Roman Women in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries 9781501514203, 9781501518560

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Introduction: Roman Women in Early Modern English Drama
“Rome’s Rich Ornament”: Lavinia, Commoditization, and the Senses in William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus
Blending Motherhoods: Volumnia and the Representation of Maternity in William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus
“Silent, Not as a Foole”: William Shakespeare’s Roman Women and Early Modern Tropes of Feminine Silence
“Timidae obsequantur”: Mothers and Wives in Matthew Gwinne’s Nero
“Let Me Use All My Pleasures”: The Ovidian Courtship of the Emperor’s Daughter in Ben Jonson’s Poetaster
“Few Wise Women’s Honesties”: Dialoguing with Roman Women in Ben Jonson’s Roman Plays
Ben Jonson’s and Thomas May’s “Political Ladies”: Forms of Female Political Agency
Bawds, Wives, and Foreigners: The Question of Female Agency in the Roman Plays of the Fletcher Canon
“The Beauties of the Time”: Roman Women in Philip Massinger’s The Roman Actor
“Poison on, Monsters”: Female Poisoners in Early Modern Roman Tragedies
Notes on Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Roman Women in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries

Late Tudor and Stuart Drama

Gender, Performance, and Material Culture Series Editors: Cristina León Alfar (Hunter College, CUNY, USA)Helen Ostovich (McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada)

Roman Women in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries

Edited by Domenico Lovascio

ISBN 978-1-5015-1856-0 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-1420-3 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-1405-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020934024 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck Cover image: © Hans Burgkmair, “Drei gut Haidin”, in Bertschi, Nikolaus, Wappenbuch besonders deutscher Geschlechter (1515) – Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Cod. icon. 308, fol. 25r www.degruyter.com

Table of Contents Domenico Lovascio Introduction: Roman Women in Early Modern English Drama

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Alice Equestri “Rome’s Rich Ornament”: Lavinia, Commoditization, and the Senses in William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus 19 Michela Compagnoni Blending Motherhoods: Volumnia and the Representation of Maternity in 39 William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus Maria Elisa Montironi “Silent, Not as a Foole”: William Shakespeare’s Roman Women and Early Modern Tropes of Feminine Silence 59 Cristiano Ragni “Timidae obsequantur”: Mothers and Wives in Matthew Gwinne’s Nero

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Michele De Benedictis “Let Me Use All My Pleasures”: The Ovidian Courtship of the Emperor’s Daughter in Ben Jonson’s Poetaster 99 Fabio Ciambella “Few Wise Women’s Honesties”: Dialoguing with Roman Women in Ben Jonson’s Roman Plays 119 Angelica Vedelago Ben Jonson’s and Thomas May’s “Political Ladies”: Forms of Female Political 141 Agency Domenico Lovascio Bawds, Wives, and Foreigners: The Question of Female Agency in the Roman 165 Plays of the Fletcher Canon

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Cristina Paravano “The Beauties of the Time”: Roman Women in Philip Massinger’s The Roman Actor 185 Emanuel Stelzer “Poison on, Monsters”: Female Poisoners in Early Modern Roman 207 Tragedies Notes on Contributors Index

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Introduction: Roman Women in Early Modern English Drama “Appellata est enim ex viro virtus,” explains Cicero in Tusculanae Disputationes (first century BCE): virtus takes its name from vir, the Latin for “man.”¹ The ideal of virtus, embracing a much broader assortment of values than the current notion of “virtue,” was a foundational staple of Roman society and was viewed as the (almost) exclusive province of men. Building on Cicero (and Varro), Lactantius—a Christian scholar who became an advisor to the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine I—would argue a few centuries later in De opificio Dei (third through fourth centuries CE) that “Vir itaque nominatus est, quod maior in eo vis est quam in femina; et hinc virtus nomen accepit. Item mulier (ut Varro interpretatur) a mollitie, immutata et detracta littera, velut mollier.”² Simply put, Lactantius contends that men are stronger than women, and so they gave virtus its name; woman, on the contrary, takes her name, mulier, from weakness itself. Accordingly, women cannot really aspire to virtus: they just lack the necessary strength. The uttermost to which they can tend is living by the ideal of pudicitia, that is, chastity. Thus, the arena in which men’s virtus should ideally be put to the test is war; the arena in which women are supposed to test their pudicitia is sex. In general terms, such a conception of the gender landscape of the society of ancient Rome widely penetrated the early modern English social imagination, which saw ancient Rome as a model for art, culture, politics, military technique, and, especially, masculinity. The Roman man was simply the best man there could exist: disciplined, loyal, strong, constant, and, above all, in control of himself. As Clifford J. Ronan famously remarked, “‘Roman’ meant ‘man’ to the superlative degree: stereotypically masculine man the ruler, the killer, the Stoic, the builder, the wielder of words—someone self-secure enough to protect (when so inclined) weak and vulnerable females, children, subject peoples, or artists.”³ Hence, the plays with a Roman setting produced for the early modern playhouses seem to have appealed especially to a male audience that relished the opportunity to watch a compelling and inspiring array of masculine virtues enacted on

 Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes 2.43; see also Varro, De lingua latina 5.73. Ironically enough, the grammatical gender of virtus in Latin is feminine.  Lactantius, De opificio Dei 12.57– 58.  Ronan, “Antike Roman,” 41. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501514203-001

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a stage by male players acting renowned male personalities from the Roman past on the backdrop of well-known momentous events in Roman history. By and large, it would be difficult to deny that the manly sphere is far more fully developed than the female one in the early modern English plays set in Rome. Small wonder, then, that, when it comes to scholarly discussions of the Roman plays of the period, the attention is predominantly focused on male characters, masculine roles in society, and manly systems of values, with the partial exception of William Shakespeare’s plays.⁴ I say “partial” because, even though Shakespeare’s Roman women have been the subject of numerous thought-provoking critical contributions in the form of journal articles and book chapters, there is no book-length study dealing systematically with Roman female characters across Shakespeare’s entire Roman corpus apart from Coppélia Kahn’s landmark Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds and Women. ⁵ Over twenty years have gone by, but nothing even remotely comparable to Kahn’s study has been produced in this period on Roman women in Shakespeare or any of his contemporaries, whereas, for example, the Greek women and the European women of early modern English drama have been recently dealt with in a monograph and a special journal issue respectively.⁶ At a time in which the reception of the Roman past in early modern English literature and culture shines as a particularly thriving area of inquiry, it seems

 Among the studies on Shakespeare’s Roman plays produced in the twentieth century, see MacCallum, Shakespeare’s Roman Plays and Their Background; Spencer, “Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Romans”; Barroll, “Shakespeare and Roman History”; Charney, Shakespeare’s Roman Plays; Traversi, Shakespeare: The Roman Plays; Simmons, Shakespeare’s Pagan Worlds; Cantor, Shakespeare’s Rome; Platt, Rome and Romans according to Shakespeare; Hunter, “A Roman Thought”; Wilders, The Lost Garden; Green, Plutarch Revisited; Miola, Shakespeare’s Rome; Siegel, Shakespeare’s English and Roman History Plays; Leggatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama; Thomas, Shakespeare’s Roman Worlds; Martindale and Martindale, Shakespeare and the Uses of Antiquity; Wells, The Wide Arch; Miles, Shakespeare and the Constant Romans; Kahn, Roman Shakespeare. For twentieth-century studies of the reception of the Roman past in early modern literature and culture beyond Shakespeare, see Gentili, La Roma antica degli elisabettiani; Ronan, “Antike Roman.”  On Shakespeare’s Roman women, see, with no pretense to exhaustiveness, Maus, “Language and Violence in Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece”; Traub, “Jewels, Statues, and Corpses”; Paster, The Body Embarrassed; Marshall, “Portia’s Wound, Calphurnia’s Dream”; J. O. Newman, “‘And Let Mild Women to Him Lose Their Mildness’”; Harris, “Sexuality as a Signifier for Power Relations”; Weber, “‘Worse than Philomel’”; Roulon, “Silencing the Feminine Voice in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar”; Griffin, “Cato’s Daughter, Brutus’s Wife”; Del Sapio Garbero, “Lucrece’s Tabula Anatomica”; Hopkins, “Men’s Busts and Women’s Thighs.”  Pollard, Greek Tragic Women on Shakespearean Stages; Semple and Vyroubalová, European Women in Early Modern Drama.

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rather odd that no monograph study or edited collection has emerged focusing on the Roman women of early modern English drama.⁷ Thousands of pages have been written in the past three decades on Roman male characters as well as on non-Roman women in early modern English drama (e. g., Cleopatra, Boudicca, Dido, Cordelia, Desdemona, etc.); nevertheless, little has emerged regarding what makes Roman women “Roman” and what their role in those plays is beyond their supposed function as supporting characters or even mere backdrops for the male protagonists. In other words, as Lisa Hopkins and I lamented in 2016 in the introduction to the thematic issue of Textus. English Studies in Italy on The Uses of Rome in English Renaissance Drama, it seems legitimate to argue that “not enough has been done about what might be gathered about the representation of female characters in the specific context of Roman drama, especially given that the narrative of the founding of the Republic was centrally bound up with the story of a woman, Lucrece.”⁸ At the time, Hopkins and I formulated a number of questions that we perceived as especially urgent: Do female characters in Roman plays feature the same traits that can be found in other genres or do they present any peculiar traits? Does the Roman ideal of virtus in any way clash with the popular stereotype of woman as invariably disorderly and possessed with an insatiable sexual appetite? Are Roman female characters somehow “special” in early modern English drama? Do the portrayals of women in Roman drama mirror to any extent the actual condition of English women by projecting English values onto their implicit judgments

 The last twenty years witnessed the publication of Parker, Plato’s Republic and Shakespeare’s Rome; Del Sapio Garbero, ed., Identity, Otherness and Empire; Hatchuel and Vienne-Guerrin, eds. Shakespeare on Screen; Del Sapio Garbero, Isenberg, and Pennacchia, eds., Questioning Bodies in Shakespeare’s Rome; Chernaik, The Myth of Rome; Pennacchia, Shakespeare intermediale; Burrow, Shakespeare & Classical Antiquity; Starks-Estes, Violence, Trauma and Virtus in Shakespeare’s Roman Poems and Plays; Innes, Shakespeare’s Roman Plays; Holland, ed., Shakespeare and Rome; Cantor, Shakespeare’s Roman Trilogy; Del Sapio Garbero, ed., Rome in Shakespeare’s World; Guardamagna, Roman Shakespeare; Gray, Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic; Bate, How the Classics Made Shakespeare. For twenty-first-century studies of the reception of the Roman past in early modern literature and culture beyond Shakespeare, see A. Miller, Roman Triumphs in Early Modern English Culture; Hadfield, Shakespeare and Republicanism; Hopkins, The Cultural Uses of the Caesars on the English Renaissance Stage; Cox Jensen, Reading the Roman Republic in Early Modern England; Paleit, War, Liberty and Caesar; Cadman, Sovereigns and Subjects in Early Modern Neo-Senecan Drama; Cheney and Hardie, The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, Volume 2: 1558 – 1660; Lovascio, Un nome, mille volti; Cadman, Hopkins, and Duxfield, eds., Rome and Home; Lovascio and Hopkins, eds., The Uses of Rome in English Renaissance Drama.  Lovascio and Hopkins, “Introduction,” 14.

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or do they in fact constitute a privileged venue in which to project desires and aspirations about women through the creation of idealised female characters?⁹

Such questions, however, could be only tangentially answered by the contributions in that venue, because, for several reasons, we could not focus exclusively on women. Hence, I decided to embark on a further, more targeted exploration of such issues in order to contribute to filling this critical gap through the present collection, which welcomes the voices of ten young and promising Italian scholars (three of whom had already contributed to the aforementioned thematic issue of Textus) with a view to further complicating and problematizing our understanding of the conception of the Roman world and of women in early modern English drama. That the Roman women of early modern English drama have attracted so little scholarly attention is arguably all the more striking in light of the fact that Gender Studies and Women’s Studies are now firmly established critical avenues.¹⁰ The reason behind this gap is possibly to be attributed to some sort of critical misconception that there may be no satisfactory insights to be gained by subjecting Roman women to the same scrutiny that has been reserved for Roman men in early modern English plays. According to Ronan, “As for Roman women, they are sometimes patronizingly termed ‘masculine,’ but oftener freakish, whorish, or ripe for being violated and victimized. Stage Rome’s obvious inability to treat women as people thus points to an instability, a hollowness, in two cultures: the Ancient and the Early Modern.”¹¹ Ronan’s curious idea that the early modern Roman plays were obviously unable “to treat women as people”—this collection sets out to demonstrate—is simply inaccurate. Not only were Roman female characters frequently portrayed as people with separate identities of their own and not merely as commoditized entities; more

 Lovascio and Hopkins, “Introduction,” 14.  On women in early modern English literature and culture, see, among others, Bamber, Comic Women, Tragic Men; Jardine, Still Harping on Daughters; Woodbridge, Women and the English Renaissance; Henderson and McManus, Half Humankind; Adelman, Suffocating Mothers; Hopkins, The Female Hero in English Renaissance Tragedy; Keeble, ed. The Cultural Identity of Seventeenth-Century Woman; Charney, Shakespeare on Love and Lust; Kemp, Women in the Age of Shakespeare; Richards and Thorne, eds., Rhetoric, Women and Politics in Early Modern England; Malcolmson and Mihoko, eds., Debating Gender in Early Modern England; Bach and Kennedy, eds., Feminism and Early Modern Texts; Higginbotham, Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Sisters; Johnson, Staging Women and the Soul-Body Dynamic in Early Modern England; Crawford, Mediatrix; Kusunoki, Gender and Representations of the Female Subject in Early Modern England; Gillen, Chaste Value; Alfar, Women and Shakespeare’s Cuckoldry Plays.  Ronan, “Antike Roman,” 41.

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importantly, a sharper focus on their often crucial role in the plays in which they appear in fact produces unexpected insights into how the events and personalities of the Roman past were—and were not—susceptible to being molded, shaped, and fashioned by current social, political, and cultural discourses about the condition, role, and prerogatives of women, especially regarding issues connected with the control of their bodies and the expression of their ideas; regarding their potential for political agency and their position in respect of education and learning; regarding masculine anxieties over their supposed sexual voracity as related to the moral as well as the economic worth of virginity before marriage and of chaste monogamy thereafter; regarding the incessant threat of feminization to which men felt they might be dangerously exposed in the presence of women; as well as regarding more specific controversies concerning gender roles such as those sparked by such pamphlets as Joseph Swetnam’s The Arraignment of Women, and the anonymous Hic Mulier and Haec Vir. At first blush, this might potentially make it look like there is nothing particularly remarkable about the depiction of Roman—as opposed to the portrayal of non-Roman— women in early modern English drama. But this is not the case. Even though the representation of Roman female characters inevitably shares several traits with that of their non-Roman counterparts, it is nonetheless possible to single out aspects that would seem to be broadly identifiable as specific of Roman women. In discussing the depictions of Roman personalities on the early modern English stage in general terms, John E. Curran, Jr., has recently argued that “Whether exhibiting demi-godlike virtue or devil-worthy depravity, they could endow a dramatis personae with a built-in stateliness and sublimity— and with, also, an undeniable relevance. For, … given Roman stories’ truth and importance, they were ubiquitously held to supply moral lessons, utility for personal and political life.”¹² As it happens, Roman women tend to be depicted at the extremes of the continuum virtue-depravity, with very few of them lying in between. Sometimes, their very Romanitas seems to frame them as examples even in spite of themselves. The Roman ideal of pudicitia, for instance, appears to be felt as much more alive by these female characters than by others, insofar as Roman women are usually viewed as either epitomes of chastity or irredeemable whores; in other words, it is as though the ideal of pudicitia were closer to home, thus making either their praise greater or their condemnation harsher. In addition, as the chapters in the collection show, the Roman female characters of early modern English drama very often play pivotal roles or serve crucial functions in the plays in which they appear. Hence, it is reductive, limiting, even mis-

 Curran, “Roman Tragedy,” 101.

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leading to look at these plays as exclusively male-centered. Besides, these female characters seem to possess a self-consciousness about their identities, as well as about their places in history and in the socio-political processes that define and are in turn defined by their actions, which, too, would seem to set them apart from non-Roman female characters. This is again in line with what Curran has recently acknowledged as typical of Roman characters in early modern English drama at large: “Romans are imagined as: alive to their own history and their identity as Romans; attuned to their own political traditions and processes; and at least ostensibly dedicated to the directives of Stoicism.”¹³ That historical and socio-political processes are so important in this context is hardly surprising, in that the Roman plays tend to be primarily—albeit by no means solely—focused on political issues. To be sure, the Roman women brought on stage in England in the early modern period are mostly women who to some extent contributed to shaping Roman history by dint of their political influence (e. g., Agrippina and Messalina) or who satisfied the Roman historians’ need to provide edifying female portraits (e. g., Lucrece and Octavia). In light of the predominant political dimension of the plays in which they are featured, a critical focus particularly—though not exclusively—directed to the exploration of their agency and effectiveness in the political arena is a particularly apt perspective to look at these Roman female characters and make sense of their role, importance, and defining qualities. Such an approach proves to be extraordinarily productive of fresh insights into the plays examined in this volume, especially in the case of the Roman tragedies set in the imperial era, in which the characterization of the female characters often responds—more or less overtly—to the depictions of tyrannical Roman emperors as feminized by lust (first extensively discussed by Rebecca W. Bushnell), in particular concerning whether women gain or are denied power in contradistinction to men.¹⁴ As the chapters that make up this volume seek to demonstrate, the Roman women of early modern English drama are not invariably marginal or peripheral; in fact, the playwrights frequently alter the historical accounts in order to expand female roles or foreground them. Despite seldom performing lengthy soliloquies, Roman women are at times even able to usurp tragic grandeur from men or display higher political alertness than their male counterparts and thus exert significant influence on the political world, albeit in less direct ways and in more fluid contexts than those traditionally appertaining to men. Roman women can be highly educated and rhetorically skillful, and their depic-

 Curran, “Roman Tragedy,” 102.  Bushnell, Tragedies of Tyrants.

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tion needs not be limited to the enactment of the values of pudicitia through the paradigm of the silent, chaste, and obedient wife; nor are Roman women necessarily viewed as leaky vessels, unable to keep secrets and contain bodily fluids, or talking too much as a correlative of their insatiable sexual appetite. Put differently, the plays under scrutiny in this collection do not necessarily offer women who abide by the rules of patriarchal society as exempla imitanda, nor do they invariably expose those who to varying degrees defy the strictures of patriarchal society as exempla execranda. Much more interestingly, they treat female characters with a high degree of complexity that ends up challenging to some extent the standard early modern categorization of women as obedient daughters and wives, devoted widows, caring mothers, promiscuous mistresses, or lustful prostitutes. And whereas the respective gender spheres ultimately stay broadly unchanged (the public is masculine; the domestic is feminine), they do not remain untouched either; on the contrary, by coming into contact, they affect each other in unexpected ways, thus opening up imaginative spaces and venues of discussions concerning some of the most crucial gender-related issues of the early modern era. In other words, the portrayal of Roman women in early modern English drama seems to provide a particularly effective exemplification of Kathryn Schwarz’s claim that although “masculine dominion forges a totalizing structure, which women disrupt only through local, ephemeral incursions … yet, … feminine will executes social imperatives, and plays a legitimate part in the operations of power.”¹⁵ The fact that all the plays tackled in this collection were written by men (as well as performed onstage by boys and men) ought not to be seen as potentially making the conclusions drawn about the representation of Roman female characters in early modern English drama irrelevant. As Valerie Traub believes, “male-authored discourses were an intrinsic, indeed, constitutive part of women’s lived experience. They provided the images and idioms that women encountered, discussed among themselves, willfully appropriated, silently disavowed, and publicly contested.”¹⁶ As a matter of fact, what we find in these texts is, as Schwarz again suggests, “the fact that male authors do not represent agency as the sole province of men. The patriarchal enterprise is far less than the sum of its parts, and stories about feminine volition divulge a great deal about the strains and the breaks.”¹⁷

 Schwarz, What You Will, 14.  Traub, The Renaissance of Lesbianism, 21. See also Dolan, Dangerous Familiars, 3.  Schwarz, What You Will, 16.

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With a sharp focus crucial for the collection to display a monograph-like level of coherence and consistency, thus unifying its ten chapters—arranged in chronological order (i. e., from Shakespeare to Richards)—by as many different scholars, each bringing a slightly different background to the table, Roman Women in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries highlights the crucial role of Roman female characters in the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries by exploring with an unprecedented thoroughness and variety of perspectives the diverse issues connected to female identities in the early modern English plays set in ancient Rome, with particular attention to the question of their agency in the man-dominated political sphere as a common thread among the works of very different playwrights. In this respect, a potentially wider theoretical variety (mainly intended as the possibility of going farther beyond the question of female agency) gave way not only to extensiveness of coverage, but—much more importantly—to the monograph-like tightness of focus with which we resolved to endow this collection. Although none of the chapters in the collection adopt a presentist perspective, we are confident that a close and comparative examination of the Roman women of early modern English drama proves to be particularly timely now that the spread of the #MeToo movement, the emergence of an increasing number of women candidates for political office, and a growing hostility throughout the world to the LGBT+ community have resulted in the issue of gender, widely conceived, being urgently debated and under revision in quite fluid and more multiple ways than ever before. More or less decisively, all of the plays here examined are part of a cultural heritage that has informed and contributed until today to gender relations and representations, as well as to conceptions of female power. In this sense, the contributors’ focus on female agency, masculinity, and femininity, which are investigated with a pronounced political and rhetorical bent, is not merely an organizing principle, insofar as all the contributors display keen awareness of the fact that each of the text discussed in the volume presents feminine subjects who to varying degrees engage conventions of gender, thus to some extent altering the ways in which those conventions operate and signify. In spite of its being similarly concerned with agency, Roman Women in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries does not share the same feminist approach as Kahn’s Roman Shakespeare, since this volume looks as the texts from a more pronounced historicist perspective. That being said, however, it is necessary to stress that all the chapters in this collection do take into account the important developments that have been made possible in Early Modern Studies by the previous interventions of feminist scholarship, which, as Schwarz remarks, “have resisted totalizing accounts of subordination and containment. Rather than take feminine subjectivity as fully conscripted to patriarchal ends, such scholar-

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ship reveals that women can transform, commandeer, or manipulate the terms of convention, and expands our understanding of what the enactment of social roles might mean.”¹⁸ Albeit not in a feminist key, this volume does explore these crucial issues with a view to yielding new insights into the plays under scrutiny, as well as into early modern discourses on gender more broadly conceived. The volume also crucially puts Shakespeare’s Roman world in dialogue with a number of Roman plays by playwrights as diverse as Matthew Gwinne, Ben Jonson, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, Thomas May, and Nathanael Richards, some of whom are seldom tackled by scholars. Thus, the chapters in this collection also seek to challenge conventional wisdom about the plays under scrutiny by specifically focusing on their female rather than male characters, while at the same time enriching our understanding of Shakespeare’s Roman women and sharpening our awareness of the fact that the Roman world on the early modern stage cannot be straightforwardly and simplistically equated with Shakespeare’s, and that pitting the depictions of female characters by this range of playmakers against each other is likely to produce insights into the range of possibilities available to them and into the reasons behind their specific dramatic choices. As a matter of fact, there is more to Roman femininity in early modern English drama than Volumnia and Virgilia, Portia and Calpurnia, Lavinia and Octavia. What about, say, Fulvia and Sempronia, Lucina and Eudoxa, Agrippina and Poppaea? In this sense, Roman Women in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries also aims to contribute to correcting the general hegemony of Shakespeare in scholarly discussions of early modern drama by viewing him as one among several playmakers who were deeply fascinated by ancient Roman culture and were keenly aware of the implications of the portrayal of women in such a setting. Although the Shakespearean project is without a doubt uniquely interesting for its subtlety, we believe that a more consistent and assiduous exploration of the canons of other playwrights of the period can reveal both what is common to and  Schwarz, What You Will, 10. Also see, e. g., Adelman, Suffocating Mothers; Amussen, An Ordered Society; Belsey, Shakespeare and the Loss of Eden and The Subject of Tragedy; Berry, Of Chastity and Power; Dolan, Dangerous Familiars and Marriage and Violence; Ezell, The Patriarch’s Wife; Ferguson, Dido’s Daughters; Gowing, Domestic Dangers; Howard and Rackin, Engendering a Nation; Hutson, The Usurer’s Daughter; Jardine, Still Harping on Daughters; Jordan, Renaissance Feminism; Kahn, Man’s Estate; Kelly and Leslie, eds., Menacing Virgins; Korda, Shakespeare’s Domestic Economies; N. Miller and Yavneh, eds., Maternal Measures; Neely, Broken Nuptials; K. Newman, Fashioning Femininity; Paster, The Body Embarrassed and Humoring the Body; Rose, The Expense of Spirit; Schwarz, Tough Love; Shannon, Sovereign Amity; Traub, The Renaissance of Lesbianism; Wall, Staging Domesticity; Willis, Malevolent Nurture. This list is inevitably suggestive rather than exhaustive.

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what is distinctive in the visions of the individual playmakers, while simultaneously leading to a more accurate and engaging assessment of the extent to which Shakespeare is actually representative of the vibrant and variegated ways of appropriating the classics on the early modern stage and page. Alice Equestri opens the collection by bringing to the fore the realization that Lavinia is represented throughout Titus Andronicus via recurring images of precious commodities, jewelry, and luxury food. This metaphorical system, she suggests, is part of a rhetoric of craftsmanship that encompasses the play more at large. In her chapter, she analyzes the meaning of the images referred to Lavinia, thus highlighting the essential quality of their referents as products to be enjoyed through the senses. In Equestri’s view, the symbolical transformation of a woman into valuable static objects at once foregrounds her nature as a medium of exchange and expresses masculine anxiety for female sexual empowerment. Such constructions of Lavinia’s femininity are also the starting point for an investigation of her link with Tamora, whose characterization partly shares similar tropes. In contrast to more traditional critical readings of Volumnia in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus focusing upon the relationship between her and her son in ways that stress their interdependence and/or the construction of the eponymous hero’s masculinity in relation to his mother, Michela Compagnoni’s chapter sheds light on Volumnia’s maternity, here viewed as the confluence of most of the meanings attached to motherhood both in ancient Rome and early modern England, which the Renaissance stage aptly intercepts. Her composite construct, she suggests, becomes paradigmatic as the point of contact between two antithetical notions of maternity that can blend in Volumnia as nowhere else in the Shakespearian canon. Compagnoni ultimately argues that only in Shakespeare’s Rome can such monstrous motherhood be foregrounded and triumph without being demonized and consequently annihilated. Maria Elisa Montironi focuses on the complex and challenging early modern views on silence, which she regards as central to Shakespeare’s characterization of female figures. The use of silence in his depiction of female Roman dramatis personae, Montironi contends, is especially pregnant on a symbolic level, because Shakespeare’s Roman plays are essentially political tragedies abounding in topical references. In Montironi’s view, the dramatization of res populi Romani is both a means of negotiating and an instrument used to discuss issues pertaining to English society. Such concerns include ways of coping and “doing things” with silence, as she seeks to demonstrate through her exploration of five Shakespearian Roman women and their relation to non-speech: Lavinia in Titus Andronicus, Portia and Calpurnia in Julius Caesar, and Volumnia and Virgilia in Coriolanus.

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In his chapter, Cristiano Ragni tackles Gwinne’s tragedy Nero, one of the most ambitious neo-Latin plays of early modern England, which has been unduly neglected by scholars despite representing one of the few contributions given by academic drama to the successful genre of the history play. By analyzing some of the female characters in Nero, namely Messalina, Agrippina, and Poppaea, Ragni highlights Gwinne’s personal refashioning of the historical accounts of the lives of these Roman women as provided by Tacitus, Suetonius, Dio Cassius, and Seneca. Ragni especially underscores Gwinne’s attempt to provide an unprecedented insight into these women’s psychology, viewed as a sign of the influence exerted by the multifaceted female characters created in London by the playwrights of the commercial stage, thereby somehow reassessing the image of some of these Roman matrons. Michele De Benedictis focuses on Julia Maior, the only legitimate daughter of the Roman Emperor Augustus, and her role in Jonson’s comical satire Poetaster. Following the Renaissance scholarly tradition, this play set in ancient Rome historically misidentifies Julia with Corinna, the literary pseudonym adopted for Ovid’s love mistress in his wanton Amores, and attributes to her a crucial role in the scandal determining the poet’s banishment from imperial court. According to De Benedictis, Jonson represents her illicit relationship with Ovid’s character and its elegiac overtones as a defiant insubordination to the decorum imposed to Roman young noblewomen, in contrast with Augustus’s severe reform of laws concerning patriarchal authority on sexual license and adultery. The playwright’s satirical (and ethical) attitude, De Benedictis remarks, is further complicated by his allusions to the late Elizabethan fashion for Ovidian narrative poems and by Julia’s self-conscious assertiveness derived from her fertilizing interaction with Ovid, beyond the mannerisms of sacrilegious revelry or dissolute eroticism. The presence of misogyny or lack thereof and, more broadly speaking, the ways in which gender and sexual identities are configured in Jonson’s Roman tragedies Sejanus His Fall and Catiline His Conspiracy are the main concerns of Fabio Ciambella’s chapter. Jonson’s Roman women, he argues, demonstrate a peculiar talent for levelling the playing field with men of power, even linguistically, thus offering a unique perspective on the configuration of gender-related issues. This is true, in Ciambella’s opinion, even when comparing the women in Sejanus and Catiline with more “canonical” (i. e., more traditionally submissive) Roman females of the early modern stage. For these reasons, he compares and contrasts Jonson’s Roman women with each other, especially as regards their speeches and dialogues, with a view to understanding whether and to what extent their role can be considered subversive.

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Angelica Vedelago draws attention to the fact that May’s tragedy Julia Agrippina and its closest near-contemporary model, Jonson’s Catiline, both feature strong-willed female characters with high political ambitions. Her chapter discusses how Jonson’s and May’s Roman women achieve and exert their political power as well as considering possible topical resonances with influential women active in the contemporary political arena of early modern England. Set in the context of the transnational and age-old querelle des femmes, the two plays, Vedelago points out, can be seen as reflexes of contemporary debates on women’s access to education and politics. A close comparative reading finally reveals how Jonson and May probably read their classical sources through their direct experience of contemporary women’s ability to devise alternative, non-standard means of exerting their political agency. In a sweeping survey of the four Roman plays in the Fletcher canon—Bonduca, Valentinian, The False One, and The Prophetess—I focus on the contrast between Roman and non-Roman female characters. The non-Roman women of the canon, I argue, display superior dynamism, assertiveness, and complexity as compared to the Roman women, who remain dependent on patriarchal values and male gazes, their roles being limited to those of wives, widows, or prostitutes. More than examples of chastity, virtue, or corruption, the non-Roman women wield actual power and accomplish actions that have significant bearings upon reality. Such an evident contrast, I suggest, seems to foster the impression that Fletcher and his collaborators found the women of ancient Rome hardly adequate for the development of their ideal “masculine” female characters, thereby making the plays radiate a sense of skepticism and disenchantment as for the transtemporal viability of the female values and paradigms that the classical world had bequeathed to the early modern era. A reassessment of the role of women in Massinger’s The Roman Actor is at the heart of Cristina Paravano’s contribution. Diverging from the writings of Suetonius and other Roman authors who dealt with the life of the Emperor Domitian, so she contends, Massinger seems to have amplified the importance of all the female characters in the play. Far from being marginal or peripheral, they pivotally influence the forces at work, since all of them, to varying degrees, are turned into vehicles of Caesar’s ruin. According to Paravano, Massinger’s powerful insight into the agency and mindset of women originates a nuanced portrayal, with more shadows than lights, apparently carrying fewer moral values than those expected from Roman women in early modern England. Emanuel Stelzer closes the collection by exploring how early modern England had inherited a distorted representation of the Julio-Claudian veneficae (female poisoners) from Tacitus, Suetonius, and Juvenal, and then tapped into these models of criminal femininity to interpret the age. As Stelzer remarks,

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whenever a woman was accused of poisoning, the figures of Livia, Agrippina, and Locusta were recalled: an example is the array of classical figures conjured up by contemporary commentators on the Overbury affair. Interestingly, the portrayal of these Roman women often featured Catholic overtones. A group of tragedies with a Roman setting (especially Gwinne’s Nero, May’s Julia Agrippina, and Richards’s Messalina) dramatize the agency of female poisoners and reflect on their social subversiveness. Stelzer’s chapter explores the question of gender in relation to this corpus of plays, an issue that the scholarship on the materiality and symbolism of poison has usually neglected.

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Cantor, Paul A. Shakespeare’s Rome: Republic and Empire. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976. Charney, Maurice. Shakespeare on Love and Lust. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Charney, Maurice. Shakespeare’s Roman Plays: The Function of Imagery in the Drama. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1961. Cheney, Patrick, and Philip Hardie, eds. The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, Volume 2: 1558 – 1660. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Chernaik, Warren. The Myth of Rome in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Cicero. Tusculanae Disputationes. Edited by Max Pohlenz. Leipzig: Teubner, 1918. Cox Jensen, Freyja. Reading the Roman Republic in Early Modern England. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Crawford, Julie. Mediatrix: Women, Politics, & Literary Production in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Curran, John E., Jr. “Roman Tragedy: The Case of Jonson’s Sejanus.” In The Genres of Renaissance Tragedy, edited by Daniel Cadman, Andrew Duxfield, and Lisa Hopkins, 100 – 14. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019. Del Sapio Garbero, Maria, ed. Identity, Otherness and Empire in Shakespeare’s Rome. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Del Sapio Garbero, Maria. “Lucrece’s Tabula Anatomica: Identity, Possession and Self-Possession in Shakespeare’s Roman Poem.” In Shakespeare and the New Science in Early Modern Culture. Shakespeare e la nuova scienza nella cultura Early Modern, edited by Maria Del Sapio Garbero, 171 – 214. Pisa: Pacini, 2016. Del Sapio Garbero, Maria, ed. Rome in Shakespeare’s World. Roma: Storia e Letteratura, 2018. Del Sapio Garbero, Maria, Nancy Isenberg, and Maddalena Pennacchia, eds. Questioning Bodies in Shakespeare’s Rome. Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2010. Dolan, Frances E. Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England, 1550 – 1700. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994. Dolan, Frances E. Marriage and Violence: The Early Modern Legacy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. Ezell, Margaret J. M. The Patriarch’s Wife: Literary Evidence and the History of the Family. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987. Ferguson, Margaret W. Dido’s Daughters: Literacy, Gender, and Empire in Early Modern England and France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Gentili, Vanna. La Roma antica degli elisabettiani. Bologna: il Mulino, 1991. Gillen, Katherine. Chaste Value: Economic Crisis, Female Chastity and the Production of Social Difference on Shakespeare’s Stage. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017. Gowing, Laura. Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Gray, Patrick. Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic: Selfhood, Stoicism and Civil War. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018. Green, David C. Plutarch Revisited: A Study of Shakespeare’s Last Roman Tragedies and Their Source. Salzburg: Institut fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1979. Griffin, Julia. “Cato’s Daughter, Brutus’s Wife: Portia from Antiquity to the English Renaissance Stage.” In The Uses of Rome in English Renaissance Drama, edited by

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Domenico Lovascio and Lisa Hopkins. Thematic issue. Textus. English Studies in Italy 29.2 (2016): 21 – 40. Guardamagna, Daniela, ed. Roman Shakespeare: Intersecting Times, Spaces, Languages. Bern: Peter Lang, 2018. Hadfield, Andrew. Shakespeare and Republicanism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Harris, Bernice. “Sexuality as a Signifier for Power Relations: Using Lavinia, of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.” Criticism 38 (1996): 383 – 406. Hatchuel, Sarah, and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, eds. Shakespeare on Screen: The Roman Plays. Mont-Saint-Aignan: Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2009. Henderson, Katherine Usher, and Barbara McManus. Half Humankind: Contexts and Texts of the Controversy about Women in England, 1540 – 1640. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985. Higginbotham, Jennifer. Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Sisters: Gender, Transgression, Adolescence. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013. Holland, Peter, ed. Shakespeare and Rome. Thematic issue. Shakespeare Survey 69 (2016). Hopkins, Lisa. The Cultural Uses of the Caesars on the English Renaissance Stage. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Hopkins, Lisa. The Female Hero in English Renaissance Tragedy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Hopkins, Lisa. From the Romans to the Normans on the English Renaissance Stage. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2017. Hopkins, Lisa. “Men’s Busts and Women’s Thighs: Anatomising the Body Politic in Shakespeare’s Roman Plays.” In Rome in Shakespeare’s World, edited by Maria Del Sapio Garbero, 67 – 86. Roma: Storia e Letteratura, 2018. Howard, Jean E., and Phyllis Rackin. Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare’s English Histories. London: Routledge, 1997. Hunter, George K. “A Roman Thought: Renaissance Attitudes to History Exemplified in Shakespeare and Jonson.” In An English Miscellany: Presented to W. S. Mackie, edited by Brian S. Lee, 93 – 118. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1977. Hutson, Lorna. The Usurer’s Daughter: Male Friendship and Fictions of Women in Sixteenth-Century England. London: Routledge, 1994. Innes, Paul. Shakespeare’s Roman Plays. London: Palgrave, 2015. Jardine, Lisa. Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1983. Johnson, Sarah E. Staging Women and the Soul-Body Dynamic in Early Modern England. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Jordan, Constance. Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. Kahn, Coppélia. Man’s Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Kahn, Coppélia. Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds and Women. London: Routledge, 1997. Keeble, Neil H., ed. The Cultural Identity of Seventeenth-Century Woman: A Reader. London: Routledge, 1994.

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Kelly, Kathleen Coyne, and Marina Leslie, eds. Menacing Virgins: Representing Virginity in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999. Kemp, Theresa D. Women in the Age of Shakespeare. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2010. Korda, Natasha. Shakespeare’s Domestic Economies: Gender and Property in Early Modern England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Kusunoki, Akiko. Gender and Representations of the Female Subject in Early Modern England: Creating Their Own Meanings. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Lactantius. De opificio Dei. In Patrologiae cursus completus, edited by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols., 7:9 – 78. Paris: Vrayet de Surcy, 1844 – 1866. Leggatt, Alexander. Shakespeare’s Political Drama: The History Plays and the Roman Plays. London: Routledge, 1988. Lovascio, Domenico. Un nome, mille volti. Giulio Cesare nel teatro inglese della prima età moderna. Roma: Carocci, 2015. Lovascio, Domenico and Lisa Hopkins. “‘Introduction: Ancient Rome and English Renaissance Drama.” In The Uses of Rome in English Renaissance Drama, edited by Domenico Lovascio and Lisa Hopkins, 9 – 19. Thematic issue. Textus. English Studies in Italy 29.2 (2016). Lovascio, Domenico, eds. The Uses of Rome in English Renaissance Drama. Thematic issue. Textus. English Studies in Italy 29.2 (2016). MacCallum, M. W. Shakespeare’s Roman Plays and Their Background. London: Macmillan, 1910. Malcolmson, Cristina, and Mihoko Suzuki, eds. Debating Gender in Early Modern England, 1500 – 1700. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Marshall, Cynthia. “Portia’s Wound, Calphurnia’s Dream: Reading Character in Julius Caesar.” English Literary Renaissance 24 (1994): 471 – 88. Martindale, Charles, and Michelle Martindale. Shakespeare and the Uses of Antiquity: An Introductory Essay. London: Routledge, 1990. Maus, Katharine Eisaman. “Taking Tropes Seriously: Language and Violence in Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece.” Renaissance Quarterly 37 (1986): 66 – 82. Miles, Geoffrey. Shakespeare and the Constant Romans. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Miller, Anthony. Roman Triumphs in Early Modern English Culture. London: Palgrave, 2001. Miller, Naomi, and Naomi Yavneh, eds. Maternal Measures: Figuring Caregiving in the Early Modern Period. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. Miola, Robert S. Shakespeare’s Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Neely, Carol Thomas. Broken Nuptials in Shakespeare’s Plays. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. Newman, Jane O. “‘And Let Mild Women to Him Lose Their Mildness’: Philomela, Female Violence, and Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece.” Shakespeare Quarterly 45 (1994): 304 – 26. Newman, Karen. Fashioning Femininity and English Renaissance Drama. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Paleit, Edward. War, Liberty and Caesar: English Responses to Lucan’s Bellum Civile, c. 1580 – 1650. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Parker, Barbara L. Plato’s Republic and Shakespeare’s Rome: A Political Study of the Roman Works. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004.

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Paster, Gail Kern. The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. Paster, Gail Kern. Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Pennacchia, Maddalena. Shakespeare intermediale. I drammi romani. Spoleto: Editoria & Spettacolo, 2012. Platt, Michael. Rome and Romans according to Shakespeare. Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1976. Pollard, Tanya. Greek Tragic Women on Shakespearean Stages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Richards, Jennifer, and Alison Thorne, eds. Rhetoric, Women and Politics in Early Modern England. London: Routledge, 2007. Ronan, Clifford J. “Antike Roman”: Power Symbology and the Roman Play in Early Modern England: 1585 – 1635. Athens (GA): University of Georgia Press, 1995. Rose, Mary Beth. The Expense of Spirit: Love and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988. Roulon, Natalie. “‘Speak no more of her:’ Silencing the Feminine Voice in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.” ACME 16 (2016): 103 – 24. Schwarz, Kathryn. Tough Love: Amazon Encounters in the English Renaissance. Durham (NC): Duke University Press, 2001. Schwarz, Kathryn. What You Will: Gender, Contract, and Shakespearean Social Space. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. Semple, Edel, and Ema Vyroubalová, eds. European Women in Early Modern Drama. Special issue 27. Early Modern Literary Studies, 2017. https://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/journal/ index.php/emls/issue/view/16. Shannon, Laurie. Sovereign Amity: Figures of Friendship in Shakespearean Contexts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Siegel, Paul N. Shakespeare’s English and Roman History Plays: A Marxist Approach. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1986. Simmons, J. L. Shakespeare’s Pagan Worlds: The Roman Tragedies. Hassocks: Harvester, 1974. Spencer, T. J. B. “Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Romans.” Shakespeare Survey 10 (1957): 27 – 38. Starks-Estes, Lisa S. Violence, Trauma and Virtus in Shakespeare’s Roman Poems and Plays: Transforming Ovid. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Thomas, Vivian. Shakespeare’s Roman Worlds. London: Routledge, 1989. Traub, Valerie. “Jewels, Statues, and Corpses: Containment of Female Erotic Power in Shakespeare’s Plays.” Shakespeare Studies 20 (1987): 215 – 38. Traub, Valerie. The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Traversi, Derek. Shakespeare: The Roman Plays. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1963. Varro. On the Latin Language, edited by Roland G. Kent. London: Heinemann, 1938. Wall, Wendy. Staging Domesticity: Household Work and English Identity in Early Modern Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Weber, William W. “‘Worse than Philomel’: Violence, Revenge, and Meta-Allusion in Titus Andronicus.” Studies in Philology 112 (2015): 698 – 717.

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Wells, Charles. The Wide Arch: Roman Values in Shakespeare. New York: St. Martin’s, 1992. Wilders, John. The Lost Garden: A View of Shakespeare’s English and Roman History Plays. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1978. Willis, Deborah. Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. Woodbridge, Linda. Women and the English Renaissance: Literature and the Nature of Womankind, 1540 – 1620. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984.

Alice Equestri

“Rome’s Rich Ornament”: Lavinia, Commoditization, and the Senses in William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus Lavinia, one of the only two female characters in Titus Andronicus, is possibly the heroine that the audience pities the most in the whole Shakespearian canon. In what is usually regarded as the goriest Shakespearean play, Lavinia embodies, as has been observed, the focus and the bulk of Titus’s excess violence in her experiencing rape, torture, dismemberment, and finally murder.¹ Moreover, in the symbolic realm of drama, the violated body of a Roman woman whose very name alludes to the founding myth of Rome—and therefore at its very urban and cultural identity—acquires political significance: as Robin L. Bott contends, Lavinia’s body is the body of Rome, attacked by the Goths.² Yet, if on the one hand the image of the woman transcends its own bodily boundaries to rise both as the location of tragedy and as the symbol of a people and its values, on the other it also appears to regress into its basic meaning by participating in a complex, consistent, and specific framework of objectification. In this chapter, I will consider the ways other characters describe Lavinia, paying particular attention to the tropes they choose to convey to the audience the established image of her as an innocent, virginal, and abused woman. Specifically, I will show how Lavinia tends to be portrayed throughout the play via recurring images of precious commodities: the employment of such tropes, in the light of both Roman and English politics of womanhood, reveals a tension between the perceived high worth of Lavinia as an almost idealized subject and the diminished value of her personhood staged by the way the other characters choose to act upon her. This acquires special significance, insofar as very often metaphoric commodities are not just things with commercial value, but they additionally call for an explicit fruition through the senses. This analysis will therefore partly benefit from a critical angle that has turned out to be very productive in cultural studies in the last few decades and, more recently, in early modern studies: a “sensory model” which, as David Howes and others have noted, has started to recognize that sensorial perceptions are a social construct. Indeed, the meanings attributed to the sensorium or the ideas connected with the senses

 Weber, “‘Worse than Philomel,’” 698 – 99.  Bott, “‘O, Keep Me from Their Worse than Killing Lust,’” 201. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501514203-002

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are not simply the result of neurological processes, but are also deeply historicized and dependent on the cultural values of specific societies.³ Therefore, a discussion of the specific “sensorial” mode through which Lavinia is objectified further fleshes out the ideals and motivations of the community in which she lives. The epithet with which Bassianus first introduces Lavinia in the play immediately places her strategically at the crossroads between personhood and thingness, thus problematizing our understanding of the character: “Gracious Lavinia, Rome’s rich ornament” is a first, lapidary description of her in a scene that notably lays out all the conflicts that will later develop in the play.⁴ The veiled implications raised by the statement will also be borne out by the events of Titus or, at the very least, by the motivations of the male characters confronting Lavinia. While refusing to champion Lavinia for her wits or inner qualities, Bassianus lingers instead only on her material worth and external beauty, with the result of objectifying her as a costly accessory. It is perhaps puzzling that this emblematic yet deeply tensional affirmation should be made by Lavinia’s true love and husband to be, but it is much less surprising if read in light of early modern social discourses of womanhood. As Katherine Gillen notes, it was customary in early modern culture to employ economic terms to target in particular the “immeasurable worth” of women’s chastity, understood both as virginity before marriage and, in Protestant morality, as chaste monogamy after it. But because such a discourse was “as common as … imprecise,” it could conflate “the woman, her spiritual essence and her genitalia in its attempt to identify the source of chastity’s value.”⁵ Gillen further contends that, in an age of emerging capitalism, of unprecedented marketing scale, and increasing economic transactions, not only did economic language deeply penetrate drama in general, but it also found in female chastity a privileged space in which it could naturally culminate. In fact, women’s chastity had the capability to stabilize aristocratic families and their economic position in a society in which shifting capitals made class structures more fluid.⁶ This led also to an anxiety towards women’s sexuality, a trait typical not just of early modern England but more in general of societies relying on patriarchy, like Rome itself, in which women “belonged” to their father until he gave them away to a husband,

 Howes, “Charting the Sensorial Revolution”; Kern-Stähler and Scheuchzer, “Introduction,” 1– 20.  Shakespeare, Titus, 1.1.52. My reference edition is that in Shakespeare, Complete Works, ed. Taylor and Wells.  Gillen, Chaste Value, 1, 5.  Gillen, Chaste Value, 3.

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whose possibility to get legitimate children and recognize them as his own relied entirely on his wife’s chastity.⁷ These social dynamics through which a woman was transferred from a family to another, and more specifically from a man to another, have been seen as a form of gift exchange—the most valuable one. Anthropologists such as Gayle Rubin explain how numerous primitive communities rely on the reciprocal exchange of gifts with their neighbors in order to “create a social link between the partners of exchange” and maintain a peaceful relationship. The exchange of women functions in a similar way, with the additional attribute that, unlike simpler gifts such as “food, spells, rituals, words, names, ornaments, tools,” it also establishes new relations of kinship.⁸ But exactly like inanimate gifts, women are conduits for relationships between men without being partners to the negotiation: they are passive participants in the social transactions but are “in no position to realize the benefits of their own circulation.”⁹ Such a privilege belongs instead to the giver and the receiver of the gift. We start realizing, then, why the word “ornament” referred to Lavinia is especially meaningful: by making direct reference to a type of object that was (and is) traditionally employed in rites of gift exchange, Bassianus fashions Lavinia as a crucial material element to tie powerful alliances between Roman men, while at the same time removing from her the human component that makes her a partner in the exchange.¹⁰ This emerges also from a more focused reflection on what it means to be a “rich ornament.” The reference to Lavinia’s rich value only partially mitigates the implications of the entire metaphor, which instead epitomizes the Roman woman as nothing more than a costly accessory or decoration: a beautiful object that, to follow the OED’s definition, “embellishes” Rome but has no intrinsic function. Patricia Fumerton associates the notion of the ornamental with what is decorative, fragmental, and peripheral. Engaging with Angus Fletcher’s theory of kosmos, which means “ornament” in Greek, she further suggests how any ornament (e. g., a jewel, a decoration on a shirt, a miniature, even a poem or a meal) is

 Gillen, Chaste Value, 4.  Rubin, “The Traffic in Women,” 171– 73.  Rubin, “The Traffic in Women,” 174.  The most notable example of a tightly organized circulation of accessories—specifically, bracelets and necklaces—is the kula ring of the Pacific islands, which anthropologists see as a complex pattern of collective, intertribal gift-giving that obliges islanders to reception and reciprocation. Marcel Mauss (The Gift, 24– 82) argues that diverse versions of such a system might be found in many Indo-European societies of the past, among which there was Rome, where pleasurable family gifts or tokens might be handed over to other families in order to create legal ties among them.

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insignificantly decorative when considered by itself. It is not expressive of anything in particular. What the ornament is expressive of cannot be seen: the overall order or cosmos that the wearer inhabits (e. g., the upper class). Decoration, in other words, allegorizes or alludes to a world of cultural value that could not otherwise be represented except by means of oblique, allusive adornment.¹¹

Identifying Lavinia as an “ornament” therefore calls attention to the environment that fashions her thus, to the values of male characters in the play, and to the signification they attribute to her by using specific tropes. At the same time, however, the commoditization of the woman herself seems to question the value of a whole person as separated from her chastity. As a peripheral and ornamental object, Lavinia is at the root of the Roman dynamics of gift exchange. She is thus, in Bernice Harris’s wording, “a means by which power is marked as masculine and is then transferred and circulated,” as well as a means to tie new strategic kinships in Rome, namely that between Saturninus and Titus.¹² Nevertheless, as an ornamental artefact, the intrinsic value she possesses is mainly aesthetic. Her own political status is thus verbally undermined but, most importantly, so is her sexual power. Bassianus is in fact the first character in Titus actively to participate in what Valerie Traub has called a “strategy of containment” to channel “male anxiety toward female erotic power.”¹³ Drawing on a body of feminist, psychoanalytic, and New Historical criticism that has stressed how male characters in Shakespeare’s plays perceive women as lovers and mothers as untrustworthy and threatening to masculine power and identity, Traub suggests that silencing a woman by physically or metaphorically turning her into a static object is an effective way for men to curb their own fear of the chaos potentially caused by her autonomy and sexual freedom.¹⁴ If the word “ornament” is in itself a generic term that leaves us momentarily uncertain about precisely what object Lavinia is turned into, a clearer tendency to fill that gap emerges as the play progresses. Specifically, Titus spells out even more neatly the ultimate implication of being a woman in a patriarchal society: as Keith Thomas argues, it means “that men have property in women and that the value of this property is immeasurably diminished if the woman at any time has sexual relations with anyone other than her husband.”¹⁵ Accordingly, Lavinia gets generally objectified as a valuable possession. Though Bassianus’s

    

Fumerton, Cultural Aesthetics, 21– 22. Harris, “Sexuality as a Signifier for Power Relations,” 385 – 86. Traub, “Jewels, Statues, and Corpses,” 215 – 38, 216. Traub, “Jewels, Statues, and Corpses,” 216 – 17. Thomas, “The Double Standard,” 210.

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love for Lavinia is deepest, he demonstrates that he is receptive to the fundamental tenets of patriarchy and to the connected fear of female independence. Talking about Lavinia as an ornament is consistent with the way he conceives of his union to her: as he tells Saturninus, it signifies “to seize my own, / my true betrothed love, and now my wife,”¹⁶ and being “possessed of that is mine.”¹⁷ As an object to be seized and owned by a male leader, Lavinia appears a subject who lacks agency and decisional power. She is instead, as Sarah Carter suggests, a passive terrain for sexual conquest that, once possessed, becomes—like an ornament—the visual display of a faction’s political power. This occurs when she is quarreled over both by the two Roman brothers Bassianus and Saturninus and, later on, by Romans and Goths.¹⁸ Lavinia’s association with possessions and commodities gets more nuanced when, after choosing Bassianus, she becomes the target of two distinct parties, Saturninus and the Goths. Though apparently appeased, Saturninus secretly meditates on his revenge against the Andronici because Lavinia “left [him] like a churl.”¹⁹ The sentence has been read in different ways, the noun “churl” variously taken as potentially referring either to Saturninus or Lavinia.²⁰ In this second reading, to stress the fact that Lavinia’s behavior was ungenerous, Saturninus employs a symbol that alludes to a miser, thus making a more explicit connection between woman and the exchange of possessions, money specifically. And yet, conforming to the standard early modern outlook that tended to see commerce as an eminently masculine activity and viewed trading women with suspicion, he fashions Lavinia’s refusal to marry him as a failed economic transaction, a refusal to offer herself up to him as coin.²¹ Alternatively, reading “churl” as “peasant,” still in connection with Lavinia, would imply that Saturninus questions her possession of money at all, hence also implicitly alluding to her present worthlessness, something that he makes explicit when she calls her “changing piece.”²² In this quotation, the reference to a loose coin overlaps with that of sexual commodity whose worth, Saturninus implies, changes according to who gets to use it. In consistence with the patriarchal view of the woman’s chastity in economic terms, the value of the woman as property dimin-

 Shakespeare, Titus, 1.1.402– 3.  Shakespeare, Titus, 1.1.40, emphasis mine.  Carter, Ovidian Myth and Sexual Deviance, 25.  Shakespeare, Titus, 1.1.482.  For instance, Alan Hughes reads it in reference to Saturninus (Shakespeare, Titus, 1994, 71n), while Jonathan Bate ties it to Lavinia (Shakespeare, Titus, 2009, 158n).  See Pennington and Shaw, Going to Market, 15 – 38.  Shakespeare, Titus, 1.1.306.

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ishes once chastity is lost. Not only does Saturninus quantify that loss of value and alludes to the link between possession as property and sexual possession; he also vilifies Lavinia as an object whose possession is always temporary and never permanent: an object designed to be utilized and passed on to the next user in exchange for some advantage. It is a sad anticipation of Lavinia’s destiny in the play. When Lavinia later starts becoming the object of the Goths’ lust and revenge, her transformation into a victim is semantically signaled by an even more varied cluster of material images. Most evidently, her transformation into an economic commodity is subject to further sharpening. Rejecting Saturninus’s devaluation of Lavinia, the Goths see her marriage chastity as precious currency through which Chiron and Demetrius can buy power for their own people. More precisely, as he later clarifies, it is a “treasury” to be reveled in and Lavinia herself a “parcel of our hopeful booty.”²³ On the contrary, Tamora sees her as a “fee” for her “sweet sons,” a repayment, thus illustrating in economic terms her idea of victimization and revenge.²⁴ Yet, rather than simply obtaining the commodity, as in an ordinary social ritual of exchange, the Goths see Lavinia as material wealth to be aggressively stolen: in Aaron’s words, something to “make pillage of.”²⁵ As these linked images are also remindful of the underlying idea of gold, they participate in the play’s recurring reliance on references to the precious metal both as a symbol of worth and as a medium of exchange. Therefore, they exploit the multi-faceted nature of the same material in the Renaissance, both in its noble, mineable, or alchemical sense as metal and in its common, vulgar form as coins.²⁶ The word “gold” and its derived adjective “golden” are used as many as thirteen times in Titus and are mainly associated with Aaron and Tamora. On the one hand, the precious material is referenced to allegorize the Goths’ idea of ascension to power: Tamora as newly made Roman empress is seen as a “golden sun” that “gil[ds] the ocean with its beams”; Aaron dreams of shining“in pearl and gold”; they call “golden slumber” the interval during which they expect the successful outcome of their plans, just as “golden” are the queen’s false “promises” designed to entice and betray Titus.²⁷ On the other hand, gold is also the ordinary currency of their criminal actions: a “bag of gold” is buried under a tree to put the blame for Bassanius’s murder on Titus’s

    87, 

Shakespeare, Titus, 2.1.132; 2.3.49. Shakespeare, Titus, 2.3.179. Shakespeare, Titus, 2.3.44. On such a qualitative difference between forms of gold see Sherman, “‘Gold Is the Strength,” and Nicholl, The Chemical Theatre, 26. Shakespeare, Titus, 2.1.5 – 6, 19; 4.4.97.

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sons; and “gold” is given to a country wife to exchange her white-skinned son with Aaron’s black baby who, like Lavinia, is also called a “treasure.”²⁸ Lavinia’s participation in this network of images also signals her involvement in the play’s insistence on the corruption of wealth. Like Aaron’s newborn baby, she is a silent object whose exchange on behalf of someone else brings about a shift in the power dynamics of the play; plus, in a play in which real money is used only for illicit aims, the connotation of Lavinia’s personhood itself as a medium of exchange characterizes the exchanges in which she is involved as obviously despicable acts. However, Lavinia’s association with such a corrupted narrative of money and gold in their overlapping meaning should not prevent us from exploring other possible meanings that gold as a material might have for the reading of her as a character, whose designations as treasure, booty, and, potentially, ornament are located in the same semantic field as gold itself. Gold-related words seem effective in depicting Lavinia’s spotless virtue, her nobility, her beauty, and her role as member of an important Roman family. In its alchemical sense as the end-product of the process of transmutation of base metals, gold embodied an ideal of perfection, harmony, and freedom from corruption.²⁹ And yet, as a natural element, gold was also a material whose high value could not be taken for granted: just like pearls and precious stones— which can also be included in a treasure—gold had to be carefully tested for purity. In this light, it is a powerful metaphor for Lavinia and her virginity, which are also all the more valuable for being pure, but they are something to be tested in order to ascertain their value. Just as gold was assayed by rubbing it against a rough piece of stone—a whetstone or touchstone—a woman’s chastity was tested in ways that could be more or less invasive: rape or intercourse were indeed some of these methods.³⁰ The obtainment itself of gold and precious stones was associated with some heavy physical action: not simply testing them but especially extracting them from the rock by mining them; or even by plundering them from the New World and shaping them to make them useable.³¹ Similarly, a woman’s body was possessed by physically violating it. Lavinia’s association with precious materials therefore suggests a problematic interpretation of the character’s virtue. Though as readers and spectators of the play we naturally tend to resist readings of her as anything other than a virginal and innocent victim, some critics have questioned Lavinia’s perceived chastity on the grounds of

   

Shakespeare, Titus, 2.3.280, 4.2.154, 172. Nicholl, The Chemical Theatre, 26. Kenny, Gold, 264– 66; Catty, Writing Rape, 94. Sherman, “‘Gold Is the Strength,” 93; Kitch, Political Economy, 30.

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early modern problematic attitudes towards victims of rape. Kim Solga notes that, in a society characterized by misogynist bias about women’s sexual appetites and in which men’s sexuality was seen as naturally aggressive, rape could legally be considered a crime only if the woman could prove her non-consent to the act: this was done through prompt verbal complaint plus physical demonstration (e. g., of gushing blood, torn clothes) before a group of witnesses.³² But Lavinia’s position as a rape victim who can successfully plead her own case is seriously disrupted by the fact that, having lost her hands and tongue, she “lacks the means to either show or tell” what happened to her: in fact, until she is finally able to communicate Philomel’s story, her family cannot recognize her body as that of a rape victim.³³ Reading rape through the lens of early modern legal regulations also obliges us to consider one more detail: rather than just a violent crime against a single person, rape tended to be considered a property crime, because it amounted to theft of a woman’s chastity and was therefore seen, like illicit seduction, as an offence to the economic interests of her household.³⁴ This stands as one further suggestion of the centrality of rape in connection not only with the symbolism of gold in all its meanings, but also and especially with Lavinia’s identity as valuable property and currency. As Oliver Arnold points out, Saturninus himself does refer to this property-related meaning of the crime as he calls Bassianus’s elopement with Lavinia “rape,” a term which could indeed indicate “the abduction of a woman, usually for the purpose of sexual violation” (OED, n.3, 3).³⁵ The preciousness of Lavinia as an object to be possessed and enjoyed, however, is not merely conveyed through images directly recalling tangible property but is also communicated by exploiting experiential or more obviously sensorial forms of value. Luxury, riches, or plenty are not describable only by things or substances whose worth, like coins or gold, is immediately or easily quantifiable. Sometimes, value has more to do with experience and how this is shaped by the opportunities given to members of specific classes. Titus communicates this very well by associating Lavinia with luxurious food and drinks. Three such images appear in the Goth conspirators’ lines before the dreadful act against Lavinia is perpetrated. Demetrius alludes to his intentions by declaring that he hopes “to pluck a dainty doe to ground,” an image that he picks up from Aaron.³⁶ As rape is thus equated with hunting—and the hideous implications of the action     

Solga, Violence against Women, 35 – 36. Solga, Violence against Women, 42, 46. Solga, Violence against Women, 8, 34– 35. Arnold, Oliver, The Third Citizen, 114. Shakespeare, Titus, 2.2.26; 2.1.118.

