirkpatrick’s observation that

130 • Cedric D. Reverand II

“it is almost impossible to establish rules that Scarlatti himself does not break or to define categories that he himself does not demolish” (Domenico Scarlatti, 251). At the risk of alienating all t­ hose who have worked to invent a Scarlatti version of the sonata, I prefer to think of the form as simply miscellaneous, which is all the more likely if we consider that Scarlatti, like jazz pianists of t­ oday, improvised, and improvisations, by their very nature, are miscellaneous, even if they are written down ­later. 14 For the Scarlatti illustrations in this essay, I am relying on Domenico Scarlatti: Sonatas, ed. Kenneth Gilbert, 11 vols. (Paris: La Pupitre, 1974–1984), published by Editions Heugel et Cie., Paris/United M ­ usic Publishers Ltd. 15 For scholarly discussions of humor in ­music, see Gretchen Wheelock, Haydn’s Ingenious Jesting with Art: Contexts of Musical Wit and Humor (New York: Schirmer, 1992), and James Webster, Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 16 The Beauties of Dominico [sic] Scarlatti. Selected from his Suites de Lecons, ed. Ambrose Pitman ([London?], [1785?]), 1. ­ ere 17 Boyd, Domenico Scarlatti, 219. One might think that cross-­handed passages w not all that difficult, b­ ecause some harpsichords at his disposal, including at least four owned by Maria Barbara, might have had two manuals. Not so. As Kirkpatrick explains: “A notion propagated by writers with ­little experience at the harpsichord is that Scarlatti’s hand-­crossings w ­ ere facilitated by the use of two keyboards. As a ­matter of fact, most such passages have to be executed on the lower keyboard, even when rendered more difficult thereby, ­because they generally occur in passages demanding massed effects of sound” (Domenico Scarlatti, 181). In the video clip on YouTube from 1985 of Rafael Puyana playing K. 120 on what appears to be his three-­manual 1740 H. A. Hass harpsichord (with its five registers), Puyana uses all manuals, but the cross-­handed work is always done on one manual alone. See https://­w ww​.­youtube​.­com​/­watch​? ­v ​= ­q3bhe7PgWgo. 18 Boyd, Domenico Scarlatti, 185–186. One might note that the editors of the competing modern editions of Scarlatti’s “complete” sonatas—­K irkpatrick, Gilbert, and Emilia Fadini—­were all accomplished harpsichordists. 19 Kirkpatrick, Domenico Scarlatti, 297. This is an example of another inventive Scarlatti quirk, which Schmalfeldt labels “one-­more time,” whereby we seem to finish a phrase, or reach a cadence, only to back up and do it again. See Schmalfeldt, “Cadential Pro­cesses: The Evaded Cadence and the ‘One More Time’ Technique,” Journal of Musicological Research 12 (1992): 1–52. 20 Schmalfeldt, “Domenico Scarlatti, Escape Artist,” 255. 21 Kirkpatrick, Domenico Scarlatti, 162. 22 Sutcliffe, Keyboard Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti, 10.

7

Queen Anne’s Other ­Women PAULA R. BACKSCHEIDER

Queen Anne was both an inveterate playgoer and the monarch of a nation that viewed itself as a sea power. The intersection of the two queenly activities of attending plays and managing a war helps us see two significant and related aspects of the plays produced during her reign: the first is the vigor with which military veterans during her reign supported the war through their plays; the second is the dramatic depiction within plays of w ­ omen far less vis­i­ble in the historical rec­ord than the Queen who nevertheless helped support the war effort. Additionally, t­hese dramatic depictions of ­women’s participation point to ­women’s crucial contributions in roles recognized by military leaders. If we are to understand forgotten, unexpected ways in which ­women ­were involved in both theater and military operations during this period, then it is impor­tant that we recognize that General John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough led the first tactically modern war. Queen Anne and her ministers supported him financially and with revolutionary recruiting initiatives. Plebian ­women with the troops became an essential infrastructure and the theater’s ­women characters developed into a significant engine of recruitment drawing thousands of fighting men. The frequency with which ­these ­women’s activities ­were depicted on stage suggests an awareness that the evolution of ­England’s complex military infrastructure during the eigh­teenth ­century involved a remarkable range of ­labor from ­women of all ranks. 131

132 • Paula R. Backscheider

From her youth, Queen Anne both enjoyed and performed in plays. In the time of Charles I, ­there had been ­performances throughout palaces, including in the Privy Chamber and Royal Bed Chambers, and Charles II followed that pre­ce­dent. In 1665, the year of Anne’s birth, Charles II set up the g­ rand hall of Whitehall as a theater, “complete with proscenium arch and gallery.”1 Anne had prob­ably attended the royal theaters many times with her f­ ather, who attended more plays than any other Stuart monarch including Charles II. The ­great actress Elizabeth Barry tutored both Anne and, l­ater, Mary of Modena in elocution.2 During the early years of her reign, she, unlike her s­ ister and brother-­in-­law, who lacked her interest in drama, continued to go to plays and have ­performances staged at court. She understood that private p­ erformances of entire plays, rehearsals, or favorite acts provided support for playwrights, supplied income for companies, and represented the monarchy favorably. Queen Anne also waged war. Shortly ­after being crowned on St. George’s Day, April 23, 1702, she declared war on France and engaged the country in the War of Spanish Succession. She soon made Captain-­General John Churchill, whom William had distrusted, Duke of Marlborough. Both Marlborough and the War of Spanish Succession are identified with Anne and both defined her reign. Her engagement with theater and war is evident. On her birthday in February 1704, she went to Dryden’s All for Love and then invited the players to perform at court on the anniversary of her coronation and on her husband’s birthday.3 That same year, Marlborough’s first major victory gave Anne’s reign the distinction of changing “the ­political axis of the world.”4 Marlborough was a dif­fer­ent order of general, and his war was a dif­f er­ent kind of war. Before Marlborough and Sébastien le Prestre, Marchal Vaubon, land ­battles had been rather scripted, and taking territory and the fortresses that blocked ­free passage on rivers ­were the usual objectives rather than achieving crushing victories. As Daniel Defoe wrote in his laudatory poem A Hymn to Victory (1704), Marlborough moved beyond the almost ceremonial methods of previous Continental campaigns of “Long Campings, Dodging, and Delays.”5 In 1704, Marlborough’s army of forty thousand marched through Bavaria. His army won a crushing victory at Blenheim on the Danube against a force of fifty-­six thousand.6 When he returned to ­England, Anne gave him a diamond sword and the royal estate of Woodstock with the promise of “a stately palace.”7 Marlborough followed this victory with another victory, at Ramillies in May 1706, and attention and patriotic joy shifted to the land war. Fighting in Flanders and on the Iberian Peninsula, Queen Anne’s troops “made their country’s name.” The role of the infantry grew exponentially, and Marlborough was especially creative in devising deadly formations that gave the ­enemy no respite, trapped their platoons, and fi­nally led to a horrific charge with bayonets. He pioneered and drilled firing using coordinated platoons rather than lines or companies and achieved continuous withering fire with a three-­platoon system. He used his large cavalry as a shock force and expected them to fight primarily with

Queen Anne’s Other ­Women • 133

swords, falling mercilessly upon the French who halted, fired, and reloaded. He became a master of placing artillery, and at Ramillies he had a hundred twenty guns and mortars while the French had only seventy pieces of artillery.8 While casualties at Steenkirk in 1692 had been 8,000 out of 150,000 men (5 ­percent), they numbered 30,000 out of 108,000 at Blenheim (28 ­percent).9 Marlborough understood the roles played by w ­ omen who traveled with the troops throughout the c­ entury. One such task of theirs was to go onto the battlefield to aid the wounded and help move them and the British dead back to camp. ­These ­women thus supported Anne’s war, and Marlborough needed them. In 1704, ­after Schellenberg, the ­battle that won a bridgehead over the Danube and opened the path to Blenheim,10 Marlborough ordered all the ­widows with his troops to begin serving as nurses immediately. They and the other nurses w ­ ere fed and paid as much as able seamen. ­There ­were seventeen doctors at Blenheim, approximately one for ­every six hundred men, but ­after Blenheim ­there w ­ ere four hospital ships in E ­ nglish w ­ aters and one in the Mediterranean arranged to receive the wounded. ­These early hospital ships ­were dif­fer­ent from the fetid horrors that Tobias Smollett described ­later. They carried live sheep and fowl to provide fresh meat and, led by w ­ omen’s demands, brought bedding on the decks to air.11

The War’s Other W ­ omen Marlborough encountered major obstacles. His Dutch allies w ­ ere balky and “timid” and retarded his plans and maneuvers.12 In 1702, as Marlborough took command, the empire was contracted to contribute eighty-­two thousand men, the Dutch one hundred thousand, and the British forty thousand. In fact, “even at its peak, in 1709, only 28,000 Britons ­were serving ­under Marlborough.” In some years, the number of Scottish and Irish regiments outnumbered the ­English. His command over the allies’ regiments was not what he wished, and he began asking for more allied troops. By 1710, Britain was paying as much as £875,000 per year for them.13 The Queen, Marlborough, and the new lord ­treasurer, William Godolphin, began her reign with a nation-­altering action, the inauguration of recruiting acts for the army (the navy had the ancient right to recruit year-­round). Parliament passed the first individual Act for Better Recruiting Her Majesties Land-­Forces and Marines in 1703.14 It allowed conscription and commissioned recruiting parties that included an officer, usually a lieutenant or captain, an assistant at the rank at least of sergeant, and several additional men including a drummer. Army recruiting acts had to be passed and then renewed annually throughout wars and ­were ­every year through 1711. History shows how unusual this was. A ­ fter Anne’s reign, such acts w ­ ere passed rarely—­ specifically in each major war and twice for the American rebellion: 1743–1744, 1756–1757, 1778–1779, and 1783—­but never annually.15 George Farquhar’s Recruiting Officer is, indeed, a detailed exploration of recruiting. Silvia, the cross-­dressed leading w ­ oman character, becomes a recruiter

134 • Paula R. Backscheider

and competes with the male recruiters, Brazen and the Plume/Kite’s recruiting party. Shadwell’s Belvedera, also in a breeches part in Humours of the Army, impersonates a volunteer, the most desired kind of recruit ­because they freely chose to enlist. As “Hickumbuz,” she passes herself off with forged letters allegedly from Bloodmore’s ­sister asking that Bloodmore provide for “him” in his regiment. Brigadier Bloodmore’s regiment is seriously undermanned, with a vacancy for a lieutenant of the grenadiers. Belvedera is handed a f­ ree commission as one of Major Fox’s lieutenants from the lot the brigadier has to dispense as he wishes. This valuable commodity was inherited or purchased by elites, and more rarely, as in the case of Brigadier Bloodmore, awarded ­a fter ­battle when superior officers ­were killed or completely disabled. Hickumbuz is thus greeted with won­der and hostility by the com­pany. Fox showers her with the perqs at his disposal, and the audience learns more about the ­women with the troops. Belvedera’s “footman,” her maid Clara, is given a sergeant’s pay, and a washer­ woman is assigned to Hickumbuz and put on the muster roll. The story of how the man she seeks becomes a soldier fills out the picture of the new drive to man the forces that was unfolding all around the audience. In fact, the theater was a frequent haunt of impress men, and, at times, men avoided the entire area. Th ­ ese characters supply realistic details, such as the seductive patter of recruiters—­something on the order of the mountebank selling phar­ma­ ceu­ti­cals. Several of the characters dramatize how the provisions in the Recruiting Acts aimed at idle or troublemaking men. Wilmot, Belvedera’s gentleman love, who is disguised as Straitup, tells a tale designed to be credible. He joined, he explains, ­because “[b]esides having had a Bastard laid to me, I had committed some Roguery in the Country, was afraid of being hang’d, and so listed my self for a Soldier.”16 Even Major Fox “gave Security to St. Martin’s [parish] for my Washer­woman’s Bastard” and “rak’d and broke Win­dows, talk’d Politicks, beat the Watch . . . ​won Money at Gaming.”17 The hundreds of ­women who attended Marlboro’s army ­were, in fact, an essential part of the infrastructure of war. The idea of a supply chain did not ­really exist. It was taken for granted that the w ­ omen with the army would be “foragers,” and the most ­organized source of provisions seemed to be the appointment of a ­grand sutler for each regiment and a petty sutler for each com­pany. Soldiers ­were supposed to receive bacon or meat twice a week and ­were given bread through the commissary, but the price of this food was deducted from their pay. They had to purchase every­thing ­else from locals or the sutlers or get food from forage.18 Both Farquhar and Shadwell make selling food to soldiers part of impor­ tant ­women characters’ work. The opening lines of Humours of the Army are between two captains discussing foraging, pos­si­ble purchases from a sutler, and “the Weakness of our Intrenchments, and the Mortality of our Men.” ­Rose in The Recruiting Officer is a chicken seller whose refusal to cheat the soldiers makes her a patriot. She was played by Susanna Mountford, a delightful young comic actress who was perfect for ­Rose’s singing and mimicking what she takes to be

Queen Anne’s Other ­Women • 135

the be­hav­ior of a fash­ion­able, higher class ­woman. Mountford used her military exercise skills in the more serious role of Belvedera. Victoria Bloodmore, played by the ­great star-­to-be Anne Oldfield, was in a more conventional romantic comedy plot. She is engaged to her parents’ choice, Bisket, a wealthy, foppish supplier of bread and forage to the army and the richest merchant in Lisbon. She resists and imagines what her role and geographic place would be ­were she to marry him: dine with bookkeepers, bargain for “stock-­fish” in Newfoundland, and “beg Coffee and Callicoes” on board an “India-­Man.”19 The development of a modern military infrastructure was slowly beginning and would be a momentous change with ­great impact on the w ­ omen who provided essential support. As the size of the infantry became the key to winning ­battles, greater numbers of ­women slogged along with the army, and they also dealt with death and maiming in the field. The historian Charles Carlton noted, “On the march, in garrisons, during sieges, and even ­battles, [­women] w ­ ere a means to survival. As Sir James Turner recognized, ‘As w ­ oman was created to be a helper to man, so w ­ omen are greater helpers in armies.’ ”20 According to Barton Hacker, “­Women’s work was necessary, thankless, and so taken for granted as to be all but ignored.”21 If noticed at all, they are usually labeled as “camp followers” and assumed to be sex workers. Both the quick appointment of a washer­woman to Belvedera and R ­ ose’s work as sutler are examples of the “all but ignored” ­women who played a critical part of the military infrastructure. As units devoted to, for instance, transport or munitions and ordnance formed and grew in importance, the hardworking ­women became a more impor­tant part of that evolution as they carried extra gear, helped set up and break camp, and sometimes even became teamsters. Military officers noted that married soldiers “fared better” and did more ­because of the work of “their husbands’ mules.”22 In the navy, ­women ­were already serving in multiple roles and w ­ ere paid to nurse and help cooks and surgeons. They added thrumming sails (sewing on strips of oakum to thicken them). ­Women w ­ ere gun monkeys in wars before the Restoration and at Trafalgar in 1805. Gun monkeys climbed down the ladders from the decks to the powder room deep in the ship, slid past the wet curtains that protected the stored powder from sparks, filled a leather cartridge, then climbed back up the ladder with the heavy cartridge, ran across the sand-­covered but still blood-­and-­water-­slippery deck through smoke and deafening gunfire, delivered the cartridge, and ran down to the hold for another load.23 So familiar ­were they that their work could be casually mentioned in places like the prologue to Nathaniel Lee’s Mithridates (1678). Sweden and France ­were building strong infrastructures to carry out wars, and that included reor­ga­niz­ing administrative funding and resource deployment. ­These advances quickly influenced E ­ ngland and other Western nations, especially as they increasingly fought alongside each other. During Marlborough’s time, the infrastructure of the military was greatly improved, and modern warfare required “financial muscle, bureaucratic o­ rganization, and technical expertise.”24

136 • Paula R. Backscheider

The obsolescence of w ­ omen as major infrastructure was a long p­ rocess. In 1777, 2,000 ­women accompanied Burgoyne when he invaded New York with 7,200 men; obviously they had been transported with him. Con­temporary accounts blame the ragged appearance and prevalence of dysentery in the American troops to the lack of w ­ omen to do the work they did for the British. In the army of 60,000 led by Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington in the early 1800s, ­there ­were 4,500 British wives listed and entitled to rations in addition to the unofficial ­women, while 1,100 Portuguese and Spanish ­women accompanied as sutlers, washerwomen, and other workers.25 We take for granted that man­ag­ers and actors who opened the Restoration theaters had military experience. ­Little noticed is the fact that some of the most notable and influential dramatists during Anne’s reign also had firsthand knowledge of wars, and several served very successfully during the War of the Spanish Succession.26 Colley Cibber, one of the most p­ opular and prolific playwrights of his generation and a poet laureate, like his f­ ather, was in a regiment ­under the fourth Earl of Devonshire ­until 1688. Richard Steele enlisted in the Life Guards commanded by James Butler, second Duke of Ormond, in 1692 during the Nine Years’ War (1688–1697). A historically good regiment originally founded by Charles II, it was officially composed of officers and “private gentlemen,” and so he would have assembled the costume described in The Theatre: “he cocked his hat, and put on a broad sword, jackboots, and shoulder-­belt.”27 He fought in two campaigns in Flanders. In 1695, he joined the Coldstream Foot Guards as an ensign in the Irish hero Lord Cutts’s own com­pany. He became Cutts’s private secretary and then a full captain with the pay and authority of the rank in 1697. In 1702 he became a captain in the new thirty-­fourth foot and began recruiting for his com­pany in Essex and Norfolk. They w ­ ere sent to the dilapidated but impor­tant Landguard Fort to help protect Harwich.28 While in the army, Steele spent considerable time visiting London and wrote three plays. He was part of the same Irish military network as the playwrights George Farquhar and Charles Shadwell, who also combined military ­service and playwriting and whose characters are featured in this essay.29 Although Farquhar’s Beaux’ Stratagem is more frequently performed and studied ­today than The Recruiting Officer, the latter is well known and frequently cited by military historians as a source of accurate information about British army recruiters’ conduct and inducements. At age twelve or thirteen, Farquhar fought in the B ­ attle of Boyne (July 1, 1690) u­ nder ­Colonel Hans Hamilton. A ­ fter a stint at Smock Alley Theatre where he acted with Robert Wilks, the star of both army plays, Farquhar moved to Drury Lane. In 1703, he married Margaret Pemell, the ­widow of an army officer.30 In 1704, the year ­after the passing of the first Recruiting Act, he received a lieutenant’s commission as a grenadier in the Earl of Orrery’s regiment and was a recruiting officer for the regiment in Shrewsbury, then Dublin, Kildare, and Lichfield.31 Charles Shadwell is almost unknown ­today in spite of the fact that his Humours of the Army was a solid success and

Queen Anne’s Other ­Women • 137

played an impor­tant part in the 1740s with The Recruiting Officer in encouraging enlistment by featuring “the Female Officer,” the ­g reat Peg Woffington. Shadwell’s Fair Quaker of Deal, or the Humours of the Navy became, perhaps, the most revived navy main piece. During the American Revolutionary War, it featured a ­grand Royal Navy Review that brought the Royal Review at Spithead to the London stage. Shadwell gives us the most detailed repre­sen­ta­tion of the ­women who have been classified as “camp-­followers.” Into the camp’s dire situation, Major Young Fox enters with recruits. They are accompanied by two common soldiers’ wives who have shared the trip from Falmouth, Cornwall, then the five-­day trip to Lisbon, and then the ten-­day march to the camp. The two w ­ omen pre­sent one of the few depictions of lower-­class ­women camp followers in plays. Shadwell shows how common and how useful such ­women ­were by having them enter on the third page of the play. Brief as ­these scenes are, they provide a look at what the ­women did, how they ­were perceived, and some of the benefits for the poorest w ­ omen. Both w ­ omen claim to be the same man’s wife. Mrs. Sneker, the second wife, offers the fact that she has carried her husband’s knapsack from Lisbon and “lain with him the ­whole March,” and, as further proof that they are married, she attests that he beats her daily.32 During this opening scene, we also learn that the other ­woman’s name is Moll, the generic name for a slut or thief. ­Until act 5, their names are eradicated, and they are first and second “Trull” in the text, as they are in the dramatis personae. Usually interpreted as an acknowl­ edgment that the ­women who unofficially followed the men ­were typically “tramps and prostitutes, lazy, defiant and totally undermining of good discipline,” the term was also neutral London slang for a soldier’s w ­ oman.33 In harmony with Sir James Turner, who said that “As w ­ oman was created to be a helper of man, so ­women are greater helpers in armies,”34 one of the arriving w ­ omen asks, “And what is the main Sign of a Wife, but ­doing all his Drudgery?”35 Serjeant File-­off advises her to leave the husband and hire herself out to wash the linen of a higher class group of officers, the grenadiers. He addresses her by her name, “Mrs. Sneker,” but she says flirtatiously, “If you please, Serjeant, I’ll take up with Straitup.” Serjeant File-­off reminds them of their position: “Fall back you—­Silence ­there—­Heark’e ­Women, be dumb, or you ­shall all be muster’d as Harlots—­whipt out of the Camp, without the Preferment of being made Nurses to the Hospital.”36 Since the w ­ omen in the camps w ­ ere sometimes suspected of being harlots, he would have no trou­ble bringing this about. File-­ off brings order and sends both wives to set up their tents and “­settle.” ­Because the rewards that ­these poor ­women could aspire to ­were so valuable, work like washing and nursing was strictly controlled by regulations or settled practice, and the best appointments entailed being put on the muster roll. Officers ­were to divide their laundry among sergeants’ wives, and soldiers’ laundry was “to be distributed in equal proportions among the other w ­ omen of the companies.” The official laundresses ­were paid five pence a week. ­Those without

138 • Paula R. Backscheider

appointments could still earn money by accepting bachelors and lower-­class clients. Hacker pointed out that wives who could earn money ­were sought out by enlisted men for the additional income.37 They gathered firewood, cooked, did laundry, gave first aid, mended clothing, foraged for food, ran errands, and made items like soap. The historian Charles Carlton summarized, “On the march, in garrisons, during sieges, and even b­ attles, [­women] w ­ ere a means to survival.”38 ­Women ­were an essential part of the infrastructure.

­These Also Serve? Like Farquhar, who depicts Molly, a lower-­class w ­ oman who stays in E ­ ngland and bears Plume’s child, Shadwell depicts sex workers in Fair Quaker of Deal, or the Humours of the Navy. In that play, Worthy, the admirable model captain, is in love with Dorcas Zeal. At least as much time, however, is given to the stories of lower-­class w ­ omen. Nanny is a barmaid who has stubbornly held onto her virtue and is recognized for it by the sailors who pass through Daniel’s; her virtue helps that tavern and inn attract a better clientele than the Wapping seamen. Jenny Private is the reformed whore, a good sort who worked her trade out of need. Jiltup, a “whore of the town,” explains the “degrees in Whoring” to the two lieutenants, Cribidge and Easy: the “Bastard-­bearing Whore” is “the most Notorious”; “she that lies with half the Town, and does it privately, is a prudent Whore”; “a mercenary Whore” wants money; and the “Whore of Honour” (like Jenny) “does it generously, and bare-­fac’d.”39 Worthy has two seamen with him. Flip is the Wapping tar whom Shadwell describes as “gets drunk with his Boats-­Crew, and values himself upon the brutish Management of the Navy.” Mizen is “a finical Sea-­Fop” who wants to reform the navy in his effeminate and fash­ion­able image (he keeps a visiting day and has knickknacks).40 Worthy leads Jenny and Jiltup through disguise and ­performances to trick them into marriage, but the conclusion is that the sailors set the w ­ omen up with h ­ ouses and economic security for life in exchange for their freedom. The ­women, who always wanted to give up their trade, are now ­free to be virtuous. ­These sex workers are actually the higher class of whores in the play. Shadwell brings bumboat ­women to the audience’s attention. Flip is staying at an inn from which the proprietor, Tom Cragg, “lets” them and his d­ aughter out. Cragg’s bumboat would have accommodated the men even before they reached the shore. “Bumboats” crowded with available ­women would be rowed quickly out to the ships, sailors would purchase a ­woman, and ­couples’ activities in hammocks followed and often went on for days (“the w ­ oman’s legs to hams hanging over the sides”).41 They could be looked upon as serving a patriotic purpose, as they w ­ ere one of the rewards for sailors who might have been on ships for nine months or more and w ­ ere ­eager for female com­pany and sex. Incidents in many plays depict the happiness of men returning to or finding new “whores” when they landed.

Queen Anne’s Other ­Women • 139

A sailor in Susanna Centlivre’s A Bickerstaff’s Burying (also 1710) opens the first scene with the sailors saying, “I hate making strange Land: Who the ­Devil knows where to find a Wench now?”42 The bumboat ­women could also be seen as contributing a civic s­ ervice. Just-­landed sailors sometimes rushed through the port town, getting drunk, insulting ­women, carousing, and committing vandalism. Again, the plays often refer to this fact and depict tars debating ­whether they ­will break win­dows or hunt w ­ omen first. Cumulatively, ­there is also a lot of information about the bumboat w ­ omen and the navy, which made vari­ous efforts to control the sailors and regulate the ­women. George Hahn notes that sailors on many ships w ­ ere allowed “female guests” for a few days when their ships w ­ ere in port. He refers to an estimate that “hundreds of prostitutes, with the unofficial permission of the navy, lived on the lower deck for the time a ship was in port.”43 Failing completely was a regulation specifying that wives alone could be allowed. One effort with reasonable success with bumboat ­women was having the boatswains check the ­women “for soundness” upon arrival at the ship. They would then pay the boatman for the ones that he accepted and would allow on board. Denver Brunsman categorizes such prostitution with sewing, extending credit, and washing as “pursuing economic activities open to them.” Isaac Land found that l­ ater in the c­ entury ­women also “sold a variety of goods at extremely inflated prices,” and sometimes even set up shops and stalls on deck.44

Furthering the Queen’s Agenda Praising Marlborough, publicizing his victories, and holding him up as the model of masculinity supported the Queen. All three plays include brief comparisons of past and pre­sent b­ attle tactics and admire Marlborough’s. Ballance, the veteran now a magistrate in Recruiting Officer, wants to hear about the episode in the Blenheim campaign during which Marshal Tallard was captured. Obviously proud and elated over this victory, he says he would enlist again could he be part of such a capture. Plume, the only character in e­ ither play with explicit experience fighting ­under him, refuses the request to describe the victory, saying only, “Our General commanded us to beat the French, and we did so, and if he pleases to say the word, ­we’ll do’t again.”45 Shadwell’s Fair Quaker of Deal satirizes Mizen’s desire to gentrify the army, reforms him, and recasts him in a movement ­toward modeling Marlborough’s calm, confident leadership. One of Shadwell’s non-­English members of the British troop in Humours of the Army admires Marlborough’s fighting style. He observes that now “dey haf no Siege, dey lauf at de Fortification.”46 On his arrival at the camp, Major Fox recites all the news from London to the ladies gathered with Mrs. Bloodmore. He reports, “I left our Royal Mistress in a very good State of Health, Reigning intirely in the Hearts of Her ­People, whose Representatives are ­doing Won­ders; and by their well-­timed Zeal, and vast

140 • Paula R. Backscheider

Supplies, show the World they are still able to Balance ­Europe’s Power. The Taxes are paid cheerfully.”47 ­These plays consistently did the nation’s work and included carefully crafted ele­ments from current national contexts. The U ­ nion with Scotland in 1707 was a hard-­fought victory for the E ­ nglish, and Shadwell takes advantage of the fact that Marlborough’s army was more foreign than E ­ nglish to advance the creation of one nation. The Queen had wanted ­Union so that the succession would be settled, and Marlborough wanted to be certain that Scotland would neither rebel nor send soldiers to Louis XIV. They managed the most power­ful Scots firmly, received help from o­ thers, and gave positions and money strategically. Many Scots had fought with Marlborough, and he wrote asking their support for the U ­ nion. In Humours of the Army, Shadwell uses the real­ity of Marlborough’s conglomerate regiments to advance the creation of one nation. ­Colonel Hyland is from “North Britain,” which signifies the recent ­Union and is assigned the highest rank. ­There are E ­ nglish, Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and even French in the camp. In fact, Marlborough’s army was more foreign than ­English. For many years, individual Scots and Irishmen sometimes fought on both sides in the same year depending on where they and the nearest troops ­were, and the ­Union was to help keep Scots on the British side. As Shadwell’s prologue says, “His Characters of several nations are / Such as when joyn’d, compose the Gross of War.” This multinational force was supposed to form an image of British unity able to overcome illness and scarcity of men and provisions to become a patriotic and effective “British” army.48 In fact, this integration was a work in pro­gress, and Shadwell makes it comic. He consistently combines ideological themes with realistic details, depicting the clash of nations, classes, genders, and backgrounds. He uses a comic trick found in many plays when a w ­ oman’s suitors push and shove to lead through a door. At one point, male characters, each representing a nation, perform it. Hyland and Major Outside (Irish) offer to fight; Major Cadwalader (Welsh) s­ ettles it by claiming the most ancient lineage. They are united, however, in their contempt for the Portuguese, whom they are fighting. The most extended scene of unity is when they contemplate the economic consequences of peace which the Brigadier announces at the end of the play (the War of the Spanish Succession ended in the year of the play’s production). On half pay, Hyland intends to return to Edinburgh, and Outside to Tiperary; they spar a bit over which can look forward to the lowest cost of living. Cadwalader mentions enjoying game and intends to pray for another war and the full pay it would bring. The hero, Major Young Fox, is Irish, as is Major Outside, and in spite of Fox’s sympathetic treatment of him, the contrasts between them rather unpleasantly emphasize class and educational differences. Outside notes that he and Fox w ­ ere both born in County Tiperary, “did suck of the same Nurse,” ate the same food from the same sources. Outside continues, “He only speaks his words one way, and I do speak them an oder vay.”49 Shortly afterward, Fox answers Outside in his dialect, and this may be intended to hint that Fox is bonding over having risen

Queen Anne’s Other ­Women • 141

from a similar unassimilated Irish place. In another scene Fox compliments Outside: “Well said my dear Country-­man.”50 Irish playwrights throughout the ­century worked to raise the status of their country. Fox’s marriage to the ­English Victoria Bloodmore is another ­union of nations and contrived to assimilate him into ­English society as well as to integrate him further into the officer corps ­because of the ways army networks operated. Bloodmore concludes, “In our Retirement P ­ leasure w ­ ill Afford,  / Britains have gain’d in War a Glorious Name.”51

Cross-­Dressed ­Performances Shadwell’s “trulls,” like the other w ­ omen characters, are ­English. Intriguingly, they w ­ ere played by men, creating a comic overlay that leaves the serious situation of the camp followers to be recognized—or not. Mrs. Alice Sneker was played by Henry Norris, whose squeaky voice, ad-­libbing, and gender-­bending made him a comic favorite. In The Recruiting Officer as Pearmain, he had declared, “I’ll be no King . . . ​I’ll be a Queen” and brought down the ­house. The second travesty part was played by Christopher Bullock J­ unior, who specialized in effeminate beaus and had played with Norris as another recruit (Appletree).52 With this casting, Shadwell’s Moll could attract neither the attention nor the sympathy that Molly in The Recruiting Officer had. Drury Lane had a wealth of first-­rate comic actors, and they w ­ ere on display in the play: Bisket (Pinkethman), Col Hyland (Bullock), Cadwalader (Doggett), and Blunder (Leigh). This casting contributes to the strong farcical ele­ments that Shadwell built into the camp and sets off the contrast to Victoria, Belvedera and even Leonora, who marries Bisket. ­There w ­ ere many hardworking ­women during Anne’s reign, and many of them also succeeded by ­performance. Fraser Easton coined the term “passing-­woman worker,” and he joins Peter Earle in using newspapers, periodical reports, and city and parish rec­ords to identify passing w ­ omen working as laborers, butchers, cooks, porters, shipwrights, plasterers, ploughmen, stonecutters, bricklayers, coachmen, pedlars, manservants, and East India recruits. Jennine Hurl-­Eamon has probed the “survival strategies” resorted to by soldiers, sailors, and their wives, such as repeatedly pawning goods, sometimes “borrowed” from their workplace. Demand for servants was high, and some trades employed many ­women, as did brewing and, in the East End, soap making and silk throwing (preparing raw silk for the many weavers in the city’s leading industry). Peter Earle goes deep into Wapping and other enclaves of the w ­ omen of soldiers and sailors and finds the occupations that employed substantial numbers of them. W ­ omen could be barmaids and servants in the thousands of venues that sold alcohol. The desperate could even be street peddlers of alcohol, especially gin. W ­ omen ­were also employed as hawkers or errand runners or stood on corners where visitors from E ­ urope and the provinces arrived and earned money guiding them to destinations.53