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almost normalized as if it were an ordinary activity—the violated woman is represented less as a person than as palatable venison. Yet, in their connection of food consumption and sexual appetite, the Goths do not cease to describe Lavinia’s high economic worth: in fact, they represent her as an animal whose hunting in early modern England was restricted to members of the nobility chosen by the monarch.³⁷ Furthermore, they judge the quality of its meat, something that also fosters a connection with high-class dietary culture.³⁸ But, most importantly, they keep stressing the idea of Lavinia as a commodity, of which meat is an example. Another one is bread, with which Lavinia is associated when Demetrius illustrates his idea of raping a married woman: “easy it is of a cut loaf to steal a shive.”³⁹ But there are more. Demetrius draws more explicitly from the agricultural world when he illustrates his plan of violating and, perhaps, killing Lavinia thus: “first thresh the corn, then after burn the straw.”⁴⁰ It is a plan at which Tamora rejoices and which, she claims, will give them “the honey we desire.”⁴¹ Each food commodity seems to morph into another, somehow related, one. Bread and corn, specifically, are basic foodstuffs that symbolically feed the Goths’ base desires.⁴² But one feature that links them all, with the exception of meat, is their color, which is indeed remindful also of gold. Even Titus himself is a contributor to this corrupt rhetoric that straddles the areas of food consumption, sexual desire, and commercial exchange: in praising Lavinia as “the cordial of mine age” he harks at the therapeutic properties of this drink to voice his own happiness on reuniting with his daughter.⁴³ At the same time, however, he refers to a drink that not only was as sweet as honey and could have a similar color to gold, but it could even be made with gold. Some cordials were indeed improved by adding flecks of gold leaf, possibly because in alchemy a cordial known as aurum potabile (drinkable gold) was believed to cure all illnesses.⁴⁴ But by presenting Lavinia through this series of gustatory stimuli, Shakespeare associates her not just with general luxury and exchanged goods, but also with an early

 Belin, From the Deer to the Fox, 6 – 7.  Jean-Louis Flandrin (“Distinction through Taste,” 273 – 74) notes how the social elites distinguished themselves from common people also through the quality of the meat they chose. Specifically, the elites ate good cuts of meat, and the common people low-grade ones.  Shakespeare, Titus, 2.1.86 – 87.  Shakespeare, Titus, 2.3.123.  Shakespeare, Titus, 2.3.131.  Fitzpatrick (Food in Shakespeare, 121) makes this point specifically in relation to bread, but it can be extended to corn.  Shakespeare, Titus, 1.1.166.  Hall, The Scientific Renaissance, 159; Charlier, Poupon, et al., “A Gold Elixir of Youth”; Nicholl, The Chemical Theatre, 26 – 27, 68.

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modern geographical ideal of plenty and abundance: rich minerals, corn and wheat, cattle and honey were in fact staple resources from whose presence travelers and authors judged the richness of a newly encountered land.⁴⁵ Such a rhetoric therefore makes the latent idea of Lavinia as body of Rome and as a territory to be conquered resurface. In this way, the text seems to foster a tension between the representation of Lavinia as objects both smaller and greater than herself. Yet, in both senses, her selfhood as a person remains elusive. The final and utmost stage into Lavinia’s objectification is reached once Chiron and Demetrius have carried out their plan. Yet, such an objectification is only partly a response to Lavinia as a raped woman: mostly, it is a reaction to her as a disabled subject. Her uncle Marcus, the first person to see Lavinia after the violence, starts describing her piece by piece, hence ostensibly refusing to see his niece as a whole person. It is one of the facets of what D. J. Palmer calls the depersonalization of Lavinia, a disconnection from personhood that is foregrounded from the very first scenes in the play.⁴⁶ Marcus’s first reaction to the sad sight is a rhetorical fragmentation of the body in front of him and a sustained comparison between non-normative body parts and their former, normative, shape: these are conducted through a careful deployment of material and sensorial conceits, which once again, as in previous scenes, link Lavinia with valuable objects. Some of the conceits Marcus uses are reinterpretations of images that the spectator has already encountered. He first notices Lavinia’s loss “of her two branches, those sweet ornaments.”⁴⁷ He then plays on the notion of Lavinia as honey by pointing at her “honey breath,” which is now accompanied by “a crimson river of warm blood.”⁴⁸ The repetition of similar tropes, this time connected with parts of Lavinia’s body instead of her complete self, has a double effect: on the one hand, juxtaposing pleasurable objects with Lavinia’s missing elements underscores the cruelty with which one thing has been transformed into the other, as well as the shift from the beautiful to the ghastly. On the other hand, it reinforces the perception that both person and body parts are deprived of human individuality, being treated simply as functional components of a larger mechanism governed by someone else: besides, they are components that are considered peripheral enough to be cut off without causing the complete failure (or death) of the mechanism. They can be cut off simply for sport, as will later occur to Titus himself too. Similar effects are achieved a little later, when the  See Matei-Chesnoiu, Early Modern Drama and the Eastern European Elsewhere, 93 – 94, 107, 182.  Palmer, “The Unspeakable in Pursuit of the Uneatable,” 321– 22.  Shakespeare, Titus, 2.4.18.  Shakespeare, Titus, 2.4.25, 22.

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same missing parts of Lavinia’s body, arms and tongue, are considered again in association with new, yet analog images. The hands as ornaments and branches now keep their botanical nature to turn into “lily hands,” while the tongue, which was first associated with honey breath, is now remembered for its peculiar quality, which it shares with honey: it was a “sweet tongue.”⁴⁹ The adjective “sweet” was extensively used in the period in its generic meaning as “pleasant” and is widely employed in Titus with that acceptation—Titus is actually the fourth play for overall number of occurrences of “sweet” in Shakespeare’s canon. Yet, Marcus’s linking the idea of sweetness to Lavinia’s tongue forcefully evokes also the sense of taste, as well as that of hearing, thereby stressing again Lavinia’s connection with food and her role in satisfying others’ appetites. And it is specifically the general insistence on representing Lavinia through taste sensations of food imagery that, I would argue, complicates our understanding of the adjective “sweet” in the play, especially when applied to Lavinia. For instance, when Titus later echoes Marcus’s fragmentary depiction of Lavinia by remembering her “sweet hands,”⁵⁰ we partly resist a generic, straightforward interpretation of the adjective—especially in a play that deliberately leans on that word so often—and might question, to some degree, Titus’s own feelings. Marcus’s piecemeal yet profoundly poetical description of Lavinia paves the way for a final turn in the objectification of Lavinia. There seems to be a point at which characters come to terms with the disabled body of Lavinia in its entirety: and yet, Marcus’s previous action of fragmentizing or breaking her down into parts persists in the way other characters later describe her. The two main conceits that Titus and Aaron, specifically, employ to represent the mutilated Lavinia refer to sensorial objects that are whole yet fragmentary at the same time. Titus uses an original image to address his now dumb daughter: “thou, map of woe that dost talk in signs.”⁵¹ A map is not just something that gives visual information and directions, but it is also a fragmented assembly of territories joined by borders, which therefore aptly figure Lavinia’s wounds and mutilated body. Furthermore, the map image participates in the overall rhetoric of luxury, commoditization, and peripherality to which Lavinia is always subject. A map in the Renaissance was a liminal object that might or might not have a practical use. It usefully represented a geographical space for those who travelled; hence, it also underscores the parallel with Lavinia as a territory to be occupied. Yet, it was also an object that increasingly became a popular form of decorative

 Shakespeare, Titus, 2.4.44, 49.  Shakespeare, Titus, 5.2.174.  Shakespeare, Titus, 3.2.12.

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art. Maps could be decorated, embellished, or hand-colored, their price reflecting the complexity of their design. Maps of exotic places, in particular, attracted great interest from European people, who bought, collected, and displayed them in their homes, therefore fueling a flourishing marketing business.⁵² The “map” is perhaps finally the exact type of “ornament” that male characters see Lavinia as. Aaron, instead, touches on an image that was used much earlier by himself and Demetrius: Lavinia “was washed and cut and trimmed.”⁵³ Following up from the set of metaphors describing her as a hunted animal, here Aaron treats her even more explicitly as a food commodity, meat, with nothing connecting her to a living being. Finally, the play materially enacts the objectification to which Lavinia has been subjected since the beginning of the play, and fulfils in particular Aaron’s metaphor by transforming the woman into an actual, lifeless and motionless, object: a corpse. It is the final triumph of masculine anxiety over female sexuality: an extreme deed encapsulating Titus’s shame for having lost his daughter’s chastity, and therefore for having lost his daughter altogether. So far we have noted how Lavinia’s objectification is apparent and recurrent throughout the scenes in which she appears. We have also briefly observed how many of the commodities through which Lavinia is typified are things calling for a specific sensory response. This now deserves some further consideration. There is an evident insistence on taste-related items: specifically meat, honey, corn, and cordial; such a rhetoric is effective because it reifies an ideal of richness and plenty to be seized or sold; moreover, by mobilizing early modern assumptions about the hierarchy of the senses, it proves instrumental in symbolizing rape. Indeed, following Aristotle’s principles as stated in De sensu, many early modern philosophers viewed taste, along with touch, as the lowest senses, in that they relied on physical contact and they represented a corporeal action.⁵⁴ Hence, the connection between taste and—through touch—base fleshly desires. Moreover, associating Lavinia with food and drinks has the effect of tying her to the play’s more evident concern with profane food consumption. This is centered, as Joan Fitzpatrick notes, on Tamora, whose sexual appetites throughout the play are finally envisioned in the scene in which she cannibalizes her own sons.⁵⁵ But Titus too, by serving the dismembered bodies of Aaron and Chiron in the form of pasties, is a crucial accomplice in forbidden food consumption. By having Lavinia participate in this wider discourse, Shakespeare iterates pat-

   

Schmidt, Inventing Exoticism, 231– 32. Shakespeare, Titus, 5.1.95. Munro, “Staging Taste,” 20 – 21. Fitzpatrick, Food in Shakespeare, 119.

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riarchal tenets but simultaneously fosters a moralizing judgment on Lavinia’s overall commoditization. Yet, on the opposite side of the sensorial spectrum from taste, Lavinia’s characterization mostly relies on tropes connected to the sense that the Aristotelian tradition saw as the noblest of all: sight.⁵⁶ This sense is specifically engaged through direct or indirect allusions to ornaments, gold, maps, and generic objects, which are first used as metaphors of aesthetic beauty, perfection, and both profit and peripherality, and later as symbols of what the disabled body has lost and of the pitiful/repulsive effect of bodily disability on the eye of the beholder. Sight, also considered in connection with visual stimuli, was the most controversial of the five senses. In fact, its superiority was judged on the grounds of its function as a medium through which knowledge and truth could be acquired. The eyes, specifically, were seen as a conduit for the mind and the heart. At the same time, however, sight was also potentially an entry point for sin and for passions that might overcome reason; its reliability should therefore not be taken for granted.⁵⁷ St. Augustine, among others, claiming that eyes loved “beautiful and varied forms, glowing and pleasant colours,” warned against the potential of beautiful objects to become sources of cupidity and vanity in people’s hearts, in that they could distract them from the higher beauty of God. More specifically, he targeted whatever was ornamental and decorative: the “beautiful externals” or the “innumerable additions to the various arts and crafts in clothing, shoes, vessels, and manufactures of this nature, pictures, images of various kinds,” which far exceeded the “necessary and moderate requirements and pious symbols.”⁵⁸ The commoditization of Lavinia as a shiny, sophisticated, colorful, and—in general—visually pleasurable object therefore tells us much not just about her own attributes and limited agency but also about her beholders. As in the case of taste, through sight-related stimuli Shakespeare invites a judgment on the morality and vain desires of the (especially male) characters in the play, and on the relation between their metaphorical vision of Lavinia and the subsequent ways in which they decide to act upon her: whether exchanging, ravishing, rejecting, or finally killing her when her real image no longer matches the beautiful perfection of the constructed image thrust upon her. Yet, if vision, at once fueling and fueled by desires, stirs people to action in the play, it also questions this very same dynamic. Beautiful artefacts such as ornaments, valuable objects, and maps posit a seeming tension between economic worth and appear Watson, “‘Dove-Like Looks’ and “Serpents Eyes,’” 39 – 40.  For an overview of such discussions see Watson, “‘Dove-Like Looks’ and “Serpents Eyes,’” 39 – 44. For a more comprehensive study, see Clark, Vanities of the Eye.  Augustine, Confessions, 10.34.51, 53 (trans. Chadwick, 209, 210). See also 10.35.55 (211).

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ance. On the one hand, they are objects whose purpose is that of being observed: they are expression of human artistry destined to be contemplated; on the other, given their economic value, they might also be used and exchanged in order to obtain something else. Such a dual nature invites a complicated reflection on Lavinia herself: while Shakespeare’s metaphorical system in the play objectifies Lavinia as a medium of exchange between factions, it simultaneously idealizes the woman as a beautiful commodity to be admired only and not touched, something therefore clashing with Lavinia’s heinous violation in the play. One final aspect to be considered is that, while Lavinia is the character in Titus whose objectification is most obvious and consistent, she is not the only such case. On the contrary, the specific metaphorical system that defines her is part of a larger rhetoric of craftsmanship that encompasses the play more broadly. Other characters occasionally share designations that are similar in nature to those we have encountered so far. I have already mentioned, for instance, how Aaron and Tamora’s self-fashioning as golden objects is shaped by their power ambitions. Another relevant image is that conjured up by Titus once he cuts off his own hand to save his sons’ lives: “for my sons, say I account of them / As jewels purchased at an easy price.”⁵⁹ Titus also sees himself and the Andronici as a faction of honest men, and therefore made not of gold but of another metal: “steel to the very back.”⁶⁰ Yet—apart from these occasional, if significant, instances of objectification in which, however, ornaments and commodities seem to be exploited for their most positive characteristics, and are therefore ennobling metaphors for the characters—there is a cluster of commodity-related tropes that, as in Lavinia’s case, are also insistently focused on a single character. That character is, somewhat unsurprisingly, the other woman in the play, Tamora. Tamora and Lavinia are normally seen as contrasting characters. Lavinia’s innocence, virtue, and submission are especially evident in opposition to that of the Queen of Goths, who appears corrupt, revengeful, and sexually free. However, because the evil nature of Tamora is not manifest from the start but is only discovered later on, there is an interval in which the two women do not differ so much in terms of apparent moral values and virtue. It is not by chance, then, that especially in the first part of the play commodifying metaphors are employed also in association with Tamora. When Titus says that

 Shakespeare, Titus, 3.1.197.  Shakespeare, Titus, 4.3.48.

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as the bark that hath discharged his freight Returns with precious lading to the bay From whence at first she weighed her anchorage,⁶¹

it is not just the honors he has received that he might see as “precious lading.” In fact, a few lines later, he presents Saturninus with Tamora and her sons, whom he has brought back as prisoners. Immediately after, in asking for mercy, Tamora herself describes her own role as a prisoner. And she does so using terms that echo the Romans’ attitude to Lavinia as an “ornament”: “we are brought to Rome to beautify thy triumphs,” she says to Titus.⁶² There is no difference, at this point, between Lavinia’s role as embellishment and exchange medium among factions and Tamora’s as a beautifying element for Rome and as valuable booty with which Titus has come back from the battle. Saturninus even remarks on the potential interchangeability of the two women. Comparing Tamora with Lavinia, the woman he is supposed to marry, he says: “A goodly lady, trust me, of the hue that I would choose were I to choose anew.”⁶³ It is a sentence that, apart from questioning Saturninus’s real feelings for Lavinia, once again evokes the idea of a woman as a commodity that the emperor can choose by color, and according to his whims, among a set of very similar ones. Tamora’s role as a passive victim of male power ends here: her subsequent becoming the new Roman queen—after Lavinia elopes with Bassianus—marks a crucial change in the character, who now reveals herself for what she really is. Such an alteration is also reflected in the way in which objectifying metaphors referred to her completely change in tone, implications, and quantity. As we have seen, Aaron connects her mistress with gold for her beauty and power, while avoiding the problematic implications of gold in its base meaning. Saturninus too contributes significantly to a similar rhetoric in connection with Tamora and distinguishes it from the way he sees Lavinia. In fact, just after stating that Lavinia is a “changing piece,” he argues instead that Tamora “overshine[s] the gallant’st dames of Rome.”⁶⁴ While on the one hand Saturninus connects Lavinia with the negative meaning of gold as a metaphor for what he sees as loose morals, on the other he views its splendor as a metaphor for the virtue Tamora, like “the stately Phoebe,” apparently has.⁶⁵

    

Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare,

Titus, 1.1.71– 73 Titus, 1.1.109 – 10. Titus, 1.1.261– 62. Titus, 1.1.306, 314. Titus, 1.1.313.

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As the play proceeds, whereas the direct objectification of Lavinia becomes more evident and more frequent, metaphors directly commodifying Tamora’s personhood virtually disappear. Such a difference reflects, on a rhetorical level, the way the two characters are perceived: Lavinia is victimized and, to some extent, powerless, while Tamora is a mastermind. Because commodifying metaphors are usually employed by men, it is not surprising that Tamora, in her role as director and counsellor of men’s strategies, is less and less considered a manipulable object. Consequently, the characteristics semantically related to the commodities with which Lavinia is associated are displaced not onto Tamora’s person but onto her actions and crafty devices. Hence, the gold, food, and drinks that identified the commodification of Lavinia as a person turn into adjectives and adverbs in the case of Tamora. As already mentioned, she calls “golden slumber” the peaceful interval of relaxation during which she expects, in the Moor’s company, the achievement of her revenge; “golden” are also the false “promises” with which she intends to betray Titus.⁶⁶ They are “words more sweet … than … honey-stalks”: words described as “delicious feed.”⁶⁷ Finally, once Titus has carried out his revenge, he concludes that Chiron and Demetrius’s mother “daintily hath fed” of her children, therefore using the cognate of a word —“dainty”—previously employed twice in connection with Lavinia: here, it is found in the form of an adverb.⁶⁸ Shakespeare therefore posits a parallel between Lavinia’s personhood and Tamora’s actions by identifying them with similar characteristics: such a rhetorical device indicates how both have an instrumental nature in the play. Just as Lavinia is used by male characters (and by Tamora herself) for their own purposes, so Tamora’s deployment of certain actions and methods leads her to specific objectives or results. In this way, the fundamental contrast between the generally passive nature of Lavinia and the active nature of Tamora, who cunningly deploys words and people to her own benefit, comes to full view too. In this chapter, I have explored how the fundamentally patriarchal nature of both Roman society and early modern England are staged in Titus Andronicus on a rhetorical and metaphorical level. Lavinia, as a female subject in such a system and as the prime victim of its corrupted deviations, is consistently and insistently described through images of valuable commodities. This model of characterization highlights her submissive and peripheral nature, while also underscoring her importance as an economic and social medium to shift the power structures

 Shakespeare, Titus, 4.4.97.  Shakespeare, Titus, 4.4.90 – 93.  Shakespeare, Titus, 5.3.60.

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of Rome. The main problem with her commoditization is that it fundamentally questions her personal value and disturbingly accompanies an increasingly evident physical—and not just metaphorical—experience of objectification, which is deployed by rape, disability, and finally death. However, by marking commodity metaphors as conveyors of an intrinsically sensorial significance, Shakespeare not only illuminates the egotistical motivations of the characters deploying such metaphors but also provides space for a moral judgment on the part of the audience, who tend to feel compassion for Lavinia. Arguably, the audience temporarily feel a version of this emotion also for Tamora who, in the first part of the play, gets commoditized on very similar rhetorical and semantic grounds as Lavinia. Yet, the quick transformation of the character, along with the full revelation of her motives, soon causes a disappearance of the personas-object allegory and a concomitant emergence of an allegorical system through which simple actions—like Lavinia’s personhood—are seen as passive commodities that help achieve greater objectives.

Works Cited Arnold, Oliver. The Third Citizen: Shakespeare’s Theater and the Early Modern House of Commons. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Augustine. Confessions, translated by Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Belin, Mandy de. From the Deer to the Fox: The Hunting Transition and the Landscape, 1600 – 1850. Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2013. Bott, Robin L. “‘O, Keep Me from Their Worse than Killing Lust’: Ideologies of Rape and Mutilation in Chaucer’s Physician’s Tale and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.” In Representing Rape in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, edited by Elizabeth Robertson, Christine M. Rose, and Christopher Cannon, 189 – 211. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001. Carter, Sarah. Ovidian Myth and Sexual Deviance in Early Modern English Literature. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Catty, Jocelyn. Writing Rape, Writing Women in Early Modern England: Unbridled Speech. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Charlier, P., J. Poupon, I. Huynh-Charlier, J.-F. Saliege, D. Favier, C. Keyser, and B. Ludes. “A Gold Elixir of Youth in the 16th Century French Court.” British Medical Journal 339 (2009): b5311. Clark, Stuart. Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Fitzpatrick, Joan. Food in Shakespeare: Early Modern Dietaries and the Plays. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Flandrin, Jean-Louis. “Distinction through Taste.” In A History of Private Life: Passions of the Renaissance, edited by Roger Chartier, 3 vols., 3:265 – 308. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.

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Fumerton, Patricia. Cultural Aesthetics: Renaissance Literature and the Practice of Social Ornament. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Gillen, Katherine. Chaste Value: Economic Crisis, Female Chastity and the Production of Social Difference on Shakespeare’s Stage. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017. Hall, Marie Boas. The Scientific Renaissance: 1450 – 1630. New York: Dover Publications, 1994. Harris, Bernice. “Sexuality as a Signifier for Power Relations: Using Lavinia, of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.” Criticism 38 (1996): 383 – 406. Howes, David. “Charting the Sensorial Revolution.” The Senses and Society 1 (2006): 113 – 28. Kenny, Shannon L. Gold: A Cultural Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2011. Kern-Stähler, Annette, and Kathrin Scheuchzer. “Introduction.” In The Five Senses in Medieval and Early Modern England, edited by Annette Kern-Stähler, Beatrix Busse, and Wietse de Boer, 1 – 20. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Kitch, Aaron. Political Economy and the States of Literature in Early Modern England. London: Routledge, 2009. Matei-Chesnoiu, Monica. Early Modern Drama and the Eastern European Elsewhere: Representations of Liminal Locality in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009. Mauss, Marcel. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Hoboken: Taylor & Francis, 2002. Munro, Lucy. “Staging Taste.” In The Senses in Early Modern England, 1558 – 1660, edited by Simon Smith, Jackie Watson, and Amy Kenny, 19 – 38. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015. Nicholl, Charles. The Chemical Theatre. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980. Palmer, D. J. “The Unspeakable in Pursuit of the Uneatable: Language and Action in Titus Andronicus.” Critical Quarterly 14 (1972): 320 – 39. Pennington, David, and Gareth Shaw. Going to Market: Women, Trade and Social Relations in Early Modern English Towns, c. 1550 – 1650. Farnham: Ashgate, 2016. Rubin, Gayle. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex.” In Toward an Anthropology of Women, edited by Rayna R. Reiter, 157 – 210. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975. Schmidt, Benjamin. Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe’s Early Modern World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Shakespeare, William. Titus Andronicus, edited by Alan Hughes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Shakespeare, William. Titus Andronicus, edited by Jonathan Bate. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2018, rev edn. Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works, edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Sherman, William H. “‘Gold Is the Strength, the Sinnewes of the World’: Thomas Dekker’s Old Fortunatus and England’s Golden Age.” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 6 (1993): 85 – 102. Solga, Kim. Violence against Women in Early Modern Performance: Invisible Acts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Thomas, Keith. “The Double Standard.” Journal of the History of Ideas 20 (1959): 195 – 216.

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Traub, Valerie. “Jewels, Statues, and Corpses: Containment of Female Erotic Power in Shakespeare’s Plays.” Shakespeare Studies 20 (1987): 215 – 38. Watson, Jackie. “‘Dove-Like Looks’ and ‘Serpents Eyes’: Staging Visual Clues and Early Modern Aspiration.” In The Senses in Early Modern England, 1558 – 1660, edited by Simon Smith, Jackie Watson, and Amy Kenny, 39 – 54. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015. Weber, William W. “‘Worse than Philomel:’ Violence, Revenge, and Meta-Allusion in Titus Andronicus.” Studies in Philology 112 (2015): 698 – 717.

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Blending Motherhoods: Volumnia and the Representation of Maternity in William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus

That the ancient Roman world constitutes a powerful matrix of cultural models in early modern England and on the early modern English stage has almost become a critical truism. In a logic of cultural mobility, Rome, viewed as representing “the intrinsic nomadism and hybridization of cultural systems,” as Maria Del Sapio Garbero argues, “mediate[d] a manifold range of issues. It could be used as a reservoir of exempla exsecranda, but also as a model of cultural authority, or better as an argument useful to negotiate new space for new forms of knowledge, especially if wrought … in the spirit of translatio imperii.”¹ Volumnia in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (1607– 1609) is emblematic of the ways in which representations of ancient Rome in English Renaissance drama participated in this general process of renegotiating Roman history and culture, since—as I intend to argue—she simultaneously voices both a Roman and a Renaissance mother. In this chapter, I therefore set out to shed light on how this composite motherhood emerges in the play with a clarity that is not so evident anywhere else in Shakespeare’s Roman plays, and on how it consistently does so regardless of the patent contradictions inhering in these maternal models. As is often the case with Shakespeare’s plot construction, he is both free and constrained in outlining his dramatic characters: he inherits Volumnia from the history told in the sources, namely Thomas North’s English translation of Plutarch’s “Life of Coriolanus” and the second book of Titus Livy’s Ab urbe condita (mainly known in Latin, but also available in Philemon Holland’s vernacular translation).² Although probably Volumnia and Coriolanus never existed, their lives are narrated by Latin historians as part of the early republic, at the time

 Del Sapio Garbero, “Introduction,” xii; Del Sapio Garbero, Isenberg, and Pennacchia, “Introduction,” 17– 18. On this topic see, among others, Miola, Shakespeare’s Rome; Del Sapio Garbero, ed., Identity, Otherness and Empire; Chernaik, The Myth of Rome; Innes, Shakespeare’s Roman Plays; Holland, ed., Shakespeare and Rome; Del Sapio Garbero, ed., Rome in Shakespeare’s World.  Coriolanus is extensively based upon the English translation of Plutarch’s Lives by Thomas North (1579); Shakespeare’s other sources include Philemon Holland’s translation of Livy’s Ab urbe condita (The Romane Historie, 1600) and Lucius Annaeus Florus’s Epitome Bellorum Omnium Annorum DCC (first/second century CE). https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501514203-003

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of the Volscian wars and siege of Corioli (494 BCE).³ The Roman past is, nonetheless, manipulated in order to make Volumnia into a character who signifies more than what history had handed down: while for some critics she epitomizes the prototype of the respectable Roman mother, for others she also puts on record the paradigm of corrupting maternity haunting early modern literature and culture.⁴ What I find peculiar about Volumnia is that she invariably combines these two contradictory models every time she speaks or is mentioned. As is well known, the nightmare of maternal malevolence as intrinsically attempting to contaminate (filial) masculinity with female weakness and corruption is often detected and staged by early modern playwrights; countless maternal characters directly or indirectly hint at this monstrous imagery inhabited by phantasmagoric devouring wombs and threats of contagion, suffocation, and feminization: hence, the only way for patriarchy and virility to prosper is often the utter eradication of such demonized motherhood.⁵ However, when observed in the context of republican and imperial Rome, such a dread of contagion is shown as not lying at the core of the constitutional influence of mothers over their sons. In that context, mothers were, on the contrary, endowed with a great authoritativeness that was neither culturally nor socially feared but rather highly respected, supported, and admired. As Susan Dixon contends, mothers—especially patrician ones—could benefit from their high social status and acted as prominent agents in their children’s lives, notwithstanding the fact that Roman society was inherently patriarchal and that the Roman family was founded on the institution of patria potestas, which granted fathers absolute power over their children throughout their lifetime (ius vitae necisque). If not by the law, the mothers’ role was commonly acknowledged and strongly ratified by social conventions: they could often administer their children’s properties, arrange their marriages, and, for sons in their adolescence or adult life, mothers were also models of virtue, insofar as they had a permanent educating role and actively participated in the development of the system of values and duties of the Roman code they were in charge of instilling and transmitting.⁶ The Roman patrician mother, as Eva Cantarella remarks, was usually regarded as her son’s “moral counselor, as his mentor, as the keeper of civic

 Innes, Shakespeare’s Roman Plays, 127.  See, e. g., Piazza, “Volumnia”; Adelman, Suffocating Mothers.  Seminal volumes on early modern representations of the maternal body as corrupting and corrupted are Adelman, Suffocating Mothers; Paster, The Body Embarrassed.  Dixon, The Roman Mother, 6, 26, 5, 170 – 87. For in-depth analyses of Roman motherhood, also refer to Evans, War, Women; Bauman, Women and Politics; Fraschetti, Roman Women; MacLachlan, Women in Ancient Rome; Cantarella, Passato prossimo.

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values, and as an example urging him to pursue his best.”⁷ Furthermore, being ideally “the object[s] of respect and affection from [their] children throughout [their] life” (pietas in matrem), the position of Roman mothers was even improved when they became widowed, inasmuch as this condition often provided them with greater financial independence and power of decision, which in turn made them into authoritative figures displaying both paternal and maternal prerogatives.⁸ What I find worth remarking is that all the features pertaining to Roman and early modern motherhood just outlined seem to converge and blend in Volumnia, who is both counselor and shaper, both a respected and an infecting presence, both an inspiring and a suffocating model. The complexity of Volumnia’s maternal construct allows an unparalleled exploration of the dynamics between mother and son in the Shakespearean canon, also due to her ubiquitous and pivotal presence in the play: she is the one who welcomes her victorious son from the wars in Corioli; she is the one who tries in vain to persuade him to make compromises in order to comply with the wishes of the Roman people and senators; and she is the one who finally convinces Coriolanus not to attack Rome at the head of the Volscian army and, in so doing, saves the city. In this chapter, I will also argue that only by being a Roman mother can Volumnia—ostensibly displayed as a suffocating mother in Coriolanus—outlive her own maternal and female monstrosity: not only does she survive demonization and annihilation in the play’s tragic finale; she even triumphs where her son fails. The multilayered construction of Volumnia’s motherhood seems to rely upon her inclination to shape bodies and roles: always drawing from both maternal models, she controls and negotiates the meanings conveyed by the physical body of her son Coriolanus and by her own. Such a surge towards shaping is also evidenced by the fact that Volumnia molds the social personae she and Coriolanus must perform in order to comply with identity models that, albeit very specific, each time acquire different nuances of meaning if considered either in the Roman or in the early modern English public sphere. What seems to emerge throughout the play as regards Volumnia’s shaping function is, first of all, her control over bodily signification. It should be remembered that it was customary in ancient Rome for mothers to be prominent agents in their sons’ development from their early years to adulthood, and Volumnia is no exception: she seems somehow to be obsessed with Coriolanus’s male body

 Cantarella, Passato prossimo, 137 (my translation).  Dixon, The Roman Mother, 41, 173; Cantarella, Passato prossimo, 137.

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and to be in charge of it as it evolves from “man-child” to “man.”⁹ As she controls the meanings that her son’s body brings forth, it comes as no surprise that Coriolanus should refer to her as “the honoured mould / Wherein this trunk was framed,” thus acknowledging and praising her role as his shaper.¹⁰ Such mastery of a mother over her son’s body, which was encouraged in Rome, nevertheless acquires new significance when Volumnia is viewed as a telling instance of early modern assumptions concerning motherhood as contaminating: while following the Roman tradition to the letter, Volumnia’s maternal control—as Janet Adelman points out—also reproduces the looming threat to masculinity inherent in the mere contact with the maternal body.¹¹ She embodies all the fears about monstrous mothers typical of the period, in that she is foregrounded as the matrix of her son’s body, in light both of her biological function as genetrix and especially of her role as shaper who gives him form, just like a she-bear licking her cubs into shape in the Renaissance imagination.¹² In early modern medical treatises and in popular culture, the origin of such female contagion would often be located in the mother’s womb, depicted as a devouring and infecting autonomous entity wandering loose around the female body.¹³ In the play, as her identification of Coriolanus as “the only son of [her] womb” makes clear, Volumnia foregrounds the importance of her womb as the prime site and source of her maternity; moreover, when she insists that Coriolanus “shalt no sooner / March to assault [his] country than to tread / … on [his] mother’s womb / That brought [him] to this world,” she also makes her womb coincide with the State.¹⁴ Whereas this passage, almost literally taken from Plutarch, is in line with the relevance granted to mothers in ancient Rome in public affairs, it also calls attention to the malevolence that the State shares with this mother’s womb: when Coriolanus is banished, Rome is turned into a malevolent nurturer that “like an unnatural dam / Should now eat up her own,” thereby emerging as the emblem of devouring wombs destroying the life they had previously nurtured, as they were pictured in the early modern cultural imagination.¹⁵

 Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 1.3.16, 17.  Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 5.3.22– 23.  Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, 130 – 64.  This belief was very popular in early modern culture, also owing to the fact that it was mentioned in widely circulating scientific treatises such as Philemon Holland’s translation of Pliny’s Historie of the World (1601).  Jorde, A Briefe Discourse; Crooke, Mikrokosmographia, 250 – 51; Paster, The Body Embarrassed, 163 – 214.  Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 1.3.6, 5.3.122 – 25.  Plutarch, C. Marcius 35. 5 (Lives, 55); Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 3.3.116 – 18, 3.1.294– 25.

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The association between Rome and Volumnia’s womb therefore implies that when Coriolanus is banished from the city he is also exiled from his mother’s womb.¹⁶ All this, from an early modern perspective, would certainly mean liberation from her suffocating grasp and possibility for an autonomous self to develop; and yet, banishment mostly means for him an utter resection of his vital binding to her, thus implying the loss of his own identity: just as she “evokes the peculiar value of women as the fertile resource without which the state cannot reproduce itself,” Volumnia makes clear that what Coriolanus has lost is also “the source of his being.”¹⁷ The original, total, unquestionable connection between Coriolanus and Volumnia synecdochically represented by her womb helps us shed light on the distinctive bond linking the two of them, a form of dependency that scholars have often detected in the play but that, in light of my argument in this chapter, stands out as paradigmatic of the complex blending of maternal paradigms underlying Volumnia’s character. From the point of view of Roman culture, such a primal tie—which outshines the relationship between Coriolanus and his wife, Virgilia—stages the typical bond between mother and son, respectively relying on filial respect and maternal care for anything concerning sons’ advancement within the context of Roman public life.¹⁸ At the same time, in an early modern context, this bond between Volumnia and her son would rather voice a suffocating relationship that turns the mother from a mentor into the sole source of the son’s self-definition. That is why, as Adelman remarks, Volumnia’s acknowledgment that “there’s is no man in the world / More bound to’s mother” than Coriolanus denotes, in fact, his utter dependence on her and his impossible pursuit of an autonomous identity.¹⁹ The frantic use of possessives in relation to both Volumnia and Coriolanus is also relevant in this respect, insofar as, just as it brings to mind the importance of family relations in the orchestration of social identities in Rome, it simultaneously shows how Volumnia and Coriolanus need each other in order to exist.²⁰ True, possessives cannot be simply supressed  Adelman, “Shakespeare’s Romulus and Remus,” 29.  Kahn, Roman Shakespeare, 157.  Dixon, The Roman Mother, 5.  Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 5.3.158 – 59 (emphasis mine); Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, 150 – 57.  Possessive determiners and pronouns recur in Coriolanus: Volumnia is referred to as “my mother” (3.2.8; 4.1.20, 27; 5.3.29, 185), “my dearest mother” (4.1.48), “your mother” (2.1.164), “thy dear mother” (5.3.161), or “his mother” (4.2.8; 5.4.6, 15, 27); Coriolanus is, instead, alternatively appointed as “my son” (1.3.2; 2.1.131; 3.2.73; 4.2.23), “the only son of my womb” (1.3.6), “my good Martius” (1.3.23), “my boy Martius” (2.1.97), “my good soldier” (2.1.166), “my gentle Martius” (2.1.167), “my first son” (4.1.33), and “my warrior” (5.3.62).

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in English, but reiterated expressions such as “my son,” “my mother,” “thy husband,” etc. could have been easily replaced by proper names or simply omitted. The fact that they are not only present but recur so frequently seems to me to be telling. This way, no matter how conventional in the context of ancient Rome, their bond also takes the shape of a corporeal fusion whereby the boundaries between Coriolanus’s and Volumnia’s bodies become blurred. The masculine realm of warfare, in which a proper Roman soldier can prove his valor, therefore also shines forth as the search for a motherless self-rebirth, as the site of a fantasy of being self-begotten (“As if a man were author of himself / And knew no other kin”), which is the only way in which Coriolanus can escape his maternal matrix.²¹ The paradox, however, lies in the fact that “the son is never more the mother’s creature than when he attempts to escape her”: the war brings Coriolanus away from Volumnia, thereby producing a heroic masculinity based on the utter eradication of female contagion; at the same time, this is just the realization of her bloodthirsty will, and Coriolanus is thus exhibited as the “‘perennial mama’s boy,’ incapable of liberating himself from the umbilical cord and achieving an adult autonomy of character.”²² In addition, this double reading of Coriolanus’s debt to Volumnia as both deep mutual respect and annihilating merging is also visible in the fact that twice in the play her status as mother of Coriolanus overlaps with the role of his wife. This does not strike one as uncommon in republican Rome, where “only mothers as progenitors share[d] in the authority and honour accorded to fathers”; nor does the rigid hierarchy regulating Volumnia’s and Virgilia’s interactions before men come off as surprising: Volumnia speaks, and Virgilia is usually silent; Volumnia is Coriolanus’s main interlocutor, and Virgilia his “gracious silence”; Volumnia enters, and Virgilia follows.²³ It is rather in an early modern perspective that this blurring is given monstrously morbid undertones, inasmuch as it somehow alludes to an unnatural union verging on carnal fusion, as Volumnia’s first lines suggest: I pray you, daughter, sing, or express yourself in a more comfortable sort. If my son were my husband, I should freelier rejoice in that absence wherein he won honour than in the embracements of his bed, where he would show most love.²⁴

   

Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 5.3.36 – 37. Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, 130; Pfister, “Acting the Roman,” 40. Kahn, Roman Shakespeare, 157; Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 2.1.170. Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 1.3.1– 5.

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The indirect reference to a marriage tie and intercourse between mother and son as soon as Volumnia enters the stage in a domestic scene alongside Virgilia paves the way for a dramatic representation of the Renaissance nightmares projecting the maternal body as an impure site of entrenched entanglement that here even becomes incestuous. This collective cultural fear staged as unnatural coupling is also echoed later on when Coriolanus attempts to infuse courage into his mother by reminding her that she was wont to say, If [she] had been the wife of Hercules, Six of his labours [she]’d have done and saved [Her] husband so much sweat.²⁵

The analogy in Coriolanus’s words conjures up an image of horrid incest, because it suggests that Volumnia would rather imagine herself as the wife than the mother of Hercules, the heroic counterpart of Coriolanus. This is especially so in consideration of the fact that Volumnia does compare herself to the mother of a hero earlier in the play and that, according to Roman mythology, Hercules (demigod son to Jupiter and Alcmene, queen of Tyrius and wife to Amphitryon) owed his superhuman strength to the milk of Juno—patroness of Rome, as well as ancient goddess of marriage and childbirth—with which he was nursed while she was asleep.²⁶ Inasmuch as Volumnia claims to be “Juno-like” and claims the merit of having instilled valor in her son through suckling (“thy valiantness was mine, thou suck’st it from me”), her reference to Hercules’s wife strikes as unexpected and thus seems further to testify to the disturbing quality in Volumnia and Coriolanus’s bodily connection.²⁷ The emphasis laid on suckling as the source of Coriolanus’s “valiantness” enables us to observe that, even in what was regarded as common practice in Rome, Volumnia stands out as poised between a Roman and an early modern motherhood. The “valiantness” with which she nursed Coriolanus encompasses

 Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 4.1.16 – 19.  As is well known, Juno was the chief female divinity in Roman mythology: she was worshipped as the protector and special counselor of the State, was mother to Mars and Bellona (god and goddess of war), and was venerated as the patron goddess of marriage and childbirth (Juno Lucina). She was deceived into suckling Hercules and, according to the myth, he owed his strength to her. The references to Juno and to suckling are echoed by the allusion to Hecuba feeding her heroic son Hector: “The breasts of Hecuba / When she did suckle Hector looked not lovelier / Than Hector’s forehead when it spit forth blood / At Grecian sword contemning” (Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 1.3.42– 45).  Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 4.2.53; 3.2.130.

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a set of values belonging to the code of Romanitas that Volumnia, as a Roman mother, was in charge of transmitting. Yet, as the OED’s first entry for the adjective “valiant” shows, it also (and more precisely) involves the state of being “stalwart of body, bone, hands”: what Coriolanus suckles from Volumnia, which she appoints as the source of his strength and virility, is related first to his body and, accordingly, to the body of his mother, to her Juno-like breasts, thereby turned into the origin of masculinity.²⁸ Moreover, because a woman’s milk—as well as her menstrual blood and all corporeal fluids—was deemed highly contaminating in early modern medical and popular culture, the dauntlessness contained in Volumnia’s breasts also becomes the main source of Coriolanus’s weakening by means of her maternal malevolence.²⁹ Her milk is therefore remodeled as the sign of the threat her androgynous femininity poses: in order to shape his body as stalwart and to engender courage in him, Volumnia herself has to possess those virtues that were regarded as exclusively male in early modern English patriarchal culture. The fact that she arrogates male prerogatives could be perceived as a virtue and encouraged in a fatherless Roman family, but it nonetheless defines Volumnia as a Renaissance woman and a mother to be feared.³⁰ The same troublesome deviation of codified gender patterns emerges when she declares: “anger’s my meat: I sup upon myself / And so shall starve with feeding.”³¹ In Galenic humoral theory, anger was meant as “fury,” “hot passion,” and was accordingly a distinctive feature of male bodies, viewed as hot and dry. It follows that, on closer inspection, Volumnia’s body, foregrounded as the epitome of maternity throughout the play, seems nonetheless to be made of and feeding on anger, and is thus fashioned as intrinsically masculine. An additional practice pertaining to the symbolic significance of bodies is the social custom of kneeling before parents, which regulated the parent-child relationship both in ancient Rome and in early modern England. In this play, it also signifies the destabilizing blurring of roles and all-absorbing bond between Volumnia and Coriolanus in the perspective of Renaissance notions of ma-

 Part of the OED entry for “valiant” reads: “1.a. Of persons: stalwart of body, bone, hands (1303)… . 2.a. Having or possessing courage; esp. acting with or showing boldness or bravery in fight or on the field of battle; bold, brave, courageous, stout-hearted (1390)”; Kahn, Roman Shakespeare, 149.  Paster, The Body Embarrassed, 64– 112.  It should not be forgotten that, according to Roman mythology, Juno was believed to have conceived her children without Jupiter’s intervention. The total absence of Coriolanus’s father from the play is then given new prominence, all the more so given the fact that mentions of Coriolanus’s father are actually included in Plutarch, C. Marcius 1. 2, 4. 7 (Lives, 1, 6).  Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 4.2.50 – 51.

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levolent motherhood. The ritual of kneeling between mother and son is staged twice in the play: when he comes back from Corioli, it is first Coriolanus who kneels before Volumnia as a form of filial respect, although she promptly invites him to stand up, for kneeling does not become a triumphant warrior; in 5.3 this practice is, however, reversed and it is Volumnia who pleads Coriolanus not to attack his home country by prostrating herself before him: here, he kneels as well, and they both rise after he is persuaded.³² Insofar as it is aimed at the safeguard of the State, this distortion of a traditional practice conveys the extent to which Volumnia’s commitment to Rome is worth the admiration and respect of the whole community. Still, this reversal of a codified corporeal practice shows that Coriolanus’s outrageous insurrection against Rome—his land, his nourishing home, his source of identity—can also be construed as a rebellion to his mother’s womb and a betrayal of his debt to her. His surrendering to her can thus be viewed as a way to acknowledge not only the centrality of pietas in matrem in Rome but also the pervasiveness of Volumnia’s control over the body of her son. Engaging with the metaphorical significance of Volumnia’s and Coriolanus’s bodies in Shakespeare’s Rome—which becomes “a privileged arena for questioning the nature of bodies and the place they hold in a changing order of the world and universe”—also implies, as Paul Innes suggests, dealing with the complex “staged ritual of the body on display.”³³ It is a composite shaping process, whereby Volumnia turns her son’s body into a mighty signifier of the daring prowess and loyal commitment required of an exemplary Roman soldier. This anatomizing and theatricalization of Coriolanus’s body are chiefly displayed through the exposition of wounds and blood on his skin, a parading exhibition that intercepts the people’s need to see and touch the marks left on their leader’s body so as to penetrate and grasp what lies beneath. Since both wounds and blood become the visible evidence of Coriolanus’s martial valor, the practice of showing his wounds to the people who demand to see them would be for him a civic duty, as well as the only way to make a step forward in his cursus honorum: I have some wounds upon me, and they smart To hear themselves remembered. … I have wounds To show you which shall be yours in private.³⁴

 Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 2.1.166; 5.3.29 – 30, 50 – 52, 56 – 57, 62sd.  Del Sapio Garbero, Isenberg, and Pennacchia, “Introduction,” 17; Innes, Shakespeare’s Roman Plays, 150.  Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 1.9.28 – 29, 2.3.75 – 76.

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Although in Plutarch Coriolanus does expose his wounds to the hungry gazes of the people, Shakespeare’s title character refuses to do so due to what scholars have often described as an intrinsic impossibility to acknowledge any necessity and accept any compromise.³⁵ The need for his wounds to be shown seems, on the contrary, to be fully understood by Volumnia and Menenius in 2.1, when, just before Martius’s triumphal entrance through the gates of the city, they descant upon the signs his body bears from the battles he has fought in his seventeen years of combat: menenius … Is he not wounded? He was wont to come home wounded. virgilia O, no, no, no! volumnia O, he is wounded, I thank the gods for’t! menenius So do I too, if it be not too much. Brings ’a victory in his pocket, the wounds become him. volumnia On’s brows. Menenius, he comes the third time home with the oaken garland.³⁶

Here, unlike Virgilia, Volumnia’s position as an aged mother in Rome endows her with the right to speak to Menenius in the same authoritative voice (like a peer pater in the public arena); however, although they both discuss the symbolic worth of Coriolanus’s wounds, it is not Menenius—the personification of Roman patriarchal aristocracy—but Volumnia who better masters “the wounds [Coriolanus] does bear for Rome.”³⁷ Far from simply enumerating them, she knows his wounds by heart—their number, their position, the wars during which he received them—and exerts a full and compulsive control over his body as compared to Menenius, who proves to be less connected with the symbolic significance of Coriolanus’s wounds, of which he seems to be only partially aware: menenius … Where is he wounded? volumnia I’th’ shoulder and i’th’ left arm. There will be large cicatrices to show the people when he shall stand for his place. He received in the repulse of Tarquin seven hurts i’th’ body. menenius One i’th’ neck and two i’th’ thigh—there’s

 Plutarch, C. Marcius 15. 1 (Lives, 21– 22); Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 2.2.146 – 49, 2.3.104– 8, 160 – 61. On this, see Adelman, Suffocating Mothers; Kaegi, “‘How apply you this?’”; Innes, Shakespeare’s Roman Plays, 151.  Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 2.1.115 – 22.  Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 4.2.28.

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nine that I know. volumnia He had, before this last expedition, twentyfive wounds upon him. menenius Now it’s twenty-seven; every gash was an enemy’s grave.³⁸

As this passage makes clear, it is Volumnia who decides that the “large cicatrices” on her son’s body will have to be “show[n] the people when he shall stand / for his place,” that these scars—once Coriolanus’s body is offered to the anatomizing gaze of the Romans—will testify to the prowess he has suckled from her. In an early modern perspective, however, these wounds that “become him” as mirrors into his martial masculinity, “the apertures that marked Coriolanus’s precocious entry into manhood as a young boy,” also come to be the signs of his mother’s molding of his male body: having Coriolanus’s wounds exposed is for Volumnia a way to prove what a brave warrior and faithful Roman her son is and, consequently, what an exemplary mother she has been; at the same time, however, it also means exhibiting the fact that he has come to embody her very own wishes on him and that, in pleasing Volumnia, Coriolanus is more and more bound to her.³⁹ Just like wounds, blood too (in a play scattered with references to blood and its cognates) “more becomes a man / Than gilt his trophy,” argues Volumnia.⁴⁰ Coriolanus often either shows blood on his body or is referred to as having a “bloody brow” and “blood upon his visage,” as someone “enmeshed in blood of others” and as “a thing of blood.”⁴¹ This blood is, after all, the visual token of both the blood he has shed for Rome and the blood of the enemies he has killed, and therefore shines forth as the emblem of the martial virtus Volumnia has fostered in him.⁴² Construing blood as a sign of masculinity was also common in Renaissance humoral theory, in which it was regarded as the hot-and-therefore-male humor par excellence. At the same time, all this blood associated with and displayed upon Coriolanus also seems symptomatic of a doubly diseased body—“a disease that must be cut away,” “an infection”: on the one hand, a disproportionate

 Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 2.1.142– 52.  Kahn, Roman Shakespeare,153.  Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 1.3.41– 42. There are twenty-one occurrences of the noun “blood” and six of the adjective “bloody” in the play, seventeen and three times respectively with reference to Coriolanus.  Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 1.3.40, 1.9.92, 1.8.10 – 11, 2.2.107.  Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 1.5.18, 1.6.57, 3.1.78, 3.1.300, 4.5.71, 101.

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quantity of blood denotes an unbalanced, excessive masculinity, while, on the other hand, it also hints at the maternal pollution of this male body, which can accordingly be imagined as covered in menstrual blood or in the blood of childbirth.⁴³ In addition, all the blood associated to Coriolanus’s body also calls attention to the chief physical element connecting him to Volumnia: this blood as the reminder of the blood tie they share. When Volumnia rejoices in seeing her son’s blood made public on his face, it is as if she were wishing to see their bond exposed. This is even more the case insofar as Coriolanus himself acknowledges that his blood is hers when he states that Volumnia is the only one “who has a charter to extol her blood.”⁴⁴ The control over the multilayered symbology of Coriolanus’s wounds and blood partakes in Volumnia’s more general orchestration, whereby she first shapes her son’s social role as a military leader and then tries to reshape him as a statesman, each time conforming to and blending both the maternal paradigms she exemplifies. As an addition to Plutarch’s Lives, which only feature references to the deep respect and consideration Coriolanus showed his mother throughout his life, Shakespeare lays unprecedented emphasis on his militaristic upbringing by Volumnia: When yet he was but tenderbodied and the only son of my womb, when youth with comeliness plucked all gaze his way, when for a day of kings’ entreaties a mother should not sell him an hour from her beholding, I, considering how honour would become such a person— … was pleased to let him seek danger where he was like to find fame. To a cruel war I sent him, from whence he returned, his brows bound with oak.⁴⁵

Considering that mothers in Rome were expected to play a crucial role in their sons’ public and private lives, Volumnia’s accounts of her propelling function in initiating Coriolanus into becoming a soldier is in several ways consistent with the Roman model she embodies. Albeit taken to extremes, such maternal apprenticeship to war and dire fierceness does reflect Rome’s customs and is responsible for turning Coriolanus into the epitome of military discipline—brave, sacrificing, manly—whose heroic deeds are publicly eulogized by Cominius in

 Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 3.1.296, 311.  Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 1.9.14 (emphasis mine).  Plutarch, C. Marcius 4. 5 – 7 (Lives, 6); Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 1.3.5 – 14.

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2.2.⁴⁶ In the play, Volumnia reclaims the relevance of her shaping of Coriolanus as a military leader: “my praises made thee first a soldier,” “thy valiantness was mine, you suck’st it from me,” and “thou art my warrior. / I holp to frame thee.”⁴⁷ In light of early modern notions of motherhood, the cultural implications of such emphasis are, however, different: the same Roman values she breeds in Coriolanus reemerge as key features in an exaggeratedly bloodthirsty masculine gender construct; the uncanny paradox here lies in the fact that this male construction— which in the Renaissance was not so much related to military valor as to being invulnerable to the threat posed by emotions and feminization—is indeed framed by Volumnia, his mother. Furthermore, as she is represented both as a moral guide in charge of maieutically eliciting her son’s dormant potential and as a source of identity, Volumnia also shapes her son by turning him into the living embodiment of her own fantasies: “I have lived, / To see inherited my very wishes, / And the buildings of my fancy.”⁴⁸ Much has been said regarding the fact that Coriolanus is Volumnia’s creature and “[her] good soldier,” but I would also like to emphasize that she seems to be endowed with the power to write and set forth his deeds by picturing them in her own visionary mind: Methinks I hear hither your husband’s drum, See him pluck Aufidius down by th’ hair, As children from a bear the Volsces shunning him. Methinks I see him stamp thus, and call thus: “Come on, you cowards, you were got in fear Though you were born in Rome!” His bloody brow With his mailed hand then wiping, forth he goes Like to a harvestman that’s tasked to mow Or all or lose his hire.⁴⁹

Volumnia’s phantasmagorical projections, relying on the repetition of sensory verbs related to hearing and sight, somehow anticipate the accounts of Coriolanus’s heroic deeds (2.2), thereby showing her power not only to manipulate the meanings of his body but also to affect and prompt his actions—in other words, what he does on the battlefield concretizes the very images she has envisioned. Even though complying with his mother’s will is prescribed by the code of Romanitas as filial duty, it also clearly appears as a form of pollution and con-

   

Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare,

Coriolanus, Coriolanus, Coriolanus, Coriolanus,

2.2.80 – 120. 3.2.109, 130, 5.3.62– 63. 2.1.192– 94. 2.1.166, 1.3.31– 39.

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tamination of his hardened masculinity, made weaker by female presence.⁵⁰ That is why, when Coriolanus surrenders to Volumnia’s pleas in 3.2, he points to his own compliance as a form of feminization: Away my disposition and possess me Some harlot’s spirit! My throat of war be turned, Which choired my drum, into a pipe Small as an eunuch or the virgin voice That babies lull asleep!⁵¹

As these lines make clear, no matter how strongly he exorcizes his emotions and needs, Coriolanus will always be subjected to his mother’s shaping will, whereby the more he becomes the fierce Roman soldier she has trained him to be, the more threatened he in fact is. The role Volumnia crafts for Coriolanus, nevertheless, exceeds the boundaries of militarism, as she—herself an example of virtue—“used to load [him] with precepts that would make invincible / The heart that conned them” and instilled into him all the values that make up the Roman code: “virtus as self-discipline, pietas as loyalty to one’s ancestors and their gods, constantia as truth to one’s never-changing and autonomous self, martial fortitudo and endurance as a ‘noble carelessness’ … towards one’s own physical needs and the opinion of others, and a Stoic imperturbability and restraint in showing one’s emotions.”⁵² As his main advisor, Volumnia leads Coriolanus into accepting the consulate he is being offered by the senators (“Pray be counselled. / I have a heart as little apt as yours, / But yet a brain that leads my use of anger / To better vantage”), and, as “the only Roman statesman, a Jacobean Machiavellian governor,” her lesson in the Roman public arena, in which everything is political, relies upon teaching Coriolanus expediency, dissimulation, relativity, flexibility, mediation, and how to be an artful, accommodating politician.⁵³ When she deploys her wisdom as a rhetorician and politician, Volumnia once again stands out as an example of both Roman and Renaissance model mother. As a widowed mother in charge of helping her son in his public life, she enjoys an authoritative position that is also visible in the stylistic form of her speeches: her initial prose in the early domestic scene with Virgilia and Valeria is counterpoised by the refined

 If Coriolanus fails in his obedience, Volumnia warns, “the gods will plague thee / That thou restrain’st from me the duty which / To a mother’s part belongs” (Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 5.3.166 – 68).  Innes, Shakespeare’s Roman Plays, 166; Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 3.2.112– 15.  Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 4.1.9 – 11; Pfister, “Acting the Roman,” 40.  Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 3.2.29 – 32; Piazza, “Volumnia,” 129, 131.

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blank verse displayed every time she talks in the public sphere, in which she is endowed with an assertive voice and opinion, rhetorical skills and an expertise comparable to—if not outshining—those of the old patres of the city. Besides, as “a woman past the menopause [was provided with] the attributes so greatly prized in old men by the ancients,” as Nina Taunton notes, she is even more equal to a fatherly old figure and thus worth admiring: as a matter of fact, Coriolanus’s multiple triumphs testify to the fact that she has artfully fulfilled her prime duty as mother of a Roman warrior (“she, poor hen, fond of no second brood, / Has clucked thee to the wars and safely home / Loaden with honour”).⁵⁴ Besides taking care of Coriolanus’s career, Volumnia’s status as prototypical Roman mother also entails accomplishing this task in the interest of the State and thus as a civic responsibility that is rewarded with public and private respect.⁵⁵ In her case, such a recognition is heightened by the fact that she— with her female contingent resembling the Sabine women in Roman history— is even responsible for saving Rome from Coriolanus’s attack at the head of the Volscian army: when she persuades her son to withdraw, she wins “a happy victory for Rome,” thus succeeding where “all the swords / In Italy and her confederate arms / Could not have made this peace.”⁵⁶ Her achievement is also crowned with a triumphal return to Rome during which Volumnia is hailed Juno-like as “our patroness, the life of Rome!”⁵⁷ Yet, in a fatherless world inhabited by old but powerless men, the authoritativeness that Volumnia’s maternal voice performs, her virago-like appropriation of masculine prerogatives (“sicinius Are you mankind? / volumnia Ay, fool. Is that a shame?”) stand out as outspoken and alarming in the early modern patriarchal system.⁵⁸ Volumnia’s post-menopausal condition, her dry and thus androgynous body in the play’s epilogue exposes the deep crisis of masculinity and patriarchy, since it is not the great Roman vir who triumphs but his aged mother: Coriolanus dies an exile in a foreign land, whereas Volumnia is saluted as “worth of consuls, senators, patricians, / A city full; of tribunes such as you, / A sea and land full,” and “deserve[s] / To have a temple built.”⁵⁹ What is celebrated is thus a paradigm of motherhood that—albeit complying with the dictates of ancient Roman custom—carries an unrestrainable subversive potential.

     

Taunton, “Time’s Whirlgig,” 38; Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 5.3.162– 64. Cantarella, Passato prossimo, 137– 38. Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 5.3.186, 207– 9. Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 5.5.1. Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 4.2.16 – 18. Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 5.6.131– 32sd; 5.4.53 – 55; 5.3.206 – 7.

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Despite being more explicitly staged in Coriolanus than in other plays in the Shakespearean canon, this maternal threat is, however, not expunged. Hence, I would like to draw attention to the fact that part of what enables Volumnia to survive in this play is “history,” in its different acceptations. “History” is first meant as the historical examples of women in middle and old age endowed with great power and charisma available to Shakespeare. The European Renaissance witnessed to a number of rulers whose feminine features, although not always in accordance with contemporary gender norms and hierarchies, were newly promoted as the source of their authority and allure. England’s Elizabeth I was, of course, a remarkable instance of an old woman with strong maternal connotations whose oxymoronic maternal construct was turned into a political weapon. At the same time, even though they could not match Elizabeth in terms of power and influence, other women in other European courts contributed to recasting such model of femininity and motherhood as positive within the context of Renaissance politics, religion, and arts: among them, Caterina de’ Medici in France, Isabella I of Castile in Spain, and Lucrezia Borgia in Italy. Such cultural and literary empowerment of aged, authoritative women voiced by Shakespeare’s Volumnia achieves further relevance if we consider that Coriolanus was probably written and staged between 1607 and 1609, that is, at a moment of rampant discontent against James I’s rule: high expectations for the new Protestant King, father to two male heirs, were being thwarted by his unpopularity among the people and in Parliament, which also resulted in social tensions that the play aptly intercepts—namely, the 1607 grain crisis and popular unrest in the Midlands.⁶⁰ In this perspective, Volumnia’s public triumph and Coriolanus’s anonymous death seem to be in line with—if not somehow legitimized by—contemporary politics and paradigms of power. “History”—that is, Roman tradition and culture—is also meant as the historical framework on which Coriolanus feeds: as previously remarked, the admiration due to a mother in Rome was proportional to her authoritativeness and influence in her son’s private and public life. The play’s Roman setting, then, also allows Volumnia to outlive her own monstrous motherhood and be praised in spite of it.⁶¹ Finally, Shakespeare can save Volumnia at the end of his play also, and above all, by dint of the constraints imposed by his sources: on the

 For further details, see Holland, “Introduction,” 56 – 71.  This is not the case with Tamora and Cleopatra, as they represent alien mothers in Roman plays; nor is it in Julius Caesar, in which Portia and Calpurnia—though exemplary Roman women—are not endowed with maternal authoritativeness and thereby get erased after displaying assertive voices (they commit suicide by swallowing fire and disappear from the stage respectively).

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one hand, Plutarch’s and Livy’s narratives set out the development of his plot; on the other hand, they enable Shakespeare not to excise Volumnia at the end of the play, although she embodies the same maternal monstrosity that is invariably erased in other plays Shakespeare wrote in the same years.⁶² This is, of course, a telling example of the ways in which Shakespeare often refashions his sources to create extremely complex, but never contradictory, characters: no matter how faithful to Plutarch’s mother of Coriolanus, Shakespeare’s Volumnia is unquestionably imbued with early modern culture and is indeed much more kaleidoscopic than her counterparts in the Latin accounts. The multilayered meanings in Volumnia seems to be present in nuce in her name, by which she is appointed only at the outset of the play, when her service to her country, in addition to her accomplished duty as mother, has made her into a self-standing example of Romanitas. ⁶³ Even though the choice of this name relies upon the fact that this is the one recorded by Plutarch, I believe that a number of considerations stemming from a closer etymological exploration of the word “Volumnia” may be fertile ground for shedding new light on the compositeness of this Shakespearian character, which may be viewed as a compendium of all the features making up her composite motherhood addressed in this chapter. First, Coriolanus’s mother in Livy (as well as in Valerius Maximus) is called Veturia, whereas Volumnia is the name of his wife—something on which scholars seldom linger. Shakespeare’s use of “Volumnia,” of course, comes from Plutarch; yet, such a significant divergency and overlapping between the names of Coriolanus’s mother and wife from one source to the other seems somehow to hint at the same blurring between the roles of mother and wife that Shakespeare’s Volumnia dramatizes. In addition, from a strictly etymological point of view, the name Veturia (from the Latin vetus, “old-aged”) brings to mind the wisdom Roman mothers used (and were expected) to possess. The etymology of “Volumnia” is much more stratified and condenses this character’s blending of maternal paradigms that is at the core of my analysis. As recounted by Livy and as was customary in ancient Rome, the word “Volumnia” directly derives from the name of her patrician family (gens Volumnia), which denotes her rightful inscription within one of the strictly male social structures holding power in Rome. This belonging, from an early modern perspective, is nonetheless the origin of her disturbing re-

 E. g., Goneril and Regan in King Lear, Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, Hermione (through temporarily) in The Winter’s Tale, Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra, and Sycorax in The Tempest.  Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 5.4.52.

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configuration as “masculine.” In addition, my emphasis on Volumnia as the emblem of maternity (in its Roman and Renaissance configurations) becomes also apparent in the fact that her proper name resonates with that of Volumna, an originally Etruscan goddess who—just like Juno—was worshipped as the protector of newborns in the vast Roman pantheon. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the proper noun “Volumnia” shares the same etymological root as the Latin word volumen, the double acceptation of which further confirms Volumnia’s blended motherhood in ways that I find highly relevant to the present discussion: volumen as “winding” puts to the forefront Volumnia and Coriolanus’s totalizing bond—“as in the Latin expression volumine fumi (‘winding of smoke’) in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (13: 601); volumen as “volume” seems rather to recast Volumnia as a hollow, embracing body that contains, shelters, and shapes Coriolanus, just as it echoes that all-encompassing and refracting world that is Shakespeare’s Rome.

Works Cited Adelman, Janet. “Shakespeare’s Romulus and Remus: Who Does the Wolf Love?” In Identity, Otherness and Empire in Shakespeare’s Rome, edited by Maria Del Sapio Garbero, 19 – 34. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Adelman, Janet. Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare’s Plays, Hamlet to The Tempest. New York: Routledge, 1992. Bauman, Richard A. Women and Politics in Ancient Rome. London: Routledge, 1992. Cantarella, Eva. Passato prossimo. Donne romane da Tacita a Sulpicia. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1996. Chernaik, Warren. The Myth of Rome in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Crooke, Helkiah. Mikrokosmographia: A Description of the Body of Man. London, 1615. Del Sapio Garbero, Maria, ed. Identity, Otherness and Empire in Shakespeare’s Rome. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Del Sapio Garbero, Maria. “The Illness of Shakespeare’s Rome: An Introduction.” In Rome in Shakespeare’s World, edited by Maria Del Sapio Garbero, vii–xxii. Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 2018. Del Sapio Garbero, Maria. “Introduction: Performing ‘Rome’ from the Periphery.” In Identity, Otherness and Empire in Shakespeare’s Rome, edited by Maria Del Sapio Garbero, 1 – 15. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Del Sapio Garbero, Maria, Nancy Isenberg, and Maddalena Pennacchia. “Introduction: Shakespeare’s Rome and Renaissance Anthropographie.” In Questioning Bodies in Shakespeare’s Rome, edited by Maria Del Sapio Garbero, Nancy Isenberg, and Maddalena Pennacchia, 13 – 19. Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2010. Dixon, Susan. The Roman Mother. London: Routledge, 1988. Evans, John K. War, Women and Children in Ancient Rome. London: Routledge, 1991.

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Fraschetti, Augusto, ed. Roman Women. Translated by Linda Lappin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Holland, Peter. “Introduction” to Coriolanus by William Shakespeare, 1 – 141. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2013. Holland, Peter. ed. Shakespeare and Rome. Thematic issue. Shakespeare Survey 69 (2016). Innes, Paul. Shakespeare’s Roman Plays. London: Palgrave, 2015. Jorde, Edward. A Briefe Discourse of a disease called the Suffocation of the Mother. London: John Windet, 1603. Kahn, Coppélia. Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds and Women. London: Routledge, 1997. Kaegi, Ann. “‘How apply you this?’ Conflict and Consensus in Coriolanus.” Shakespeare 4 (2008): 362 – 78. MacLachlan, Bonnie, ed. Women in Ancient Rome: A Sourcebook. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Miola, Robert S. Shakespeare’s Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Paster, Gail Kern. The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. Pfister, Manfred. “Acting the Roman: Coriolanus.” In Identity, Otherness and Empire in Shakespeare’s Rome, edited by Maria Del Sapio Garbero, 35 – 47. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Piazza, Antonella. “Volumnia, the Roman Patroness.” In Questioning Bodies in Shakespeare’s Rome, edited by Maria Del Sapio Garbero, Nancy Isenberg, and Maddalena Pennacchia, 121 – 34. Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2010. Pliny the Elder. The Historie of the World, translated by Philemon Holland. London: Adam Islip, 1601. Plutarch. Plutarch’s Lives, Englished by Sir Thomas North in Ten Volumes. Vol. 3. London: Dent, 1898. Shakespeare, William. Coriolanus. Edited by Peter Holland. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2013. Taunton, Nina. “Time’s Whirlgig: Images of Old Age in Coriolanus, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Newton.” In Growing Old in Early Modern Europe: Cultural Representations, edited by Erin J. Campbell, 21 – 38. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. Willis, Deborah. Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.

Maria Elisa Montironi

“Silent, Not as a Foole”: William Shakespeare’s Roman Women and Early Modern Tropes of Feminine Silence Introduction William Shakespeare’s awareness of the rich implications of the denial, impeding, or prohibition of communication has been discussed extensively since the 1980s, and its exploration from the perspective of performance studies has been particularly successful.¹ Michael Neill has argued that there is ample evidence that Shakespeare himself, as a practical man of the theatre, was intensely interested in the dramatic potential of non-verbal effects—not least the expressive power of silence …. The late plays, in particular, often contain striking moments of unspeaking eloquence subtlety made possible by his company’s use of the smaller indoor space of the Blackfriars from 1608.²

In addition to its dramatic power, silence can be hermeneutically very revealing as a trope that is embodied on stage by characters, and it is an element that is determined by the sociocultural background of the dramatic text more than by the material conditions of the performance. Many of Shakespeare’s silences affect female characters, and the gender studies approach has proved rewarding in discussions of the theme. Christina Luckyj’s perspective seems the most interesting: she contends that in early modern drama silence must be interpreted by considering the conflicting and contradictory contemporary discourse around it, which involved both men and women and often contributed to blurring gender borders. Early modern silence swings from feminine decorum to strategic, masculine political tool; from foolish impotence to forms of androgynous wisdom or dissent. As Luckyj observes, “potentially androgynous, silence became a crucial site where gender markers could be reinforced, interrogated or elided on the early modern stage.”³ Conduct and emblem books of the period extensively disseminated polarized stereotypes of

 See mainly McGuire, Speechless Dialect.  Neill, “The Tempest,” 101.  Luckyj, “A moving Rhetoricke,” 91. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501514203-004

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virtuous silent women and rhetorically aggressive shrews.⁴ However, new emerging ideas simultaneously challenged these clichés.⁵ The early modern construction of silence is crucial to Shakespeare’s characterization of female figures. The implications of silence in the depiction of female Roman dramatis personae seem particularly worthy of investigation and are especially pregnant on a symbolic level because Shakespeare’s Roman plays are mostly political tragedies abundant in topical references as well as dramatized tropes endowed with exemplary function. If the dramatization of res populi Romani is both a means of negotiating and an instrument used to discuss issues pertaining to English society (mainly that of power), then focusing on female rather than male characters offers the opportunity to look at the depiction of those who lived in the shadow of power and were subjected to an imposed voice but unable to speak their own. Shakespeare’s Roman female characters do not merely exemplify the ideal of the silent, virtuous woman or an opposite anti-model, but rather dramatize different ways of coping and “doing things” with silence as Romans, that is, as subjects.⁶ Capitalizing upon Luckyj’s ideas on early modern silence, this essay explores five Shakespearian Roman women and their relation to non-speech: Lavinia in Titus Andronicus, Portia and Calpurnia in Julius Caesar, and Volumnia and Virgilia in Coriolanus. Shakespeare must have (either consciously or unconsciously) faced the question of silence as he handled his sources on Roman civilization and particularly when he focused on female figures. Amy Richlin argues that “from most ancient women we have only silence.”⁷ Thus, she defines her investigation of their history as a “constant search for the women just out of hearing.”⁸ It is not surprising that in depicting his female Roman characters, Shakespeare turned primarily to two male authors: Thomas North, the translator of Plutarch’s Lives, and Ovid, the Latin poet. Their works were central to Shakespeare’s production especially regarding the representation of female characters, even though they are very different as for type, function, and cultural background. Ovid’s works, in particular, are of great interest to the present analysis, since the binomial pairing of women and silence gains tremendous significance in

 See for example Vives, De institutione, 140 ff.  See Luckyj, “A moving Rhetoricke,” 13 – 41.  It is not by chance, I believe, that the most important Shakespearian non-Roman woman embodying a rhetoric of silence is Cordelia, i. e., a character who stems from an ancient—and potentially exemplary—legend and who is deeply constrained by her condition as subject of a kingdom, although the kingdom is ruled by her own father.  Richlin, Argument with Silence, 2.  Richlin, Argument with Silence, 2.

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them. Allowing women to speak in the first person and lingering over the description of violent acts perpetrated against them, Ovid sheds light on female characters and gives them visibility, especially in the Heroides. One of the victims portrayed in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the silenced Philomela, inspired Shakespeare’s first Roman woman: Lavinia in Titus Andronicus.

Lavinia Luckyj asserts that “No play in early modern drama foregrounds feminine silence more than Titus Andronicus, and no play exposes so vividly the competing cultural constructions surrounding it.”⁹ The virtuous daughter of the title character initially chooses silence and also has it imposed on her; she subsequently fights against her forced muteness by using the possibilities of intertextuality. Lavinia has fifty-nine lines in the play, a mere quarter of those given to Tamora (256). The Roman woman is counterposed to the queen of the Goths: the latter is lusty, false, and evil (thus verbose); the former is chaste, good, and obedient (hence taciturn). As she is introduced on stage, Lavinia’s silence proves her to be a proper Roman woman who respects the exemplum of femininity inherited from the classical world and endorsed by Renaissance England. When decisions are made about her marriage in 1.1, Lavinia is on stage but does not speak a word. Her feminine silence at this juncture is clearly a sign of modesty and obedience: she cannot take such decisions about her life; hence, her persona is dehumanized, and she resembles an object in the hands of the men who fight for her. One can reconstruct Lavinia’s experiences only through the words of the male characters who compete for her. She is always the object of actions in their sentences and is therefore “syntactically silent,” as it were.¹⁰ In Thomas Becon’s terms (c. 1560), Lavinia’s silence in this context might be interpreted as “the duty of maids” and is associated with female closure and submission.¹¹ However, in the following act the notion that Lavinia perfectly fits this exemplary model falters. In his The Excellency of Good Women (1613) Barnaby Rich states that “the woman of modesty openeth not her mouth but with discretion, neither is there any bitterness in her tongue.”¹² A comparison of Rich’s description of femininity to Lavinia’s harsh wit against Tamora in 2.2 suffices to disa Luckyj, “A moving Rhetoricke,” 91.  See Shakespeare, Titus, 1.1.244– 46, 280, 287, 289 – 90, 293, 300 – 301.  Becon, New Catechism, 367.  Rich, The Excellency of Good Women, 29.

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buse the reader of the Roman woman’s conformity to the prescribed ideal. Lavinia is capable of biting assertiveness and, when her speech is inhibited, she finds another way to communicate and avenge herself. This female character is unsettling and difficult to categorize, and her complexity grows when her reaction to the silence imposed on her is scrutinized. After Lavinia justifiably accuses her of adultery, Tamora rouses her sons against Lavinia and consents to their raping her. Accordingly, the Roman woman is abused and deprived of her hands and tongue. In other words, she is deliberately denied the possibility of speaking up. The aggression begins with Chiron, one of the two rapists, declaring: “I’ll stop your mouth.”¹³ In his opinion, her mouth spoke too much in speculating on his mother’s affair and, accordingly, it deserves to be punished. The assault ends with Demetrius, the second abuser, ironically exhorting Lavinia to “go tell, and if thy tongue can speak, / Who ’twas that cut thy tongue and ravished thee.”¹⁴ While trying to free herself, the Roman woman uses her self-imposed silence as a prudish feminine reticence to avoid pronouncing the unspeakable nefandum and claims that the rape is what “womanhood denies my tongue to tell.”¹⁵ However, she then provides proof of skillful rhetoric in defining the misdeed as “worse-than-killing lust.”¹⁶ Violated and amputated, the silent Lavinia is far from being the innocuous woman her rapists believed she would be. On the contrary, her quietness becomes a form of “feminine silence … monstrously unchaste” that is open, not fixed, and is consequently indecipherable.¹⁷ This inscrutability makes Lavinia both threatening and grotesque. The beginning of 4.1 is telling in this respect: the mutilated Lavinia runs after Lucius’s son, trying to ask him something, and he flies from her crying for help because he is scared by his inability to decode what she wants and is, perhaps, even more afraid of the possibility that she does not mean anything but is instead possessed by “some fit or frenzy,” like “Hecuba of Troy,” because of her suffering.¹⁸ The Senecan idea that speechless grief can lead its victims to madness and destruction was widespread in Renaissance England and is even mentioned in medical books.¹⁹ In fact, Lavinia has not been driven to madness. Marcus and

      

Shakespeare, Titus, 2.2.184. Shakespeare, Titus, 2.3.1– 2. Shakespeare, Titus, 2.2.174. Shakespeare, Titus, 2.2.175. Luckyj, “A moving Rhetoricke,” 91. Shakespeare, Titus, 4.1.17, 20. See Luckyj, “A moving Rhetoricke,” 69.

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Titus understand this and are confident that “somewhat doth she mean.”²⁰ Thus, they try to interpret her communicative intentions. However, their efforts result in a polysemic interpretation of her “signs,”²¹ which, according to Coppélia Kahn, serve at a figurative level “to dramatise the erasure of the female voice in the Roman patriarchy; to destabilise the language in which women are customarily figured as objects of exchange or vessels of reproduction; and to bring obliquely to light what has been censored.”²² Inferring meaning from Lavinia’s silence is not easy: her condition resists interpretation and, consequently, it puzzles and even panics her interlocutors. In Luckyj’s opinion, “as a potential sign of disobedience and unchaste behaviour [Lavinia’s silence] confounds all assurances. Titus Andronicus not only undermines humanist assumptions about an eloquent rhetoric of silence, it associates silence’s unruly openness with women who lie beyond masculine rhetorical control.”²³ Paradoxically, Lavinia’s forced silence allows her to be unmanageable and disruptive as she expresses herself through signs and “quotations” from Ovid’s literature. This aspect is worth investigating to assess Lavinia’s symbolic value: she succeeds in denouncing her rapists by showing Titus pages from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to make him realize that she “was surprised … Ravished and wronged as Philomela was.”²⁴ Lavinia employs Ovid’s Metamorphoses to elucidate what happened to her. At the same time, the text is used as a source of inspiration for a cannibalistic revenge, which explicitly includes imposed silence in Shakespeare. In avenging himself, Titus speaks words that significantly mirror Chiron’s as he committed his own crime: “Sirs, stop their mouths; let them not speak to me, / But let them hear what fearful words I utter.”²⁵ Ovid’s book is not a mere detail within the plot; it is, rather, a crucial point of reference for the interpretation of Shakespeare’s play. Through it, Shakespeare is able to evince the limits of literature, to showcase its potential against silence, and to exhibit the empowering and multiplying force of the web of texts it represents. A speechless victim, Lavinia nevertheless becomes an exemplum of the force of the literary word over imposed silence. Moreover, Lavinia’s association with Philomela becomes crucial to the interpretation of Shakespeare’s characterization if one first considers that, as Lisa S. Starks-Estes argues, in Ovid’s work Phil-

 Shakespeare, Titus, 4.1.9.  Shakespeare, Titus, 4.1.8.  Kahn, “Shakespeare’s Classical Tragedies,” 225.  Luckyj, “A moving Rhetoricke,” 93.  Shakespeare, Titus, 4.1.51– 53. Marcus mentions the same myth when he first sees the raped Lavinia in 2.3.11– 32.  Shakespeare, Titus, 5.2.167– 8.

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omela represents “the subversive power of the female voice—even when it cannot be heard, or perhaps even more when it cannot.”²⁶ It should be noted that Ovid’s Philomela is also a symbol of the possibilities and deficiencies of language.²⁷ Further, besides being an emblem of female chastity in Shakespeare’s time, the silenced Philomela was also appropriated “as a figure for the (male) poet,” a symbolism that may apply to Ovid’s original character as well.²⁸ Deducere carmen, or the act of weaving/writing poetry is a role performed by both Philomela and Ovid. Unable to speak, Philomela embroiders the elucidation of her reasons while Ovid, exiled from Augustan Rome, “attempts to use his poetry as a written medium to reconnect with his lost community and effect his return to it.”²⁹ Early modern culture borrowed and enhanced the idea of Philomela as a symbol of the poet. In the Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, Sidney invokes Philomela as “an instrument of the male poet.”³⁰ In Robert Greene’s Philomela, a homonymous young lady, who clearly bears the features of the related classical figure, lives in humanist Italy and is described as the perfect woman: modest, chaste, and “silent, not as a foole, but because she would not be counted a blab.”³¹ The story is set in a misogynistic society that sees “womens tongues [as] tipt with deceit.”³² Nevertheless, the protagonist proves to be extremely clever, a genuine wit who expresses herself through odes and sonnets, just like a poet. Shakespeare himself identifies with Philomela in the Passionate Pilgrim and in sonnet 102. Additionally, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2.2) and in Lucrece, this mythological character is invoked somewhat as a Muse that serves to inspire the expression of outrage against the violation of a person’s freedom or body. Thus, elsewhere in his oeuvre Shakespeare relates to Philomela and chooses her to signify the act of creating poetry. Bearing Philomela’s symbolism in mind, it seems plausible to explore another possible significance of Lavinia’s character as a metaphor for censored poets in an age in which art is “made tongue-tied by authority,” as Shakespeare writes in sonnet 66.³³

 Stark-Estes, Violence, Trauma, and Virtus, 93.  See Enterline, The Rhetoric of the Body, 4– 5.  Luckyj, “A moving Rhetoricke,” 168.  Natoli, Silenced Voices, 79.  Luckyj, “A moving Rhetoricke,” 169.  Greene, Philomela, Bv.  Greene, Philomela, Dr.  See, among others, Dutton, Mastering the Revels; Clare, “Art made tongue-tied by authority”; Hadfield, Literature and Censorship; Chiari, Freedom and Censorship.

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The political weight of Titus Andronicus has long been recognized by critics, especially the play’s mirroring of the religious tensions of early modern England. Michael Neill contends that “the play’s notorious parade of mangled limbs bodies forth the dismemberment of the body politic itself” and that “Lavinia’s severed tongue” is an emblem “of speech cut off at the very root.”³⁴ Critics have highlighted the religious elements potentially suggested by Lavinia’s mutilation. Building on this discussion, Lisa Hopkins develops the idea that “Titus Andronicus is centrally interested in how contemporary Roman identities, in the shape of Catholicism, relate to classical ones.”³⁵ Hence, besides signifying the non-speech of women, Lavinia’s silence may also allude to the silence imposed by censorship, particularly on religious issues. The control of the authorities over the theatre and the censorship of the press were domineering when Titus was composed (1584– 1594). During Elizabeth’s reign, censorship aimed primarily at “suppressing religio-political texts —either Catholic writings that denied Elizabeth’s supremacy and advocated placing a Catholic monarch on the English throne, or radical Protestant texts that denied the Queen’s authority over religion.”³⁶ By the time Shakespeare began his career, “his theatre was subject to state-censorship laws that, among other things, outlawed plays that advanced Catholic doctrine and forbade theatrical representations of the divine in accordance with Protestant belief that such representations were idolatrous.”³⁷ As Hopkins indicates, religious identities are thematized in the play and are depicted in a way that reflects the “confusion and ambiguity in Shakespeare’s own society.”³⁸ The idea of a pitiless and overbearing censorship that elides the possibility of safety from its ambit is also evinced by the series of murders committed by Titus. These killings include the assassination of his daughter Lavinia and of one of his sons on the grounds of honour and virtue. Through the act of conspiring silence, Titus also has the clown, “the play’s most openly Catholic character,” killed solely because of his thoughtless references to religion.³⁹ Kahn views Titus as the personification of an “extreme, rigid conception of manly virtue” that leads Rome to its ruin. She regards Lavinia as a metaphor of “the double bind of women, who must either speak in the language of the fathers

 Neill, Putting History to the Question, 186.  Hopkins, The Cultural Uses of the Caesars, 28.  Clegg, Press Censorship, 75.  Diehl, “Religion and Shakespearean Tragedy,” 87.  Hopkins, The Cultural Uses of the Caesars, 28.  Hopkins, The Cultural Uses of the Caesars, 29; Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, 4.4.42; 84– 85. As Gary Taylor (“Devine,” 26) acutely observes, “his ignorance hangs him.”

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or improvise other means of communication in its interstices.”⁴⁰ However, considering the associative meaning elicited from Lavinia’s connection with Ovid’s Philomela, who “supplied early modern authors with a classical precedent for conflating feminine silence as impotence with feminine silence as agency,” Lavinia may also symbolize the kind of silence that overcomes gender limits.⁴¹ The subjected position of Shakespeare’s Lavinia, who is silenced but is willing to communicate, may be construed as an effective metaphor for the playwright who is forced into silence on current religious questions but finds a way to criticize this circumstance and to express himself indirectly through ancient Roman literature, thus giving new topical meanings to classical myths.

Portia and Calpurnia Elizabethan censorship may also have influenced the writing of Julius Caesar, which was probably conceived around 1599, when the Bishops’ Order banished satires. In the play, Shakespeare’s Roman republic mirrors contemporary England; as Natalie Roulon argues, “it is no accident” that in the text “the characters who are silenced should be associated with prophetic or poetic speech.”⁴² Two Roman women—who are also the only women in the play—Brutus’s wife Portia and Caesar’s wife Calpurnia, represent the silenced characters par excellence in Julius Caesar. In opposition to the other Roman plays discussed in this chapter, these two female characters definitely have minor roles; they are present in the text but are essentially unnecessary to the action. Indeed, women are merely mentioned in the historical accounts about the conspiracy against Caesar. However, they are more numerous than the two retained by Shakespeare, and some contemporary English and continental plays dramatizing the same events accord women more importance.⁴³ Hence, it is striking that Shakespeare allotted the two Roman women in Julius Caesar just a few lines: Calpurnia speaks twenty-seven lines, and Portia is given eighty-two; and each speaks in two different specular scenes of the play. Yet, their brief appearances are impressive and somehow iconic, largely because of their evocative words and symbolic silences. Portia is presented as a noble and witty woman. She asks her husband about his strange behavior and, after understanding that he is plotting something that he must keep secret, she tenders her famous plea to convince him to share that    

Kahn, Roman Shakespeare, 61. Luckyj, “A moving Rhetoricke,” 168. Roulon, “‘Speak no more of her,’” 136. Roulon, “‘Speak no more of her,’” 126 – 27.

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secret with her. It is interesting to note the manner in which she speaks against her gender, traditionally regarded as incapable of mastering speech and keeping counsel, and the manner in which she appropriates the Stoic silence trope both in her supplication scene and in 2.4, her second and last appearance, in which she is paradoxically shown as out of control and panicked in the knowledge that her husband is participating in Caesar’s assassination.⁴⁴ In 2.1, she mentions her self-inflicted wound as a sign of loyalty and endurance and then, in 2.4, she personifies “constancy,” addressing this virtue and asking her to “be strong upon [her] side” and “set a huge mountain ’tween [her] heart and tongue!”⁴⁵ Both tokens echo Zeno’s self-mutilation, which was typical of the classical Stoic discourse on silence and was borrowed by the Neo-Stoicism of Tudor England. In his De garrulitate, Plutarch explains how difficult it is for some men to be silent and praises nature because it has placed the teeth before the tongue, so that they can bite it “till it bleeds” and prevent it from speaking.⁴⁶ In his Penelope’s Web, Robert Greene uses this “masculine trope of heroic prudence … to express the virtue of feminine silence” and explains to women that nature reminds them of the importance of silence through “the Bulwarke of the teeth.”⁴⁷ However, the same author in Philomela negatively refers to women who “proclaime silence with theyr tongues … when in their hearts they are plotting.”⁴⁸ In early modern England, non-speech was considered not only a praiseworthy sign of self-control, but also a political tool to conceal seditious threats. Thus, it was deemed useful for men who followed the “philosophy” of defiant endurance as exemplified by Brutus, the chief organizer of Caesar’s assassination in Julius Caesar. ⁴⁹ Yet, silence as an expression of a threatening political attitude could be problematic when associated with femininity. Portia’s blatantly proclaimed disapproval of women in 2.1 and her quasioneiric fight with her allegedly feminine side in 2.4 may be seen as the consequence of her awareness of being “a paradox.”⁵⁰ She is, in Julia Griffin’s words, “the female version of [Cato’s] proud virtus which is so closely bound up to its etymology: vir, man.”⁵¹ Her speech reflects a woman’s need, in a patriarchal society, to demonstrate her worth by denying her womanhood as Queen

       

See Griffin, “Cato’s Daughter,” and Lovascio’s chapter in the present collection. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 2.1.298 – 99, 2.4.6 – 7. Plutarch, De garrulitate 503 c, in Luckyj, “A moving Rhetoricke,” 54. Luckyj, “A moving Rhetoricke,” 54. Greene, Philomela, Dr. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 4.2.197. Griffin “Cato’s Daughter,” 22. Griffin “Cato’s Daughter,” 22.

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Elizabeth did in her famous speech to the troops at Tilbury in 1588 and as many women did before her, according to Christine de Pizan’s accounts in The Book of the City of Ladies, which was published in Brian Ensley’s English translation in 1521. Portia’s words mirror early modern anxieties over the paradox of Stoic silence: its androgyny. Also, since Stoic silence was associated with rebelliousness in Tudor England, Portia’s terror in 2.4 and her suicide committed by swallowing fire—thus destroying her phonatory and articulatory organs—make her an allegory of feminine insubordinate fortitude, a female trope of heroic prudence. Brutus elucidates the reasons for her insanity (“fell distraught”) and her suicide, and these are significant: she chooses to die because she is impatient of her husband’s absence (who is not dead yet in Shakespeare’s account), but also because “young Octavius with Mark Antony / Have made themselves so strong.”⁵² It may be inferred that she takes her own life for political reasons as well as for a personal cause: her husband’s deeds exert consequences both on him and the Roman commonwealth at large. Shakespeare had access to several “versions” of this Roman woman as he designed Portia’s character in Julius Caesar. Among them is the medieval rendering by Pizan in her Book of the City of Ladies. Here she first mentions Portia in order to repudiate the accusation that women cannot keep secrets, and then invokes her together with Calpurnia to provide “refutations of the claim … that a man who trusts his wife’s advice or lends it credence is stupid.”⁵³ One comment reads: “if Brutus had believed his wife Portia when she told him not to kill Julius Caesar, he would not have been killed himself and all the misfortune that resulted from that deed would not have come to pass.”⁵⁴ She also refers to the case of Julius Caesar: “had he believed his clever and dependable wife, he would never have been assassinated.”⁵⁵ Other examples provided by Pizan include Andromache and Cassandra, who are also interestingly mentioned in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, which was written in the same period as Julius Caesar. Maureen Quilligan underlines the emblematic value of Portia’s suicide in the French book as she dies by “enacting” her ability to keep silent.⁵⁶ Critics also note that the consequences she predicts, and that lead her to taking her own life, are not merely personal (her husband’s death in this variant of the story); they are, in fact, mainly political.⁵⁷ Portia’s suicide may thus be considered an act of ideolog-

     

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 4.2.207, 205 – 6. Pizan, The Book, 127. Pizan, The Book, 127. Pizan, The Book, 128. Quilligan, The Allegory, 151. See Pizan, The Book, 126.

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ical heroism as it is in Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris (editio princeps: 1473).⁵⁸ Shakespeare’s Portia, who dies “by strange manner,” may be domestically feminine in her position, but she is no less politically engaged and allegorical than Pizan’s Portia who “truly died the strangest death of all.”⁵⁹ Her representative self-silencing is a last “political act” addressed to the Romans; it is also dedicated to her husband as proof of her love and trustworthiness, a gestus capable of representing constant women as well as the insubordinate defenders of the commonwealth.⁶⁰ Calpurnia is introduced on stage in 1.2 as she is publicly humiliated by Caesar because of her barrenness and is advised by him, on the basis of a superstitious belief of the Roman “elders,” to let herself be touched by Antony during the Lupercal race to “shake off [her] sterile curse.”⁶¹ After this brief exchange, Calpurnia appears again in 2.2 when she tells her husband about the supernatural events that occurred the night before and that she finds prophetic. The description takes the form of a fourteen-line hypotyposis embellished by alliterations and hyperboles, meant to express and evoke fear. Indeed, her dream has exactly this effect on her, as the audience comes to know through Caesar’s words. It is worth noting that both omens contain silent images and monstrous noises, but no words. These visions are open silences that must be illuminated. Calpurnia fears them, and subsequent facts will prove her right. However, she does not succeed in convincing Caesar to remain at home and avoid going to the Senate. Her thoughts are denigrated as “foolish,” and she is quickly silenced.⁶² She listens silently to the dialogue that occurs between Caesar and Decius Brutus as the latter provides a captious interpretation of her dream, and she silently lets Caesar go after the man who had earlier been shown to believe in ancient superstitions about fertility has declared himself ashamed of having trusted his wife’s irrational thoughts. Silenced, Calpurnia exits the play for good and is never mentioned again. Seemingly, her presence in the play and her words are as barren as her womb. Speaking vividly but ineffectively and without affecting the course of events, the role of this Roman woman may be described as a cameo appearance, albeit one really memorable and functional. Her silence, however, commonly seen as unquestioned feminine obedience, is worth further investigation. Her account of supernatural facts and her interpretation of her own dream allow the playwright to demonstrate, as with Lavinia in Titus Andronicus, “the     

See Franklin, Boccaccio’s Heroines, 132– 38. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 4.2.241; Pizan, The Book, 126. Goldberg, Shakespeare’s Hand, 70. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 1.2.9, 11. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 2.2.105.

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limits of masculine discursive control and knowledge.”⁶³ Not only is she ridiculed for her fears, but the misleading interpretation of her dream by Decius Brutus is crucial and leads to Caesar’s death. It is interesting to note that in the second part of her second and last scene, after she is belittled for stating her opinion, she freezes as if in an act of self-censorship. She seems to become the dumb embodiment of her inscrutable dream vision. In doing so, she incarnates the “desirable refuge from the dangers of speaking and being legible” that early modern culture considered a virtue and associated with women both iconographically and dramatically.⁶⁴ Suddenly enclosing herself in perfect silence, her character becomes an instrument that demonstrates the importance of the feminine (and more broadly, marginal) voice in society and the terrible consequences of silencing it.

Volumnia and Virgilia As a trope embodied by female characters, non-speech is particularly challenging in Shakespeare’s last Roman dramatic work, Coriolanus (1607– 1609). This play is considered by some critics to be Shakespeare’s most overtly political dramatic piece, not only because of its topical references to Jacobean England, but also for its performance history and afterlife. The choice between words and silence is obviously crucial in this play about Machiavellian politics and tyrannical power that also stages the contemporary conflict concerning “masculine” Attic and “feminine” Ciceronian rhetorical styles. The play conveys the clear message that a person’s identity corresponds to “fame,” “opinion,” and the “report” of the individual’s deeds more than to the actions themselves, because politics equals performance.⁶⁵ The tribunes are the “playwrights” and “stage directors” of the plebeians; they provide the lower classes with lines to speak against Martius in 2.3. The Roman general is unable to act on the world stage and is therefore politically doomed. Nevertheless, he is continuously prompted and encouraged by his mother Volumnia, who organizes her son’s “political performance” in 3.2 in scrupulous detail, including his use of unvoiced gestures. Coriolanus’s wife chooses silence in this reality that is made up of words. However, even her silence may be construed as a strategy or a speech act to be performed to obtain something.

 Luckyj, “A moving Rhetoricke,” 91.  Luckyj, “A moving Rhetoricke,” 90.  Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 1.3.20, 1.9.1– 9, 5.6.53 – 58.

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Coriolanus’s contempt for words is an attribute that Shakespeare took from his source, which describes the Roman general as “unfit for any man’s conversation” and lacking education.⁶⁶ The greatest benefit of education is “that it teacheth men that be rude and rough of nature, by compasse and rule of reason, to be civill & courteous.”⁶⁷ This assertion reflects the “Ciceronian emphasis on the civilizing power of speech,” and this belief is typical of both classical culture and early modern humanism.⁶⁸ From this perspective, speech is a tool for socialization, for the negotiation of the common good, and ultimately for political control when mastered by men. Its contrary, silence, represents foolish impotence or feminine passivity. However, in Coriolanus, Shakespeare simultaneously reinstates and questions this classical heritage, and offers a far more complex scenario that reflects the cultural anxieties intrinsic in his age regarding rhetoric and silence. Building on the Ciceronian notion of culture, rhetoric was regarded as an essential prerequisite for a man of politics and was ambiguously associated with different political models. In his studies on the Renaissance homo retoricus, Wayne Rebhorn argues that “the Cicero inherited by the Renaissance was … a Janus-faced figure when it came to politics. One face offered a free republican rhetor engaged in combat with other rhetors; the other face made him a ruler who controlled an audience.”⁶⁹ The mainstream conception of rhetoric in England may be summed up in Henry Peacham’s definition of the orator, in his Garden of Eloquence (1577): “the emperor of men’s minds and affections.”⁷⁰ Most Renaissance treatises and manuals of rhetoric considered the art of good public speaking “the art of ruling others.”⁷¹ Consequently, the political model associated with it was monarchy (and absolutism). As rhetoric began to be regarded as an instrument in the hands of tyrants and came to be considered the tool of deceivers, silence gained importance as a safe private space and as a way of expressing discontent and protest. In such contexts of civil strife about religion as the early modern era was, silence could be regarded as an overtly challenging act of resistance (as in the rejection of the ex officio oath in processes against alleged heretics) or simply as a way of keeping one’s ideas safe and secret. The notion discussed above emerges clearly from an analysis of the two main female characters in Coriolanus, Volumnia and Virgilia, who are respective-

     

Plutarch, “Coriolanus,” 314 (C. Marcius 1. 4). Plutarch, “Coriolanus,” 314 (C. Marcius 1. 5). Luckyj, “A moving Rhetoricke,” 13. Rebhorn, “Rhetoric and Politics,” 388. Rebhorn, Renaissance Debates, 226. Rebhorn, “Rhetoric and Politics,” 388.

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ly the embodiments of tyrannical rhetoric and resistant silence. As previously mentioned, Coriolanus’s mother Volumnia, though relegated to her private feminine dimension, actually directs her son’s words and actions in the political arena. On the contrary, the protagonist’s wife Virgilia, addressed by her husband as “my gracious silence,” is the epitome of silence and works as a foil to her mother-in-law’s character. Virgilia appears in five scenes (1.3, 2.1, 4.2, 4.3, 5.3), takes the floor just twenty-six times, and only speaks a few lines.⁷² Volumnia is on stage in the same scenes as Virgilia with the addition of one, but she has double the lines, and her speeches are usually very long. The one additional scene in which she appears is also the one in which she acts most significantly as a political prompter (3.2). This aspect of her role is wholly created by Shakespeare, and in 3.2, the scene that contributes the most to her characterization, Volumnia is both directly and indirectly depicted as the perfect rhetorician. In order to convince Coriolanus to speak to the people whom he detests, she employs the strategies of ethos, logos, and pathos. Moreover, while teaching Coriolanus his “part,” Volumnia explicitly defines public speaking as concealment and an instrument of conquest.⁷³ She also supplies her son with words and stage directions, thereby demonstrating her awareness of the eloquence of silent, non-verbal communication, as well as of the importance of rhetorical techniques such as captatio benevolentiae, a staple of Cicero’s oratory.⁷⁴ The type of rhetoric supported by Volumnia is repeatedly criticized and unmasked by Coriolanus, who compares it with performance and harlotry, and reminds the audience that his mother considered the plebeians “things created / to yawn, be still and wonder, / when one but of [his] ordinance stood up / To speak of peace or war.”⁷⁵ From Volumnia’s perspective, silence is a sign of impotence or defeat by a more skillful orator. She sees it in Ciceronian terms as a condition reserved for fools who are incapable of using language and are thus incapable of agency. But Virgilia, Volumnia’s counterpart on stage, provides an example of a different kind of silence. To quote Robert Greene again, she is “silent, but not as a foole.”⁷⁶ Virgilia is presented as Volumnia’s converse: she fears violence and spares her words. According to Jarret Walker, Virgilia’s silence in Coriolanus has visual and emblematic value because it is always presented on stage in contrast with

    

Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Greene, Philomela, Bv.

2.1.170. 3.2.53 – 58. 3.2.74– 87. 3.2.10 – 14.

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the opposite nature of her mother-in-law.⁷⁷ Immediately as the female characters are introduced to the audience, Volumnia attacks Virgilia for her mood, begging her to “sing, or express [herself] in a more comfortable sort.”⁷⁸ She forces her to abandon her silence and calls her a “fool.”⁷⁹ Virgilia answers Volumnia’s 168word plea with a ten-word question. At first sight, Virgilia seems to comply with the prescriptive and lauded model of passive womanhood discussed above. It is true that the dominant patriarchal culture silenced women and still advocated silence as a quintessentially female virtue. However, it would be mistaken not to consider the potential further meanings of Virgilia’s behavior. It is vital to link her conduct to early modern connotations and implications associated with feminine silence. In the scene in which she is introduced on stage (1.3), Virgilia is determined to wait for her husband at home and avoids speaking. Given her mother-in-law’s insistence on going out and talking, her conduct may be seen as an act of defiance. This idea is corroborated by the fact that Virgilia is mockingly compared to Penelope by Valeria.⁸⁰ As in the case of Lavinia/Philomela, the classical allusion is meaningful, since the character of Penelope was frequently used as an exemplum in Shakespeare’s time. Penelope’s Web (1587), Robert Greene’s early modern offshoot of the story of Penelope, seems particularly useful for a discussion of Virgilia’s silence. The book is a prose romance that is didactic in its purpose and is addressed to gentlewomen. It is dedicated to Lady Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, and to Lady Anne, Countess of Warwick, both friends of Elizabeth I. Nonetheless, it takes into account the gentlemen readers who, like Mars, “will sometime bee prying into Venus’ papers.”⁸¹ The text discusses “three especiall vertues, necessary to be incident in every vertuous woman … namely obedience, chastitie and sylence.”⁸² The goal is achieved by means of three different accounts of Penelope’s dialogues with her Nurse and her Ladies as she unweaves her cloth at night. The complete text “reveals a truth about feminine virtue—the woman who strives to be virtuous must also be a first-rate performer.”⁸³ To exemplify the need to perform silence, Penelope tells the story of King Ariamenes of Delphos, who must choose an heir among his three sons and resolves to take the

 Walker, “Voiceless Bodies,” 179.  Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 1.3.1– 2.  Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 1.3.41.  Shakespeare’s Penelope is closer to Ovid’s version than to Homer’s. See Sawday, Engines, 161.  Greene, Penelope’s Web, A4r.  Greene, Penelope’s Web, Frontispiece.  Murphy, Virtuous Necessity, 37.

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decision by judging their wives. The first two women compete against each other in praising themselves while the third keeps silent. Her discretion is commended, and she wins the king’s favor. Greene implies that the third wife’s conduct is an intentional and calculated performance of silence, and he has Ismena, one of Penelope’s ladies, declare: “when I have such a proffer as a Crowne … I will forget my prattle.”⁸⁴ Apart from presenting virtues as performed attitudes, Greene redefines the stereotyped idea of womanly silence primarily through the use of paradigms. As Luckyj points out: “Initially [Penelope] recommends silence as the cardinal female virtue … Yet the exempla she produces are derived not from Pauline or Aristotelian sources but rather from Plutarch’s writings on masculine silence.”⁸⁵ In appropriating the masculine significance of silence as wisdom and resistance borrowed from Plutarch’s De garrulitate, Greene redefines the idea of silence as androgynous. Penelope herself simultaneously corroborates and challenges the classical conception of obedient and passive womanhood: the ideal wife of Homer’s Odyssey provides a rather complex model of feminine virtuousness since it condones secret cunning and deceit in the performance of obedience. As Jessica C. Murphy observes, Penelope’s weaving is really revealing in this respect, insofar as it “is the performance of a womanly task that convinces her suitors of her honesty. However, when she unravels her daily weaving, she performs her wifely duty to Odysseus… . The deceit that is inherent in her performance is sanctioned, as she is being dishonest only to be honest.”⁸⁶ Ironically, Greene highlights the theatricality and ambiguousness of Penelope, presenting her as a teacher of women’s demeanor as she unweaves the misleading shroud. Valeria sounds equally ironic in Coriolanus when she associates Virgilia with Penelope, speaking of the legendary woman as a simulator and referring to her friends’ actions in meta-dramatic terms: “You are manifest housekeepers”; “I must have you play the idle huswife with me this afternoon.”⁸⁷ The text suggests that Virgilia is acting the role of the “gracious silence” because performed submission is rewarding. Greene’s Penelope instructs women by saying: “I cannot thinke … that there is any husband so bad, which the honest government of his wife may not in time refourme, especially if she keepe those three speciall poynts that are requisite in every woman, Obedience, Chastitie and Silence, three such graces, Nurse, as may reclayme the most gracelesse husband in the world.”⁸⁸ According to this conduct     

Greene, Penelope’s Web, H2v. Luckyj, “A moving Rhetoricke,” 53. Murphy, Virtuous Necessity, 37. Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 1.3.84– 86; 1.3.53 – 54; 1.3.71– 72, emphasis mine. Greene, Penelope’s Web, B4v–C1r.

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book, then, Virgilia’s performance of feminine virtue may possess the power to transform and to persuade the “gracelesse” Roman general. Like Homer’s Penelope, Virgilia has often been seen as a far too simple and unproblematic character. In the critical history of this Shakespearian Roman woman, her silent nature deeply affected by feelings has been largely viewed as a dramatic strategy to make some scenes emotionally moving, as proof of proper “bridal modesty,” as “conjugal tenderness,” or as the necessary “feminine” outlook on life that is lacking elsewhere in the play.⁸⁹ Apparently, her recalcitrance with regard to speaking fits the obedient and submissive model of the perfect woman. However, a few critics have identified something else in her behavior, something that goes beyond the context of gendered matrimonial prescriptions. A. C. Bradley, for example, compares Virgilia to Cordelia and claims that her muteness “is made to suggest a world of feeling in reserve.”⁹⁰ One can read Virgilia’s silence as a multifunctional form of agency on the basis of Greene’s Penelope: her performance of silence allows her to be seen as the perfect woman by society, to initiate an act of defiance towards Volumnia, and to wield transformative power on her husband. Greene’s prescription concerning the reformative power of the performance of feminine virtues by women, including silence, is acknowledged by Coriolanus himself when he declares, won by emotion: “Not of a woman’s tenderness to be, / Requires nor child nor woman’s face to see.”⁹¹ Simultaneously, he exhibits the early modern anxieties over the emasculating reduction of male power that silence can represent and that an empowered female silence can produce. The whole supplication scene (5.3) is telling in this respect. Virgilia, Volumnia, Valeria, Young Martius, and attendants visit Coriolanus in his tent to convince him not to attack his own homeland. Coriolanus’s mother speaks about one hundred lines in striking contrast to his wife’s four lines. The general, moved by this feminine delegation, finally agrees to spare Rome. According to Laurie Maguire, “the stage directions embedded in [Volumnia’s] dialogue suggest that Coriolanus responds to Virgilia’s silence rather than to Volumnia’s oration.”⁹² Coriolanus is clearly moved by the silent performance of virtues. He mentions “that curtsy worth” and his mother’s gesture of bowing, both signs of obedience; those “doves’ eyes,” a biblical expression linked with beauty as well as meekness; and his son’s “aspect of intercession.”⁹³ It is this vision that     

Ripley, Coriolanus, 26. Bradley, “Second Annual Shakespeare Lecture. Coriolanus,” 472. Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 5.3.129 – 30. Maguire, Studying Shakespeare, 112. Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 5.3.27, 29, 32.

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reduces him to powerless silence as he admits: “Like a dull actor now / I have forgot my part and I am out.”⁹⁴ Even acknowledging the diplomatic merits of Volumnia, one has to observe that, willy-nilly, she performs submission before her son. Near the beginning of the scene she asserts ironically: “I kneel before thee, and unproperly / Show duty as mistaken all this while / Between the child and parent.”⁹⁵ Finally, as indicated by Neill, “Volumnia concludes her torrent of reproach to the renegade hero with an exhibition of emotionally aggressive self-censorship, vowing to be ‘hushed until our city be afire.’”⁹⁶ Words finally surrender to silence, which encompasses the ability to be more threatening and convincing.

Conclusion The Shakespearian instances of feminine Roman silence discussed in this chapter simultaneously exemplify and defy the time-honored idea of an impotent female silence, and are polysemic, symbolic, and topical. To detect the multi-levelled functioning of this notion of silence, the newly ascribed force and the power of agency to silence must be kept in mind. Traditionally regarded as a passive female virtue, the condition of silence was reexamined by early modern English culture, which also affected contemporary readings of classical and mythological figures that were considered female role-models. Shakespeare’s Roman women are certainly subjected to silence, but they also fight it, heroically embody it and skillfully use it to speak their voice and empower themselves. Whether they choose silence or are forced to be silent, these female characters are never impotent fools incapable of speaking, nor are they simply virtuously subjected women. In fact, they are staged embodiments of early modern feminine tropes of silence and of the contemporary debates on the subject. The early modern views pertaining to non-speech and reticence are complex, contradictory, politically relevant, and challenging from a gender-oriented perspective. Shakespeare appropriated silence as the passive ideal of female Romanitas in order to question this cultural value and redefine it from its very source, according to the contemporary rhetoric of silence. Moulding the classics anew, he also provided fresh, emancipating—or at least inspiring—models, indebted to the past but functional for the present. Most interestingly, the female

 Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 5.3.40 – 41.  Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 5.3.54– 56.  Neill, “The Tempest,” 101.

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Roman standpoint provides Shakespeare with a safely “exotic” metaphoric context (the Roman one) and with a fertile marginal and subservient perspective (the female one) through which he can discuss the imposed, self-imposed, and performed silences of early modern English subjects.

Works Cited Becon, Thomas. A New Catechism … Edited by John Ayre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1844. Bradley, A. C. “Second Annual Shakespeare Lecture. Coriolanus.” In Proceedings of the British Academy. Vol. 5, 457 – 73. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976. Chiari, Sophie, ed. Freedom and Censorship in Early Modern English Literature. New York: Routledge, 2019. Clare, Janet. “Art Made Tongue-Tied by Authority”: Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatic Censorship. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999, 2nd ed. Clegg, Cyndia Susan. Press Censorship in Elizabethan England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Diehl, Huston. “Religion and Shakespearean Tragedy.” In The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy, edited by Claire McEachern, 86 – 102. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Dutton, Richard. Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991. Enterline, Lynn. The Rhetoric of the Body from Ovid to Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Franklin, Margaret. Boccaccio’s Heroines: Power and Virtue in Renaissance Society. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. Goldberg, Jonathan. Shakespeare’s Hand. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Greene, Robert. Penelope’s Web … . London, 1587. Greene, Robert. Philomela … . London: George Purlowe, 1615. Griffin, Julia. “Cato’s Daughter, Brutus’s Wife: Portia from Antiquity to the English Renaissance Stage.” In The Uses of Rome in English Renaissance Drama edited by Domenico Lovascio and Lisa Hopkins. Thematic issue. Textus. English Studies in Italy 29.2 (2016): 21 – 40. Hadfield, Andrew, ed. Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. Hopkins, Lisa. The Cultural Uses of the Caesars on the English Renaissance Stage. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Kahn, Coppélia. Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds and Women. London: Routledge, 2002. Kahn, Coppélia. “Shakespeare’s Classical Tragedies.” In The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy, edited by Claire McEachern, 218 – 39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, 2nd edn. Luckyj, Christina. “A moving Rhetoricke”: Gender and Silence in Early Modern England. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002.

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Maguire, Laurie. Studying Shakespeare. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. McGuire, Philip. Speechless Dialect: Shakespeare’s Open Silences. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Murphy, Jessica C. Virtuous Necessity: Conduct Literature and the Making of the Virtuous Woman in Early Modern England. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015. Natoli, Bartolo. Silenced Voices: The Poetics of Speech in Ovid. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2017. Neill, Michael. Putting History to the Question: Power, Politics, and Society in English Renaissance Drama. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Neill, Michael. “The Tempest: ‘Hush, and be mute’: Silences in The Tempest.” In Late Shakespeare. 1608 – 1613, edited by Andrew J. Power and Rory Loughnane, 101 – 20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pizan, Christine de. The Book of the Cities of Ladies. Translated by Ineke Hardy. Edited by Sophie Bourgault and Rebecca Kingston. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2018. Plutarch. “The Life of Caius Martius Coriolanus.” In Coriolanus by William Shakespeare, edited by Philip Brockbank, 313 – 68. London, Methuen, 1976. Quilligan, Maureen. The Allegory of Female Authority: Christine de Pizan’s Cité des Dames. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. Rebhorn, Wayne. Renaissance Debates on Rhetoric. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000. Rebhorn, Wayne. “Rhetoric and Politics.” In The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, edited by Michael John MacDonald, 387 – 96. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Rich, Barnaby. The Excellency of Good Women. London: Thomas Dawson, 1613. Richlin, Amy. Argument with Silence: Writing the History of Roman Women. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014. Ripley, John. Coriolanus on Stage in England and America 1609 – 1994. London: Associated University Presses, 1998. Roulon, Natalie. “‘Speak No More of Her:’ Silencing the Feminine Voice in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.” ACME 1 (2016): 103 – 24. Sawday, Jonathan. Engines of the Imagination: Renaissance Culture and the Rise of the Machine. London: Routledge, 2007. Shakespeare, William. Coriolanus. Edited by Peter Holland. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2013. Shakespeare, William. Julius Caesar. In William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, 627 – 54. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Shakespeare, William. Titus Andronicus. Edited by Jonathan Bate. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2018. Stark-Estes, Lisa S. Violence, Trauma, and Virtus in Shakespeare’s Roman Poems and Plays. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Taylor, Gary. “Devine []sences.” Shakespeare Survey 54 (2001): 13 – 30. Vives, Juan Luis. De Institutione Feminae Christianae. Liber Primus. Edited by Charles Fantazzi and Constant Matheeussen. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Walker, Jarrett. “Voiceless Bodies and Bodiless Voices: The Drama of Human Perception in Coriolanus.” Shakespeare Quarterly 43 (1992): 170 – 85.

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“Timidae obsequantur”: Mothers and Wives in Matthew Gwinne’s Nero One of the most ambitious neo-Latin plays of early modern England, Matthew Gwinne’s Nero (1603) centers on the last, notorious offspring of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, whose “overwhelmingly negative image” has been handed down by virtually all Roman historical and literary texts.¹ This play is a mastodontic work that fuses together the several accounts on the life of Nero found in the most famous sources by following what David Womersley has defined the “archaeological restoration” method: “Let Tacitus, Suetonius, Dio, and Seneca do the speaking for me. For they supply pretty much all the words. I only set them to verse.”² In line with the resurgence of interest in Tacitus and Seneca that characterized late Elizabethan England, Gwinne proves to have understood the potentialities of Nero’s life, and this may probably be the reason why he decided to endow it with a dynamized and more poetic outlook for the stage.³ Although his main focus was the depiction of Nero’s ruthlessness—he purposely omitted all of Nero’s positive actions—Gwinne did not create, as Howard B. Norland observes, “a unified study of a tyrant or of a man driven by a lust for power or a delight in evil like Shakespeare’s or Legge’s Richard III.” Rather, his Nero emerges as “a character without a centre who is easily manipulated.”⁴ At a closer reading, the true masterminds of his tragoedia nova appear to be the female characters surrounding Nero, particularly Poppaea, Agrippina, and Valeria Messalina. As will be discussed in detail below, Gwinne seems to have transposed the “lust for power” and “delight in evil” that his Nero lacks into the lat-

 Grau, “Nero,” 262. See also Muhlbach, “Die englischen Nerodramen”; and Griffin, “Nachwort,” 467– 80. Educated at Oxford and friend to William Gager, John Florio, and Giordano Bruno, Gwinne was considered a literary luminary at the time. He wrote occasional verses in English and Italian, as well as editing The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia with Fulke Greville (1590). Besides Nero, he authored the comedy Vertumnus, sive, Annius recurrens (1605) and the pageant Tres Sybillae (1607). For Gwinne’s biography, see Wright, “Gwinne, Matthew (1558 – 1627).”  “Pro me loquantur Tacitus, Suetonius, Dion, Seneca: nam et loquuntur ipsi fere omnia: ego tantummmodo modos feci” (Gwinne, Nero, 2v). All translations from Nero are from Sutton’s hypertext critical edition. On Gwinne’s assembling method, see Womersley, “Sir Henry Savile’s Translation of Tacitus,” and Sutton, Introduction to Nero, §23.  Burke, “Tacitism, Scepticism and Reason of State,” 479 – 98.  Norland, “Neo-Latin Drama,” 500. See also Leidig, introduction to Nero, 9. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501514203-005

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ter’s wife, Poppaea—the true engine of the second half of the play. At the same time—and this is perhaps the most interesting aspect—Gwinne’s emphasis on his female characters also results in unexpected and rather personal renderings of Valeria Messalina and Agrippina. In this only apparently derivative assembling of the accounts provided by Tacitus, Suetonius, Dio Cassius, and Seneca, therefore, it seems as if Gwinne sought somehow ante litteram to reassess the biased image of these notorious Roman matrons.

Nero in Oxford Despite the juicy plot it promises, Gwinne’s Nero has never been duly appreciated. After all, with 5,000 lines, more than 80 speaking parts, and a certain lack of coherence—without mentioning its exceptionally lengthy Act 5, which could almost stand as a play in its own right—it is hardly surprising that the few scholars who have taken Nero into account would usually write it off.⁵ As we can read in Gwinne’s Dedicatory Epistle to Sir Thomas Egerton, his son John, and son-in-law Francis Leigh, those were the very reasons why his play never made it to the stage: “But why wasn’t this acted? I do not say because it was unsuitable; perhaps it was not even written to this end. Although both are suggested by the multitude of roles, the unequal length of the Acts, and the implausible manner of handling [the plot].”⁶ While claiming to have understood and accepted the rejection of Nero, however, he somewhat bitterly concluded with a quotation from Pliny the Younger’s Epistles: “As he said, ‘to the degree it finds disfavour among the unlettered, it ought to find favour among the learned.’”⁷ Gwinne’s hopes, however, were going to be dashed. Over the centuries, the play gradually sank into oblivion. Frederick S. Boas even omitted it from his seminal work on Tudor university drama, in spite of the play having been written in 1603, when the last Tudor Queen was still alive.⁸ Even the first modern editor  Churchill and Keller, “Die lateinischen Universitäts-Dramen Englands,” 266 – 71; Muhlbach, “Die englischen Nerodramen,” 16 – 17; and Leidig, introduction to Nero, 9 – 10.  “At cur non acta? Non dico, quod non apta; forte nec scripta in hunc finem: etsi utrumque innuat et personarum multitudo, et longitudo inaequalis actuum, et modus tractandi non plausibilis” (Gwinne, Nero, 4r).  “Tanto maiorem (inquit ille) apud doctos habere debet gratiam, quanto minorem apud indoctos habet” (Gwinne, Nero, 4v).  The words “Elisa regnat” indicate that the play was written before her death, but the dedication is dated to Ash Wednesday 1603, which in England at the time would normally mean 22 February 1604, when James was on the throne, not 2 March 1603, when the queen was still alive (she died on the 24th), which would account for Boas’s omission, although a dedication according to

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of Nero, Hans-Dieter Leidig, dismissed it as a mere “academic exercise,” not theater.⁹ Apart from scattered and rather unflattering observations by a few German scholars, the only critic to offer some positive remarks about the play was J. W. Binns in 1974. He acknowledged that “[it] has its effective moments, and would have come off well upon the stage,” and concluded by stating that “[i]n his Nero, Gwinne succeeds not only in reproducing the traditional elements of Senecan tragedy, but in surpassing them.”¹⁰ More recently, probably thanks to the considerable increase in the scholarly attention dedicated to the plays produced in the two academic hubs of Elizabethan England, other researchers have started looking into Gwinne’s dramatic output with fresh eyes, and especially into Nero, thus shedding new light on an unfairly neglected work.¹¹ Building upon Binns’s considerations, Dana F. Sutton was the first to insist upon the play’s several merits. In his 2012 hypertext critical edition, Sutton presented Nero as one of the few contributions given by academic drama to the history play—a genre that had become highly successful on the London stages thanks to Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare—and claimed that it was the only work able to rival Thomas Legge’s widely influential Richardus Tertius “in scope and ambition.”¹² A perfect example of that new dramatic form aiming to bring history alive, Sutton obviously stressed Gwinne’s indebtedness to Seneca and his penchant for the goriest elements of his drama—which played a crucial and much studied role in Tudor literature.¹³ At the same time, he highlighted Gwinne’s exceptional command of Latin, which enabled him to play with Senecan stylistic and rhetorical features, so as to give shape to “an iridescent, evershifting and constantly fascinating verbal kaleidoscope,” which can be labelled as “Latinate Euphuism.”¹⁴ The play’s own language, which may have seemed its most patent limit, has therefore turned into one of the main reasons for its modern reevaluation and appreciation. Emma Buckley too has recently highlighted

the modern dating system can be found as early as 1553. On the academic drama of early modern England, see Boas, University Drama; Binns, Intellectual Culture, 120 – 40, and “The Humanist Latin Tradition”; Knight and Tilg, The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin.  Leidig, “Introduction to Nero,” 9.  Binns, “Seneca and Neo-Latin Tragedy in England,” 223 – 24.  Besides the references in note 8, see also Bradner, “The Latin Drama of the Renaissance”; Brooke, “Latin Drama”; Grund, “Tragedy”; Tilg, “Comedy.”  Sutton, introduction to Nero, §5.  Sutton, introduction to Nero, 25. See also Binns, “Seneca and Neo-Latin Tragedy in England,” 216 – 21, 223; Leidig, introduction to Nero, 6 – 7; Norland, “Neo-Latin Drama,” 499 – 503; Braund, “Haunted by Horror,” 440.  Sutton, introduction to Nero, §41.

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the significance of “the very Latinity of Gwinne’s drama.”¹⁵ More specifically, by showing how Nero’s Act 4 subtly hints at the contemporary, and hotly debated, issues of kingship and tyrannicide, Buckley concludes that “[t]he elite inaccessibility of the play allows Gwinne to frame arguments too dangerous to be countenanced in English.”¹⁶ Along the same lines, Celia Goodburn has analyzed Nero’s interest in the logics of power and set it against the backdrop of the anxieties provoked by Elizabeth I’s uncertain succession.¹⁷ These are all pieces of evidence confirming what Tucker Brooke had already claimed regarding the continuities between academic and public drama.¹⁸ To put it in Buckley’s words: “Academic drama did not only serve as an important creative precursor to the work of the great vernacular playwrights, but also continued to offer innovative, engaging, and quintessentially ‘Elizabethan’ theatrical responses to contemporary issues … extend[ing] far beyond the ivory tower.”¹⁹ Of course, this continuity meant that those plays that were meeting unprecedented success on the London stages could exercise a significant influence on academic playwrights too. As the output of the most talented of these, William Gager, demonstrates, academic drama went well beyond a mere dramatization of prose sources or a refashioning of Senecan models. Rather, as I have written elsewhere, the authors of neo-Latin plays in Oxford and Cambridge were “perfectly aware of the powerful energy animating the plays staged in the public theatres in London and managed to infuse some of that revitalising power in [their] main works.”²⁰ In this regard, Gwinne’s characterization of Nero’s women appears particularly interesting. It is indeed in the lines attributed to these female characters and in the events he decided to emphasize that we can appreciate Gwinne’s novel approach to the story. In his historiographical sources, women rarely speak. This was an obvious consequence of the patriarchal stance that characterized ancient Roman society. Even the most prestigious and powerful imperial women of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, memorable though their portraits may be, emerge as somewhat “underdeveloped and undeniably shaped by stereotypical conceptions.”²¹ This is also the case of Nero’s women, from his mother Agrippina to his wives Octavia and Poppaea, as well as his cousin Valeria Messalina. The exceptionality of these women that scholars usually highlight—be it

      

Buckley, “Drama in the Margins,” 603. Buckley, “Drama in the Margins,” 603. Goodburn, “Matthew Gwinne’s Nero tragaedia nova,” 14– 28. Brooke, “Latin Drama,” 234. Buckely, “Matthew Gwinne’s Nero (1603),” 17. Ragni, “Dido in Oxford,” 44. Ash, “Women in Imperial Roman Literature,” 442. See also Grau, “Nero.”