142 • Paula R. Backscheider

Although Anne prob­ably would not have seen the trulls and the sex workers in Fair Quaker of Deal as being like the mistresses of her u­ ncle, f­ ather, and Marlborough, she was part of a generation who enjoyed and played cross-­dressed parts. She herself acted in such plays. John Crowne’s Calisto was commissioned, rehearsed, and performed at court twenty times between September 1674 and February 1675. It was designed to be performed by court ladies, five of whom w ­ ere ­under fifteen and included princesses Mary (aged twelve) who played Calisto and Anne (aged ten) as the nymph Nyphe, a character created for her. Sarah Jenyns was four years older than Anne and played Mercury. More revealing is that the teenaged Princess Anne also acted in an all-­woman ­performance of Nathaniel Lee’s sensational tragedy Mithridates. Speculation has placed it at St. James’s Palace, the banqueting ­house at Whitehall, at Sir Allen Apsley’s ­house in St. James Square, and, most recently by Andrew Walkling, in the Lord Chamberlain’s Whitehall lodgings. Walkling proposes dating it during the Christmas or Carnival season (1677/78), and perhaps on the Friday before Shrove Tuesday, February 8, 1678.54 That would place it before its first ­performance at Drury Lane in February or March, and evidence for ­these several locations suggests that t­ here may have been more than one p­ erformance.55 In November 1681, a year when it was revived at Drury Lane, Anne performed it the first of three times in Edinburgh at Holyrood Palace (the last on November 24).56 It was one of the p­ opular plays based on the E ­ uropean heroic romances. For the royal ­family, Gautier de Costes, sieur de la Calprenède’s Cassandre (1642–1645) and his other plays w ­ ere favorite sources.57 The plot was the late life of Mithridates VI, descendant of Alexander the ­Great and Persian royalty (Eupator Dionysus, 120–63 BCE), the ­great rival of the growing Roman Empire, who conquered all of Asia Minor, fought all three of Rome’s greatest generals, and battled Rome for nearly forty years. In the Third Mithridatic War (74–63 BCE), he was forced to retreat to his ancestral holding, Pontus. From ­there, Pompey drove him to Crimea, his last province. In the play, ­there are reports of Pompey’s advance. Julius Caesar invaded from Egypt and defeated him with ease in 47 BCE. Caesar’s report to the Roman Senate is the locus for the famous “Veni, vidi, vici.” Lee’s highly fictionalized play followed his Rival Queens and was his fifth play about a troubled king. It was influenced by La Calprenède’s La Mort de Mithridate (1636) and Racine’s Mithridate (1673), both solid successes with revivals and lasting reputations. The history was well known anyway by educated p­ eople, as its classical sources included Appian’s Roman History and Plutarch’s Lives (“Life of Lucullus”). Lee’s play was frequently performed and printed u­ ntil 1738, and, remarkably, in 1779 Frances Brooke’s first produced play, The Siege of Sinope, was based on the libretto for Giusseppi Sarti’s opera, Mitridate a Sinope (1779) at the same time King’s Theatre, London’s Italian opera ­house, was staging Antonio Sacchini’s Mithridates, its only newly commissioned opera of the season.58 Mithridates continues to be a dramatic subject as in Dorothy Sayers’s Strong Poison (1931) and the video game Total War: Rome (2008).59

Queen Anne’s Other ­Women • 143

As James Winn observes, it was a rather strange choice for young ladies, yet Lee wrote in the prologue that originally “ ’twas meant the Ladys Play,” and in the dedication to the Earl of Dorset, he asks that it be “laid at the Feet of the Queen.” It has graphic vio­lence and evil schemes and is filled with explicit sexual language. In 1678 Anne performed in the play as Prince Ziphares, the youn­ ger of the two sons of Mithridates from his marriage with his s­ ister Laodice. He is loyal to his ­father and a ­great warrior. He is inspired to win a ­battle against impossible odds by Mithridates’s promise that he can marry Semandra, a ­daughter of a ­great general and therefore too low for a match with the prince. Notably, Anne was the d­ aughter of Anne Hyde, which, as Winn points out, had already caused her to be snubbed upon a marriage feeler as “from a mediocre ­family.”60 Frances Apsley, one of Anne’s closest friends, played Semandra. Following a practice of assuming names from heroic romances, Anne and Frances corresponded for seven or eight years as Ziphares and Semandra, with Anne as Ziphares. Anne used the male pronoun, as in 1683 when she alluded to her coming marriage and explained not writing while Frances was ill: “do not have so ill opinons of your Ziphares for tho he changes his condition yet nothing ­shall ever alter him from being ye [sic] same to his deare Semandra.”61 Ziphares’s ­brother Pharnaces has deliberately tempted Mithridates with Semandra in revenge for Mithridates making his love, Monima, his queen. While Ziphares is away fighting, his villainous conspirator Pelopidas brings Mithridates to see Semandra sleeping in glorious beauty: Behold her then upon a Flowry Bank, With her soft Sorrows lull’d into a Slumber, The Summers Heat had, to her natu­ral Blush, Added a brighter, and more tempting Red; The Beauties of her Neck and Naked breasts, Lifted by inward starts, did rise and fall.62

Mithridates “gazes ­o’er all that Field of Love,” and in spite of a brief bout of conscience, sends for her. He rapes her, and the narration is lengthy. Between accounts of her r­ esistance and weeping are explicit descriptions of his actions, as “Streight I fell upon her Balmy Lips” (28). Pharnaces imagines holding her down by her “amber hair” and raping her, too: I’th midst of her Groans, and Cries, and gushing Tears, I wou’d have ravish’d her. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Who knows but opposition mounts the Joy? (29)

In the first ­performance as Ziphares, Anne played the part of the child of a ­great king wronged by a sibling, and Mary’s insults ­toward Anne w ­ ere well known. She

144 • Paula R. Backscheider

was representing a warrior, and Queen Henrietta Maria had symbolically led the royalist forces that marched from Yorkshire to Oxford in the summer of 1643. She identified herself as “her she-­majesty generalissima” and is associated with the ­Battle of Burton Bridge, an impor­tant crossing over the River Trent that the Royalists cleared to reach the south in 1643.63 Anne and the Bishop of London, Henry Compton, had led an “army” of about a thousand ­horse­men who had joined as they passed on the symbolic pro­gress to Oxford in support of William on his landing at Torbay.64 On Ziphares’s return to the city, crowds of venerating and celebrating citizens met and followed him in what was a spectacular scene in the ­performances. Given Charles’s falling popularity and the ­great ­resistance to her ­father’s succession, imagining and performing in such a welcome seems attractive. In the Drury Lane production, the ­great Charles Hart played Ziphares with Mohun as Mithridates in another pairing of contrasting images of masculinity. In the second court staging of the play, Anne played Semandra, the part that Elizabeth Boutell had debuted. Hart and Boutell w ­ ere another p­ opular and effective pairing in tragedy. He was the “embodiment of virtuous and energetic heroic morality,”65 and Boutell’s small stature and mellow, rather soft voice in parts like this drew audience sympathy. She could proj­ect ­great sexual appeal, was known for her beautiful hair, and performed many impor­tant parts written specifically for her by Dryden, Wycherley, Lee, and the king’s favorite, D’Urfey, among o­ thers. Scholars have written a number of psychological analyses of Anne in this play, but I would call them imaginings as mine are conjectures. Literary critics often forget to think about the relationship between audience members and ­performance. Steeped in seeing rehearsals, plays, and performing in them from the time she was a child, Anne was in a position to imagine performing parts. The most emotionally power­ful scenes in Mithridates are between Ziphares and Semandra. By choosing ­these parts, Anne played both sides of ­these dialogues that ­were in the genre of Dryden’s All for Love but occasionally stretch ­toward the sentimentality and sensibility of ­later plays. Anne could give them the emotional resonance that brought out the answering depths of the other character. Th ­ ere are three of ­these one-­on-­one moments. As Ziphares returns victorious from the ­battle, Mithridates has forced her to pretend to be cold to him. Ziphares sees her enter: “But see, the Sun . . . ​O my Star! / Thou Day, that gild’st my ­little world of comfort.” Semandra plays her part, but her lines could have given him clues that she is performing: “The Kiss you ravish, Prince, is dangerous; . . . Upon your Life, offer the like no more” (36–39). Another one-­on-­one moment is when she has the opportunity to tell Ziphares what she had been forced to do. She tells him that only the threat to his life could have persuaded her to feign indifference: Not Racks, nor all the Tortures Which Hell combin’d cou’d put into the Hearts Of bloodiest Tyrants, shou’d have forct me to’t. But, Oh! Your Life . . . (53)

Queen Anne’s Other ­Women • 145

Fi­nally, t­ here is the scene in which they die together. Like Dryden’s Cleopatra, she dies with domestic longing, that in the next world he ­will be a ­father and she “the smiling M ­ other of some ­little Gods” (63). Each of the scenes is at least three pages long and filled with moving language that occasionally rises to ­great poetry.

Serious Signs Male playwrights with military experience bring personal experiences and issues that add unobtrusive themes. Both Farquhar and Shadwell experienced economic hardship in the military and ­were in positions to try to help their men. It is notable that the happy endings of their army plays depend partly on all of the husbands receiving commissions or inherited money. The themes of economic difficulties and the risks in the military life that are pushing Victoria ­toward Bisket are the fabric of the plays. Just outside in the same act is the bustling picture of camp life with the lower order men, ensigns, and serjeants—­the men the “trulls” might “marry”—­d iscussing a card game and schemes to make a ­little money. Other minor characters, Captains Wildish and Hearty, enter and lament larger expenses and debts. The prospect of peace hangs over the economic thoughts of the men, and a happy ending for the play had to include taking care of them in the face of the news of a four-­months’ peace. The situation of cashiered soldiers was well known. The epilogue to Thomas Baker’s The Busy Body (1709) alludes to the effect of peace on soldiers: “Some sniveling Cits, wou’d have a Peace for spight, / To starve ­those Warriours who so bravely fight.” How dire payment of the troops was, especially when furloughed or retired, is evident from the fact that only two years before Humours, the 1711 Recruiting Act included a section threatening the death penalty for “ringleaders” and “officers” “if any Number of Soldiers s­ hall presume to Assem­ble to take Counsel amongst themselves for the Demanding of their Pay, or s­ hall at any time Demand their Pay in a Mutinous manner.”66 Thomas Otway, then a lieutenant and left unpaid and unemployed by the peace, wrote a play featuring the story of Captain Beaugard, who loyally “resigned his post in foreign military ­service” to join the ­English army and was disbanded and “loyally starv[ing].” This actually happened. An appeal had been made for the Scots to come back to fight for G ­ reat Britain in 1677–1678, but they w ­ ere almost immediately disbanded and put on half pay.67 Farquhar’s old crippled soldier has become a beggar in Love and a B ­ ottle (1698), an episode “generally read t­ oday as an expression of Farquhar’s sympathy for the E ­ nglish soldiers who had recently been disbanded ­after the 1697 Peace of Ryswick.” His Constant ­Couple also condemns their treatment.68 As the plays produced in the next eighty years show, post–­active duty was a critical issue for w ­ omen, as it was for Mrs. Bloodmore counseling Victoria. One of Steele’s ­women characters asks if her suitor has a commission, which would give her economic and even social status information.

146 • Paula R. Backscheider

As they are told of the peace, some of the men in Shadwell’s camp balance the vision of home with mentions of half pay. Outside and Hyland compare how cheap it is to live in Ireland and Scotland, and Cadwalader looks forward to shooting game and fattening himself up with “Welsh Ale.”69 Wildish and Hearty are in old regiments and secure. The other men have vari­ous economic prospects. The need for a steady income hangs over the play even before the confirmation of the peace. One of the Ensigns asks if anyone knows of a regiment for sale. They had good reason to worry, as peacetime levels in 1715 would be thirteen thousand in the navy and nineteen thousand in the army.70 Mrs. Bloodmore’s and their insecurities are valid. Throughout the long eigh­teenth ­century, disabled or demobilized soldiers and sailors begged and even sang or danced for money in the streets. Chelsea Hospital for el­derly soldiers and Greenwich Hospital for seamen opened in 1692, and the number of released military men on the streets of both areas grew. Queen Anne was not a rich or profligate ruler. She had been denied money to which she was entitled, refused a fixed allowance, and insulted over money and a request for Richmond Palace by William and Mary. She even had to buy her own plate and other ­house­hold accessories. Voted the same annual revenue as William, she began her reign by designating £100,000, or one-­seventh, for “public ­service.” The revenue never reached more than £500,000, and she and the country suffered. War is expensive. During her reign, the national debt ­rose to much criticism from £17.3 million at the end of the Nine Years’ War to £36.2 million by 1714, the year a­ fter the Peace of Utrecht.71 James Winn recasts our image of Queen Anne in several impor­tant ways, and my essay contributes novel evidence supporting this Queen, whose administration, effectiveness, and popularity have been described with disparate accounts and conclusions. Winn’s and Reverand’s books leave no doubt as to her active enjoyment of the s­ ister arts. Detailed knowledge of her participation in the dramatic arts and of the theater’s response to her rule, synonymous with Marlborough’s war, is very much in pro­gress, but my essay illuminates the kinds of work awaiting scholars.

Notes 1 R. E. Pritchard, Scandalous Liaisons (Gloucestershire, UK: Amberley, 2015), 106. 2 R. O. Bucholz, The Augustan Court: Queen Anne and the Decline of Court Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 25, 205; James Winn, Queen Anne: Patroness of the Arts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 63, 136, 670n126. 3 Winn, Queen Anne, 359–360; for a full account of Calisto, see 1–41. Winn notes Queen Anne’s attendance at other p­ erformances: 173, 211–212, 235, passim. Brian Corman lists some of the plays she selected for ­performance at court during her reign in “The Theatre in the Age of Queen Anne: The Case of George Farquhar,” in Queen Anne and the Arts, ed. Cedric D. Reverand II (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2015), 154.

Queen Anne’s Other ­Women • 147

4 Shirley S. Kenny quoting Winston Churchill, Works of Farquhar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 2:550n14–19. Quotations from The Recruiting Officer are from this edition. 5 Daniel Defoe, A Hymn to Victory (London, 1704), 25. Defoe was something of a student of war, as proposals in his Essays upon Proj­ects (London, 1697) show. David G. Chandler describes wars before as “relatively gentlemanly affairs” with “firm conventions.” See Chandler, “Armies and Navies: The Art of War on Land,” in New Cambridge Modern History: The Rise of G ­ reat Britain and Rus­sia, 1688–1715/25, ed. J. Bromley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 6:741. This is my source for much history of the conduct of war. 6 John Hoppit, Land of Liberty? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 116–117. 7 David Green, Queen Anne (London: Collins, 1970), 135–136; Winn lists other rewards that followed as Marlborough won b­ attles, Queen Anne, 194, 282, 318. 8 John Mackenzie, “­Battle of Ramillies,” www​.­britishbattles​.­com​/­war​-­of​-­the​-­spanish​ -­succession. 9 Chandler, “Armies and Navies,” 759–760, 748–749, respectively. 10 Jeremy Black, Britain as a Military Power, 1688–1815 (London: University College London Press, 1999), 50. 11 Barton Hacker, “­Women and Military Institutions in Early Modern ­Europe,” Signs 6, no. 4 (1981): 661–662; Charles Carlton, Seat of Mars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), i:201, 244. Marlborough was concerned about w ­ idows and set up a scheme by which officers in all the regiments in the Low Countries contributed money for a fund for support of w ­ idows; R. E. Scouller, Armies of Queen Anne (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), 337. W ­ omen sometimes led the way, as Elizabeth Atkin did in o­ rganizing hospitals for several hundred wounded seamen at Portsmouth and Harwich during the First Dutch War (1652–1654); Suzanne Stark, Female Tars: W ­ omen Aboard Ship in the Age of Sail (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996), 68. 12 “Timid” is Roy A. Sundstrom’s description in Sidney Godolphin: Servant of the State (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992), 136–137. 13 Britain purchased foreign troops; Hoppit, Land of Liberty?, 115. ­ ere also land forces assigned to ships. See Parliamentary Archives, 14 The Marines w UK Parliament, https://­w ww​.­parliament​.­uk​/­about​/­living​-­heritage​ /­transformingsociety​/­private​-­lives​/­yourcountry​/­key​-­dates​-­​/­1703​-­1907. 15 Parliamentary Archives, UK Parliament. 16 Charles Shadwell, The Humours of the Army (London: 1713), 9. 17 Shadwell, Humours of the Army, 3, 5. 18 Scouller, Armies of Queen Anne, 220. 19 Shadwell, Humours of the Army, 34. 20 Carlton, Seat of Mars, 106. 21 Hacker, “­Women and Military Institutions,” 644. 22 Quoted in Hacker, “­Women and Military Institutions,” 653–654. 23 Stark, Female Tars, 72. 24 Kevin Gardner, “George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer: Warfare, Conscription, and the Disarming of Anxiety,” Eighteenth-­Century Life 25, no. 3 (2001): 44. 25 Hacker, “­Women and Military Institutions,” 655, 661. 26 Susanna Centlivre has long been recognized as an out­spoken supporter of Marlborough and the Whigs and is prob­ably the ­widow of an army officer whom she married before 1700; her plays span the years of Anne’s reign. See, by way of comparison, John Wilson Bowyer, Celebrated Mrs. Centlivre (Durham: Duke

148 • Paula R. Backscheider

University Press, 1952), 12–14. She is included in my W ­ omen in ­Wartime: Theatrical Repre­sen­ta­tions in the Long Eigh­teenth ­Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022). ­ areer of Richard Steele 27 Quoted in Calhoun Winton, Captain Steele: The Early C (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964), 39. U ­ nless other­wise noted, the account of Steele’s military c­ areer is from this source. Winton admits times when precise dates are impossible, as the exact date he left the army. 28 While ­there, Steele complained of the bad condition of the barracks and “all parts of this Garrison” and the resulting bad health of his men. Quoted in George A. Aitken, The Life of Richard Steele, 2 vols. (New York: Greenwood, 1968), 1:81. 29 Ellen Gill accurately describes patronage networks as “a core, all-­encompassing, feature of eighteenth-­century life, branching across all aspects of society from politics to the church” in Naval Families, War and Duty in Britain, 1740–1820 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2016), 7. 30 Kenny, Shirley Strum. “George Farquhar (1676-7-1707).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004; online ed., 2004. ODNB; Peter Dixon citing the testimony of Margaret Farquhar, “Introduction,” in The Recruiting Officer (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986), 1, 6. Critics express skepticism ­because he was “a mere thirteen years old,” but anyone familiar with how young teen­agers joined the army and navy at the time, often by just walking into camps or docks as volunteers (as Farquhar allegedly did), or notes the “boy soldiers” fighting all over the globe in the twenty-­first c­ entury must find this biographical note credible. ­ nglish army who benefited from 31 Thus he can be identified with Irishmen in the E “an ethnic chain of command” that played an impor­tant part in their advancing socially and eco­nom­ically. See Helen Burke, “The Irish Joke, Mi­grant Networks, and the London Irish in the 1680s,” Eighteenth-­Century Life 39, no. 1 (2015): 52, 55, and on his counter-­stage Irish characters, 59–62. Apparently through a misunderstanding, he sold his commission in 1706 (the ODNB says “tricked out of ” it). 32 Shadwell, Humours of the Army, 10. 33 Kathleen Wilson, Island Race: En­glishness, Empire, and Gender in the Eigh­teenth ­Century (London: Routledge, 2003),103; Jennine Hurl-­Eamon, Marriage and the British Army in the Long Eigh­teenth ­Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 123. 3 4 Quoted in Carlton, Seat of Mars, 106. 35 Shadwell, Humours of the Army, 10. 36 Shadwell, Humours of the Army, 10. 37 Hacker, “­Women and Military Institutions,” 660–661, 650, respectively. 38 Carlton, Seat of Mars, 106. 39 Charles Shadwell, The Fair Quaker of Deal, or, the Humours of the Navy (London, 1710), 32. 40 Shadwell, The Fair Quaker of Deal (London, 1715), 17. The expanded 1715 edition has a list of characters that includes t­ hese descriptions. 41 Quoted in Stark, Female Tars, 6. See also Isaac Land, War, Nationalism, and the British Sailor, 1750–1850 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 45, 48, 91. 42 Susanna Centlivre, A Bickerstaff’s Burying (London, 1710), 2. 43 H. George Hahn, The Ocean Bards (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2008), 61–62. On poems about sailors’ w ­ omen, virtuous and not, see 84–86. 4 4 Land, War, Nationalism, and the British Sailor, 48–49; he argues that the sailors needed to “prove” their heterosexuality, 45. Denver Brunsman, Evil Necessity:

Queen Anne’s Other ­Women • 149

British Naval Impressment in the Eighteenth-­Century Atlantic World (Charlottesville: University of ­Virginia Press, 2013), 150–151, 158; he gives an example of 492 ­women joining a crew of 750 men on board a ship in the Bay of Biscay (151, quotation, 158). 45 Farquhar, Recruiting Officer, 55. 4 6 Shadwell, Humours of the Army, 14. 47 Shadwell, Humours of the Army, 4. 48 Bridget Orr also observes the play’s participation in the defining of the new British identity from disparate Celtic nationalities but m ­ istakes Young Fox for ­English; Empire on the E ­ nglish Stage 1660–1714 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 216, 245–246. 49 Shadwell, Humours of the Army, 49. 50 Shadwell, Humours of the Army, 51. 51 Shadwell, Humours of the Army, 71. 52 Friedman-­Romell discusses this casting at length and suggests other possibilities including that they may be satires of the London mollies, in “Breaking the Code: ­Toward a Reception Theory of Theatrical Cross-­Dressing in Eighteenth-­Century London,” Theatre Journal 47, no. 4: 470–479. I think she loses count of which ­woman is which in the course of her discussion. ­ omen Warriors, Female Husbands and 53 Fraser Easton, “Gender’s Two Bodies: W Plebian Life,” Past and Pre­sent 180 (2003): 131–174, esp. 136–137; Jennine Hurl-­Eamon, “The Fiction of Female Dependence and the Makeshift Economy of Soldiers, Sailors, and Their Wives in Eighteenth-­Century London,” ­Labor History 49, no. 4 (2008): 481–501; Peter Earle, A City Full of P ­ eople: Men and W ­ omen of London, 1650–1750 (London: Methuen, 1994), 15–16, 74–76, 15–16, 90–130, 144–155. On the needle trades, see 139–143; he describes their earnings as “meager” (143). 54 The London Stage conservatively gives between January 1678 and August 1679; Andrew Walkling, who has analyzed the most evidence of any scholar regarding the dates of the ­performance of this work, conjectures the December–­January timing, Masque and Opera in ­England, 1656–1688 (London: Routledge, 2017), 120–124. See also “The Ups and Downs of Louis Grabu,” Royal Musicals Association Research Chronicle 48, no. 1 (2017): 26. Winn, Queen Anne, suggests spring 1679 (63), and see his impor­tant notes (657–658). Adding the banqueting h ­ ouse is Thomas B. Stroup and A. L. Cooke, eds., The Works of Nathaniel Lee (New Brunswick, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1954), 1:287. ­ atter of speculation. The 55 The date of the first ­performance at Drury Lane is a m London Stage and other sources believe that it “was not l­ ater than February 1678,” but some scholars believe the licensing date of March 28, 1678, is impor­tant. ­ ngland, 1656–1688 (London: Routledge, 56 Andrew Walkling, Masque and Opera in E 2017), 120, 127; P. F. Vernon, introduction to The Rival Queens (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970), xiv, nn. 4, 5; David Roberts, The Ladies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 115–117. 57 For an account of this book and the royal f­ amily, see my “Crisis Texts,” Restoration 42, no. 1 (2018) and the first chapter of my ­Women in ­Wartime, “Prolegomenon,” 26–46. 58 Both Sarti and Sacchini had respected international reputations. Curtis Price, Judith Milhous, and Robert D. Hume, Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth-­Century London (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 1:297 and 315. Grove ­Music Online, s.v., Giuseppe Sarti and Antonio Sacchini, www​.­oxfordmusiconline​.­com.

150 • Paula R. Backscheider

59 Although her compilations are quite incomplete, Adrienne Mayor lists other plays, operas, and mentions in The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest E ­ nemy (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2010), 378–379; some historical and biographical information also comes from this source. 60 Winn, Queen Anne, 65. 61 Letters of Two Queens, ed. Benjamin Bathurst (London: R. Holden, 1924), 42, 165. 62 Nathaniel Lee, Mithridates King of Pontus (London, 1711), 26. Quotations are from this edition. 63 Hibbard, Caroline M. “Henrietta Maria [Princess Henrietta Maria of France (1609–1669)].” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004; online ed., 2008. 64 Winn, Queen Anne, 135. 65 Peter Holland, The Ornament of Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 185. 66 Clifford Walton, History of the British Standing Army, 1660–1700 (London: Harrison & Sons, 1894), 811. 67 Hannah Smith, “Politics, Patriotism, and Gender: The Standing Army Debate on the ­English Stage, circa 1689–1720,” Journal of British Studies 50, no. 1 (2011): 48–75, see 55. 68 Helen M. Burke, “Crossing Acts: Irish Drama from George Farquhar to Thomas Sheridan,” in A Companion to Irish Lit­er­a­ture, 2 vols. (Oxford: Wiley-­Blackwell, 2010), 1:129; Smith, “Politics, Patriotism, and Gender,” 63. 69 Shadwell, Humours of the Army, 71. 70 Hoppit, Land of Liberty?, 129. 71 Hoppit, Land of Liberty?, 124; Winn, Queen Anne, 285, 297; 53–54, 94.

8

Anne Donnellan Friend of the Arts ELLEN T. HARRIS

Anne Donnellan came from an Irish ­family of wealth and status. For a ­woman of her station, the expectation was that she would marry, thereby removing herself from the f­ amily’s care and support while maintaining or increasing the f­ amily’s status. When Donnellan chose not to marry a­ fter a satisfactory offer was made, her older siblings separated her from the f­ amily assets to which, by staying single, she had refused to contribute. They thwarted bequests left to her from her youn­ger ­brother and ­mother. Donnellan’s ­sister openly “spoke with ­great contempt” of single w ­ omen, saying, “It was a foolish scheme, for ­after forty [Donnellan was about fifty-­nine at this time] it was awkward ­because they ­were insignificant.”1 As Miriam Slater has written, “Spinsterhood was viewed as a form of social derogation.”2 Donnellan’s life belies such descriptions.3 Despite the severe reduction to her inheritance contrived by her b­ rother and s­ister, Donnellan ultimately managed to live in­de­pen­dently, invest wisely, and, t­ oward the end of her life, establish an i­ ndependent ­house­hold. Through her friendship with Mary Delany, she was an early member of the group of feminist ­women ­later known as the Bluestockings. As the posthumous auction of her art collection demonstrates, she was actively interested in the visual arts. She was esteemed in literary circles and renowned for her singing. In this essay, by focusing on Donnellan’s astute financial management in difficult circumstances and her interests and activities in the performing, 151

152 • Ellen T. Harris

literary, and visual arts, I hope to refute the common belief, even among their own families, that unmarried ­women ­were “insignificant.”4 Though Donnellan was never in a position to become a patroness of the arts, her gifted intellectual participation in the social and artistic circles to which she had access made her a friend to the arts, a category of support that allows us to see more clearly ­women’s varied means of promoting and sustaining their interests.5

Life Donnellan was born in Ireland about 1700, the ­daughter of Nehemiah Donnellan, chief baron of the Irish Exchequer from 1702 to his death in 1705. In 1712, her ­mother, Martha Ussher, married Philip Percival, youn­ger b­ rother of John Percival, l­ ater first Earl of Egmont. Avidly interested in m ­ usic, Percival held the commission to oversee the state trumpets and the ­music in Dublin ­Castle, the center of ­English and royal administration in Ireland. His judgments on ­music ­were considered “infallible.”6 At amateur concerts he ­organized in his home, Percival drew participants from a wide circle of ­family and friends. In a letter of April 17, 1714, he wrote to his b­ rother of the ­performance of a “­little serenata” from Italy in which Donnellan and two of her cousins played the leading roles: “Kit Usher [Christopher] performs Thirsis, his ­sister Fillis, & Nancy [Anne] Chloris.”7 This is the first notice we have of Donnellan singing. In December 1727, Percival brought his ­family to London.8 Mary Delany (née Granville), then Mary Pendarves and a recent ­widow, whose published letters provide a ­r unning commentary on British society of the eigh­teenth ­century, wasted no time making a social call on Mrs. Percival.9 She mentioned the event to her s­ ister Ann Granville in a letter of January 19, 1728.10 At first she attended concerts with Donnellan’s s­ ister Katherine, who had made a propitious marriage the previous June to Robert Clayton, a wealthy landowner and clergyman, who ­later became the (Anglican) Bishop of Clogher in Ireland. It was not ­until April 4, 1730, that Delany first mentioned Donnellan by name,11 but their friendship blossomed into a lasting relationship of g­ reat importance. They enjoyed concerts and operas together, and, with Delany accompanying on the harpsichord and Donnellan singing, they frequently read through songs at the keyboard. Although Delany sometimes referred to Donnellan in her letters simply as “Don,” she also, given her proclivity for nicknames, called her “Philomel” (the nightingale), often shortened to “Phil” or transformed into the shepherdess “Phyllis” and, on occasion, “Sylvia” (the warbler). Donnellan’s ­family had moved to London most likely to seek advantageous marriages for their d­ aughters. When Donnellan’s ­sister Katherine wed Robert Clayton in 1728, his wealth was such that he gave his wife’s marriage portion back to the ­family for her ­sister Anne, thus doubling the financial benefit she would bring to a successful suitor. According to Elizabeth Robinson Montagu, Donnellan received a proposal of marriage, which she refused, from George

Anne Donnellan • 153

Berkeley, ­later Bishop of Cloyne, and a close friend of the Percivals. Montagu wrote that Donnellan’s “reasons for refusing him I know not, friends w ­ ere consenting, circumstances equal, her opinion captivated, but perhaps aversion to the cares of a married life, and apprehensions from some particularities in his temper hinder’d the match.”12 It may also be that Donnellan refused to live “a plain farmers life, and wear Stuff of her own Spinning” in the American colonies, something that Berkeley reported the ­woman he ultimately married had accepted with “­g reat Chearfullness” when he “presented her with a Spinning Wheel.”13 Donnellan’s refusal of this marriage seems to have led her older siblings to take the (unsympathetic, but not illogical) view that by having chosen not to contribute to the f­ amily wealth and status through marriage she had rendered herself ineligible to benefit from the f­ amily’s assets. Like many unmarried w ­ omen, she lived with her parents throughout their lives, frequently serving as the daughter-­at-­home. She explained this in a letter to Jonathan Swift: “What has kept me seven years in London, is the duty I owe a very good ­mother, of giving her my com­pany since she desires it, and the c­ onvenience I enjoy with her of a ­house, coach, and servants, at my command.”14 But ­after the deaths of her unmarried youn­ger b­ rother and her m ­ other in 1750 and 1751, respectively, her older ­brother and s­ ister found l­egal means to separate her from any legacies she was granted, including their ­mother’s bequest of her ­house.15 Her ­sister questioned the very idea of Donnellan having a ­house, asking, “What signifies your not having a h ­ ouse, ­can’t you take a lodging?”16 As Delany described the situation: “Mrs. D[onnellan]’s ­great offense is that her ­mother has left her all she could, and her youn­ger b­ rother did the same (though she ­will not enjoy the latter); the ­whole would not have amounted to £6,000, and the other b­ rother’s estate is better than two thousand pounds a year, and the ­sister is in vast circumstances. How strange and how worthless are such enviers.”17 Donnellan was left with a gift of £1,000, still a very large sum, worth somewhere between £100,000 and £200,000 ­today, but nothing close to what her ­mother had intended (figure 8.1).18 Her annuity account at the Bank of ­England, which she had opened with a subscription in 1749, shows the receipt of this bequest on September 6, 1751, as her first subsequent credit.19