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their willpower or (im)morality—is always filtered through the lens of the historians’ biases, who looked at the Neronian Age with prejudiced eyes.²² Tacitus, in particular, the one who provides us—and Gwinne—with the most information, was anything but supportive of the growing degrees of autonomy and influence of these women. In this regard, while modern scholarship has reassessed the image of Tacitus as an unremitting misogynist, it cannot be denied, as Francesca Santoro L’hoir shows, that he depicted most of the Julio-Claudian imperial women—with the exception of Octavia—rather negatively, as “individuals unduly and inappropriately obsessed with power.”²³ In his play, by contrast, even when following his sources more closely, Gwinne provides a rather peculiar characterization of Nero’s women. In Messalina’s and Agrippina’s cases, this attempts to give reasons for their notorious actions, but more generally it emphasizes their exceptional skills in navigating the political arena of imperial Rome, as opposed to their often weak and inept male counterparts. In so doing, as will be shown below, Gwinne’s portrayal of Nero’s women seems to confirm what has been recently noticed about the far from peripheral role Roman women played in the “operation of power.”²⁴

The Root of Evil: Valeria Messalina The wife of Claudius, a cousin of Caligula and Nero, and a great-grandniece of Augustus, Valeria Messalina has gone down in history as an empress who was as implacably ruthless with her enemies as she was insatiably promiscuous with her supposedly countless lovers.²⁵ Even though the latest scholarship has partially reassessed such a defaming picture by underscoring the biases of Roman historians, this unflattering image of Messalina circulated widely in the early modern period.²⁶ Rather unsurprisingly, then, in Gwinne’s Prologue she is presented as a Bacchante, “wear[ing] tragic buskins, carry[ing] a thyrsus, and lead[ing] the dance [with] her hair hang[ing] down loosely,” accompanied by her latest lover Caius Silius and by the Chorus, significantly made up of Nemesis and the three Furies. Magisterially giving shape to the weird silence that Tacitus mentioned when describing Claudius’s reaction to his wife’s last and most

 Barrett, “Nero’s Women,” 76.  Santoro L’hoir, “Tacitus and Women,” 5. See also Baldwin, “Women in Tacitus.”  Schwarz, What You Will, 14.  Tacitus, Annals 11.26.1; Suetonius, Deified Claudius 5.26.2; Dio Cassius, Roman History 60.18.1.  Gérard, “La vie de Messaline,” 39 – 64.

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offensive adultery, in this dumb show Gwinne stages the empress being sentenced to death and consequently dragged offstage.²⁷ Immediately afterwards, Nemesis takes the floor and implants the Senecan “murder, revenge, weeping, slaughter, evil” that will characterize Nero’s later rule in Messalina’s furor: “From this grew the crop of crime presently to be enacted.”²⁸ Up to this point, Gwinne follows his sources quite closely. As the Ghost of Messalina enters the stage in 1.1, however, things seem to change. Giving voice to the woman who is always spoken about but never really speaks, Gwinne engages his Messalina in a heated monologue against the two men with whom she has shared the latter part of her life. Between the lines of her long speech, one may perceive Gwinne’s willingness to present the notorious empress as a somewhat misunderstood character, more courageous and politically alert than both Silius and Claudius. When the Ghost of Silius appears onstage, harassing her as “the [only] author of [their] crime,” for instance, not only does she scornfully address him as “pitiable mate,” but also proves much braver than him as she takes full responsibility for their criminal actions: “I committed it, I confess, and I began it.”²⁹ The contempt oozing out of these words is the same she reserves for Claudius, “a lowly Emperor” and “savage husband,” whom she promises to haunt for the rest of his life.³⁰ At this point, proving to have learned Seneca’s lesson well, Gwinne has Messalina curse Claudius’s family after evoking, Medea-like, all the most powerful goddesses of the Underworld: “Let a consort despoil her husband, a niece her uncle, a son-in-law his father-in-law, a son his father—I shudder to say this—of his government.”³¹ What is striking about this curse is Messalina’s last line. Among the horrible family crimes that will bring the Julio-Claudian dynasty to its end, it is Nero’s seeming involvement in his step-father Claudius’s death and the subsequent upsetting of Rome’s government that emerges as the most grievous. In a world such as the one Gwinne found in his sources, in which the men in power were usually shown as little interested in ruling well or unable to do it

 “gerit cothurnos, thyrsum quatit, ducit choreas, illa crine fluxo, hic vinctus hedera” (Gwinne, Nero, Prologus A3r). Messalina reportedly married Gaius Silius while Claudius was visiting Ostia in 48 CE. Her reasons are still subject to debate but may be connected to Silius’s aspirations to the throne. See Levick, Claudius, 64– 67.  “Caedem, ultionem, lachrymas, cladem, nefas” (Gwinne, Nero, 2 A3v); “Hinc scelerum seges, / quae mox agenda” (Gwinne, Nero, 52– 54 A4r).  “sceleris authorem, comes / persequeris?” (Gwinne, Nero, 1.1.69 – 70 B1r). “Miserande coniux” (Gwinne, Nero, 1.1.61 B1r); “Egi, fateor, et coepi nefas” (Gwinne, Nero, 1.1.69 – 70 B1r, emphasis mine).  “imperator vilis,” “coniux ferox” (Gwinne, Nero, 1.1.81 B1r).  “Coniux marito, patruo neptis, gener / socero, patrique filius (timeo loqui) / imperia” (Gwinne, Nero, 1.1.101– 9 B1v, emphasis mine).

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properly, it cannot pass unnoticed that the first to express some concern—albeit fleetingly—about the political turmoil that Nero will provoke is indeed Messalina. Besides, by making personal use of well-known historical accounts and departing especially from Tacitus’s disdainful account, Gwinne also surprisingly manages to hint at the fact that the notoriously lustful Bacchante might actually have been a victim of both her unworthy lover’s ambition and her own husband’s cruelty. In this regard, when cursing Claudius in the aforementioned scene, Messalina claims to be craving revenge on him because he was a “savage husband.” She accuses him of never having cared about her anguish, despite being aware of it. His inhumanity, she continues, is testified by the indifference he showed upon receiving news of her death. As a matter of fact, after Messalina’s murder, Claudius is said to have behaved as if nothing had happened—“he betrayed no symptoms … of any human emotion,” Tacitus wrote.³² In Gwinne’s sources, Claudius’s lack of concern is justified by the fact that readers are previously told about her repeatedly disrespectful behavior in detail, eventually culminating in her outrageous marriage to Silius. This peculiar characterization of Messalina as an aching and neglected wife, therefore, is Gwinne’s invention, which particularly stands out as these events are all presented from her own point of view. This is an aspect that Gwinne further underlines when he makes her address Silius soon afterwards. After bravely admitting to having committed the crimes for which the Ghost is trying to blame her, it is indeed the bitter realization of having risked everything for the wrong man that emerges from her words, when she says: “You surpassed me [in our crimes] while we sought a husband for me, a kingdom for you.”³³ It is, in other words, as if Gwinne intermittently opened Messalina’s heart up to his readers/audience, thus presenting his personal explanation of the reasons lying behind her notorious actions. It would be in vain to look for these lines in Tacitus, Suetonius, or Dio Cassius. Instead, given the above-mentioned influence of commercial on academic drama at the time, it is not unlikely that Gwinne may have attended some of the many plays that were being staged in the theaters in London and may have been struck by the passionate and vibrant female characters that the most talented playwrights were creating. Ambitious as he was when it came to theater—his “greatest love”—it is not far-fetched to imagine that Gwinne may have tried to infuse some of the passion that characterized those

 “ullius denique humani affectus signa dedit” (Tacitus, 11.38.3).  “Tu praestitisti, mihi virum, regnum tibi / dum petimus” (Gwinne, Nero, 1.1.71– 72 B1r, emphasis mine).

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characters in his own tragoedia nova. ³⁴ Fleeting though this may appear in the case of Messalina, this vibrant passion emerges much more vigorously once Gwinne brings onstage the major female character of the first half of the play, Agrippina.

A Mother’s Love: Agrippina Minor One of the most prominent members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Agrippina Minor did not enjoy a much better fate than her predecessor, Messalina. Again due to biased readings that the most recent scholarship has been trying to reassess, Agrippina is commonly known as a dangerous and scheming woman, probably involved in the assassination of her uncle/husband Claudius and rumoured to have been sexually involved with her own son, Nero.³⁵ Differently from what he seems to be doing with Messalina, however, in Nero Gwinne does not alter his sources concerning Agrippina, nor does he try to portray her as a victim. In fact, he makes her the true responsible for all the crimes more or less explicitly attributed to her by ancient historians. What Gwinne manages to do, though, is to give Agrippina a uniquely tragic stance. This is indeed what makes one almost pity her at the end when, after fighting to secure the crown for her son Nero, he repays her by ordering that she be murdered. Playing with his sources in a subtle way, then, Gwinne emphasizes Agrippina’s reportedly boundless love for her ungrateful son and turns the notorious virago’s soft spot into the main cause of a tragic self-sacrifice. Agrippina proves to be the most fascinating character within the play as soon as she is brought onstage. In 1.2, Claudius, recently widowed after Messalina’s murder, decides to pick a new wife and asks the three most likely candidates—Aelia Petita, Lollia Paulina, and Agrippina—to show who cares for him the most. While the first two try to convince the emperor by appealing to ancient sentiments and favors, in a scene echoing Paris’s famous choice of “the most beautiful” among the goddesses and at the same time significantly foreshadowing Shakespeare’s King Lear, Agrippina does precisely what Cordelia will refuse to do—she flatters her old and foolish uncle and thus wins the crown: “Why do I

 In 1597 Gwinne was appointed Professor of Physic at Gresham College, London. In 1605, he also became Physician of the Tower and then Fellow of the College of Physicians. Given his love for drama, as testified by his involvement in Oxford’s thriving theatrical life, not only is it possible that he attended the numerous playhouses of the capital, but also highly unlikely that he did not do so. See Wright, “Gwinne, Matthew (1558 – 1627).”  See Barrett, Agrippina, 1996; and Ginsburg, Representing Agrippina.

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foolishly assault the heedless gods with prayers? Rather let the chief god on earth be petitioned, for in my eyes Claudius has always been our supreme divinity.”³⁶ She then goes on to discredit her two rivals’ social status and reminds Claudius that she is daughter to his brother Germanicus, a glorious general of royal blood, thus implying that their marriage would do good to the empire itself: “do you not appreciate that they are born of consuls, but I of a triumphator, your brother Germanicus? And still you hesitate?”³⁷ Unsurprisingly, Claudius soon gives in to her with these words: “They please me equally. Beauty is in them, Venus in Julia [Agrippina]. Charm is in them, Persuasion in Julia. Splendour is in them, kinship with the gods in Julia.”³⁸ Thus staging a conversation that is only roughly summarized in his sources, not only does Gwinne introduce Agrippina’s character as highly charismatic, but in voicing her persuasive skills he also proves to have learned well the lesson of the classics regarding the importance of persuasion, which was taught in the grammar schools as well as the two English universities of the time—the same persuasion that has been variously shown to be one of the key elements of the success of the playwrights of the commercial stage.³⁹ In this regard, Agrippina’s exceptional linguistic skills can be better appreciated in 1.4. After having talked Claudius into adopting Nero, her son by her first marriage, thus elevating him to the same rank as Claudius’s heir, Britannicus, Agrippina starts planning her own husband’s murder. Altering his sources, which remain unusually sceptical about the role she may have played in Claudius’s death, Gwinne presents Agrippina as the mind behind his poisoning. In other words, Gwinne proves to have been influenced by the portrayal of the empress as it appears in the pseudo-Senecan Octavia. ⁴⁰ In a later exchange of opinions with her lover Pallas, which again originates from Gwinne’s imagination, it is always Agrippina who stands out as an exceptionally gifted orator. While revealing to Pallas her concerns for Claudius’s ever more open hostility toward

 “Quid vota surdos ad deos demens fero? / Potius petatur summus in terris deus. / Nam mihi supremus Claudius semper deus” (Gwinne, Nero, 1.2.225 – 27 B3r). On the striking resemblance between this scene and the beginning of King Lear, see Sutton, “Introduction to Nero,” section 30.  “Has consulari, me triumphali patre, / Germanico … germano tuo, / Caesare creatam cernis? Et dubitas adhuc?” (Gwinne, Nero, 1.2.235 – 39 B3v).  “pariter placent. / Est forma in illis, Iuliae innata est Venus. / Est lepor in illis, Iuliae Suada insidet. / Est splendor in illis, Iuliae divum genus” (Gwinne, Nero, 1.2.246 – 49 B3v).  Riggs, The World of Christopher Marlowe, 83 – 84.  Leidig, “Introduction to Nero,” 7.

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her, moreover, Gwinne’s Agrippina also proves to understand the logic of power much better than her husband: Who can await the outcome of royal threats in security? Who would not forestall them? If necessary, you should cheerfully commit a crime rather than suffer one. Prudent sovereigns, guard against making arrogant threats … Let him be put down lest he put me down unawares.⁴¹

Unmistakably, this is the lesson taught by Innocent Gentillet’s stereotypical version of Niccolò Machiavelli’s philosophy, as could be found in his fortunate Discours … contre Nicolas Machiavel (1576), and which was variously embodied by the successful villains of the plays for the commercial stage.⁴² Even without necessarily arguing for a direct link between these and Gwinne’s Nero, it cannot be denied that, when Agrippina later dismisses Pallas’s attempt to convince her to “sway [her] husband by yielding,” her speech about what great women like her can do—“Let timid women be compliant. I shall accomplish my threatened crime”—suggestively echoes the similarly bombastic speeches that could be heard on the London stages.⁴³ Nor is it too far-fetched to claim that, even when staging Agrippina’s magisterial dissimulative arts, Gwinne may have remembered the lesson provided by those popular Machiavellian characters. In 1.5, for instance, we understand that Claudius has been poisoned with the help of the physician Xenophon but is taking longer than expected to die. When Agrippina urges Xenophon to accelerate the process, she catches sight of Britannicus and Octavia, and quickly dissimulates her anxiety for the uncertain development of her plan by showing deep concern for her sick husband: [Aside] Poor me, what did I do? His children heard—rather let them hear that I am loyal. [Aloud] Oh world’s eye and soul, god of medicine, arch-doctor born of Phoebus, father of healers and Health, no less great than your father, direct the hand of this healing doctor, lest my Claudius feel any pain, lest my Claudius feel any pain.⁴⁴

 “Quisquamne regum tutus expectet minas? / Quin potius illas occupet? Potius scelus, / si sit necesse, quam feras, facias lubens. / Cavete tumidas, providi reges, minas … / prematur, ne minus cautam premat” (Gwinne, Nero, 1.4.454– 61 C2v).  On the reception of Machiavelli in sixteenth-century England, see Praz, “Machiavelli and the Elizabethans,” and Arienzo and Petrina, Machiavellian Encounters.  “timidae obsequantur: quod minor, faciam scelus” (Gwinne, Nero, 1.4.468 C2v).  “Misera, quid feci? Nefas / nati audierunt: audiant potius piam. / O mundi et ocule, et anima, medicinae deus, / O nate Phoebo archiatre, medicorum pater, / O patre magno non minor soboles Salus, / dirigite medici doctam alexicaci manum, / ne quid doloris Claudium capiat meum, / ne quid doloris Claudius sapiat meus” (Gwinne, Nero, 1.5.552– 59 C4r).

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When news of Claudius’s death eventually gets out, however, she immediately resumes her own daring and overreaching self: “She dared no crime, she suffered one; I have suffered none, because I am daring. Fortune afflicted the timid one, lifted up the bold… . After many centuries, Destiny has produced me, uniquely a daughter, sister, wife, and mother of rulers.”⁴⁵ Principibus … matrem—There’s the rub. These two words, placed as they are at the end of her speech, strike the reader’s attention and confirm something that had slowly emerged throughout Act 1. All the crimes Agrippina committed up to this point of the tragedy were aimed solely at securing her son Nero the throne. “I have nothing to request for myself,” she had told Claudius right after their marriage, but she asked two things for Nero: “that my son be created your son-in-law, that my son be called Nero.”⁴⁶ So blindly fond of him and determined to get him crowned she is that when the auguries famously reveal that “he will rule, but if he reigns he will fall upon his mother,” she joyously accepts her destiny without blinking an eye: “Let the sky fall on her too. What does this concern me, as long as he reigns?”⁴⁷ Even though this effective remark is something that Gwinne found in his sources, the way he stages this episode at the very beginning—and not as Tacitus and Suetonius did, who reported it after her death— is fundamental in making sense of his more complex characterization of Agrippina, as well as clearly seeking to underline the paradoxical side of this only apparently ruthless character. Because of this arrangement of events, and knowing how the story will end, despite Agrippina’s role in Claudius’s murder, one cannot help but feel some kind of pity for her when she reveals, at the end of Act 1, how her joy is solely due to what she has managed to get for her son: “My wishes are fulfilled, joy overwhelms Julia… . Now Nero ascends to the pinnacle of Empire, born of me, master because of me, Nero thanks to me.”⁴⁸ This pity further intensifies when Nero enters the stage in 2.3 and blatantly ignores her. While in his sources, especially Tacitus, we read about Nero’s gradual detachment from his mother because of her more and more explicit attempts to control him, Gwinne makes the emperor’s reaction more abrupt and does not provide any explanation

 “Non ausa scelus, est passa; non passa, audeo. / Fortuna timidam afflixit, audentem extulit. / … Post multa me sors saecla principibus dedit / natam, sororem, coniugem, matrem unicam” (Gwinne, Nero, 1.5.597– 604, emphasis mine).  “Nil habeo pro me quod petam”; “Ut natus ex me sit tibi lectus gener, / ut natus ex me sit tibi dictus Nero” (Gwinne, Nero, 1.2.294; 299 – 300 B4r).  “ager. Regnabit; at si regnet, in matrem ruet. / agrip. Ruatque coelum; quid mea? Regnet modo” (Gwinne, Nero, 1.4.495 – 96 C3r).  “Expleta vota: Iuliam laeta occupant”; “Nunc meus ad apicem surget imperii Nero. / Me natus, ex me dominus, et per me Nero” (Gwinne, Nero, 1.5.588, 599 – 600 C4v).

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for his astonishing behaviour.⁴⁹ Therefore, Agrippina’s disbelief—again the fruit of Gwinne’s imagination—unsurprisingly voices her deep sorrow and is striking in that it sounds tragically humane: Has he gone? Has he left? Thus? Has Nero Gone? Has Domitius departed, scarcely having glanced at his mother, scarcely saying a word? … Ungrateful Domitius, is this how you repay my favours? So this how your favours return to you, unhappy Julia?⁵⁰

Pallas’s words, urging her to retain her grip and forgive her son, crash in front of her utter desperation: “Is it a light thing for the mother who gave her son power to be thrust out by the inhumanity of her sole child?”⁵¹ Gwinne therefore provides his Agrippina a motive for her famously failed conspiracy against her son and roots it not in her supposed thirst for power—as all his sources claim —but rather in Nero’s cruelty and ingratitude to his mother. Indeed, as shown above, Agrippina never says that she wants the crown for herself, but always for her son. By omitting the obscene rumors about Agrippina and Nero’s incestuous relationship, moreover, Gwinne clearly seeks to underscore Agrippina’s unfortunate destiny as a mother, thus providing her with an unprecedented tragic stance. Gwinne’s willingness to highlight this uncommon side of Agrippina is further proved when, in 2.8, he stages an unattested meeting between her and her daughter-in-law Octavia, right after Nero has ordered Britannicus’s murder and started showing his interest in Poppaea. Here, Gwinne significantly makes them echo each other in their grief: octavia Leave me, life, avoid these evils in death. agrippina Depart, soul, and flee the crimes at hands. octavia Step-mother, do you mock me in my misery, or do you mourn for your daughter-in-law? agrippina May I be yet more miserable, if I do not suffer the same as you!⁵²

 Tacitus, Annals 13 – 14.  “Discessit? Abiit? Itane? Discessit Nero? / Abiit Domitius, vix prius matrem intuens, / vix allocutus? … / Ingrate Domiti, merita sic pensas mea? / Huc merita redeunt, Iulia infoelix, tua?” (Gwinne, Nero, 2.4.817– 24 D4r).  “Leve regna dantem filio regno eiici / immanitate filii matrem unici?” (Gwinne, Nero, 2.4.837– 38 D4r).  “oct. Recede, vita, morte devites mala. / agrip. Elabere, anima, scelera quae prope sunt fuge. / oct. Noverca, miseram ludis, an luges nurum? / agrip. Sim me miserior, paria nisi patiar tibi: / sed quae miserior?” (Gwinne, Nero, 2. 8.1189 – 93 F1r).

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Gwinne unprecedentedly aligns Agrippina’s sufferings with Octavia’s, Nero’s victim par excellence. So as to underscore her deeper inward drama—and thus her tragic stance— though, he makes her add: “I have fallen from higher hopes, and so I grieve the more.”⁵³ In this regard, the playwright also slightly alters the moment when, in 3.7, Nero eventually orders that she be murdered. Seeing his son’s centurions coming, the first thing she does—as Gwinne’s sources reported—is deny that Nero may have ordered them to kill her: “My son has not ordered you to kill me. Do you dare do this without orders?”⁵⁴ When she realizes that her moment has come, however, she appeals for the last time to the courage that had characterized her at the beginning and asks them to strike her in the belly: “Strike me in the belly! Let your sword be plunged in this womb.” Then she adds—and this is Gwinne’s emphasis: “This is where you must stab, this is the womb that bore such a monster.”⁵⁵ Here Gwinne manages to play with the few lines that can be read in Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dio Cassius and turn them into surprisingly gripping speeches, which provide us with an unprecedented insight into Agrippina’s aching heart.⁵⁶ The revenge that her Ghost promises to take on her ungrateful son in the Chorus opening Act 4 will eventually have its effects. Agrippina’s Ghost, the only one repeatedly brought onstage by Gwinne until the very end of the tragedy, will assault Nero’s mind until his own death, along with the ghosts of his other victims, in a way that not only plays with the typical elements of Senecan drama, but is also reminiscent of the last scenes of Shakespeare’s Richard III. At that point, however, the persuasive linguistic skills she has shown at the beginning will be all gone. The only words she will keep repeating, as if to remind Nero of his most grievous crime, are Nero and Mater. While it may be true, as Leidig and Norland stated, that Nero is no tragic hero, Agrippina certainly is.⁵⁷ This is undoubtedly due to Gwinne’s hitherto rarely acknowledged dramatic skills, which, strange as this may sound, persuade his audience/readers that she did not deserve to be treated so cruelly by her beloved son.

 “Maiore de spe decidi, et doleo magis” (Gwinne, Nero, 2. 8.1196 F1r).  “Non imperavit filius, matrem ut neces. / Non iussus audes?” (Gwinne, Nero, 3.7. 2124– 5 I2r).  “Condatur ensis utero in hoc: hic est tibi / fodiendus, hic est tale qui monstrum tulit” (Gwinne, Nero, 3.7. 2129 – 30 I2r, emphasis mine).  For a comparison, see Tacitus, 14.8.3 – 5; Suetonius, Nero 6.34.1; Dio Cassius, Roman History, 62.13.5.  In this regard, see Santoro L’hoir, “Tacitus and Women,” 21.

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“Regno charius et anima mihi”: Poppaea Sabina Despite his reportedly dissolute life, Nero was officially married to Claudia Octavia, the only daughter of Claudius and Messalina. In Gwinne’s play, her character is closely modelled on Tacitus’s Annals and, most of all, the pseudo-Senecan Octavia, in which the exceptionally virtuous woman’s sufferings, as Buckley puts it, are presented as far “exceed[ing] those of the classic Greek mythological heroines Electra and Iphigenia.”⁵⁸ Octavia’s cruel destiny was marked the day that Nero met and fell for Poppaea Sabina, the wife of his friend Otho. By fusing together quotations from Virgil, Propertius, and Horace, Gwinne imagines their budding romance in a highly poetic vein. Possibly for the only time in the play, he highlights Nero’s more emotional side, ready as he claims to be to give up everything for his new love: “Poppaea, my love’s pomp, goddess of my spirits, light of my eyes, splendour of earthly goddesses … I love you, and I pray you love me in return. Why stay silent? I, Caesar, love you, and I pray you love in return.”⁵⁹ “Because petty love speaks out while great love stays silent,” Poppaea replies, “A great urge impels me to speak, a great one forbids me… . Intoxicated, I confess, I am falling in love… . You would be kinder, Nero, to kill me than not to love me.”⁶⁰ This romantic scene is abruptly interrupted by Paris, who brings the news of Agrippina’s aforementioned conspiracy. Despite such a romantic onset, Gwinne decided to follow the anything-butflattering portrait of Poppaea sketched by Tacitus, who had been the first to present her just as ruthless and scheming as Agrippina.⁶¹ Differently from the latter, however, Gwinne makes his Poppaea the only female character that proves to have a truly insatiable thirst for power. Showing rhetorical skills as subtle and refined as those Gwinne had attributed to Nero’s mother—thus establishing a patent connection between the two—Poppaea manages to get rid of all the people who stand between her and the fulfilment of her wishes. “You love Otho,” she whispers in Nero’s ears, “and are depriving him of what he loves the

 Buckely, “Matthew Gwinne’s Nero (1603),” 20. For a detailed analysis of Gwinne’s Octavia, see Buckely, “Drama in the Margins,” 611– 22.  “Poppaea, pompa amoris, animorum dea, / iubar oculorum, coelicum terrae decus … / Quin amo, et redames precor. / Quid conticescis? Caesar amo, redames precor” (Gwinne, Nero, 3. 2. 1336 – 45 F3v).  “Quia conticescit gravis amor, loquitur levis. / … vis cogit loqui, / ingens, et ingens prohibet … / Fatebor, ebria in amores ruo. / … Me, Nero, trucides, mitius, quam non ames” (Gwinne, Nero, 3. 2.1346 – 68 F3v).  Holtztrattner, Poppaea Neronis potens, 146 – 47.

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most?”⁶² There is no need to say more: Nero quickly dispatches her inconvenient husband to Lusitania as governor of that province. “But, Jupiter,” she then adds, “you have your sister-wife Juno … Whom will this offended wife spare—or rather, whom will she not harm?”⁶³ This simple hinting at Octavia is enough to mark the young empress’s destiny: “I shall not delay,” Nero immediately promises, “Octavia will fall out of heaven.”⁶⁴ Not yet satisfied, Poppaea goes in for the kill, as she has to throw her number one enemy down: Agrippina, who had previously expressed her antipathy toward her. “But one name remains,” she concludes, “and that makes me shudder even more: that of Augustus, indeed that of Augusta your mother, nor is this an empty name. She rules, she issues orders, she plays the master. You are not free, Nero, nor an emperor.”⁶⁵ Adding fire to the flames, these words ignite Nero’s unfounded (at least in Gwinne) hatred against his mother: “But I shall quickly cast off the weight … I want her dead.”⁶⁶ By emphasizing Poppaea’s domineering side, and thus presenting her as the true villain of tragedy—the only character who actually enjoys being evil— Gwinne makes her the engine of the second half of his play: “Devote yourself to revenge, revive your faint determination,” she encourages Nero, “When you have stored this wisdom in your mind, if you do not act you will receive an injury.”⁶⁷ Even though some scholars have underscored how rarely feminine influence actually “extended beyond the confines of the internal court intrigue,”⁶⁸ Gwinne’s Poppaea is also the one to talk Nero into replacing a by-then disgraced Burrhus with Tigellinus and Rufus, thereby showing to be much more politically alert than her naive husband: “Two, so that all the favours will not flow to one man, so that each will be the other’s rival and they will pose a threat to each other … Power divided is weakened.”⁶⁹ “Indeed, to satisfy you,” Nero tells here in what even Leidig acknowledged as a “dramatically effective” passage, “let the populace, my wife, Acte, Burrhus, Otho, Seneca, my mother, the

 “Amas Othonem, et quod amat Otho primum rapis?” (Gwinne, Nero, 3. 2.1398 F4v).  “At soror et uxor (Iupiter) Iuno tua … / cui parcet uxor laesa, quin laedat magis?” (Gwinne, Nero, 3. 2.1413 – 24 F4v).  “nil moror, coelo cadet” (Gwinne, Nero, 3. 2.1432 G1r).  “At nomen unum restat horrendum magis, / Augustae, et illud matris Augustae: nec est / inane nomen: illa regit, illa imperat, / illa dominatur: tu nec es liber, Nero, / nec imperator” (Gwinne, Nero, 3. 2.1439 – 43 G1r).  “sed onus excutiam brevi. / … Cupio peremptam” (Gwinne, Nero, 3. 2.1468 – 75 G1v).  “In ultionem incumbe: languentem impetum / recollige … / Id ubi reponas: nisi facis, damnum feres” (Gwinne, Nero, 3. 3.1563 – 65 G2v).  Barrett, “Nero’s Women,” 63.  “Duos, in unum ne omnis exundet favor: / aemulus ut alter alteri, immineant sibi … / Divisa vis, infirma” (Gwinne, Nero, 4. 3. 2525 – 28).

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whole word go to ruin!”⁷⁰ By arranging the information he had found in his main source so as to exaggerate Poppaea’s influence, then, even when following Tacitus, Gwinne manages to belittle Nero’s power of action, as all the decisions the emperor takes are shown to be the result, more or less directly, of Poppaea’s whims. With his Poppaea, Gwinne completed the triad of exceptional women playing a part in Nero’s life. As opposed to what he had done with Messalina and Agrippina, however, Gwinne did not offer any glimpses into Poppaea’s “within.” Useful though her character is shown to be, with her lust for power making the drama proceed to its written end, it is as if Gwinne was not really interested in the superficiality of her delight in evil. Significantly, among the other imperial Roman women, she is the only one not to come back as a ghost promising revenge or prophesying future developments in the story after her death. Famously killed with a kick by Nero while pregnant of their child, Poppaea is quickly got rid of in 5.8, a victim of the same murder spree to which she had repeatedly incited Nero.

Conclusion Gwinne’s attention to the characterization of Nero’s women confirms, as Buckley argues, that with this play he “[undertook] a far more ambitious interrogation of his sources” than previously acknowledged.⁷¹ Understanding the potentialities of those characters, it seems that Gwinne tried to bring some of the energy he had enjoyed in the plays staged in the London playhouses into his Nero, whose vigorous female characters can well compete with those of public drama. Particularly, Messalina, Agrippina, and Poppaea prove Gwinne’s ability to infuse some revitalizing passion into the story of a “contemptible rather than terrible” Roman emperor and stand out as the truly remarkable characters of his tragoedia nova. ⁷² Fascinated as he seems to have been by Nero’s exceptional women, then, it is not surprising that Gwinne decided to conclude this tragedy by paying homage to England’s similarly exceptional female sovereign, Elizabeth I—“daughter of peace, salvation of the realm, goddess of mercy, love-light of mankind, glory

 “quin tibi ut fiat satis, / plebs, uxor, Acte, Burrhus, Otho, Seneca, et parens, / et cuncta pereant” (Gwinne, Nero, 3. 2.1475 – 76 G1v). See Leidig, “Introduction to Nero,” 9.  Buckely, “Drama in the Margins,” 612.  Leidig, “Introduction to Nero,” 9.

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of sovereigns.”⁷³ By carefully stating the difference between Nero’s and her rule, he chose to dedicate his last words to the greatest woman of his time who, with her unwavering support, allowed for both the commercial and academic drama to thrive as never before in England.

Works Cited Arienzo, Alessandro, and Alessandra Petrina. Machiavellian Encounters in Tudor and Stuart England. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. Ash, Rhiannon. “Women in Imperial Roman Literature.” In A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, edited by Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon, 442 – 52. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Barrett, Anthony A. Agrippina: Sex, Power and Politics in the Early Roman Empire. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Barrett, Anthony A. “Nero’s Women.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Nero, edited by Shadi Bartsch, Kirk Freudenburg, and Cedric Littlewood, 63 – 76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Baldwin, Barry. “Women in Tacitus.” Prudentia 4 (1972): 83 – 101. Binns, J. W. Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Leeds: Francis Cairns, 1990. Binns, J. W. “The Latin Humanist Tradition Reassessed.” In Reassessing Tudor Humanism, edited by Jonathan Wolfson, 186 – 96. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Binns, J. W. “Seneca and Neo-Latin Tragedy in England.” In Seneca, edited by C. D. N. Costa, 205 – 34. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974. Boas, Frederick S. University Drama in the Tudor Age. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914. Bradner, Leicester. “The Latin Drama of the Renaissance (1340 – 1640).” Studies in the Renaissance 4 (1957): 31 – 54. Braund, Susanna. “Haunted by Horror. The Ghost of Seneca in Renaissance Drama.” In A Companion to the Neronian Age, edited by Emma Buckley and Martin T. Dinter. 425 – 43. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. Brooke, Tucker. “Latin Drama in Renaissance England.” English Literary Studies 13 (1946): 233 – 40. Buckley, Emma. “Drama in the Margins—Academic Text and Political Context in Matthew Gwinne’s Nero: Nova Tragaedia (1603) and Ben Jonson’s Sejanus (1603/5).” Renaissance Studies 30 (2016): 602 – 22. Buckley, Emma. “Matthew Gwinne’s Nero (1603): Seneca, Academic Drama, and the Politics of Polity.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 40 (2013): 16 – 33.

 “alumna pacis, imperii salus, / dea mititatis, hominum amor, regum decus” (Gwinne, Nero, Epilogue 4999 – 5000 T3r).

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Burke, Peter. “Tacitism, Scepticism and Reason of State.” In The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450 – 1700, edited by J. H. Burns, 479 – 98. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Churchill, G. B., and Wolfgang Keller. “Die lateinischen Universitäts-Dramen Englands in der Zeit der Königin Elisabeth.” Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellshaft 35 (1898): 266 – 71. Dio Cassius, Roman History. Volume VIII. Translated by Earnest Cary. London: Heinemann, 1925. Ginsburg, Judith. Representing Agrippina: Constructions of Female Power in the Early Roman Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Goodburn, Celia. “Matthew Gwinne’s Nero tragaedia nova: Custom and Innovation in Late Elizabethan England.” Aletria. Belo Horizonte 28 (2018): 14 – 28. Grau, Donatien. “Nero: The Making of the Historical Narrative.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Nero, edited by Shadi Bartsch, Kirk Freudenburg, and Cedric Littelwood, 261 – 75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Griffin, Miriam T. “Nachwort: Nero from Zero to Hero.” In A Companion to the Neronian Age, edited by Emma Buckley and Martin T. Dinter, 467 – 80. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. Grund, Gary. “Tragedy.” In The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin, edited by Sarah Knight and Stefan Tilg, 103 – 18. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Gwinne, Matthew. Nero tragaedia noua. Matthaeo Gwinne Med. Doct. Collegij Diui Ioannis Praecursoris apud Oxonienses socio collecta e Tacito, Suetonio, Dione, Seneca. Londini: Ed. Blounte, 1603. Holztrattner, Franz. Poppaea Neronis potens. Studien zu Poppaea Sabina. Wien: Berger & Söhne, 1995. Knight, Sarah, and Stefan Tilg. The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Leidig, Heinz-Dieter. Matthew Gwinne, Nero (Printed 1603). Prepared with an Introduction by Heinz-Dieter Leidig. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1983. Levick, Barbara. Claudius. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Minaud, Gérard, “La vie de Messaline, femme de Claude.” In Les vies de 12 femmes d’empereur romain—Devoirs, Intrigues & Voluptés, 39 – 64. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012. Muhlbach, Egon. Die englischen Nerodramen des XVII. Jahrhunderts insonderheits Lees Nero. Leipzig: Weids, 1910. Norland, Howard B. “Neo-Latin Drama in Britain.” In Neo-Latin Drama and Theatre in Early Modern Europe, edited by Jan Bloemendal and Howard B. Norland, 471 – 544. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Praz, Mario. “Machiavelli and the Elizabethans.” Proceedings of the British Academy 13 (1928): 3 – 51. Ragni, Cristiano. “Dido in Oxford. William Gager’s Ovidian Play in Elizabethan England.” In The Uses of Rome in English Renaissance Drama, edited by Domenico Lovascio and Lisa Hopkins. Thematic issue. Textus: English Studies in Italy 29.2 (2016): 41 – 61. Riggs, David. The World of Christopher Marlowe. London: Faber & Faber, 2004. Santoro L’hoir, Francesca. “Tacitus and Women’s Usurpation of Power.” Classical World 88 (1994): 5 – 25. Schwarz, Kathryn. What You Will: Gender, Contract, and Shakespearean Social Space. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.

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Sutton, Dana F. Matthew Gwinne, Nero (1603). A Hypertext Critical Edition. Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1997 – 2017. http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/Nero/ (accessed 31 January 2019). Tacitus, Publius Cornelius. The Annals. Volume III (Books IV–VI, XI–XII). Translated by John Jackson. London: Heinemann, 1963. Tacitus, Publius Cornelius. The Annals. Volume IV (Books XIII–XVI). Translated by John Jackson. London: Heinemann, 1963. Tilg, Stefan. “Comedy.” In The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin, edited by Sarah Knight and Stefan Tilg, 87 – 102. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Wright, Iain. “Gwinne, Matthew (1558 – 1627).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11813 (accessed 31 January 2019). Womersley, David. “Sir Henry Savile’s Translation of Tacitus and the Political Interpretation of Elizabethan Texts.” Review of English Studies 42 (1991): 313 – 42.

Michele De Benedictis

“Let Me Use All My Pleasures”: The Ovidian Courtship of the Emperor’s Daughter in Ben Jonson’s Poetaster Naked, the princess danced. Under the shadow of the Rostra and out onto the moonlit stones of the Forum, she stepped and swirled in silence … Behind her trailed a group—several men, an elderly woman, one or two younger ones—some dressed, some with half their clothes discarded as they went. Now and then they stopped to drink from a cup they passed from hand to hand, and presently, as they drew near the statue of Marsyas again, someone began to sing … (Benita Kane Jaro, Betray the Night: A Novel about Ovid)

The subplot of Ben Jonson’s comical satire Poetaster, or His Arraignment (1601) compresses and rewrites the parable of Ovid’s literary and amatory career, revolving around the ill-fated consequences of his scandalous relationship with Julia Maior (or the Elder), the only biological child of the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus and the main reason for Ovid’s banishment from Rome in the play. The events and characters historically involved in this love affair are intentionally altered or sacrificed by Jonson, who adopts a selective approach to his sources for the theatrical demands of the play, thus producing a series of deliberate anachronisms. The dramatic features of this peculiar Ovidian subplot veers from the amusing tropes of classical New Comedy to a displacing pseudo-tragic conclusion with no consolatory appeal. Act 1 introduces Ovid and his two juvenile forbidden loves for poetry and Julia, Augustus’s daughter; the princess initially appears with Ovid only in Act 2 for a brief series of witty exchanges in Chloe’s house, the citizen’s wife. The core of their unfortunate love affair is circumscribed by Jonson in Act 4, in which the couple is interrupted during the wanton revelry of a sacrilegious banquet by an outraged Augustus, who separates them by condemning Julia to segregation and Ovid to perpetual exile from Rome, not before a long parting scene with romantic innuendos and deep introspection. The fictional Ovid whom Jonson discloses for Blackfriars and its learned audience in Act 1 is a gifted young poet, forced by his pragmatic father to follow law studies as groundwork for his personal cursus honorum, but completely lost in his poetical fancies and audaciously flirting with an adolescent Julia, the Roman princess. Jonson, a meticulous scholar devoted to humanist erudition, was probably aware that the historical Ovid was actually in his fifties—at his third marriage—when sentenced by Augustus to exile without a formal trial (8 CE), and as well versed in Suetonius or Tacitus’s historiographic works https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501514203-006

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as to know that the emperor condemned Julia Maior to relegation for the crime of adultery ten years before Ovid’s punishment—when she was already married with her third husband, Augustus’s successor Tiberius.¹ The real reasons for Ovid’s banishment from Rome to the remote shores of the Black Sea in Tomis are still disputed by historians. Writing from the exile, in Tristia Ovid himself is far from explicit when he alludes to the imputations causing his relegation as “carmen et error.”² The first hint has been generally ascribed to the erotic license of his poem Ars amatoria, even though that had been circulating a decade before the banishment; for the equivocal nature of the fatal “error” offending the princeps Augustus—not a crime (scelus) but an ingenuous and unintentional blunder—many speculative assumptions focus on his excessive familiarity or indiscretions with prominent women in the Augustan household.³ These prurient and voyeuristic conjectures include his role as abettor for Julia the Younger’s adulteries—Julia Maior’s first daughter—with Silanus; his Acteon-like intromission in some mystery ritual reserved to imperial ladies as Livia; or the accidental discovery of Augustus’s incestuous intercourse with his granddaughter Julia the Younger.⁴ The unhistorical liaison between Ovid and Julia Maior was, however, a legendary commonplace still extant in medieval and early modern biographic accounts on the Roman poet, possibly originated in the fifth century from Sidonius Apollinaris. In his Carmen 23 Sidonius ascribes to Corinna—the literary pseudonym for Ovid’s love mistress in his elegiac Amores—a key role in determining Ovid’s banishment and refers to her as “Caesarea puella,” a (vague) definition frequently interpreted as an allusion to Augustus’s only daughter.⁵ Centuries of apocryphal speculations and discordant mythology contributed to keeping alive this erroneous association, still mentioned as a widespread assumption in the Renaissance commentaries or prefatory matters to Ovid’s works.⁶ Jonson himself in Underwood 27 persists in evoking this connection when he praises the ennobling power conveyed by Ovid’s elegiac poems to their real dedicatee, behind the fictional love-persona of Corinna:

 See Fantham, Julia Augusti, 141– 43.  Ovid, Tristia 2.207– 10.  Green, “Carmen et Error,” 204– 8.  Thibault, The Mystery of Ovid’s Exile, 55 – 57.  Thibault, The Mystery of Ovid’s Exile, 42– 45.  In the headnote to his translation of Ovid’s poem Ibis (1569), Thomas Underdown favors the hypothesis of an illicit affair between Ovid and Julia Maior at the root of the poet’s exile, and quotes the same passage from Sidonius about her identification with Corinna in Amores.

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Or hath Corinna, by the name Her Ovid gave her, dimmed the fame Of Caesar’s daughter, and the line Which all the world then styled divine?⁷

A few lines before, Jonson enlists the names of other love elegists from ancient Rome (i. e., Tibullus, Propertius, and Gallus) involved in the same encoded practice of addressing the beauties of their beloved behind a cover name, as Lycorisalias-Cytheris for Gallus’s mistress. At the dawn of the Roman imperial age, Ovid and his fellow poets used to interact within this mundane frame of avant-garde literary circles attended by open-minded aristocrats, fashionable intellectuals, and stylish gallants. Their fondness for convivial revelry was often paired with the sophisticated sensuality of their amatory verses, under the banner of the absolute disengagement from res publica as civic matter, in disregard of the holy institutions of family and marriage. Julia Maior was deeply involved, as an amateur intellectual and patroness, with this elite sphere of young and conceited frondeurs. In Poetaster, Jonson allows Ovid’s and Julia’s theatrical counterparts to hang around a similar cultural milieu, in which they can nonchalantly take part in an urbane synergy of licentious pastimes and artistic pursuit of love in elegiac terms.⁸ Thus, Jonson’s Julia embodies here Ovid’s worshipped lyrical muse with the pseudonym of Corinna—a secret he tries to circumscribe within his clique—but the sincere inspiration radiated by “the law and art of sacred Julia’s love” prevails over the more cynical precepts of Ars amatoria, the provokingly didactic poem written by the historical Ovid to instruct his readers in the subtle arts of seduction and eroticism.⁹ The young Ovid we see in the first part of the play, in fact, does not delineate his character according to the persona of the libertine master of love from Ars amatoria but genuinely professes his idealistic belief in the disinterested art of poetry in opposition to the malicious voices of barbarous ignorance and prosaic profit.¹⁰ The first scene features a complete recital

 Jonson, Underwood, 27.17– 20.  Cave, “Poetaster,” 16.  His Restoration analog is more reticent, if not unreliable, in his disclaimers. In Aston Cockayne’s tragicomedy The Tragedy of Ovid (1669), an old and exiled Ovid still denies any past liaison with Princess Julia as Corinna, notwithstanding the given credence. During a monologue focused on the innocence of his venial “error” (4.3.13 – 24), however, he seems to lay blame on Julia’s cunning art of seduction “For, if I e’er enjoy’d her, it was through / Her craft, I taking her to be another.”  Stapleton, “Marlovian Residue,” 18 – 20.

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in English language of Amores 1.15—a hymn to the immortality of poetry against Envy—uttered by the young Ovid at the end of his act of composition. This is a smooth and elegant revision of Christopher Marlowe’s own translation in heroic couplets of the same Ovidian poem, first issued in the collection Certaine of Ovids Elegies, and circulating in the decade prior to Jonson’s play, but formally put to flame by the Bishops’ Ban in June 1599.¹¹ The Ban’s main target was the rampant overflow of satirical poems and epigrams, although its range of censorship against socially disruptive publications conceptually included other subgenres of poetry connected with the late Elizabethan craze for neo-Ovidianism, above all in the form of epyllia, short poems on mythological subjects, usually replete with erotic narratives and witty digressions.¹² In this way Jonson’s Poetaster performs a twofold role as posthumous tribute to Marlowe’s Ovidian aesthetics, insofar as he inclusively revitalizes its recognizable echoes in the limelight of the contemporary commercial stage, and consequently implies a parallel challenge to the authorities of censorship by summoning a banned text within his comical satire. At the same time, it is more problematic to classify Jonson’s overall attitude towards the neo-pagan fashion of Ovidian epyllia in the 1590s—chiefly thriving in the intellectual turmoil of the Inns and Universities, at a relatively safe distance from royal court—a genre not completely rejected from the subplot of Poetaster for its literary influence, but whose racy wit, unorthodox morality, and mannerist style may have contaminated the immature behavior (or rhetoric) of young women and often became the target of the satirists’ fierce invectives against the corruption of social and literary decorum.¹³ In this comical satire, Jonson does not deny—a dramatization of literary criticism per se—his empathetic and appropriative esteem for the liberty of speech and aesthetical dignity inherent in Marlowe’s hyperbolic love verses but, on the other hand, he warns playgoers against the dangers of such refined and playful license in poetry, though declaredly exempt from any moralizing purpose. Poetaster’s Marlovian Ovid ambivalently questions the office of the poet and the use of his inborn talent: above all, in Act 4 he experiences first-hand how this stylish lack of any ethical (or social) fulfillment for love’s and beauty’s sake may be easily misunderstood by biased, prejudiced and slanderous censors as a perversion of literature in the form of idle desecration or impious subversion, especially when combined to a not irreprehensible, though harmlessly frivolous, conduct in private  See James, “The Poet’s Toys,” 105 – 6; Moulton, Before Pornography, 104– 7. Jonson’s rendition, entitled “The Same by B.I.,” followed Marlowe’s own translation in the complete posthumous edition of All Ovid’s Elegies (1602).  Callaghan, “Comedy and Epyllion,” 27– 29.  Keach, Elizabethan Erotic Narratives, 28 – 30, 125 – 30.

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life. In these terms, the complete schism of the versifier’s multiple and fictional persona from the virtuous real man is something that is still ethically inconceivable—or at least counterproductive—for Jonson as an author. The character of Jonson’s Roman princess seems at first sight intellectually and intimately to benefit—at her own risk—from her closeness to the sophistication of coterie poets such as Ovid and his courtly fellows, beyond the ephemeral paradigms of fashion. This emancipating influence allows Julia/Corinna in Poetaster to distance herself from the social and moral topoi imposed by Roman conservative tradition, which fettered with the label of meretrix (whore) every upperclass woman whose life path did not conform to the customary transition from virtuous girl, subjected to her father’s custody, to honest matron, loyal to her husband. Furthermore, Julia’s social eminence and sentimental commitment create a remarkable gap between her place as Ovid’s mistress and other female characters in Jonson’s comedies. When Julia comes on stage in 2.2, her graceful presence softens any potential misogynistic perspective: she consorts friendly with her inferiors, the middle-class citizens, expresses sincere compassion for Propertius’s lovesickness, and shows her self-confidence by enjoying Hermogenes’s song on the legitimation of women’s mutability in the game of passions “so they were but used as fashions.”¹⁴ These attitudes contribute to widen the disparity between Julia and other key women in Jonson’s comical canon, a repertory featuring Dol Common, the typical vessel of whoredom and fraud in The Alchemist (1610), or Celia from Volpone (1606), who rejects the pleasure of the senses for the sake of hypocritical respectability.¹⁵ A more immediate display of distinction takes place in Act 2 if we consider how Jonson portrays Chloe, the goldsmith’s despotic, shrewish wife, a London-humored character based on the mood of Jonsonian city comedy with her inclination for pretentious ignorance, commodity culture, and ridiculous affectation in her social climbing to court society. The cheerful train connected to Julia’s liberal court in Poetaster also includes Cytheris, Tibullus’s favorite under the elegiac alias of Lycoris, whose historical alter ego in ancient Rome practiced the profession of elite courtesan, comparable to a Greek hetaera, a freedwoman instructed in the noble arts of dance, music, singing, and witty conversation.¹⁶ These qualities indeed contributed to shape in the elegists’ imagery the figure of the docta puella (learned mistress), the ideal woman fit to match, by charming education and sexual independence, the poets’ demand for self-determined partners to be idolized in their verses. The

 Jonson, Poetaster, 2.2.151.  Maus, Jonson and the Roman Frame, 82– 84.  Hemelrijk, Matrona Docta, 22– 23, 79 – 80.

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real Julia Maior was probably not immune to the fascination of elegiac love rituals during her teenage years, when Ovid’s erotic writings circulated in private form before becoming widespread in Rome’s public libraries, and she might have cherished the benefits of an “Ovidian” schooling in the restricted milieu of her stylish friends at court, in spite of the morally austere education imposed by her father, who privileged for Julia’s domestic learning the practice of spinning and weaving, according to the ancient mores. ¹⁷ Conversely, the endorsed study of Ovid’s heterogeneous canon was common practice in Renaissance England, but the selection of excerpts and florilegia in grammar schools—frequently moralized through Christian allegories—tried to omit the most lascivious parts of his poems or to magnify the elegance of the verses in place of their explicit contents.¹⁸ This does not mean that titillated schoolboys or young women educated at home had no access in semi-clandestine ways to the tempting appeal of Ovid’s poetry through a more uninhibited approach, nor that late Elizabethan poets did not exploit the disruptive neo-Ovidian vogue for mythological epyllia to overturn ironically the Petrarchan commonplace of the passively chaste mistress seduced by her tireless wooer.¹⁹ When Bianca faces Lucentio’s oblique wooing—her suitor disguised as a schoolmaster—in the subplot of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, she reveals her learned and self-conscious mastery of Ovid’s Heroides during a (cover) lesson of Latin permeated with romantic innuendoes and witty exchanges.²⁰ Lucentio is an avowed adept to Ovid’s Ars amatoria, but the outwardly innocent Bianca looks more poised and skilled in matters of amorous skirmishes as she teasingly replies to him, due to her ability to apply the playful aspects of Ovidian eroticism from a female viewpoint, the same from which she claims to “learn my lesson as I please myself.”²¹ Jonson’s fictive Julia in Poetaster enjoys a privilege further than what ordinary girls may recollect from the bookish legacy of learned Ovidianism or its early modern revivals in neo-pagan fashion: she is allowed to interact tangibly with the dramatic persona of Ovid, and therefore to share on stage, as her accom-

 Fantham, Julia Augusti, 32– 34, 115; Suetonius, Deified Augustus 64.2.  Enterline, Shakespeare’s Schoolroom, 74– 76; Stapleton, Marlowe’s Ovid, 9 – 13.  In his anti-theatrical pamphlet The School of Abuse (1579), Stephen Gosson praises Augustus for Ovid’s banishment and quotes passages from Ars amatoria as accomplices to pagan bawdry and crafty eroticism to be proscribed from school curricula. In 1585, an anonymous speech addressed to Parliament demanded on the same grounds to suppress the printed circulation of Ovid’s Ars, at that time sold and read freely in English schools. See Callaghan, “Comedy and Epyllion,” 32– 34; James, “The Poet’s Toys,” 116 – 17.  Bate, Shakespeare and Ovid, 126 – 29; Enterline, Shakespeare’s Schoolroom, 97– 101.  Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, 3.1.20.

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plice/playmate in love antics, the climax of his Dionysian enthusiasm for uninhibited revelry and ironic role-playing. The appointed happening for this celebration of sensuality and carnivalesque will be the “heavenly banquet” organized by Ovid and his poetry circle in Julia’s imperial court. Although Gallus first attempts to invite Cytheris and Chloe to this irreverent party with conceited emphasis in his description—a godlike metamorphosis for the guests, inspired by the sacred power of poetry—Tibullus speaks more openly, and “to tell the female truth, which is the simple truth, ladies,” explains to them how the banquet will consist in a mocking travesty of deities: “Ovid will be Jupiter; the Princess Julia, Juno; Gallus here, Apollo; you, Cytheris, Pallas.”²² A declared burlesque of myth through merry disguise and sensual license— hence stylistically contiguous to the lightest epyllia—the blasphemous banquet staged in 4.5 shows Ovid/Jupiter playing the part of the Olympian king of the feast, or rather a Lord of Misrule without any control on the anarchical debauchery of the revels, in which every inebriated partygoer becomes the godlike author of his/her own nonsensical play-within-the-play, as Margaret Tudeau-Clayton points out.²³ Every residue of decorum having being forbidden in order to foster the flippancy of jovial drunkenness and erotic incontinence, the only law for these counterfeit gods and goddesses is to “play the fools by authority.”²⁴ The tiny size of the players aping the capriciousness of titanic gods highlighted the overall ludicrous context of this entertainment, since Poetaster was represented for the first time by the Children of the Chapel, a company of boy actors housed at Blackfriars. Julia as eminent host endorses the spirit of the banquet, in which even a married couple of citizens is invited to be ridiculed, and impersonates with brilliant irony the role of Juno, Jupiter’s jealous wife and tutelary deity of wedlock. Accordingly, Ovid/Jupiter, the archetype of whimsical cuckold-making—who inveighs here against his wife with the derogatory title of “cotquean,” a nagging hussy—provides Juno with many amused occasions for scolding him because of his brazen flirting with Venus/Chloe, in line with the stage dynamic of witty role-playing and funny banters. Julia’s playful and caustic rejoinders in these quarrels, worthy of “a right smart-tongued goddess,” may recall the saucy haughtiness and witticism used by the historical Julia Maior to reply to her father’s moral conformism, as reported in the fifth century by Macrobius in his convivial dialogue Saturnalia. ²⁵ What Macrobius left us in his series of an   

Jonson, Poetaster, 4.2.28 – 35; see also Hardie, Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion, 101. Tudeau-Clayton, Early Modern Virgil, 158. Jonson, Poetaster, 4.5.36. See also Mulvihill, “Poetaster and the Ovidian Debate,” 244– 46. Jonson, Poetaster, 4.5.90.

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ecdotes and jokes on the Roman princess is the portrayal of a fascinating and gentle woman in her thirties—already married, three times, according to her biography—whose sophisticated learning and lavish extravagances were employed to utter ironically her self-assertive dissent against the stereotypes of modesty, chastity, and obedience imposed in Rome by a patriarchal society to aristocratic young women.²⁶ Amy Richlin remarks how Julia’s verbal adroitness and defiant overtones in Macrobius lead to side with her and to connect Julia with the proud women in Roman comedy, admiring her dialectic ability to put to silence none other than Caesar Augustus, in the part of the authoritarian and (consequently) fooled father.²⁷ Augustus’s restrictions based on patriarchal control and moral severity are wholly at odds with the dissolute banquet of the gods in Poetaster, although Jonson surely knew a specific account by Suetonius on the gossip circulating in Rome about a scandalous episode from Augustus’s youthful revelry, in which he impersonated the divine Apollo during the impious “banquet of the twelve gods” with his illustrious guests.²⁸ The princeps in Poetaster would probably have had to feel hypocritically ashamed for this background parallel—curiously, the revels in 4.5 feature exactly twelve actors—but Jonson circumvents this ambiguous prospect by inverting Augustus’s function in the banquet and by insisting on the implied filial conflict, whereas the emperor’s likely indignation hovers over the feast before his actual entry on stage. All the provocations inferred from Ovid and Julia’s dissolute banquet will contribute to materializing the source of their dramatic “error” in the eyes of the pater familias’s conservative authority and to triggering their dismissal from the play. The reckless atmosphere of debauchery among euphoric mock-deities does not prevent Julia from adding personal meta-allusions to Ovid’s precarious position, as reveler and poet, within the frame of mythological parody.²⁹ Pretending indignation in a fit of jealousy, Julia/Juno chides her fictive husband for the dangerous effects of the gods’ wickedness, which may induce the imprudent poets to “live as profane as we,” and consequently she lightheartedly threatens to exile Jupiter from Olympus to “make a poor poet of thee, if thou abuse me thus.”³⁰ Jupiter ignores these perils and, reiterating his insolence, orders through his herald Mercury that “the great emperor, Augustus Caesar,” had to “presently sacrifice as

    

Macrobius, Saturnalia 2.5.1– 10. Richlin, “Julia’s Jokes,” 72– 78. Suetonius, Deified Augustus, 70.1– 2. See also Erskine-Hill, The Augustan Idea, 112. Carr, “Jonson and the Classics,” 306 – 8. Jonson, Poetaster, 4.5.84– 89.

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a dish to this banquet his beautiful and wanton daughter Julia.”³¹ The last lines of the repartee belong to Juno/Julia, a self-mocking and untimely prophetic advice in which she recommends Augustus to sacrifice his profligate daughter because he had better do so ten times than suffer her to love the well-nosed poet, Ovid—whom he shall do well to whip, or cause to be whipped, about the Capitol, for soothing her in her follies.³²

The follies of the revels actually cease the very moment Julia pronounces these words, since the following scene begins with Caesar Augustus abruptly bursting into the room of the blasphemous scandal with his attendants, thus interrupting every form of entertainment. The emperor’s outraged reaction is a mixture of wrath and disgust, which even his wisest and most liberal counsellors find hard to restrain. The first object of his rage is obviously Julia, whom he would kill on the spot did not Horace and Maecenas, two examples of tolerance and urbanitas, interpose themselves to avoid the brutality of this punitive burst. Their mediation is neither sufficient to sedate Augustus’s outpouring of invectives against his sacrilegious daughter—a deceitful “panther” and a “degenerate monster”—nor to prevent his ashamed sense of discomfort at the idea of her survival, when he asks: “What, would you have me let the strumpet live / That for this pageant earns so many deaths?”³³ Suetonius reports with similar emphasis Augustus’s momentary idea to sentence Julia to death, after he had made her daughter’s adulteries public through a letter to the Senate.³⁴ Julia Maior’s alleged sexual misconduct and dissolute pastimes, however, were notorious in Rome well before the sentence of her relegation to the island of Pandateria, and the historical Augustus was certainly less stupefied than Jonson’s dramatic analog when he disowned her; Macrobius made his discouraged Augustus confess to his friends that “he had two spoiled daughters to put up with—Rome and Julia.”³⁵ The princess was very popular and beloved by the lower classes, although defamatory rumors had circulated on her disreputable liaisons with several men since her second marriage with Agrippa. This situation manifestly contrasted with Augustus’s personal (and somewhat ineffectual) campaign of social reform to correct by drastic measures the injured

    

Jonson, Poetaster, 4.5.173 – 79. Jonson, Poetaster, 4.5.182– 85. Jonson, Poetaster, 4.6.14– 15. Suetonius, The Deified Augustus, 65.2– 3. Macrobius, Saturnalia 2.5.4.

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morality of Roman promiscuous habits. His Lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis (or “Julian law on the suppression of adultery,” 18 BCE ca.) converted irregular sexuality from private matter into a civic crime, not distinct from a serious offense to the State.³⁶ Hence, the fault of adultery (and fornication) in high-born families conceptually became not only an illegal violation of traditional ethical codes, but also a blatantly defiant act of disloyalty against the emperor’s auctoritas as embodiment of the patriarchal institution of state (pater patriae) and custodian of the moral rectitude of his subjects. Since the managing of their public image was strictly linked with the political and matrimonial arrangements of their own “honorable” family, the patrician and most liberal women were the principal victims of this form of restrictive retaliations. The ordinary penalty consisted in offshore exile and partial confiscation of their patrimony, but the adulterer’s father could reserve the right to kill his own daughter if caught in his house during sexual intercourse. From this perspective, the extent of Julia Maior’s licentious behavior was exponentially far more harmful, as she transgressed the values of the eminent Julian family by impairing the political credibility of her father’s laws, together with the prestige of his sovereign image.³⁷ Jonson’s wrathful Augustus in Poetaster, 4.6, may be blamed for reacting with rash intemperance and sullen purposes to Julia’s involvement in the banquet, but he is rather historically in character in light of the unruly agenda of this irreverent revelry, which infers a transversal ridicule of the inner paternalism from Lex Iulia and its inhibitions on sexual matter or conjugal integrity, as sung by Gallus in the previous scene: But, since it is no part of wisdom In these days, to come into bonds, It shall be lawful for every lover To break loving oaths, To change their lovers, and make love to others, As the heat of everyone’s blood And the spirit of our nectar shall inspire.³⁸

The fact that the theatrical Julia is not yet married does not lessen the problematic impact of Augustus’s inappropriate harshness on the comical mood of the play, even though his function may here be viewed, in broad terms, within the killjoy stereotype of the obtuse and prudish father of New Comedy, who unsuc-

 Fantham, Julia Augusti, 40 – 42; Davis, Ovid and Augustus, 85 – 89.  Severy, Augustus and the Family, 181– 82, 198.  Cave, “Poetaster,” 18; Jonson, Poetaster, 4.5.28 – 34.

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cessfully tries to hinder the romantic plot involving two young lovers. After repressing the revels, the princeps addresses the majority of his anathemas to the poets’ profane abuse of their sacred art in idle and pretentious fictions that feign virtue for immoral idols, in line with Jonson’s purpose to define the function of the ideal court poet in Poetaster, his last theoretical (and topically satirical) contribution to the personal feud against other contemporary playwrights for redefining the literary tenets of drama, commonly known as War of Theatres, or poetomachia. ³⁹ But when Augustus refers only to Ovid’s culpability and sentences him to exile from court—mentioning the poet by his cognomen “Naso” (i. e., “nose”), and ignoring the other revelers, virtually unpunished—the relevance of his guilty love affair with the princess is necessarily at the core of the verdict, followed by Julia’s imprisonment in the imperial lodgings for her wantonness, not without echoing her last words at the party: Licentious Naso, for thy violent wrong In soothing the declined affections Of our base daughter—we exile thy feet From all approach to our imperial court, On pain of death, and thy misgotten love Commit to patronage of iron doors.⁴⁰

No vocal reply comes from the (till then) eloquent Ovid and his imperial mistress. The sly and bold princess portrayed in Macrobius would have found dozens of scornful or sarcastic retorts to challenge her father’s predictable rhetoric, but Jonson’s Julia dare not pronounce a single line in this scene, thus joining Ovid in his speechless sense of frustration and awe before a dreadful authority. If Jonson had to edify a great part of Poetaster to support his own programmatic validation of Augustan moral and artistic policy, with the princeps as exemplary ruler and patron of honorable poets, the dramatist’s representation of a revengeful Augustus in this scene seems rather controversial, considering his lack of godly mercy and spirit of family reconciliation.⁴¹ Maecenas and Horace’s combined pleas to “forgive: be like gods” or to “let your royal bounty, Caesar, mediate” fall on deaf ears before the emperor’s arbitrary will.⁴² Back in ancient Rome, the implied concern for despotic decision-making and hurried judgment is something that Tacitus—a source largely espoused by Jonson in his tragedy Sejanus His Fall (1603) to warn about the degeneration of autocracy—highlights in his ac   

Koslow, “Humanist Schooling,” 140 – 42. Jonson, Poetaster, 4.6.51– 6. Erskine-Hill, The Augustan Idea, 109; Hardie, Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion, 98. Jonson, Poetaster, 4.6.57– 58.

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count on these scandals at court. When he comments on Augustus’s disproportionate severity in punishing to stark relegation the sexual incontinence of both Julias as a crime akin to lèse-majesté—instead of a common guilt usually dealt with leniency by the ancient mos maiorum—Tacitus states polemically: “by the harsh appellations of sacrilege and treason, he [Augustus] overstepped both the mild penalties of an earlier day and those of his own laws.”⁴³ As staged by Jonson, Augustus had formerly heard of the preparation for the impious banquet from Asinius Lupus—a sprechender Name for his asinine dullness and wolfish malevolence—a paranoid magistrate inclined to alarmistic suspicion and legal actions for groundless allegations, especially of conspiracy. This foolish (but potentially virulent) character epitomizes, in the satirical context of the late Elizabethan Poetaster, the concrete danger for absolutist monarchs to take into account rumors from malicious sources and create an atmosphere of surveillance within a State of terror, in which the ruler’s myopic arbitrium— with its ensuing retaliations—might have been conditioned by biased and defamatory intelligence.⁴⁴ When in 4.4 Lupus intercepts the theater manager Histrio and interrogates him regarding the props hired by the revelers for their godlike masquerade, just a few harmless items are sufficient for him to cry wolf and assume a seditious plot against the princeps. Therefore, he exclaims “a crown and a scepter? This is good! Rebellion, now?,” a topical anxiety Tom Cain regards as set by Jonson to allude to the recent revival of Shakespeare’s Richard II commissioned by the Earl of Essex’s supporters on the eve of their uprising against Elizabeth I (February 1601) and to the interrogation of Augustine Phillips—an actor from the Lord Chamberlain’s Men—who confessed to having been paid to represent an old play featuring the deposition of a king.⁴⁵ Even though in 4.6 Augustus finally does not find any signs of treacherous intrigue against him in the impudent banquet, and the magnanimous poet Horace—Jonson’s self-reliant satirical persona and ideological mouthpiece within the play—plays down the peril of the revelers’ jocund license by accusing Lupus “To prey upon the life of innocent mirth / And harmless pleasures, bred of noble wit,” Jonson’s concern for the risk of hasty persecution derived from the misinterpretation of poetic (and theatrical) contents, or intrusion in private love affairs is still palpable in the pseudo-romantic subplot.⁴⁶ “’Tis a dan-

   

Tacitus, Annales 3.24.2. Sinfield, “Perils of Cultural Production,” 7– 11. Jonson, Poetaster, 4.4.18; Cain, “‘Satyres, That Girdle and Fart of Time,’” 60 – 65. Jonson, Poetaster, 4.7.37– 38.

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gerous age,” as Poetaster’s armed Prologue warns us to defend himself from Envy’s slanders and hint at Jonson’s thorny position as outsider satirist not yet established into the patronage of the royal court; it was a very dangerous age for such prominent Roman women as Julia Maior, a period in which many defamatory voices circulated about her licentious sexuality and frolics, eventually undoing her official image and contributing to her downfall.⁴⁷ Julia and Ovid in Poetaster may boast illustrious literary precedents in this sense, and Poetaster reverberates their presence even after the subplot is over. When the Apollonian poet Virgil reads a long excerpt from Aeneid in 5.2 to please Augustus, the play echoes an ennobling point of parallelism for Julia’s ill-starred destiny through the myth of Dido and her troublesome love for Aeneas. Differently from Julia, Dido is no longer a disengaged princess: she is a queen with a greater responsibility for her image before the subjects, but in Virgil’s lines she shares the fate of Ovid’s Jonsonian mistress for the catastrophic consequences of Fame’s agency, the multi-tongued personification of evil rumor who divulgates the story of her amatory liaison in Carthage with the Trojan hero.⁴⁸ The historical context of Augustan Rome was evidently not immune to these forms of uncontrollable and contrived detractions, often proliferating in the manner of sensational gossip with a taste for the obscene. As the Stoic Seneca reported in De beneficiis 6.32, before the scandal of her exile took place in 2 BCE, the rebellious Julia Maior had not only made public her sequence of adulteries, but during her night escapades through the streets of Rome she had outraged the platforms (rostra) from which her father had promulgated the Lex Iulia in the forum, and there played the prostitute with strangers near the statue of the satyr Marsyas, which she crowned as numen of hubristic free speech.⁴⁹ Modern historians generally speculate that a large part of this emphasis on Julia’s promiscuity was actually a programmatic smokescreen to discredit the princess and cover the real political reasons for her banishment: a compromising adulterous affair with Iullus Antonius—son of the triumvir Marcus Antonius defeated by Augustus, then Octavianus, at Actium—and her support to Iullus’s conspiratorial

 James, “Ben Jonson’s Light Reading,” 248 – 49. Nathaniel Lee, in his heroic play Gloriana, or, the Court of Augustus Cæsar (1676), still applies this hearsay: “All Rome with thy proclaim’d dishonour rings, / And ev’ry infant Iulia’s lewdness sings” (4.1.5 – 6).  Moul, Jonson, Horace and the Classical, 36 – 38. See also Schmidt. “Enacting the Classics,” 125 – 27, 131– 33.  This account is featured in Fantham, Julia Augusti, 140. See also Lee, Gloriana (2.1.38 – 45), in which the spiteful Tiberius whispers in the ears of Julia’s first husband Marcellus about the princess’s midnight parades, disguised as the goddess Venus on a pageant-like golden throne, and intent on desecrating Janus’s and Jupiter’s temples.

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faction hostile to Tiberius’s succession, her stepbrother and third (despised) husband.⁵⁰ This correlation between sexual transgression and domestic struggle inside Augustan household contributed to the ruin of Julia’s first daughter, ostensibly confined to Trimerus on the charge of adultery, but possibly affiliated as well with a scheming anti-Tiberian network.⁵¹ Julia the Younger underwent a systematic process of silencing damnatio memoriae and left Rome with ignominy in 8 CE, the same year of Ovid’s exile; as a way to interweave completely the unfortunate trend of offshore confinement for Julia Maior’s female lineage, Jonson dramatized in Sejanus the tragic fate of her proud second daughter Agrippina the Elder, relegated by a Machiavellian Tiberius to Pandateria—the same island as her mother. Jonson’s Ovid is not as socially high-ranked as the historical Iullus to sustain a balanced match with such a woman as the Roman princess. One of the main issues hindering his affair with Julia in Poetaster is the disparity of their birth: flirting with the emperor’s daughter is something utterly prohibited to an equestrian/commoner such as Ovid, a serious violation of class codes.⁵² Besides, once banished from the elite circle at court and its magnetic sphere of fashionable poets, Ovid betrays through synecdoche his sense of dismay for status downgrade and amorous deprivation, if “The court’s the abstract of all Rome’s deserts, / And my dear Julia th’abstract of the court.”⁵³ In Julia and Ovid’s last appearance together (4.9), the scene of their passionate leave-taking, the “heavenly” princess is placed above him, at her window, with a clear allusion (to some degree parodic) to the balcony scene in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. ⁵⁴ Julia fervently longs to fill the gap created by physical or class distance (“the two lets of our love / Local and ceremonial height and lowness”) and announces she will throw herself down, thereby putting into action a suicidal trust in the eternal reunion of two loving souls, once freed from the material and social restraints of living bodies.⁵⁵ The sense of fusion and release diffusedly voiced by Julia’s idealization of the lovers’ afterlife is dense with metaphysical  Ferrill, “Augustus and His Daughter,” 334– 38. Among Julia’s alleged lovers, Iullus was the only one sentenced to death for high treason, and probably forced to commit suicide; see Thibault, The Mystery of Ovid’s Exile, 58 – 61; Wood, Imperial Women, 36 – 40. Jonson’s own copy of Seneca’s De clementia shows underlinings and annotations on the paragraphs praising Augustus for having spared the lives of the other men involved in Julia’s scandal; see Evans, “Jonson’s Copy,” 271– 72.  Levick, “The Fall of Julia the Younger,” 302– 6, 333 – 36.  Sinfield, “Poetaster,” 15 – 16.  Jonson, Poetaster, 4.8.18 – 19.  Another source is Ovid’s moving farewell to his wife before his exile in Tristia 1.3.  Jonson, Poetaster, 4.9.6 – 7; see also Nash, “The Parting Scene,” 55 – 57.

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conceits, but she traces back the origin of all her tribulations to her father’s moral conformism and arbitrary rule, the “height of birth / Of place, of duty, or of cruel power.”⁵⁶ Decease thus represents for Julia chiefly a transcendental status exempted from parental bonds and control: “The souls of parents rule not children’s soul / When death sets both in their dissolved estates.”⁵⁷ After the frivolous debauchery of the burlesque banquet, Jonson takes care here to represent Julia’s feelings with empathetic depth, a solemn and moving confession of love from a sincere young lady, albeit overcharged with rhetorical imagery and philosophical hyperboles.⁵⁸ Julia and Ovid are (almost) completely exempted from Jonson’s satirical attacks or asides against typified “humours” to be fostered and purged in the play, and yet they still do not represent the positive polarity of the play, embodied by two such faultless poets as Horace and Virgil instead, as exemplary depositaries of Stoic insight and virtuous temperance in their verses, in contrast with the pretentious poet Crispinus and the playhouse hack Demetrius.⁵⁹ Conversely, if we consider the structure of Jonson’s comical satires, this pair of lovers stand in an anomalous limbo as problematic outsiders, a semi-peripheral and ambiguous territory from which the dramatist, however, cannot exclude his typical aversion to the consolations of metaphysical sublimation and the clichés of romantic comedy—there will be no happy ending for Julia and her paramour in Poetaster, as their historical counterparts were doomed to lifelong disgrace after Augustus’s verdicts.⁶⁰ Julia’s insightful approach, for instance, is soon after hilariously lessened by Jonson when she acts with Ovid a delaying series of half-exits and call-backs for their reluctance to put an end to the farewell love ritual, before disappearing from the stage.⁶¹ For the philosophical import of the scene, Jonson might have drawn upon George Chapman’s poem Ovids Banquet of Sense (1595) about the split between spirit and senses within an Ovidian subtext, but his objective differs from Chapman’s cryptic and mock-serious epyllion. In Chapman, Ovid’s passion for Corinna-alias-Julia is literally at first sight the cause of his “error”—he peeps into her imperial garden while she is bathing and promptly falls in love—a long hedonistic descent into the lower scale of the five senses through the banquet’s obscure

 Jonson, Poetaster, 4.9.12– 13.  Jonson, Poetaster, 4.5.65 – 66.  Stapleton, “Marlovian Residue,” 24– 25.  In his handwritten annotations on the 1619 edition of Martial’s works, Jonson defends the historical Ovid against the charges of immorality in his poetry and conduct; see James, “Ben Jonson’s Light Reading,” 251– 52.  Blissett, “Roman Ben Jonson,” 94– 95; Maus, Jonson and the Roman Frame, 77– 79.  Jonson, Poetaster, 4.9.80 – 97.

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metaphors, but it also represents, more obliquely, the chance for the (allegorical) Roman poet to raise his aspirations towards a Neoplatonic ecstasy of the soul.⁶² The philosophical notion of “a banquet of sense, like that of Ovid,” is a motif still present in Jonson’s late comedy The New Inn (1629), in which Lady Frampful and Lovel are summoned to a metaphorical “trial of love” to dispute on their respective beliefs in the primacy of carnal desire or spiritual union, introduced by an oath of allegiance to Ovid’s Ars amatoria, the holy text for the liturgy of amatory skirmishes—here entitled De arte amandi. ⁶³ In Poetaster, 4.9, Jonson does not profess a syncretic approach to these dichotomies, because Ovid brings Julia back to earth from her philosophical flourishes without a dire collision, thus leaving her body intact at the window and dismissing every transcendent pretension with regard to metaphysical reunification. On the contrary, the way he dissuades his exclusive muse from suicidal aspirations consists in identifying the quintessence of love’s beauty (and its fulfillment) with something that depends on the living corporeality of sense “And is more plausible to blood and flesh / Than spiritual beauty can be to the spirit.”⁶⁴ This speech forestalls a tragic ending for Julia and paves the way for Ovid’s sincerely contrite soliloquy—his last lines in the play—in which he admits his helplessness before the madness and witchcraft of love, above all if “The truest wisdom silly men can have / Is dotage on the follies of their flesh.”⁶⁵ The playwright does not resolve through a single criterion the contradictions intrinsic in Ovid’s vulnerable character and his “flawed aesthetics,” torn between the divine elevation of elegiac poetry and the dependence on tangible pleasure, but portrays in dramatic terms—not without empathy for his difficulties—the fate of a young worshipper of love’s beauty, whose hapless condemnation for a private affair will not obfuscate his eternal renown as master of poetic love over the following centuries, as Blackfriars’s select audience would have easily acknowledged.⁶⁶ Once Julia has curbed her inclination to suicide, she is still Ovid’s most faithful supporter from this far-sighted perspective, while she carries on expressing her admiration for the poet’s unrewarded virtues, a lofty nobleness forced to “fly close to earth” and still busy “pursuing flies” for the malice of ig-

 Moss, “The Second Master of Love,” 473 – 75.  Jonson, The New Inn, 3.2.38 – 42, 123 – 24. De arte amandi, or The Art of Love was the alternate title of Loves School (1625), Thomas Heywood’s first complete translation in English of Ovid’s Ars amatoria.  Jonson, Poetaster, 4.9.40 – 41.  Jonson, Poetaster, 4.9.108 – 9.  Mulvihill, “Poetaster and the Ovidian Debate,” 250 – 51; Hardie, Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion, 99, 104– 5; Tudeau-Clayton, Early Modern Virgil, 161– 62.

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norant or the arbitrary dispositions of “worldly tyranny.”⁶⁷ In evoking the coercive sense of Augustus’s imperatives on filial and ethical expectations, Jonson’s Roman princess develops in the following lines a proud assertion of the dignity of her true feelings and godlike sense of self-determination: O father, since thou gav’st me not my mind, Strive not to rule it; take but what thou gav’st To thy disposure. Thy affections Rule not in me. I must bear all my griefs; Let me use all my pleasures. Virtuous love Was never scandal to a goddess’ state.⁶⁸

Augustus’s pursuit of authority over her daughter, Julia argues, ends where their minds differ: the virtuous prerogative to suffer or to enjoy herself during her individual progress is something apart from the decrees of state or biological inheritance. It is the same liberty that legitimates the love that ties a princely goddess to her elegiac partner, regardless of ensuing allegations, and described as “free from scandal and offense.”⁶⁹ The resonant motifs of this passage evoke the emotional repertory of the adolescent heroines in English Renaissance romance, inasmuch as their sentimental unrest generally went hand in hand with resentful claims against the restrictions of patriarchal custom. What distinguishes Julia’s attitude from the lamenting tone of these conventional characters is her faculty of introjecting the fertilizing experience of elegiac poetics due to her lively closeness to its greatest exponent, though only in fictionalized terms. A similar attitude of individual enrichment has been detected in the additions in Q2 Romeo and Juliet by Heather James, who remarks how in this version Shakespeare’s heroine stands out for the capability to impress on her most passionate speeches the bold eloquence of Ovidian love poetry, not reduced to simple rhetorical devices.⁷⁰ Juliet, James persuasively suggests, in the post-matrimonial monologue and balcony speech modulates her fervent introspection according to the eroticism of Ovid’s elegies. She fluently masters as a docta puella her most intimate pressures into the acted metalanguage of those Roman women celebrated by elegists, no longer a passive object of love, but a responsive young lady who reacts to the conformist vexa-

 Jonson, Poetaster, 4.9.48 – 58, passim.  Jonson, Poetaster, 4.9.59 – 64. Lee’s Julia (Gloriana, 1.1.76 – 77) splits likewise her dissent on Augustus’s parental authority: “All that is Earth of me is in your hand, / But, Sir, my Spirit’s not at your command.”  Jonson, Poetaster, 4.5.65 – 66.  James, “The Ovidian Girlhood,” 111– 12, 118 – 21.

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tions of parental control and filial duty as the defiant mistresses put to question by Ovid’s poems in the Augustan age. We do not know how Jonson’s personal ethics and paternal sensitivity would have reacted in real life to an insubordinate daughter such as Julia Maior, but even if he does not completely absolve her theatrical counterpart in Poetaster from some juvenile impropriety, he exonerates this Julia from any blameworthy need of redemption in light of her cultural dowry inherited from the learned experience of an Ovidian girlhood. The awareness of this valuable lesson is what enables her to continue to conceive as legitimate her life and pleasures, a free patrimony acquired with full right, which even a Roman emperor could not confiscate.

Works Cited Bate, Jonathan. Shakespeare and Ovid. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Blissett, William. “Roman Ben Jonson.” In Ben Jonson’s 1616 Folio, edited by Jennifer Brady and W. H. Herendeen, 90 – 110. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1991. Cain, Tom. “‘Satyres, That Girdle and Fart of Time’: Poetaster and the Essex Rebellion.” In Refashioning Ben Jonson: Gender, Politics, and the Jonsonian Canon, edited by Julie Sanders, Kate Chedgzoy, and Susan Wiseman, 48 – 70. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998. Callaghan, Dympna. “Comedy and Epyllion in Post-Reformation England.” Shakespeare Survey 56 (2003): 27 – 38. Carr, Joan. “Jonson and the Classics: The Ovid-Plot in Poetaster.” English Literary Renaissance 8 (1978): 296 – 311. Cave, Richard. “Poetaster: Jonson and His Audience.” In Jonsonians: Living Traditions, edited by Brian Woolland, 13 – 26. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. Cockayne, Aston. The Tragedy of Ovid. London, 1669. Davis, Peter J. Ovid and Augustus: A Political Reading of Ovid’s Erotic Poems. London: Duckworth, 2006. Enterline, Lynn. Shakespeare’s Schoolroom: Rhetoric, Discipline, Emotion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Erskine-Hill, Howard. The Augustan Idea in English Literature. London: E. Arnold, 1983. Evans, Robert C. “Jonson’s Copy of Seneca.” Comparative Drama 25 (1991): 257 – 92. Fantham, Elaine. Julia Augusti: The Emperor’s Daughter. London: Routledge, 2006. Ferrill, Arther. “Augustus and His Daughter: A Modern Myth.” In Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History, Vol. 2, edited by Carl Deroux, 332 – 46. Brussels: Collection Latomus, 1980. Green, Peter. “Carmen et Error: πρόφασις and αἰτία in the Matter of Ovid’s Exile.” Classical Antiquity 1 (1982): 202 – 20. Hardie, Philip. Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Hemelrijk, Emily. Matrona Docta: Educated Women in the Roman Élite from Cornelia to Julia Domna. London: Routledge, 2002.

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James, Heather. “Ben Jonson’s Light Reading.” In A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid, edited by John F. Miller and Carole E. Newlands, 246 – 61. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014. James, Heather. “The Ovidian Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Boy Actors: Q2 Juliet.” Shakespeare Survey 69 (2016): 106 – 22. James, Heather. “The Poet’s Toys: Christopher Marlowe and the Liberties of Erotic Elegy.” Modern Language Quarterly 67 (2006): 103 – 27. Jonson, Ben. The New Inn, or The Light Heart, edited by Julie Sanders. In The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, edited by David Bevington, Martin Butler, and Ian Donaldson, 7 vols., 6:165 – 308. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Jonson, Ben. Poetaster, or His Arraignment, edited by Gabriele Bernhard Jackson. In The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, edited by David Bevington, Martin Butler, and Ian Donaldson, 7 vols., 2:1 – 179. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Jonson, Ben. Underwood, edited by Colin Burrow. In The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, edited by David Bevington, Martin Butler, and Ian Donaldson, 7 vols., 7:69 – 295. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Keach, William. Elizabethan Erotic Narratives: Irony and Pathos in the Ovidian Poetry of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Their Contemporaries. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1977. Koslow, Julian. “Humanist Schooling and Ben Jonson’s Poetaster.” English Literary History 73 (2006): 119 – 59. Lee, Nathaniel. Gloriana, or, The Court of Augustus Cæsar. London, 1676. Levick, Barbara. “The Fall of Julia the Younger.” Latomus 35 (1976): 301 – 39. Macrobius. Saturnalia, edited by Robert A. Kaster. London: Heinemann, 2011. Maus, Katharine E. Ben Jonson and the Roman Frame of Mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Moss, Daniel. “‘The Second Master of Love:’ George Chapman and the Shadow of Ovid.” Modern Philology 111 (2014): 457 – 84. Moul, Victoria. Jonson, Horace and the Classical Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Moulton, Ian F. Before Pornography: Erotic Writing in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Mulvihill, James D. “Jonson’s Poetaster and the Ovidian Debate.” Studies in English Literature, 1500 – 1900 22 (1982): 239 – 55. Nash, Ralph. “The Parting Scene in Jonson’s Poetaster.” Philological Quarterly 31 (1952): 54 – 62. Ovidius. Tristia, translated by Arthur Leslie Wheeler. London: Heinemann, 1924. Richlin, Amy. “Julia’s Jokes, Galla Placidia, and the Roman Use of Women as Political Icons.” In Stereotypes of Women in Power: Historical Perspectives and Revisionist Views, edited by Barbara Garlick, Suzanne Dixon, and Pauline Allen, 65 – 91. Westport: Greenwood, 1992. Schmidt, Gabriela. “Enacting the Classics: Translation and Authorship in Ben Jonson’s Poetaster.” In Elizabethan Translation and Literary Culture, edited by Gabriela Schmidt, 111 – 45. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013. Severy, Beth. Augustus and the Family at the Birth of the Roman Empire. London: Routledge, 2004.

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Shakespeare, William. The Taming of the Shrew, edited by Barbara Hodgdon. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2010. Sinfield, Alan. “Poetaster, the Author, and the Perils of Cultural Production.” Renaissance Drama 27 (1996): 3 – 18. Stapleton, Michael L. “Marlovian Residue in Jonson’s Poetaster.” In Christopher Marlowe: Identities, Traditions, Afterlives, edited by Daniel Cadman and Andrew Duxfield. Early Modern Literary Studies, Special Issue 23 (2014): 1 – 26. Stapleton, Michael L. Marlowe’s Ovid: The Elegies in the Marlowe Canon. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014. Suetonius. The Lives of the Caesars: Book II. The Deified Augustus. Translated by J. C. Rolfe. London: Heinemann, 1963. Tacitus. The Annals I–III, translated by John Jackson. London: Heinemann, 1931. Thibault, John C. The Mystery of Ovid’s Exile. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964. Tudeau-Clayton, Margaret. Jonson, Shakespeare and Early Modern Virgil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Wood, Susan E. Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68. Leiden: Brill, 2000.

Fabio Ciambella

“Few Wise Women’s Honesties”: Dialoguing with Roman Women in Ben Jonson’s Roman Plays Introduction Sejanus His Fall (first performed in 1603 and first published in 1605) and Catiline His Conspiracy (first performed and published in 1611) are the only extant Roman tragedies by Ben Jonson. Their titles feature evident similarities, both with regard to their structure (proper noun + possessive determiner + common noun) and content. The centrality attributed to the male protagonist in both plays is obvious by simply looking at the noun phrases that constitute their titles. Early modern connoisseurs of classical history—the so-called “Reader[s] extraordinary” of Catiline’s introductory note—would have no trouble in identifying the parallelism between the two Romans’ downward spirals of power. This chapter focuses on the Roman female characters in Sejanus and Catiline in order to assess whether, and to what extent, Jonson can be considered a subversive playwright, as suggested by a number of scholars who claim to have identified a proto-feminist approach in his works.¹ After a very brief account of the circumstances of the staging and failure of the two tragedies, the main female characters will be introduced and examined, with an especial emphasis on their relationship with their male counterparts. Finally, since Jonson shapes his Roman female characters especially through a skillful use of dramatic dialogue, the stylistic features of the women’s lines will be analysed, mainly by deploying the linguistic tools offered by Conversation Analysis (hereafter CA).

Sejanus and Catiline: Jonson’s Roman Tragedies Various hypotheses have been put forward regarding the unique position occupied by Sejanus and Catiline within Jonson’s canon. First of all, scholars have been intrigued by the fact that the only two tragedies completed by Jonson

 See, e. g., Hayes, Jonson and Women; Sanders, “‘I will fit the players yet!’”; Sanders, Chedgzoy, and Wiseman, eds., Refashioning Ben Jonson; Schafer, “Daughters of Ben.” https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501514203-007

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were inspired by Roman history.² Most critics agree that Jonson’s interest in dramatizing the Roman past is at least partly due to the influence exerted by William Shakespeare’s Roman tragedies—namely Titus Andronicus (1584– 94), Julius Caesar (1599), Antony and Cleopatra (1606 – 1607), and Coriolanus (1607– 1609)— in different stages of Jonson’s career.³ Unlike Shakespeare’s adaptations of Roman history, however, Jonson’s tragedies were complete fiascos: Sejanus’s first performance at the Globe was “hissed off the stage,” and Jonson himself complains about Catiline’s unsuccessful staging both in the preface and the dedication to the published version of his second tragedy.⁴ Different reasons for this failure can be suggested, but Thomas Rymer’s criticism regarding a supposed lack of decorum does not seem plausible, especially given Shakespeare’s customary violation of that same principle.⁵ On the contrary, Ashley H. Thorndike’s considerations seem more convincing. Unlike Shakespeare’s Roman plays, he argues, in Jonson’s tragedies “[m]ere spectacle and farce disappear, and events are treated in accord with a well-thought-out theory of historical tragedy. But Jonson’s theory proved hampering.”⁶ Therefore, unlike Shakespeare’s tragic genius, Jonson’s comic talent is thought to have marred his two Roman tragedies completely, due to his painstaking attempt to respect his classical sources.⁷ Nonetheless, political and religious considerations must have also led Jonson to decide to deal with a dramatic genre that appears not to have been really congenial to him. Barbara N. De Luna discusses Sejanus in terms of a “state-satire built around an historical parallel,” and Chanmi Ko is even more explicit when she asserts that “Jonson uses Tacitus as a means of critiquing the political reality of Jacobean England and resisting royal misrule.”⁸ By using Tacitus’s Annales as one of his main sources for Sejanus, Jonson was possibly attacking King James I’s court and the king’s favorites, so much so that the playwright was called before the Privy Council by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton (Jonson’s “mortal enemy”) who railed against Sejanus’s hints of popery and treason. Indeed, as Philip J. Ayres argues, Jonson’s first tragedy could even be read as an

 See, for instance, de Villiers, “Ben Jonson’s Tragedies.”  See, for instance, Hunt, “Jonson vs. Shakespeare.”  Mehl, Shakespeare’s Tragedies, 132– 36; Ayres, “Introduction,” 37.  Rymer, A Short View of Tragedy, 162.  Thorndike, “Ben Jonson,” 30.  Sejanus’s story is mainly taken from Tacitus’s Annales, Cassius Dio’s Historia Romana, Suetonius’s De vita Caesarum, and Juvenal’s Satirae. Among Catiline’s sources, one can list Cicero’s Catilinariae, Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae, and Plutarch’s Lives.  De Luna, Jonson’s Romish Plot, 6; Ko, “English Tacitism and Ben Jonson’s Sejanus His Fall,” 96.

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Anglicized Roman metaphor for the 1603 Main Plot, led by anti-Jacobean Catholics who wanted to put James’s cousin Lady Arbella Stuart on the English throne.⁹ Nevertheless, Peter Lake’s view on this issue entails a completely different reading of the accusations against the playwright, a reading linked to Jonson’s Catholicism and focused not on the date of the first performance of the play (1603), but on 1605. Public theaters were closed for the plague after Elizabeth I’s death; hence Sejanus could have been performed only at court between December 1603 and February 1604, then staged again at the Globe in April 1604. Therefore, it is highly improbable that its alleged political criticism caused Jonson to attract the hostility of the censorship and the Privy Council. According to Lake, the quarto edition possibly turned “a piece of flattery, directed towards the incoming Stuart [into] a … bitter reflection on that Stuart’s failure or refusal to deliver the goods, expected and then very broadly hinted at in 1603.”¹⁰ In other words, the 1603 version of the tragedy may have been a less polemic play than the 1605 quarto edition, thus marking the transition from “a moment of great (Catholic) optimism”¹¹ by Jonson’s side to a period when “such optimism had evaporated.”¹² With a view to dealing with a political reading of Catiline, it may be helpful to borrow Anne Barton’s question about the circumstances of its composition: “The second experiment was as catastrophic as the first. But what impelled Jonson in this direction at all … when he seemed to be at the height of his power and renown as a writer of comedy?”¹³ The answer is likely to be found in the political climate of the first decade of James’s reign, which witnessed an unprecedented politics of misrule, as well as unparalleled corruption and squandering of resources. Jonson’s position at court, however, was rather ambiguous: indeed, in 1611 he was a well-known comedy writer and poet, and a de facto Poet Laureate. His masques celebrated the harmony of James’s reign, while he reserved his criticism to his tragedies. As Domenico Lovascio remarks, Catiline can be read simultaneously as a royal celebration against the Gunpowder Plot (a sort of captatio benevolentiae Jonson promoted in order to distance himself from his connection with the Catholic conspirators once and for all) and a mirror image of a corrupted monarchy.¹⁴

 Ayres, “Jonson, Northampton, and the Treason in Sejanus.”  Lake, “Ben Jonson and the Politics of ‘Conversion,’” 164.  Lake, “Ben Jonson and the Politics of ‘Conversion,’” 164.  Lake, “Ben Jonson and the Politics of ‘Conversion,’” 164.  Barton, Ben Jonson: Dramatist, 156.  Lovascio, “Introduzione,” xxxvii–xlv.

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Jonson’s Roman Women: Female Characters in Sejanus and Catiline “Throughout the progression of his playwriting career, each new play in Jonson’s art and evolution as a dramatist has more and more closely connected him to the female characters he creates.”¹⁵ Tara J. Hayes’s comment about Jonson’s progressive identification with his female characters is one of the few outside voices opposing the more widespread scholarly assumptions―which are going to be reaffirmed and reinforced in this chapter―regarding the misogyny and sexism informing early modern literary production in general (perhaps with the exception of some of Shakespeare’s female protagonists) and Jonson’s production in particular.¹⁶ According to Hayes, the ambiguous social and political position that characterizes the female voices in Jonson’s canon reflects the playwright’s very same thorny and ambiguous condition within early Jacobean society, in between an ingratiating courtly production and a dramatic output veiledly critical of the Stuart monarchy.¹⁷ Hayes argues that this is particularly true when considering Jonson’s Roman tragedies, which, contrary to the subtle satiric verses of his comedies, stage (hazardously for him) the playwright’s political critique towards the first Stuart monarch. As a matter of fact, Agrippina’s uncomfortable position in the play (and, going back to Sejanus’s sources, during Tiberius’s empire) seems to echo Jonson’s awkward situation during James’s reign and the Jacobean theater.¹⁸

 Hayes, Jonson and Women, 266.  See, among others, Sanders, Chedgzoy, and Wiseman, eds., Refashioning Ben Jonson. For a reading of Shakespeare as a (proto‐)feminist writer, see Novy, Shakespeare and Feminist Theory. See also Underdown, “The Taming of the Scold”; Erickson, Patriarchal Structures in Shakespeare’s Drama; Shepard, “Credit and Patriarchy in Early Modern England”; Brenner, “The Good and Bad of that Sexe.” Concerning Jonson’s misogyny, Mary B. Rose asserted that “[t]hey [Jonson’s women] are continually outrageous, unspeakably grotesque. In all Jacobean drama, no misogyny is so detailed and unmitigated, so utterly triumphant, as Ben Jonson’s in Epicoene” (Rose, The Expense of Spirit, 57)  Hayes, Jonson and Women, 269; Lemon, Treason by Words, 137– 60.  Vipsania Agrippina (known as Agrippina the Elder) was granddaughter of the emperor Augustus and wife of Germanicus (Tiberius’s adoptive son). After the death of her husband (probably poisoned by Tiberius’s order to promote Drusus the Younger as the emperor’s only heir) she struggled to make her children legitimate heirs of Tiberius, and Caligula did become emperor after Tiberius’s death in 37 CE. Unfortunately, his mother could not see him crowned because she had been declared a public enemy by the Senate in 31 CE and exiled to Ventotene, where she had died in 33 CE.

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Jonson’s Agrippina embodies Roman virtus against the political abuses that plague Tiberius’s Rome: she is the “fire” that needs to be “extinct,” a “male-spirited dame,” a woman with “too much faith / To be corrupted” and “too-too unreproved a chastity, / To be attempted.”¹⁹ Virtue is a paramount entity in the tragedy, a set of moral values the importance of which is stated in Jonson’s dedication to Esmé Stewart Aubigny, 3rd Duke of Lennox, “To the no less by virtue than blood” (emphasis mine). As Jonson knew well, Roman virtus was mainly a male moral code of conduct (etymologically, the noun virtus comes from vir, meaning “man”) and it was handed down from father to son(s). Therefore, treating Agrippina as an embodiment of virtus means acknowledging her, as Sejanus does in the above-quoted lines from Act 2, as a man-like woman. When dealing with Livia, the situation is quite the opposite.²⁰ She is introduced at the very beginning of Act 2, but Sejanus has already anticipated her role within the tragedy in Act 1: she is “now corrupted,” since her physician Eudemus has been preparing a poisoned mixture to murder her second husband Drusus and let her lover Sejanus ascend the throne of the Roman empire after Tiberius’s death.²¹ The audience’s Erwartungshorizont is indeed hardly betrayed when Livia enters the stage with Sejanus and Eudemus. Livia promises her physician “a fit and full reward for his large merit,” having handed in the potion which will kill her “no more … husband now.”²² She is determined to murder Drusus, as “[her] fear and love of him / Left [her] at once,” even though one cannot determine whether anything terrible happened between the married couple, except Livia’s affair with Sejanus, which may have led her to long for her husband’s death.²³  Jonson, Sejanus, 2.42, 211, 395 – 96, 397– 98.  Claudia Livia Giulia (known as Livilla or Claudia Livilla) was Emperor Claudius’s sister. Unfortunately for her, both her husbands (Gaius Caesar, Augustus’s heir, first, and Drusus Julius Caesar, Tiberius’s son, later) failed to ascend the Roman throne. According to classical historians—especially Cassius Dio, Suetonius, and Tacitus—she was implied in Sejanus’s poisoning of Drusus, since she was thought to be the latter’s lover (a theory embraced by Jonson himself, as Sejanus’s text testifies).  Jonson, Sejanus, 1.370.  Jonson, Sejanus, 2.8, 10.  Jonson, Sejanus, 2.46 – 47. Here Livia’s words seem to recall the Player Queen’s lines in Hamlet’s pantomime: “Women’s fear and love hold quantity, / In neither aught, or in extremity” (3.2.145 – 46). Instead of showing Livia’s love for Sejanus—which would probably justify her desire for killing Drusus—Jonson depicts her as a Machiavellian character completely absorbed by her plan to kill her husband, an unscrupulous woman whose short utterances demonstrate only the urgency to fulfil her dark purposes. In Jonson’s tragedy, we understand Sejanus and Livia’s affair only through the words of the man, who, however, does not miss the occasion to inform the audience, when alone on stage, that he uses her to reach his goals: “Ambition makes more

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Hence, both Agrippina and Livia are introduced by other characters’ words before getting onto the stage; thus, the audience can situate them early within their social and interpersonal contexts. Nonetheless, the fortune that awaits the two noblewomen is completely different. Agrippina, the emblem of virtus, will be “confined to Pandataria,” a Pontine island in the Tyrrhenian Sea called Ventotene today, as a result of her insecure position within Roman society, while Livia will live, since “[h]er character’s drive to survive determines her decisions, performances and actions,” as if she were an ante litteram theatrical embodiment of the Darwinian theory.²⁴ In other words, by contrasting the only two noble female characters in Sejanus, Jonson seems to emphasize that only the most corrupted personalities can survive in a corrupted world, be it the allegorical Roman empire of Tiberius or Jacobean England (something that Hayes defines as survivalist’s advantage).²⁵ We will come back to this pivotal point later on. When Jonson comes to deal with Roman history again almost ten years after Sejanus, Britain’s political status has not changed at all; on the contrary, the first decade of James’s reign has proved to be characterized by increasing corruption and misrule. Hence, Jonson stages a tragedy the title of which seems even more provocative than Sejanus’s, namely Catiline His Conspiracy. Of course, the theme of a regicidal plot is reinforced here, although this tragedy is set during the late republican period of Roman history.²⁶ Among the female characters whom Jonson depicts in Catiline, Fulvia and Sempronia are certainly the most interesting and noteworthy.²⁷ In fact, while Aurtrusty slaves than need. / These fellows, by the favour of their art, / Have still the means to tempt; oft-times the power. / If Livia will be now corrupted, then / Thou hast the way, Sejanus, to work out / His secrets, who, thou know’st, endures thee not, / Her husband, Drusus: and to work against them. / Prosper it, Pallas, thou that better’st wit; / For Venus hath the smallest share in it” (1.366 – 74).  Jonson, Sejanus, 4.335; Hayes, Jonson and Women, 284.  Hayes, Jonson and Women, 284.  According to Roman sources, Catiline’s conspiracy was stopped at the beginning of 62 BCE, while Sejanus’s attempt to ascend the imperial throne dates to 31 CE, almost a century later. Despite the chronological gap and the different forms of government they tried to overturn (Catiline lived in the late republican period, Sejanus at the dawn of the Roman empire), the two plots might have been interpreted by Jonson as attempts to rise up against weak and corrupted institutions.  Jonson’s Fulvia seems to be a hybrid character, a mixture of two different Roman women whose name was Fulvia. The first woman was Fulvia Flacca Bambula, wife to Publius Clodius Pulcher, then to Gaius Scribonius Curio, and finally to Mark Antony. The other Fulvia, according to Sallust, was Quintus Curius’s lover and secret informer of Cicero about Catiline’s plot. That is the reason why, at the very beginning of Act 2, Galla mixes up the names of Fulvia Flacca Bamb-

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elia―Catiline’s second wife―and Galla―Fulvia’s servant―are rather minor characters, Fulvia and Sempronia are much more complex personalities. When dealing with women in Catiline, however, it seems that Jonson’s connection with his female characters, as delineated by Hayes in her previously mentioned study, fails. First, neither Fulvia nor Sempronia can be considered as highly developed characters as Sejanus’s Agrippina or Livia. As a matter of fact, when the two women enter the stage in Act 2, they sketch out a conversation about men that underlines Fulvia’s sex appeal (and her desire for social mobility and richness), while at the same time differentiating her from the middle-aged Sempronia who, albeit proud of her knowledge of Greek and understanding of politics, is, however, forced to attract men by offering them Lucullan banquets. During the republican period, while men’s virtue was linked to values such as incorruptibility and skills in war, one of women’s most highly prized traits was virginity. Nevertheless, according to Roman law, concubinage, meaning an affair between two unmarried people, was “tolerated to the degree that it did not threaten the religious and legal integrity of the family” ―provided that the relation was monogamous―and gifts could be exchanged between a concubine and her man.²⁸ Therefore, as far as the two female characters here analyzed are concerned, neither can be defined properly as an honorable woman. Fulvia’s affair with Quintus Curius is clearly based on concubinage, inasmuch as they are not married, and the man gives her presents in exchange for sex. Yet, monogamy is identifiable only on Curius’s side, since, as Fulvia herself confesses to Sempronia, “for the act, I can have secret fellows / With backs worth ten of him, and shall please me, / … a myriad better.”²⁹ Besides, when talking about relationships with other men earlier in the tragedy, Fulvia proudly admits: “Faith, I keep / No catalogue of ’em. Sometimes I have one, / Sometimes another, as the toy takes their bloods.”³⁰ Hence, Fulvia’s behavior seems to go beyond the limits permitted by concubinage. Mutatis mutandis, the cultured and politically skilled Sempronia is no less ―if not worse―than her friend as for philandering. Although she is married to

ula’s first two husbands with the other Fulvia’s lover Quintus Curius: “galla You are for Clodius still, / Or Curius. fulvia Sirrah, if Quintus Curius come, / I am not in the mood” (2.5 – 7). Jonson’s Sempronia is another character from Sallust’s Catilinae. She was wife to Decimus Junius Brutus, a politician who became consul in 77 BCE. She helped Catiline to organize his famous plot, which is at the center of Jonson’s tragedy, and held a meeting with other conspirators at her house when her husband was away from Rome.  Grimal, Love in Ancient Rome, 111.  Jonson, Catiline, 2.165 – 67.  Jonson, Catiline, 2.151– 53.

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Decimus Junius Brutus, she shows a certain interest in Quintus Curius too when Fulvia declares her will to get rid of him as a lover: “fulvia Now you may have him. sempronia He’s fresh yet, Fulvia; / Beware how you do tempt me.”³¹ Moreover, Sempronia envies Fulvia’s beauty and youth because she can attract men more easily: Th’art a most happy wench, that thus canst make Use of thy youth and freshness in the season, And hast it to make use of … I am now fain to give to them, and keep Music and a continual table to invite ’em.³²

Sempronia is regarded (and regards herself) as very intelligent and a great politician, characteristics that often make her appear “manly.” When Galla praises her political understanding before Fulvia, the latter is doubtful: “fulvia She has wit, too? / galla A very masculine one.”³³ Sempronia herself highlights her own masculinity―in terms of wit and power―when she puts herself on the same level of influence as Crassus and Caesar on Catiline’s wished-for election as consul: “We shall make him Consul, / … Crassus, I, and Caesar / Will carry it for him.”³⁴ Finally, even Catiline admits he has heard rumors about Sempronia’s understanding in terms of political matters: “Aurelia / Tells me you have done most masculinely within, / And play’d the orator.”³⁵ Unfortunately for Sempronia, her understanding of politics will reveal its limits, since Catiline’s conspiracy (which she fervently supported) will be foiled by Cicero, who will be informed about the plot by Fulvia, who will choose to support the winning party.

    

Jonson, Jonson, Jonson, Jonson, Jonson,

Catiline, Catiline, Catiline, Catiline, Catiline,

2.161– 62. 2.186 – 90. 2.44– 45. 2.99 – 101. 2.198 – 99.

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Understanding Jonson’s Women: A Pragmatic Perspective CA: An Overview Agrippina, Livia, Fulvia, and Sempronia are four dramatic characters whose peculiarities are especially shaped through conversation, both with each other and their male counterparts (showing strong differences depending on their interlocutor’s gender). According to Alexander H. Sackton, in Jonson’s Roman plays, “rhetoric is the basis for the growth of the plot,” and this is particularly evident when dealing with male characters.³⁶ Nonetheless, the above-mentioned women do not perform long monologues or soliloquies; therefore, the audience of Sejanus or Catiline is asked to interpret their personas through their dialogues. For this reason, in this article, CA will be the privileged approach to the study of the four women’s verbal exchanges within Jonson’s two Roman tragedies, with the purpose of underlining similarities, differences, and gender-related issues. CA is a linguistic and stylistic approach to the study of any kind of interaction. It arose thanks to the combined studies of Gail Jefferson, Harvey Sacks, and Emanuel A. Schegloff (hereafter Sacks et al.) in the second half of the twentieth century. Their article explored Turn-Taking in conversation and provided a thorough exemplification of CA and its analytical method, thus bringing this pragmatic approach to the attention of scholars of applied linguistics for the first time.³⁷ In particular, for the sake of the present analysis, it is necessary to mention Paul Grice’s contribution to interactional practices.³⁸ Drawing upon J. L Austin’s theory of speech acts, Grice hypothesizes that conversation is based on the cooperation of two or more speakers/hearers (Cooperative Principle, hereafter CP) and is governed by four “maxims”: 1. Quantity: speakers must supply the appropriate amount of information needed (no less, no more); 2. Quality: speakers must tell the truth, avoiding giving false or unproven information; 3. Relation: utterances must be pertinent to the conversational context; 4. Manner: speakers must be clear and avoid saying obscure things.

 Sackton, Rhetoric as a Dramatic Language in Ben Jonson, 150.  See Sacks, “Poetics.”  See Grice, “Logic and Conversation.”

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In the following paragraphs I seek to demonstrate that breaking even one of these four maxims results in diminishing a woman’s chance to survive within the society depicted in Jonson’s Roman tragedies. Grice’s CP and maxims deeply influenced early studies about politeness in verbal exchanges, especially Robin T. Lakoff’s and Geoffrey Leech’s approach to the so-called Politeness Principle (hereafter PP). In 1973, Lakoff focused on what she defined as the speaker and hearer’s Pragmatic Competence (PC), which is articulated according to two rules: clarity and politeness. Clarity includes Grice’s four maxims, while politeness is expressed through three principles: 1. Do not impose; 2. Give options; 3. Make your receiver feel good.³⁹ In a 1979 article focused on differences between men and women in conversation, Lakoff deals with four rules of style (roughly corresponding to the PC rules above): 1. Clarity (Grice’s four maxims); 2. Distance (formal/impersonal politeness); 3. Deference (give options to addressee stressing informal politeness); 4. Camaraderie (intimate politeness). According to Lakoff, women’s speech is characterized by Rule 3 and 4, while men’s speech turns by Rule 1 and 2. In the 1980s, Leech developed Grice’s and Lakoff’s models further, focusing on the speaker (rather than the hearer) and formulating an approach to CA whose six maxims (1. Tact, 2. Generosity, 3. Approbation, 4. Modesty, 5. Agreement, and 6. Sympathy) are based on the combination of four parameters (1. Costs vs. benefits; 2. Optionality; 3. (In)directness; 4. Authority and social distance).⁴⁰ The linguistic analysis conducted in the following paragraphs therefore seeks to contribute to the recent interest of stylisticians and pragmatic linguists in the study of conversational features in literary (and above all dramatic) dialogue, since conversation in literary texts “builds on and intensifies features that are spontaneous in ordinary conversation.”⁴¹  Lakoff, “The Logic of Politeness,” 297.  Leech, Principles of Pragmatics.  Tannen, Conversational Style, 192. For theoretical aspects about CA and literary dialogue see, among others, Bowles, “The Contribution of CA to the Study of Literary Dialogue.”

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Agrippina: A Dominant Roman (speaking) Woman “[L]ength may be important for interpreting the kind of role that speakers have in a conversation―active or passive, dominant or submissive.”⁴² Agrippina is certainly not the female character who intervenes the most in Jonson’s Roman tragedies (see table 1), but she is undoubtedly the woman whose speech turns are the longest. Table 1 shows the proportion between the number of lines acted by the four Roman women dealt with in this article and the number of speech turns they make on the stage.⁴³ Table 1. Jonson’s Roman women’s speeches. Characters (in alphabetical order)

Number of lines uttered

Number of speech turns

Average number of lines per speech turn

Agrippina Fulvia Livia Sempronia

   

   

 ~. ~. ~.

Table 1 shows that Agrippina’s speeches are on average more than twice longer than her female counterparts’. This means that when she speaks, she makes relatively long speeches. This aspect is particularly evident in the latter of the two scenes in which she is on stage (one in Act 2 and the other in Act 4): if in Act 2 Agrippina shares the scene with Silius―despite preserving her dominant position, as we will see shortly―in Act 4 the noblewoman embodies the fulcrum of the entire episode, talking more than the other four male characters on stage considered together (see table 2). Therefore, as far as quantitative data are concerned, Act 4 represents a relatively uncommon scenario in which a woman surpasses as many as four men in terms of numbers of lines uttered.

 Bowles, Storytelling and Drama, 39.  In Catiline, Fulvia and Sempronia mostly utter very short lines (sometimes even hemistichs or one-word lines, following the widespread Elizabethan rhetorical technique of antilabe), thus making the comparison with Sejanus’s Agrippina and Livia even more interesting in terms of number of words uttered. Nevertheless, in this case, hemistichs and one-word lines have been counted with all the other lines (be they blank verse or not), since they do not affect the purpose of our analysis at all.

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Table 2. Number of lines uttered by each character in Agrippina’s scene in Act 4. Character

Number of lines uttered

Agrippina Caligula Drusus Gallus Nero

    

To demonstrate Agrippina’s dominant role from a qualitative viewpoint, CA offers an interesting pragmatic approach in terms of politeness.⁴⁴ First of all, it is worth noting that in Sejanus Agrippina and Livia talk exclusively with men―be they their peers or not―while Catiline’s Fulvia and Sempronia converse both with men and women, thus offering a particularly interesting ground for the study of gender implications. All the male characters who interact with Agrippina show deep reverence for her, while she does not seem to worry about the success of the conversations she has with them. She simply wants to state her point of view, no matter if she loses face.⁴⁵ Senator Silius’s first lines in Act 2 are exemplary of this acknowledgement of Agrippina’s social respectability when taking his leave from the stage: “May’t please your highness not forget yourself; / I dare not, with my manners, to attempt / Your trouble farther.”⁴⁶ According to Lakoff’s semantic approach to CA, Silius’s politeness toward Agrippina may be referred to as distance―here shown especially through the (polite) non-intimate deixis “your highness”―a determinant that, combined and well balanced with clarity (Silius’s continuous attempts to make Agrippina understand his statement by using expressions like “I meant,” “your highness knows,” etc.), deference, and camaraderie (“‘[t]is great, and bravely spoken, like the spirit / of Agrippina”), would guarantee, in Lakoff’s view, the success of the conversation.⁴⁷ While Silius seems to combine Lakoff’s four determinants well―as a matter of fact, at the beginning of the scene he takes his leave from

 In this study, I will employ Grice’s, Lakoff’s, and Leech’s (semantic) politeness theories, thus not referring either to Erving Goffman’s or Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson’s notion of “face” and FTAs (Face Threatening Acts) or neo-Foucauldian discursive approaches, since I believe that these latter analytical methodologies are not relevant for the scenes selected in this chapter―especially when dealing with Agrippina’s deliberate refusal to talk politely.  For a definition of “face” see Goffman, “On Face-Work,” and Goffman, Interaction Ritual.  Jonson, Sejanus, 2.1– 3.  Lakoff, “Stylistic Strategies within a Grammar of Style”; Jonson, Sejanus, 2.436, 459, 458.

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the noblewoman, though managing the conversation for the entire Act 2, a clear sign of his intention to remain and discuss urgent political matters―Agrippina repeatedly infringes the PP, thus showing impatience towards conversation itself (“Farewell, noble Silius!”) and trying to centralize the verbal interaction on herself (“Hear me, Silius”).⁴⁸ Besides, to adopt Leech’s maxim-based approach as a theoretical framework for CA, while Silius maximizes his position by performing nearly all the six principles formulated by the British linguist, Agrippina seems to refuse to adhere to any of these maxims.⁴⁹ This does not mean that she deliberately violates Leech’s principles to sound impolite: on the contrary, the Roman noblewoman intentionally chooses not to sound polite at all (nor impolite), as if politeness were in antithesis with the “[v]irtue’s forces” she praises.⁵⁰ In this sense, her role can be considered as dominant, not just because she dominates the conversation, but inasmuch as her bold speeches influence the other characters―be they her loyal children, Drusus and Nero, who must be “worthy of [her] womb,” or her political adversaries Tiberius and Sejanus, worried about her prominent social position.⁵¹ Therefore, CA reveals that Agrippina is not concerned with losing face, which is why she conflicts with the Emperor Tiberius, her father-in-law, who exiles her to Ventotene. In other words, even Agrippina’s bold use of language, by disregarding politeness rules, reflects the woman’s uncomfortable social status, whose similarities with Jonson’s position within Jacobean society has been sketched above.

 Jonson, Sejanus, 2.430, 449.  1. Tact maxim (“Most royal princess” [2.431]); 2. Generosity maxim; 3. Approbation maxim (“‘Tis great, and bravely spoken, … yet” [2.458]); 4. Modesty maxim (“I dare not, with my manners, to attempt / Your trouble farther” [2.429]); 5. Agreement maxim (“Pray the gods, / I be so, Agrippina; but I fear . . .” [2.470 – 71]); 6. Sympathy maxim (“May’t please your highness not forget yourself” [2.428]).  Jonson, Sejanus, 2.456.  Jonson, Sejanus, 4.75. In conversation, Agrippina dominates the scene also because most of her utterances are questions―even the rhetorical questions in Act 4, the answer to which is almost exclusively “no”―since she wants to learn about the political condition of her beloved Rome (especially about Sejanus’s intrigues). By asking so many questions, she becomes the center of both the scenes in which she acts, as all the other (male) characters gravitate towards her trying to answer her.

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Livia’s Active Role Hugo Bowles’s quotation inserted at the very beginning of the paragraph above can also be considered as a starting point in this section dedicated to the other important Roman female character in Jonson’s Sejanus: Livia. Dealing with active and passive roles in CA means understanding how this sense of “activity” is reached and perceived when characters speak with each other. Considering Livia’s role in conversation as active (and changeable) results in a linguistic justification for her personal success in the version of Roman history Jonson staged in Sejanus―in addition to the evident social and political criticism the playwright wanted to make of those Machiavellian figures for whom Livia stands and who would stop at nothing when it came to power and social climbing. After all, the virtuous Agrippina is condemned to exile, while the unscrupulous Livia will survive Sejanus’s plot. Livia performs only one scene in Act 2 and, exactly like Agrippina, she only converses with men. Nevertheless, unlike her female rival, she seems aware of her position within society: she is not a “male-spirited dame” and for this reason she assumes a dominant role within conversation only when the context allows her to do so (i. e., when she is alone with her physician Eudemus).⁵² Her awareness of being a woman in a “world of wolf-turn’d men” probably determines her success.⁵³ In conversation, Livia enacts the PP quite well (even addressing Sejanus with “my lord” more than once or calling Eudemus “good physician” twice) and she seems to respect Grice’s four maxims of CP properly, unlike, for instance, Catiline’s Sempronia, as will be shown in the next paragraph. In fact, Livia always gives the right amount of information Eudemus and Sejanus ask her (maxim of quantity)―even if this means answering with one-word utterances (“No,” “Neither”) or very short but informative sentences (“An eunuch Drusus loves”) ―she gives adequate evidence for what she says (maxim of quality), her utterances are always pertinent to the context (maxim of relation), and her sentences are crystal clear from a morpho-syntactic and semantic viewpoint (maxim of manner), as her first lines show: livia Eudemus, I will see it, shall receive A fit and full reward for his large merit.— But for this potion we intend to Drusus, No more our husband now, whom shall we choose

 Jonson, Sejanus, 2.211.  Jonson, Sejanus, 3.251.

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As the most apt and able instrument, To minister it to him? eudemus I say, Lygdus. sejanus Lygdus what’s he? livia An eunuch Drusus loves.⁵⁴

According to her point of view, her scene in Act 2 can be split into four different dramatic sequences, whose succession is marked by Sejanus’s presence (or absence) on stage. When the praetorian prefect is on stage, Livia speaks less, with staccato sentences (probably seduced by his dominant role, both from a physical and social point of view), and mostly in favor of Sejanus’s political concerns. When Sejanus walks away because first “[t]he emperor hath sent for [him],” and then “Caesar sends / With all his haste both of command and prayer,” Livia’s apprehensions pass from conspiracy-oriented issues to prerogatives traditionally identified as feminine: “How do I look to-day?”⁵⁵ At the same time, while shifting from “masculine” matters to more “female” concerns about makeup and physical appearance, Livia’s role changes from submissive to dominant: the conversation focuses on her, with Eudemus occupied, like a loyal maidservant, in freshening her makeup and talking about Livia’s beauty and attractive complexion. This funny gag ends when Sejanus reenters the stage announcing his “rude departure,” and Livia’s role returns submissive, her lines now focused on Sejanus’s political matters again.⁵⁶ What CA shows, however, is that Livia’s double passage from submissive to dominant speaker does not affect her active role within the scene (and within the verbal exchange), perhaps because she has an active role in her husband’s murder. In other words, she does not care about being dominant or submissive when talking with the two men on stage; she is only concerned with acting (and talking about acting) concretely in order to have Drusus poisoned. Indeed, her exclusive use of the verbal active voice (“I will see it,” “we intend,” “shall we choose,” “I shall but change,” etc.), deontic modality (“he must be wrought / To the undertaking,” “we must use / More than a common speed,” etc.), and future tense (“Eudemus, I will see, shall receive / A fit and full reward for his large merit,” “I shall but change your words,” “I’ll use my fortune,” etc.) suggests her intention to act and to do it quickly.⁵⁷ Unlike Agrippina’s use of the past tense relegating

   

Jonson, Jonson, Jonson, Jonson,

Sejanus, Sejanus, Sejanus, Sejanus,

2.7– 13. 2.51, 104– 5, 59. 2.104. 2.18 – 19, 117– 18, 7, 114, 137.

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her to a chronologically distant (virtuous) period at the dawn of the Roman empire, Livia’s predilection for present and future forms indicates the character’s willingness to act as soon as possible.⁵⁸

Fulvia and Sempronia in Catiline: A Matter of Maxim(s) What has been stated so far about Agrippina and Livia can be likewise noticed when examining Fulvia and Sempronia. On the one hand, just like Agrippina, Sempronia is preoccupied with political issues and, for this reason, she is often compared with men. On the other hand, Fulvia’s obsessive preoccupation for her own physical appearance mirrors Livia’s desire to look beautiful in Sejanus’s eyes. As previously noted, the binomial pairs Agrippina-Sempronia and Livia-Fulvia also share the same destiny: while the most politically involved women are condemned to failure, the apparently most superficial ones find their successful way through the tragedies. By simply considering this aspect of female agency in Sejanus and Catiline, we can conclude that Jonson’s connection with his female characters is not so strong after all, and misogynistic attitudes do come to light. In fact, it cannot be a coincidence that the most “masculine” women are destined to fail in both tragedies, as if Jonson wanted to slip through the idea that role-swapping or -overlapping is not advisable and that―both in imperial Rome and Jacobean England―each gender should remain in its own sphere. As Neil H. Keeble, among others, explains, men placed themselves in the public sphere (which involved also political matters), while women’s place was within the private, domestic sphere.⁵⁹ In other words, Agrippina and Sempronia are destined to fail inasmuch as they try to undermine their “natural/traditional” position within the world. On the contrary, women like Livia or Fulvia manage to survive the tragic events of the plays since they know, accept, and even try to benefit from their domestic position within Roman/early modern society, regardless of the fact that their concern with makeup, jewelry, body lotions, and physical appearance could make them appear frivolous. From a linguistic viewpoint, the difference between Fulvia and Sempronia is all the more evident because the two women interact with each other and offer

 Livia’s one and only use of the past tense to talk about the end of her love for Drusus―“my fear and love of him / Left me at once” (2.47– 48)―is emblematic in this sense.  Keeble, ed., The Cultural Identity of Seventeenth-Century Woman.

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fertile ground to a Gricean analysis of their conversations. In fact, although Fulvia and Sempronia find common ground to talk about domestic life, their current or former lovers and sexual affairs in Act 2, the latter noblewoman deliberately infringes Grice’s maxim of quantity more than once: fulvia I have some letters To write, and send away. sempronia Alas, I pity thee. I ha’ been writing all this night, (and am So very weary) unto all the Tribes, And Centuries, for their voices, to help Catiline, In his election. We shall make him Consul I hope, amongst us. Crassus, I, and Caesar Will carry it for him. fulvia Does he stand for’t? sempronia H’is the chief candidate.⁶⁰

Fulvia has not asked Sempronia about her letter writing nor does she want to know about the content of those letters. Fulvia understands that her friend has given her too much information (probably counting on her discretion) and that Sempronia will continue to break the maxim of quantity if she goes on asking her about the forthcoming consular elections (something that Fulvia will indeed do). Sempronia’s violation of Grice’s maxim of quantity and Fulvia’s resulting implicatures therefore seem to lie at the very foundation of Catiline’s fall. In fact, the information Sempronia gives Fulvia will be forwarded to Cicero, who will eventually foil Catiline’s conspiracy.

Conclusions From the linguistic analysis conducted in this chapter about the conversational features of the female characters’ speeches in Jonson’s Roman tragedies, the playwright’s conservative view about women seems to be confirmed, thus corroborating eminent literary studies about Jonsonian conservativism and his female characters’ inferior role.⁶¹ Gender issues are presented by Jonson through conflicting pairs of influential Roman women both in Sejanus (Agrippina vs.  Jonson, Catiline, 2.95 – 101.  See, among others, Lanier, “Masculine Silence,” and Ostovich, “Ben Jonson and the Dynamics of Misogyny,” whose assumptions, however, reveal also “quiet concessions that put his [Jonson’s] ‘misogyny’ in a new light” (Ostovich, “Ben Jonson and the Dynamics of Misogyny,” 109).