Finances ­Independent investing by w ­ omen in the early modern period was largely l­ imited to t­ hose who w ­ ere unmarried, e­ ither w ­ idows or spinsters. Ann M. Carlos and Larry Neal, in their study of w ­ omen investors who owned shares in the Bank of ­England from 1720 to 1725, quote the eighteenth-­century jurist Sir William Blackstone on the married ­woman’s lack of “­independent l­egal identity”: “By marriage the very being or ­legal existence of a w ­ oman is suspended, or at least it is incorporated or consolidated into that of her husband, ­under whose wing,

154 • Ellen T. Harris

FIGURE 8.1  ​Signed transfer showing Anne Donnellan as “sole executrix” of her m ­ other’s

estate, shifting her m ­ other’s £1,000 of stock into the account of “my self the said Anne Donnellan.” (Courtesy of the Bank of E ­ ngland Archive: AC 28/964, p. 151 #1793.)

protection and cover she performs every­thing, and she is therefore called in our law a feme covert.”20 In contrast, an unmarried w ­ oman was considered a feme sole, or ­independent ­under the law, with the power to buy and sell property, to sue and be sued. ­Widows and spinsters, despite their differing social status, ­were treated as equals within this category.21 Not surprisingly, as the research of Carlos and Neal demonstrates, “the g­ reat majority of w ­ omen in the market w ­ ere single, with about half being w ­ idows and half spinsters.”22 Further, by “aggregating across the experiences of each individual w ­ oman,” Carlos and Neal find that “­women made money.”23 Within three years of receiving her ­mother’s bequest, Donnellan opened her first cash account with Goslings Bank.24 One of a number of private banks in London, Goslings offered financial ­services to ­those, especially ­women, who did not want to deal with their investments at the Bank of E ­ ngland and elsewhere themselves, and also to t­ hose who lived outside of the London area and thus needed an attorney to manage their transactions. This was a boon for Donnellan on both accounts. Goslings also represents a boon for scholars. Stock transactions at the Bank of ­England w ­ ere often executed by brokers or o­ thers by power of attorney, leaving the source of credits and the destination of debits unknown;

Anne Donnellan • 155

additionally, cash accounts generally served as reservoirs of ready money drawn on by the account holder for use elsewhere, again providing l­ ittle information.25 By contrast, the Goslings ledgers look more like a modern checkbook, with the names of the sources and destinations of transfers identified. They illustrate that Donnellan was a savvy man­ag­er and investor of what monies she had. The very first credit in her Goslings account on October 17, 1754, is a deposit of £47 10s described as the six-­month payment from the Ramsgate Pier annuity, which had been offered for sale to raise funds (a bond issue in modern American terminology) “for the enlarging and maintaining the harbor of Ramsgate.”26 The £47 10s interest on Donnellan’s purchase came regularly ­every six months ­until her death in 1762, the £95 total making up the bulk of her annual income. Donnellan also owned stock in the East India Com­pany from 1749 ­until her death, which provided another £12 per year in dividends. She further received the interest on her own 3-­percent annuities and her ­mother’s 3.5-­percent annuities (as executrix) at the Bank of ­England, which amounted annually to an additional income ranging from about £35 in 1755 to £25 10s in 1758. Donnellan’s total income from her investments in 1755 was thus slightly less than £142 per year. A series of transactions among her stock accounts between 1756 and 1757 illustrate a surprising financial aptitude for a w ­ oman who first acquired ­independent funds so late in life. Even assuming, as is likely, that she took advice from o­ thers, her willingness to use the market to increase her income is striking.27 In June 1756, for instance, she increased her holding of East India stock from £200 to £400 (the additional stock costing £273 at the selling price of 136.5 ­percent), and in April 1757, she sold the same amount of stock for £278 at 139 ­percent, in effect breaking even. However, a few days ­later, she sold £250 of her £1,000 of 3.5-­percent annuities (at 88.5 ­percent for £220), reducing her holdings from £450 to £200 and her six-­month interest payment from about £8 to £3 10s. Then, in June 1757, Donnellan used £287 from her East India account and the £220 from her 3.5-­percent annuities to buy £520 of Exchequer life annuities, from which she received £28  in dividends per year. Th ­ ese investment changes appreciably increased her income, producing by 1760 a total of £160 10s per year, an increase of almost £20 annually. The significance of this increase can best be understood in relation to the average wages of the time, when, for example, a carpenter made a salary of about £20–26 per year.28 Donnellan’s financial situation also can be compared to that of Delany. At the age of seventeen, Delany was forced by her ­family to marry a crony of one of her ­uncles. She found him revolting but was sternly warned not to thwart the social and financial wishes (and ambitions) of her elders. In 1725, ­after seven years of marriage, her husband died, but the expected financial benefit for Delany (and her f­ amily) failed to materialize due to the lack of a signed ­will. As a result, given that the marriage had not produced any heirs, the bulk of his estate went to his nearest blood relative, his niece Mary Pendarves Bassett. Delany sued in

156 • Ellen T. Harris

Chancery, but the case was resolved only in 1734.29 Delany’s own account at Goslings Bank (­r unning from 1747 to 1789) shows that she ultimately received £370 yearly (most often in two payments) for the rest of her life (even a­ fter she remarried).30 As Delany wrote to her ­sister, this reduced income would cost her “pains and management to keep myself clear.”31 Donnellan faced an even greater financial challenge. Nevertheless, her investment income in the last d­ ecade of her life provided her with the means fi­nally to have a h ­ ouse of her own, elegant furnishings, and at least one servant. On her ­mother’s death in 1751, having been blocked from taking owner­ship of her ­mother’s ­house near Hanover Square, Donnellan needed to look for a new place to live. From 1752 to 1755, she resided on Blicks Row (now Bolton Row) and then moved into a new-­built ­house with coach h ­ ouse and stables on Charles Street, Berkeley Square, where she lived for the rest of her life (figure 8.2).32 As was (and largely remains) standard in London, ­houses w ­ ere purchased as long-­ term leaseholds, frequently of ninety-­nine years, which leases could be sold. A separate freeholder to whom ground rent was paid owned the ground on which such ­houses ­were built. The Goslings account contains information about the regular costs of the ­house, their starting time dependent on when Donnellan chose to make them directly from the account rather than by some other means. For example, an annual payment of £1 12s from 1757 to the Royal Exchange Assurance Com­pany in early December refers to the fire insurance she bought on the h ­ ouse and stables while u­ nder construction in 1753.33 The surviving rec­ords of the Assurance Com­pany show that at this time it typically charged 2s per £100 of appraised value plus what seems to be a onetime appraisal and recording fee of 7s 6d.34 If we take the yearly payments of £1 12s as the annual rate on the appraised value of her ­house, Donnellan’s ­house was valued at £1,600.35 From April 1756 ­there is also an annual payment of the ground rent for her ­house and stables of £14 8s from Donnellan’s bank account to Robert Andrews, estate agent for the Grosvenor London Estate, or to Thomas Walley Partington, his son-­in-­law.36 The starting date for this payment can be tied to the deed transferring the ground lease of two contiguous plots on Charles Street for the “Remainder of a Certain Term of Ninety-­four years” to Donnellan dated November 6, 1753.37 The two plots together had a front footage of 42 feet and comprised 7,056 square feet. Donnellan also spent money on furnishing and decorating her h ­ ouse. The cata­logue for the posthumous auction of her art collection (1763), discussed below, illustrates her strong interest in collecting. It i­ sn’t pos­si­ble to trace t­ hese purchases through her Goslings account, but the Mr. Barber to whom she paid £21 on December 8, 1759, can be identified with confidence as the Irish miniaturist Rupert Barber (1719–1772). Barber and his m ­ other, poet Mary Barber (1685–1755), ­were part of the artistic circle around Swift in Dublin and friends of both Donnellan and Delany. Donnellan commissioned Barber to paint a

Anne Donnellan • 157

FIGURE 8.2  ​Anne Donnellan’s h ­ ouse on Charles Street, Berkeley Square, as it appears t­ oday. Author’s photo­g raph.

miniature portrait of herself as a gift for Delany (figure 8.3), whose comments date the work to 1752: “Mrs. Donnellan has given me her picture in enamel by Mr. Barber; it is by much the handsomest likeness and as well painted as any of Zincke’s.”38 The payment of £21 to Barber in December 1759 points to a dif­fer­ ent work: surely the miniature portrait of George Frideric Handel (who had died ­earlier that year) that she left to the British Museum in her w ­ ill. Unfortunately, it now is lost. The accession rec­ord of the museum reads, “1762. June 11. An enameled picture by Barber, set in gold, of George Frederick Handel: left to this Museum by Mrs. Donnellan and presented by Executor, Edward Legrand Esq.”39

158 • Ellen T. Harris

FIGURE 8.3  ​ Mrs. Anne Donnellan (1752) by Rupert Barber, miniature portrait in enamel.

© National Museums Northern Ireland, Collection Ulster Museum, Belfast, BELUM.U1889.

Donnellan was quick to purchase a harpsichord for her own benefit, which also allowed her to host small musical events for her friends. Indeed, Delany writes on December 4, 1755, of “two musical entertainments offered me yesterday . . . ​a concert at Lady Cowper’s, and Mr. Handel at Mrs. Donnellan’s. She has got a new harpsichord of Mr. Kirkman’s” (figure 8.4).40 Donnellan’s transfer of £9 9s (9 guineas) to Kirkman recorded six weeks ­later on January 15, 1756, suggests, rather delightfully, that Donnellan had asked Handel for a full evaluation of the new instrument before she paid for it. Delany rec­ords another event at Donnellan’s ­house in December 1756 where Handel, now completely blind, again played the harpsichord, reporting, “He was not in spirits any more

Anne Donnellan • 159

FIGURE 8.4  ​Kirkman harpsichord dated 1754 now at Handel Hendrix House in London. Reproduced with kind permission of the Handel H ­ ouse Trust.

than myself but his playing is always delightful!”41 One imagines that Donnellan’s ­house saw many such after­noons.42

Friend of the Arts—­Music, Painting, Lit­er­a­ture Whereas Delany (figure 8.5) became renowned as an artist (her paper mosaics are in the British Museum) and Montagu, an author of import,43 it was in m ­ usic that Donnellan was an active participant as well as connoisseur. It seems that she had a prodigious talent, but, given her social status, she remained an amateur. Professional w ­ omen singers, as opposed to w ­ omen artists or writers, had a seemingly unshakable reputation for immorality, regardless of truth. Donnellan took solo roles in ­family musicales at least by the age of fourteen, and Delany’s letters offer repeated evidence that Donnellan’s singing was widely recognized by the genteel and aristocratic classes and by professional musicians. She describes an after­noon of boating on the Thames in 1731 when “Philomell was soon called upon to make use of her sweet pipe.” This attracted other boaters, who “pursued” them. Donnellan’s voice “charmed them so much that they did not quit us till she had sung several songs.”44 On their way to Ireland ­later

FIGURE 8.5  ​ Mary Delany (née Granville) by Joseph Brown, line engraving ­a fter an enamel miniature, 8 × 5.25 in. (204 × 132 mm), published in 1861 by Richard Bentley in Diary and Letters of Madam D’Arblay. © National Portrait Gallery, London NPG D14857.

Anne Donnellan • 161

that year, the two w ­ omen w ­ ere delayed waiting for passage across the Irish Sea. Among ­those also waiting w ­ ere “several of our acquaintances,” including the outstanding violinist Matthew Dubourg, who, as concertmaster of the orchestra at Dublin ­Castle, was well known to the Percival ­family. He worked with Handel as early as 1719 and was concertmaster in 1742 for the premiere of Messiah in Dublin. Delany writes that as they waited “sweet Philomel, whose conversation, you know, is not inferior to her voice, exerts herself” and that “Dubourg plays and Phill sings as much as we desire them.”45 We also know from Delany, who lived a short distance from Handel on Brook Street and sometimes hosted musical e­ venings, that at one of t­ hese parties the prima donna Anna Strada, Donnellan, and other ladies sang with Handel at the keyboard.46 John Boyle, fifth Earl of Orrery, wrote from Dublin of hearing Donnellan on numerous occasions in which her singing was the principal attraction. He warns his friend Dr. Edward Barry in a letter of December 11, 1736, not to be surprised if Orrery’s cousin the Earl of Burlington “quits his Nitch and flings himself at Miss Donallan’s Feet as soon as ever [Handel’s] ‘Verdi prati’ [Alcina, 1735] reach his ears.”47 The next month he writes about Barry singing “Catches with the Bishop and Miss Donellan [sic] from morning till Night.”48 In May, he thanks the Bishop of Cork (Robert Clayton, brother-­in-­law of Donnellan) for having “regal’d” and “improv’d” his senses in so many ways at his ­house, not least his “Ears by the Voice of Miss Donaldson [sic].”49 In a letter without date (prob­ably written in 1741), Elizabeth Montagu writes to her cousin of Donnellan singing “Care selve, ombre beate” from Atalanta (1736) “sweeter than Farrinelli [sic].”50 ­These and other descriptions provide tantalizing suggestions of the quality of Donnellan’s voice, which, of course, is lost to us. Unfortunately, her ­music criticism turns out to be just as ephemeral. We have descriptions of the force of her critique (and that of her circle) but no substance. It almost seems as if Donnellan expressed her connoisseurship of each of the arts in its own medium. Her literary views are clearly laid out in letters to friends and leading authors, and her artistic tastes documented by her commissions and art collection, but her musical perceptions and tastes w ­ ere expressed verbally and are now, like the sound of her voice, lost in the air. In 1734, Delany writes of a group of ­women who “met at Mrs. Donellan’s where we sang and played, and squabbled about m ­ usic most extravagantly.”51 Donnellan writes to Montagu, “Lord George came in [and] he & I had a warm dispute about Handel & musick, I own, I do not think his Lordship a g­ reat musician.”52 In 1744 Delany writes a­ fter attending Semele, “Mrs. Donnellan desires her par­tic­u­lar compliments to all but to my b­ rother; she bids me say ‘she loses half her p­ leasure in Mr. Handel’s m ­ usic by his not being h­ ere to talk over the par­ tic­u­lar passages.’  ”53 Delany never mentions the content of t­ hese discussions or names the specific passages that ­were subject to critique. We hear of their attendance together at many ­performances of Handel’s works, of rehearsals of his ­music at his ­house, and of Handel playing through his ­music at their ­houses, but

162 • Ellen T. Harris

t­ here is no correspondence between Donnellan or Delany and Handel (likely ­because they lived so near), nor with other composers, or musicians. It would be particularly in­ter­est­ing to have an inventory specifying Donnellan’s bequest of “all my M ­ usic Books” (musical scores) to her cousin and godson, the composer Garret Wesley, first Earl of Mornington (­father of the Duke of Wellington), but none exists.54 In the end, we are left with a strong sense of the importance of m ­ usic in Donnellan’s life and of her abiding friendship with Handel and love of his ­music, but with very l­ ittle specificity. How dif­f er­ent is the written rec­ord of Donnellan’s literary discernment. Her correspondence with Montagu (figure 8.6), extending throughout the 1740s (while Donnellan and Montagu ­were both spinsters), provides significant information about the tastes and reading material of educated w ­ omen of the upper classes. As with all educated ­people at this time, the classics and the classical period, in terms of both original writings and works about the period, played an impor­tant role. A good deal of emphasis was placed on studying the character of well-­known figures. Like most ­women, neither Montagu nor Donnellan read Latin. When Donnellan recommended to Montagu a new translation of Pliny’s letters, she added that it “does for us poor ignorant w ­ omen who c­ an’t read it in the original, as some learned ladies can.”55 The character of Cicero features largely in their correspondence. Donnellan writes of reading Conyers Middleton’s Life of Cicero, comparing it unfavorably to César Saint-­Réal’s Cesarion (which would have been available to her in French or ­English)56: I have read no further than Cicero’s consulship. By what I have read of Atticus in other authors[,] particularly the Abbé St. Real, who has given his character, and translated Cicero’s letters to him, I had not so high an opinion of him as I find Doctor Middleton has given you. I met yesterday at Pen’s, the Bishop of Oxford, Mrs. Secker and Miss Talbot, and they seemed to think Dr. Middleton was not so much the historian as the Panegyrist of Cicero . . . ; but when I have read the ­whole I ­will read St. Réal again, and then I w ­ ill tell you more of my mind.57

Montagu did not take long to respond: I find you are in the meridian of Tully’s [Cicero’s] glory; I am afraid you w ­ ill be less pleased with him in his adversity, when his fears and irresolution make him act timorously, and repent what he has done, accuse his friends, and grieve at ­every circumstance that crosses him. I own I am much offended at his vanity, and surprised at his timidity; such a desire of glory, and fear of death, seem strangely united, as likewise his love of his country and submission to the tyrants of it. . . . ​I intend to read, with g­ reat attention, all his epistles, for I find by ­those Dr. Middleton has inserted in his work, that he writes very freely to

FIGURE 8.6  ​ Elizabeth Montagu (née Robinson) by Thomas Cheesman, a­ fter Sir Joshua

Reynolds, stipple engraving, 15 × 11 7/8 in. (380 × 302 mm), published May 26, 1809. © National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG D5284.

164 • Ellen T. Harris

his friends. . . . ​As Atticus is but a new acquaintance of mine, if you make any substantial objections to him I w ­ ill give him up.58

The evaluation of character, ­whether of classical figures, modern politicians, dramatic roles, or close friends, played an impor­tant part of eighteenth-­century genteel society. Poetry, modern and ancient, was also one of their interests. Milton’s poems L’Allegro and Il Penseroso feature in their letters, and, as Graydon Beeks has shown, a spate of quotations in the letters from 1741 of Montagu, Donnellan, and Delany stem not just from a love of Milton’s poetry but also from Montagu having heard Handel’s setting L’Allegro ed il Penseroso in January or February of that year (a composition Donnellan and Delany would have known at least as well). Writing to her ­sister a­ fter the concert, in a rare letter discussing a ­performance, Montagu reports that “the musik follow’d the sense extreamly well in both the grave & chearfull strain but the Singers ­were vile, I can compare them to nothing that ­will not set your teeth on edge.”59 Milton’s contrasting images of “The Cheerful Man” and “The Pensive Man” became a handy gamut of extremes by which a person’s character could be judged. In a letter to the Duchess of Portland, Montagu uses this m ­ easuring device to describe Donnellan’s state of mind: “I had a letter from Donnellan the other day; she tells me she is not perfectly well, but yet in good spirits. Her mind seems just in the medium one would wish, in the very region of reason, below mirth and above melancholy. I think her letters extremely good, and, like herself, unaccompanied with conceit and self-­opinion.”60 In contrast, Montagu repeatedly describes herself as preferring the “Extreame[s]” to the Mean.61 “I am for Penseroso & Allegro by turns, sometimes I wish to be hid from days garish Eye[,] at o­ thers to wander not unseen.”62 The interest shared by Donnellan and Montagu in delineating character made them avid readers of modern biography and autobiography. Montagu writes of reading “Cibber’s Life,”63 and Donnellan describes her interest in Thomas Carte’s An History of the Life of James, the Duke of Ormonde.64 Further, in her appraisals of theatrical productions, Donnellan emphasizes ­whether or not the repre­ sen­ta­tion of character was apt. In 1741 she saw Margaret (Peg) Woffington’s famous, cross-­dressed portrayal of Sir Harry Wildair in George Farquhar’s The Constant ­Couple (1700). She exclaims, “Indeed I never saw anything done with more life and spirit; but at the same time she looked too young, too handsome, and her voice seemed more proper for Opera than the play; so that we see when ­things are out of nature, though they may have many beauties, in the w ­ hole they ­will not please.”65 Donnellan’s critique of David Garrick’s production of King Lear in 1747 places her strongly in the growing number of ­people urging a return to Shakespeare’s original texts. She writes that she went to the play specially to see Garrick and Susannah Cibber and that although “both performed extremely well,” she was “provoked that they have altered Shakespear’s plain, sincere, artless

Anne Donnellan • 165

creation into a whining, love-­sick maid. I would have an Act of Parliament, at least of Council, that nobody should add a word to Shakespear, for it makes sad patchwork.”66 In the first half of the eigh­teenth ­century, the number of partial editions attempting to find clarity within the multiple folios in which the plays survived while weeding out l­ ater adaptations proliferated with varying success. When Montagu published her Essay on Shakespear, however, she sidestepped the massive editorial issues and focused, not surprisingly, on character and plot. She writes in her introduction, “In delineating characters he [Shakespeare] must be allowed far to surpass all dramatic writers, and even Homer himself; he gives an air of real­ity to e­ very ­thing and in spite of many and g­ reat faults, effects better than any one has done, the chief purposes of the theatrical repre­sen­ta­tion.”67 Although Donnellan died in 1762, one imagines that Montagu’s work published in 1769 benefited from years of discussion with her and o­ thers. Donnellan’s intellect was esteemed by a number of the most prestigious authors in her lifetime. In Dublin, she was welcomed into the circle of Swift. In his correspondence with Delany, he identified himself as Donnellan’s “true admirer and most h ­ umble servant.”68 The poet Mary Barber drew a verse portrait of an artistic-­intellectual exchange between her friend and Alexander Pope, in which Donnellan delights Pope with her singing, and in return his verse inspires her: To Mrs. Anne Donnellan, with the fourth Essay on Man. Dear Philomela, oft you condescend, With Notes Seraphic, to transport your Friend: Then in Return, let Verse your Soul rejoice, Wise, as your Converse, rapt’rous, as your Voice.69

Donnellan met poet Edward Young at Tunbridge Wells in the summer of 1741 when both w ­ ere taking the w ­ aters. She wrote Montagu that she “conversed much with Doctor Young, but I had not enough to satisfy me. We ran through many subjects, and I think his conversation much to my taste. He enters into h ­ uman nature, and both his thoughts and expressions are new.”70 ­There is no correspondence between Young and Donnellan, but for nearly twenty years, Young wrote of his re­spect and admiration for her to Margaret Bentinck, Duchess of Portland (a close friend of Delany and Donnellan). He writes ­after first making her acquaintance (original spelling), “Mrs Donollan whom I have studid I find to be of an excellent Mind & Heart; I had once thoughts of drawing so amiable a Character at Length; but I ­shall Abridge it in One Sentence wh implys All. ‘She is worthy to be yr Grace’s Friend.’ ”71 Some of the familiar and jocular tone of ­these letters is captured in his mention of a pos­si­ble visit to the Duchess, with whom Donnellan was currently staying:72 “If Affairs permit me the Honour of seeing Bullstrode [the Duchess’s home] again this Season, I ­will bring with me

166 • Ellen T. Harris

Mrs. Donolans Paquet, as a Charm against any Misadventures in my Journey. I ­will not say, as the Religious carry Relicks; for that is making a Saint of Her; whereas I r­ eally think, Her onely ye very Best of Sinners. If she is not Content with that Character I am sorry for it; for it is ye Tiptop of what our Church admits.”73 Donnellan’s interactions with Swift and Young, w ­ hatever the intellectual rigor of their personal conversations, have a predominantly social character. Her relationship with novelist Samuel Richardson is of a strikingly dif­fer­ent cast. Introduced in 1750 by Delany, Donnellan and Richardson became close friends and active correspondents for the rest of their lives, especially during the 1750s as Richardson published and revised his epistolary novel depicting a morally fine man, The History of Sir Charles Grandison.74 Richardson conceived Grandison as a male counterpoint to the famous character of Cla­ris­sa Harlowe in his previous novel, Cla­ris­sa, or, the History of a Young Lady. When Richardson opened a correspondence with Donnellan, he apparently suggested that in the two months since they had met she might have forgotten him. She replied in reference to Cla­ris­sa: “I have admired Cla­ris­sa, and wept with her. I have loved Miss Howe, and execrated Lovelace with her; and a ­little despised Mr. Hickman. I have shook with horror and resentment at Lovelace and all his crew. I have detested the ­whole Harlowe f­ amily. In short, I am thoroughly acquainted with them all, and have had ­every passion and affection raised in me by them. And can Mr. Richardson say I have known him but three days?”75 Early on in the correspondence, the character of Hickman from Cla­ris­sa is discussed at some length, and although Donnellan acknowledges him a good man in comparison to the charismatic and evil Lovelace, she deems him lacking in firmness and self-­esteem. She allows that Richardson has shown it preferable to choose a “too tame” lover such as Hickman for a husband rather than a Lovelace: “But in a character that I should like, I would, even in a lover [i.e., a suitor], have him shew t­ hose qualities that I should willingly submit to be governed by as a wife: and if a man let me use him with contempt as a lover, I d­ on’t know w ­ hether I should ever rightly re­spect him as a husband and friend.”76 As the correspondence extends, the discussions on what actions define a “fine man,” including Donnellan’s suggestions on the introduction of ­these into the narrative, are detailed, intelligent, and fascinating. One senses their impact on the finished book in many places. It seems almost as if the years of reading and discussing character in classical authors, modern biographies, and con­temporary theater with Elizabeth Montagu came to fruition in the last ten years of Donnellan’s life in her correspondence with Richardson on the evolution of Sir Charles Grandison.77 The interest of Donnellan’s friendship group in drawing prose “characters” of one another (see Young’s comments above on “drawing so amiable a character” as Donnellan) also affected their collection of art, most of them actively participating in the fash­ion­able commission, collection, and bequeathing of their

Anne Donnellan • 167

FIGURE 8.7  ​ Wesley F ­ amily (with Anne Donnellan) (1731) by William Hogarth. © Stratfield

Saye Preservation Trust.

own and their friends’ portraits. We have already seen that Donnellan commissioned from Rupert Barber a miniature of herself as a gift for Delany and a miniature of Handel for herself. In addition, her cousin Richard Wesley included Donnellan in a group portrait by William Hogarth of his f­ amily making m ­ usic in 1731 (figure 8.7).78 The portrait shows Richard Wesley holding a violin, perhaps checking his tuning. Mrs. Wesley sits across from him. She is not a direct participant in the ­music making, but rather is engaged with her knotting, a ­process of interlacing and tying knots to create a decorative pattern.79 Possibly, however, she is giving the beat with the shut­tle in her right hand. Wesley looks at her, as does Donnellan, who stands in the ­middle with her ­music book opened in her hands. The older ­daughter, Elizabeth, sits poised to begin at the keyboard; she too looks at her ­mother. Only the youn­ger d­ aughter, Frances, does not. Rather, she is holding a dance position that has her looking out at an i­ magined audience (and maybe t­ oward her s­ ister at the keyboard). She also is poised to begin. The readied performers on the brink of making ­music give the portrait an air of suspended animation. The Wesleys’ only son Garrett, born four years ­after this painting was made, excelled in ­music and went on to become something of a composer. It is to Garrett Wesley, godson of both Donnellan and Delany, that Donnellan bequeathed all her ­music books.80

168 • Ellen T. Harris

Donnellan’s original ­will and first codicil (dated respectively November 12, 1758, and November 20, 1759) indicate the full dimension of Donnellan’s collection of portraits given her by her friends.81 She leaves to the son of her close friend Katherine Southwell “her picture that She gave me,”82 and to her cousin Mary Forth, “Mrs. Delany’s picture set in Gold.” She returns to Elizabeth Montagu “her picture which She gave me” and to her friend Isabella Sutton “her picture Ring which She gave me and to her B ­ rother Mr. Richard Sutton her picture in Oyle.” To Bernard Granville she bequeaths “his ­Sister Delany’s picture in Oyle.” In addition, she gives to Anne Dewes, Delany’s ­sister, “all the pictures in my ­House done by Mrs. Delany.” To Delany herself, she leaves “all my prints and drawings in Books and Sheets.” Donnellan originally left all of the “pictures . . . ​not other­wise disposed of in this my W ­ ill or the Codicil annexed” to her “tender friend and Nurse” Mrs. Anne Shuttleworth.83 However, as stated in a second codicil of July 1, 1761, Shuttleworth’s death necessitated “some Alterations.” She now asks that her pictures be sold and the profit divided in half between the Chartered Incorporated Schools in Ireland and “the four Hospitals [in Dublin] to which I pay l­ ittle subscriptions.” Her collection (minus what she specifically bequeathed) was part of an auction held by Abraham Langford on February 10 and 11, 1763.84 The printed cata­logue provides an inventory (figure 8.8).85 Auction cata­logues of the first half of the eigh­ teenth ­century give a good picture of the scope and taste of a collector, but they are rarely complete. Prize works are often specifically bequeathed or offered in advance of the sale. In Donnellan’s case, she left to Delany’s ­brother, Bernard Granville, any two paintings of his choice, which would have been removed before auction. Attributions are unreliable, and the omission of detailed descriptions of content, artistic medium, and exact dimensions often make it difficult or impossible to identify the listed works with a known painting ­today.86 Even though many of the descriptions in the cata­logue of Donnellan’s collection relate to known works of art still in ­Great Britain, often in London, this does not mean she owned the originals, although that possibility cannot be summarily dismissed.87 Despite ­these lingering questions, the general picture provided by Donnellan’s choice of artworks adds to our understanding of her person. Donnellan’s collection, placed at the end of a large auction of paintings, comprises fifty-­four lots, many containing more than one picture and representing about three-­quarters of the art sold on the second day. The first listing that strikes one’s eye is the portrait by “Mrs Beale” of her son. Mary Beale (1633–1699) was a commercially successful portrait p­ ainter, “a very rare example of a seventeenth-­ century ­woman who became a professional artist.”88 Over time, as her work grew to support her ­family, her husband took over the financial management of their business affairs and ran the h ­ ouse­hold. Given Donnellan’s admiration and re­spect for ­women’s artistry in the poems of Mary Barber, the literary skill of Elizabeth Montagu, and the artwork of Mary Delany, of which she had a separate collection as evidenced from her w ­ ill, it comes as no surprise that she would want to

Anne Donnellan • 169

FIGURE 8.8  ​ Cata­logue of the Genuine Collection of Italian and Other Pictures, of Anne Donnellan, Late of Charles-­Street, Berkeley Square, Deceased. Netherlands Institute for Art History; Art Sales Cata­logue Online: Lugt 1266.

acquire a work by this artist. Beale painted a number of portraits of her two sons, Bartholomew and Charles (see, for example, figure 8.9). The cata­logue offers no clarity on the specific portrait Donnellan may have owned.89 The auction paired Beale’s portrait of her son with a strikingly dif­fer­ent seventeenth-­century portrait from the same lot: King Charles I by Cornelis Janssens. Born in London, Janssens, also known as Cornelius Johnson, worked as a portrait p­ ainter to the E ­ nglish court and aristocracy from 1619.90 That Donnellan owned a portrait by him of this early Stuart king who was beheaded in 1649 suggests a ­political position. Although, following the Interregnum, the crowning of Charles II in 1660 restored the Stuarts to the throne, their continued reign was fraught and brief. With the crowning of George I in 1714 by means of the

170 • Ellen T. Harris

FIGURE 8.9  ​ Bartholomew Beale (ca. 1660) by Mary Beale (1633–1699), oil on paper laid to canvas, 14 × 11 in. Courtesy of the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, Paul Mellon Fund, B2016.24.