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Livia) and Catiline (Fulvia vs. Sempronia) with a view to showing the consequences of disregarding (Roman/early modern) gender roles within society. In seventeenth-century England (as well as in the imperial Roman society depicted by Jonson), private and public spheres were separated, and each gender was assigned to its own sphere. Therefore, the women’s place was within the private domestic sphere, where, among other tasks, women “could raise … children and provide their education.”⁶² Livia (in Sejanus) and Fulvia (in Catiline) embody the stereotype of the woman concerned with private issues, and the course of events of the two tragedies appears to repay their awareness and desire to respect their position within society. From a linguistic perspective, the pragmatic tools offered by CA help appreciate Livia’s and Fulvia’s successful interactional strategies.⁶³ On the other hand, the public sphere was a masculine prerogative, and women’s “involvement in politics was nearly nonexistent.”⁶⁴ Agrippina and Sempronia intentionally violate this etiquette―as they violate the PP and CP in terms of CA. The effect of their social and linguistic inadequacy results in their respective debacles. Of course, the conclusions drawn in this article focus on Jonson’s Sejanus and Catiline exclusively, and I do not intend to infer a general pattern from these plays of Jonson’s punishing of the politically assertive woman. Further research would be necessary regarding the Jonsonian dramatic and poetic canon―which would broaden our perspective to different textual genres―in order to validate such a thesis, or prove it incorrect or too apodictic. To conclude, Hayes’s assertion that “[t]hroughout the progression of his playwriting career, each new play in Jonson’s art and evolution as a dramatist has more and more closely connected him to the female characters he creates” does not find any validation in the research conducted in this chapter―at least, with regard to Jonson’s Roman tragedies―and Jonson’s position within early modern theater does not appear to stand out from the crowd of his contemporaries for any proto-feminist acknowledgement.⁶⁵

   

Smyth, “Transcending Traditional Gender Boundaries,” 28. For a thorough exploration of female language see Lakoff, “Language and Woman’s Place.” Smyth, “Transcending Traditional Gender Boundaries,” 28. Hayes, Jonson and Women, 266.

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Works Cited Austin, John L. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962. Ayres, Philip J. “Introduction” to Sejanus His Fall by Ben Jonson, 1 – 44. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990. Ayres, Philip J. “Jonson, Northampton, and the Treason in Sejanus.” Modern Philology 80 (1983): 356 – 63. Barton, Anne. Ben Jonson: Dramatist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Bowles, Hugo. “The Contribution of CA to the Study of Literary Dialogue.” Novitas-ROYAL. Research on Youth and Language 5 (2011): 161 – 68. Bowles, Hugo. Storytelling and Drama: Exploring Narrative Episodes in Plays. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2010. Curran, John E., Jr. “Roman Tragedy: The Case of Jonson’s Sejanus.” In The Genres of Renaissance Tragedy, edited by Daniel Cadman, Andrew Duxfield and Lisa Hopkins, 100 – 14. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019. De Luna, Barbara N. Jonson’s Romish Plot. A Study of Catiline and Its Historical Context. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. Erickson, Peter. Patriarchal Structures in Shakespeare’s Drama. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985. Goffman, Erving. Interaction Ritual: Essays in Face-to-Face Behavior. Chicago: Aldine, 1967. Goffman, Erving. “On Face-Work: An Analysis of Ritual Elements in Social Interaction.” Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes 18 (1955): 213 – 31. Grice, Paul H. “Logic and Conversation.” In Studies in Syntax and Semantics III: Speech Acts, edited by Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan, 183 – 98. New York: Academic Press, 1975. Grimal, Pierre. Love in Ancient Rome. New York: Crown, 1967. Hayes, Tara J. Jonson and Women; or How One Man’s Insistence on his own Artistic Theory Challenges Dramatic Practices and Views of His Own Gender Representations on the Elizabethan Stage. PhD dissertation. Detroit: Wayne State University, 2010. Hunt, Maurice. “Jonson vs. Shakespeare: The Roman Plays.” Ben Jonson Journal 23 (2016): 75 – 100. Jonson, Ben. Catiline His Conspiracy, edited by Inga-Stina Ewbank. In The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, edited by David Bevington, Martin Butler, and Ian Donaldson, 7 vols., 4:23 – 185. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Jonson, Ben. Sejanus His Fall, edited by Tom Cain. In The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, edited by David Bevington, Martin Butler, and Ian Donaldson, 7 vols., 2:212 – 391. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Keeble, Neil H., ed. The Cultural Identity of Seventeenth-Century Woman: A Reader. London: Routledge, 1994. Ko, Chanmi. “English Tacitism and Ben Jonson’s Sejanus His Fall.” Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 22 (2014): 95 – 119. Lake, Peter. “Ben Jonson and the Politics of ‘Conversion’: Catiline and the Relocation of Roman (Catholic) Virtue.” Ben Jonson Journal 19 (2012): 163 – 89. Lakoff, Robin T. “Language and Woman’s Place.” Language in Society 2 (1973): 45 – 80. Lakoff, Robin T. “The Logic of Politeness; Or, Minding Your p’s and q’s.” In Papers for the Ninth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, edited by Thomas C.

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Smith-Stark, Ann Weiser, and Claudia W. Corum, 292 – 305. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society, 1973. Lakoff, Robin T. “Stylistic Strategies within a Grammar of Style.” Annals of the New York Academy of Science 327 (1979): 53 – 78. Lanier, Douglas. “Masculine Silence: Epicoene and Jonsonian Stylistics.” College Literature 21 (1994): 1 – 18. Leech, Geoffrey N. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman, 1983. Lemon, Rebecca. Treason by Words: Literature, Law, and Rebellion in Shakespeare’s England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. Loxley, James. “Critical Reception.” In Ben Jonson in Context, edited by Julie Sanders, 73 – 83. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Lovascio, Domenico. “Introduzione” to La congiura di Catilina. Testo inglese a fronte by Ben Jonson, xi–lxx. Genova: ECIG, 2011. Mazur, Allan, and Mima Cataldo. “Dominance and Deference in Conversation.” Journal of Social and Biological Structures 12 (1989): 87 – 99. Mehl, Dieter. Shakespeare’s Tragedies: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Novy, Marianne. Shakespeare and Feminist Theory. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2017. Ostovich, Helen. “Ben Jonson and the Dynamics of Misogyny: A Cultural Collaboration.” In The Elizabethan Theatre XV, edited by C. Edward McGee, Augusta Lynne Magnusson, Valerie Creelman and Todd Pittigrew, 89 – 109. Toronto: P. D. Meany, 2002. Richards, Jennifer, and Alison Thorne, eds. Rhetoric, Women and Politics in Early Modern England. New York: Routledge, 2007. Rymer, Thomas. A Short View of Tragedy. London: Richard Baldwin, 1693. Rose, Mary B. The Expense of Spirit: Love and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988. Sacks, Harvey. “Poetics; Requests, Offers, and Threats; The ‘Old Man’ as an Evolved Natural Object.” In Harvey Sacks. Lectures on Conversation, 2 vols., edited by Gail Jefferson, 1:318 – 31. Malden: Blackwell, 1995. Sacks, Harvey. Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson. “A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation.” Language 50 (1974): 696 – 735. Sackton, Alexander H. Rhetoric as a Dramatic Language in Ben Jonson. London: Cass, 1967. Sanders, Julie. “‘I Will Fit the Players Yet!’: Women and Theatre in Jonson’s Late Plays.” In Ben Jonson and Theatre: Performance, Practice and Theory, edited by Richard Cave, Elizabeth Shafer, and Brian Woolland, 179 – 90. London: Routledge, 1999. Sanders, Julie. Kate Chedgzoy, and Susan Wiseman, eds. Refashioning Ben Jonson: Gender, Politics, and the Jonsonian Canon. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998. Schafer, Elizabeth. “Daughters of Ben.” In Ben Jonson and Theatre: Performance, Practice and Theory, edited by Richard Cave, Elizabeth Shafer, and Brian Woolland, 154 – 78. London: Routledge, 1999. Schegloff, Emanuel A., and Harvey Sacks. “Opening up Closings.” Semiotica 8 (1973): 289 – 327. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet, edited by John Jowett. In The New Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, edited by Gary Taylor, James Jowett, Terry Bourus, and Gabriel Egan, 1993 – 2099. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

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Shepard, Alexandra. “Credit and Patriarchy in Early Modern England.” Past and Present 167 (2000): 75 – 106. Smyth, Jacquie. “Transcending Traditional Gender Boundaries. Defining Gender Roles through Public and Private Spheres.” Elements 4 (2008): 28 – 34. Tannen, Deborah F. Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk among Friends. Norwood: Ablex, 1984. Thorndike, Ashley H. “Ben Jonson.” In Adolphus W. Ward and Alfred R. Waller, eds. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature. An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. Volume VI: English. The Drama to 1642. Part Two, 1 – 46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907 – 1921. Underdown, David E. “The Taming of the Scold: The Enforcement of Patriarchal Authority in Early Modern England.” Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, edited by Anthony J. Fletcher and John Stevenson, 116 – 36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Villiers, Jacob I. de. “Ben Jonson’s Tragedies.” English Studies 45 (1964): 433 – 42.

Angelica Vedelago

Ben Jonson’s and Thomas May’s “Political Ladies”: Forms of Female Political Agency

The political agency of early modern women has been attracting increasing scholarly attention, often intersecting with ongoing discussions on women’s forms of writing and public speaking.¹ In this chapter, I set out to contribute to this fertile field of inquiry by considering how two early modern playwrights—Ben Jonson and Thomas May—take issue with female political agency by drawing upon Roman historiography, in which women not only stand out as exempla of feminine virtue but also often emerge as unscrupulous politicians. By focusing on Jonson’s Catiline His Conspiracy (1611) and May’s Julia Agrippina, Empresse of Rome (first staged in 1628; printed in 1639), I will look at how the two playwrights depict their female characters as political stakeholders and engage with contemporary debates on women’s education and participation in public life. In so doing, as I argue, Jonson and May reflect on the forms in which influential women of their time exerted their own political agency, thereby shedding new light on the alleged exclusion of early modern women from the political arena. In Catiline His Conspiracy, Jonson dramatizes one of the moments of highest internal political tension in the history of republican Rome. After failing to obtain the consulship in 66, 64, and 63 BCE, the patrician Catiline plotted against the republic, but Cicero, a homo novus, the first of his non-patrician family to reach the consular honors, foiled the conspiracy thanks to a disclosure. According to Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae, Jonson’s main source, the responsible for the leak was the noblewoman Fulvia, who found out about the imminent coup d’état from her incautious lover Quintus Curius. In Jonson’s play, Cicero openly acknowledges Fulvia’s role: “Here is a Lady, that hath got the start, / In piety, of us all,” “the author of [Rome]’s safety,” but also one of “the first symptoms” of the malady that was rotting the state from within.² Fulvia’s crucial contribution is only one of the ways in which women exert political agency in Jonson’s Catiline. Fulvia, depicted in the play as an upper-class courtesan, wilily exploits her erotic ascendancy over men, whereas the older Sempronia, less renowned for her ageing beauty than for her impressive education and political influence, employs

 Richards and Thorne, “Introduction,” 8; Crawford, Mediatrix, 2; Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, 345 – 430.  Jonson, Catiline, 3.2.107, 222, 214. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501514203-008

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other weapons to carve out a space for herself in a male-dominated ruling class. In T. S. Eliot’s terms, Fulvia and Sempronia stand out as “political ladies.”³ Almost twenty years after the publication of Jonson’s Catiline, another play put in the limelight a couple of “political” Roman women, namely May’s The Tragedy of Julia Agrippina: Empresse of Rome, which telescopes events occurring in 49 – 59 CE, a decade in the waning phase of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.⁴ Agrippina, partly modelled on Jonson’s Sempronia, maneuvers a number of powerful men of the imperial court like a deft puppeteer in order to achieve two irreconcilable ambitions: getting her son Nero to the throne and maintaining a certain control over him afterwards. The other, less prominent political woman in the play is Poppaea, who, like her Jonsonian counterpart Fulvia, exploits her attractiveness but, unlike her, is a noblewoman and can conclude three advantageous marriages as part of her social climbing. While Roman history was a far from unusual subject matter in early modern English drama, the foregrounding of women who contributed to the making of that history cannot be dismissed as a conventional choice.⁵ Upon closer examination, Jonson’s and May’s delineation of willful female characters bespeaks an interest in women’s political agency at a time in which women’s socio-political role was a highly topical issue. This chapter will accordingly explore Jonson’s and May’s characterization of “political ladies” and the means these women employ to satisfy their thirst of power to men’s dismay. Jonson’s Fulvia and Sempronia significantly extend their agency beyond the sphere of domesticity and love; May’s Agrippina and Poppaea, based on classical sources and on Jonson’s Catiline, assert themselves as political players in imperial Rome. Moreover, this chapter will attempt to trace possible connections with English contributions to the transnational, age-old querelle des femmes, particularly in May’s Agrippina. It will also try to detect similarities between these Roman female characters and powerful women in early modern England, particularly in their ability to establish themselves as political shareholders. To posit a parallelism between ancient Rome and early modern England is more than a heuristic key to a historicizing reading. Contemporary influential women may well have mirrored themselves in these Roman women; at least one of them certainly did in spite of herself: in a 1669 revival of Jonson’s Catiline, Lady Harvey saw herself parodied by the actress

 Eliot, “Ben Jonson,” 152.  On Thomas May’s life and dramatic production, see Chester, Thomas May, 1– 130; Lautner, Modern Spelling Edition, vii–xxvii; Norbrook, “May, Thomas”; and Pangallo, “Introduction,” vii. The only modern edition of Julia Agrippina is that by F. Ernst Schmid (see May, Agrippina).  Ewbank, “Introduction,” 6 – 9.

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impersonating Sempronia, Katherine Carey, instructed to ridicule her by her arch-enemy at court, Lady Castlemaine.⁶ Jonson’s and May’s Roman women exert political influence in three major ways: alongside erotic and lethal weapons, Sempronia and Agrippina make use of alternative means, which range from oratorical and writing proficiency to networking and campaigning skills. All these abilities, which could be grouped under the label of “intellectual means,” will be the major focus of this chapter: although the three kinds—erotic, lethal, and intellectual—are not isolated but appear in combination, the last group is the one that both playwrights especially developed and enriched from scant references in their sources. In Catiline, Fulvia and Sempronia are granted the whole of Act 2, which has often been perceived as out of place in the tragedy. John Dryden famously defined it as a mere comic interval that uneasily fits with the rest of the play: In Catiline you may see the Parliament of Women; the little envies of them to one another; and all that passes betwixt Curio and Fulvia: Scenes admirable in their kind, but of an ill mingle with the rest.⁷

Jonson himself does not seem to have thought highly of this act: in the preface “To the Reader in Ordinary,” he complained that his audience preferred the first two acts, which to him were the “worst,” and “dislike[d] the oration of Cicero.”⁸ Nonetheless, his relative assessment of the first two acts does not invalidate Jonson’s qualification of this play as the “best” of his tragedies.⁹ Why should Jonson devote a whole act to a “Parliament of Women” within what he regarded as the “best” of his tragedies, if it was only a matter of “little envies”? One reason is its role within the structure of the play: Act 2 functions as a mirror of the all-pervading corruption in Rome, as many critics have pointed out.¹⁰ The preceding choral section partly anticipates the act’s content, presenting women as trifling, lascivious, and easily boasting.¹¹ Eliot further qualified its structural and comic function as satiric and, as such, hardly consistent with the rest of the play, arguing that Fulvia and Sempronia’s dialogue “cannot be squeezed into a tragic frame.”¹² Unlike Dryden, however, Eliot regarded this lively dialogue as “the best scene in

 Lovascio, “Introduzione,” xiii.  Dryden, “John Dryden’s Essay,” 246.  Jonson, Catiline, 26.  Jonson, Catiline, 25.  Lovascio, “Introduzione,” xxxiv, lxx; Ewbank, “Introduction,” 15.  Jonson, Catiline, 1.1.555 – 59.  Eliot, “Ben Jonson,” 153.

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the body of the play,” apparently “belong[ing] to satiric comedy”; Jonson’s drama, he added, is not satiric in the fashion of Jonathan Swift or Molière but “is only incidentally satire, because it is only incidentally a criticism upon the actual world.”¹³ However prominent the structural value of Act 2, it is worth considering its female figures not only as reflections of Rome’s moral decline but also as characters per se. Also, starting from Eliot’s observations, we can attempt to decipher Jonson’s mild satire by identifying possible allusions to contemporary women’s political agency. Sempronia and Fulvia’s dialogue is Jonson’s most conspicuous expansion of Sallust’s account of the conspiracy, which provides very little information about them. Fulvia is allotted only passing remarks: she is described as a noblewoman in an adulterous relationship with the conspirator Quintus Curius; when he discontinuess his usual generous gifts and starts to treat her badly, she leaks what she knows about the plot; she does not reveal her lover’s name, but Cicero involves her in his questioning of Curius.¹⁴ One of the libidinous women who contributes to the conspiracy, Sempronia is endowed with paradoxical traits: masculine audacity, noble birth, beauty, learnedness, humor, intriguing eloquence, multiple artistic, and literary talents but also unreliability, lasciviousness, excessive generosity, and alleged complicity in homicides.¹⁵ Jonson is highly indebted to Sallust’s chiaroscuro portrait of Sempronia. Her characterization is first entrusted to her enthusiastic admirer Galla, Fulvia’s maid, who extols the noblewoman’s oratorical skills and brilliant education: Sempronia masters Latin and Greek and has a talent for dancing, singing, humor, and poetry.¹⁶ Although the younger Fulvia exploits her erotic weapons in the wiliest way in the play, the more mature Sempronia is prone to sexual licentiousness too. While Fulvia exploits men’s sexual desire to her own economic advantage, Sempronia not only indulges in but even searches for erotic passion, and distributes economic and sexual favors alike.¹⁷ Galla regards her intelligence (“wit”) as “masculine,” prompting Fulvia to label Sempronia as a “she-critic.”¹⁸ It is not immediately clear whether by “critic” Fulvia means a moral or a literary judge; this term’s ambiguity is registered in John Bullokar’s 1616 dictionary, which defines “Criticke” as one who “censure[s] other mens acts or works writ-

     

Eliot, “Ben Jonson,” 153. Sallust, Bellum Catilinae 23, 26. Ewbank, 58n2.1. Jonson, Catiline, 2.1.34, 38, 40 – 41, 44– 49, 88 – 89. Jonson, Catiline, 2.1.53 – 55, 65 – 66. Jonson, Catiline, 2.1.45.

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ten.”¹⁹ However, the context in which “she-critic” appears and the occurrences of “critic” in other Jonsonian plays would seem to confirm that Fulvia is thinking of Sempronia as a literary critic.²⁰ Fulvia’s attitude is ironic and mocking towards Galla’s admiration: by coining the neologism “she-critic,” Fulvia implicitly asserts that she regards the possibility for a woman to be a “critic” as, if not impossible, at least unconventional. Her irony undercuts Galla’s credibility and exemplifies what Dryden called “little envies”: although she ironizes Galla’s enthusiasm, Fulvia betrays an obsessive curiosity about Sempronia’s versatile genius. The characterization of Sempronia as a literary critic and as a writer might have partly informed the entrance of Agrippina in May’s namesake tragedy. About halfway through Act 1, Agrippina enters the stage not as “Empresse of Rome,” as the play’s subtitle suggests, nor as dux femina, as the preceding characters have depicted her.²¹ Rather, the first words she utters express humble submission: “You are my judges,” she tells Seneca and the fawning courtier Vitellius, referring to her “Commentaries,” the memoirs she wrote during her fertile otium. ²² Agrippina appears as a budding writer and as a ruler who finds the time “to purchase fame by writing” like Julius Caesar: negotium can successfully coexist with a florid otium litterarium, and she is living proof of it. Agrippina’s praise for Caesar as a politician, however, gives way to an unflattering assessment of him as a writer: referring to his Commentarii, she thinks that “[h]ad Caesar liv’d, hee would have mended” his war memoirs.²³ Agrippina’s dismissal of Caesar’s style triggers Seneca’s prompt rebuttal: the dialogue turns into a proper scholarly disputation with appeals to auctoritates to corroborate one’s thesis. When the bone of contention becomes Cicero’s authority, the confrontation turns into a miniature querelle between Ciceronian and anti-Ciceronian stances.²⁴ Like Jonson’s Sempronia, Agrippina despises Cicero, but for completely different reasons: while Sempronia stigmatizes him politically as a “talker” with

 Bullokar, An English Expositor, E4v. The OED also registers a moral and aesthetic meaning of “critic,” and both are first recorded at the turn of the sixteenth century.  Fulvia coins “she-critic” immediately before asking Galla if Sempronia writes poetry. Jonson uses “critic” in both senses: in Cynthia’s Revels (1600), the allegorical character Criticus is both a moral censor at the court of Queen Cynthia and an expert in literary criticism; cf. Cynthia’s Revels, 1.4.14– 16; 1.5.18 – 61. However, Jonson mostly uses “critic” to indicate someone who judges literary works; Cynthia’s Revels, Praeludium.85; Volpone, Prologue.30; Poetaster, 4.3.86 – 87; Every Man Out, Induction.60.  On the dux femina topos, see Ginsburg, Representing Agrippina, 112– 16.  May, Agrippina, 1.1.313, 318.  May, Agrippina, 1.1.374, 377– 79, 411– 14.  May, Agrippina, 1.1.424– 49.

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“no pedigree, no house, no coat, / No ensigns of a family,” Agrippina is concerned with Cicero’s writing style.²⁵ The dispute is abruptly interrupted by a macabre entrance: that of the head of Lollia Paulina, whose murder Agrippina commissioned to dispose of a rival in conquering Emperor Claudius.²⁶ Agrippina’s portrayal as an aspiring writer and self-assured literary critic is sullied by the tangible proof of her fierce and cruel nature.²⁷ While May knew that Agrippina wrote memoirs from Pliny’s Natural History and Tacitus’s Annals, her disputation with Seneca is May’s invention; the content of their judgements is equally drawn from Latin sources.²⁸ Agrippina undercuts Seneca as a philosopher too: “I’ll teach him new Philosophy,” she snaps after realizing he has tried to exclude her from an official hearing.²⁹ A woman overshadows a male politician, philosopher, and dramatist in issues of literary criticism, thereby causing the bewilderment of her interlocutors in their aside comments. Vitellius cannot believe how “confident shee is in censuring” and how she “pays him [Seneca] home,” i. e., she pays him back in his own coin by appealing to philosophy against a philosopher; Seneca is “amaz’d” and “let[s] her have her way” in their literary debate.³⁰ However, her foray into literary criticism is detrimental to her characterization, since she hypocritically blames Caesar for indulging Hirtius’s flattery, when she likewise lets Vitellius fawn on her.³¹ Agrippina’s credibility is all the more undermined in the eye of an early modern audience, inasmuch as she insists that Cicero “was not able / No, not in Oratory,” while he was the predominant, almost undiscussed stylistic model for prose writing.³² Agrippina thus emerges less as an advised literary critic than as a selfdeceived author, pontificating as she does about style with extreme judgments and anticipating her son Nero’s infamous artistic idiosyncrasies. Though dubious, Agrippina’s literary achievements overall rehabilitate her character: May’s decision to devote greater space to her literary skills than his sources bespeaks a general attempt to provide a milder portrait of the Empress.³³ Like her historical counterpart, May’s Agrippina does have recourse to lethal remedies to remove obstacles to her ambitions: she has her rival Lollia Paulina

        

Jonson, Catiline, 2.1.108, 120 – 21. May, Agrippina, 1.1.452– 53; Tacitus, Annals 12.22.3. May, Agrippina, 1.1.132, 224– 25. Schmid, Introduction, 21, 23. May, Agrippina, 4.766. May, Agrippina, 1.1.444, 446, 449. May, Agrippina, 1.1.427– 28. May, Agrippina, 1.1.437– 38. Schmid, “Einleitung,” 72.

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killed, her uncle-husband Claudius poisoned, Marcus Silanus also poisoned as a precaution against his potential revenge for his brother’s suicide, and, finally, her opponent Narcissus killed.³⁴ Nonetheless, May omits some of Agrippina’s mischievous actions such as her incestuous propositions to her son and her extreme resolutions out of jealousy (the banishment of a woman praised by Claudius, Calpurnia, and the execution of her former sister-in-law, Domitia Lepida, Nero’s grandmother, lest she should exert too great an influence on Nero).³⁵ To be sure, these omissions might result from a necessary compression of events, but May’s redemption of Agrippina appears undeniable in his decision to underplay her responsibility for her most prominent misdeed, the poisoning of Claudius: in the play, the Empress shares the guilt with her lover, the freedman Pallas, who in Tacitus has no role in the killing. In fact, in May it is Pallas who convinces an unusually hesitant Agrippina regarding the necessity of murdering Claudius.³⁶ Agrippina’s temporary irresoluteness contrasts with her Tacitean counterpart, who has been planning the murder for a long time and is the only one responsible for the decision.³⁷ Furthermore, on three occasions May’s Agrippina reconsiders her misdeeds with repentance. First, after staring at Lollia Paulina’s severed head, she outwardly betrays signs of compassion and declares that she “could have pardon’d her” but that “[r]eason of state forbade it.”³⁸ In this case, Agrippina’s cruelty is only partly mitigated: the appeal to the “reason of state” excuse leads us to mistrust Agrippina’s compassion, and Seneca’s following aside reinvigorates this impression (“Would shee had such a nature!”).³⁹ Second, when she realizes Nero’s ingratitude, she explicitly regrets killing Claudius with “bloody treason”; the source behind this retrospective self-assessment is Tacitus, but while in the historian Agrippina bitterly reminds Nero of her actions in order to threaten him, in May she ruminates on them alone in a soliloquy.⁴⁰ Finally, she defines her actions “impious” and regrets wronging Claudius’s son Britannicus right before his sister Octavia enters to announce his death.⁴¹

 May, Agrippina, 1.1.452– 53; Tacitus, Annals 12.22.2; May, Agrippina, 2.543 – 51; Tacitus, Annals, 12.66 – 67; May, Agrippina, 4.256 – 85; Tacitus, Annals 13.1.1; May, Agrippina, 4.290; Tacitus, Annals 13.1.3.  Tacitus, Annals 14.2.1, 12.22.3, 64– 65; Ginsburg, Representing Agrippina, 31, 34, 47.  May, Agrippina, 2.499 – 543.  Tacitus, Annals, 12.66.1.  May, Agrippina, 1.1.482– 90.  May, Agrippina, 1.1.492.  May, Agrippina, 4.845 – 50; Tacitus, Annals 13.14.  May, Agrippina, 5.1.132– 34.

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While Agrippina’s cruelty is relatively attenuated, her political power is recognized by her supporters and opponents alike, often to the detriment of male authority. The courtier Vitellius sees the creation of a Roman colony in the German city of Oppidum Ubiorum (today’s Cologne) named after Agrippina as the expression of her “power” and “greatness.”⁴² The newly dismissed praetorian prefect Crispinus exposes Claudius’s dependence on Agrippina: “Great Agrippina has commanded Caesar / To command Pallas to command us two.”⁴³ The polyptoton of “command” ironically underlines the relay of the order from Agrippina to Pallas. The latter boasts his power, which derives not from flattery or rhetoric but from his sexual intrigue with Agrippina, thereby reversing any patriarchal logic: it is a male courtier who benefits from the favors of an upper-rank woman, not the opposite.⁴⁴ However, while Pallas claims that he makes “noblest men” his “hated instruments,” Agrippina in turn sees him as a “happy instrument” who was so fortunate as to enjoy “[t]hat which a Caesar su’d to taste.”⁴⁵ Albeit in disparaging terms, her opponent Narcissus acknowledges her authority too by defining her as a “Tygresse in / This dragon spirit” and a “crafty Mother.”⁴⁶ Seneca wonders if she is “already turn’d our Emperour” and observes that “would she keepe a temper / Fitting the quality of her sex and place, / I should admire the bravery of her minde.”⁴⁷ The Tribune who killed Lollia Paulina addresses Agrippina with the honorific title of Augusta, which the historical Agrippina received in 50 BCE and which entailed the assimilation of the empress consort to the emperor regnant.⁴⁸ Although this title did not officially bestow real political power but rather “a public prominence and visibility,” in the case of Agrippina her status as “Augusta” exceeded its mere honorific value and sanctioned her real influence on Rome’s politics.⁴⁹ In May, Agrippina’s power is also evident in the way she manipulates Claudius: while giving him the impression that she is not willing to intrude but only to give advice, she leads him to choose Seneca and Afranius Burrus as new leaders of his praetorian guard:

 May, Agrippina, 1.1.361– 62.  May, Agrippina, 2.1.120 – 21.  May, Agrippina, 1.1.78 – 81. I here intend “patriarchy” as “the modern analytical concept to refer to a social system which favors men over women”; Crawford and Mendelson, Women in Early Modern England, 5.  May, Agrippina, 3.1.141– 42.  May, Agrippina, 1.1.122 – 23, 132, 203, 233.  May, Agrippina, 1.1.370, 4.679 – 81.  May, Agrippina, 1.1.457, 465; Ginsburg, Representing Agrippina, 70.  Ginsburg, Representing Agrippina, 70.

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agrippina Shall Burrhus have it Caesar? Speak thy pleasure Or if my care offend, I shall hereafter Forbeare to meddle. caesar No, sweet Agrippina; Since thou wilt have it so.⁵⁰

Agrippina usurps Claudius’s authority again when she takes the lead about the trial of Caratacus, the British chieftain defeated by the Romans: agrippina Caesar, let’s sit together; one Tribunall Will hold us both. caesar It shall bee so, my love, Thou, as my selfe, shalt pardon or condemne.⁵¹

By “Tribunall” here May does not mean a court but is translating the Latin “suggestus,” a platform from which, as Tacitus explains, Agrippina was listening to Caratacus’s speech, unusually “sitting in state before Roman standards” and presenting herself as “imperii socia” (claimant of a “partnership in the empire”).⁵² In May, Agrippina’s means to engage with politics are not only lethal, poisonings and executions, or intellectual, her ability to control Claudius and to disguise ad personam measures as Realpolitik precautions; she also has recourse to erotic weapons. May could find extensive material in his sources on Agrippina’s incestuous and adulterous relationships but he focuses only on her adultery with Pallas.⁵³ Narcissus and Petronius, the latter the author of the prose-verse novel Satyricon, disparagingly comment on her lust, but Petronius also emphasizes the political motives behind her liaison: ’T was her ambitions to bee made the wife Of Claudius, that first made her prostitute Her selfe so low, and court this fellows love, Whom she perceiv’d to have a ruling power Over his doating master, to ambition Shee sacrific’d her honour ’tis well known.⁵⁴

    

May, Agrippina, 1.1.588 – 93. May, Agrippina, 1.1.632– 36; Tacitus, Annals 12.37.4. Tacitus, Annals 12.37.4. Ginsburg, Representing Agrippina, 116 – 30. May, Agrippina, 248, 253, 259, 47– 53.

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It is again Tacitus who reports that Agrippina began the relationship with the rich freedman Pallas because he was a key figure to gain Claudius’s favor; the “prospect of power” (“spe[s] dominationis”) led her to have no qualms about her dignity.⁵⁵ However, May aptly attributes this unflattering judgment to Petronius, who in the play acts as the irreverent chastiser of Roman vices and whose Satyricon provides more than thirty lines for the play.⁵⁶ May’s audience would know Petronius also from Tacitus’s memorable portrayal and account of his death, a parody of the Stoic suicide.⁵⁷ There Tacitus famously defined Petronius as “arbiter of elegance” (“elegantiae arbiter”), as he was Nero’s guide in his pleasure-seeking lifestyle, and tells how he scorned the convention of flattering the emperor at the point of death but revealed Nero’s adulterous relationships instead.⁵⁸ In May, Petronius’s moralizing inevitably sounds hypocritical to Nero, but Petronius solves the contradiction by arguing that a satirist is the person who “know[s] those vices, which hee meanes to tax.”⁵⁹ Thus, it is quite apt that a “furious Satyrist” would expose Agrippina’s sacrifice of her morality for power’s sake.⁶⁰ Petronius’s portrayal of Agrippina does not correspond with the idea that the empress has of herself. Indeed, Agrippina explicitly denies any use of her erotic powers: in a soliloquy, she asserts her identity like Seneca’s Medea and William Shakespeare’s Cleopatra (“Agrippina is her self”) and proudly underlines her status as a self-made woman who does not depend on “a marriage bed” or “a husbands love”: Now Agrippina is her self, and all The power and dignity she holds, her own. I do not owe it to a marriage bed, Or poore dependence on a husbands love. Where every minion might have rival’d mee. There is no power, no state at all, but what Is undependent, absolute and free.⁶¹

After Nero has been acclaimed emperor by a corrupted army, Agrippina welcomes this victory as her personal achievement:

      

Tacitus, Annals 12.65.2, 14.2.2. May, Agrippina, 4.454– 97. Tacitus, Annals 16.19. Tacitus, Annals 16.18.3 – 19.3. May, Agrippina, 4.505 – 10. May, Agrippina, 4.499. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 3.13.191; Seneca, Medea 171; May, Agrippina, 4.300 – 6.

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This is the day that sets a glorious Crown On all my great designes this day declares My power, and makes the trembling world to know That Agrippina only can bestow The Roman Empire, and command the wheel Of suffring Fortune, holding in her hand The fate of nation.⁶²

Agrippina here fancies she is endowed with quasi-demiurgical powers, above any god and even Fortune itself; she is so swollen with pride as to disdain the help of “petty Goddesses.”⁶³ Her megalomania also manifests itself in her obsession with names: “Is there not a name / Above Augusta to enforme the world / How great I am?”⁶⁴ Most importantly, she argues that no other woman ever wielded the power she has: as incontrovertible proof of her “undiscussed” authority, she adduces the unprecedented honor that the Senate has granted her, i. e., two personal lictors, a privilege refused to the first “Augusta,” Augustus’s wife Livia: Besides my proper and peculiar guards Two lictors by the Senate are assign’d Distinct from Caesar and the Consuls state To wate on mee, that all the world at last Th’ Imperiall power may in a woman know. I was an Empresse but ne’re reign’d till now.⁶⁵

May gives lesser prominence to Agrippina’s erotic ascendancy over men than her lethal and intellectual means. The role as sexual transgressor that historiographers unanimously attribute to Agrippina is transferred to another character, Poppaea, who bears some resemblance to Jonson’s Fulvia: both use their erotic charms to achieve a higher position. However, they differ in many respects: in their status, in their attitude to love, and in their aim. While Poppaea as a noblewoman can exploit the institution of marriage—she marries three powerful men (Crispinus, Otho, and Nero)—Fulvia, who in Sallust is also a noblewoman but in Jonson is turned into a courtesan, must content herself with relationships that are bound to remain adulterous. In her soliloquies and in her dialogues with Otho, Poppaea nominally expresses her love for him and ascribes her marriage

   

May, May, May, May,

Agrippina, 3.1.374– 80. Agrippina, 3.1.382– 85. Agrippina, 3.1.380 – 81. Agrippina, 1.1.471; Tacitus, Annals 1.14.2, 13.2.3; May, Agrippina, 4.307– 12.

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with Nero to the inscrutable fate that “overrule’d [her] love” for Otho.⁶⁶ However, Petronius bluntly unmasks Poppaea’s hypocrisy: he grants that she did nourish desire for Otho for some time but only “for it is a rascall of a winning carriage,” until “that passion / Which you call love” eventually had “to yeeld / To pride her quality predominant.”⁶⁷ Poppaea herself avers her true ambitions: although never taking responsibility for her decision, she betrays her real concerns, i. e., “fortune” and the “title” of Augusta: Tis not the love of Caesar, but the honour, And that high title which attends his love That is Poppaeaes aime.⁶⁸

Unlike the hypocritical Poppaea, Fulvia explicitly regards men as investments that need to be profitable: she does not keep “a catalogue of ’em” and, with reference to Curius, she complains that “[h]is good gifts are done. / He does not yield the crop that he was wont.”⁶⁹ While Poppaea’s aim is Rome’s highest political honor for a woman, the title of Augusta (“To bee Augusta is the greatest gift / The fates can give”), Fulvia’s foray into high politics is totally instrumental to ambitions other than political status.⁷⁰ In providing her decisive leak to Cicero, she is not animated by thirst for power, let alone by patriotic devotion, for which Cicero falsely praises her.⁷¹ Her only motive is the search for economic stability, and her currency is sex. As she confides to Sempronia, she is ready to satisfy men’s lust only if they pay her accordingly: They shall all give and pay well that come here, If they will have it—and jewels, pearl, Plate, or round sums to buy these. I am not taken With a cob-swan, or a high-mounting bull, As foolish Leda and Europa were, But the bright gold, with Danae. For such price, I would endure a rough, harsh Jupiter, Or ten such thund’ring gamesters, and refrain To laugh at ’em till they are gone, with my much suff’ring.⁷²

      

May, Agrippina, 5.1.370. May, Agrippina, 5.1.65, 72– 73. May, Agrippina, 5.1.373 – 77. Jonson, Catiline, 2.1.152, 164– 65. May, Agrippina, 4.248 – 49, 253. Jonson, Catiline, 3.2.107– 21. Jonson, Catiline, 2.1.177– 85.

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Although Sempronia cannot count on Fulvia’s “youth and freshness,”⁷³ her political influence and oratorical skills are recognized among her co-conspirators and rivals alike. Catiline sees Sempronia’s “sulphurous spirit” taking “[l]ight at a spark” as a positive quality, defends her against his fellow Longinus’s derogatory remarks, and praises her for behaving “most masculinely” and for “play[ing] the orator”; Cicero considers her “a chief,” his “gentle enemy,” a worthy competitor in oratory.⁷⁴ Her detractors are among her very fellow conspirators: Longinus reduces her sphere of action to erotic pleasure; Cethegus attacks her for being a woman, and, as such, inevitably treacherous; Catiline himself, just after praising Sempronia for her oratorical performance, does not attack her directly but soliloquizes about the need to have recourse to “the dregs of mankind” for his conspiracy, among which he includes women, particularly wives: What ministers men must for practice use! The rash, th’ambitious, needy, desperate, Foolish, and wretched, ev’n the dregs of mankind, To whores and women! Still, it must be so. Each have their proper place, and in their rooms They are the best. … With these, domestic traitors, bosom thieves Whom custom hath called wives, the readiest helps To betray heady husbands, rob the easy, And lend the moneys on returns of lust.⁷⁵

For Catiline, women’s “proper place” is the domestic and erotic sphere, and their role is that of treacherous “thieves / Whom custom hath called wives.” However, many men including Catiline himself benefit from the help of women, particularly their wives. Catiline appears fond of and reliant upon his second wife, Aurelia Orestilla: for her he killed his former wife and his son, and he counts on her as a co-conspirator, asking her to deploy her courtly skills in order to gather adherents among women (“Get thee store and change of women,” “Be thyself, too, courtly / And entertain, and feast, sit up, and revel”).⁷⁶ In Catiline, Caesar ridicules Cicero for being too dependent on his wife Terentia.⁷⁷ That Jonson puts this detail derived from Plutarch’s Life of Cicero in Caesar’s mouth is quite iron-

    

Jonson, Jonson, Jonson, Jonson, Jonson,

Catiline, 2.1.187. Catiline, 3.3.43 – 44, 198 – 99, 3.4.27, 4.4.77. Catiline, 3.3.193, 4.5.19 – 22, 3.3.225 – 41. Catiline, 1.1.98 – 104, 115 – 17, 171– 85. Catiline, 4.2.46.

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ical, considering that in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar the dictator temporarily surrenders to his wife Calpurnia.⁷⁸ Caesar recanted his decision to comply with his wife’s wishes, and this famously turned out to be a fatal mistake. Therefore, this intertextual reference may ultimately contribute to undermining Caesar’s detraction of wives’ advice. In May’s play too does a character question the participation of a woman in politics on the grounds of her gender: Seneca contrives a plan to prevent Agrippina from sitting next to Nero on the “Tribunall,” the platform from which the emperor was to give a hearing to the Armenian ambassadors. His fear is that: It would be Romes disgrace, the Senates shame And my great crime if the Embassadors That come to plead their contryes cause at Rome, Should see a woman perching up with Caesar Into the chare to give them audience, And sit commanding ore the Roman ensigns: Twas not the custome of our Ancestors To see such sights.⁷⁹

Although the reference to the discrepancy with “the custome of our Ancestors” is based on Tacitus’s “mor[es] veterum,” which is a characteristically Tacitean alteration of the traditional mos maiorum, the word “custom” may have had further resonance within a discourse about women in politics. Custom was one of the arguments adduced by male writers to exclude women from the public sphere. For May’s audience, recent appeals to custom had been made during the controversy over masculine women, the debate stretching roughly from 1615 to 1625 about women’s wearing masculine clothes.⁸⁰ Although female crossdressing had been the object of satirical representations in plays since the 1570s–1580s, including Jonson’s Epicoene, or The Silent Woman (1609), the first openly polemic attack on such a practice occurred in 1615, when Thomas Adams published his pamphlet Mysticall Bedlam, or the World of Mad-Men, in which he introduced the Latin phrase hic mulier to refer to a masculine woman.⁸¹ In the same year, another controversy about women was sparked by the publication of Joseph Swetnam’s pamphlet The Araignment of

 Ewbank, 122n46; Daniell, “Introduction,” 14; Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 2.2.55 – 56.  May, Agrippina, 4.658 – 65; Tacitus, Annales 13.5.2, cf. 12.37.4. May might have read about this event also in John Xiphilinus’s epitome of Cassius Dio’s Roman History; Xiphilinus, Epitome 177 = Cassius Dio, Roman History, 61.3.3 – 4.  Clark, “Hic Mulier,” 157, 165, 182.  Clark, “Hic Mulier,” 160 – 65.

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Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women, which triggered manifold responses, including Rachel Speght’s A Mouzell for Melastomus (1617).⁸² In 1620, two anonymous pamphlets were published, whose titles are based on Adams’s phrase: Hic Mulier, or the Man-Woeman, and Haec Vir, or the Woeman-Man, both marking the apex of the controversy over masculine women. In the latter pamphlet, the character Hic Mulier attacks the recourse to custom against women’s crossdressing: Are we then bound to be the Flatterers of Time or the dependents on Custom? Oh miserable servitude, chained only to Baseness and Folly, for than custom, nothing is more absurd, nothing more foolish… . I might instance in a thousand things that only Custom and not Reason hath approved. To conclude, Custom is an Idiot.⁸³

As Katherine U. Henderson and Barbara F. McManus have pointed out, “although she [Hic Mulier] retreats from this position at the end of the treatise, the fact that such radical concepts were articulated at all in the Renaissance is in itself remarkable.”⁸⁴ While the pamphlet war on masculine women was intense but relatively short-lived, the one around Swetnam’s libel enjoyed a more lasting success: Swetnam’s book was reprinted many times until 1634.⁸⁵ The 1620s controversy over masculine women is one of the peaks of an ongoing English Renaissance querelle des femmes that had started in the mid-sixteenth century.⁸⁶ What sets this specific controversy apart from the wider querelle is the condemnation of women who usurp masculine prerogatives. The echo of this phenomenon must have been particularly strong considering that it involved upper-rank women and even triggered the intervention of King James I to contain it.⁸⁷ Therefore, May’s audience may have been familiar with this controversy. Although there are references to masculinity in his classical sources and Jonson’s play (Galla defines Sempronia a “very masculine” lady, and for Catiline she behaves “most masculinely”), the masculine features of May’s Agrippina (Narcissus attributes to the empress a “dragon spirit,” and Seneca brands her as “strange male spirit”) potentially acquire further significance as belated responses to the climate of the early 1620s.⁸⁸

      

Clark, “Hic Mulier,” 165. Anon., “Haec Vir; or, The Womanish Man,” 283 – 84. Henderson and McManus, Half Humankind, 31. Lewalski, “Introduction,” xxi. Henderson and McManus, Half Humankind, 11. Clarke, “Hic Mulier,” 166. May, Agrippina, 1.1.123, 381.

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The debate on masculine women particularly concerned crossdressing, the most conspicuous transgression; however, two other interrelated aspects were equally controversial in early modern England: women’s education and their participation in politics. These two issues, which both Jonson and May explore in their plays, had been the subject of vigorous debates since the mid-sixteenth century. Defying the Aristotelian notion that women are inherently inferior to men, many humanists such as Thomas More, Erasmus, and Juan Luis Vives had argued that women had the right to receive an education; Erasmus, indeed, used to be against it until the effects of education on More’s brilliant daughters made him change his mind.⁸⁹ A particularly influential treatise in England was Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s Latin Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex (1529), first translated into English in 1542.⁹⁰ In his discussion about exemplary women in the field of “oratory and poetry,” Agrippa, who includes among them Sallust’s Sempronia, remarks that “[i]f, in our time, education had not been prohibited to women, today also very well-educated women would be considered more talented than men.”⁹¹ Agrippa also mentions exemplary women engaged in ruling their country and devotes much space to the discussion of Roman women’s rights, including those endowed with the title Augusta.⁹² However, none of these humanists envisaged the possibility that education may lead their contemporary women to be politically active. Vives implicitly discards such an option, arguing that women should stay at home: “If she is a good woman, it is best that she stay at home and be unknown to others… . She will appear in public on occasion, but as rarely as possible.”⁹³ Richard Mulcaster invokes the need to educate women but also falls in the contradiction of other humanists advocating education for women but excluding them from the public sphere: by appealing to custom, he argues that he has never seen women going to grammar schools or university, because their education must be “within limit … in respect of marriage” and domestic life.⁹⁴ Thomas Smith explicitly prevents women from “meddl[ing] with matters abroade; nor to beare office in a citie or common wealth,” but contemplates exceptions when “the authoritie is annexed to the blood and progenie, as the crowne, a dutchie, or an erledome, for there the blood is respected, not the age nor the sexe.”⁹⁵

      

Rummel, “Introduction,” 10. Rabil, “Agrippa and the Feminist Tradition,” 4, 27. Agrippa, Declamation, 82– 83. Agrippa, Declamation, 81– 86, 90 – 93. Vives, Education, 72, 93. Gaggero, “Civic Humanism,” 407– 8; Mulcaster, Positions, 168, 174. Smith, De Republica Anglorum, 19.

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By the time Jonson and May were writing their plays, England had witnessed the rule of two queens regnant. Even though they counted as exceptions, their gender in their rise to the throne had unsurprisingly been a source of contention: in 1558, John Knox famously condemned “the monstrous regiment of women” and branded it as unnatural.⁹⁶ John Aylmer’s rebuttal rehabilitated female rule but only insofar as it was an exception, as Smith would also later argue: Queen Elizabeth I was always celebrated as an exceptional woman, assimilated as she was to the Virgin Mary, other saints, and pagan goddesses.⁹⁷ As Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford underline, “her success as a female ruler depended on putting a distance between herself and all other women.”⁹⁸ How could nonroyal women aspire to a political role, if they were in principle excluded from the public sphere? As Susan Wiseman points out, “the prohibition against women’s participation in the political arena that characterizes the early modern period . . ., rather than meaning that women had no relation to the political arena, set the terms of their participation to it.”⁹⁹ However, one distinction needs to be drawn: nonroyal women ranged from noblewomen to “middling” to poor.¹⁰⁰ While poor and middling women could only express popular forms of political influence such as collective protests in rural and urban riots, noblewomen could aspire to “high politics.”¹⁰¹ The formal exclusion of women from the public sphere in early modern treatises on education should not lead us to think that noblewomen did not actually have a political role in practice, a misconception that some modern political historians contributed to consolidating.¹⁰² Smith’s very list of exceptions reveals that noblewomen were entitled to “intermeddle with publicke affaires,” thereby clashing with humanist precepts.¹⁰³ Also, English noblewomen could become courtiers and as such received salaries; their political role was not institutional as that of a member of Parliament but enjoyed at least partial recognition.¹⁰⁴ Noblewomen exerted high-level political power in more “fluid” venues such as the court and noble households.¹⁰⁵

 Henderson and McManus, Half Humankind, 12.  Collinson, “Elizabeth I.”  Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, 357.  Wiseman, “Exemplarity, Women and Political Rhetoric,” 145.  Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, 5.  Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, 346, 384.  Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, 345 – 46.  Smith, De Republica Anglorum, 19.  Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, 370 – 71.  Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, 345 – 46.

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Significantly, both Catiline and Agrippina feature discussions on nobility. In May, Pallas questions its purported importance with many echoes from Cicero’s monologue in Catiline. ¹⁰⁶ In Jonson, alongside Cicero, Sempronia and Fulvia discuss nobility as well: Sempronia defends nobility by birth, while Fulvia claims that nobility stems from virtue.¹⁰⁷ Sempronia’s appeal to the “ensigns of a family” must not have been too far from the perception of such noblewomen as Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (the mother of the dedicatee of Jonson’s Catiline), who famously entered London accompanied by her entourage all in the colors of the Sidney family’s livery.¹⁰⁸ Mary Sidney is only one of the many influential noblewomen that share qualities with Jonson’s Sempronia and May’s Agrippina. Women such as Margaret Dakins Hoby, Lucy Harrington Russell, and Mary Sidney Wroth exerted a literary and political influence in elite coteries and at court that can be hardly overstated. Paradoxically, it was often men that benefited from these women’s political role: many noblewomen acted as patrons and mediators, promoting the career of their relatives and protégés. Noble birth was a precondition to access élite politics but was not enough to wield it: education was in this sense crucial. The qualities that Jonson and May emphasized in their Roman women—brilliant eloquence, networking skills, and artistic talents—are all intellectual means that enabled early modern English noblewomen to exert political agency. The intellectual ways into politics that Jonson and May foregrounded range from eloquence in back-stage politics to literary and artistic talents but also embrace letter-writing. In Jonson’s Catiline, Fulvia and Sempronia do refer to this activity: fulvia I have some letters To write and send away. sempronia Alas, I pity thee. I ha’ been writing all this night—and am So very weary—unto all the tribes And centuries for their voices, to help Catiline In his election. We shall make him consul, I hope amongst us. Crassus, I, and Caesar Will carry it for him.¹⁰⁹

Sempronia’s letter-writing is explicitly political: it is meant as support to Catiline’s candidacy. Also, Sempronia significantly places the pronoun “I” between

   

May, Agrippina, 1.1.83 – 104. Jonson, Catiline, 2.1.115 – 42. Bicks and Summit, “Introduction,” 47– 48. Jonson, Catiline, 2.1.94– 101.

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the names of Crassus and Caesar, thereby virtually claiming the power of no less than two would-be triumvirs.¹¹⁰ The early modern genre of letter-writing that most influenced politics is the suitor’s or petitioning letter, the most sizeable in women’s extant correspondence of the period.¹¹¹ The impact of such practice can be gauged by the manifold surviving letters in which noblewomen acted as “intermediaries, ‘brokers’ and patrons” about “the preferment of suitors to offices; the bestowing of titles and honors; to procure grants of land, wardships, pensions and annuities; to secure justice and release from imprisonment” and to maintain “kinship and patronage networks.”¹¹² Women also acted as mediators and literary patrons: Penelope Devereux guaranteed an administrative position to Robert Sidney, Philip’s brother, not by writing a letter of petition herself but by personally delivering one to the queen.¹¹³ Lucy Russell, one of the ladies closest to Queen Anne, eased the rapid rise of George Villiers as favorite of James and had earlier promoted the career of Jonson himself as a major producer of masques; moreover, Jonson called upon her when he was jailed after offending the king in Eastward Ho! (1605).¹¹⁴ Women participated in the literary scenario not only as patrons but also as authors and critical readers, roles reunited in the figure of May’s Agrippina: in 1621, Lady Mary Wroth published the romance The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, a roman à clef that shows a “fantasy of women’s involvement in literary and social affairs.”¹¹⁵ Margaret Hoby studied and annotated copies of religious treatises in preparation of debates or conversations.¹¹⁶ Just as for Catiline feasts are ideal venues for his wife Aurelia’s networking, so court entertainments had political value in early modern England: Queen Anne danced in masks and created a second court at her house in Greenwich with the help of Lady Russell, who also regularly took part in dances, a sign of her influence at court.¹¹⁷

 Inga-Stina Ewbank, 63n100, persuasively reads “I” as the first-person pronoun rather than the alternative form of the adverb “ay” and argues for this interpretation exactly on account of Sempronia’s assertion of her “participation in politics.”  Magnusson, “Letters,” 144– 45.  Daybell, “Letters,” 187 and “Women’s Letters of Recommendation,” 175.  Crawford, Mediatrix, 14.  Crawford, Mediatrix, 14; Lewalski, Writing Women, 107.  Britland, “Women in the Royal Courts,” 129. On the “now decades-long history of scholarship on early modern women writers,” see Crawford, Mediatrix, 2; on early modern women as scholars and critics, particularly in classics, see McCallum-Barry, “Learned Women,” 29 – 47.  Crawford, Mediatrix, 106.  Britland, “Women in the Royal Courts,” 130.

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Sempronia and Agrippina not only mirror contemporary women’s political roles but also voice an aspiration to a greater recognition thereof. There is hardly a more outspoken declaration of women’s worth to participate in politics than the one articulated by Jonson’s Sempronia: I do wonder much That states and commonwealth employ not women To be ambassadors sometimes! We should Do as good public service and could make As honorable spies—for so Thucydides Calls all ambassadors.¹¹⁸

Even Speght, the first Englishwoman to use her own name in gender controversies publicly—“the first Champion of her sex,” as the pseudonymous writer Constantia Munda defined her—did not dare make such claims but was more compliant with the traditional division of gender roles: in Mouzell she speaks of “the affairs befitting my Sex” and in her Dream, the prefatory poem to Moralities Memorandum (1621), she laments her choice to abandon her studies and unwillingly accepts to return “from whence [she] came, and where [she] must remaine.”¹¹⁹ A member of the middle class, Speght did not enjoy the privileges of her contemporary noblewomen. In conclusion, limiting the scope to Jonson’s and May’s assertive Roman women has hopefully proven fruitful in several ways. First, such a focused analysis has sought to reconsider female characters that have often been neglected or seen as ancillary by exploring the manifold forms of their political agency. Second, a comparison with the sources has revealed that both authors distanced themselves from the Latin material in the attribution or foregrounding of intellectual qualities to women that turn out to be fundamental political instruments. Finally, such qualities as masculine eloquence and public activism stand out as refractions of contemporary debates on women’s transgressions and the limits of their education; similarly, references to letter-writing and artistic talents evoke the crucial literary and political activities of contemporary influential noblewomen, some of whom were already establishing their female authorial identity. In their portrayal of Roman “political ladies,” Jonson and May thus problematize women’s formal exclusion from England’s public scenario by raising the curtain on the unexpected ways in which women actually maneuvered high politics from behind the scenes.

 Jonson, Catiline, 4.5.8 – 13.  Lewalski, “Introduction,” xi, xvi; Speght, The Polemics and Poems, 31, 57.

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Works Cited Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius. Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex, edited and translated by Albert Rabil. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Anon. “Haec Vir; or, The Womanish Man.” In Katherine U. Henderson and Barbara F. McManus, Half Humankind: Contexts and Texts of the Controversy about Women, 1540 – 1640, 277 – 89. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985. Bicks, Caroline, and Jennifer Summit. “Introduction.” In The History of British Women Writing, 1500 – 1610, edited by Caroline Bicks and Jennifer Summit, 1 – 59. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Britland, Karen. “Women in the Royal Courts.” In The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing, edited by Laura Lunger Knoppers, 124 – 39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Bullokar, John. An English Expositor. London: John Legatt, 1616. Chester, Allan Griffith. Thomas May: Man of Letters 1595 – 1650. PhD Diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1932. Collinson, Patrick. “Elizabeth I.” In The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref: odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-8636. Crawford, Julie. Mediatrix: Women, Politics, and Literary Production in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Daniell, David. “Introduction” to Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, 1 – 147. Walton-on-Thames: Nelson, 1998. Daybell, James. “Letters.” In The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing, edited by Laura Lunger Knoppers, 181 – 93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Daybell, James. “Women’s Letters of Recommendation and the Rhetoric of Friendship in Sixteenth-Century England.” In Rhetoric, Women and Politics in Early Modern England, edited by Jennifer Richards and Alison Thorne, 172 – 90. London: Routledge, 2007. Dio, Cassius. Roman History, translated by Earnest Cary. 9 vols. London: Heinemann, 1914. Dryden, John. “John Dryden’s Essay.” In Ben Jonson: The Critical Heritage, 1599 – 1798, edited by D. H. Craig, 245 – 53. London: Routledge, 1995. Eliot, T. S. “Ben Jonson.” In The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical Edition, The Perfect Critic 1919 – 1926, edited by Antony Cuda and Ronald Schuchard, 8 vols. 2:150 – 64. London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Ewbank, Inga-Stina. “Introduction” to Catiline His Conspiracy by Ben Jonson. In The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, edited by David Bevington, Martin Butler, and Ian Donaldson, 7 vols., 4:3 – 21. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Gaggero, Christopher. “Civic Humanism and Gender Politics in Jonson’s Catiline.” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500 – 1900 45 (2005): 401 – 24. Ginsburg, Judith. Representing Agrippina: Constructions of Female Power in the Early Roman Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Henderson, Katherine U., and Barbara F. McManus. Half Humankind: Contexts and Texts of the Controversy about Women, 1540 – 1640. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985.

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Jonson, Ben. Catiline His Conspiracy, edited by Inga-Stina Ewbank. In The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, edited by David Bevington, Martin Butler, and Ian Donaldson, 7 vols., 4:23 – 185. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Jonson, Ben. Cynthia’s Revels, or The Fountain of Self-Love, quarto version, edited by Eric Rasmussen and Matthew Steggle. In The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, edited by David Bevington, Martin Butler, and Ian Donaldson, 7 vols., 1:441 – 547. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Jonson, Ben. Every Man Out of His Humour, edited by Randall Martin. In The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, edited by David Bevington, Martin Butler, and Ian Donaldson, 7 vols., 1:251 – 428. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Jonson, Ben. Poetaster, or His Arraignment, edited by Gabriele Bernhard Jackson. In The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, edited by David Bevington, Martin Butler, and Ian Donaldson, 7 vols., 2:21 – 181. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Jonson, Ben. Volpone, or The Fox, edited by Richard Dutton. In The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, edited by David Bevington, Martin Butler, and Ian Donaldson, 7 vols., 3:25 – 191. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Jonson, Ben. The Workes of Beniamin Jonson. London: Will Stansby, 1616. Lautner, Edward John. A Modern-Spelling Edition of Thomas May’s The Tragedy of Antigone, The Theban Princesse. PhD diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1970. Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. “Introduction” to The Polemics and Poems of Rachel Speght, xi– xxxvi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Lovascio, Domenico. “Introduzione” to La congiura di Catilina. Testo inglese a fronte by Ben Jonson, xi–lxx. Genova: ECIG, 2011. Magnusson, Lynne. “Letters.” In The History of British Women’s Writing, 1500 – 1610, edited by Caroline Bicks and Jennifer Summit, 130 – 95. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. May, Thomas. Thomas May’s Tragedy of Julia Agrippina, Empresse of Rome, edited by F. Ernst Schmid. Louvain: A. Uystpruyst, 1914. McCallum-Barry, Carmel. “Learned Women of the Renaissance and Early Modern Period in Italy and England: The Relevance of Their Scholarship.” In Women Classical Scholars: Unsealing the Fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romilly, edited by Rosie Wyles and Edith Hall, 29 – 47. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Mendelson, Sara, and Patricia Crawford. Women in Early Modern England, 1550 – 1720, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Mulcaster, Richard. Positions … Necessarie for the Training of Children. London: Thomas Vautrollier, 1581. Norbrook, David. “May, Thomas (b. in or after 1596, d. 1650).” In The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. https://www.ox forddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e18423. Pangallo, Matteo. “Introduction.” In Thomas May, The Tragedy of Antigone: 1631, vii–xxiii. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016. Rabil, Albert. “Agrippa and the Feminist Tradition.” In Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, 3 – 33. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

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Richards, Jennifer, and Alison Thorne. “Introduction.” In Rhetoric, Women and Politics in Early Modern England, edited by Jennifer Richards and Alison Thorne, 1 – 24. London: Routledge, 2007. Rummel, Erika. “Introduction” to Erasmus on Women, 3 – 14. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. Seneca. Medea. In Hercules, Trojan Women, Phoenician Women, Medea, Phaedra, edited and translated by John G. Fitch, 303 – 403. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Shakespeare, William. Julius Caesar, edited by David Daniell. Wlaton-on-Thames: Nelson, 1998. Schmid, F. Ernst. “Einleitung” to Thomas May’s Tragedy of Julia Agrippina, 1 – 85. Louvain: A. Uystpruyst, 1914. Smith, Thomas. De Republica Anglorum. London: Henrie Midleton, 1583. Speght, Rachel. The Polemics and Poems of Rachel Speght, edited by Barbara Kiefer Lewalski. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Tacitus. The Annals, translated by John Jackson. 4 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937. Vives, Juan Luis. The Education of a Christian Woman, edited and translated by Charles Fantazzi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Wiseman, Susan. “Exemplarity, Women and Political Rhetoric.” In Rhetoric, Women and Politics in Early Modern England, edited by Jennifer Richards and Alison Thorne, 129 – 48. London: Routledge, 2007. Xiphilinus, John. Dionis Nicaei Rerum Romanarum … epitome. Lyon: Guillaume Rouillé, 1559.

Domenico Lovascio

Bawds, Wives, and Foreigners: The Question of Female Agency in the Roman Plays of the Fletcher Canon Depictions of “masculine” women who stand out for their heroism, dominance, and agency are so numerous in the Fletcher canon that Philip J. Finkelpearl argues that “in the world of Fletcher’s plays there seem to be more female ‘male spirits’ than male ones.”¹ For Gordon McMullan, John Fletcher’s penchant for populating his plays with “assertive and dominant women” results from a desire to explore “brief alternative realms” that may offer “glimpses of possible new worlds which are much more appealing than the pragmatics that indicate how impossible they are.”² In all probability, these portrayals of “masculine” female characters were decisively shaped by Fletcher’s first-hand experience of that “feminocentric country environment” in which he seems to have participated at Ashby de la Zouch, the seat of his literary patrons, Henry Hastings, fifth Earl of Huntingdon, and his wife Elizabeth Stanley, whom the earl himself praised for her “judicious conceit & masculine understandinge.”³ Prima facie, a Roman context might seem potentially fertile ground to delineate female characters specially endowed with “masculine” virtues; yet, this turns out to be only partially the case, in that, as much as the Roman (as opposed to the non-Roman) women in the Fletcher canon are indeed able to display qualities such as constancy and fortitude, very rarely do they emerge as assertive or dominant. To be sure, this is partly due to the strong patriarchal stance encoded in the society of ancient Rome (possibly even stronger than that encoded in early modern English society), which posed a limit to Fletcher’s and his collaborators’ creative freedom; more importantly, however, the playwrights seem to have wished to emphasize in several ways the limitations of Roman female models, so that their portrayals of Roman women end up radiating a tangible sense of skepticism and disenchantment as for the transtemporal viability of the female values and paradigms that the classical world had bequeathed to the early modern era.