Protestant Succession, the German Hanoverians legally superseded the Scottish, and now Catholic, ­House of Stuart, despite their right by blood to the crown. Widespread opposition to this change arose, especially in Scotland and among Catholics in Ireland, but also with British Protestants who believed deeply in the “divine right” of kings. Moreover, one did not need to be a rebel, directly involved in the attempt to restore the Stuarts by military or ­political means, to feel nostalgia for a native monarchy in the face of a German-­speaking King whose court was conducted in French. Mary Delany’s birth ­family, the Granvilles,

Anne Donnellan • 171

was actively engaged in anti-­Hanoverian (Jacobite) activities in the 1710s, and Donnellan’s Irish f­amily may also have been. Th ­ ere is no evidence that e­ ither Delany or Donnellan took part in any antigovernment actions, but their upbringing prob­ably tilted them t­ oward a positive remembrance of the Stuart dynasty, especially of Charles I, considered a martyr by royalists and Jacobites.91 Donnellan’s apparent interest in the work of E ­ nglish artists continues with three works by Peter Tillemans (ca. 1684–1734), an artist she might have known or, at least, known about. Among other work, Tillemans, who, like Handel, relocated to E ­ ngland in his mid-­twenties, painted scenic backdrops for the Royal Opera Com­pany.92 All three of his paintings in Donnellan’s collection are described as “A ­Battle, on Copper.” Once again, the information does not identify a specific work. Tillemans began his ­career making copies of ­battle scenes by Jacques Courtois and Pierre Bourguignon, and ­later many ­battle scenes ­were falsely attributed to him. Robert Raines quotes Vertue’s statement that Tillemans “copyd Bourgonione for ­Battles which he did many & of his own desgins [sic] very well,” but then adds, “Of recent years ­little more has been needed for the attribution of a ­battle scene to Tillemans than that it should be somewhat in the manner of Courtois.”93 The three b­ attle scenes attributed to Tillemans in Donnellan’s collection may therefore not be of Tillemans’s design or even from his hand. The critical point may simply be that Donnellan thought it was Tillemans’s work she was collecting. It may also be, ­whether or not Tillemans himself painted ­these ­battle scenes on copper, that they are copies of his most famous ­battle pictures in support of the Stuart monarchy during the reign of George I. One of t­ hese, entitled The King’s Declaration, is the fourth in a series of nine paintings begun in 1721 depicting “The Story of Charles the First” and represents Charles’s repetition to the army at Wellington, near Shrewsbury, of his declaration to Parliament in September 1642 that he desired “the preservation and Advancement of the True Protestant religion, the law and liberty of the subject, the just rights of Parliament and the peace of the Kingdom.”94 Another is the B ­ attle of Glenshiel, 1719, depicting the Jacobite Rising of 1719, one of the “failed attempt[s] to restore the Stuart dynasty.”95 If the “­Battles, on Copper,” attributed to Tillemans in Donnellan’s collection depicted t­ hese or similar military scenes, then they connect to her portrait of Charles I by Johnson, not just as work attributed to a p­ ainter working in London but as artwork in support of the Stuarts. ­There is one work in Donnellan’s collection that cries out for commentary, but only a series of speculations is pos­si­ble. The work is identified simply as “A ­Battle,” and the artist identified in the cata­logue as Van der Meulen. However, the anonymous o­ wner of the annotated cata­logue now preserved at the Netherlands Institute for Art History has crossed out Van der Meulen’s name. It appears something was penciled in to the left, but this is indecipherable from digital copy. Most astonishing, this painting sold for thirty-­one guineas (£32 11s). The next highest price among Donnellan’s collection was £8 10s 5d for “Two small

172 • Ellen T. Harris

Landscapes with Ruins and figures” by Pierre Patel (1605–1676). Nearly four times as much, the price of thirty-­one guineas for a single painting is near the top of the range for the period.96 The highest price for a single painting at the auction in which Donnellan’s collection was sold was other­wise £15 15s for a ­Battle by Bourguignon. At the time of the auction of Donnellan’s collection, the surname Van der Meulen would prob­ably have been taken to represent Adam Frans van der Meulen (1632–1690), who was famous for his paintings of the military exploits of Louis XIV. The content of t­ hese paintings would have been obvious to collectors from the uniforms and flags, if not from the depiction of the King and the surrounding topology. One pos­si­ble scenario is that our anonymous annotator realized immediately that the painting was not of Louis XIV and struck through the surname. However, it could be that the painting was not by Adam Frans but by his less well-­known b­ rother Pieter (or Peter) van der Meulen. Horace Walpole describes him as “­brother of the battle-­painter so well known for his pictures of the military history of Louis Quatorze. Peter, who came into ­England in 1670, lived to be employed in the same manner by Louis’s rival, King William.”97 The most famous painting attributed to Peter van der Meulen is The ­Battle of Boyne (1690), depicting William III (at that time co-­regnant with Mary, elder ­daughter of the exiled James II) with the commander-­in-­chief of his army, the Duke of Schomberg, as they head for b­ attle with James II. William’s defeat of his father-­ in-­law was a major turning point in the Irish Protestant ascendancy and, like other moments in the Stuart dynasty, quickly took on mythic proportions. This painting, whose attribution is now questioned, is held in Stormont (Northern Ireland Parliament Buildings).98 The identity of the b­ attle painting in Donnellan’s collection, of course, remains a mystery. If it was Peter van der Meulen’s B ­ attle of Boyne, it has to have been a copy given the monumental size of the original canvas, and it raises the question of where she might have acquired such a work.99 But it does seem likely, given the price it fetched, that ­whatever the painting may have been it was as highly valued for a mythologizing p­ olitical meaning as for its artistry.100 Donnellan’s owner­ship of Johnson’s Charles I, as well as b­ attle scenes attributed to Tillemans, makes the unidentified “­Battle” a good candidate for being Stuart related as well. In addition to illustrating Donnellan’s interests in ­women and British (or naturalized British) artists, as well as pos­si­ble advocacy or nostalgia for the Stuart dynasty, Donnellan’s art collection shows a slight predilection for w ­ omen subjects. As opposed to nine images of fictional, mythological, and biblical ­women, three Venuses, a Magdalene, a Virgin and Christ, Sigismunda, two of Jupiter and Europa, and Lot and his ­daughters, t­ here are seven of men, Charles I, a dead Christ, as well as the Virgin and Christ, a David and Saul (which may have had a connection for Donnellan with Handel’s oratorio Saul), and the prodigal son, as well as Lot and the two of Jupiter above.

Anne Donnellan • 173

Donnellan owned twenty landscapes (of Dutch or Italian provenance), which seem reflective of the many nature descriptions in her correspondence with Montagu and o­ thers, some in direct relation to Milton’s text in Handel’s L’Allegro ed il Penseroso. Her three paintings entitled “Sea Piece” and one, “Sea Port,” all Dutch or Flemish, may relate to her many sea crossings, given her frequent trips between ­England and Ireland or her trip to the Spa in Belgium. Taken as a w ­ hole, Donnellan’s art collection, like her musical and literary pursuits, focuses on works that reflect her personal interests. Spinsterhood in the eigh­teenth ­century was a difficult road to choose. The older, single w ­ oman, easily overlooked and frequently scorned, had no natu­ral place in society. Marriage was the expected norm, even if the match was clearly unsatisfactory. Montagu’s ­brother Matthew saw “no fault in the match” between a female cousin and a man of ­little wealth who “once delighted in debauchery,” saying that “no ­woman o­ ught to venture upon the state of Old Maiden without a consciousness of an inexhaustible fund of good nature.”101 Montagu complained to her cousin, the Rev. William Freind, ­later the Dean of Canterbury, that in terms of “the intrinsic value of a ­woman[,] few know it, and nobody cares.”102 In another letter to Freind, she resolves never to marry.103 And yet in 1742 she accepted the proposal of Edward Montagu. Donnellan supported her decision, saying that a marriage settlement is “the only way we females have of making ourselves of use to Society and raising ourselves in this world.”104 All who knew Donnellan seem to have highly valued her character and her mind. As she was a daughter-­at-­home, her movements, as she wrote to Swift, w ­ ere somewhat ­limited while her parents w ­ ere living (­until 1751). Her social group consisted mainly of artists (writers, ­painters, and musicians), and her closest friends ­were other “single” w ­ omen: Mary Delany during her widowhood and Elizabeth Montagu before her marriage. She never had the easy access to aristocratic connections that came to Delany by birthright, nor did she become a major patroness of the arts or hostess of a salon, but she was esteemed for her intelligence and musical ability. Notwithstanding the societal disparagement of spinsters and the successful maneuvers of her older siblings to deprive her of monetary bequests from her m ­ other and youn­ger b­ rother, Donnellan’s financial acumen, artistic talent, and social ease ultimately allowed her to create a rich and fulfilling life among the social and artistic elite. In 1759, when Donnellan’s ­sister set out to denigrate spinsters in the presence of Delany, a retort referring to Donnellan’s social success made the perfect comeback. As Delany ­later described the event to her ­sister, “I was angry at the indignity, and said, but with g­ reat calmness, ‘I won­der you should say so, for your s­ ister Donnellan, whose drawing room is constantly filled with the best com­pany and whose conversation is such sought ­after.’ It would have diverted you to have seen how blank she looked.”105 Among the vari­ous tributes to Donnellan, perhaps the strongest is the bequest of fifty guineas Handel left her, surely in part a response

174 • Ellen T. Harris

FIGURE 8.10  ​Handel’s ­Will, final page of last codicil (April 11, 1759) with bequest of 50 guineas

(£52 10s) to “Mrs. Donnalan of Charles Street Berkley Square.” The National Archives PROB 1/14, f5v.

to the hospitality and companionship she offered at her h ­ ouse on Charles Street at the end of the composer’s life (figure 8.10). Donnellan never had the resources to become a patroness of the arts, but she was a true friend of the arts.

Notes 1 Mary Delany, The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany, 6 vols., ed. Augusta Hall Llanover (London: R. Bentley, 1861–1862) 3:544; hereafter Delany Correspondence. ­ amily Life in the Seventeenth C ­ entury: The Verneys of Claydon 2 Miriam Slater, F ­House (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 84. ­ omen Alone: Spinsters in E ­ ngland, 1660–1850 (New Haven, CT: 3 Bridget Hill, W Yale University Press, 2001) begins with this comment: “It is difficult to recall the opprobrium in which spinsters w ­ ere held or to understand the hostility—­even venom—­w ith which they w ­ ere regarded, both in life and letters” (1). 4 I spoke on Donnellan as an amateur singer at the Annual Conference of the British Society for Eighteenth-­Century Studies (2013) and the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-­Century Studies (2014). I am grateful for the comments I received at t­ hose meetings. Donnellan also forms a part of my book George Frideric Handel: A Life with Friends (New York: Norton, 2014), but ­there was no room t­ here for a full discussion of her life. 5 In preparing this chapter, I have had James Winn’s pathbreaking biography, Queen Anne: Patron of the Arts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), very much in mind. As a tribute to James, I have tried to illustrate in miniature how a w ­ oman who was a commoner could support the arts in her own way. 6 Edward Synge, Bishop of Ferns to Jonathan Swift, September 18, 1738, in The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, 5 vols., ed. Harold Williams (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964) 5:124; hereafter Swift Correspondence.

Anne Donnellan • 175

7 Philip to John Percival, April 17, 1714, in Egmont Papers, British Library, London, BL Add. MS 47027, 196; in ­family correspondence, Donnellan is referred to as Nancy. 8 Philip to John Percival, December 18, 1727, BL Add. MS 47032: f. 54v. ­ idow from 1725 u­ ntil her late marriage to Rev. Dr. Patrick 9 Delany remained a w Delany in 1743. I refer to her throughout by the name Delany. I discuss her two marriages in Harris, George Frideric Handel, 163–169 and 218–222. 10 Delany Correspondence, 1:152. 11 Mary Pendarves (later Delany) to Ann Granville, Delany Correspondence, 1:251 and 253. 12 Elizabeth Montagu to Gilbert West, January 28, 1753, in Elizabeth Montagu—­The Queen of the Blue Stockings: Her Correspondence from 1720 to 1761, 2 vols., ed. Emily J. Climenson, (London: John Murray, 1906), 2:26. See also Richard H. Popkin, “Bishop Berkeley and Anne Donnellan,” in The High Road to Pyrrhonism, ed. Richard A. Watson and James E. Force (San Diego: Austin Hill Press, 1980), 363–367. 13 George Berkeley to John Percival, September 3, 1728, BL Add. MS 47032, 159 (f. 82r). 14 Anne Donnellan to Jonathan Swift, January 19, 1735, Swift Correspondence, 5:288. 15 Hill, in ­Women Alone, describes many similar situations, considering it commonplace. Her examples include the novelists Sarah Scott (née Robinson; she married in 1751), who was left homeless when her m ­ other died and her ­brother inherited the ­family estate in 1746 (68), and Jane Austen, who with her ­mother and ­sister was forced out of the Rectory that had been their home when her ­brother succeeded to the living in 1805 (79). 16 Quoted by Delany, May 12, 1752, Delany Correspondence, 3:119. 17 Mary Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, February 18, 1752, Delany Correspondence, 3:90. 18 Hill, ­Women Alone, 162, describes Donnellan as an heiress, but, if so, this was only in prospect and never in fact. ­ ngland Archive, London, ledger, AC27/248, p. 535; transfer no. 1793 with 19 Bank of E her signature in AC28/964, 151. 20 Ann M. Carlos and Larry Neal, “­Women Investors in Early Capital Markets, 1720–1725,” Financial History Review 11, no. 2 (2004): 197–224 (200). 21 ­Because of her assumed virginity, something never assumed for an unmarried man, a spinster was viewed as unnatural and undesirable. See Hill, ­Women Alone, 8–9. ­Widows ­were ­free of t­ hese associations and welcomed in society. 22 Carlos and Neal, “­Women Investors,” 211. 23 Carlos and Neal, “­Women Investors,” 214. 24 Goslings Bank was established in 1742 when Francis Gosling became the first partner; the prior goldsmith establishment had been founded in about 1642 by Henry Pickney. In 1896, Goslings was merged into Barclay & Com­pany. The customer ledgers from Pickney’s goldsmith firm and Goslings Bank (1717 to 1896) survive at Barclays Group Archives (Wythenshawe, Manchester). 25 This is true, for example, of the Bank of ­England accounts of George Frideric Handel; see Ellen T. Harris, “Handel the Investor,” M ­ usic & Letters 85, no. 4 (2004): 521–575. 26 For the history and creation of this annuity, see Acts of Parliament (22 Geo. 2 c. 40), “Ramsgate and Sandwich Harbours Act” (1748). 27 In the discussion that follows, it is critical to understand that, in the eigh­teenth ­century, stocks and annuities ­were always listed by a par value of £100. The a­ ctual

176 • Ellen T. Harris

price or value of the stock or annuity was determined by the selling price on the day given as a percentage indicating the value in relation to £100. Thus, £100 of stock at 88 ­percent was worth £88 in cash value. It may be useful to consider £100 of stock in modern terms as a single unit or “share.” 28 See “Appendix 1: Currency, Living Costs, Wages, and Fees” in Harris, George Frideric Handel, 373–379. 29 Pendarves v. Bassett: The National Archives, Kew-­Chancery C11/935/5, with decrees and ­orders ­running from 1727 to 1734. 30 For more detail, see Harris, George Frideric Handel, 166–169. 31 Mary Delany to Ann Granville, August 15, 1734, Delany Correspondence, 1:488. 32 Donnellan’s residences a­ fter her ­mother’s death can be traced in the Scavengers and Highway rate books for St. George Hanover Square, City of Westminster Archives Centre, London. She describes the extent of her Charles Street residence in her w ­ ill. 33 See M. W. Beresford, “Building History from Fire Insurance Rec­ords,” Urban History Yearbook 3 (1976): 7–16. See also Barry Supple, The Royal Exchange Assurance: A History of British Insurance 1720–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). 34 Incomplete rec­ords of the Royal Exchange Assurance, founded in 1720, survive at the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) in two original series, the first of which runs from December 11, 1753, to September 1759 and the second from 1773. As Donnellan paid her insurance each year around December 1, it appears that the surviving register just misses by about ten days a rec­ord of her purchase. However, a ­house appraised on December 17 described as “situate next Mrs. Donnellan in Charles Street aforesaid” confirms its existence. With her death in 1762 falling between the two surviving series, the documents also miss the transfer of her ­house to new owner­ship. ­ ouse in Spring Gardens for £1,900 (Goslings Bank 35 In 1766, Mary Delany sold her h ACC/130/39, 208). 36 See “The Development of the Estate 1720–1785: The Estate Agent,” in Survey of London: Volume 39, The Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair, Part 1 (General History), ed. F. H. W. Sheppard (London, 1977), 9–11, British History Online, http://­w ww​ .­british​-­history​.­ac​.­uk​/­survey​-­london​/­vol39​/­pt1​/­pp9​-­11. 37 Middlesex Deeds Registry, LMA MDR/1753/004/0001-0472, nos. 170 and 171. The lease was sold to Donnellan by Roger Shuttleworth, b­ rother of her friend Anne Shuttleworth, also a spinster. As Francis Gosling seems to have served as Donnellan’s financial advisor, Shuttleworth appears to have been her personal agent and man­ag­er in regard to the construction of the h ­ ouse and other affairs. Donnellan leaves a bequest of £20 to him “for his g­ reat care and Honesty in my affairs.” 38 Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, postmark April 30 [1752], Delany Correspondence, 3:116. 39 “Department of Antiquities and Coins, Donations 1756–1836” (British Museum). 40 Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, December 4, 1755, Delany Correspondence, 3:383. 41 Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, December 12, 1756, Delany Correspondence, 3:454. 42 The Kirkman harpsichord owned by Handel Hendrix House in London is dated 1754 and therefore likely to be very similar to the one purchased by Donnellan in 1755. It was a gift to the H ­ ouse by George Warburg (Hamden, CT). In a letter from him now in the Handel Hendrix House (Warburg to Christopher Purvis, February 23, 2019), he relays the story of speaking with Thomas Goff (1898–1975), London harpsichord maker, who asked the Warburgs “­whether we ­were hearing from the lady who inhabited our Kirckman [sic].” Goff explained he had had the harpsichord “at [his h ­ ouse on] Pont Street ­earlier for restoration work and remembered it not

Anne Donnellan • 177

only for its own fine qualities but also for the dear lady who used to speak to him from it.” Alas, Warburg and his wife had not heard from her while the instrument was with them in Connecticut, but Warburg asked if “perhaps she has found her voice again at Handel-­Hendrix?” In an unscholarly leap precipitated by this correspondence, I won­der if the Handel-­Hendrix Kirkman might be the very instrument purchased by Donnellan and played by her and Handel. 43 The artistic achievements of Delany and Montagu are discussed in Alice Anderson Hufstader, ­Sisters of the Quill (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978). On the development of Delany’s reputation as an artist in her lifetime and the encomium given her by Horace Walpole in his Anecdotes of Painting in E ­ ngland (2nd ed., 1786), see Harris, George Frideric Handel, 366–370. 44 Delany to Ann Granville, June 8, 1731, Delany Correspondence, 1:276. 45 Delany to Ann Granville, September 10, 1731, Delany Correspondence, 1:286–287. 46 Delany to Ann Granville, April 12, 1734, Delany Correspondence, 1:457–458. 47 The Orrery Papers, ed. Emily Charlotte De Burgh-­Canning Boyle, the Countess of Cork and Orrery, 2 vols. (London, 1903), 1:177. Hereafter Orrery Papers. 48 John Boyle, Fifth Earl of Orrery to Rev. Marmaduke Philips, January 18, 1737, Orrery Papers, 1:192. 49 Orrery Papers, 1:221. 50 BL Add. MS 70493, “Copies (the originals now being lost) in the handwriting of Margaret, Duchess of Portland, of letters of Elizabeth Robinson afterwards [sic] Montagu to Mrs Donnellan, e­ tc.,” 81. 51 Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, April 4, 1734, Delany Correspondence, 1:454. 52 As quoted by Graydon Beeks, “Another Reference to Handel in the Montagu Correspondence,” Newsletter of the American Handel Society 31, no. 3 (2016): 1 and 4, from Huntington Library (HL) MS MO 752 (April 27 [1741]). 53 Delany to Ann Granville Dewes (February 11, 1744), Delany Correspondence, 2:262. That is, she misses discussing specific passages of Handel’s m ­ usic with Delany’s ­brother, Bernard Granville. By quoting Donnellan’s comment out of its context in Delany’s letter, some commentators have mistakenly understood that the reference is to Donnellan discussing Handel’s m ­ usic with the composer. See, for example, Patrick Kelly, “Anne Donnellan: Irish Proto-­Bluestocking,” Hermathena: A Trinity College Dublin Review 154 (1993): 39–68, 48. Not that this d­ idn’t happen, but that is not what is said in this letter. 54 The National Archives, Kew (henceforth TNA): PROB 11/875/484 (Chancery copy); PROB 10/2321 (autograph). See below for the musical group portrait by William Hogarth of the Richard Wesley f­ amily with Donnellan. 55 Donnellan to Montagu, October 28 [1748], as quoted in Sylvia Harcstark Myers, The Bluestocking Circle: W ­ omen, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-­ Century ­England (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 39, from HL MS MO 786. 56 Conyers Middleton, The History of the Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero (London, 1741); César Vichard Saint-­Réal, Cesarian, ou Entretiens divers (Paris, 1684); trans. Joseph Walker, Cæsarion, or Historical, P ­ olitical, and Moral Discourses (London, 1685). Middleton was the second husband of Montagu’s grand­mother, in whose home Montagu spent much of her childhood and was educated. 57 Donnellan to Montagu, April 15, 1741, Queen of the Blue Stockings, 1:70–71. “Pen” refers to Mrs. Pendarves, l­ ater Mrs. Delany, at whose ­house Donnellan was able to discuss Middleton’s Cicero with Thomas Secker, Bishop of Oxford (­later Archbishop of Canterbury), his wife, and Catherine Talbot (then in her twenties and a student of Secker, ­later a member of the Bluestockings and an author). Talbot ­later

178 • Ellen T. Harris

described Donnellan as “a very sensible and ingenious w ­ oman”: see Talbot to Elizabeth Car­ter, February 7, 1755, in A Series of Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Car­ter and Miss Catherine Talbot, from 1741 to 1770, 4 vols., ed. Rev. Montagu Pennington (London, 1809), 2:199. 58 The Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, with Some of the Letters of Her Correspondents, 3 vols., ed. Matthew Montagu (Boston, 1825), 1:95–96. Neither Climenson’s nor Montagu’s edition of Montagu’s letters is fully complete; Climenson provides excerpts of the letters in a narrative frame, while Montagu gives edited complete letters but not the full correspondence. Please note, vari­ous editions of Montagu’s Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu divide the volumes differently, affecting page and volume references. 59 HL MO 5602, as quoted in Graydon Beeks, “Mirth, Melancholy, and the ­Future Mrs. Montagu,” Newsletter of the American Handel Society 30, no. 1 (2015): 1, 4–5, at 4. For more references to Milton/Handel L’Allegro (ed) il Penseroso in Montagu’s letters from 1740 and 1741, see BL Add. MS 70493, pp. 7, 23, 30, 59, 66, 81, 90–1 (see n. 52 above). 60 (October 5—) Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, 1:177. 61 HL MO 296 A, as quoted in Beeks, “Mirth, Melancholy,” 4. 62 BL Add. MS 70493, 59. 63 Colley Cibber, An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber, Comedian (1741); letter quoted in Queen of the Blue Stockings, 1:91. 64 (London, 1736), Queen of the Blue Stockings, 1:194. 65 (1 December 1741), Queen of the Blue Stockings, 1:93. 66 Donnellan to Montagu, November 27, 1747, Queen of the Blue Stockings, 1:253–254. 67 Elizabeth Montagu, An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare (London, 1769), 16–17. 68 Swift to Delany, October 7, 1734, in Swift Correspondence 5:260. 69 Mary Barber, Poems on Several Occasions (London, 1734), 180. 70 Donnellan to Montagu, September 1, 1741, in Queen of the Blue Stockings, 1:85; see 84 for Montagu’s recommendation that Donnellan meet Young. 71 Edward Young to Margaret Bentinck, Duchess of Portland, August 5, 1741, in The Correspondence of Edward Young 1683–1765, ed. Henry Pettit (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971), 123–124; henceforth Young Correspondence. 72 Donnellan identifies her whereabouts in a letter to Montagu (October 21, 1743) in Queen of the Blue Stockings, 1:168–169, at which time Young was also visiting. 73 Edward Young to Margaret Bentinck, Duchess of Portland, October 29, 1743, Young Correspondence, 168. 74 T. C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel, Samuel Richardson: A Biography (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971), 149. 75 Donnellan to Samuel Richardson, July 14, 1750, in The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson, 6 vols., ed. Anna Laetitia Barbauld (London, 1804), 4:7–8; henceforth Richardson Correspondence. 76 Donnellan to Richardson, August 17, 1750, Richardson Correspondence, 4:18. Compare this to her ­earlier correspondence with Montagu about marriage in Queen of the Blue Stockings, 1:112–114. 77 It is surely through Donnellan’s influence that Richardson has Harriet Byron, the heroine in Grandison, play and sing ­music by Handel at social gatherings. See Eaves and Kimpel, Samuel Richardson, 350; also, Harris, George Frideric Handel, 147–148. 78 Wesley was born Richard Colley, but took the surname of his cousin Garrett Wesley on inheriting the Wesley estates. He gave the name Garrett Wesley to his only son,

Anne Donnellan • 179

l­ ater first Earl of Mornington, f­ ather of the Duke of Wellington. Garrett’s elevation to the Irish peerage as first Viscount Wellesley of Dangan in 1760 began a p­ rocess that led to the change in spelling of the f­ amily’s surname to Wellesley. Hogarth’s The Wesley ­Family (with Anne Donnellan) has remained in the collection of the Dukes of Wellington, held in the Stratfield Saye Preservation Trust. See Harris, George Frideric Handel, 137–139, including a black-­and-­white reproduction of the group portrait; a color reproduction appears on the dust jacket. 79 Knotting is somewhat similar to macramé. I originally thought that she was knitting or crocheting. I am grateful to Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson for pointing out that she is actually knotting: she holds the shut­tle in her right hand with the thread, held in the small bag suspended on her left arm, looped over the fin­gers of her left hand. See also Olivia Baldwin and Thelma Wilson, “Purcell’s Knotting Song,” Musical Times 128, no. 1733 (1987): 379–381. ­ amily and “had the 80 Delany was pre­sent during Hogarth’s painting of The Wesley F ­pleasure of seeing him paint the greatest part of it” (Delany to Ann Granville, March 30, 1731, Delany Correspondence, 1:283). She also describes a number of musical e­ venings at the home of the Wesleys. 81 TNA PROB 11/875/484. ­ ere close relations to the ­family of Donnellan’s stepfather, Philip 82 The Southwells w Percival. Catherine Southwell, ­widow of Edward Southwell (1705–1755), died shortly ­a fter Donnellan in 1765. The Southwells’ son, also Edward Southwell, followed his f­ ather as a member of Parliament. 83 Shuttleworth briefly owned the property next to Donnellan, but she seems to have lived with Donnellan in the last years of her life (d. 1761). In her w ­ ill she describes Donnellan as “my ever honoured my dearest my best nay my only Friend.” She leaves Donnellan “the poor trifle of Twenty Guineas” for “two ­Tables for her dining Room for I have always hated the old ones” and requests “a Guinea a piece may be given to Donnellan’s three Servants that are in the h ­ ouse with me when I dye” (The National Archive, Kew: PROB 11/866/193). 84 Langford was one of the leading auctioneers of the period. Handel purchased a number of artworks at his auctions, and Langford auctioned Handel’s collection ­a fter his death. See Harris, George Frideric Handel, 244–256, for a description of the art purchases and collections of Handel and his circle (not including Donnellan, whose collection came to my attention too late to be included). 85 Cata­logue of the Genuine Collection of Italian and Other Pictures of Mrs. Anne Donnellan, Late of Charles-­Street, Berkeley Square, Deceased; As Also of a Collection of Pictures, by Vari­ous Masters. Which W ­ ill Be sold by Auction, by Mr. Langford, 1763, copy in the Netherlands Institute for Art History, The Haag (RKDH) sourced in Art Sales Cata­logues Online. 86 All of t­ hese issues are clearly laid out in Thomas McGeary, “Handel as Art Collector: Art, Connoisseurship and Taste in Hanoverian Britain,” Early ­Music 37, no. 4 (2009): 533–574, 536–537. 87 ­There are many specific works of fine art in the art collections of Handel’s friends. For example, Elizabeth Batt’s ­family owned The Elevation of the Cross by Rubens, now at the Louvre Museum, Paris. Elizabeth Palmer inherited her husband’s collection, including Rembrandt’s A Turkish Bashaw. Now titled Man in Oriental Costume, the painting survives at the Metropolitan Museum, New York. For details on the provenance of both works, see Harris, George Frideric Handel, 244–257, 258–263. ­ ainters 88 Ellis Kirkham Water­house, The Dictionary of 16th & 17th ­Century British P (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1988), 19.

180 • Ellen T. Harris

89 Beale’s portraits of her sons survive at the West Suffolk Heritage ­Service and in the Yale Center for British Art. 90 The National Portrait Gallery online refers to Johnson as “the forgotten man of seventeenth-­century art. . . . ​He was prolific and successful but, as a p­ ainter at Charles I’s court, had the bad luck first to be overshadowed by the superstar Anthony van Dyck, and then to have his British c­ areer halted by the civil wars” (https://­w ww​.­npg​.­org​.­uk​/­whatson​/­display​/­2015​/­cornelius​-­johnson​-­charles​-­is​ -­forgotten​-­painter​.­php). 91 Portraits of Charles I “attributed to” Johnson survive at the Norfolk Museums ­Service and the National Trust for Scotland, Haddo H ­ ouse (this latter on loan from a private collection). 92 George Frideric Handel: Collected Documents I: 1609–1725, ed. Donald Burrows, Helen Coffey, John Greenacombe, and Anthony Hicks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 736. 93 Robert Raines, “Peter Tillemans, Life and Work, with a List of Representative Paintings,” Walpole Society 47 (1978–1980), 21–59, 28. 94 As quoted in Raines, “Peter Tillemans,” 54–55. 95 National Galleries Scotland online (https://­w ww​.­nationalgalleries​.­org​/­art​-­and​ -­artists​/­8221​/­battle​-­g lenshiel​-­1719​-­figures​-­probably​-­include​-­lord​-­george​-­murray​-­c​ -­1700​-­1760​-­rob​-­roy​-­macgregor​-­1671). This work was previously misidentified as the ­Battle of Killiecrankie; see Art Fund online, “Art ­we’ve helped buy” (https://­w ww​ .­artfund​.­org​/­supporting​-­museums​/­art​-­weve​-­helped​-­buy​/­artwork​/­2243​/­battle​-­of​ -­g lenshiel). 96 The highest known price Handel paid for a painting was £39 18s, for a work attributed to Rembrandt. Rembrandt’s Man in Oriental Costume, now at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, was purchased for £28 17s 6d at an auction in 1755. See Harris, George Frideric Handel, 246–247, 253, 358. ­ ngland, reprint of the edition of 1786 97 Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in E (London, 1871), 293. ­ attle of Boyne 98 The painting commemorates not only the defeat of James II at the B but also the broader continental importance of the League of Augsburg against the French, in which, for the first time, the Vatican formed an alliance with the Protestant countries—­a circumstance that would have been significant to the Dutch William and his court p­ ainter. As a result, the artist added the figure of Pope Innocent the XI in the clouds of the upper-­left corner, giving a blessing to the Protestants. In the twentieth ­century, this caused ­great consternation. See, for example, Adrian Rutherford, “Painting of Pope Blessing King Billy Shunned in Shame but Now SDLP Man Wants It to Take Pride of Place Up on Hill,” Belfast Telegraph, March 21, 2016, https://­w ww​.­belfasttelegraph​.­co​.­uk​/­news​/­northern​ -­ireland​/­painting​-­of​-­pope​-­blessing​-­k ing​-­billy​-­shunned​-­in​-­shame​-­but​-­now​-­sdlp​-­man​ -­wants​-­it​-­to​-­take​-­pride​-­of​-­place​-­up​-­on​-­hill​-­34556822​.­html. 99 The most likely source for such a painting or copy would have been her aristocratic Protestant relations in Ireland, such as the Southwells. ­ attle of the 100 Van der Meulen’s painting was not, of course, the only depiction of the B Boyne. Walpole specifically mentions a painting by Dirk Maas for the Earl of Portland and another depiction by John van Wyck (Walpole, Anecdotes, 293, 298). A con­temporary depiction by Jan van Huchtenburg now resides at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. ­Because of the importance of this event, paintings of it continued to be made long ­a fter the fact, such as that by Benjamin West (1778), preserved in Northern Ireland by the National Trust.

Anne Donnellan • 181

101 Matthew Robinson to Elizabeth Robinson (­later Montagu), April 19, 1741, in Queen of the Blue Stockings, 1:73. 1 02 Elizabeth Robinson (­later Montagu) to William Freind, January 30, 1740, in Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, 1:54. 103 Elizabeth Robinson (­later Montagu) to William Freind (n.d.), in Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, 1:191. 104 Unsigned letter from Donnellan to Montagu, [1742] in Queen of the Blue Stockings, 1:113. 105 Delany to Dewes, March 31, 1759, Delany Correspondence, 3:544.

9

Responding to Emma in 1816 Reviewers, Readers, and “Opinions” PETER SABOR Emma, Jane Austen’s fourth published novel, marked a turning point in her brief authorial ­career. The first of her books to be issued by the prestigious ­house of John Murray, in late December 1815,1 it was also the first and only one to bear a dedication, a notoriously unenthusiastic one to the Prince Regent, the f­ uture George IV. The wording is soporific: “To His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, This Work is by His Royal Highness’s Permission Most Respectfully Dedicated, By His Royal Highness’s Dutiful and Obedient ­Humble Servant, The Author.”2 With the ­triple repetition of “His Royal Highness” and the formulaic ­presentation of the author as the Prince Regent’s “Dutiful and Obedient ­Humble Servant,” this is, in effect, an anti-­dedication, indicating Austen’s lack of enthusiasm, if not her contempt, for its subject.3 In her juvenilia, Austen had parodied the extravagance of book dedications, with “The Beautifull Cassandra,” for instance, informing its dedicatee Cassandra Austen, “Madam You are a Phoenix. Your taste is refined, Your sentiments are noble, and your Virtues innumerable.”4 The dedication for Emma goes to the other extreme. The Regent, however, was an enthusiast for Austen’s novels, and among the first readers of Emma in 1816. This 182

Responding to Emma in 1816 • 183

essay examines the responses of t­ hose readers, both amateurs such as the Regent and professional reviewers, as well as Austen’s often bemused and amused remarks on their attempts to scrutinize and interpret her work. Emma was Austen’s breakthrough novel, receiving at least eight reviews in ­English within a year of its first publication.5 Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, in contrast, received just two reviews each, while Mansfield Park, shockingly, attracted no reviews at all. By far the most impor­tant review of Emma, or of any Austen novel during her lifetime, was that by Walter Scott, published anonymously in the Quarterly Review in March 1816. Founded in 1809 with the active support of Scott, u­ nder the editorship of William Gifford, as a Tory counterpart to the Whig-­dominated Edinburgh Review, the Quarterly rapidly established itself with the Edinburgh as one of the two leading review journals of the age. In 1816, it had some twelve to fourteen thousand subscribers—­against the two thousand copies of Emma printed by Murray for his first and only edition.6 In Austen’s lifetime, far more readers would thus become familiar with Emma through Scott’s review than through a direct experience of the novel itself; the lengthy quotations that Scott selected for discussion would become the best-­known parts of the text. Scott’s review of Emma, ­running to some five thousand words, affords the novel scrutiny of a kind that makes it, as Brian Southam observed, significant “in the history of criticism as well as in Jane Austen studies.”7 Striving to characterize Austen’s extraordinary attention to detail, Scott makes a revealing comparison between her fiction and the Flemish school of painting, whose subjects, he declares, “are not often elegant, and certainly never ­grand,” but the paintings are “finished up to nature, and with a precision which delights the reader.”8 Implicit in this praise is a contrast with Scott’s own novels, designed to be both elegant and g­ rand. L ­ ater in the review, Scott returns to his theme, contending that “the turn of this author’s novels bears the same relation to that of the sentimental and romantic cast, that cornfields and cottages and meadows bear to the highly adorned grounds of a show mansion, or the rugged sublimities of a mountain landscape.”9 Readers, that is, can choose between the “cottages and meadows” depicted so faithfully by Austen and the “rugged sublimities” of a novel by Scott. Austen read the review in a copy of the Quarterly lent to her by John Murray II, the publisher both of the journal and of Emma itself. In a letter to him of April 1, 1816, she declares that “the Authoress of Emma has no reason I think to complain of her treatment in it—­except in the total omission of Mansfield Park.—­I cannot but be sorry that so clever a Man as the Reviewer of Emma, should consider it as unworthy of being noticed.”10 Just as Scott’s compliments to Austen are consistently double-­edged, so too is her response to his critique: the “I think” in “has no reason I think to complain” makes one suspect that she might indeed have grounds for d­ oing so. W ­ hether Scott knew the identity of

184 • Peter Sabor

the author of Emma is as uncertain as ­whether Austen knew the identity of her reviewer. She must, however, have known that this landmark essay would help bring her novel into national, and international, prominence. Of the other reviews (all of them anonymous) of Emma in British periodicals in 1816, none gave it the sustained consideration that it received from Scott, and most of them trivialized the work in vari­ous ways—­using the adjective “amusing” ad nauseam. The most perceptive was the first, published in the Champion for March 31, which observed that the author’s style was “easy, unaffected, and fluent.” Sounding much like Scott, to whom this piece is surely indebted, the reviewer contends that Austen’s scenes are of the “middling stamp,” and that her “country h ­ ouse is no ­castle or hall of honour,—­but a plain mansion, with a shrubbery and large gates, such as e­ very one knows.”11 Two months l­ ater, the Augustan Review for May allowed that the author of Emma “­will always interest and please,” while recommending that she create “a greater variety of incidents” in her subsequent publications. Since the reviewer refers to the hero of Pride and Prejudice as “Davey,” however, his or her knowledge of the novels is questionable.12 For the Literary Pa­norama in June, the novel “is not ill conceived; it is not romantic but domestic.” Austen’s gentlemen, however, “are rather unequal to what gentlemen should be,”13 a surprising complaint about a novel in which Mr. Knightley is the most gentlemanly of Austen’s vari­ous gentlemen. For the Monthly Review of July, in another trivializing review, Emma contained useful lessons for “the fair reader,” and “­will prob­ably become a favourite with all ­those who seek for harmless amusement, rather than deep pathos or appalling horrors, in works of fiction.”14 The British Critic for July, in a similar vein, opined that “whoever is fond of an amusing, inoffensive and well principled novel, ­will be well pleased with the perusal of Emma,” adding that “it does not dabble in religion; of fanatical novels and fanatical authoresses we are already sick.”15 The Gentleman’s Magazine for September was similarly faint in its praise, concluding that Emma “is amusing, if not instructive; and has no tendency to deteriorate the heart.”16 The reviewer compares the novel with Pride and Prejudice, but, like Scott, makes no mention of Mansfield Park. The British Lady’s Magazine, and Monthly Miscellany, also published in September, reviewed Emma in conjunction with Amelia Opie’s St.  Valentine’s Eve. Both ­were found unequal to their authors’ previous novels, Emma being inferior not only to Pride and Prejudice, described as “the most pleasant novel of the last half dozen years,” but also to Mansfield Park.17 If Austen read any of t­hese reviews, her response, which would surely have been caustic, is unknown. Emma also received some scrutiny in ­Europe shortly ­after its first publication. An anonymous French translation, La Nouvelle Emma, ou les caractères anglais du siècle (The New Emma, or the ­English characters of the age) appeared in Paris in March 1816, only three months ­after Murray’s first edition, and in the same month as Scott’s review. As Gillian Dow observes, “This is a remarkable turnaround, even for a period during which novels criss-­crossed the Channel at

Responding to Emma in 1816 • 185

speed.”18 This quite accurate version of Emma is equipped with a concise but suggestive preface, presumably by the translator. It emphasizes the novel’s verisimilitude; French ­people who have visited ­England w ­ ill recognize Austen’s depiction of the customs and manners of provincial life. Th ­ ere are, in Emma, no marvelous adventures, with ­giants and enchanted ­castles; every­thing is natu­ ral and believable. Intriguingly, the preface draws attention to the dedication to the Prince Regent and claims that the novel has been favorably received in ­England—­presumably with Scott’s review in mind.19 Also of interest is the title given to the translation, La Nouvelle Emma, prob­ably, as Isabelle Bour observes, to distinguish it from a novel titled Emma; or, the Child of Sorrow, published anonymously in 1776.20 This ­earlier Emma had received two separate French translations in 1778, a sign of its surprising popularity. The translator of Austen’s novel thus felt compelled to insist on its being a new novel, not merely a third translation of an older one, and to add a subtitle, adverting to the pre­sent age (les caractères anglais du siècle). More recently, moreover, Emma; or the Foundling of the Wood (1803), by the Irish author Charlotte Brooke, had been posthumously published: a further pos­si­ble source of confusion. ­There w ­ ere no other con­temporary translations of Emma, but the ­English first edition was noticed in two German periodicals: the Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände (Morning paper for the educated ranks) and the Jenaische allgemeine Literatur-­Zeitung (Jena general literary newspaper). Both, as Annika Bautz observes, mention the success of Austen’s novels while, like Scott, omitting to mention Mansfield Park, and both praise her rendition of the domestic world of Emma.21 The Jena reviewer adds that E ­ ngland was now developing a taste for fiction of this kind, rather than for tales of striking and often incredible events. In Rus­sia, the journal Vestnik Evropy (­European herald) published a short piece in June 1816 on British w ­ omen writers, such as Maria Edgeworth, Amelia Opie, Lady Morgan, Frances Burney, and Elizabeth Hamilton, who ­were, it declared, dominating the British novel. The anonymous reviewer then turns to Emma, which is “garnering true praise.” Its author, who had previously published Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice (Mansfield Park is ignored yet again), is “an unknown ­woman writer” who “successfully depicts h ­ ere pictures of quiet f­ amily life.”22 Austen would almost certainly have had no knowledge of t­ hese remarks on Emma in German and ­Russian, although she might have encountered, or at least been informed of, the French translation.  ­ ese published reviews tell us a good deal about how Emma was regarded in Th ­England and on the Continent. Of equal significance are the casual remarks made by con­temporary readers, which w ­ ere avidly sought a­ fter by Austen herself. Perhaps the earliest are ­those of William Gifford, who, in his capacity as literary advisor to Murray, read Emma in manuscript in September  1815 and

186 • Peter Sabor

recommended it for publication. Letters from Gifford to Murray in the Murray archive at the National Library, Edinburgh, show that he was an admirer of Pride and Prejudice, which he read more than once, and of Mansfield Park, which he proclaimed “a good novel, & ­after Mrs D’arblay’s quite amusing”:23 using Frances Burney d’Arblay’s The Wanderer, published shortly before Mansfield Park in 1814, as a standard. “Of Emma,” he wrote on September 29, “I have nothing but good to say. I was sure of the writer before you mentioned her.” Gifford also undertook to polish the manuscript of Emma, which “though plainly written has yet some indeed, many ­little omissions, & an expression may now & then be mended in passing through the press.”24 Murray evidently found Gifford’s advice compelling. He also persuaded Scott to undertake the review in the Quarterly, yet his way of d­ oing so, in a letter written on Christmas Day, 1815, is somewhat disconcerting. “Have you,” he asked Scott, “any fancy to dash off an article on Emma? It wants incident and romance, does it not? None of the author’s other novels have been noticed, and surely Pride and Prejudice merits high commendation.”25 Murray, however, could simply have been provoking Scott. He had, ­after all, made a surprising commitment to publish an obscure female novelist while also commissioning a review from the greatest man of letters of his age. Among the first readers to rec­ord her impressions of the published work was Sarah Harriet Burney, half ­sister of Frances Burney, whose own first novel, Clarentine, had appeared in 1796. Jane Austen read it, surprisingly, on three occasions, although with decreasing enthusiasm. In a letter to Cassandra Austen of February 8–9, 1807, she tells her s­ ister that “we are reading Clarentine, & are surprised to find how foolish it is. I remember liking it much less on a 2d reading than at the 1st & it does not bear a 3d at all. It is full of unnatural conduct & forced difficulties, without striking merit of any kind.”26 In early January 1816, Sarah Harriet Burney was lent a set of Emma by her publisher, Henry Colburn, who prob­ably knew that she was an Austen enthusiast. Sarah Harriet wrote her name on the title page of all three volumes of her copy of Pride and Prejudice, which by 1838 she had read nine times; as she wrote to Anna Grosvenor on January 21 of that year, Walter Scott had read the novel three times, but she had “read it as bumper toasts are given—­three times three!”27 ­A fter receiving her set of Emma from Henry Colburn, Sarah Harriet Burney wrote to him that “even amidst languor and depression” it “forced from me a smile, & afforded me much amusement.”28 She was more forthcoming in a letter of March 1, 1816, to her favorite niece, Charlotte Barrett, telling her, “I am so glad you like what you have read of ‘Emma’ and the dear old man’s ‘gentle selfishness.’—­Was ­there ever a happier expression?—­I have read no story book with such glee, since the days of ‘Waverley’ and ‘Mannering,’ and, by the same Author as ‘Emma,’ my prime favorite of all modern Novels ‘Pride & Prejudice.’ ”29 It is intriguing to see Sarah Harriet responding with such evident emotion to the portrait of Mr. Wood­house. Her own ­father, Dr. Burney, had died two years previously, in 1814, ­after becoming, as Lorna Clark notes, “somewhat peevish and

Responding to Emma in 1816 • 187

hypochondriacal” in his old age;30 for many years, Sarah Harriet, his only unmarried d­ aughter, had acted as his amanuensis and his nurse. It is also in­ter­est­ing to find Sarah Harriet h ­ ere comparing Emma not only to Pride and Prejudice but also to the hugely successful first and second novels of Walter Scott, Waverley (1814) and Guy Mannering (1815). In ­doing so, she casts Austen as Scott’s equal: something that very few readers in the first half of the nineteenth ­century would have ventured to do. Sarah Harriet’s enthusiasm for Austen is all the more striking given Frances Burney’s remarkable silence on the subject: ­there is not so much as a mention of or allusion to Austen anywhere in the vast body of her journals and letters. She was, admittedly, in France when Sense and Sensibility was first published in 1811, but she was in E ­ ngland for the publication of all of Austen’s subsequent novels—­and had ample opportunity to read and write about Austen at any time up to her death in 1840. Sarah Harriet, in contrast, remained a strong admirer of Austen ­until the end of her life, writing to Henry Crabb Robinson on March 4, 1843, ­after the publication of a corrected edition of Susan Ferrier’s second novel, that “the ‘Inheritance’ is excellent, & perhaps Miss Ferrier’s best . . . ​but I quite, & always did, prefer Miss Austen.”31 At about the same time that Sarah Harriet Burney received her copy of Emma, very shortly a­ fter its first publication, another w ­ oman writer, Maria Graham, received the novel from John Murray himself. In a letter to the publisher of February 9, 1816, Graham apologized that a “dangerous illness” had prevented her from acknowledging the gift, but not from enjoying the novel: “As I was not allowed any very stout reading I was very glad of something new that was light. I am very well pleased with Emma not that I think it equal to Pride and prejudice but it quite belongs to that class of innocent & lively novels in which the authoress so particularly excels.”32 Like Sarah Harriet Burney and most of Austen’s con­ temporary readers, Graham found Emma inferior to Pride and Prejudice. She commends it in the same way that Mr. Wood­house praises gruel: as something that could be read in times of sickness, when anything more substantial, “stout reading,” was to be avoided. Mr. Wood­house was not at all to the taste of another w ­ oman author, Maria Edgeworth, who received a complimentary set of Emma from her publisher, Myles Hunter, at the behest of Austen. Edgeworth read only the first volume in January 1816 before abandoning the novel. In a letter to her half b­ rother, Charles Sneyd Edgeworth, and his wife Harriette, she wrote, “­There was no story except that Miss Emma found the man whom she designed for Harriet’s lover was an admirer of her own—­and he was affronted at being refused by Emma—­and Harriet wore the willow—­and smooth thin water-­g ruel is according to Emma’s ­father’s opinion a very good ­thing & it is very difficult to make a cook understand what you mean by smooth thin w ­ ater gruel!!”33 Edgeworth was so unimpressed by Emma that she left her copy, bearing her signature on the title page, unbound in its paper wrappers.34 She had more patience with Mansfield Park, but found the be­hav­ior of General Tilney in Northanger Abbey “quite outrageously out of

188 • Peter Sabor

drawing and out of nature.” As for Persuasion, Edgeworth found “all that relates to poor Anne and her lover, to be especially in­ter­est­ing and natu­ral,” while objecting to “the tangled, useless histories of the f­ amily in the first 50 pages.”35 For Edgeworth, the prize novel of 1816 was a three-­volume work by Frances Jacson, Rhoda, published almost si­mul­ta­neously with Emma. Like Emma, it appeared anonymously in December 1815, although dated 1816 on the title page, and also like Emma it was the author’s fourth novel. Edgeworth liked Rhoda, she told her ­brother and his wife, “much—50%—­better than Emma.”36 As Scott notes in his review of Emma, Edgeworth’s novels “are laid in higher life” than ­those of Austen, who “confines herself chiefly to the middling classes of society.”37 Jacson’s novels, like Edgeworth’s, feature high-­born characters in principal roles—­which helps explain what seems baffling to us: Rhoda’s popularity exceeding that of Emma in 1816, and g­ oing through two editions in London and one in Boston within a year. Emma too, unlike any other of Austen’s novels in her lifetime, received an American edition, published by Mathew Carey in Philadelphia in 1816. No reviews of this edition, however, are known, whereas Rhoda received a very positive three-­page review in the newly founded Boston journal, the North American Review.38 Extant copies of the London editions of Rhoda often contain bookplates of titled families.39 The humorist and wit Sydney Smith recommended it to his d­ aughter Lady Holland, telling her, “I was pestered into reading it and felt myself very much obliged to my persecutors.”40 Edgeworth’s friend Lady Romilly, in contrast, had no time for e­ ither Austen or Jacson, telling Edgeworth in a letter of May 7, 1816, “I have read both Emma and [Rhoda]. In the first t­ here is so l­ ittle to remember, and in the last so much one wishes to forget, that I am not inclined to write about them.”41 No such disappointment over Emma was registered by one of Austen’s strongest con­temporary admirers, Anna Larpent, the wife of John Larpent, inspector of plays in the office of the Lord Chamberlain. In her copious unpublished diaries, preserved in seventeen volumes at the Huntington Library, Larpent rec­ ords her impressions of Austen and many other novelists. In reading Pride and Prejudice in March 1813, she was struck by “the modest gentleness of Jane—​ & the firm proper Spirit of Elizabeth—­models—­I own I felt as if I had made a group of new acquaintance who interested & amused me.” When Larpent read Emma in April 1816, she was “pleased & interested. . . . ​The story & the characters are quite in a familiar stile but perfectly in Nature. Take each character singly, not one is original, groupe them & they become a lively picture of domestic scenes & the portraits are from the life—­A certain stile of middling society is excellently painted . . . ​& upon the ­whole I think the work has much merit in shewing the minute traits of nature, & of a nature whose ­little foibles are within the notice of all.”42 Unlike many of her contemporaries, Larpent refrained from comparing Emma to Pride and Prejudice; nor did she do so when, in January 1818, she finished reading Northanger Abbey and Persuasion—­a lthough she did find Northanger Abbey much inferior to Austen’s other novels.

Responding to Emma in 1816 • 189

Although sales of Emma ­were sluggish, several prominent authors expressed enthusiasm for the novel in 1816. The Irish poet and balladeer Thomas Moore wrote to the poet Samuel Rogers in a letter of June 30, “Let me entreat you to read ‘Emma’—it is the very perfection of novel-­writing—­and I cannot praise it more highly than by saying it is often extremely like your own method of describing t­hings—so much effect, with so ­little effort!”43 Another prolific author, Mary Russell Mitford, was equally enthusiastic, recommending Sir William Elford, in a letter of July 2, to “go for amusement to Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austen. By-­the-­way, how delightful is her ‘Emma’! the best, I think, of all her charming works.”44 The novelist Susan Ferrier was also an astute reader, telling Charlotte Clavering in a letter of 1816, “I have been reading ‘Emma,’ which is excellent; ­there is no story ­whatever, and the heroine is not better than other ­people; but the characters are all so true to life, and the style so piquant, that it does not require the adventitious aids of mystery and adventure.”45 Ferrier’s editor, the Victorian man of letters John A. Doyle, took umbrage at what he perceived as a slur on Austen’s craftsmanship,46 but her remark that Emma has “no story ­whatever” is not merely negative. By “story,” as she explains, Ferrier means the trappings of “mystery and adventure,” so thoroughly exploited in Gothic fiction of the time. Another novelist taken by Emma was Anna Maria Porter, who counseled her ­sister Jane Porter in a letter of October 12–13, 1816, “If you have time, d­ on’t forget to read the novel of Emma.” Two days ­later, in a letter of October 14–15, 1816, she followed this up with a reminder: “Have you read the novel of Emma yet? Do, if you have not.”47  Austen was allocated thirteen ­presentation copies of Emma by John Murray.48 She refers to them, tongue-­in-­cheek, in a letter of November 26 to Cassandra, who had heard from their ­brother Charles at sea. “Poor dear Fellow!,” Austen tells her s­ ister, “I have a g­ reat mind to send him all the twelve Copies which ­were to have been dispersed among my near Connections—­beginning with the P.R. & ending with Countess Morley.”49 Nine copies w ­ ere sent to f­ amily members. Of the other four, one was sent in a special red morocco gilt binding to the Prince Regent; one to the Regent’s librarian, the egregious James Stanier Clarke; one to the impecunious Anne Sharpe, governess from 1804 to 1806 of Austen’s niece Fanny Catherine Knight at Godmersham Park; and one to the Countess of Morley at Saltram H ­ ouse. Austen had the Prince Regent’s dedication copy expensively bound (for twenty-­four shillings) with some reluctance, telling Cassandra, in a letter of December 2, 1815, “It strikes me that I have no business to give the P.R a Binding.”50 Clarke wrote to Austen on December 21, 1815, telling her, in his lumbering manner, “I have read only a few Pages which I very much admired—­ there is so much nature—­and excellent description of Character in ­every ­thing you describe.” He had sent his own copy, “which I have in no re­spect deserved,”51

190 • Peter Sabor

to the Prince Regent, who would thus find himself with two sets of Emma. The Regent belatedly conveyed his gratitude to Austen via a letter from Clarke of March 27, 1816, thanking her “for the handsome Copy you sent him of your last excellent Novel.”52 The praise sounds routine, and Austen mocked it in her letter to John Murray of April 1, 1816: “You ­will be pleased to hear that I have received the Prince’s Thanks for the handsome copy I sent him of Emma. ­Whatever he may think of my share of the Work, Yours seems to have been quite right.”53 As Nick Foretek has shown, however, the Prince is the first known buyer of an Austen novel, purchasing his copy of Sense and Sensibility, on the advice of his booksellers Becket & Porter, on October 30, 1811, two days before the novel’s official publication. He subsequently bought the first and then the second edition of Pride and Prejudice, both published in 1813, then the second edition of Sense and Sensibility, also published that year, and the first editions of Mansfield Park (1814) and Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, published as a four-­volume set in December  1817. In addition, he paid to have the novels properly bound in calfskin, with gilt edges.54 He thus acquired what was prob­ably one of the fullest runs of Austen’s novels owned by any collector in her lifetime, and, with the addition of the specially bound Emma, almost certainly the most elegant. In 1815, the Regent’s physician, Matthew Baillie, told Austen’s ­brother Henry that “the Prince was a ­great admirer of her novels; that he read them often, and kept a set in e­ very one of his residences,”55 a remark that explains why the obsequious James Stanier Clarke gave his p­ resentation copy of Emma to his employer. Anne Sharpe’s copy of Emma, with her signature and the inscription “from the Author,” written by a clerk at John Murray’s offices, is also extant: bought in 2022 by an anonymous American collector for £375,000.56 And thanks to Austen’s compilation “Opinions of Emma” (of which more below), we know how Sharpe responded to the novel. The fate of Lady Morley’s p­ resentation copy of Emma is unknown. Her letter of thanks to Austen, however, written promptly on December 27, 1815, is of considerable interest: “I have been most anxiously waiting for an introduction to Emma, & am infinitely obliged to you for your kind recollection of me, which ­will procure me the p­ leasure of her acquaintance some days sooner than I shd other­ wise have had it.—­I am already become intimate in the Wood­house f­ amily, & feel they ­will not amuse & interest me less than the Bennets, Bertrams, Norriss & all their admirable p­ redecessors. I can give them no higher praise.”57 The letter reveals that the Countess was already well versed both in Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park, and suggests that she had also read Sense and Sensibility. Happily, we can follow the Countess in her reading of the novel, recorded in a series of letters to her sister-­in-­law, Theresa Villiers. A day before writing to Austen, Lady Morley wrote to Villiers, “I have just received Miss Austin’s new novel Emma & look forward with no small satisfaction to reading it. I just looked into the first two or three pages & think it promises well.”58 By December  29,

Responding to Emma in 1816 • 191

however, as the Countess tells Villiers, disappointment had set in: “I have got only half thro’ the first Vol of Emma—­therefore it is not fair to judge it—­but I do not yet think it so good as the ­others—­tho’ ­there is still a ­great deal that is good & like herself, she a ­little draws out the conversation too long, I think . . . ​ tho’ they are excellent & most admirably in character.”59 On January 7, 1816, Lady Morley sent a further report: “Emma does not satisfy me at all & you may imagine that it does not excite a very high interest when I tell you that I have not yet finished it. Still t­ here are p­ eople who it is impossible not to have a taste for.”60 Lady Morley had finished the novel by January 27, when she told her sister-­in-­law that she found it inferior to Mansfield Park and Pride and Prejudice, although the characters of Mr. Wood­house, Mrs. Elton, Miss Bates, and some ­others ­were delightful. ­There was, however, “such a total want of story,” and “so ­little to interest in the hero, who gives me only the idea of an el­derly, sensible, good sort of man.” The “talking characters talk too much.” Worst of all was the heroine, whose passion for matchmaking was unnatural: “A match-­ making Miss is a non-­descript—­that is a métier so much more confined to the matronly part of her sex. Then, surely, with all the sense & cleverness wch Emma is represented to possess it is not natu­ral that she shd have formed such a violent friendship with such a vulgar ­little fool as Harriet.”61 Austen did not discover that Emma had failed to live up to Lady Morley’s expectations: in “Opinions of Emma” Austen claims that the Countess was “delighted with it.”62 Nor did Austen find out that like Maria Edgeworth, Lady Morley was far more taken by Rhoda than by Emma. ­A fter lavishing praise on Jacson’s work in a letter to Villiers of February 1816, the Countess concludes, “I ­don’t know when I have read a novel that pleased me so much . . . ​R hoda herself I think the most natu­ral character I have ever read of.”63  Austen herself took a keen interest in her readers’ responses to Emma, as can be seen from several remarks in her surviving correspondence. Her best-­k nown comment on the novel, “I am g­ oing to take a heroine whom no one but myself ­will much like,”64 acts as a warning signal: ­those readers who fail to appreciate her heroine ­will not endear themselves to the author. To James Stanier Clarke, in a letter of December 11, 1815, she wrote, “My greatest anxiety at pre­sent is that this 4th work shd not disgrace what was good in the ­others. But on this point I ­will do myself the justice to declare that w ­ hatever may be my wishes for its’ success, I am very strongly haunted by the idea that to t­ hose Readers who have preferred P&P. it w ­ ill appear inferior in Wit, & to t­ hose who have preferred MP. very inferior in good Sense.”65 Three weeks ­later, in a letter of December 31, Austen thanked the Countess of Morley for her “kind Disposition in favour of Emma,” and added a telling remark: “In my pre­sent state of doubt as to her reception in the World, it is particularly gratifying to me to receive so early an

192 • Peter Sabor

assurance of your Ladyship’s approbation. It encourages me to depend on the same share of general good opinion which Emma’s P ­ redecessors have experienced, & to beleive that I have not yet—as almost e­ very Writer of Fancy does sooner or ­later—­overwritten myself.”66 Not to “overwrite” herself was, I believe, a key concern for Austen; she was determined that each of her novels, including Emma, should represent a fresh start, rather than merely following in the footsteps of its p­ redecessors. Austen’s concern with the views of her readers is also manifested in her fascinating manuscript compilation “Opinions of Emma,” a counterpart to her e­ arlier “Opinions of Mansfield Park,” both preserved at the British Library. Each document rec­ords the views of a considerable number of Austen’s ­family, friends, and distant acquaintances on the respective novels: thirty-­nine for Mansfield Park and forty-­one for Emma. Austen seems to have compiled “Opinions of Mansfield Park” over a six-­month period: from the novel’s first publication in May 1814 ­until late November of that year.67 She spent longer gathering up the responses to Emma: from December  1815 u­ ntil at least February  1817, a few months before her death.68 Austen’s sources w ­ ere letters to herself and o­ thers, her recollection of conversations, and hearsay, with remarks being passed on to her by relatives and friends. Included in the “Opinions” are the responses of all the ­family members who had received ­presentation copies of the novel: James and Jane Leigh Perrot, Mrs. Austen and Cassandra Austen, Charles Austen, James and Mary Austen, Francis and his wife (also Mary Austen), and Fanny Knight. A surprising number of the opinions are concerned primarily with ranking Emma in relation to Austen’s other novels, rather than discussing it in its own right. Sense and Sensibility is almost never mentioned, but Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park are constantly invoked. The first two of the opinions, by Austen’s sailor b­ rother Francis and his wife Mary, are characteristic: Captn . Austen.—­liked it extremely, observing that though t­ here might be more Wit in P & P—­& an higher Morality in MP—­yet altogether, on account of it’s peculiar air of Nature throughout, he preferred it to e­ ither. Mrs . F. A.—­liked & admired it very much indeed, but must still prefer P. & P.