 Finkelpearl, Court and Country Politics, 241.  McMullan, Politics of Unease, 76.  McMullan, Politics of Unease, 194, 62. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501514203-009

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The four plays identifiable as Roman in the Fletcher canon—Bonduca (1613 – 14), Valentinian (1610 – 14), The False One (1619 – 23), and The Prophetess (1622), the latter two penned by Fletcher in collaboration with Philip Massinger— feature a total of seven Roman women.⁴ In purely numeric terms, the Roman female characters in the Fletcher canon therefore equal those in William Shakespeare’s dramatic oeuvre (Lavinia in Titus Andronicus; Portia and Calpurnia in Julius Caesar; Octavia in Antony and Cleopatra; Volumnia, Virgilia, and Valeria in Coriolanus). Yet, Shakespeare’s Roman women are not only more evenly distributed across the different tragedies; they also seem to have more relevance in the plays in which they appear than their Fletcherian counterparts: four of these have minor roles (Ardelia, Phorba, Claudia, and Marcellina in Valentinian); two may be described as supporting characters (with Eudoxa’s role in Valentinian being more consequential than Aurelia’s in The Prophetess); and the only one who can be considered a protagonist (Lucina in Valentinian) dies halfway through the play in which she appears. Hence, there are six Roman women in Valentinian, one in The Prophetess, and none in either Bonduca or The False One. Strikingly, each of these latter two plays features a well-known nonRoman queen as a main character (the Icenian warrior queen Boudica and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra respectively), while the prophetess of the 1622 play is Delphia, a Celtic druidess, whose character Fletcher and Massinger developed from meager historical information.⁵ Hence, it would appear that the generally marginal roles of the Roman women in the Fletcher canon are thrown into even sharper relief by the preeminence accorded to non-Roman women in three out of four Roman plays. The four minor characters, all in Valentinian, can be divided into two pairs: the emperor’s bawds, Ardelia and Phorba, and Lucina’s waiting women, Claudia and Marcellina. These characters are all Fletcher’s invention, as neither of the two main sources for the play, namely Book III of Martin Fumée’s 1587 French translation of Procopius of Caesarea’s The History of the Wars and the “Histoire d’Eudoxe, Valentinian, et Ursace” in Honoré D’Urfé’s L’Astreé. Seconde partie (1610), mentions either any bawds or handmaids. Cramming the play with as

 The date limits for the all the plays mentioned in the chapter are those provided by Wiggins, British Drama.  The name of Delphia’s niece (a character invented for the play) is Drusilla. As Roman history features many famous Drusillas, one might be led to think that she is a Roman; yet, nowhere does the play suggest that she is. In fact, the name Drusilla apparently has Celtic origins, which is possibly the reason behind Fletcher and Massinger’s choice. It seems worth remarking that the playwrights may have inferred the Gaulish origin of the name from Suetonius, Tiberius 3.2.

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many as two bawds and four freedmen acting as panders (Balbus, Proculus, Chilax, and Lycinius), all invented by Fletcher and added to the eunuch Lycias (who replaces Heracle l’Eunuque of L’Astrée), decisively contributes to setting up the bleakly oppressive atmosphere that pervades Valentinian’s court, as do the sophisticated rhetorical strategies the bawds employ to manipulate language in order to persuade Lucina to sleep with the emperor, which fully expose, as Marina Hila points out, “the inversion of values and moral relativism for which Valentinian is responsible.”⁶ The speciousness of the bawds’ rhetoric is evident, for example, in their claims that “The honour of a woman is her praises, / The way to get these, to be seen and sought to,” and that “Virtue is either lame or not at all, / And love a sacrilege and not a saint, / When it bars up the way to men’s petitions.”⁷ It would be hard to counter Lucina’s view that “There is no wonder men defame our sex / And lay the vices of all ages on us, / When such as you shall bear the names of women.”⁸ In order to make their moral degradation even more explicit, Fletcher presents the bawds’ actions in such a way as to make them come off as much craftier and more experienced than the apparently incompetent panders, much as happens in Fletcher’s The Humorous Lieutenant (1619 – 1623). Ardelia and Phorba are eventually murdered by “the women of the town,” as a Messenger reports soon after Valentinian’s death.⁹ Far from being such negative characters as the bawds, Claudia and Marcellina have, however, an even more limited and less relevant role in the play, insofar as their frivolous witticism and ultimate acceptance of Valentinian’s panders’ amorous offers when they get to court—“they have had some sport too, / But are more thankful for it,” Valentinian scornfully informs Lucina after raping her—mainly serve as foil to Lucina’s constancy and fortitude.¹⁰ The only Roman woman in The Prophetess, the Emperor Charinus’s sister Aurelia, whose actions in the play have no authority in the sources—namely, Nicolas Coeffeteau’s Histoire romaine (1621) and The historie of Iustine (1606?)—is also depicted in a negative light, albeit for different reasons. In 3.3, haughty in her treatment of the Persian ambassadors and the Persian princess Cassana, who is her prisoner, Aurelia is even dispossessed of her agency and becomes a mere puppet at the mercy of Delphia, whose spells make her ludicrously lust after Maximinian in order to take her far from Dioclesian, who prefers her to Del-

 Hila, “’Justice Shall Never Heare Ye,’” 752.  Fletcher, Valentinian, 1.2.11– 12, 23 – 25.  Fletcher, Valentinian, 1.2.45 – 47.  Fletcher, Valentinian, 5.2.158.  Fletcher, Valentinian, 3.1.133 – 34.

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phia’s niece Drusilla.¹¹ Toward the end of the play, in order to support her now husband and Emperor Maximinian, who feels as “walk[ing] / With heavie burthens on a sea of glasse” because he is afraid that Dioclesian might one day reclaim the imperial seat he has ceded to him and because he fears the opposition of his co-emperor Charinus, Aurelia’s brother, she offers him a cynically Machiavellian perspective according to which Neernesse of blood, Respect of pietie, and thankfulnesse, And all the holy dreams of vertuous fools Must vanish into nothing, when Ambition (The maker of great minds, and nurse of honour) Puts in for Empire.¹²

Even though the two of them actually owe their freedom to Dioclesian and his army, who rescued them after they had been taken hostages by the Persians, Aurelia contemptuously labels Dioclesian as “simple,” because “he was the Master / … of a Jewell, / Whose worth and use he knew not,” while at the same time coldly referring to her brother Charinus as “a stranger, / And so to be remov’d.”¹³ This grants her Maximinian’s excited praise: Thou more then woman, Thou masculine Greatnesse, to whose soaring spirit To touch the stars seems but an easie flight; O how I glory in thee! those great women Antiquitie is proud of, thou but nam’d, Shall be no more remembred: but persever, And thou shalt shine among those lesser lights To all posteritie like another Phebe, And so ador’d as she is.¹⁴

As Maximinian’s words make clear, Aurelia does conquer the laurel of “masculine” woman and manages to outdo the examples offered by classical history, but for all the wrong reasons. Her self-interest and ambition are further underscored by her spurning the hesitant Maximinian to action when they finally reach Dioclesian’s country house with the army in order to kill him: “Be speedie

   

Fletcher Fletcher Fletcher Fletcher

and and and and

Massinger, Massinger, Massinger, Massinger,

Prophetess, Prophetess, Prophetess, Prophetess,

3.3.1– 4, 18 – 26, 37– 109. 5.2.48 – 53. 5.2.54– 57, 59 – 60. 5.2.59 – 67, emphasis mine.

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in your work, (you will be stopt else) / And then you are an Emperour.”¹⁵ Only after Delphia’s irresistible demonstration of power does she accept to “enjoy the riches of [Dioclesian’s] goodnesse.”¹⁶ All in all, Aurelia clearly embodies the courtly temptations and ambitions that threaten to make Dioclesian stray from honoring his initial pact with Delphia, in a country-versus-court dynamics that is at the heart of several of the plays in which Fletcher had a hand. The fact that Aurelia serves a function for Maximinian that is the opposite, as we shall see, of that served by Cleopatra and Delphia for Caesar and Dioclesian respectively makes her treatment in the play sharply ironical and reflects badly on the possibility of agency for Roman women. The two remaining Roman women, Lucina and Eudoxa, deserve a lengthier discussion. As has been often argued, Lucina—probably the Roman character in the canon that has attracted the highest amount of critical scrutinies together with The False One’s Julius Caesar—is delineated in Valentinian as a touchstone of chastity, constancy, and integrity, her story being explicitly modeled on that of Lucrece, possibly the most celebrated exemplum of female virtue in Roman history, and her name (which is not given by Procopius and is Isidore in L’Astrée) being an epithet of Diana, the goddess of chastity. Lucina resists all the panders’ and bawds’ temptations, does not surrender even to the emperor’s own insistence, and is eventually raped. Then, aware of the indelible stain she and her family would have to carry if she continued to live, she resolves to commit suicide with her husband Maximus’s blessing. Lucina’s behavior is that of an impeccably chaste Roman matron; yet, the play also seems to make a point of emphasizing that what she embodies is an exemplary form of passive heroism. From the outset of the play, as Hila points out, “Lucina’s body is introduced to us as a political site over which she has no control. Valentinian’s bawds believe that the redemption of the empire will take place through her; Aecius suggests that she should postpone suicide in order to reclaim the emperor to virtue.”¹⁷ Lucina’s passivity is further compounded by the fact that, even though everyone is talking about her from the very first line of the tragedy, she is not referred to by name until 1.2.97, that is, not until 210 lines into the play, as if she were a nameless entity rather than a human being. That Lucina is a piece of property just like horses, orchards, and houses is also evidenced in the fact that “Maximus plays the ring, a love token and symbol of

 Fletcher and Massinger, Prophetess, 5.4.57– 58.  Fletcher and Massinger, Prophetess, 5.4.147.  Hila, “‘Justice Shall Never Heare Ye,’” 750.

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her chastity, at dice, and loses it to the emperor.”¹⁸ Later on, Lucina herself brands Valentinian as a “Glorious thief” for stealing her chastity.¹⁹ Moreover, not only does Lucina’s rhetorical power prove to be limited in failing first to persuade Valentinian not to rape her and to make him feel ashamed or guilty afterwards (which, incidentally, stands in stark contrast to the rhetorical power sometimes exhibited by Shakespeare’s Roman women); Fletcher also crucially departs from L’Astrée—in which Isidore makes her husband vow to avenge her on Valentinian after the rape and remains alive long enough to rejoice at the sight of the emperor’s gory corpse—in having Lucina die of grief, shame, guilt, and fear as soon as she enters her house after taking her last leave of her husband. Overwhelmed by the unbearable tangle of such intense emotions, which she is shown as unable to control, she dies an offstage death “marked by silence and the lack of agency.”²⁰ Pace Suzanne Gossett, who argues that “The very silence reveals that the method of death is insignificant,” the manner of Lucina’s death seems in fact to take on especial consequence, insofar as she “is prevented, even in a Roman context, from actually striking the blow herself,” as Nancy Cotton Pearse notes.²¹ Not only is her will irrelevant before, during, and after the rape; even her death, planned in the form of that supreme act of self-will, suicide, turns out to be unassertive. In this sense, Lucina seems to fall short of Lucrece’s example, also by dint of the fact that there is no overthrow of absolute monarchy and establishment of a republican state in store for Rome at the close of the play. Lucina’s passivity only partly contrasts with the limited agency that Fletcher bestowed on Valentinian’s wife Eudoxa, who would indeed seem to outdo Lucina in managing to complement “female” qualities such as chastity and faithfulness with the “male” traits of assertiveness and rational planning, so that she might momentarily come across as being a glaring exception to the rule. As Gwynne Kennedy observes, Eudoxa “places herself beyond erotic desire and remains an exemplary faithful widow,” refusing to submit herself to Maximus; at the same time, as Eileen Allman argues, Eudoxa is not “confined to family, nor her virtue to chastity. Although she wishes for death, she does not commit suicide over her husband’s murder; neither does she run Gertrude-like into the arms of another man.”²² Finally, Eudoxa takes action and responsibility and upstages

 Hila, “‘Justice Shall Never Heare Ye,’” 750.  Fletcher, Valentinian, 3.1.57.  Loughlin, Hymeneutics, 164.  Gossett, “‘Best Men are Molded out of Faults,’” 308; Pearse, Chastity Plays, 155.  Kennedy, “Gender and the Pleasures of Revenge,” 158; Allman, Jacobean Revenge Tragedy, 125.

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Maximus, thus proving to be “more manly than the revenger.”²³ Fletcher’s desire to make Eudoxa more “masculine” than his sources may have suggested is substantiated by a couple of deviations from the sources. First, as Marco Mincoff points out, “the manner in which she is forced to marry her husband’s murderer is passed over, whereas for D’Urfé it is of cardinal importance.”²⁴ Second, while in the sources Eudoxa enlists the help of the Vandal King Genseric to take revenge on Maximus, Valentinian does not follow this narrative, with Eudoxa taking matters into her own hands instead. And yet, notwithstanding Fletcher’s ostensible effort to enlarge Eudoxa’s “manly” role, at the same time the impact of her actions is significantly curtailed by other dramatic choices. First, she appears on stage in just three scenes in Act 5, and never alone; second, Fletcher has her remain silent “regarding her personal motives for revenge” in order to “keep her chaste and properly exemplary”; third, coming off as more manly than Maximus does not exactly proves to be a major achievement in light of Fletcher’s characterization of Maximus as progressively emasculated by his inability to govern himself and his urges; finally, and most importantly, even though Eudoxa’s capacity to take action does in part challenge the maleness-authority nexus that lies at the foundations of Roman society, the play nevertheless “does not end with gynecocracy,” and Rome’s power conspicuously “remains in the hands of men”: Eudoxa’s revenge, despite punishing Maximus, does not set in motion any actual political revolution.²⁵ In other words, as active and assertive as a Roman woman can be, Fletcher seems to suggest, only temporarily can she “assume male voice and occupy male space.”²⁶ Revealingly, Valentinian never extols Eudoxa in relation to any ancient Roman exemplum. This makes her stand out in a play that, as Hila points out, is profoundly informed by “a cyclical view of history based on the premise that political roles and beliefs determine individual behaviour, rather than vice versa… . Lucina plays Lucrece; Valentinian retraces the footsteps of Nero and Caligula; Maximus follows the example set by Valentinian” rather than the one set by Lucrece’s husband Collatine.²⁷ The Eudoxa narrative in the play in fact resembles a non-Roman story, that of Sinorix and Camma. As Pearse remarks, “When Sinorix murdered Camma’s husband in order to be able to marry

 Allman, Jacobean Revenge Tragedy, 127.  Mincoff, “Fletcher’s Early Tragedies,” 72.  Kennedy, “Gender and the Pleasures of Revenge,” 159; Allman, Jacobean Revenge Tragedy, 129.  Allman, Jacobean Revenge Tragedy, 118.  Hila, “‘Justice Shall Never Heare Ye,’” 749.

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her, Camma murdered the villain on her wedding day. For this deed she was frequently extolled as an exemplum of wifely loyalty”; in addition, at the end of Valentinian the soldiers honor Eudoxa as a “saint,” much as Camma was honored.²⁸ That Fletcher has Eudoxa acclaimed at the end of the tragedy as “righteous,” “a piece of justice,” “virtuous,” and “a saint” seems intended to foreground feminine rather than masculine traits; besides, such a glorification brings Eudoxa closer to Lucina.²⁹ As a matter of fact, Eudoxa is not alone in being hailed as a saint in Valentinian; Lucina is viewed as even superior to a “saint” before she is raped.³⁰ These associations cumulatively contribute to reinforcing the idea of passivity associated with these Roman women by subtly hinting at the Catholic saints, traditionally viewed as powerful symbols of passive resistance and heroism, in a not uncommon instance of early modern backand-forth slippage between ancient and Renaissance Rome. Significantly, too, the last lines of the play are spoken by the army officer Afranius, a man, and not by Eudoxa, who remains silent after unfolding the reasons why she decided to murder Maximus and leaving it to the men to determine whether “I have done well, or ill.”³¹ All in all, what seems to emerge rather clearly from a scrutiny of these female Roman characters is that Fletcher appears to have found the women of ancient Rome hardly adequate for the development of his ideal “masculine” female characters, so much so that when he decides to endow Roman women with a certain degree of agency he ends up either resorting to a non-Roman model (Camma for Eudoxa) or casting their actions in a negative light (Ardelia, Phorba, and Aurelia). Such inadequacy becomes even more apparent when the Roman women are compared with the three non-Roman women having important roles in Fletcher’s Roman plays, all of whom prove to be more “masculine” than their Roman counterparts. In The False One, Cleopatra is such “an actively decisive force in determining Caesar’s path of temptation, fall and regeneration” that she finally manages “to rise to the role of Caesar’s deuteragonist.”³² During the siege of the palace toward the end of the play, Cleopatra emerges as able to “stand unmov’d,” “and / With a masculine constancy deride / Fortunes worst malice,” displaying dignity, courage, and nobility in the face of potential death and rising as

    

Pearse, Chastity Plays, 156; Fletcher, Valentinian, 5.8.116. Fletcher, Valentinian, 5.8.111, 112, 114, 116. Fletcher, Valentinian, 1.1.54. Fletcher, Valentinian, 5.8.109. Lovascio, “She-Tragedy,” 180, 168.

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a positive example that infuses courage in her sister.³³ In addition, she does not even shed tears at the view of her brother Ptolemy’s mangled corpse, because only “common women doe so.”³⁴ More importantly, it is Cleopatra who prompts Caesar to regain his masculinity after being feminized by lust and luxury in the first part of the play, thereby making his victory against the Egyptian rebels possible; moreover, not only does she showcase, unlike Eudoxa, her ability to play a decisive role in the political arena to the end in ultimately obtaining what she wanted all along, i. e., “The Crowne of Egypt”; she also demonstrates, unlike Lucina, full control over her own body, in that she deliberately sleeps with Caesar for political gain: “though I purchase / His grace, with losse of my virginity, / It skills not, if it bring home Majesty.”³⁵ Delphia is not merely the eponymous character in The Prophetess, she is its veritable puppeteer. Her agency and dominance are repeatedly foregrounded throughout the play: she determines Dioclesian’s rise to emperor and then makes him realize that being such is not so desirable after all; she seeks revenge on behalf of Drusilla rather than for herself; she protects Dioclesian’s choice of a humble life by using her magic to thwart Maximinian and Aurelia’s final assault.³⁶ And even though, as McMullan observes, “until the final act . . ., Delphia is at best a figure of moral ambivalence,” she ultimately imparts positive moral teachings by exposing ambition, vice, and betrayal, while simultaneously making Dioclesian come to appreciate values such as loyalty, gratitude, and mercy; Dioclesian, as Molly Hand remarks, then “passes them along to Maximinian, and so forth, in a great chain of reform and redemption.”³⁷ Such a capacity for redeeming powerful Roman generals puts Delphia on a par with The False One’s Cleopatra, thereby creating a stark contrast with Aurelia’s negative influence on Maximinian; even more significantly, such a high degree of dominance and agency seems to be dependent on a characterization that, as Hand notes, evidently “incorporate[s] essential characteristics of the male magician figure,” making Delphia come off as a “Descendant of Prospero and Faustus.”³⁸ Hence, there is indeed at least a “masculine” woman who manages to determine the political trajectory of the male-dominated Roman political world in the Fletcher canon, but she is a foreign sorceress.

     

Fletcher, False One, 5.4.15, 17– 19. Fletcher, False One, 5.4.137. Fletcher, False One, 5.4.208, 1.2.104– 6. Fletcher and Massinger, Prophetess, 5.4.103 – 20. McMullan, Politics of Unease, 184; Hand, “‘You Take No Labour,’” 174. Hand, “‘You Take No Labour,’” 170.

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Although Bonduca is unlike either Cleopatra or Delphia in her being eventually unsuccessful in political and military terms (which partly gets her close to Eudoxa) as well as in her being overshadowed by her cousin Caratach in dramatic ones, she indisputably exhibits over four out of five acts of the play (unlike Eudoxa, who only appears in the final act of Valentinian) those “masculine” traits of agency and assertiveness that are hardly identifiable in the Roman women of the Fletcher canon. The play has Bonduca mention her former victories against the Roman army (“Twice we have beat ’em”), and even though she finally succumbs, there lingers no doubt that she did pose a significant threat to the world of heroic male values and that she was admirable and worthy of the male warriors’ respect: “She was truly noble, and a Queen,” comments Suetonius after her death.³⁹ Bonduca’s agency finds another (barbaric) outlet outside the battlefield in her instructing her daughters to torture their Roman prisoners (“Come, hang ’m presently … . Torment ’em wenches”) and a final instantiation in her suicide during the Romans’ siege of the Britons’ fort, through which Bonduca avoids the humiliation of capture and triumph, and also appropriates a typical Roman fashion, which is all the more significant when viewed against Valentinian’s Lucina’s failure to take her own life.⁴⁰ Cleopatra, Delphia, and Bonduca evidently display superior dynamism, initiative, assertiveness, vitality, and complexity as compared to the Roman women of the canon, who never really manage to establish separate identities of their own, dependent as they are on patriarchal values and male gazes, their roles being limited to those of wives, widows, or prostitutes. More than examples of chastity, virtue, or corruption, these non-Roman women wield actual power and accomplish actions that have significant bearings upon reality. And even though they may either be ultimately defeated by male power (Bonduca) or cooperate with it for positive ends (Delphia and Cleopatra, as opposed to Aurelia), each vies for preeminence with her male co-protagonist (Caratach, Dioclesian, and Caesar). The agency of the foreign Cleopatra, Delphia, and Bonduca in the Roman plays ends up further highlighting the lack of it in the Roman women, thus fostering the impression that there may be, as it were, something amiss in being a Roman woman in the Fletcher canon. Skepticism as to the value system encoded by Roman female models also apparently seeps from the allusions and appeals to Roman paragons that recur so frequently across the canon, their largest share pointing to exempla

 Fletcher, Bonduca, 1.1.12, 4.4.156.  Fletcher, Bonduca, 2.3.1, 16, 4.4.134– 53.

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drawn from the history of the Roman republic and especially to Lucrece.⁴¹ Whereas some—possibly most—of these allusions, as Pearse remarks, are deployed by Fletcher to compare his heroines (the majority of whom are “wives … or troth-plight wives”) “explicitly and implicitly to classical archetypes” as a way to “glorify these heroines” or, adds McMullan, even “to authorize their activities,” in several places of the canon it is possible to discern what Jocelyn Catty describes as “an equally strong tendency to undermine [those same exempla] through subversive rewriting,” which makes them actually convey a palpable sense of unease as for their currency and validity.⁴² Significantly, it is the Lucrece narrative that is most often turned topsy-turvy; in particular, the rewritings tend to focus on the issue of Lucrece’s consent to sex with Sextus Tarquin, with Lucrece’s resistance being construed as either a sign of coyness or a stratagem to increase male desire, in line with early modern assumptions concerning insatiable female sexual voracity. In Fletcher’s The Triumph of Death (1613 – 19), the villain Lavall, burning with desire for the chaste Gabriella, declares he will ravish her “like lustie Tarquin / Turn’d into flames with Lucrece coy denyals”; rather than an act of violence against Lucrece, Tarquin’s rape is refashioned as actually encouraged by her coyness, in a tendentious exploitation of the all-too-familiar “no-means-yes” topos.⁴³ Turning to the results of the attack rather than the feigned modesty that allegedly prompted it, the old bawd Cassandra tries (unsuccessfully) to convince the beautiful and chaste Evanthe, the queen’s waiting-woman, to sleep with King Frederick in Fletcher’s A Wife for Month (1624): Had Lucrece e’re been thought of, but for Tarquin? She was before a simple unknowne woman, When she was ravisht, she was a reverent Saint; And do you think she yeelded not a little? And had a kinde of will to have been re-ravisht?⁴⁴

In this version, then, Lucrece liked intercourse with Tarquin so much that she wanted to have another go: Cassandra overturns the story to the point of transforming that great archetype of chastity into an incentive to lust and constructing rape not just as a claim to renown and honor, but as a path to sanctity.

   

Pearse, Chastity Plays, 151– 90. Pearse, Chastity Plays, 228; McMullan, Politics of Unease, 166; Catty, Writing Rape, 94. Fletcher and Field, Four Plays, 6.92– 93. Fletcher, A Wife for a Month, 4.3.40 – 44.

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Bonduca’s elder daughter proposes a very similar reading. During their last stand against the Romans who are besieging their stronghold, she cries out to the assailants: “your great Saint Lucrece / Di’d not for honour; Tarquin topt her well, / And mad she could not hold him, bled.”⁴⁵ Lucrece is again referred to as a saint, but her sanctity is immediately called into question by her allegedly unrestrainable desire to keep Tarquin for herself after their encounter, a reading that identifies in her a desperately addictive enjoyment to his sexual prowess: once more, the emblem of chastity becomes a lustful whore. These depictions of Lucrece are not so unlike the one Oriana ironically provides in Fletcher’s The Wild Goose-Chase (1620 – 21) when De Gard recommends more discretion about her love for Mirabel to protect herself from the people’s opinion. Fiercely ranting against the people, Oriana claims that, if they drink enough, they’ll swear Lucretia Died not for want of power to resist Tarquin, But want of pleasure that he stayed no longer; And Portia, that was famous for her piety To her loved lord, they’ll face ye out, died o’ th’ pox.⁴⁶

Exploiting once again the image of an insatiable Lucrece dying from insufficient sexual satisfaction and adding to the mix the vision of an unfaithful, syphilitic Portia, Oriana’s reply both “foreground[s] the implicit violence of popular male attitudes to women” and suggests the instability of these exempla together with the dangers of applying them across different historical periods.⁴⁷ In an early modern context, not even the exemplum of Lucrece can stop the “people” from formulating judgments on women that project onto history their own expectations as a way more readily to inscribe them in the patriarchal order: if all women are insatiable strumpets, then even Lucrece and Portia must have been horny harlots, and history is in need of rewriting. Ironically, when Lucrece’s chastity is taken as a paragon in Francis Beaumont and Fletcher’s Cupid’s Revenge (1606 – 1611), it is actually used as a term of comparison speciously to praise the lascivious Bacha; as Prince Leucippus, who has already slept with her, tells King Leontius, his father, she is by heaven Of the most strict and blamelesse chastity That ever woman was: (good gods forgive me)

 Fletcher, Bonduca, 4.4.117– 19.  Fletcher, Wild-Goose Chase, 1.2.116 – 20.  McMullan, Politics of Unease, 168.

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Had Tarquin met with her, she had been kild With a Slave by her ere she had agreed.⁴⁸

In this case, the Lucrece exemplum is deprived of any ethical valence and becomes a mere instrument for sophistry. Roman female exempla, these allusions would cumulatively seem to suggest, are no longer untouchable; incorporated as they are in the early modern discourses of misogyny, patriarchy, and politics, any instances of their application to the present should be at least viewed with suspicion. To be sure, as Catty points out, all these rewritings “are made through the voice of a particular character”; nevertheless, they do seem to contribute to destabilizing and undermining the validity and meaning of the value system encoded in the traditional images of exemplary Roman women.⁴⁹ Among the allusions to Lucrece just surveyed, one also referenced Portia, known to the early modern era as an exemplum of wifely loyalty to Marcus Brutus, the leader of the conspiracy that killed Julius Caesar. Portia is especially relevant to the present discussion, in that she serves as a paragon for Juliana in The Double Marriage (1620 – 23), a play by Fletcher and Massinger set in Naples, the plot of which is based on two of Seneca the Elder’s Controversiae. ⁵⁰ Although other female characters in the Fletcher canon may arguably be viewed as reenacting, to various extents, Roman models in non-Roman contexts—such as Merione in Fletcher, Massinger, and Nathan Field’s The Queen of Corinth (1616 – 19) and Sophia in Fletcher, Massinger, and (probably) Field’s Rollo, or The Bloody Brother (1617– 20)—Juliana is a more interesting character to consider in the remit of this chapter, inasmuch as she is possibly the non-Roman character in the entire canon that is most explicitly, closely, and programmatically modeled against the background of a Roman exemplum. ⁵¹ To be more precise, however, Fletcher and Massinger do not just refer to the historical exemplum; they also have in mind Shakespeare’s appropriation of that exemplum. This is clear from the very first scene of the play, which reenacts the well-known orchard conversation between Brutus and Portia in Julius Caesar, with Juliana even mentioning Brutus by name to extol the patriotic endeavor to purge one’s country of a

 Beaumont and Fletcher, Cupid’s Revenge, 2.2.156 – 60.  Catty, Writing Rape, 99.  On the relationship between The Double Marriage and the Controversiae, see Waith, Pattern of Tragicomedy, 204; Curran, “Declamation and Character,” 92– 93, 94– 96, 99 – 101, 106 – 8.  On Merione, see Pearse, Chastity Plays, 156 – 63; Gossett, “‘Best Men are Molded out of Faults,’” 316 – 17; Loughlin, Hymeneutics, 104– 7, 121– 38; Curran, “Declamation and Character,” 103 – 5. On Sophia, see S. Clark, Sexual Themes, 114– 16; Curran, “Roman Imperial Character,” 334– 35.

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tyrant.⁵² Daniel Morley McKeithan has duly noted the similarities between the two scenes, but it is the differences that chiefly seem to matter in this case.⁵³ Although early moderns often extolled Portia as a model of constancy and fortitude, Shakespeare’s character is in fact not so steadfast and strong. As Julia Griffin points out, Shakespeare “shows her in a state of panic while Brutus is en route to the Senate (2.4); in this scene—almost ignored by critics, and often cut in performance—she appeals for constancy and laments ‘how weak a thing / The heart of woman is!’”⁵⁴ In addition, she “dies, not out of grief for her husband’s death … but out of sickness and panic … : Portia, in this account, is ‘distract’—the word used for the desperate Titus Andronicus, Ophelia and King Lear: crazy.”⁵⁵ It is this version of Portia that Fletcher and Massinger especially want the audience to keep in mind at the outset of The Double Marriage; as a matter of fact, as Pearse observes, “The suggestions of Julius Caesar in [the first] scene are so many that it will arouse in the audience a strong expectation that Juliana will behave like Shakespeare’s Portia and, through nervousness and curiosity, teeter on the edge of revealing her husband’s plans.”⁵⁶ In fact, the play defies any expectations the audience may have. Unlike Portia, who feels the necessity to ask Brutus “Think you I am no stronger than my sex, / Being so father’d, and so husbanded?,” Juliana does not need the authority of any male figures to vouch for her own strength.⁵⁷ Unlike Portia, Juliana does not have to hurt herself in order to convince her husband Virolet to share his plans; he does so because he is extremely impressed with the extent to which she exceeds the integrity of her sex (“Oh, more then woman! / And more to be belov’d”) as it emerges from her willingness even to renounce him if it is for the general good; as he exclaims after she leaves the stage just before the conspirators’ entry, “Such a Masculine spirit, / With more than womans vertues, were a dower / To waigh down a Kings fortune.”⁵⁸ Unlike Portia, who laments “How hard it is for women to keep counsel,” Juliana proves not to be “leaky” at all: Virolet wonders “can I finde out / A Cabinet, to lock a secret in, / Of equall trust to thee?”; she even resists torture and refrains from revealing her husband’s secret to the tyrant Ferrand; and, as Cyrus Hoy points out, “Like

 Fletcher and Massinger, Double Marriage, 1.1.140.  McKeithan, Debt to Shakespeare, 167– 69.  Griffin, “Portia from Antiquity to the English Renaissance Stage,” 36; Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 2.4.40 – 41.  Griffin, “Portia from Antiquity to the English Renaissance Stage,” 36 – 37.  Pearse, Chastity Plays, 172.  Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 2.1.295 – 96.  Fletcher and Massinger, Double Marriage, 1.1.150 – 51, 181– 83.

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Dorothea in [Thomas Dekker and Massinger’s] The Virgin Martyr, she tires the executioners, and the patience with which she bears her sufferings reduces her tormentors to a state of impotent frustration, as the stoic endurance of the tortured senators does Caesar in [Massinger’s] The Roman Actor.”⁵⁹ On the rack, Juliana endures a physical pain that must be much more intense than that produced by a self-inflicted wound in the thigh and is even deprived of her ability to bear children in the process. Unlike Portia, as Ira Clark observes, “Juliana actively plots with Virolet” and forcefully encourages him to action: “O may it [you sword] / Peirce deep into this Tyrants heart, and then / When you return bath’d in his guilty bloud, / I’le wash you cleane with fountains of true joy.”⁶⁰ Unlike Portia, Juliana is able to suppress “Weake womens fear” in order to take action and stab the man she thinks is her husband’s enemy Ronvere.⁶¹ Finally, unlike Portia, Juliana does not commit suicide in her husband’s absence, and is in fact as constant as to refuse to kiss Virolet even after he is free from his obligations to Martia: as Pearse remarks, “the scene is incredibly ingenious in presenting the only possible temptation to the chastity of such an exemplary lady as Juliana,” which seems to suggest that “Fletcher evidently intended to show that a woman who could display extraordinary fortitude under torture would be as extraordinarily chaste,” with a view to “creating an exemplum of womanly behavior that exceeds the precedents of ancient [hi]story,” in that Juliana even “patiently gives up her husband to her rival.”⁶² And yet, it is impossible to ignore that Juliana, as Ira Clark points out, ultimately sacrifices herself “for the honor of public masculine pride,” thereby exhibiting “the epitome of a norm of conventional feminine excellence.”⁶³ In other words, the play seems to suggest that, as Sandra Clark argues, “manliness in a woman is admirable” when “it overgoes what is naturally womanly” only as long as “it supports rather than challenges male prerogatives, and a male-centred concept of virtue,” and “is therefore non-threatening to the accepted hierarchy of male-female relations.”⁶⁴ Even though brought to its utmost perfection and lifted out from a more restrictive Roman context, the Roman paradigm still displays significant limitations: Juliana out-Portias Portia and in so doing explodes the passive Roman paradigmatic ideals of constancy, fortitude, loyalty,

 Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 2.4.9; Fletcher and Massinger, Double Marriage, 1.1.151– 53; Hoy, “Massinger as Collaborator,” 65.  I. Clark, Moral Art, 192; Fletcher and Massinger, Double Marriage, 1.1.171– 74.  Fletcher and Massinger, Double Marriage, 5.2.43.  Fletcher and Massinger, Double Marriage, 4.3.157– 212; Pearse, Chastity Plays, 173 – 75.  I. Clark, Moral Art, 194.  S. Clark, Sexual Themes, 74, 76.

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and chastity, which plainly emerge as truly admirable and functional only with a view to stoically meeting the suffocating demands of a strongly patriarchal society. Impeccable as they are, Juliana’s virtues are fundamentally passive and are accordingly praised as a form of saintly martyrdom (“what new Martyr heaven has begot, / To fill the times with truth”), which cannot but stress her passivity: willing even to sacrifice her biological femininity, Juliana becomes barren as a result of the tortures.⁶⁵ Furthermore, her only “real” action turns out to be disastrously mistaken: she kills the man she believes is her husband’s worst enemy Ronvere, but he is actually Virolet himself disguised. Besides, Juliana’s death brings her somehow closer to Valentinian’s Lucina, insofar as she dies of an overwhelming emotion after having been restrained from committing suicide by her husband’s command: male authority even prevents Juliana from deciding the manner and the time of her death.⁶⁶ The inadequacy of Roman female models is further underscored by the fact that Juliana sacrifices everything for a man, Virolet, who emerges as utterly undeserving of such a wife, being, in Pearse’s words, “one of those Fletcherian heroes who are fated and impotent in all their attempts at positive action.”⁶⁷ His very name seems to imply that his virility is at least up for discussion. In Renaissance French, virolet can mean “young man” or even “penis”; besides, if “vir-” is taken as meaning “man,” and “-let” is taken as a diminutive suffix, the obvious implication would be that Vir-o-let is “a little man”; moreover, when used with adult persons, the “-let” diminutive tends to be belittling, to connote paltriness and to convey disdain.⁶⁸ And even if one sees Virolet as “a well-meaning man torn apart whenever called upon to decide something,” as John E. Curran, Jr. does, they still need to acknowledge that he is “weak … in comparison to Juliana,” which exactly seems to be the point in this case.⁶⁹ With regard to the frequent recurrence of strong, “masculine” female characters in the plays of the Fletcher canon, Lucy Munro provides an important caveat. She remarks that Fletcher is sympathetic to the plight of women caught within patriarchal structures, but he is not a twenty-first century feminist, and it is unrealistic to expect him to be able to imagine a realistic alternative to these structures… . A temporary inversion of gender roles is possible, and may have beneficial long-term results, but it can only be temporary.⁷⁰

     

Fletcher and Massinger, Double Marriage, 3.3.125 – 26. Fletcher and Massinger, Double Marriage, 5.2.93 – 105. Pearse, Chastity Plays, 173. Rabelais, Œuvres, 3:486. Curran, “Declamation and Character,” 99 – 100. Munro, “Introduction,” xv.

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The impression that one gains from the Roman plays in the canon is that the Roman women are never allowed to take even that short glimpse of a temporary inversion of roles, caught up as they are, for all their exemplarity, in an excessively passive fulfillment of their fixed roles as mothers, wives, widows, saints, or whores. In the Roman plays, the hierarchy of gender roles is never as destabilized as elsewhere in Fletcher, and the audience hardly ever witnesses that “theatrical triumph of witty women over misogynist men” that Kathleen McLuskie sees as typical of many plays in which Fletcher had a hand; when this occurs, what the audience sees is at best the success of non-Roman characters such as Delphia and Cleopatra.⁷¹ Female power lies or comes from outside Rome in a sort of inverted penetration; if Roman masculinity is in crisis in Fletcher’s Roman world (as the “feminized” or unconfident depictions of Valentinian, Caesar, Maximus, and Dioclesian would seem to suggest), so is femininity, and the “masculine” qualities that would make Roman women assertive and dominant rather than mere paragons of constancy, self-sacrifice, and chastity are transferred onto non-Roman women as a way to put this situation into even sharper focus: the women who at least collaborate decisively with powerful Roman men, namely Delphia and Cleopatra, are patently not Roman. The only Roman woman who does, Aurelia, cynically pursues selfish goals. Even the rhetorical skills of these Roman women are presented as either limited or ineffectual. There is no Volumnia in Fletcher’s Roman world. Apart from Lucina, the case of Rollo’s Sophia is also particularly significant. Despite only achieving a temporary truce, her plead for reconciliation between her two sons, Rollo and Otto, is an admirably powerful specimen of rhetoric, which tellingly translates large chunks of Seneca’s Thebais. And it seems significant that Fletcher and his collaborators chose to adapt for the stage the story of the rivalry between the Roman emperors Antoninus (better known as Caracalla) and his younger brother Geta as reported in The history of Herodian (1556?) and then changed the setting to medieval France, changing the names of all the characters, so that even such an instance of powerful oratory as Sophia’s actually becomes that of a non-Roman woman. The plays considered therefore contrast markedly with the comedies and (most) tragicomedies of the Fletcher canon, which often manifest “the immense theatrical potential of women’s conflicted, combative relationships with men.”⁷² In fact, the Roman plays seem painfully to expose the limitations of Roman female exempla, which are exhibited as undependable and impracticable even in

 McLuskie, Renaissance Dramatists, 214.  Chalmers, Sanders, and Tomlinson, “Introduction,” 15.

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their most perfect realization outside a Roman context, that is, Juliana in The Double Marriage. The excessive passivity enshrined in these Roman virtuous female models seems to be presented with more than an ounce of skepticism. Just as with Fletcher’s choice of sources, which tends to privilege continental Renaissance publications over the classics and suggests little sense on his part of regarding classical texts with particular solemnity, these female exempla, the plays would seem to suggest, cannot be followed or adopted only by virtue of their antiquity; in fact, their very antiquity keeps them firmly stuck in the past, thereby making them partially unpalatable and, above all, hardly viable as guides for the present and the future.

Works Cited Allman, Eileen. Jacobean Revenge Tragedy and the Politics of Virtue. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999. Beaumont, Francis, and John Fletcher. Cupid’s Revenge, edited by Fredson Bowers. In The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, edited by Fredson Bowers, 10 vols., 2:315 – 448. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966 – 1996. Catty, Jocelyn. Writing Rape, Writing Women in Early Modern England: Unbridled Speech. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999. Chalmers, Hero, Julie Sanders, and Sophie Tomlinson. “Introduction” to Three Seventeenth-Century Plays on Women and Performance, 1 – 60. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006. Clark, Ira. The Moral Art of Philip Massinger. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1993. Clark, Sandra. The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher: Sexual Themes and Dramatic Representation. London: Routledge, 1993. Curran, John E., Jr. “Declamation and Character in the Fletcher-Massinger Plays.” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 23 (2010): 86 – 113. Curran, John E., Jr. “Fletcher, Massinger, and Roman Imperial Character.” Comparative Drama 43 (2009): 317 – 54. Finkelpearl, Philip J. Court and Country Politics in the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Fletcher, John. Bonduca. Edited by Cyrus Hoy. In The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, edited by Fredson Bowers, 10 vols., 4:149 – 259. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966 – 1996. Fletcher, John. A Wife for a Month. Edited by Robert Kean Turner. In The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, edited by Fredson Bowers, 10 vols., 6:355 – 482. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966 – 1996. Fletcher, John. The Tragedy of Valentinian. In Four Jacobean Sex Tragedies, edited by Martin Wiggins, 233 – 328. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Fletcher, John. The Wild-Goose Chase. Edited by Sophie Tomlinson. In Three Seventeenth-Century Plays on Women and Performance, edited by Hero Chalmers, Julie

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Sanders, and Sophie Tomlinson, 61 – 176. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006. Fletcher, John and Nathan Field. Four Plays, or Moral Representations, in One. Edited by Cyrus Hoy. In The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, edited by Fredson Bowers, 10 vols., 8:223 – 344. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966 – 1996. Fletcher, John and Philip Massinger. The Double Marriage. Edited by Cyrus Hoy. In The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, edited by Fredson Bowers, 10 vols., 9:95 – 220. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966 – 1996. Fletcher, John. The False One. Edited by Robert Kean Turner. In The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, edited by Fredson Bowers, 10 vols., 8:113 – 221. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966 – 1996. Fletcher, John. The Prophetess. Edited by George Walton Williams. In The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, edited by Fredson Bowers, 10 vols., 9:221 – 321 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966 – 1996. Gossett, Suzanne. “‘Best Men are Molded out of Faults”: Marrying the Rapist in Jacobean Drama.” English Literary Renaissance 14 (1984): 305 – 27. Griffin, Julia. “Cato’s Daughter, Brutus’s Wife: Portia from Antiquity to the English Renaissance Stage.” In The Uses of Rome in English Renaissance Drama, edited by Domenico Lovascio and Lisa Hopkins. Thematic issue. Textus. English Studies in Italy 29.2 (2016): 21 – 40. Hand, Molly. “‘You Take No Labour’: Women Workers of Magic in Early Modern England.” In Working Subjects in Early Modern English Drama, edited by Michelle Dowd and Natasha Korda, 161 – 76. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011. Hila, Marina. “‘Justice Shall Never Heare Ye, I Am Justice’: Absolutist Rape and Cyclical History in John Fletcher’s The Tragedy of Valentinian.” Neophilologus 91 (2007): 745 – 58. Hoy, Cyrus. “Massinger as Collaborator: The Plays with Fletcher and Others.” In Philip Massinger: A Critical Reassessment, edited by Douglas Howard, 51 – 82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Kennedy, Gwynne. “Gender and the Pleasures of Revenge.” In Feminism and Early Modern Texts: Essays for Phyllis Rackin, edited by Rebecca Ann Bach and Gwynne Kennedy, 152 – 71. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 2010. Loughlin, Marie H. Hymeneutics: Interpreting Virginity on the Early Modern Stage. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1997. Lovascio, Domenico. “She-Tragedy: Lust, Luxury and Empire in John Fletcher and Philip Massinger’s The False One.” In The Genres of Renaissance Tragedy, edited by Daniel Cadman, Andrew Duxfield, and Lisa Hopkins, 166 – 83. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019. McKeithan, Daniel Morley. The Debt to Shakespeare in the Beaumont-and-Fletcher Plays. Austin: privately printed, 1938. McLuskie, Kathleen. Renaissance Dramatists. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989. McMullan, Gordon. The Politics of Unease in the Plays of John Fletcher. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994. Mincoff, Marco. “Fletcher’s Early Tragedies.” Renaissance Drama 7 (1964): 70 – 94. Munro, Lucy. “Introduction” to The Tamer Tamed by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, vii– xxv. London: Methuen, 2010.

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Pearse, Nancy Cotton. John Fletcher’s Chastity Plays: Mirrors of Modesty. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1973. Rabelais, François. Œuvres. Edited by François-Henri-Stanislas de L’Aulnaye, 3 vols. Paris: Louis Janet, 1823. Shakespeare, William. Julius Caesar. Edited by David Daniell. Walton-on-Thames: Nelson, 1998. Waith, Eugene M. The Pattern of Tragicomedy in Beaumont and Fletcher. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952. Wiggins, Martin, in association with Catherine Richardson. British Drama, 1533 – 1642: A Catalogue, 11 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012 – 2020.

Cristina Paravano

“The Beauties of the Time”: Roman Women in Philip Massinger’s The Roman Actor Philip Massinger highly esteemed The Roman Actor (1626) and reputed it “the most perfect birth of my Minerva.”¹ The playwright’s praise of his own work proves to be fitting for a play whose protagonist is a votary of the goddess of wisdom, arts, and military strategy. The tragedy belongs to a group of plays featuring first-century Roman tyrants as protagonists, who “were well-known in Renaissance England, through the study of the lives and careers of authors such as Suetonius, Lucan and Seneca.”² It stands out from the over fifty extant vernacular Roman plays dating from 1585 to 1635 as the only one portraying the despotic Emperor Domitian (81– 96 CE).³ On the other hand, the reference to Minerva, an impending figure in the play, may also suggest the vital role played by female agency. Critical readings of the tragedy have largely focused on the play’s metatheatrical aspects, its reception, and its depiction of the state of the art of the English theatre in the 1620s. At the same time, much discussion has been devoted to the playwright’s use of classical sources to shape political analysis and to the implications embedded in the portrayal of a tyrant such as Domitian by setting Caroline London against imperial Rome.⁴ As Martin Butler remarks, the play’s classicism is “part of an urgent need to re-create the past in terms of the anxieties of the present.”⁵ Even though, more than any other playwright of his period, Massinger “presented some advance in women’s status in courtships, in marriages, and in social politics,” not much attention has been paid to the female characters in The Roman Actor, with the exception of Domitia, Caesar’s wife, whose relevance has been in-

 Massinger, “Dedication,” 21– 22.  Butler, “The Roman Actor and the Early Stuart Classical Play,” 139; Hopkins, The Cultural Uses of the Caesars, 131.  Chernaik, The Myth of Rome, 249.  See, e. g., Hartley, “Philip Massinger’s The Roman Actor and the Semiotics of Censored Theater”; Curran, “Fletcher, Massinger, and Roman Imperial Character”; Greenberg, “The Tyranny of Tragedy”; Dunnum, “‘Not to Be Altered’”; Rochester, Staging Spectatorship. Massinger’s tragedy is no longer read as an act of accusation or rebellion, or as a pièce a clef, in which the emperor and his Augusta stand for the royal couple, yet it brings to light parallels and differences between imperial Rome and 1620s England.  Butler, “The Roman Actor and the Early Stuart Classical Play,” 140. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501514203-010

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vestigated in some detail.⁶ This chapter purposes to reassess the role of women in the play and to discuss the strong impact of female agency on the public and political spheres. Massinger amplified the importance of female characters so much that the tragedy can be interpreted as his personal version of Domitian’s downfall, in which his Roman women are much more incisive than their historical counterparts. The tragedy was staged in 1626 at Blackfriars, whose audience included a higher percentage of women than the Globe; therefore, like other plays written for the new repertoire, it provides “a woman-centred perspective,” which anticipates a tendency that came to prevail in the 1630s.⁷ Far from being marginal or peripheral, the female characters in the play pivotally influence the forces at work: all of them, to varying degrees, are active participants in revenge plots as well as vehicles of Domitian’s ruin rather than mere victims. Massinger delineates his characters by relying on a rich body of writings, mainly by anti-Domitianic authors, whose accounts he blends dexterously.⁸ In terms of plot, while he is mainly indebted to Suetonius, whose De Vita Caesarum recounts the lives of the Caesars, Massinger also took material from Cassius Dio’s Historia Romana, Tacitus’s Historiae and Agricola, Juvenal’s Satires, Martial’s Epigrams, the anonymous Epitome de Caesaribus, and Plutarch’s Lives (with minor details also from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Horace’s Satires). Some of his borrowings come, however, from his immediate predecessors, so that the play “reads at times as if it were an anthology of best-loved moments of Jacobean drama.”⁹ Ben Jonson’s Sejanus His Fall (1603), whose lines resonate in The Roman Actor, stood as a model for Massinger, even though he did not share Jonson’s approach to history. For Jonson, the first requirement of a tragedy was “truth of argument,” which on some level makes his Sejanus “a piece of historiography.”¹⁰ Massinger’s treatment of the historical sources, on the contrary, is freer. He departed from them and altered “nearly everything that he borrows,” careless of historicity, thereby bending the historical accounts to his own dramaturgic needs so deftly that “no trace of patchwork is to be discovered.”¹¹ Massinger’s treatment of female characters seems to be indebted to Tacitus’s unfavorable rendition of imperial women. The Roman writer gave “women more space in his work than most ancient historians” but his portrayals were often based on

 I. Clark, The Moral Art of Philip Massinger, 72.  Gurr, The Shakespeare Company, 11.  For a detailed analysis of the sources of the play, see Briggs, The Influence of Jonson’s Tragedy; Gibson, “Massinger’s Use of His Sources.”  Goldberg, James I and the Politics of Literature, 203.  Jonson, Sejanus, “To the Reader,” 12– 14; Barish, “Introduction,” 4  Gibson, “Massinger’s Use of His Sources,” 61; Koeppel, ‟Philip Massinger,” 154.

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prejudices and negative stereotypes and influenced by rhetorical necessities.¹² Women are crucial in Massinger’s depiction of the emperor: the playwright magnified the role of the women Caesar had outraged as a way to demonstrate that his moral depravity made him unfit to rule. The playwright seems to be guided by strong moral principles in line with puritanical views; he emphasizes Caesar’s incontinency and inhumanity, thus presenting him as an “emperor who preached morality but practiced incest and murdered his opponents.”¹³ In 1.2, Massinger introduces the female protagonist of the play, Domitia, the wife of Senator Lamia. Domitian, blinded by his passion for her, orders her husband to divorce her. Parthenius, Caesar’s freedman, informs her of the emperor’s will. Far from feeling objectified like a mere sexual prey, Domitia sounds rather enthusiastic about her new condition: parthenius Think upon state, and greatness, and the honours That wait upon Augusta, for that name Ere long comes to you. Still you doubt your vassal; But when you have read this letter, writ and signed With his imperial hand, you will be freed From fear and jealousy. And I beseech you, When all the beauties of the earth bow to you, And senators shall take it for an honour, As I do now, to kiss these happy feet; When every smile you give is a preferment, And you dispose of provinces to your creatures, Think on Parthenius. domitia Rise. I am transported, And hardly dare believe what is assured here. The means, my good Parthenius, that wrought Caesar (Our god on earth) to cast an eye of favour Upon his humble handmaid?¹⁴

A. P. Hogan sees this scene as “a graceful and depraved version of the Annunciation.”¹⁵ Unlike the real humble handmaid, Domitia will turn out not to be an example of incomparable chastity. Depicted as a perverted Mary, she rather possesses the nature of Eve, “infected with aspirations for godhead by a tempter.”¹⁶ Like her historical counterpart, portrayed with hostility by anti-imperial     

Swindle, “Women in Tacitus,” 106. Jones, The Emperor Domitian, 19. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 1.2.6 – 21. Hogan, “Imagery of Acting,” 275. Clark, Moral Art, 72.

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propaganda, here Domitia experiences a ‟metamorphosis from dutiful wife to imperial whore,” and switches seamlessly between the two extremes.¹⁷ Aside from the name, she shares with Caesar the ability to be “a highly self-conscious performer” by playing the role she is assigned.¹⁸ Massinger cleverly brought her to life through the gaze of three male figures, thereby creating a tantalizing picture that challenges the spectator to decide who is telling the truth. All the men involved with her, Domitian, Lamia, and Paris, define her by comparison with other women from classical mythology, all turned into masks she can wear and which reflect traits of her personality. She possesses Helen of Troy’s beauty and unfaithfulness, Phaedra’s unrestrained desires, and Juno’s imperial regality. She is suitably associated with seductive Helen, whose name was “shorthand for infidelity,” when Lamia prophesies Domitian’s downfall at the hand of a “wanton Helen,” who is bound to betray him.¹⁹ The comparison is far more scathing in light of her betrayal with the actor Paris later in the play: my ravished wife may prove as fatal To proud Domitian, and her embraces Afford him in the end as little joy, As wanton Helen brought to him of Troy.²⁰

She must have been flattered by the analogy, as seems to be testified by the fact that later in the play she proudly claims to be Helen (4.2.79 – 82), a symbol of “women’s sexual power over men.”²¹ Interestingly, when she is equaled to another illustration of a sexually predatory character, Phaedra, Paris employs the same adjective chosen by Lamia, “wanton”: “Though you have a shape / Might tempt Hyppolitus, and larger power / To help or hurt than wanton Phaedra had.”²² In Domitian’s eyes, instead, his wife has acquired such a divine stature to be compared to Juno waiting to embrace Jupiter: “But when I look on / Divine Domitia, methinks we should meet / (The lesser gods applauding the encounter) / As Jupiter, the Giants lying dead / On the Phlegraean plain, embraced his Juno.”²³

      

Vinson, “Domitia Longina, Julia Titi, and the Literary Tradition,” 440. Thomson, ‟World Stage and Stage,” 416. Maguire, Helen of Troy, 104. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 1.2.106 – 9. Blondell, Helen of Troy, ix. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 4.2.69 – 71. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 1.4.64– 67.

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Unsurprisingly, Massinger deprives her of the virtues belonging to Roman matronae, such as constantia, sobrietas, integritas, pudicitia, and continentia, but depicts her as a reversal of the image of the chaste, obedient, and silent woman. “There was / A Lucrece once,” argues Aretinus, complaining about the decay of Roman values from the past.²⁴ What remains of the legacy of the glorious Roman past is the outrageous memory of Tarquin, still alive thanks to Domitian, who performs similar misdeeds. Domitia overshadows the other female characters, who lack her complexity and psychological depth in spite of being none the less recognizable and distinguishable as individuals. All the women characters are on stage without the men for a brief but significant moment in 1.4. The following exchange exhibits the power games within the group and the competitive relationships between the women. They represent the Tacitean idea of “aemulatio muliebris,” rivarly, assiduous competition, which is a constant concern of both Tacitus’s and Massinger’s imperial women.²⁵ To a keen eye, the presence of Domitia, Caenis, Julia, and Domitilla is intentionally unhistorical. Massinger here refashioned history in a bid “to achieve a satisfying aesthetic and thematic structure.”²⁶ Their presence without the interference of men provides a very peculiar picture of the emperor. Massinger multiplied the female points of view in a paradoxical historical perspective that might enable the audience to identify with the victims of Caesar’s abuses and to see different aspects of his personality.²⁷ In this scene, all the women want to secure their position within the social and political hierarchies. They seem to be pushing and shoving each other in order to get the best position to greet the emperor upon his arrival: Enter iulia, caenis, domitilla, [and] domitia. caenis Stand back. The place is mine. julia Yours? Am I not Great Titus’ daughter, and Domitian’s niece? Dares any claim precedence? caenis I was more: The mistress of your father, and in his right Claim duty from you. julia I confess you were useful To please his appetite. domitia To end the controversy—

   

Massinger, The Roman Actor, 2.1.132– 33. Tacitus, Annals 2.43.4; Rutland, “Women as Makers of Kings,” 16. Ronan, “Antike Roman,” 21. See the concept of identification in Rackin, Stages of History, 94.

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For I’ll have no contending—I’ll be bold To lead the way myself. domitilla You, minion! domitia Yes. And all ere long shall kneel to catch my favours. julia Whence springs this flood of greatness? domitilla You shall know Too soon, for your vexation, and perhaps Repent too late, and pine with envy when You see whom Caesar favours.²⁸

The first who claims preeminence is Caenis, in light of her status as mistress of a former emperor. Suetonius provided a favorable and sympathetic portrayal of this woman.²⁹ Respected for her faithfulness to Vespasian, who lived more uxorio with her after the death of his wife, she exerted considerable political influence, also acting as the emperor’s intermediary.³⁰ In the scene, she is erroneously identified as Titus’s mistress, a mistake that Massinger corrects later on (2.1.251). This is an example of how the playwright intentionally revised history to his own ends. This variation prepares the way for the conflict with Julia: it also highlights the initial lack of reciprocal support in the group and the male-oriented view of the female condition that leads Julia to see Caenis as a pleasure object, a contemptible concubine. Domitia abruptly settles the matter by declaring her supremacy. Caenis, Julia, and Domitilla will soon realize that they are to be “vassals to a proud woman” who has an unbridled appetite for power and sexual pleasures, thus combining Tamora’s libido dominandi and Cleopatra’s overpowering allure.³¹ It is Domitian himself who openly claims the superiority of his “divine Domitia” over the other women on two occasions. One of the emperor’s main mistakes is his inability to discriminate. He is like other domineering males in the Massingerian canon who “see Woman not individual women”: [To the women] The beauties of the time! Receive the honour To kiss the hand which, reared up thus, holds thunder; To you, ’tis an assurance of a calm. Julia, my niece, and Caenis, the delight

 Massinger, The Roman Actor, 1.4.1– 13.  Suetonius, Deified Vespasian 3.  See Cassius Dio, Roman History 66.14.3.  Massinger, The Roman Actor, 4.1.72; for the concept of libido dominandi see Augustine, The City of God 1.30.

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Of old Vespasian; Domitilla too, A princess of our blood.³²

Whereas Domitia is idolized, the others are downgraded and humiliated despite their influential social position when they are asked to kiss the emperor’s hand. Far from being an honor, such a request may be seen as an attempt to put them in their place, since people of inferior status were expected to kiss the hand of a superior. A similar episode is recounted by Suetonius: when Caenis, returning from Istria, offered to kiss Domitian’s lips as it was customary for close members of the family, he unexpectedly refused and put forth his hand instead.³³ If this was due to either “snobbish detachment, tinged with love and respect for the memory of his mother” or hubris, it is not clear which.³⁴ Both Julia and Domitilla, noble by birth, are thus compared to Caenis, since they remind Domitian of the Caesars before him, whose shadows loom large over his reign. Throughout the play, women are often defined ‟in terms of their connections to men” as daughters, wives, and mistresses: Julia, forget that Titus was thy father; Caenis and Domitilla, ne’er remember Sabinus or Vespatian. To be slaves To her, is more true liberty than to live Parthian or Asian queens. As lesser stars That wait on Phoebe in her full of brightness, Compared to her you are.³⁵

Domitian explains that their primacy and power belong to the past and they are now compelled to bow down to the new Augusta. Interestingly, Massinger defies the play’s historical chronotope by inserting an anachronism, a common practice in drama since Aeschylus. To define the role of women and their degree of submission to Domitia, he employs the term vassals, which evokes the pyramidal feudal system. He seems to acknowledge some dignity and a higher position than mere slaves, the definition he initially used. The three women were all victims of Domitian’s cruelties. While Caenis was publicly offended, the other two were sexually abused to varying degrees. In a conversation with Julia, Domitilla clarifies the degradation and violence they suffered:    

Edwards, Massinger’s Men and Women, 48; Massinger, The Roman Actor, 1.4.54– 59. Suetonius, Domitian 12.3. Southern, Domitian: Tragic Tyrant, 10. Kemp, Women in the Age of Shakespeare, 66; Massinger, The Roman Actor, 2.1.249 – 55.

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You are tender Of your own wounds, which makes you lose the feeling And sense of mine. The incest he committed With you, and publicly professed in scorn Of what the world durst censure, may admit Some weak defence, as being borne headlong to it But in a manly way to enjoy your beauties. … But poor I, That would not yield, but was with violence forced To serve his lusts, and in a kind Tiberius At Capri never practised, have not here One conscious touch to rise up my accuser, I in my will being innocent.³⁶

The historical accounts provide details about Domitian’s relationship with the three women. When his father Vespasian told Domitian to marry Julia, he refused because at that time, around 70 CE, he was conducting an illicit affair with Domitia Longina, still married to Aelius Lamia.³⁷ Years later, he entertained a passion for Julia, had her husband executed, and took her to live in the imperial palace. Anti-Domitianic writers such as Suetonius and Juvenal reported that she was forced to abort their child and died in the process in 89 CE, seven years before the assassination of Domitian.³⁸ Yet, this is likely to be a rumor spread by anti-imperial propaganda. Flavia Domitilla, on the contrary, was the daughter of Domitian’s sister. Her husband and she were both charged with atheism; while the former was executed, the latter was exiled to Pandataria (the ancient name of Ventotene, an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea) in 95 CE.³⁹ Her supposed rape by the emperor is the playwright’s invention, since none of the historians report it nor do they mention her involvement in the conspiracy to murder him. Nevertheless, she may stand for the many women mistreated by Caesar. Despite the historical inaccuracy, the presence of these women on stage plays a key role in the moral condemnation of the emperor and may be seen as an attempt on Massinger’s part to blacken the already hostile portrayal of Domitian handed down to posterity. The long scene in Act 2 confirms Domitia’s supremacy and definitely makes her stand apart from the other women. When she is compelled to sing in front of Senator Lamia, her former husband, to remind him of what he has lost, the em-

   

Massinger, The Roman Actor, 3.1.4– 10, 14– 19. See Cassius Dio, Roman History 66.3 – 4. Suetonius, Domitian 22; Juvenal, Satires 2.32– 33. Cassius Dio, Roman History 67.14.1– 2.