The third respondent, Charlotte Bridges, sister-­in-­law of Elizabeth Knight, “preferred it to all the o­ thers,” while Anne Sharpe liked it “better than MP.—­but not so well as P. & P.” Cassandra Austen’s judgment was exactly the opposite: “better than P. & P.—­but not so well as M.P.” Fanny Knight, the Knights’ eldest ­daughter, liked it “not so well as ­either P. & P. or MP”; James Austen and his wife Mary “did not like it so well as ­either of the 3 ­others,” while their son, James Edward, “preferred it to M.P.—­only.”69 It is pos­si­ble to tabulate the opinions.70 In a matchup with Pride and Prejudice, Emma fares very poorly: only five of twenty-­five comparisons between the

Responding to Emma in 1816 • 193

two are in Emma’s f­ avor. Against Mansfield Park the contest is more even, with ten opinions preferring Emma and thirteen its p­ redecessor. No meaningful comparison can be made with Sense and Sensibility, since only three of the opinions mention Austen’s first novel—­two ranking it above and one below Emma. It is clear, however, that for ­these readers, as for the professional reviewers, Pride and Prejudice was easily their favorite, with Mansfield Park in second place and Emma close ­behind. The other major preoccupation in the “Opinions of Emma” is with the relative merits of the characters. Emma herself, not surprisingly, divides the respondents, attracting a roughly equal number of positive and negative comments. As Austen had predicted, ­there ­were several Emma-­haters: Fanny Knight “could not bear” her, while Benjamin Lefroy “did not like the Heroine so well as any of the ­others.” Opinions of Mr. Knightley ­were entirely favorable, and the comical characters, Mrs. Elton and Miss Bates, ­were also generally approved: Anne Sharp, for instance, found Mrs. Elton “beyond praise.”71 One set of opinions, t­ hose of Austen’s maternal u­ ncle James Leigh Perrot and his wife Jane, is of special interest. The ­couple “saw many beauties” in the novel, “but cd not think it equal to P. & P.—­Darcy & Elizth had spoilt them for anything ­else.—­Mr. K. however, an excellent Character; Emma better luck than a Matchmaker often has.—­Pitied Jane Fairfax—­thought Frank Churchill better treated than he deserved.” James Leigh Perrot died in March 1817, shortly a­ fter Austen recorded this tepid response to Emma. Jane Leigh Perrot, however, notorious for having been accused of shoplifting at Bath in 1799, outlived her husband by twenty years, and in October  1828 she read Emma for a second time—­perhaps encouraged to do so ­because her nephew James Edward Austen was about to marry his fiancée, Emma Smith. As she writes to James Edward, “I still cannot like it so well as poor Jane’s other novels. Excepting Mr. Knightly & Jane Fairfax, I do not think any one of the characters good. Frank Churchill is quite insufferable. I believe I should not have married him, had I been Jane. Emma is a vain meddling ­woman. I am sick of Miss Bates. Pride and Prejudice is the novel for me.”72 It is intriguing to read Jane Leigh Perrot’s second thoughts about Emma ­here, and at firsthand, rather than filtered through Austen’s consciousness. Frank Churchill, now “quite insufferable,” has declined since her initial reading, as has Emma herself—­previously labeled simply a “Matchmaker,” but now “a vain meddling w ­ oman.” And Miss Bates, not mentioned in Austen’s summary of the Leigh Perrots’ response, has clearly outworn her welcome. A few of the opinions, refreshingly, are concerned with subjects other than the characters. James and Mary Austen found the language of Emma “dif­f er­ent from the o­ thers; not so easily read.” Alethea Bigg, Austen’s childhood friend, objected, on a second reading, “to the sameness of the subject (Match-­making) all through,” although the language was “superior to the o­ thers.” The as yet unidentified Mrs. Guiton “thought it too natu­ral to be in­ter­est­ing”: a strikingly odd remark. The also unidentified Mrs. Brandreth singled out the final volume

194 • Peter Sabor

for special praise: “superior to anything I had ever written—­quite beautiful!” Penelope Lutley-­Sclater likewise thought that Austen had “brought it all about very cleverly in the last volume.”73 ­There are also several unintentionally comical opinions. Jane Digweed, whom Austen mocks in some of her letters, “did not like it so well as the ­others, in fact if she had not known the Author, could hardly have got through it.” Isabella Herries, a distant acquaintance, “did not like it—­objected to my exposing the sex in the character of the Heroine—­convinced that I had meant Mrs. & Miss Bates for some acquaintance of theirs—­People whom I had never heard of before.” Mr. Cockerell, possibly the architect Samuel Pepys Cockerell, a friend of Fanny Knight, “liked it so l­ ittle, that Fanny wd. not send me his opinion.” A Mrs. Dickson “did not much like it” and “liked it the less, from their being a M r. and M rs . Dixon in it.” And Mrs. Wroughton, possibly the wife of the Reverend Philip Wroughton, “thought the Authoress wrong, in such times as ­these, to draw such clergymen as Mr. Collins & Mr. Elton.”74 In an article on the “Opinions” of Mansfield Park and Emma, Katie Gemmill points out that of the forty-­one entries for Emma, all but three have been paraphrased by Austen in vari­ous ingenious ways. Direct quotations are reserved for “favourable opinions in line with her own.”75 The first of t­ hese is Penelope Lutley-­ Sclater’s remark on the cleverness of the last volume. The second, by Charlotte Cage, wife of the Reverend Charles Cage, is quoted apparently verbatim from a letter by Cage to Fanny Knight: “A ­g reat many thanks for the loan of Emma, which I am delighted with. I like it better than any. E ­ very character is thoroughly kept up. I must enjoy reading it again with Charles. Miss Bates is incomparable, but I was nearly killed with t­ hose precious t­ reasures! They are Unique . . . ​ I am at Highbury all day, & I ca’nt help feeling I have just got into a new set of acquaintance. No one writes such good sense & so very comfortable.”76 Charlotte Cage’s delight in Harriet Smith’s “precious ­treasures,” the faded contents of a “pretty l­ittle Tunbridge-­ware box,”77 is quite aty­pi­cal among the opinions, showing her to have been an especially keen reader of Emma. One other direct quotation among the opinions is from a letter to Austen by her ­brother Charles, then serving in the Eastern Mediterranean. “Emma,” he wrote, “arrived in time to a moment. I am delighted with her, more so I think than even with my favourite Pride & Prejudice, & have read it three times in the Passage.” Charles was the only one of Austen’s commentators to read Emma at sea, and the only one to read it three times. At the other extreme was the Reverend Fulwar Craven Fowle, Vicar of Kintbury, who “read only the first & last Chapters, ­because he had heard it was not in­ter­est­ing.”78 ­There was clearly no shortage of readers of Emma ready to scrutinize and voice their views on the novel, but no consensus among them emerged. Many felt, like John Murray, that the novel lacked dramatic incidents, but for some this was a virtue, not a vice. The heroine was ­either a remarkable new creation or ­else unbearable. Mr. Knightley was widely admired, except by Lady Morley, for whom he

Responding to Emma in 1816 • 195

was merely a “good sort of man.” Several readers delighted in the comic characters, while ­others, such as Maria Edgeworth, found them insufferably tedious. The novel was e­ ither even better than Pride and Prejudice or e­ lse far inferior; ­either as good as Walter Scott at his best or ­else not nearly as good as Frances Jacson’s Rhoda. In 1831, fifteen years ­after its first publication, Thomas Babington Macaulay noted with amusement that “Lord and Lady Lansdowne extolled Emma to the skies,” although he “had heard Wilber Pearson call it a vulgar book a few days before.”79 Unable to come to any agreement about the salient characteristics and overall merits of Emma, Austen’s contemporaries gave voice to a controversy over its merits that continues to the pre­sent day.

Notes For their invaluable assistance and advice, I am indebted to Gillian Dow, Devoney Looser, and Fiona Ritchie. 1 Advertisements for Emma as published “this day” appeared on December 16 and 23, 1815, although the title page bore the date 1816. Postdating had long been a common practice for books published in November or December; booksellers wished them to appear newly minted. See Jane Austen, Emma, ed. Richard Cronin and Dorothy McMillan, Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), xxvii. 2 Austen, Emma, [lxxx]. 3 For Austen’s reluctance to dedicate her novel to the Prince Regent, see Emma, xxvi–­x xvii. 4 Juvenilia, ed. Peter Sabor, Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 53. See also Sabor, “Brotherly and Sisterly Dedications in Jane Austen’s Juvenilia,” Persuasions 31 (2009): 33–46. 5 Five of ­t hese reviews are reprinted in Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, ed. B. C. Southam (London: Routledge, 1968), 58–72. The three o­ thers w ­ ere discovered and reprinted by William S. Ward, “Three Hitherto Unnoted Con­temporary Reviews of Jane Austen,” Nineteenth-­Century Fiction 26, no. 4 (1972): 469–477. 6 For the circulation figures of the Quarterly Review, see Richard D. Altick, The ­English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 392. David Gilson notes that Murray had 2,000 copies of Emma printed, and that in December 1818, 565 w ­ ere unsold. In 1820, with 539 copies still available, the novel was remaindered at 2 shillings, a fraction of the original price of a guinea (21 shillings); see Gilson, A Bibliography of Jane Austen (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), 68, 69. 7 Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 13. 8 Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 67. 9 Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 68. 10 Jane Austen to John Murray II, April 1, 1816, in Jane Austen’s Letters, 4th ed., ed. Deirdre Le Faye (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 327. Scott might have failed to notice Mansfield Park b­ ecause he was unaware of its existence; it is not mentioned on the title page of Emma, which was published as “by the Author of ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ &c. &c.” 11 Ward, “Three Hitherto Unnoted Con­temporary Reviews,” 469, 470. 12 Ward, “Three Hitherto Unnoted Con­temporary Reviews,” 474, 475.

196 • Peter Sabor

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38

Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 70. Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 70. Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 71. Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 72. Ward, “Three Hitherto Unnoted Con­temporary Reviews,” 476. Gillian Dow, “Translations,” in The Cambridge Companion to Emma, ed. Peter Sabor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 169. Jane Austen, La Nouvelle Emma, ou les caractères anglais du siècle (Paris, 1816), v, vi. See Isabelle Bour, “The Reception of Jane Austen in France and Switzerland: The Early Years, 1813–1828,” in The Reception of Jane Austen in ­Europe, ed. Anthony Mandal and Brian Southam (London: Continuum, 20007), 12–32, see 26–27. See Annika Bautz, “The Reception of Jane Austen in Germany,” in Mandal and Southam, Reception of Jane Austen in E ­ urope, 93–166 (93); and Gilson, Bibliography of Jane Austen, 70. See Catherine Nepomnyashchy, “Jane Austen in Rus­sia: Hidden Presence and Belated Bloom,” in Mandal and Southam, Reception of Jane Austen in E ­ urope, 334–349, see 334–335 (with her translations of the ­Russian); and Gilson, Bibliography of Jane Austen, 70. See Kathryn Sutherland, “Jane Austen’s Dealings with John Murray and His Firm,” Review of ­English Studies 64 (2012): 121. Sutherland, “Jane Austen’s Dealings,” 123. Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 13. Jane Austen’s Letters, 125–126. Two more of Sarah Harriet Burney’s five novels appeared in Austen’s lifetime, but no remarks on them by Austen have survived. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney, ed. Lorna J. Clark (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), 420. This well-­thumbed copy of Pride and Prejudice, bearing Sarah Harriet Burney’s signature on the title page of each volume, emerged at an auction in New York in 2011 and was subsequently acquired by Wake Forest University. Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney, 199. Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney, 201. For Mr. Wood­house’s “gentle selfishness,” see Austen, Emma, 6. Lorna Clark, “A Con­temporary’s View of Jane Austen,” Notes and Queries 43, no. 4 (1996): 419. Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney, 469. For an image and partial transcription of the letter, see Gillian Dow, “Jane Austen’s Emma at 200: From E ­ nglish Village to Global Appeal,” Persuasions On-­Line 37, no. 1 (2016). Graham subsequently bought a set of the six Austen novels in Edinburgh, which remained in her ­family ­until its sale in 2020 by the London bookseller Jarndyce, for £55,000; see Book Collector 70, no. 1 (2021): 151–152. Maria Edgeworth’s Letters from Ireland, ed. Valerie Pakenham (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2018), 199. For Mr. Wood­house’s views on “nice smooth gruel, thin, but not too thin,” see Emma, ed. Cronin and McMillan, 112. Preserved by the Edgeworth ­family, although at some point volume 2 went missing, the broken set was sold by Sotheby’s in London on December 16, 2010, for $125,000. Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 11, 17. Maria Edgeworth’s Letters from Ireland, 198. Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 64. North American Review 3, no. 8 (1816): 216–218. For the Philadelphia edition of Emma, and the marginalia of a reader on a copy now in the New York Society

Responding to Emma in 1816 • 197

Library, see Juliette Wells, Reading Austen in Amer­i­ca (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), and Wells, “The 1816 Philadelphia Emma: A Forgotten Edition and Its Readers,” Persuasions 38 (2016): 155–178. 39 My own copy of the second edition of 1816 bears the armorial bookplate of Viscount Strathallan. 40 See Joan Percy, “An Unrecognized Novelist: Frances Jacson (1754–1842),” British Library Journal 23, no. 1 (1977): 83. 41 Gilson, Bibliography of Jane Austen, 71. 42 Anna Larpent, Diaries, 8:249v; 9:247v–48r, Huntington Library, HM 31201. Larpent also rec­ords her reading of the other Austen novels, except for Mansfield Park; see Fiona Ritchie, “Anna Larpent and Shakespeare,” ABO: Interactive Journal for W ­ omen in the Arts, 1640–­1830 8, no. 1 (2018): 12 and n. 16. 43 The Letters of Thomas Moore, 2 vols., ed. Wilfred S. Dowden (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964), 1:396. 4 4 A. G. L’Estrange, The Life of Mary Russell Mitford, 3 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1870), 1:331. Some twenty years ­later, Mitford would receive as a gift from William Ogbourn the set of Austen’s complete novels first published in 1833 by Richard Bentley. In a letter of September 13, 1835, acquired in 2021 by Chawton ­House, Mitford tells Ogbourn, “The edition is very beautiful, & it is delightful to possess as one’s own the entire collection of this favourite writer.” Mitford alludes to Emma on several occasions, having read it for a second time, in twenty-­four hours, on February 18–19, 1819; see Azar Hussain, “ ‘Our Miss Austen’: Jane Austen and Mary Russell Mitford—­A New Appraisal,” Persuasions 40 (2018): 249. 45 Memoir and Correspondence of Susan Ferrier, 1752–­1854, ed. John A. Doyle (London: John Murray, 1898), 128. 46 See Memoir and Correspondence of Susan Ferrier, 4. 47 Letters from Anna Maria Porter to Jane Porter, Huntington Library, POR 752, 754. For the Porter ­sisters’ enthusiasm for Austen, see Ruth Knezevich and Devoney Looser, “Jane Austen’s Afterlife, West Indian Madams, and the Literary Porter ­Family: Two New Letters from Charles Austen,” Modern Philology 112, no. 3 (2015): 554–568. 48 See Gilson, Bibliography of Jane Austen, 68. John Murray recorded the names of twelve recipients; the thirteenth, not on Murray’s list, was the Prince Regent. ­ ere is a discrepancy between Austen’s “twelve Copies” 49 Jane Austen’s Letters, 315. Th ­here, which includes the one for the Prince Regent, and Murray’s figures. 50 Jane Austen’s Letters, 317. 51 Jane Austen’s Letters, 320. The deluxe copy, bearing the Regent’s bookplate and that of Queen Victoria, is in the Royal Library, Windsor C ­ astle. In 2016 it was displayed at Jane Austen’s H ­ ouse Museum (now Jane Austen’s ­House), and in 2019 it formed part of the exhibition “George IV: Art and Spectacle” at the Queen’s Gallery, London. 52 Jane Austen’s Letters, 325. 53 Jane Austen’s Letters, 327. 54 See Nick Foretek, “A Royal Purchase: The First Jane Austen Novel Sold,” Notes and Queries 66, no. 2 (2019): 272–273. 55 James Edward Austen-­Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen, ed. Kathryn Sutherland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 92. 56 The copy was sold by Jonkers Rare Books in March 2010 for £325,000, then a rec­ord price for any Austen novel. It was resold by the rare book dealer Peter Harrington in September 2022 at a new rec­ord price of £375,000; the buyer has since deposited the copy at Chawton H ­ ouse.

198 • Peter Sabor

57 Jane Austen’s Letters, 321–322. 58 William A. W. Jarvis, “Jane Austen and the Countess of Morley,” Jane Austen Society Collected Reports, 1986–1995, 10. 59 Jarvis, “Jane Austen and the Countess,” 10–11. 60 Jarvis, “Jane Austen and the Countess,” 11. 61 Jarvis, “Jane Austen and the Countess,” 11. 62 Austen, “Opinions of Emma,” in ­Later Manuscripts, ed. Janet Todd and Linda Bree, Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 237. 63 Jarvis, “Jane Austen and the Countess,” 11. 64 Austen-­Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen, 119. 65 Jane Austen’s Letters, 319. 66 Jane Austen’s Letters, 323. 67 See Austen, ­Later Manuscripts, 696. 68 See Austen, ­Later Manuscripts, 702. 69 “Opinions of Emma,” in ­Later Manuscripts, 235. 70 For a dif­fer­ent tabulation of the Opinions, in terms of their star ratings, see Edward Copeland, “Con­temporary Responses,” in Sabor, Cambridge Companion to Emma, 68–69. 71 “Opinions of Emma,” in ­Later Manuscripts, 235, 237. 72 Jane Leigh Perrot to James Edward Austen, October 29, 1828, in Austen Papers, ed. R. A. Austen-­Leigh (London: Spottiswoode, 1942), 280. 73 “Opinions of Emma,” in ­Later Manuscripts, 235, 236, 237, 238. 74 “Opinions of Emma,” in ­Later Manuscripts, 237, 238. 75 Katie Gemmill, “Ventriloquized Opinions of Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma: Jane Austen’s Critical Voice,” University of Toronto Quarterly 79, no. 4 (2010): 1120–1121. 76 “Opinions of Emma,” in ­Later Manuscripts, 238. The copy of Emma that Charlotte Cage borrowed from Fanny Knight is now at Jane Austen’s H ­ ouse, together with the Godmersham Park copies of all of Austen’s novels. 77 Austen, Emma, 366. 78 “Opinions of Emma,” in ­Later Manuscripts, 238, 239. 79 Letter to Hannah Macaulay, July 18, 1831, The Letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay, 6 vols., ed. Thomas Pinney (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 2:72.

10

Elizabeth Rivers and Christopher Smart Eighteenth-­Century Poetry across Time and Form MELISSA SCHOENBERGER The visual artist Elizabeth Rivers (1903–1964) concludes her essay “Modern Painting in Ireland” (1961) with a meditation on time, taste, and the enduring work of art: Only time can show of what artists are capable and in that time it is the opportunity that is offered to them that may be the deciding f­ actor in their work. The “good” versus the “not good” in art is a ­matter of perennial argument and this is bound to be so b­ ecause it involves m ­ atters of taste. If we make comparison between the multitude of works that have survived out of the past, we exercise our personal taste in elevating some above o­ thers. But some, like the saints, remain with us while ­others, skilled and notable though they may be, are only of antiquarian interest. Real art is a language of passionate conviction.1

Five years e­ arlier, Rivers had put ­these ideas into practice, publishing a book of wood engravings titled Out of Bedlam: XXVII Wood Engravings by Elizabeth Rivers with texts from Christopher Smart (1956), in which she “offered” her own 199

200 • Melissa Schoenberger

kind of “opportunity” to a poem that had waited two centuries to “show of what [it was] capable.” In the ­middle ­decades of the twentieth ­century, Christopher Smart’s long poem Jubilate Agno, first known to Rivers as Rejoice in the Lamb, found new life in one of the modernist artist’s own most striking works.2 Rivers sensed in the eighteenth-­century poem the very “language of passionate conviction” that for her distinguished the kind of art that ­ought to survive silence and slow time. Although written in the mid-­eighteenth c­ entury while its author was involuntarily confined for an alleged ­mental illness,3 Jubilate Agno did not see publication ­until 1939, having emerged from the ­family papers of ­Colonel Carwardine Probert in Suffolk. The scholar, poet, and diplomat William Force Stead, once described in a brief letter of recommendation by W. B. Yeats as “a charming personality,”4 recounted his trip to view the c­ olonel’s “inherited t­ reasures,” among which was Smart’s poem, kept as one of t­ hose uncirculated objects of “antiquarian interest” Rivers acknowledges: He showed me old stained glass from a ruined priory; ancient monastic deeds and charters; documents relating to the Elizabethan Earl of Oxford; letters from William Hayley, the friend and biographer of Cowper, written to ­Colonel Probert’s great-­grandfather, the Reverend Thomas Carwardine . . . ; ­family portraits by Romney whom this ancestor, along with Hayley, had taken out to Italy, and sketches by the g­ reat masters which they collected on their Italian tour one hundred and fifty years ago. But it was the sixteen folio pages closely written on both sides in the handwriting of Christopher Smart . . . ​to which my attention kept returning.5

On the eve of global catastrophe, Smart’s fragmentary manuscript—­several sections do not survive—­found its way out from within a collection of objects such as property documents, religious art, and remnants of gentlemanly Continental travel representing a E ­ uropean order already much changed. In a sense, once granted permission to publish the poem, Stead set it ­free; it had been written in a private mad­house by a man who even upon his release found himself in and out of prison, ultimately meeting his end in the King’s Bench. Now, however, it could be read by a broader public, and even taken up by other artists. In Rivers’s case, the text of Jubilate Agno made pos­si­ble the full realization of a series of engravings confronting both the devastations and redemptions in ­human life. Born in Hertfordshire, Rivers trained in London and Paris and spent a ­great deal of her working life in Ireland, though she returned to E ­ ngland as a fire warden during the Second World War.6 Like Smart, whose writing ranged widely across genres and forms, Rivers was a versatile artist, working in drawing, painting, printmaking, and stained glass. In the preface to Out of Bedlam, she notes that a friend, the poet Geoffrey Taylor, proposed Smart’s Rejoice in

Elizabeth Rivers and Christopher Smart • 201

the Lamb as perhaps a good place to find titles for this par­tic­u­lar series of engravings, and his instinct proved correct. Rivers notes that she read the poem “with won­der and with ­pleasure,” and appears to have detected a fundamental affinity between Smart’s poem and her own engravings: “The engravings ­were done over a period of years including the war years 1939–1945. Perhaps the disruption and vio­lence of that time induced a frame of mind naturally in sympathy with and finding expression in Christopher Smart’s acute and abbreviated utterances, his wisdom and praise, humility and pain. I have borrowed the sentences printed in this book with gratitude for their aptitude to my thought.” Rivers’s claim that Smart’s lines w ­ ere suitable to her work, providing an “aptitude to [her] thought,” may at first surprise scholars of both eighteenth-­century poetry and modernist aesthetics. ­Stereotypes of the one maintained by the other can sometimes preclude consideration of the reasons why the two periods actually have much to say to one another. Of course, upon closer inspection, their divisions tend to break down; readers of, say, Tristram Shandy and Ulysses, when brought together, surely have much to talk about. Similarly, in reading Smart through Rivers, we may discover new ways of understanding pos­si­ble points of connection between the eigh­teenth and twentieth centuries, and between lit­er­a­ture and the visual arts. Among specialists in eighteenth-­century poetry, Jubilate Agno, which consists of long, unmetered lines beginning ­either with “Let” or “For,” is by now moderately famous, given its i­ mmense range of reference and unusual structure, and its unique place in Smart’s ­career. As Karina Williamson puts it in the preface to her edition of the poem, “Jubilate Agno stands alone as the only major work not published in [Smart’s] lifetime, and the only major work of which an autograph copy survives.”7 Although Jubilate Agno is sometimes described as unlike other writing in the eigh­teenth ­century, or read purely in relation to Romanticism, its blending of religious, scientific, philosophical, geological, historical, linguistic, and literary threads (among o­ thers) fits perfectly well with other long poems of the period. Like ­those poems, this one fuses conceptual arenas that have long since been divided into formal disciplines, often making associative links between seemingly disparate topics. Understanding the poem in this way, perhaps we should not be surprised that a modernist artist found it amenable to her own vision. Smart’s very flexible and fragmented eighteenth-­century poem was ripe for the kind of breaking and remaking that characterizes Rivers’s engravings in Out of Bedlam, which she undertook with the hope of envisioning a new way forward. The language of Smart’s poem became for Rivers a way to knit her images together, illuminating the engravings and the connections among them, while also propelling the series forward. The twenty-­seven images that comprise Out of Bedlam depict cruel urban modernity, formidable cosmic forces, and delicate organic forms. Together ­these images create an abstract yet coherent sequence,

202 • Melissa Schoenberger

beginning with an image of two men talking, then shifting to meditations on nature and the divine, turning next to the hard ­angles of city life and ­human indifference, and making a final return to the heavens, contemplating illumination and enlightenment before settling once more on the scene of conversation. Rivers’s often stark work in black and white reinforces her exploration of forces that both give life and destroy it, and by turns suggests both the abundant vitality of the natu­ral world and the barrenness so common in the ­human one. Fairly early in Jubilate Agno, Smart contemplates “translation”: “Let Libni rejoice with the Redshank, who migrates not but is translated to the upper regions. / For I have translated in the charity, which makes t­ hings better and I ­shall be translated myself at the last.”8 Scholars have found ­these lines valuable for thinking not only about Smart as a textual translator, but also about the significance of his religious commitments in relation to such work, reading the final passive construction ­here as a declaration of his ultimate ascension into heaven.9 ­These interpretations are apt, and indeed necessary for understanding Smart in his own period, but I also find this part of his poem a suitable starting point for thinking about Rivers’s engagement with it two centuries l­ ater. In the case of Out of Bedlam, Smart has indeed been “translated . . . ​at the last,” particularly if we think deeply about what the word “translation” can mean. In just three Latinate syllables, this word signifies a highly intricate set of ideas. Of course, its prefix, “trans,” means “across”; its suffix, “tion,” tells us that it is a noun. Its most captivating piece lies at its core, taking “lat” from “latus,” the fourth principal part of the irregular Latin verb “ferre,” to carry ( fero, ferre, tuli, latus). This perfect passive form is required to make phrases like “having been carried.” So “translation,” in its most basic etymological sense, means “the act of having been carried across.” Although often used actively—in discussing translators, translations, and the choices they involve—­“translation” is not an active bringing across, but rather expresses the fact of having been brought across. Its derivational cousin “transfer” expresses more agency, but crucially we do not describe works of lit­er­a­ture brought from one language to another as “transfers.” They are “translations,” perhaps ­because we want to be sure always to recognize that something has acted upon them. The ­thing translated never brings itself across. In meaningfully contemplating anything “translated,” we then become obligated to won­der about the effects of this ­process: What happens to the object as a result of this bringing across? Who did the bringing, and why? Where did it begin, and where has it ended up? What about it has changed? What survives? What has been dispersed or discarded? Of course, questions like this w ­ ill be familiar to anyone who has spent time reading texts in translation, but I submit ­here that the stakes of their answers change when we ask them in order to understand the afterlife of an eighteenth-­century poem (which missed the chance at a first life in the period of its composition) brought across both time and medium. Smart, his contemporaries, and his p­ redecessors all maintained fairly flexible

Elizabeth Rivers and Christopher Smart • 203

views of translation: often the aim was not purely to provide access to readers unfamiliar with the language of the original, but rather to take the act of translation as an occasion for further creativity and experimentation. At the same time that literary scholars ­were only beginning to comprehend Jubilate Agno, Rivers was translating it in the most eighteenth-­century way: pulling it apart and reassembling it as something entirely dif­fer­ent. As she acknowledges in the preface to Out of Bedlam, she discerned in the poem a way to give verbal expression to the “disruption and vio­lence” of the Second World War; in a sense, too, Rivers is working in the manner of a seventeenth-­or eighteenth-­ century translator: like Abraham Cowley, Thomas Hobbes, Lucy Hutchinson, John Dryden, and so many ­others, she needed to work with art made in another culture, and in the distant past, in order to respond to the world around her. Ultimately, Rivers found narrative power in a poem that in its original form proceeds as anything but a narrative. Although scholars have offered vari­ous ways to account for its encyclopedic and associative qualities, I continue to believe that it remains perpetually beyond the full comprehensive power of even the most assiduous reader, perhaps ­because both its eclectic range of reference and its meditative repetition tend to encourage reconsideration of why we want to make sense of t­ hings in the first place: in the face of coercion, Smart created a poem that questions the very need to control. It is perhaps ironic then that translated by Rivers, this sprawling and visionary poem becomes a source of coherence, albeit a hard-­fought one: the twentieth-­century artist understood that the only way to unearth anything resembling a narrative in this poem is to break it apart and put it back together again. Crucially, however, the result is not orderly control. Rather, the coherence Rivers creates works in the ­service of making sense and starting anew, despite the lingering echoes of despair.

Word As we move more directly to Rivers’s work, I want first to consider the lines she drew from Smart, reading them together. ­Because Rivers does not indicate the original locations of the lines in the poem, and for ease of reference for scholars interested in thinking further about Out of Bedlam, I have identified the locations of the lines in Stead’s edition—­the source of Rivers’s quotations10—­and produced the list below, which to my knowledge exists nowhere e­ lse. Reading the version of the poem published by Stead, Rivers would have encountered thirty-­two sections titled with Roman numerals, with one section consisting of lines beginning with “Let” and another section consisting of lines beginning with “For.” She encountered W. H. Bond’s conclusions about the more plausible ordering of the poem—as a series of pairings between the “Let” and “For” lines, where both are extant—­only in the mid-1950s, not long before her own volume saw publication. In considering the list of engravings below, note that Rivers draws only from the “For” lines:

204 • Melissa Schoenberger

Engraving 1: Stead section VII.35 (p. 74): “For t­ here is a traveling for the

Glory of God without ­going to Italy or France.” 2: XI.30 (95): “For the propagation of light is quick as the divine Conception.” 3: IX.70 (87): “For t­ here is infinite provision to keep up the life in all the parts of Creation.” 4: X.13 (88): “For earth which is an intelligence hath a voice and a propensity to speak in all her parts.” 5: VIII.52 (80): “For I bless God for ­every feather from the wren in the sedge to the cherubs & their mates.” 6: XVI.49 (119): “For the warp & woof of flowers are worked by perpetual moving spirits.” 7: VII.53 (75): “For nature is more vari­ous than observation tho’ the observers be innumerable.” 8: IX.8 (83): “For he hath fixed the earth upon arches & pillars, and the flames of hell flow u­ nder it.” 9: XVI.15 (118): “For The Lightning before death is God’s illumination in the spirit for preparation and for warning.” 10: VIII.38 (79): “For they began with grubbing up my trees and now they have excluded the planter.” 11: IX.4 (83): “For Charity is cold in the multitude of possessions, & the rich are covetous of their crumbs.” 12: XXIII.36 (148): “For the mind of man cannot bear a tedious accumulation of nothings without effect.” 13: VII. 45 (75): “For I am a l­ ittle fellow, which is intitled to the ­great mess by the benevolence of God my f­ ather.” 14: VIII.61 (81): “For the nets come down from the eyes of the Lord to fish up men to their salvation.” 15: XV.11 (113): “For ignorance is a sin b­ ecause illumination is to be obtained by prayer.” 16: XII.4 (98): “For the D ­ evil can set a ­house on fire, when the inhabitants find combustibles.” 17: IX.71 (87): “For the air is contaminated by curses and evil language.” 18: XI.33 (95): “For Adversity above all other is to be deserted of the grace of God.” 19: XI.38 (95): “For beeing desert-ed is to have desert in the sight of God and intitles one to the Lord’s merit.” 20: XI.39 (95): “For ­things that are not in the sight of men are thro’ God of infinite concern.” 21: XI.42 (95): “For their attention is on a sinking object which perishes.”

Elizabeth Rivers and Christopher Smart • 205 22: XI.35 (95): “For t­ here is a forlorn hope ev’n for impenitent

sinners ­because the furnace itself must be the crown of Eternity.” 23: XI.14 (94): “For ­every man beareth death about him since the transgression of Adam but in perfect light t­ here is no shadow.” 24: VIII.77 (82): “For I bless God that I am not in a dungeon but am allowed the light of the Sun.” 25: X.63 (91): “For light is propagated at all distances in an instant ­because it is actuated by the divine conception.” 26: VII.14 (73): “For he hath turned the shadow of death into the morning.” 27: XI.34 (95): “For in the divine idea this Eternity is compleat & the Word is a making many more.” Rivers ranges across the text of the poem, often creating points of connection between lines that in their original locations are quite distant from one another. For instance, she begins by drawing from seven unique sections to knit together a meditation on divine creation and organic life.11 The seventh line that Rivers selected, “For nature is more vari­ous than observation tho’ the observers be innumerable,” points both to the diversity of the natu­ral world and to the insufficient comprehension of that world by ­those living in it. Yet this line also becomes a hinge into the next section of the book, which turns first to godly power, and then laments the shortcomings of a humanity that has turned away from such power and against one another. ­A fter reaching its lowest point in the twenty-­ first line—­“For their attention is on a sinking object which perishes”—­the series begins to venture a degree of hopefulness; the final lines take up the notion of “light,” suggesting both spiritual illumination and creative renewal. Although Rivers ultimately draws from nine distinct sections in Stead’s text, she appears to have been especially interested in section XI, which supplies eight titles for her engravings; the next most frequently used sections are IX and VIII, each supplying four titles. Lines from XI appear near the beginning and at the very end of Out of Bedlam,12 but they primarily cluster together in its final third, working together to reinforce the volume’s bleakest moments. In this section, Smart is concerned with darkness, dev­ilry, witchcraft, and shadows; he begins the page by warning, “For the ­devil hath most power in winter, ­because darkness prevails.” L ­ ater, he makes admonitions about “the powers of darkness” which “prevail” when “the light is defective.”13 It is hardly surprising that Rivers found analogues for “the disruption and vio­lence” of her own time in this part of the poem. Yet she also would have gleaned a sense of humility, as when Smart asserts, “For times and seasons are the Lord’s—­Man is no chronologer.”14 And ultimately, she encountered lines on the return of light and hope, finding a conclusion for Out of Bedlam in which “this Eternity is compleat” and the “Word”—­the log­os,

206 • Melissa Schoenberger

which we might understand as divine intelligence, the energy of creation, and perhaps poetic language—­“is a making many more.” Reproduced by Rivers ­after a series of images suggesting renewed illumination and a promising new “morning,” and paired with a second image of two men talking, this final line posits a link between cosmic regeneration and artistic creation: on the pages of Out of Bedlam, a ruined world has been confronted and transformed, and the enduring powers of conversation and storytelling continue to remake the world.

Word and Image As we move to Rivers’s images and the ways in which they inflect the meanings of Smart’s lines, it may be useful to ask one more question about words: why does Rivers recruit only from the “For” sections? To be sure, the “For” lines are often more vivid, and certainly more amenable to reordering and transplantation. The “Let” lines would have been far less forgiving. Consider for instance the line corresponding to the one that begins Out of Bedlam, paired with its poetic partner; it appears in Williamson’s edition like this: “Let Zohar rejoice with Cychramus who cometh with the quails on a par­tic­u­lar affair. / For ­there is a traveling for the Glory of God without g­ oing to Italy or France” (B.35). Clearly, the first line would demand a highly specific image, and ­unless an artist had Kabbalah and quails in mind, it would do l­ ittle to generate much beyond itself. The second line, however, makes no obscure allusions and requires no special knowledge to comprehend. It is in some ways specific—­making par­tic­u­lar references to E ­ uropean countries—­but other­wise general enough to work with any number of images. For Rivers, making engravings that in part reflect on some of the twentieth ­century’s “war years,” this line can be repurposed to acknowledge the fact of restricted movement in times of conflict, as well as the per­sis­tence of the imagination to wander, seeking something higher than itself. Now consider the way in which it appears on Rivers’s page (figure 10.1):15 In this engraving, two seated men appear to be having a conversation; one leans forward slightly, the other nods his head in a gesture of listening or thinking. They and their chairs are clearly defined, but the spaces beneath and b­ ehind them are more abstract: the curves in the background suggest rolling hills, but also resemble something like clouds. The brighter white of the cross-­hatching in the frame illuminates the curves and the bodies of the men; its concentration in the upper left could indicate rising sunlight. Th ­ ese men sit nowhere in par­tic­u­lar, but that seems to be the point: h ­ ere Rivers is less interested in where they converse than in the fact that they are conversing. In this context, Smart’s words achieve new kinds of meaning: they offer no clarity about where the men sit, though of course we do know that they have not traveled “to Italy or France.” More significantly, though, they may help us reconsider what it could mean to “travel for the Glory of God” without ­going anywhere; ­these two seated p­ eople are certainly not ­going anywhere; they are not even standing up. In this sense, then, “the Glory of God”

Elizabeth Rivers and Christopher Smart • 207

FIGURE 10.1  ​Elizabeth Rivers, Out of Bedlam (1956), Engraving I, © Estate of Elizabeth

Rivers. (Image courtesy of Wellesley College Libraries.)

becomes something one finds in engaging with another person, rather than in taking up a pilgrimage. Reading back into the image now, perhaps it is clearer why the book begins by resisting any urge we might feel to locate ­these figures in a concrete space: even among the ruins or in a state of disorientation, h ­ uman encounters remain both pos­si­ble and meaningful.

208 • Melissa Schoenberger

Although not a literary historian, Rivers seems to have sensed that each line was asking to be answered; in a way, her images act in a manner not unlike the “Let” lines, establishing a premise and awaiting a response. I would submit, however, that Rivers’s word-­and-­image pairings in Out of Bedlam ultimately work more dynamically in relation to one another than do the “Let” / “For” lines of Jubilate Agno. Th ­ ere, we are perpetually urged forward, moving from the initial subjunctive quality of “Let” to the firmer resolution of “For”—at least in t­ hose places where the lines can be matched—­and where only one form survives, the repetition of ­either initial word can send us fluidly and hypnotically down the page. In ­those sections, vari­ous passages emerge from the accumulation of associative connections, but still, the poem tends to propel our reading onward, given that it typically does not offer enough rhythmic, verbal, or sonic connection to draw us backward without our deliberately deciding to do so. The experience of reading Out of Bedlam proceeds differently: given the arrangements of engravings over titles, the eye likely falls first to the image, and then moves down the page to the text. But, as in the discussion of the first image above, the reading of ­those words tends to invite reconsideration of the image, which may invite yet more reconsideration of words, and so on. This recursive quality encourages ever more complicated thought, and discourages any urge to s­ ettle into a single—or ­simple—­conclusion. Put more simply, the pages of this book, which begin with a scene of conversation, also stage a series of conversations between Rivers and Smart. Neither one explains the other, but each encourages a reduplicating cycle of interpretation. As Out of Bedlam continues, a world emerges, perhaps as it is being ­imagined by the men in the initial scene. The engravings become much richer and more finely detailed. In figure 10.2, for instance, a h ­ uman being reaches into the fo­liage of a tree, with limbs and torso echoing the bends and curves of the trunk and branches; together, ­these forms suggest a fundamental unity between humanity and the natu­ral world. Intensive detail, illuminated by the radiance of the sun, fills the engraving, which as a result appears to teem with organic vitality. The text reinforces the sense of plenitude, pointing to the “infinite provision” supplied by the earth, which makes pos­si­ble its own perpetuation. Smart recalls Milton, whose Paradise Lost posits a paradise in which Adam and Eve are completely provided for, though they must also maintain the lush growth that surrounds them, propping up flowers and preventing disorderly overgrowth. As Adam tells Eve, in his first speech, they have been allotted a “delightful task / To prune ­these growing Plants, and tend ­these Flow’rs, / Which ­were it toilsome, yet with thee ­were sweet.”16 In recalling this prelapsarian ­labor, Smart points implicitly to the work required for “keep[ing] up” the “life in all parts of Creation.” Rivers heightens this aspect: we may reconsider the dynamic alignment of her two central figures by reading the h ­ uman being as fulfilling a custodial role in tending to the tree. Ultimately this early engraving suggests that humanity does not simply rest in or enjoy nature, but rather participates actively in its care and keeping.

FIGURE 10.2  ​Elizabeth Rivers, Out of Bedlam (1956), Engraving III, © Estate of Elizabeth

Rivers. (Image courtesy of Wellesley College Libraries.)

210 • Melissa Schoenberger

Yet another more ominous allusion lurks h ­ ere as well; in talking with Satan before the fall, Eve pauses to ask which tree in par­tic­u­lar he wishes to show her: For many are the Trees of God that grow In Paradise, and vari­ous, yet unknown To us, in such abundance lies our choice, As leaves a greater store of Fruit untoucht, Still hanging incorruptible, till men Grow up to their provision, and more hands Help to disburden Nature of her Birth.17

­ ere, the “abundance” of Eden transcends the awareness of Adam and Eve; curH rently it poses endless “choice,” but she also explains that humanity ­will need to “grow up,” or expand in number, in order to most fully engage with what is at this point a seemingly limitless “provision.” Tragically, the fall arrives before they come to know the trees of Paradise more comprehensively, but in this moment a crucial humility prevails. For now, Eve accepts that which is “unknown,” maintaining her place within a larger system. The portentous quality of this passage was surely not lost on Smart: in his line, the mere fact that “provision” for sustaining earthly life exists hardly guarantees that it ­will be taken up and used. The poet may prophesy, but the sustaining of “Creation” requires many more hands than he can provide, and depends on their commitment to the task. Rivers must have gleaned the threat of failure lurking ­here; several woodcuts on the beauty and tranquility of nature follow this one, but then the series takes a dark turn. To title her tenth image, in which several massive rectangles occlude the sun, beneath which a man walks dejectedly with shoulders hunched forward, she chooses a line suggesting infringement on agricultural work: “For they began with grubbing up my trees and now they have excluded the planter.” Although Rivers suggests the vio­lence and destruction of the mid-­twentieth c­ entury, she consistently avoids explic­itly topical repre­sen­ta­tions; as exemplified h ­ ere, she works in a deeper and more abstractly didactic vein, couching the failures of her time in the deceptively s­ imple terms of agriculture: humility, maintenance, and the threat of devastation. Soon the natu­ral imagery falls away, and the engravings become more angular, suggesting the hard edges of urban indifference and cruelty (figures 10.3 and 10.4). Now the rectangles layered over one another in the tenth engraving become high-­rise buildings in the eleventh (figure  10.3). H ­ ere, no sun appears. All illumination emerges from within the buildings, suggesting man-­made electric lighting, rather than the natu­ral warmth of the sun. Drawn starkly, without adornment, ­these urban dwellings are layered to create the illusion of infinite recursion, receding further and further into the background. A h ­ uman form is perhaps suggested in the bottom row of win­dows on the foremost building, but other­wise the engraving represents a world that has crowded out all organic

FIGURE 10.3  ​Elizabeth Rivers, Out of Bedlam (1956), Engraving XI, © Estate of Elizabeth

Rivers. (Image courtesy of Wellesley College Libraries.)

FIGURE 10.4  ​Elizabeth Rivers, Out of Bedlam (1956), Engraving XII, © Estate of Elizabeth

Rivers. (Image courtesy of Wellesley College Libraries.)

Elizabeth Rivers and Christopher Smart • 213

shapes. Rivers’s choice of title h ­ ere expands the moral lesson at hand: this rejection of nature indicates a lapse in communal feeling, a retreating of the wealthy into their private homes, without regard for t­ hose left with less. In stark contrast to the “infinite provision” of the natu­ral world, this artificial one makes no attempt to foster life. In the next engraving (figure 10.4), the rectangular forms shift again. They appear to move further away, and the sun has returned, bringing with it rays of light that fall on curves and lines alike: with its geometric variety and re­introduction of ­human beings, the twelfth engraving releases us slightly from the hard monotony of the previous frame. Now several ­people appear to gaze upon a city far away, but it continues to loom in the center of the image, set in front of two shapes that together recall an eclipse. Clearly, we have not found redemption yet. Moreover, Smart’s words temper ­whatever visual relief we may have gleaned ­here. In Jubilate Agno, this line appears ­after Smart has composed lines on several letters—­which he does more than once in the poem—­and on the numbers one through nine. The “For” lines directly preceding this one s­ ettle on “Cipher,” or zero, which “is a note of augmentation”;18 Williamson observes that Smart is thinking ­here of the way in which zero “ ‘augments’ numbers by multiplying them by ten.”19 Smart continues, “For innumberable ciphers w ­ ill amount to something,” contemplating the irony of the fact that a symbol of nothingness can create infinitely large numbers. ­A fter t­ hese musings arrives the text selected by Rivers: “For the mind of man cannot bear a tedious accumulation of nothings without effect.” In the poem, this line articulates a kind of relief at the fact that zero, when added to other numbers, has a generative power: if ­things ­were other­wise, Smart observes, the mind would reject it. Brought across two centuries and into this series of engravings, however, the mathematical meaning recedes. Rivers’s image requires us to determine what “nothing” might signify in this context: it seems connected to the coldness and spareness of urban isolation, contrasted with the abundance of the natu­ral world. Yet echoes of Smart’s zero do remain in the eclipse-­like circles surrounding the rectangular buildings, as well as in the sun crowded into the upper-­left corner; the g­ reat “nothing” of zero threatens to engulf the city altogether. As in the poem, h ­ ere the line also creates a sense that an argument has reached its culminating point: the rectangles of the e­ arlier engravings, now receding, are rejected as “nothings” that have proliferated in “tedious accumulation.” A marked shift emerges at this point: no longer accommodating t­ hese “nothings,” the world of Out of Bedlam catches fire, weaving snippets of hope through moments of cruelty and discord. Fi­nally, though, the light of the sun returns in its full strength. The penultimate engraving (figure 10.5) bursts with birds, flowers, and other images repeated from the idyllic opening section of the series. Crucially, none of the h ­ uman figures appear now; the world, in all its beauty, consists of flora and fauna. The title initially suggests a triumphant recovery, now that “the shadow of death” has

FIGURE 10.5  ​Elizabeth Rivers, Out of Bedlam (1956), Engraving XXVI, © Estate of

Elizabeth Rivers. (Image courtesy of Wellesley College Libraries.)

Elizabeth Rivers and Christopher Smart • 215

given way to a “new morning,” but what—or who—­else survives? Is this a vision of the world restored? Or is it a divine ascension ­after annihilation? In the final engraving, we return to the two men again, though now they appear larger, as though closer to us, and are set against a more clearly defined natu­ral landscape, while a slice of moon hangs above and between them. Ending ­here, we may imagine that we have overheard the telling of an old fable. Or perhaps we have witnessed the recapitulation of a descent into unspeakable vio­lence, which needed to be translated into abstractions and symbols and refracted through the language of another time. Elsewhere in “Modern Painting in Ireland,” Rivers proposes that “art, by definition, is the making well of what needs to be made. . . . ​­Every art, in its making, discloses a way of looking at the world.”20 I would extend this line of thought into the act of translating: a translation happens ­because it needs to. At times that need simply has to do with access, as is the case for school texts. But in other instances, this need arises b­ ecause an artist finds that she lacks some of the tools required for confronting something in her own time. This kind of translation, especially when it spans centuries or more, tends to reveal aspects not only of the work translated but also of the culture into which it arrives. I would also submit that considered in this way, translation can be an act of humility, a way of acknowledging that ­others may have already ventured answers to questions we face. In creating Out of Bedlam, Rivers generated “a way of looking at the world” by combining her own vision with that of Smart. Gazing with and through him at a world in crisis, Rivers confronted the worst of h ­ uman failures, and ventured a way up and out of the ruins. Crucially, however, she offered only a beginning, leaving open the question of what exactly the dawning of a new day would bring. Of course, art on its own cannot repair the devastation of world war, and it certainly could not have prevented it. Nor can scholarship. As James Winn has observed, scholars may wish to believe that the humanities can “provide a moral center . . . ​but the World Wars provided some terrifying counterexamples. Participants . . . ​who had been blessed with superior educations in the humanities, and who carried the works of Goethe or Shakespeare in their knapsacks, ­were not thereby prevented from engaging in atrocities.”21 Winn, who goes on to quote his teacher Maynard Mack, suggests that the moral work of the humanities resides in the ways they are shared, and depends on the upholding of “moral responsibilities” by t­ hose who teach and write. In thinking about the case of Christopher Smart, and his resonance for an artist who throughout her c­ areer was deeply concerned with the beauty and brutality of the world around her, I recall the many ways in which James Winn argued that the arts o­ ught to be shared with as many o­ thers as pos­si­ble, not kept cloistered among specialists. They are evidence that we go on, no m ­ atter what. In confinement, Smart continued to write. A ­ fter surviving the Blitz, Rivers made more art. P ­ eople keep reading, looking, and listening to what artists produce. ­Those of us who enjoy the privilege to read, write, and teach for a living must remain always aware of

216 • Melissa Schoenberger

our obligations to t­ hese pro­cesses: as Winn suggests in the conclusion to The Pale of Words, scholars are charged with “fulfilling our responsibility to the humanities—­and thus to humanity.”22

Notes I am grateful to Janis DesMarais, Visual Literacy and Arts Librarian, Dinand Library, College of the Holy Cross, for her assistance in acquiring the images included in this essay. 1 Elizabeth Rivers, “Modern Painting in Ireland,” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 50, no. 198 (1961): 175–183 (183). 2 In general, I refer to Smart’s poem as Jubilate Agno, using Stead’s title only where it is historically prudent to do so. 3 For a fuller accounting of the poet’s life, see Karina Williamson, “Smart, Christopher (1722–1771),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), and the introduction to Williamson’s edition of Jubilate Agno (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980). 4 George Mills Harper, “William Force Stead’s Friendship with Yeats and Eliot,” Mas­sa­chu­setts Review 21, no. 1 (1980): 9–38, 25. 5 William Force Stead, Rejoice in the Lamb (London: J. Cape, 1939), 14–15. ­ nglish Artist in Ireland,” in Irish Ink: 6 See Craig Fansler, “Elizabeth Rivers, an E Exploring the Artists and Poets of the Dolmen Press, Wake Forest University Libraries, https://­zsr​.­wfu​.­edu​/­2016​/­elizabeth​-­rivers​-­an​-­english​-­artist​-­in​-­ireland​/­; Clare Dalton, Irish W ­ omen Artists 1870–1970 (Dublin: Adam’s Auctioneers, 2014); and Harriet Wheelock, Collection List No. 136: Elizabeth Rivers Papers, National Library of Ireland, Dublin, 2008. 7 Karina Williamson, introduction to Jubilate Agno, v. 8 Quoted from Smart, Jubilate Agno, B.11. For discussion of this line in relation to eighteenth-­century translation and religious devotion, as well as for deeper consideration of Smart’s translation work generally, see Rosalind Powell, Christopher Smart’s E ­ nglish Lyr­ics: Translation in the Eigh­teenth ­Century (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2014). 9 See Williamson, introduction to Jubilate Agno, 14n11, and Powell, Christopher Smart’s ­English Lyr­ics, 3n10. 10 Where discussing se­lections from Smart by Rivers, I quote from the Stead edition; in all other cases, I quote from the edition published by Williamson. Th ­ ese sources are cited parenthetically in the text. 11 For broader treatment of Smart and the organic, see Denise Gigante, Life: Organic Form and Romanticism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). 12 No “Let” lines survive for the manuscript page that comprises Stead’s section XI, so in this case our con­temporary experience of reading the poem would have been similar to Rivers’s. This section begins at Smart, Jubilate Agno, B.296. See also the digital scan of this page maintained by the Houghton Library at Harvard University at http://­id​.­lib​.­harvard​.­edu​/­a leph​/­009708286​/­catalog. 13 Smart, Jubilate Agno, B.315. 14 Smart, Jubilate Agno, B.340. 15 All images reproduced by kind permission of the estate of Elizabeth Rivers. Images courtesy of Wellesley College Libraries.

Elizabeth Rivers and Christopher Smart • 217

16 John Milton, Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (1957; Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003), 4:437–439. 17 Milton, Complete Poems and Major Prose, 9:618–624. 18 Smart, Jubilate Agno, C.34–35. 19 Williamson, introduction to Jubilate Agno, 94n34. 20 Rivers, “Modern Painting in Ireland,” 183. ­ erformance 21 James Winn, The Pale of Words: Reflections on the Humanities and P (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 124. 22 Winn, Pale of Words, 129.

Selected Bibliography Allsopp, Niall. Poetry and Sovereignty in the E ­ nglish Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Altick, Richard D. The E ­ nglish Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957. Augustine, Matthew C. “The Chameleon or the Sponge? Marvell, Milton, and the Politics of Literary History.” Studies in Philology 111 (2014): 132–162. Backscheider, Paula R. “Crisis Texts: Transforming Calprenède into Royal Portraiture.” Restoration: Studies in E ­ nglish Literary Culture, 1660–1700 42, no. 1 (2018): 79–103. —­—­—. Spectacular Politics: Theatrical Power and Mass Culture in Early Modern ­England. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. —­—­—. ­Women in ­Wartime: Theatrical Repre­sen­ta­tions in the Long Eigh­teenth ­Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. Baines, Paul, and Pat Rogers. Edmund Curll, Bookseller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Baldwin, Olivia, and Thelma Wilson. “Purcell’s Knotting Song.” Musical Times 128, no. 1733 (1987): 379–381. Battigelli, Anna. Art and Artifact in Austen. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2020. —­—­—. “John Dryden’s Angry Readers.” In Books and Readers in Early Modern ­England, edited by Jennifer Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer, 261–281. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Beeks, Graydon. “Another Reference to Handel in the Montagu Correspondence.” Newsletter of the American Handel Society 31, no. 3 (2016): 1, 4. —­—­—. “Mirth, Melancholy, and the F ­ uture Mrs. Montagu.” Newsletter of the American Handel Society 30, no. 1 (2015): 1, 4–5. Beresford, M. W. “Building History from Fire Insurance Rec­ords.” Urban History Yearbook 3 (1976): 7–16. Black, Jeremy. Britain as a Military Power, 1688–1815. London: UCL Press, 1999. Boyd, Malcolm. Domenico Scarlatti: Master of M ­ usic. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986. Brewer, John. The ­Pleasures of the Imagination: ­English Culture in the Eigh­teenth ­Century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997. 219

220 • Selected Bibliography

Bucholz, R. O. The Augustan Court: Queen Anne and the Decline of Court Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993. Bundock, Michael. The Fortunes of Francis Barber: The True Story of the Jamaican Slave Who Became Samuel Johnson’s Heir. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015. Burden, Michael. “Where Did Purcell Keep His Theatre Band.” Early ­Music 7, no. 3 (2009): 429–443. Burrows, Donald, Helen Coffey, John Greenacombe, and Anthony Hicks, eds. George Frideric Handel: Collected Documents I: 1609–1725. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Butt, John. Playing with History: The Historical Approach to Musical P ­ erformance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Carlson, Marvin. The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. Carlton, Charles. Seat of Mars. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011. Clark, T. J. The Painting of Modern Life. Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1985. Cowburn, P. M. “Christopher Gunman and the Wreck of the Gloucester.” The Mari­ner’s Mirror 42 (1956): 113–126, 219–229. Curran, Stuart, “Dynamics of Female Friendship in the L ­ ater Eigh­teenth ­Century.” Nineteenth-­Century Contexts 23 (2001): 221–239. Dalton, Clare. Irish W ­ omen Artists 1870–1970. Dublin: Adam’s Auctioneers, 2014. De Bolla, Peter. The Education of the Eye: Painting, Landscape, and Architecture in Eighteenth-­Century Britain, 1750–1815. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003. Dreyfus, Laurence. “Early ­Music Defended against Its Devotees: A Theory of Historical ­Performance in the Twentieth ­Century.” Musical Quarterly 69, no. 3 (1983): 297–322. Duffin, Ross. “­Music and the Stage in the Time of Shakespeare.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare, edited by R. Malcolm Smuts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, 748–763. Eger, Elizabeth. Bluestockings: W ­ omen of Reason from Enlightenment to Romanticism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. —­—­—. “Paper Trails and Eloquent Objects: Bluestocking Friendship and Material Culture.” Parergon 26, no. 2 (2009): 109–138. Eger, Elizabeth, Charlotte Grant, Clíona Ó Gallachoir, and Penny Warburton, eds. ­Women, Writing and the Public Sphere, 1700–1830. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Erskine-­Hill, Howard. Poetry and the Realm of Politics: Shakespeare to Dryden. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Eubanks Winkler, Amanda. “The Intermedial Dramaturgy of Dramatick Opera: Understanding Genre through ­Performance.” Restoration: Studies in ­English Literary Culture, 1660–1700, no. 2 (Fall 2018): 13–38. —­—­—­, ed. ­Music for Macbeth: Recent Researches in the M ­ usic of the Baroque Era. Middleton, WI: A-­R Editions, 2004. —­—­—. O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note: M ­ usic for Witches, the Mad and the Melancholic on the Seventeenth-­Century ­English Stage. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. —­—­—. “A Tale of Twelfth Night: M ­ usic, P ­ erformance, and the Pursuit of Authenticity.” Shakespeare Bulletin 36, no. 2 (2018): 251–270. Fansler, Craig. “Elizabeth Rivers, an ­English Artist in Ireland.” In Irish Ink: Exploring the Artists and Poets of the Dolmen Press. Wake Forest University Libraries, 2016. https://­zsr​.­wfu​.­edu​/­2016​/­elizabeth​-­rivers​-­an​-­english​-­artist​-­in​-­ireland.

Selected Bibliography • 221

Ferry, Anne Davidson. Milton and the Miltonic Dryden. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968. Foxcroft, H. C., ed. The Life and Letters of Sir George Savile . . . ​First Marquis of Halifax. 2 vols. London: Longman, 1828. Freedman, Morris. “Dryden’s ‘Memorable Visit’ to Milton.” Huntington Library Quarterly 18 (1955): 10–21. Friedman-­Romell, Beth. “Breaking the Code: T ­ oward a Reception Theory of Theatrical Cross-­Dressing in Eighteenth-­Century London.” Theatre Journal 47, no. 4 (1998): 459–479. Fumerton, Patricia. Ballads and Broadsides in Britain (1500–1800). Farnham, UK: Ashgate Press, 2010. —­—­—. “Not Home: Ale­houses, Ballads, and the Vagrant Husband in Early Modern ­England.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 493–518. Gerzina, Gretchen. Black E ­ ngland: Life Before Emancipation. London: John Murray, 1995. —­—­—. Britain’s Black Past. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020. Gibbs, Jemma M. Performing the T ­ emple of Liberty: Slavery, Theater, and P ­ opular Culture in London and Philadelphia, 1760–1850. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Gigante, Denise. Life: Organic Form and Romanticism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009. Gilbert, Kenneth, ed. Domenico Scarlatti: Sonatas. 11 vols. Paris: Heugel, 1974–1984. Grant, Mathew Roger. Peculiar Attunements: How Affect Theory Turned Musical. New York: Fordham University Press, 2020. Green, David. Queen Anne. London: Collins, 1970. Hacker, Barton. “­Women and Military Institutions in Early Modern ­Europe.” Signs 6, no. 4 (1981): 643–671. Hagstsrum, Jean. The S­ ister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and E ­ nglish Poetry from Dryden to Gray. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Hahn, H. George. The Ocean Bards. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2008. Haley, K. H. D. An E ­ nglish Diplomat in the Low Countries: Sir William ­Temple and John De Witt, 1665–1672. Oxford: Clarendon, 1986. Hammond, Paul. Dryden and the Traces of Classical Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. —­—­—. “Dryden’s Use of Marvell’s Horatian Ode in Absalom and Achitophel.” Notes and Queries 233 (1988): 173–174. —­—­—. Milton and the P ­ eople. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. —­—­—. Milton’s Complex Words: Essays on the Conceptual Structure of “Paradise Lost.” Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Hammond, Paul, and David Hopkins, eds. John Dryden: Tercentenary Essays. Oxford: Clarendon, 2000. Harper, George Mills. “William Force Stead’s Friendship with Yeats and Eliot.” Mas­sa­chu­setts Review 21, no. 1 (1980): 9–38. Harris, Ellen T. “Handel the Investor.” ­Music & Letters 85, no. 4 (2004): 521–575. —­—­—. George Frideric Handel: A Life with Friends. New York: Norton, 2014. Haynes, Bruce. The End of M ­ usic: A Period Performer’s History of ­Music for the Twenty-­ First ­Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Hill, Bridget. W ­ omen Alone: Spinsters in E ­ ngland, 1660–1850. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.

222 • Selected Bibliography

Holland, Peter. The Ornament of Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Hoppitt, John. Land of Liberty? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Hufstader, Alice Anderson. ­Sisters of the Quill. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978. Hume, Robert. “The Politics of Opera in Late Seventeenth-­Century London.” Cambridge Opera Journal 10, no. 1 (1998): 15–43. Hunt, John Dixon, et al. “Cata­logue: Garden Design in the Netherlands.” Journal of Garden History 8, no. 2–3 (1988): 259–260. Jacobsen, Gertrude Ann. William Blathwayt: A Late Seventeenth C ­ entury ­English Administrator. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1932. Jones, Howard. The Epicurean Tradition. London: Routledge, 1989. Kelly, Patrick. “Anne Donnellan: Irish Proto-­Bluestocking.” Hermathena: A Trinity College Dublin Review 154 (1993): 39–68. Kenworthy-­Brown, J. A. “The Building of Dyrham Park, Gloucestershire for William Blathwayt between 1692 and 1702.” Connoisseur 149 (1962): 138–144. Kipnis, Igor. The Virtuoso Scarlatti: 15 Sonatas for Harpsichord. Chesky Rec­ords 1992. CD. Kirkpatrick, Ralph. Domenico Scarlatti. Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1983. Kivy, Peter, Authenticities: Philosophical Reflections on Musical P ­ erformance. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995. Land, Isaac. War, Nationalism, and the British Sailor, 1750–1850. New York: Macmillan, 2009. Lewcock, Dawn. William Davenant, the Court Masque, and the E ­ nglish Seventeenth-­ Century Scenic Stage, c. 1605–­c. 1700. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2008. Lewis, Jayne, and Maximillian E. Novak, eds. Enchanted Ground: Reimagining John Dryden. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Lipking, Lawrence. The Ordering of the Arts in Eighteenth-­Century ­England. Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1970. Luckett, Richard. “Exotick but Rational Entertainments: The ­English Dramatick Operas.” In ­English Drama: Forms and Development, edited by Marie Axton and Raymond Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977, 123–141. Maccubin, Robert P., and Martha Hamilton-­Phillips, eds. The Age of William III & Mary II: Power, Politics and Patronage. Williamsburg, VA: College of William and Mary, 1989. Marks, Peter, and Anne Midgette. “Two Critics Debate a Rare Rehashing of a Revised ‘Macbeth’: Singing Witches and All.” Washington Post, September 12, 2018. Marshall, David. The Frame of Art: Fictions of Aesthetic Experience, 1750–1815. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. Mayo, T. F. Epicurus in ­England (1650–1725). Dallas: Southwest Press, 1934. McGeary, Thomas. “Handel as Art Collector: Art, Connoisseurship and Taste in Hanoverian Britain.” Early ­Music 37, no. 4 (2009): 258–263. Milhous, Judith. “The Multimedia Spectacular on the Restoration Stage.” In British Theatre and the Other Arts, 1660–1800, edited by Shirley Strum Kenny. Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1984, 41–62. Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: W ­ omen, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-­Century ­England. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990. Orr, Bridget. Empire on the ­English Stage 1660–1714. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Partner, Jane. Poetry and Vision in Early Modern E ­ ngland. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Selected Bibliography • 223

Pater, Walter. “The School of Giorgione.” In The R ­ enaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry. New York: Macmillan, 1909, 130–154. Payne, Deborah C. “ ‘Damn You, Davenant!’: The Perils and Possibilities of Restoration Shakespeare.” Restoration and 18th-­Century Theatre Research 32, no. 1 (2017): 21–40. Pears, Iain, The Discovery of Painting: The Growth of Interest in the Arts in E ­ ngland, 1680–1768. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988. Powell, Rosalind. Christopher Smart’s ­English Lyr­ics: Translation in the Eigh­teenth ­Century. Surrey: Ashgate, 2014. Preston, R. A. “William Blathwayt and the Evolution of a Royal Personal Secretariat.” History 34 (1949): 28–43. Price, Curtis. M ­ usic in the Restoration Theatre. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1979. Price, Curtis, Judith Milhous, and Robert D. Hume. Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth-­ Century. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995. Purcell, Stephen. “Practice-­as-­Research and Original Practices.” Shakespeare Bulletin 35, no. 3 (2017): 425–443. Reverand, Cedric D., ed. Queen Anne and the Arts. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2015. Rivers, Elizabeth. Out of Bedlam: XXVII Wood Engravings by Elizabeth Rivers with Texts from Christopher Smart. Glenageary: Dolmen Press, 1956. —­—­—. “Modern Painting in Ireland.” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 50, no. 198 (1961): 175–183. Roach, Joseph. Cities of the Dead: Circum-­Atlantic ­Performance. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Roberts, David. The Ladies: Female Patronage of Restoration Drama, 1660–1700. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Rogers, Pat. Grub Street: Studies in a Subculture. London: Methuen, 1972. Rupp, Susanne. “Milton’s Laughing God.” In A History of E ­ nglish Laughter, edited by Manfred Phister, 48–49. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002. Sabbattini, Nicola. “Practica di fabricar scene e machine ne’ teatri.” In The ­Renaissance Stage: Documents of Serlio, Sabbattini and Furttenbach, edited by John H. McDowell and Barnard Hewitt. Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1958, 37–177. Sabor, Peter, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Emma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Sadie, Stanley, and Anthony Hicks, eds. Handel: Tercentenary Collection. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan Press for the Royal Musical Association, 1987. Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory. London: HarperCollins, 1995. Schenker, Heinrich. The Masterwork in M ­ usic. Translated by Ian Bent. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925–1930. Schneider, Rebecca. Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment. London: Routledge, 2011. Scouller, R. E. Armies of Queen Anne. Oxford: Clarendon, 1966. Sheveloff, Joel. “Domenico Scarlatti: Tercentenary Frustrations.” Musical Quarterly 71, no. 4 (1985): 399–436. —­—­—. “The Keyboard M ­ usic of Domenico Scarlatti: A Reevaluation of the Pre­sent State of Knowledge in the Light of the Sources.” PhD diss., Brandeis University, 1970. Slater, Miriam. F ­ amily Life in the Seventeenth C ­ entury: The Verneys of Claydon H ­ ouse. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984. Stark, Suzanne. Female Tars: W ­ omen Aboard Ship in the Age of Sail. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996.

224 • Selected Bibliography

Stern, Tiffany. Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Sundstrom, Roy A. Sidney Godolphin: Servant of the State. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992. Sutcliffe, Dean. The Keyboard Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and Eighteenth-­Century Musical Style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Tabakis, Peter. “­You’ve Never Seen Any ‘Macbeth’ Like the One at the Folger Theatre.” DCist, September 12, 2018. Taruskin, Richard. Text and Act: Essays on M ­ usic and ­Performance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Todd, Janet. ­Women’s Friendship in Lit­er­a­ture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. Walkling, Andrew R. E ­ nglish Dramatick Opera, 1661–1706. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. —­—­—. Masque and Opera in ­England, 1656–1688. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017. Water­house, Ellis Kirkham. The Dictionary of 16th & 17th ­Century British P ­ ainters. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1988. Webster, James. Haydn’s “Farwell” Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Wendorf, Richard. Sir Joshua Reynolds: The P ­ ainter in Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. Wheelock, Gretchen. Haydn’s Ingenious Jesting with Art: Contexts of Musical Wit and Humor. New York: Schirmer, 1992. White, Jerry. A G ­ reat and Monstrous ­Thing: London in the Eigh­teenth ­Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. Williams, Sarah F. “An Intermedia Approach to Seventeenth-­Century ­English P ­ opular Song Culture.” In Open Access Musicology, by Daniel Barolsky and Louis Epstein. Amherst, MA: Lever Press, 2020. https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­3998​/­mpub​.­12063224. Wilson, Kathleen. Island Race: En­glishness, Empire, and Gender in the Eigh­teenth ­Century. London: Routledge, 2003. Winn, James Anderson, ed. Critical Essays on John Dryden. New York: G.K. Hall, 1997. —­—­—. “Heroic Song: A Proposal for a Revised History of E ­ nglish Theater and Opera, 1656–1711.” Eighteenth-­Century Studies 30, no. 2 (Winter 1996/1997): 113–137. —­—­—. John Dryden and His World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987. —­—­—. The Pale of Words: Reflections on the Humanities and ­Performance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. —­—­—. The Poetry of War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. —­—­—. Queen Anne: Patroness of the Arts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. —­—­—. Unsuspected Eloquence: A History of the Relations between Poetry and M ­ usic. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981. —­—­—. “When Beauty Fires the Blood”: Love and the Arts in the Age of Dryden. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992. —­—­—. A Win­dow in the Bosom: The Letters of Alexander Pope. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1977. Zwicker, Steven. “Sites of Instruction: Andrew Marvell and Tropes of Restoration Portraiture.” In Politics, Transgression, and Repre­sen­ta­tion at the Court of Charles II, edited by Julia Marciari and Catharine M ­ acLeod Alexander. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007, 123–138.

Notes on Contributors PAUL A R. BACKSCHEIDER , Philpott-­Stevens Eminent Scholar, Auburn University, is the award-­winning author of several books, including Daniel Defoe: His Life, Spectacular Politics, and Eighteenth-­Century ­Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre. She has published articles in PMLA, Theatre Journal, ELH, and many other journals. A former president of the American Society for Eighteenth-­Century Studies, she has held a Guggenheim Fellowship and is one of the few American members of the Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Edinburgh. Her most recent book is ­Women in W ­ artime: Theatrical Repre­sen­ta­tions in the Long Eigh­teenth ­Century.

is professor of ­English at SUNY Plattsburgh. She is the editor of Art and Artifact in Austen and the author of Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind. Together with Laura Stevens, she edited a special topics issue of Tulsa Studies in ­Women’s Lit­er­a­ture on “Eighteenth-­Century ­Women and ­English Catholicism.” She has held fellowships at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Yale University’s Beinecke Library, and Notre Dame’s Erasmus Institute.

ANNA BAT TIGELLI

AMANDA EUBANKS WINKLER is professor of musicology and director of the Depart-

ment of M ­ usic in the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Her recent publications include M ­ usic, Dance, and Drama in Early Modern E ­ nglish Schools; Shakespeare in the Theatre: Sir William Davenant and the Duke’s Com­ pany (co-­authored with Richard Schoch); an edition of John Eccles’s theater ­music; and two essay collections, one coedited with Linda Phyllis Austern and Candace Bailey, Beyond Bound­aries: Rethinking M ­ usic Circulation in Early Modern ­England, and another coedited with Claude Fretz and Richard Schoch, Performing Restoration Shakespeare. She was a long-­term fellow at the Folger

225

226 • Notes on Contributors

Shakespeare Library and served as the co-­investigator on Performing Restoration Shakespeare, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK. PAUL HAMMOND is professor of seventeenth-­century ­English lit­er­a­ture at the Uni-

versity of Leeds, and a fellow of the British Acad­emy. He is the coeditor with David Hopkins of The Poems of John Dryden, 5 vols., and his other books include Dryden and the Traces of Classical Rome, The Strangeness of Tragedy, Milton and the ­People, and Milton’s Complex Words. is professor emeritus of m ­ usic at the Mas­sa­chu­setts Institute of Technology. She is the author of George Frideric Handel: A Life with Friends; Handel as Orpheus: Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas; and Henry Purcell: Dido and Aeneas. Her most recent work pertains to Handel’s finances. ELLEN T. HARRIS

DAVID HOPKINS is emeritus professor of ­English lit­er­a­ture and ­senior research fellow at the University of Bristol. He was coeditor with Paul Hammond of The Poems of John Dryden in the Longman Annotated ­English Poets, and of the five-­ volume Oxford History of Classical Reception in E ­ nglish Lit­er­a­ture. His other publications include Conversing with Antiquity: ­English Poets and the Classics from Shakespeare to Pope.

is George Duke Humphrey Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Wyoming. He has published extensively on lit­er­a­ture (especially Dryden and Pope), as well as on art, architecture, and ­music. His recent publications include several anthologies: Queen Anne and the Arts; An Expanding Universe: The Proj­ect of Eighteenth-­Century Studies; and Paper, Ink, and Achievement: Gabriel Hornstein and the Revival of Eighteenth-­Century Scholarship, the latter two coedited with Kevin Cope; and Abraham Cowley: A Seventeenth-­Century ­English Poet Recovered, coedited with Michael Edson. He is also the general editor of Eighteenth-­Century Life. CEDRIC  D. REVERAND II

is professor of ­English and Canada research chair at McGill University, Montreal, where he is the director of the Burney Centre. His publications on Jane Austen include an edition of her early writings, Juvenilia, and The Cambridge Companion to Emma. He is also principal investigator for Reading with Austen, a digital re-­creation of the Godmersham Park Library in 1818, which is accessible at www​.­readingwithausten​.­com.

PE TER SABOR

MELISSA SCHOENBERGER is associate professor of E ­ nglish at the College of the Holy Cross, where she specializes in seventeenth-­and eighteenth-­century poetry. She is the author of Cultivating Peace: The Virgilian Georgic in E ­ nglish, 1650– 1750. Her articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Restoration: Studies in

Notes on Contributors • 227

­English Literary Culture 1660–1700, Translation and Lit­er­a­ture, Philological Quarterly, and Eighteenth-­Century Life. ANDREW R. WALKLING is professor of art history, ­English, and theatre at Bingham-

ton University, State University of New York. He is the author of Masque and Opera in ­England, 1656–1688 and ­English Dramatick Opera, 1661–1706 and has written extensively on Restoration musical drama, the politics of theatrical and musical p­ erformance, and the work of Henry Purcell and his contemporaries.

is Stanley Elkin Professor in the humanities and professor of ­English at Washington University. He has published widely on Restoration lit­ er­a­ture, with par­tic­u­lar attention to the writings of John Dryden and Andrew Marvell. His most recent work includes an edition of John Dryden: Selected Works for the 21st-­Century Oxford Authors series and a forthcoming volume in the Oxford Handbook series on Restoration lit­er­a­ture. STEVEN N. ZWICKER

Index Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. Addison, Joseph, 2, 93, 95 Anne, Queen of ­Great Britain: and arts, 3–4, 9–10, 103; economic prudence of, 146; theatrical experience of, 131–132, 142–144; and war effort, 9–10, 131–133, 136, 141, 142 Apsley, Frances, 143 arts: analy­sis of, 5; and friendship, 151–181; and time, 199–200; and war, 4, 9–10, 47–48, 55, 58, 131–146, 200–201, 203, 206, 215 Arts and Humanities Research Council, 31 Astrological Observations, 66 Aubrey, John, 18 Austen, Cassandra, 192 Austen, Charles, 194 Austen, Francis, 192 Austen, James, 192; on language of Emma, 193 Austen, James Edward, 192, 193 Austen, Jane, 10–11; and Charles Austen, 194; and Francis Austen, 192; and James Austen, 193; and Mary Austen, 192; and Charlotte Bridges, 192; and Sarah Harriet Burney, 186–187; and James Stanier Clarke, 189–191; and Jane Digweed, 194; and Maria Edgeworth, 185, 187–188, 191, 195; and Susan Ferrier, 189; and William Gifford, 185–186; and Maria Graham, 187; and Fanny Knight, 193; and Anna Larpent,

186; and Benjamin Lefroy, 193; and Thomas Moore, 189; and Countess of Morley (Frances Talbot), 189, 190–191, 194; and John Murray, 182–187, 189–190, 194; and Anna Maria Porter, 189; and Prince of Wales/Prince Regent (George IV), 182–183, 185, 189–190; and Sir Walter Scott, 183–188, 195; and Anne Sharpe, 189, 190, 192. WORKS: Emma, 182–198; dedication of Emma, 182–183, 189, 190; ­presentation copies of Emma, 182, 189–190, 192; reviews of Emma, (printed) 183–185, (unprinted) 186–188; translations of Emma, 184–185; Mansfield Park, 183–186, 187, 190, 192, 193, 194, 199; Pride and Prejudice, 11, 183–188, 190–195; “Opinions of Emma,” 190–193; “Opinions of Mansfield Park,” 192 Austen, Mary (Francis Austen’s wife), 193 Austen, Mary (James Austen’s wife), 192–193 Ayloffe, John, 53 Baker, Thomas, The Busy Body, 145 ballads, 5 Barber, Mary, 15, 165, 168 Barber, Rupert, 156–157, 167. ILLUSTRATIONS: Mrs. Anne Donnellan, Fig. 8.3, 158 baroque mythological opera. See Dryden, John: Albion and Albanius

229

230 • Index

Barry, Edward, 161 Barry, Elizabeth, 132 Beale, Mary, 168–169. ILLUSTRATIONS: Bartholomew Beale, Fig. 8.9, 170 Bentinck, Margaret, Duchess of Portland, 165 Berkeley, George, Bishop of Cloyne, 153 Betterton, Thomas, 68–69, 75–77, 82 Bigg, Alethea, 193 Blathwayt, John, 9, 96–98 Blathwayt, William: education of, 88–89; literary and musical connections of, 8–9, 87–88; p­ olitical sympathies of, 87, 92; reading habits of, 88. See also Dyrham library; Dyrham Park Blenheim, ­battle of, 132–133; praised in plays, 139; commemorated through the arts, 4–5 Blenheim Palace, 4–5 Bluestocking Circle, 6, 151 Bourguignon, Pierre, 171 Boutell, Elizabeth, 144 Boyle, John, 5th Earl of Orrery, 161 Brewster, Ann, 62n36 Bridges, Charlotte, 192 Brooke, Frances, The Siege of Sinope, 142 Broschi, Carlo (Farinelli), 104, 161 Brown, Joseph, Engraving of Mary Delany, Fig. 8.5, 160 Buckingham, 2nd Duke of (George Villiers), 18, 54–55 Bullock, Christopher, Jr. (actor), 141 Burney, Sarah Harriet, 186–187 Cage, Charles, 194 Cage, Charlotte, 194 Carey, Mathew, 108 Carte, Thomas, An History of the Life of James, Duke of Ormonde, 164 Catholick Gamesters, The, 54 Centlivre, Susanna, 139, 147n26 Charles I, King of G ­ reat Britain, 169, 171 Charles II, King of G ­ reat Britain, 27, 71 Charleton, Walter, Epicurus’s Morals: Collected and Faithfully En­glished, 90 Cheesman, Thomas, Engraving of Elizabeth Montagu, Fig. 8.6, 163 Churchill, John, Duke of Marlborough: and Blenheim, 133–134; dramatic repre­sen­ta­ tions of, 139; and military infrastructure, 131–133; and w ­ omen in military, 131, 133, 147n11

Cibber, Colley: war experience of, 10, 136, 164 Cicero, 162 Clarke, James Stanier, 189–191 Clayton, Robert, Bishop of Clogher in Ireland, 152, 161 Colburn, Henry, 186 Cooper, Anthony Ashley. See Shaftesbury, 1st Earl of Courtois, Jacques, 171 cross-­dressing, 141–145, 164 Crowne, John, Calisto, 142 Curll, Edmund, 93 Davenant, William: intermedial dramaturgy of, 7, 31–33, 34, 36, 41–42; and Shakespeare adaptations, 31. WORKS: Macbeth (2018 production), 7, 31–43; audience response to, 41–42; John Eccle’s m ­ usic for, 7, 34, 35; instrumental m ­ usic for, 36–38; Richard Leveridge’s ­music for, 34; ­music rehearsals for, 36; reviews of, 41–42; settings of, 33–34; witches ­music in, 34–41; witches scenes in, 31, 33–41. See also syncopated time De Blainville, M.: tutor to John Blathwayt, 86, 96, 97 Delany, Mary: and art, 156–158, 159, 161–162, 164, 167–168, 173–174; friendship with Anne Donnellan, 151–153, 164–166, 168; finances of, 155–156; Jacobite activity of, 170–171, 173; marriage of, 155; paper mosaics of, 159; Joseph Brown’s line engraving of, Fig. 8.5, 160 diegetic supernaturalism, 8, 68–82 Digweed, Jane, 194 Donnellan, Anne: art collection of, 157, 166–173; bequests of, 168; book collection of, 162, 167; and Mary Delany, 151–153, 156–159, 161, 166, 167–168, 173; early life, 151–153; finances of, 153–159; and friendships, 10, 151–181; and George Frideric Handel, 157–159, 161–162; h ­ ouse of, 156; Jacobitism of, 169–172; literary interests of, 162–166; marriage refusal, 151, 153; on John Milton, 164; and Elizabeth Montagu, 161–165; and musical interests of, 152, 156, 158–162; and Samuel Richardson, 166, 178n77; on Shakespeare, 164–165; and spinsterhood, 173; and Jonathan Swift, 153, 156, 165–166, 173; and ­women artists, 172; and

Index • 231

Edward Young, 165. ILLUSTRATIONS: Rupert Barber’s miniature portrait of, Fig. 8.3, 158; Cata­l ogue of the Genuine Collection of Italian and Other Pictures, of Anne Donnellan, Fig. 8.8, 169; H ­ ouse of, Fig. 8.2, 157; ­Will, Fig. 8.1, 154 Donnellan, Katherine, 152 Doyle, John A. (writer), 189 dramatick opera: rise of, 2–3, 6–8; Macbeth, 39–46; Albion and Albanius, 65–85 Dryden, John: and Buckingham, Duke of (George Villiers), 18, 54–55; crypto Catholic language of, 21; and diegetic supernaturalism, 68–82; as historiographer royal, 7–8, 47, 53; and liberty, 50–52; and Andrew Marvell, 53–59; and memory, 7–8, 46–64; and John Milton, 6, 16–22, 27–28, 49–53, 58; and Restoration literary culture, 3, 17, 16–30, 46–64; and Rochester, 2nd Earl of (John Wilmot), 27–28; R ­ ose Alley attack on, 18, 29n9, 55; and stage machinery, 65–85; Jonathan Swift on, 27–28. WORKS: Absalom and Achitophel, 7–8, 18, 47–64; Albion and Albanius, 8, 68–85; All for Love, 22, 50–52; Annus Mirabilis, 56; Astraea Redux, 60n20; Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 19, 23, 28; Fables, Ancient and Modern, 55; His Majesties Declaration Defended, 47, 55; History of the League, 47; Marriage-­a-­ la-­Mode, 22; State of Innocence, 18, 20–22; Threnodia Augustalis, 55–58; “To My Lord Chancellor,” 56; Works of Virgil, 92, 95, 98. See also satire Dubourg, Matthew (violinist), 161 Dyrham library: Sir William ­Temple’s influence on, 86–92, 95, 97, 98 Dyrham Park, 8–9; Dutch influence on, 86–87; Epicurean and Stoic inscriptions in, 91–92; Horatian inscriptions, 92; library, 87–91, 92, 95, 97, 98; m ­ usic in, 100n53 early m ­ usic movement, 32–33 Eccles, John, 7, 34, 35 Edgeworth, Maria, 185, 187–188, 191, 195 Eger, Elizabeth, 6 Eisenstein, Robert (­music director), 34, 35, 37, 41 Elford, Sir William, 189 Emma. See ­under Austen, Jane

­English civil wars: and cultural memory of, 47–48 epicureanism, 89, 90–91 Exclusion Crisis, 21 Farinelli, 104, 161 Farquhar, George: economic hardship of, 145; military c­ areer of, 136. WORKS: Constant ­Couple, 145, 164; Love and a ­Bottle, 145; Recruiting Officer, 133–135, 136–137, 141 Felipe V, King of Spain, 104 Ferdinand VI, King of Spain, 104 Ferrier, Susan (novelist), 189 Folger Shakespeare Library, 31 Forth, Mary, 168 Fowle, Fulwar Craven, 194 Freind, William, Dean of Canterbury, 173 friendship, 5. See ­under Donnellan, Anne Garrick, David, 164 George, Prince Regent (­later, George IV, King of ­Great Britain): and dedication of Emma, 185, 182–183, 189, 190; as collector of Austen’s novels, 189–190 George I, King of G ­ reat Britain, 169–171 Gifford, William: on Jane Austen’s Emma, 185–186 Globe Theatre, 32–33 Goslings Bank, 154–156, 175n24 Grabu, Louis, 68, 82 Graham, Maria (novelist), 187 Granvill, Ann (­sister of Mary Delaney), 152 Granvill, Bernard (­brother of Mary Delaney), 168 Gunman, Christopher (Capt.): and Albion and Albanius, 75–77; and celestial phenomenon, 67–68, 72–75, 77, 79; journal of, 72, 74, 75, 78–79, 81, 84nn16–17; and Laura Martinozzi, dowager duchess of Modena, 74, 79; and United Com­pany, 68–69, 81–83. ILLUSTRATIONS: Brydges-­Scott reproduction of celestial phenomenon, Fig. 4.1, 73; Ink and watercolor rendering of celestial phenomenon, Fig. 4.2, 76; Second rendering of celestial phenomenon, with wings of clouds added, Fig. 4.3, 80

232 • Index

Handel, George Frideric, 2, 5; and John Blathwayt, 96–97; and Anne Donnellan, 157–159, 161–162, 173–174, 175; art collecting habits of, 179n84, 180n96; and John Milton, 164; and Domenico Scarlatti, 104. WORKS Alcina, 161; L’Allegro ed il Penseroso, 173; Atalanta, 161; Saul, 172; Semele, 161. ILLUSTRATIONS: ­Will, Fig. 8.10, 174 Hart, Charles (actor), 144 Haydn, Joseph, 2, 105, 107, 109. ILLUSTRATIONS: “Allegro.” String Quartet op. 50, no.1 in Bb Major, Fig. 6.5, 116; “Andante.” Symphony no. 94 (“Surprise”), Fig. 6.4, 115 Henrietta Maria, Queen of ­Great Britain, 144 Herries, Isabella, 194 Herringman, Henry, 20 Hobbes, Thomas: on laughter, 17; on state of nature, 52 Hogarth, William, Wesley ­Family (with Anne Donnellan), Fig. 8.7, 167 Horace, inscriptions in Dyrham Park, 92 Hutchinson, Lucy, 90 intermediality, 1–2, 31–33, 34, 36, 41–42 Jacob, Giles: and Blathwayt f­ amily, 87, 93–96; epicureanism of, 95; and Alexander Pope, 93–95; and Sir William T ­ emple, 95. WORKS: The Country Gentleman’s Vade Mecum, 93; Essays Relating to the Conduct of Life, 94–95; E ­ very Man His Own L ­ awyer, 94; Journey Back from Bristol to London, 94; Journey to Bath and Bristol, 94; Love in a Wood, or, The Country Squire, 94; Lover’s Miscellany, 93; New Law Dictionary, 94; “On the Water-­works in Mr. Blathwayt’s Gardens,” 93–94; Rape of the Smock, 94–95; Tractatus de Hermaphroditis, 94 Jacobitism: and Anne Donnellan, 169–172; and Mary Delaney, 170–171 Jacson, Frances, Rhoda, 188, 191, 195 James II, King of G ­ reat Britain, 172 Janssens, Cornelius, 169, 172 Jermyn, Henry, 27 Jones, Inigo, 33 Jonson, Ben, 33

Kipnis, Igor (harpsichordist), 110, 128n1 Kirkman harpsichord, 158–159, 176n42, Fig. 8.4, 159 Knight, Elizabeth, 192 Knight, Fanny, 189, 192, 193, 194 Knox, Vicesimus, Elegant Extracts, 5 lampoon, 24 Langford, Abraham, 168 Larpent, Anna: on Jane Austen, 188 Laughter: in satire, 16–30; and Davenant’s Macbeth, 34, 41; Thomas Hobbes on, 17 Lee, Nathaniel, 135. WORKS: Mithridates, 142–145; Rival Queens, 142–143 Lefroy, Benjamin, 193 L’Estrange, Sir Roger, 52–53; attacks on, 54–55; The Free-­Born Subject, 61n23 Litany of the D. of B., 54 Locke, Matthew, 37 Louis XIV, King of France, 172 Lucretius, 90 Lutley-­Sclater, Penelope, 194 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 195 Malafronte, Judith (director), 34 Maria Barbara de Bragança, (Queen of Spain), 104; and Domenico Scarlatti, 107–108 Martinozzi, Laura (dowager duchess of Modena), 74, 79 Marvell, Andrew: and John Dryden, 53–59; on Paradise Lost, 20, 53; on rhyme, 18–20; and State of Innocence, 53; as Whig polemicist, 53. WORKS: Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government, 21, 53; Horatian Ode on C ­ romwell’s Return from Ireland, 55–57; Last Instructions to a ­Painter, 27; “On Mr Milton’s Paradise Lost,” 19–20; Rehearsal Transpros’ d: The Second Part, 64n65 Mary (shipwrecked vessel), 83n5 Mary of Modena, 20, 21 Middleton, Thomas, 33; Life of Cicero, 162 Milton, John: and divine laughter, 16–18; John Dryden on, 49–53, 58; and John Dryden’s State of Innocence, 18, 20–22; and liberty, 50–51; Jonathan Swift on, 27–28. WORKS: L’Allegro, 164; “Notes on the Verse,” 19, 20, 27; Paradise Lost, 16–21, 49–50, 52, 98, 208, 210; Il Penseroso, 164; Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, 52

Index • 233

Mitford, Mary Russell, 189, 197n44 Montagu, Elizabeth Robinson, 152, 161, 166, 168, 173; correspondence with Anne Donnellan, 161, 162, 168. WORKS: Essay on Shakespeare, 165. ILLUSTRATIONS: Thomas Cheesman’s Engraving of, Fig. 8.6, 163 Montgomery, Rachel (alto singer), 40 Moore, Thomas (Irish poet and balladeer), 189 Morley, Countess of (Frances Talbot), 189; on Emma, 190–191, 194 Mountford, Susanna, 134–135 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 107 Mulgrave, Earl of (John Sheffield), 17, 26 Murray, John: and Jane Austen’s Emma, 182–187, 189–190, 194 Nalson, John, 54–55 Nöel, Emily (soprano), 36, 39 Norris, Henry (actor), 141 Oates, Titus, 49 Ogilby, John, 92 opera. See ­under Davenant: Macbeth; Dryden, John: Albion and Albanius Ottoboni, Pietro, Cardinal, 104 Ottway, Thomas, 145 parhelia. See Gunman, Christopher: celestial phenomenon Patel, Pierre, 172 Pater, Walter, 2, 11 Pendarves, Mary. See Delany, Mary Pepys, Samuel, 31, 40 Percival, Philip, 152 Performing Restoration Shakespeare Proj­ect, 31–33, 34–36, 41–43 period instruments, 32 Perrot, James Leigh, 193 Perrot, Jane Leigh, 193 pitches: of vowels, 1–2 playwrights: as veterans, 131, 136–137, 139–140, 145–146 polemics: Whig and Tory strategies, 48–58 Pope, Alexander: and Anne Donnellan, 10, 165; and friendship, 5; and Grub Street, 9, 93–95; and Haydn, 2–3, 93–95. WORKS: The Dunciad, 93–94

Popish Plot, 21 Porter, Anna Maria, 189, 197n47 Povey, Thomas, 88–89 practice-­based research, 33–34, 41–43 Prince of Wales/Regent (George IV): and Emma, 185, 182–183, 185, 189, 190; as collector of Austen’s novels, 189–190 Probert, Carwardine, 200 Purcell, Henry, 3, 97 Raree-­show, from ­Father Hopkins, 81–82 Restoration literary culture: aesthetics of, 6; class dynamics of, 22; and diegetic supernaturalism, 68–82; and empiricism, 66; and laughter, 6, 16–30; and rhyme, 2–3, 6, 19–21, 27, 56; stage spectacle in, 65–85; theater m ­ usic of, 31–46, 45nn21–22; and war, 47–49. See also satire Reverand, Cedric: on Queen Anne, 146 rhymed verse, 2–3, 6; controversy over, 2, 19–21 Richardson, Samuel, 166 Richmond, Robert (Director), 33–40, 41 Rivers, Elizabeth, 11; and Christopher Smart, 199–216; and natu­ral world, 202, 204, 205, 208, 210, 213; and Paradise Lost, 208–210; on translation, 200, 202–203, 215; on urban isolation, 201, 210, 213; and war, 215. WORKS: “Modern Painting in Ireland,” 199, 215; Out of Bedlam, 199–216. ILLUSTRATIONS: Out of Bedlam, Engraving I, Fig. 10.1, 207; Out of Bedlam, Engraving III, Fig. 10.2, 209; Out of Bedlam, Engraving XI, Fig. 10.3, 211; Out of Bedlam, Engraving XII, Fig. 10.4, 212; Out of Bedlam, Engraving XXVI, Fig. 10.5, 214. See also Smart, Christopher Romantic composers, 3 Romantic poets, 3 Roseingrave, Thomas: and Scarlatti cult, 104 Sackville, Charles, 6th Earl of Dorset, 17 Saint-­Réal, César, 162 Samuel, Richard, Portraits in the Characters of the Muses in the ­Temple of Apollo, 6; and ­women’s role in the arts, 14n31 satire: corrective power of, 17, 25; as exposure, 25; and lampoon, 18, 28n8; and laughter, 16–18, 20–28

234 • Index

Scarlatti, Domenico, 9; ­career of, 103–105, 129n10; cross-­handed passages of, 107–111, 130n17; and George Frideric Handel, 104; key changes of, 106–109; and Maria Barbara, 104–105, 107–108; and musical jokes, 106–111; originality of, 103, 105–106; and popularity in E ­ ngland, 104, 128n5; and sonata form, 104–105, 129n13; sonatas, difficulty of, 111; sonatas as visual spectacles, 110–111. WORKS: Essercizi per Gravicembolo, 103; Sonata in A Minor, K. 175, 106; Sonata in B Minor K. 27, 108–109; Sonata in C Minor, K. 84, 106; Sonata in D Major, K. 29, 107–108; Sonata in D Minor, K. 120, 109–111; Sonata in E Minor, K. 394, 106; Sonata in G Major, K. 427, 109–110; Suites de Pieces Pour le Clavier, 104. ILLUSTRATIONS: Sonata in A Minor, K. 175 (Fig. 6.3), 114; Sonata in B Minor, K. 27 (­measures 1–16), (Fig. 6.8), 119; Sonata in B Minor, K. 27 (­measures 17–32), (Fig. 6.9), 120; Sonata in C Minor, K. 84 (Fig. 6.2), 113; Sonata in D Major, K. 29 (­measures 1–25), (Fig. 6.6), 117; Sonata in D Major, K. 29 (­measures 25–49), (Fig. 6.7), 118; Sonata in D Minor, K. 120 (­measures 1–12), (Fig. 6.13), 124; Sonata in D Minor, K. 120 (­measures 13–27), (Fig. 6.14), 125; Sonata in D Minor, K. 120 (­measures 27–44), (Fig. 6.15), 126; Sonata in D Minor, K. 120, (­measures 45–58), (Fig. 6.16), 127; Sonata in E Minor, K. 394 (Fig. 6.1), 112; Sonata in G Major, K. 427 (­measures 1–12), (Fig. 6.10), 121; Sonata in G Major, K. 427 (­measures 13–24), (Fig. 6.11), 122; Sonata in G Major, K. 427 (­measures 25–39) (Fig. 6.12), 123 Schneider, Rebecca, 34 Scott, Sir Walter: on Albion and Albanius, 67, 72–75, 85n21; on Emma, 183–188, 195 Sedley, Sir Charles, 17 semi-­opera. See ­under Davenant: Macbeth; Dryden, John: Albion and Albanius Shadwell, Charles: economic hardship of, 145; military c­ areer of, 136; repre­sen­ta­tions of ­women, 137. WORKS: Fair Quaker of Deal, or the Humours of the Navy, 138–139, 142; Humours of the Army, 134, 137–138, 139–141, 145, 146 Shaftesbury, 1st Earl of (Anthony Ashley Cooper), 18, 50, 58

Shakespeare, William: Macbeth, 33; The Tempest, 33 Sharpe, Anne, 189, 190, 192 Sheffield, John, Earl of Mulgrave, 17, 26 Shuttleworth, Anne, 168 Smart, Christopher, 11; and madness, 200; and Paradise Lost, 208–210; on translation, 202–203. WORKS: Jubilate Agno, 200–206, 208, 213, 215 sonata form. See ­under Scarlatti, Domenico Southwell, Katherine, 168 spinsterhood, 173–174 stage machinery, 8. See also Dryden, John: Albion and Albanius Stanley, Thomas (­English poet and ­philosopher), 90 Stead, William Force (American diplomat and poet), 200 Steele, Sir Richard, 93, 136 Strada, Anna Maria (Italian soprano), 161 sun dogs. See Gunman, Christopher: celestial phenomenon Swift, Jonathan: and Anne Donnellan, 10, 153, 156, 165–166, 173; and Scriblerus Club, 93; and Sir William T ­ emple, 89. WORKS: ­Battle of the Books, 6–7, 27–28, 89–90 syncopated time, 34, 37, 39, 40, 43 Talbot, Frances, Countess of Morley, 189; on Emma, 190–191, 194 Tate, Nahum, 4 Taylor, Geoffrey, 200–201 Taylor, Zachary, 63n53 ­Temple, Sir William: as ambassador, 89; and ­Battle of the Books, 89; influence on Dyrham library, 86–92; interdisciplinary curiosity of, 89–91. WORKS: “Upon the Gardens of Epicurus,” 90 Tillemans, Peter, 171 Tonson, Jacob, 92 translation, 200, 202–203, 215 Underhill, Cave, 81–82 van der Meulen, Adam Frans, 172 van der Meulen, Pieter, 172 Villiers, George. See Buckingham, 2nd Duke of Virgil, 48, 52; in Swift’s B ­ attle of the Books, 27–28 virtuosity, 3

Index • 235

Walpole, Horace, 172 Wang, Yuja (pianist), 109 war effort: and economic hardship, 146; and impressment, 134; and military infrastructure, 135; recruiting acts, 133; ­women’s roles in, 133–139 Watermeier, Ethan (bass singer), 39 Wesley, Garret, 1st Earl of Mornington, 162, 167 Wesley, Richard, 167 William III, King of G ­ reat Britain, 86–87, 89, 172 Wilmot, John, 2nd Earl of Rochester, 17, 18; attacked in Dryden’s All for Love, 22; satire of Charles II, 24; satire of Dryden, 23–25; satire of John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, 26. WORKS: Artemisia to Chloe, 26; The Ramble, 25; Tunbridge Wells, 25; Timon, 25

Winn, James: on Queen Anne, 103, 143, 146; on the arts, 102–103; on John Dryden, 3; flute recordings of, 12n2; and intermediality, 7, 32; and ­music, 2–3, 32, 102, 111; on John Milton, 1; on Restoration theater, 1–2, 81; on moral work of the humanities, 11–12, 215; on pitches of vowels, 1. WORKS: John Dryden and His World, 3; The Pale of Words, 216; Queen Anne: Patroness of the Arts, 3–4, 103; Unsuspected Eloquence, 2; When Beauty Fires the Blood, 3 witches scenes. See Davenant’s Macbeth Woffington, Margaret (Peg), 164 ­women: and breeches parts, 133–134. See also war effort: ­women’s roles in Young, Edward, 165–166