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peror calls for “an universal silence.”⁴⁰ This order stands as a warning for Lamia not to interrupt the performance with his protests, but it can also be applied to the other female characters, who are silenced while on stage with Domitian. While Domitilla, Julia, and Caenis are silent spectators of Domitia’s apotheosis, Caesar’s wife takes center stage. When singing before the emperor and Lamia, she becomes part of a triangle that foreshadows the one in Act 4 with the two Roman actors, Caesar and Paris. Her performance combines music and beauty, an irresistible pull for Lamia, even though she can only be heard. Her voice, loaded as a site of influence and power, evokes the endless duality between spiritual love and carnal lust, salvation and damnation. The episode also emphasizes the oxymoronic nature of Domitia who, like Pandora and Helen, bears the curse of the Hesiodean kalon kakon (beautiful evil): she sings like a mesmerizing siren, whose enchantment is lethal.⁴¹ Massinger did not include the words of her song since here what matters is the act of singing more than the content, as well as its effect on the male listeners and the audience.⁴² Actually, she is instrumental to the emperor’s revenge over Lamia, guilty of being the woman’s former husband. Far from providing relief, her rendition of the song increases tension in a scene that dramatizes a perverted moment of symbolic adultery. Lamia is in a tragic impasse, since his fate is sealed, however he reacts to Domitia’s song. The emperor will charge him with treason and have him executed whether he shows lustful appreciation for her as a singer or claims to be dumb to her attractiveness. Once the senator has been led off by a guard, the emperor reassures Domitia, who does not have to worry anymore about her “plurality of husbands.”⁴³ Domitian has not realized that the real threat to his marriage is not Domitia’s former husband but her uncontrolled appetite and her passion for drama, an interest she openly expresses. When the emperor asks her opinion about The Cure of Avarice, one of the three plays-within-the-play, he receives a surprisingly critical reply and a peculiar request. She provides an artistic judgment, expressing her dislike for an unoriginal play whose subject comes from Horace, Satire 2.3.82– 83. domitia For the subject, I like it not; it was filched out of Horace—

   

Massinger, The Roman Actor, 2.1.219. Hesiod, Theogony 585. Wong, Music and Gender, 36. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 2.1.242.

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Nay, I have read the poets…. Prithee, Caesar, For I grow weary, let us see to morrow Iphis and Anaxarete. caesar Anything, For thy delight, Domitia.⁴⁴

Her answer suggests that she has benefited from the literary education that was commonly enjoyed by women belonging to the elite (before being wife to a senator and an emperor, she was daughter to Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, a senator and general, as well as consul under Caligula). By laying emphasis on her education, Domitia stresses her high social position and the rights she may claim. Her dislike for the play may be based on her lack of interest for the moral and didactic tone of Horace’s satire. Domitia seems to be among other characters in early modern drama who are assiduous readers of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Nonetheless, unlike Innogen and Lavinia, who read the painful myth of Philomel’s rape, she prefers the story of the shepherd Iphis and the stone-hearted Anaxarete, which the Latin poet recounts in the form of a paraclausithyron with powerful sexual overtones.⁴⁵ Her choice is replete with ambiguity. On the one hand, she selects a mythological episode in which the female protagonist is not a victim of male abuse. Anaxarete is actually an active agent leading Iphis to self-destruction, thus suggesting a powerfully independent model of womanhood. On the other hand, she is turned into stone since she does not even feel pity when the shepherd commits suicide. This woman refuses to surrender to passion but resists, as Domitia never does. Massinger lays the basis for the resolution of the play when Stephanos asks for female intervention and encourages Julia and Domitilla to avenge Domitian’s wrongs, since Rome expects more “than womanish complaints after such wrongs” from “Titus’ daughter and his uncle’s heir.”⁴⁶ The sudden rise in favor of Domitia and her many tyrannical acts of superbia impact on the dynamics within the group, so that rivalry gives way to mutual support and mercy, together with a shared thirst for revenge against a cruel despot and his proud Augusta. Domitia exerts her influence on the other women by compelling them to duties appropriate for ladies in waiting:

 Massinger, The Roman Actor, 2.1.409 – 11, 416 – 19.  Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.698 – 761.  Massinger, The Roman Actor, 3.1.25, 24.

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Oh, here’s Caenis. Enter caenis.

domitilla Whence come you? caenis From the empress, who seems moved In that you wait no better. Her pride’s grown To such a height that she disdains the service Of her own women, and esteems herself Neglected when the princesses of the blood On every coarse employment are not ready To stoop to her commands.⁴⁷

“References to Roman pride,” Clifford J. Ronan points out, “are omnipresent in English drama.”⁴⁸ Here the adjective proud and the noun pride are mostly associated to Domitia. She is described as “the proud empress,” “proud mistress,” and “proud Augusta,” all phrases that foreground both her hubris and her high social standing.⁴⁹ The opposition between the group and her is not a binary, black-and-white contrast, since the other women are neither loyal nor particularly virtuous. Their ideological stance is only seemingly Stoic. Their endurance of the emperor’s abuses is not due to either constantia or fortitudo, to Stoic moral values, or to a concern for Rome’s welfare, but to meager calculation. They are “unduly and inappropriately obsessed with power” and they protest only at the loss of their own prestige and influence, while Domitia stands as the emperor’s new favorite.⁵⁰ Therefore, they scrutinize their enemy looking for a weak point, her fatal flaw. They find it in the empress’s infatuation with Paris, the player who will play Iphis: “so taken / She is with Paris the tragedian’s shape, / That is to act a lover, I thought once / She would have courted him.”⁵¹ Intoxicated by her power, Domitia starts conflating theater and reality. In a situation explicitly reminiscent of Hamlet, she claims to have instructed the actors and co-authored the tragedy they are going to perform, thus displaying her literary abilities and suggesting she is playing the role of a modern-day Dramaturg. ⁵² She also selects the players, forcing Caesar’s cousin to play Anaxarete in a bid “to humble / The pride of Domitilla that neglects me,” and then criticizing her by claiming that “There’s her true nature, / No personated scorn.”⁵³ Just as Caesar used her sing      

Massinger, The Roman Actor, 3.1.78 – 86. Ronan, “Antike Roman,” 110. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 3.1.49, 3.2.111, 4.1.56. Santoro L’Hoir, “Tacitus and Women,” 5. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 3.1.91– 94. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3.2.1– 43. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 3.2.139 – 40, 246 – 47.

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ing performance to torture Lamia, Domitia exploits dramatic action to torment Domitilla. “[S]he calls [her] ‘Dwarf!’,” Domitilla complains.⁵⁴ Actually, Domitia uses the performance also as a way to ridicule the woman’s low stature. She gives her lines in which the woman has to deride her own height (“But thou could nourish any flattering hope / One of my height in youth, in birth and fortune, / Could e’er descend to look upon thy lowness?”), thereby inviting the spectators to “focus on the physicality of that body.”⁵⁵ Yet, there is strategy behind her decision, some method in her madness. While Caenis is presumably too old to play the part, Julia is too dear to the emperor, who deeply loved her, according to historiographical accounts. Domitilla, instead, was an easier target that could be hit without consequences. Nothing can be denied to the proud Augusta, as the emperor exclaims: “Anything / For thy delight, Domitia.”⁵⁶ Like the Danish prince, too absorbed by the fictional theatrical situation, Domitia interjects during the performance, breaking the dramatic illusion to comment on the events. Her observations show that the boundaries between fiction and real facts are too blurred for her to be able to make a distinction. This is far more evident when she reacts with horror at Paris’s fictitious suicide. Her disproportionate response arouses the emperor’s concern: “Why are you / Transported thus, Domitia? ’Tis a play; / Or grant it serious, it at no part merits / This passion in you.”⁵⁷ Interestingly, Domitia employs again the adjective “transported.” The same term recurs also earlier in the play (1.2.17) when she expresses her delight for her imminent marriage with Caesar and the resulting improvement of her social condition. This choice highlights her lack of Stoic temperantia or, as Seneca puts it, cupiditates refrenare, the capacity to restrain her own desires, and may suggest that she lacks self-control especially when she experiences vehement emotions, like the fright for the loss of the man she desires, even though only in the fictional space of drama.⁵⁸ In this scene, Massinger multiplied the female points of view, thus showing how women can shape the dramatic action from manifold angles: as performers, as members of the audience, and, more directly, as people, like Domitia, who “helped to produce the theatrical entertainments they are watching.”⁵⁹ Massinger’s emphasis on Domitia’s interest in drama and Domitilla’s performance in a private theatrical event at court, in which women were allowed to take part,

     

Massinger, The Roman Actor, 4.1.16. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 3.2.241– 43; McManus, Women on the Renaissance Stage, 99. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 2.1.118 – 19. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 3.2.280 – 84. See “Oportebat cupiditates refrenari,” in Seneca, Ad Lucilium 120.11. Allen Brown and Parolin, “Introduction,” 9

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may be a way to exhort and mold public opinion about a contemporary event that aroused much criticism. In 1626, when the play was first staged, Queen Henrietta Maria scandalized the court by performing the leading role in Honorat de Bueil, seigneur de Racan’s Arténice, the first masque in the reign of Charles I. The similarities between the two theatrical events are too blatant to be ignored. As the Florentine ambassador reported: She acted in a beautiful pastoral of her own composition, assisted by twelve of her ladies whom she had trained since Christmas. The pastoral succeeded admirably; not only in the decorations and changes of scenery, but also in the acting and recitation of the ladies—Her Majesty surpassing all the others.⁶⁰

While Arténice was Henrietta Maria’s “cultural manifesto,” Iphis and Anaxarete was Domitia’s.⁶¹ Curiously, Massinger’s play saw publication three years later, but “we cannot know to what, if any, extent the printed version reflects amendments made by Massinger to keep up with current events.”⁶² In a sense, the play prefigures the texts that targeted the queen in the 1630s, such as William Prynne’s Histriomastix (1632), which famously equated female performers with notorious whores. Even though the Queen’s influence over the English social, political and cultural life became more perceptible in the 1630s, we may presume that she started exerting it earlier on.⁶³ If the play was in any way supposed to “offer advice and guidance” to Charles I, it was possibly meant to provide recommendations to his queen consort too.⁶⁴ Domitia’s violent passion for Paris has not gone unnoticed. Headed by Aretinus, the three women decide to inform the emperor, apparently the only one still unaware of his wife’s unrestrained passion for Paris. Unlike other female characters in Massinger’s theater, who defy the silent role they have been assigned and publicly stand up, such as Camiola in The Maid of Honour (1621– 22) or Cleora in The Bondman (1623), Domitilla, Caenis, and Julia speak in front of Domitian only when supported by a man. They accept Aretinus’s proposition to bring a complaint to the emperor only when the man promises them to “ruin her, and raise you” by making them see the fall of their enemy, Domitia:

 Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 4:548 – 49.  Britland, Drama at the Courts, 52.  White, “Introduction,” 19.  See Britland, Drama at the Courts; Bailey, Staging the Old Faith; Tomlinson, “She That Plays the King.”  Sanders, Caroline Drama, 20.

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domitilla Were you serious To prove your accusation, I could lend Some help. caenis And I. iulia And I.⁶⁵

Their competitive relationship is turned into a supportive bond: they make a pact marking a female alliance that will be lethal to the emperor. After spying on Domitia and finding out about her meeting with Paris, they make Caesar witness a scene of seduction, very common on the early modern stage, even though in this case the roles are reversed. The love scene between the empress and the player Paris is a disturbing reversal of the rape of Lucrece. What is disconcerting is the rapid parable of her metamorphosis: from wife of Senator Lamia to revengeful and tyrannical virago, “unworthy / of the least spark of that diviner fire” that Caesar had conferred upon her.⁶⁶ She has become the emperor’s veritable alter ego as her name suggests. According to Rebecca W. Bushnell, Domitia “magnifies Domitian’s image as a tyrant and suggests the slipperiness of the gender categories used to establish that image.”⁶⁷ When she forces Paris to surrender to her will, Domitia assumes a despotic imperial tone worthy of Domitian, as if closeness to him had transformed her in a projection of him, an authentic second self: Thou must! Thou shalt! The violence of my passion knows no mean, And in my punishments and my rewards I’ll use no moderation.⁶⁸

Domitia displays a monstrous libido dominandi and an inability to channel her desires: her sudden and passionate verbal outburst seems to suggest the connection between free female speech and sexual voracity.⁶⁹ As Carol Thomas Neely observes, in the early modern period “women’s verbal self-assertion was almost invariably associated with sexual self-assertion and promiscuity.”⁷⁰ While in Shakespeare’s plays women, once married, are often silenced, or their role is strongly downsized, here it is Domitia’s marriage with the emperor that enables her to display a much more powerful voice to express her will and her sexual

     

Massinger, The Roman Actor, 4.1.96, 81– 83. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 4.1.124– 26. Bushnell, Tragedies of Tyrants, 178. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 4.2.79 – 82. Miller, “Hens should be served first,” 166. Neely, “Shakespeare’s Women,” 126.

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desire for Paris. Caesar, livid spectator of the scene, sees his aspiration to become a new Hector frustrated, finding himself as Menelaus: [Enter] caesar, aretinus, julia, domitilla, [and] caenis above. domitia As a testimony I am not scorned, kiss me. Kiss me again. Kiss closer. Thou art now my Trojan Paris, And I thy Helen. paris Since it is your will [They kiss.] caesar [Aside] And I am Menelaus. But I shall be Something I know not yet.⁷¹

There must be intentional mirroring in this scene, which relies on the same mythological imagery as Act 2 but draws opposite conclusions. If Domitia’s kiss turned the emperor into a new Hector (2.1.281– 85), now the kiss given to Paris transforms Domitian into a Menelaus thirsty for revenge. Massinger shows all his mastery in delineating the many nuances in the relationship of the imperial couple, exposing Domitian as weakened by his passion for Domitia. While the emperor’s reaction is immediate and violent (“What shall I name thee? / Ingrateful, treacherous, insatiate”), his wife does not show any sign of regret or fear nor does she ask for mercy.⁷² Caesar insists on her ingratitude, reminding his wife of the many privileges she has received and how he downplayed and submitted to her the other women, “these / Of mine own blood.”⁷³ When she finally breaks her “stubborn silence,” she blames the emperor for not restraining his lustful desires on her: “This. Thy lust compelled me / To be a strumpet, and mine hath returned it / In my intent and will, though not in act, to cuckold thee.”⁷⁴ “The activities of the imperial women,” Susan Fischler remarks, “became a standard category which authors used to evaluate the quality of emperors… . By definition, ‘good’ emperors had wives and mothers they could control, who never overstepped the boundaries set by convention.”⁷⁵ Domitia overcomes the limits set by her gender identity and her social standing: as a self-conscious siren, she is aware that she can mold the em-

    

Massinger, The Roman Actor, 4.2.101– 6. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 4.2.119 – 20. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 4.2.128 – 29. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 4.2.135, 136 – 38. Fischler, “Social Stereotypes and Historical Analysis,” 127.

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peror’s will “into what form she likes,” since Domitian is utterly enslaved to his lust and has no power over his wife.⁷⁶ Against all odds, Domitian unexpectedly shows clemency towards his wife, not only by sparing her life but also by forgiving her. Since this act of clementia is only due to his overwhelming obsession for Domitia, it does not include the other people involved. While Paris is murdered on stage by Caesar himself, Aretinus is put to death, and the other women are imprisoned and condemned to exile. Nevertheless, Domitia is not inclined to forgive the emperor for Paris’s murder or forget it, so she rejects his grace. She is determined to show the power she has over him: “my empire’s larger / Than thine”; she knows where his vulnerabilities lie and she hurts his self-esteem.⁷⁷ She denies his divine status of Lord and God and reminds him that to her he will always be second to Paris, despite the latter’s death. When Domitia leaves him scornfully (“So with all / Contempt I can, I leave thee”), he can but put her name on the proscription list and sign her death warrant. Domitia’s rebellion takes place under the impenetrable gaze of Minerva, whose statue is well visible on stage from the beginning of Act 5.⁷⁸ Taking advantage of the emperor’s moment of sleep, the ghosts of two senators put to death by Caesar appear and remove the statue, thus leaving him metaphorically unarmed and helpless. The removal of the effigy, the “spiritual sign” of his power, signals downfall.⁷⁹ Now Domitian has been definitively abandoned by all his women, both his family and his “sole protectoress,” Minerva.⁸⁰ Domitia further betrays Caesar by stealing the proscription list while the emperor is asleep. Those on the list, Parthenius, Domitia, Julia, Caenis, Domitilla, Stephanos, Sijeius, and Entellus gather to murder him. Despite their determination and resolution, the women are conscious that they cannot exact their revenge alone: if Domitia wishes she were “A man to give it action,” Domitilla claims she has “a spirit as daring / As hers that can reach higher.”⁸¹ Therefore, they leave the revenge to the men, thereby acknowledging it as “a masculine enterprise.”⁸² None the less, they are determined to play a part:

      

Massinger, The Roman Actor, 4.1.11. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 5.1.60 – 61. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 5.1.80 – 81. Rochester, Staging Spectatorship, 47. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 5.1.150. Massinger, The Roman Actor, 5.2.5, 6 – 7. Kennedy, “Gender and the Pleasures of Revenge,” 164.

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caesar Nay then, I am lost. Yet though I am unarmed I’ll not fall poorly. O’erthrows Stephanos. stephanos Help me! entellus Thus, and thus! [They stab Caesar.] sijeius Are you so long a-falling? caesar ’Tis done, ’tis done basely. Falls, and dies. parthenius This for my father’s death! domitia This for my Paris! julia This for thy incest! domitilla This for thy abuse Of Domitilla! These severally stab him. ⁸³

Even though the final stabs are from Stephanos, Sijeius, and Entellus, the other characters’ contribution is no less important in symbolic terms. Female revenge does not carry the political significance of regicide, but stands as personal vengeance. Massinger is careful to provide the conspirators with valid grounds for their actions: Parthenius takes his revenge for his father, whose murder may stand for all those who died unjustly, while Domitia, Julia Caenis, and Domitilla for the abuses suffered. As the stage directions make clear, they keep stabbing the emperor after he is dead. They rage against a corpse. Yet, their actions are emblematic of their retaliation on him for the mistreatment they suffered. Caenis, who is listed among the characters on stage, does not pronounce a single speech and is not directly involved in the murder. Compared to the others, her grievance is less unbearable; nonetheless, she is a silent member of the plot. Here Massinger, as Douglas Howard suggests, “insisted upon pursuing the moral consequences of revenge,” while leaving the political weight of the characters somehow aside.⁸⁴ Caesar pays for his crime as an immoral and cruel man more than for his strictly political choices as an emperor. After the murder of its leader, Rome has to face a new political dawn. The play questions the legitimacy of the murder of Domitian, a tyrannical ruler: “he was our prince, / However wicked,” as the First Tribune replies to the conspirators.⁸⁵ In the group, who will be punished later, responsibility falls first on

 Massinger, The Roman Actor, 5.2.70 – 75.  Howard, “Massinger’s Political Tragedies,” 126.  Massinger, The Roman Actor, 5.2.77– 78.

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Domitia, who was “the ground / of all these mischiefs.”⁸⁶ While her historical counterpart is innocent as she was not involved in the plot, Massinger turns her into an avenger blinded by Paris’s death. Caesar’s Augusta pays for her pride, her status as the emperor’s favorite, and her reckless influence on him. The Tacitean perspective dominating the play invests all the female characters. Each of them individually pursues a private goal, thus trying to reinforce her social role as both a Roman and a woman, but also manages to form a female alliance that is not based on familial duty or friendship but on their common hatred for Domitian. They prove to be avidae dominandi, like the ferocious Agrippina outlined by Tacitus in his Annals. ⁸⁷ The playwright’s powerful insight into the agency and mindset of women originates a nuanced portrayal, with more shadows than lights, with fewer moral values than those expected from Roman women in early modern England, and more concern for personal interests. Massinger challenged the traditional rendering of Roman women as brave and virtuous in a bid to suggest the political, social, and moral decline in his own times, in which he may have detected harbingers of the crisis that ultimately led to the civil war.

Works Cited Allen Brown, Pamela, and Peter Parolin. “Introduction.” In Women Players in England 1500 – 1660: Beyond the All-Male Stage, edited by Pamela Allen Brown and Peter Parolin, 1 – 21. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. Augustine. The City of God against the Pagans. Edited by B. Dombart and A. Kalb. Translated by George E. McCracken. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1957. Austern, Linda Phyllis. “‘Sing Againe Syren.’ The Female Musician and Sexual Enchantment in Elizabethan Life and Literature.” Renaissance Quarterly 42 (1989): 420 – 48. Bailey, Rebecca. Staging the Old Faith: Queen Henrietta Maria and the Theatre of Caroline England, 1626 – 1642. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009. Barish, Jonas A. “Introduction” to Sejanus His Fall by Ben Jonson, 1 – 24. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965. Bentley, Gerald Eades. The Jacobean and Caroline Stage. 7 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941 – 1968. Blondell, Ruby. Helen of Troy: Beauty, Myth and Devastation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Briggs, William Dinsmore. “The Influence of Jonson’s Tragedy in the Seventeenth Century.” Anglia 35 (1912): 277 – 337.

 Massinger, The Roman Actor, 5.2.84.  Tacitus, Annals 6.25.3.

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Britland, Karen. Drama at the Courts of Queen Henrietta Maria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Bushnell, Rebecca W. Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the English Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. Butler, Martin. “The Roman Actor and the Early Stuart Classical Play.” In Philip Massinger: A Critical Reassessment, edited by Douglas Howard, 139 – 70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Chernaik, Warren. The Myth of Rome in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Clark, Ira. The Moral Art of Philip Massinger. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1993. Clark, Ira. Professional Playwrights: Massinger, Ford, Shirley and Brome. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992. Curran, John E., Jr. “Fletcher, Massinger, and Roman Imperial Character.” Comparative Drama 43 (2009): 317 – 54. Dio, Cassius. Dio’s Roman History, translated by Ernest Cary and Herbert Baldwin Foster, 9 vols. London: Heinemann, 1914 – 1927. Dunnum, Eric. “‘Not to Be Altered:’ Performance’s Efficacy and Audience Reaction in The Roman Actor.” Comparative Drama 46 (2012): 517 – 43. Edwards, Philip. “Massinger’s Men and Women.” In Philip Massinger: A Critical Reassessment, edited by Douglas Howard, 39 – 49. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Fischler, Susan. “Social Stereotypes and Historical Analysis: The Case of Imperial Women at Rome.” In Women in Ancient Societies, edited by Léonie J. Archer, Susan Fischler, and Maria Wyke, 115 – 33. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994. Gibson, C. A. “Massinger’s Use of His Sources for The Roman Actor.” Journal of Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 15 (1961): 60 – 70. Goldberg, Jonathan. James I and the Politics of Literature: Jonson, Shakespeare, Donne, and Their Contemporaries. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. Greenberg, Marissa. “The Tyranny of Tragedy: Catharsis in England and The Roman Actor.” Renaissance Drama 39 (2011): 163 – 96. Gurr, Andrew. The Shakespeare Company: 1594 – 1642. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Hartley, Andrew James. “Philip Massinger’s The Roman Actor and the Semiotics of Censored Theater.” English Literary History 68 (2001): 359 – 76. Hesiod. Theogony, edited by M. L. West. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966. Hogan, A. P. “Imagery of Acting in The Roman Actor.” Modern Language Review 66 (1971): 273 – 81. Hopkins, Lisa. The Cultural Uses of the Caesars on the English Renaissance Stage. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Horace. Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica, edited and translated by H. Rushton Fairclough. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970. Howard, Douglas. “Massinger’s Political Tragedies.” In Philip Massinger: A Critical Reassessment, edited by Douglas Howard, 117 – 38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Jones, Brian W. The Emperor Domitian. London: Routledge, 1992.

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Jonson, Ben. Sejanus His Fall. Edited by Tom Cain. In The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, edited by David Bevington, Martin Butler, and Ian Donaldson, 7 vols., 2:212 – 391. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Juvenal. Juvenal and Persius [Satires]. Edited and translated by G. G. Ramsay. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1940. Kemp, Theresa D. Women in the Age of Shakespeare. Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2010. Kennedy, Gwynne. “Gender and the Pleasures of Revenge.” In Feminism and Early Modern Texts: Essays for Phyllis Rackin, edited by Rebecca Ann Bach and Gwynne Kennedy, 152 – 71. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 2010. Koeppel, Emil. “Philip Massinger.” In The Cambridge History of English Literature 6 (Part 2: The Drama to 1642), 160 – 88, edited by A. W. Ward and A. R. Waller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969. Maguire, Laurie. Helen of Troy: From Homer to Hollywood. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Massinger, Philip. The Roman Actor. Edited by Martin White. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. Miller, Naomi J. “Hens Should be Served First: Prioritizing Maternal Production in the Early Modern Pamphlet Debate.” In Debating Gender in Early Modern England, 1500 – 1700, edited by Cristina Malcolmson and Mihoko Suzuki, 161 – 84. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Neely, Carol Thomas. “Shakespeare’s Women: Historical Facts and Dramatic Representations.” In Shakespeare’s Personality, edited by Norman N. Holland, Sidney Homan, and Bernard J. Paris. 116 – 34. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by Frank Justus Miller, 2 vols. London: Heinemann, 1916. Rackin, Phyllis. Stages of History: Shakespeare’s English Chronicles. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. Rochester, Joanne. Staging Spectatorship in the Plays of Philip Massinger. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Ronan, Clifford J. “Antike Roman”: Power Symbology and the Roman Play in Early Modern England, 1585 – 1635. Athens (GA): University of Georgia Press, 1995. Rutland, Linda W. “Women as Makers of Kings in Tacitus’ Annals.” Classical World 72 (1978): 15‒29. Sanders, Julie. Caroline Drama: The Plays of Massinger, Ford, Shirley and Brome. Plymouth: Northcote House, in association with the British Council, 1999. Santoro L’Hoir, Francesca. “Tacitus and Women’s Usurpation of Power.” Classical World 88 (1994): 5‒25. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Ad Lucilium. Edited and translated by Richard M. Gunmere, 3 vols. London: Heinemann.1917 – 1925. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2006. Southern, Pat. Domitian: Tragic Tyrant. London: Routledge, 1997. Suetonius. The Lives of the Caesars (The Lives of Illustrious Men). 2 vols. London: Heinemann, 1970. Swindle, Jennifer M. “A Rhetorical Use of Women in Tacitus’ Annales.” Studia Antiqua 3 (2003): 105 – 15. Tacitus. The Annals of Tacitus. Edited with a commentary by A. J. Woodman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

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Thomson, Patricia. “World Stage and Stage in Massinger’s Roman Actor.” Neophilologus 44 (1970): 409 – 26. Tomlinson, Sophie. “She That Plays the King: Henrietta Maria and the Threat of the Actress in Caroline Culture.” In The Politics of Tragicomedy: Shakespeare and After, edited by Gordon McMullan and Jonathan Hope, 189‒207. New York: Routledge, 1992. Vinson, Martha P. “Domitia Longina, Julia Titi, and the Literary Tradition.” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 38 (1989): 431 – 50. White, Martin. “Introduction” to The Roman Actor by Philip Massinger, 1 – 68. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. Wong, Katrine K. Music and Gender in English Renaissance Drama. London: Routledge, 2013.

Emanuel Stelzer

“Poison on, Monsters”: Female Poisoners in Early Modern Roman Tragedies The quotation that is included in the title of this chapter should not be regarded as a misled response to a textual error such as F. O. Matthiessen’s notorious enthusiastic reading of the phrase “soiled fish of the sea” in Hermann Melville’s White-Jacket instead of the correct (and plainer) “coiled fish of the sea.”¹ I am well aware that the lines as interpreted in the most recent edition of Nathanael Richards’s Tragedy of Messalina (“Keep off, insatiate Empress, I’ll no more! / Poison on monsters, the blood of Nessus / Dam up thy curtain, gulf-like appetite!”²) should read much differently. The previous editor had kept the text as found in the 1640 octavo: “Keepe off insatiate Empresse, I’le no more, / Poyson of Monsters, the blood of Nessas [sic] / Damme up thy Curtian-gulph-like appetite.”³ These abrasive expressions are spoken in the play by Montanus, one of the many targets of the lust of Valeria Messalina, the wife of the Emperor Claudius. I have retained the imperative and added the comma, thus emphasizing this hypothetical phrasal verb, because this phrase encapsulates the subject of this chapter: the representation, with gusto, of the Julio-Claudian veneficae, or female poisoners, in early modern English drama through the analysis of three plays— Matthew Gwinne’s Nero (1603), Thomas May’s Tragedy of Julia Agrippina (1639), and Richards’s already mentioned Messalina (1640). I have chosen these three tragedies among the many extant early modern plays depicting the Julio-Claudian dynasty because they make the most of the link between Roman women in power and poison. This is the first essay to tackle such a topic. There have been very good books and articles on the staging of poisonings in early modern drama and on actual early modern female poisoners.⁴ Katherine Armstrong has analysed the relation-

 Matthiessen’s blunder was first pointed out in Nichol, “Melville’s ‘Soiled’ Fish of the Sea,” 338 – 39.  Richards, Messalina, 3.2.57– 59.  Richards, Messallina, 1573 – 75. A shirt soaked in the poisonous blood of the centaur Nessus was the means of Hercules’s death. The other reference is to the Lacus Curtius, a gaping pit that according to legend had appeared in the Forum and vanished after the sacrifice of a youth, Marcus Curtius, who jumped into the chasm on his horse.  See Bowers, “The Audience and the Poisoners of Elizabethan Tragedy,” 491– 504; Pollard, Drugs and Theater in Early Modern England; Thomas, “Toxic Encounters,” 48 – 55; Wilson, Poihttps://doi.org/10.1515/9781501514203-011

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ship between female sexuality and drugs in Jacobean plays;⁵ Lisa Hopkins and Sharon McDonnell have perceptively examined the connections between Catholicism and poisoning in the anonymous Claudius Tiberius Nero (published in 1607); while Alastair Bellany has demonstrated how often Jacobean intellectuals compared contemporary court scandals with the conspiracies that occurred during the first decades of the Roman empire: By linking these Roman poison stories to contemporary politics, dissidents could use alleged court poisonings to diagnose, in potentially more radical, even republican ways, the political ailments that plagued the late Elizabethan and early Stuart age.⁶

However, the gender issues related to staging the veneficae have not been the object of scholarly analysis so far: scholars have tended to regard them as mere witches, thus neglecting a necessary examination of their agency and political role as Roman female poisoners.

Historicizing and Qualifying an Archetype The figure of the female poisoner seems to tap into an archetype of unnatural womanhood, at least in Western patriarchal ideology.⁷ A woman who, instead of nurturing and feeding her offspring and other family members, should administer them poison or try to kill a member of her community (particularly a male one) has often been seen as a prime example of monstrosity. She will be represented metaphorically as a “viper” or as inherently venomous—any contact with her may be fatal. Alternatively, she will be likened to a witch. Whereas the Greeks could exploit the intrinsic ambiguity of the pharmakon (poison/remedy) administered by the pharmakis or pharmakeutria, her Roman equivalent, the venefica, could have no such indeterminateness. A venefica is someone who first and foremost concocts venenum, which can also mean spell, philter, or cosmetic, but generally means poison. Also, whereas the Romans seldom showed awareness of the etymological nexus between venenum and Venus (which contributed to a further negative portrayal of femininity),⁸ it seems that the link became apparent

son’s Dark Works in Renaissance England; Martin, Women, Murder, and Equity, 123 – 54, and Dolan, Dangerous Familiars, 177– 236.  Armstrong, “Possets, Pills and Poison,” 43 – 56.  Hopkins and McDonnell, “Romish Poison,” 103 – 22; Bellany, “Thinking with Poison,” 569.  See Hallissy, Venomous Woman.  For Virgil and Lucretius as exceptions, see O’Hara, True Names, 128.

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and convenient in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. For instance, Geoffrey Chaucer, Raphael Holinshed, and William Camden all refer to the lamentation on the death of Richard I written by Geoffrey of Vinsauf (fl. 1200): “Illa dies tua nox fuit et Venus illa venenum,” i. e. “That day was your night and Venus herself was your poison.”⁹ Murder by poison was often associated with women: it was considered detestable also because less honorable and more treasonable than killing in combat. Reginald Scot quoted Pliny the Elder and many other classical sources when writing that women “have been the first inventers, and the greatest practisers of poisoning, and more naturallie addicted and given thereunto than men.”¹⁰ Hence, it follows that men’s choice to poison “calls into question their masculinities and manhoods,” insofar as they are appropriating a practice traditionally assigned to women.¹¹ This gender distinction was codified and enforced (though only for a short time) under Henry VIII: female poisoners were burned, while male poisoners were boiled alive.¹² Poisonings lend themselves easily to be staged in drama. A poisoning can be spectacular and, when performed by a woman, it can indicate very clearly the values associated with gender and class, since it deals with the criminological paradigms of a given society. Theater itself was seen as a toxic activity and a poisonous environment, all the more so as the female poisoner was played by a boy actor—as John Rainolds warned in 1599: “beautiful boys by kissing do sting and pour secretly in a kind of poison, the poison of incontinency.”¹³ Specifically, the stories of the Julio-Claudian veneficae could yield juicy material for early modern drama as well as striking politically relevant chords. The influence of the classical female poisoners should not be underestimated: according to the OED, it was in order to translate Tacitus’s description of Locusta (see below) as a venefica that Richard Greenway in 1598 coined the term “poisoneress.” According to the writings of Suetonius, Cassius Dio, Livy, Tacitus, and Juvenal, the fame of the veneficae was for the most part dire. Both Livy and Valerius Maximus reported that, in 331 BCE, 170 women were convicted for trying to poison their male neighbors: these were the first trials for poisoning, a crime

 Gallo, The Poetria Nova, 34. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are mine.  Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 67.  Hopkins and McDonnell, “Romish Poison,” 109.  The 15301 Act for Poisoning (repealed in 1547) seems to have admitted some loopholes: a woman, Margaret Davy, was boiled to death in 1542, as had been a maidservant, accused of poisoning her mistress, in 1531.  John Rainolds, The Overthrow of Stage-Plays (London, 1599), 18, quoted in Pollard, Shakespeare’s Theatre, 174.

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so nefarious that it had imperiled the very survival of Rome.¹⁴ The danger was highlighted by Machiavelli, who ended his Discorsi sulla Prima Deca di Tito Livio by relating this event—in Edward Dacres’s 1636 translation: “And if in any City the like accidents ever happen’d, it was in Rome, where they fell out both strange and unexpected, as was that, when it seemed, that all the Roman dames had conspired to kill their husbands.”¹⁵ One of the “Declamations” contained in Alexander Silvayn’s collection The Orator (known to William Shakespeare and translated into English by Anthony Munday in 1596) made much of this episode (one of the accused matrons exclaims that “euery modest woman had rather die then reueale the infirmity of their sex,” to which the Senators reply that, “As is the common custome of women, so is your prattle tedious, and to small purpose of the matter in question”).¹⁶ After this original trial case, stories of Roman female poisoners abound, often reiterating and exploring Livy’s definition of poisoning as “muliebris fraus,” womanly treachery (8.18.6). Livia Drusilla was rumored to have murdered her husband, Augustus, the first emperor, by giving him poisoned figs (14 CE). Livilla (Tiberius’s niece) also seems to have poisoned her husband, Drusus Julius Caesar (23 CE), after being seduced by Sejanus, the Emperor’s favorite (and the titular character of Ben Jonson’s 1603 tragedy Sejanus His Fall). Perhaps more famously, Agrippina was said to have killed her spouse, Claudius, by using poisonous mushrooms (54 CE). A lowly woman, Locusta, had probably given Agrippina that poison, and her expertise was also employed, one year later, by Claudius’s son Nero to kill his rival Britannicus (Messalina’s son). The poisonings imputed to these Roman women became didactic examples of execrable vice as well as sensational portrayals of women in power. In Protestant propaganda, the poisonings of the Julio-Claudian veneficae seemed to have been revived in Renaissance Italy, through the alleged actions of Lucrezia Borgia and, later, the cases of Giulia Tofana and her disciple, La Spara. The link between poison, witchcraft, and pestilential popery was often remarked upon, especially since the idea of Italy as “the Apothecary-shop of poyson for all Nations” had become a common stereotype—consider also this statement by the theologian John Adams: “If we should gather Sinnes to their particular Centers, we would appoint … Poysoning to Italie.”¹⁷ Reformed divines liked to think that these acts among Catholics had been inherited from the hea Culham, “Women in the Roman Republic,” 137.  Dacres, Machiavels Discourses, 642.  Silvayn, The Orator, 389, 390.  Nashe, Pierce Pennilesse, 186; Thomas Adams, The Diuells Banket Described in sixe sermons (London, 1614), 291, quoted in Bowers, “Audience and Poisoners,” 495.

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thens: even “[i]n the flourishing State of Rome, there were many temperers of poison,” claims Henry Goodcole in a pamphlet printed in London in 1635 that bears a telling title: Murder Upon Murder: Or, the Old Way of Poysoning Newly Revived (on Alice Clarke’s 1635 murder of her husband in Uxbridge, Middlesex).¹⁸ Even more explicitly, in 1616, a gentleman called Peter Hay had warned his countrymen against the practices and meddling of the Jesuits in these terms: This venemous doctrine is like vnto that Lady, of whom Tacitus writeth, called Locusta, whose singular skill to temper Poyson so, that when it was most deadly, it wrought most vnperceiuedly, made her to bee called, Maximum instrumentum imperij: A great and necessary Instrument of the Empire, and much made of vnder Nero. This doctrine doth attrappe and snare the liues of greatest Monarkes before they can be aware.¹⁹ In the Renaissance, when someone wanted to accuse or vilify an aristocratic woman, it was common to refer not to Locusta, obviously, but to Roman noble matrons such as Livilla and Agrippina. For instance, Anne Boleyn, accused of masterminding various poison plots, was called by Eustace Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador, “the English Messalina or Agrippina.”²⁰ Importantly, since the Julio-Claudian veneficae were primarily represented as female criminals involved in politics, their poisonings could be referred to in a way that could (but did not necessarily have to) avoid the paradigm of magic and witchcraft.²¹ The clearest evidence of a conscious link between the veneficae and early modern female poisoners can be found in the trial documents and contemporary anecdotes concerning the Overbury affair.²² On 14 September 1613, the poet and diplomat Sir Thomas Overbury was found dead in the Tower of London, where he had been incarcerated for displeasing King James I. In the trials (overseen by Sir Edward Coke and Sir Francis Bacon), Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset, pleaded guilty to poisoning Overbury thanks to some toxic “tarts” prepared by Anne Turner, a maidservant versed in pharmaceutics. The Countess wanted to kill Overbury because he had repeatedly tried to thwart her marriage with the king’s ambitious favorite, Robert Carr, which she managed to achieve after obtaining the annulment of her previous marriage to the Earl of Essex due to alleged impotence. She was pardoned, as was Carr, who always declared

 As found in Martin, Women and Murder, 289.  Hay, A Vision of Balaams Asse, 110.  Brewer, Gairdner, and Brodie, Letters and Papers, 10:54.  The obsessive interest of James (the author of the 1597 treatise Daemonologie) in witchcraft is common knowledge: he was afraid that a number of witches kept trying to assassinate him and his family through incantations as well as toxic brews.  See Bellany, The Politics of Court Scandal.

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himself innocent. By contrast, Anne Turner was hanged with three other accomplices. In the correspondence between Carr and Overbury that was read in the trial, King James was called Julius; the Queen, Agrippina or Livia. More to the point, in a coeval poem by Robert Ayton, Carina Caro, the Countess “is portrayed as compelled by love and by the advice of a sinister ‘Locusta’²³ (Turner) to murder Overbury as an obstacle to her marriage to her beloved Carr”: “[I] gave birth to the crime with a Locusta as a midwife, and she provided an easy route to realise my wishes.”²⁴ The most astounding court scandal of the age set up links with the acts of the veneficae, which thus gained even greater resonance in Jacobean and Caroline drama.

The Female Poisoner as “Artifex” in Matthew Gwinne’s Nero The physician Matthew Gwinne wrote the most ambitious Latin play of his age, Nero, which was published in the weeks around the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. St. John’s College, Oxford, had refused to stage it for evident reasons: originally 5,000 lines long, with roughly eighty speaking parts, it deals with Nero’s entire career and is replete with sensationalism and an excess of ghosts. “In fact,” suggests Dana Sutton, “the play is a regular carnival of death and cruelty and, if Nero is liable to any criticism, far from deprecating it for being an academic exercise, one would be more accurate to censure Gwinne for erring in the opposite direction.”²⁵ Gwinne wrote Nero while Elizabeth was still alive: he concludes it by declaring that “nothing can be more different as our English goddess from Nero.”²⁶ Still, as soon as possible, he inserted in a second edition (which also appeared in 1603) a dedication to James, and it has been argued that the dramatist wanted the new king to use Nero as a negative exemplum. ²⁷

 Locusta is also the name of the mother of Crispinus, the titular anti-hero of a provincial play plausibly written by John Newdigate, The Emperor’s Favourite, which has been shown to refer covertly to the relationship between James and his other favorite, the Duke of Buckingham. See Keenan, “Staging Roman History,” 63 – 104. On “poisonous” royal favorites, see Bellany and Cogswell, The Murder of King James I, 281– 360.  McOmish and Reid, “Robert Ayton: From a beloved Carr to her dear Carr.”  Sutton, “Oxford Drama.”  Gwinne, Nero, “Epilogue.” I use the English translation prepared by Sutton, except when otherwise indicated.  Nordland, “Nero as an Exemplum,” 399 – 407.

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Act I opens with the appearance of the ghosts of Messalina and Gaius Silius, the senator she had married, thus committing bigamy, since she was already married to the emperor Claudius (which triggered their death). Despite the fact that Messalina knows very well for what she is being punished in the Underworld (“Are you harassing me as the author and partner of our crime? I committed it, I confess, and I began it”), the two ghosts ask for revenge: “We ought to suffer the Furies, not be Furies.”²⁸ They invoke these goddesses: “Come forth, Kindly Ones, stained with blood, venom, and gore.”²⁹ Poison, at once, comes to the fore as a horrible agent of female torment and vengeance. Aelia Paetina (whom Claudius had divorced before marrying Messalina) tries to signal her innocence by distancing herself from such a model: “I have not resorted to arms, poison, or curses: love is my weapon, tears my potion, pleas my curses.”³⁰ Claudius, however, will not remarry her, choosing instead his niece, Agrippina (Nero’s mother)—an abhorrent, incestuous union. However, Agrippina’s ambition craves for more: namely, an empire all to herself, for all her protestations that she is doing it for her son, whose succession is threatened by Britannicus (Messalina’s child). Seeing the fate of Claudius’s other spouses, Agrippina recurs to poison, as she confides to the freedman Pallas: “he [i. e. Claudius] dies lest he kill.”³¹ But Agrippina does not act simply to defend herself and Nero: her hubris leads her to say that a woman’s wrath is more powerful than the gods’. “Woman is irate and powerful. Think that Jove’s thunder and lightning are here. For wrath and power are Jove’s thunder and lightning—and Woman is an even greater thing.”³² Pallas asks her which poison she prefers, and she replies: agrippina The speedy one betrays the crime, treachery works through the slow. … I want a drug that will derange his mind while drawing out his death. pallas And what woman is to be the artist? agrippina Locusta, already convicted of evildoing.³³

     

Gwinne, Gwinne, Gwinne, Gwinne, Gwinne, Gwinne,

Nero, 1.1. Nero, 1.1. Nero, 1.2. Nero, 1.4. Nero, 1.4. Nero, 1.4.

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Locusta is called an “artifex” in the original Latin: the skills of the veneficae are difficult to master, and their operations can indeed be called an art. Here, Gwinne is following Tacitus (almost word for word), who had called Locusta “artifex talium,” i. e., “an expert in such things.”³⁴ In the original text of the play, Pallas does not ask “quinam” (“what man”) but directly “quaenam” (“what woman”): poisoning pertains to the female sphere. Still, rather than the lowly Locusta, it is Agrippina herself that in the next scene is called a “hard-hearted Medea,” the prototypical venefica. ³⁵ The murder is successful, although not easily executed: Agrippina has to employ a physician to kill Claudius once and for all (“Help him vomit with a feather, but a feather dipped in poison.”)³⁶ Nero, for his part, once enthroned, does not want to be overruled by her. Once he eliminates Pallas, Agrippina cries: “I make no attempt to conceal all the evils of this house, especially my marriage, my poison—or rather (oh, the wickedness!) your poison. For those crimes are yours from which you benefit.”³⁷ She sees with astonishment that her domain and symbol, poison, has been transferred to her son’s agency and tries saying that she had used it only for his sake. It is now Nero who summons Locusta and demands her help to kill Britannicus (with whom an English audience would understandably side). Feeling moral qualms, Locusta had tried to save him in the past, but Nero’s fury knows no such limits: he strikes her and puts it succinctly enough: “Kill or be killed.”³⁸ locusta Because you urge, Caesar, watch me. I shall seek poisons from heaven and the Underworld. From the one, I shall seek the Hydra’s venoms, the blood of Nessus, the torch of Althaea; from the other, the banes of the Snake, Scorpion, and Crab. I shall mix the poison of Colchis with hemlock, opium with aconite, viper’s venom with spider’s web, fire with water. I shall add to the poisons spells to make them do their work the worse. May I die if he who drinks these things does not perish on the spot! nero Do these things, Locusta, and I shall grant you pupils, immunity, rewards for your good deed. Come, mix your potions in my chamber.³⁹

Locusta’s knowledge of all things toxic is impressive. Tacitus had said that she was “multa scelerum fama” (“with a vast reputation for crime”), and in general Gwinne sticks almost word for word to Suetonius and Tacitus (for instance, the

     

Tacitus, Annales 12.66.2. Gwinne, Nero, 1.5. Gwinne, Nero, 1.5. Gwinne, Nero, 2.5. Gwinne, Nero, 2.6. Gwinne, Nero, 2.6.

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former wrote that “[Nero] rewarded Locusta for her eminent services with a full pardon and large estates in the country, and actually sent her pupils.”)⁴⁰ After Britannicus is poisoned, Agrippina’s life can but spiral down to her own demise, and she is killed by her son’s troops. Her ghost (for which Gwinne drew on the pseudo-Senecan tragedy Octavia, first century CE) will demand revenge in the following act. Remembering the grisly vision of the matricidal Nero admiring her corpse (as recounted by Suetonius), Agrippina represents herself as pure poison: “Drink the gore for which you thirst. Drink down your mother”—the monstrosity of Nero, her own flesh and blood, will find no solace after drinking the blood of the venefica. ⁴¹

Thomas May’s Julia Agrippina: Franco-Italianate Poison and Roman Plots In Thomas May’s play, Agrippina is put center-stage. The dramatist’s models here were Jonson’s Roman tragedies, and May knew how to make drama without recurring to atrocitas. I agree with Allan Griffith Chester that the drama may actually result as “flat,” but its relevance to Jacobean politics and its gender concerns make Julia Agrippina significant: it is a play that “is full of political alliances forged at the groin.”⁴² A few scholars have drawn parallels between May’s Agrippina and Henrietta Maria, the Catholic royal consort of Charles I, or, more interestingly, Marie de’ Medici, the queen’s mother, who visited the British court in 1638, after being banished from France by her son, Louis XIII.⁴³ This was one year before the play was printed (though it had been first staged, apparently without great success, in 1628), and May was soon to espouse the parliamentary side at the outbreak of the Civil War. In the 1620s and 1630s, however, he had sought and obtained royal patronage and had even tried to ingratiate himself with Henrietta Maria with a new year’s gift poem.⁴⁴ We do not know if and how much May changed the text of his play prior to publication, but Julia

 Tacitus, Annales 13.15.3; Suetonius, Nero 33.3 (The Lives of the Caesars, 2:143).  Suetonius, Nero 34.4 (2:145 – 47); Gwinne, Nero, 4.1. It has often been argued that Hamlet channels this episode in the “’Tis now the very witching time of night” soliloquy.  Chester, Thomas May, 109; Perry, Literature and Favoritism, 262.  See Clarke, “Introduction”; Hopkins, The Cultural Uses, 140 – 41; Randall, Winter Fruit, 245 – 46. On Marie de’ Medici’s reception at the British court, see Britland, “An Under-Stated Mother-in-Law,” 204– 23.  May, A New Yeares Gift, 48v. On May in the 1620s and early 1630s, see Britland, “Buried Alive,” 138 – 53.

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Agrippina seems to reflect and interrogate many issues of French and British courtly culture. To understand how Marie de’ Medici wanted to be viewed by her contemporaries, one need look no further than at Rubens’s spectacular cycle of twentyfour pictures (now at the Louvre) commissioned by the Queen with herself as a subject in 1621. She is represented multiple times with all the glittering paraphernalia of empire and worldly glory. In particular, the last painting, finished in 1625 and entitled La Félicité de la Régence, portrays Marie allegorically as Justice, surrounded by Olympians and enthroned holding the scales, an orb, and a scepter, while the personifications of Vice, Envy, and Ignorance are shown grovelling at her feet. What previous scholars have not taken into account in this context is that Marie de’ Medici was rumored to have been involved in several poison plots orchestrated by her chief Italian minister, Concino Concini—whose wife was burned at the stake as a witch in 1617 (the same year in which he was murdered in a conspiracy arranged by Marie’s son, Louis XIII). These rumors were probably spread by Cardinal Richelieu’s faction, and the most notorious had to do with her attempted poisoning of her oldest son with a view to putting on the throne her favorite one, Gaston d’Orléans. Under cover of recalling how that other French Medici queen, Catherine (1519 – 1589) made great use of poisoned gloves, a 1617 pamphlet implicitly accused Marie of having inherited some physicians’ unpleasant tendency (punning on the Italian meaning of Medici): qui ne viuent & ne respirent que par le moyen des corruptions, ordures, meslanges & putrefactions de plusieures sales matieres, auroit en mesme temps esmeu toutes les entrailles de cet Estat, & … corrompu toutes les meilleures & plus nobles parties de ce grand Corps.⁴⁵ [who neither live nor breathe without the aid of those corrupting concoctions, filthy preparations, and putrefied mixtures made up with various loathsome ingredients; she would have caused all the entrails of this country to be convulsed and, at the same time, … have corrupted all the best and noblest parts of this great body].

Tracing parallels with the Julio-Claudian dynasty was common practice also at the French court: in 1618, the poet Estienne Durand, one of Marie’s main protégés, was tortured and executed for having translated a pamphlet in which he compared Louis XIII to the matricidal Nero, while, in April 1633, an anonymous individual hung on the street corners of Rome an explosive Latin distich against Louis XIII: “Turca necat fratrem, Nero matrem, Gallus utrumque: / Numquid erit Gallus Turca Neroque simul?” (The Turk kills his brother, Nero his mother,  Anon., Le Roy Hors de Page, 6.

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the Frenchman both of them: / Will the Frenchman be then like the Turk and Nero combined?)⁴⁶ Thomas May himself would later explicitly compare Marie de’ Medici to Agrippina in his History of the Parliament of England (1647): Not long after [Queen Marie’s] departure from England she died at Culleine [i. e. Cologne], and might seem a parallel, in some things, to the famous Empress of Rome who founded that city, and there planted a Roman colony, Agrippina, the wife of Claudius Caesar and the mother of Nero. They both had tasted of power, been active in it, but not pleasing to the people. They were both taught that the greatness of their sons was not so much advantage to their power as they had hoped, and had learned, that all power dependent upon another is of small validity and less stability.⁴⁷

It must be said, however, that it is difficult to detect exact mirrorings in Julia Agrippina, since May relied heavily on the same sources as Gwinne, and indeed the dialogue is sometimes very similar (although in terms of structure and topicality, May seems to surpass his predecessor). In the play, poison is first associated not with women, but with the ghost of Caligula (Agrippina’s brother).⁴⁸ The Fury Megaera summons him “to blast this fair / And gorgeous Palace, like that poisonous air, / Which Earth-quakes from the ground’s torn entrails, breath / To fill the world with pestilence and death.”⁴⁹ He himself mentions those legendary “chests of poison” he had owned, which after his death had been thrown into the sea and had killed the fish (according to Suetonius).⁵⁰ At all events, poison comes to the fore in the verbal exchanges between Agrippina (“[t]his dragon spirit”) and the freedman Pallas, which might evoke the relationship between Queen Marie and Concini.⁵¹ Unsurprisingly, these two characters are likened to snakes: they, “like seen snakes will now / Bestir themselves in a more desperate fury.”⁵² If it is Pallas that de-

 Quoted in Firpo, Bibliografia degli scritti, 56.  May, History of the Parliament, 109.  Note, however, that Caligula is referred to by Megaera with these words: “[a] blacker Fury than myself must rise” (May, Julia Agrippina, “Prologue”)—where “fury” is normally assigned a female gender.  May, Julia Agrippina, “Prologue.”  May, Julia Agrippina, “Prologue”; Suetonius, Caligula 49.3 (1:479 – 81).  May, Julia Agrippina, 1.1.  May, Julia Agrippina, 2.3. These two lines are clearly reminiscent of Jonson’s Sejanus His Fall: “Their forces, like seen snakes, that else would lie / Rolled in their circles, close” (2.256 – 57). That play’s interesting treatment of poison and “queer politics” goes beyond the scope of this chapter but undoubtedly served as a model for many other dramatic works of the period.

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cides they should use poison to kill Claudius, it is Agrippina who knows the exact means: The way’s resolved already; there were lately The fairest mushrooms sent from Libya That e’re these eyes beheld, a meat which he Affects with greediness; in one of those Caesar shall meet his death; if that should fail His chief Physician Xenophon is mine.⁵³

The plot is successful, and Agrippina rejoices: This day declares My power, and makes the trembling world to know That Agrippina only can bestow The Roman Empire, and command the wheel Of suffering Fortune, holding in her hand The fate of nation.⁵⁴

The audience could hardly restrain a smirk when Nero praises her: he will strive “to excel / Her most admired and exemplary goodness.”⁵⁵ The same dynamics between Pallas and Agrippina recurs in 4.4, when they decide to have the nobleman Silanus poisoned: Pallas suggests; Agrippina commands. However, Nero inherits his mother’s predilection for toxic drugs: he plans his mother’s murder but, first, it is Britannicus’s turn to die. His encounter with Locusta is both more abusive and shorter than the one enacted in Gwinne’s play. He beats her, calls her, predictably enough, “hag,” “Witch. / Fiend, fury, devil,” and threatens to kill her in case her poison should prove inefficient again.⁵⁶ May chooses to silence Locusta: she only utters thirty-five words in total. Perhaps, the dramatist did not want her to divert the spectators’ attention from the empress. When Agrippina sees Britannicus’s hearse, she refers to Nero as a venomous snake, normally coded as female: “’twas I that gave / That viper life.”⁵⁷ She swears she will do justice, but it is too late: she can no longer abide the thought that she is the mother of someone so noxious and, at the end, when Anicetus,     

May, May, May, May, May,

Julia Julia Julia Julia Julia

Agrippina, 2.4. Agrippina, 3.6. Agrippina, 3.6. Agrippina, 4.9. Agrippina, 5.3.

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Nero’s agent, comes to kill her, it is almost a relief for her, as is evident from her last lines in the play: “Then strike this womb / This tragical, and ever cursed womb … to appease the hatred of the earth / ’Gainst Agrippina for dire Nero’s birth.”⁵⁸ In this play, Thomas May does not show himself as purely republican, since he portrays Britannicus as a worthy, if doomed, candidate to redeem the empire, but the gendered poison coursing through the veins of the people embodying the institution indicates a corrupting force that requires heartfelt and timely opposition.

Nathanael Richards’s Messalina: A Venomous Empress in Melodramatic Mode Messalina is not usually seen as a venefica. Cassius Dio does report that she had had the consul Marcus Vinicius poisoned because he had refused to sleep with her—but, even today, Messalina is remembered for her motive rather than for the means she employed: she has come down in history for her lust and sexual profligacy.⁵⁹ In his Sixth Satire, Juvenal wrote that by night she went to the brothels and prostituted herself. She was also accused of setting up a whorehouse at court, and Pliny the Elder recounts the contest she won against the most famous courtesan of the city to determine who could fornicate with more men in one night.⁶⁰ Messalina’s life was inscribed as an example of lust paving the way for crime, and so it is small wonder that in the Renaissance she was associated with the Julio-Claudian veneficae. For example, Richard Brathwaite wrote an epigram on Frances Howard, the notorious “poisoneress,” entitled Upon our Age’s MESSALINA, insatiat Madona, the matchless English-COROMBONA (published in 1658).⁶¹ One did not need to be the greatest author who ever lived to understand that Messalina’s story could make for titillating drama—acceptable, it seems, as long as one included the empress’s violent end. This happens, up to a point, in Na-

 May, Julia Agrippina, 5.5.  Dio, Roman History 60.27.4.  Pliny, Natural History 10.172.  Brathwaite, An Excellent Piece, G2– 3. “Corombona” refers to Vittoria Accoramboni (Gubbio, 1557–Padua, 1585), the Italian noblewoman whose life was dramatized by John Webster in his 1612 tragedy The White Devil. This was the original subtitle: The Tragedy of Paolo Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano. With the Life and Death of Vittoria Corombona the Famous Venetian Curtisan.

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thanael Richards’s tragedy, performed by the King’s Men at the Salisbury Court Theatre around 1635 (and published in 1640). This couplet in Thomas Rawlins’s dedicatory poem sums up Richards’s intention in his The Tragedy of Messalina: “Rome’s mighty whore by thee adorns the stage, / For to convert not to corrupt this age.”⁶² This language suggests both that vice will be punished at the end and what kind of vice Britain was being faced with in those decades: the dreaded return of popery through the Catholic royal consort, Henrietta Maria, on whom the king seemed to dote excessively. However deeply read in Stoicism, the senator Silius cannot resist the glittering splendor of Messalina. When she feasts with “masque, midnight revels, / All rare variety to provoke desire,” virtus is overwhelmed.⁶³ The Empress describes herself as a cosmic force of toxic corruption: “Rome shall take notice, our incensēd blood, / Like to Medusa’s, shall to serpents turn, / Poisoning the air, where local chastity / Claims least pre-eminence.”⁶⁴ In a passage in which she mixes the language of a Medea and of Lady Macbeth, she invokes the infernal spirits with these words: Circle me round, you Furies of the night, Dart all your fiery lust-strung arrows here. Here, here, let Circe and the Sirens’ charms Pour their enchantments. Monarch of flames, Fill with alluring poison these mine eyes, That I may win the misty souls of men, And send them tumbling to th’Acharusian Fen.⁶⁵

Messalina asks to become an agent of Evil incarnate who can captivate men’s souls through the inexorable poison of her charms. Note also that she appeals to a “Monarch of flames,” a typically anachronistic example of an assimilation of Pluto with Satan. When she kisses Silius, her touch becomes as accursed as Helen’s in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus: O, that delicious melting kiss prevails, Sucks dry the sweetness of a soul distressed, Poisons my blood and brain, and makes me apt To do an outrage I should loathe to name.⁶⁶

 Richards, Messalina, “To his worthy friend, Mr Nathaniel Richards, upon his Tragedy of Messalina.”  Richards, Messalina, 1.3.20 – 21.  Richards, Messalina, 1.3.29 – 32.  Richards, Messalina, 2.2.10 – 16.  Richards, Messalina, 2.2.65 – 68.

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Messalina asks Silius to kill his wife, Sillana, and he seems ready to comply, even if he should suffer “[a] death more terrible then Alcides’ was” (i. e., Hercules being burnt to death by Nessus’s poisoned shirt).⁶⁷ Lepida, Messalina’s mother, tries in vain to stop her daughter’s iniquities. In markedly metatheatrical terms, she herself invokes Medea, not as the archetypal venefica, but as the destroyer of her own flesh and blood: “Then I will act Medea’s murd’ring part / Upon my stain of blood, that gods and men / May sit and laugh, and plaudit my revenge.”⁶⁸ But Messalina’s lust and corruption are so exaggerated to become campy or even melodramatically preposterous. The flaunted intertextuality of the play may be held accountable for producing this feeling in a piece that seems to enjoy highly sensationalistic scenes, from Messalina brandishing an obviously anachronistic pistol to the earth swallowing three characters. Claudius, on the contrary, is portrayed as a very weak man. He speaks little and when he does act at the end he is shown as already corrupted by Messalina: he is as full of poison as she is. Silius (admittedly, not an unbiased character) tells him: Spit all thy venom, be it a sea of Poison; let it fall, here’s none will shrink, our Bloods are all too much ennobled into The eminent temper of true monarchs To dread respectless death.⁶⁹

Richards lets Messalina kill herself in a highly overdramatic way. A few instants before death, she says: “O my mad lust, whither wilt thou bear me? / A dim black fog raised from the Lernean fen / Obscures my sight.”⁷⁰ She is seeing a toxic fog before her eyes, as if this veil were a concrete representation of what has been seething and smoldering inside her all this time.

 Richards, Messalina, 2.2.104.  Richards, Messalina, 2.2.65 – 68.  Richards, Messalina, 5.2.178 – 82.  Richards, Messalina, 5.2.420 – 22. This statement is circularly connected with Silius’s speech at the beginning of the play: “Here’s no seducing pomp, no clouds of vice, / Nor fogs of vanity obscures man’s sight / From the direct to ways directly ill” (1.1.13 – 15).

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Conclusion: Roman Women Poisoning On In 1643, three years after the publication of Richards’s play, Claudio Monteverdi’s Incoronazione di Poppea premiered at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice. This is an opera that is enticingly outrageous even today: at the end, Nero and Poppaea can celebrate not only their evidently carnal love, but also their ruthless ambition. In England, theaters had already been closed by the puritans, and one wonders if the London audiences would have liked or accepted something similar. Without a doubt, they had long been captivated by the dramatic ascents and falls of the Julio-Claudian veneficae. One of the most eminent nineteenth-century historians, Thomas Babington (who knew very well the mores of the Roman past and was also the author of the popular Lays of Ancient Rome), described Jacobean Britain in these terms: The ignominious fondness of the King for his minions, the perjuries, the sorceries, the poisonings, which his chief favourites had planned within the walls of his palace … made him an object of loathing to many of his subjects. What opinion grave and moral persons residing at a distance from the Court entertained respecting him, we learn from Mrs. Hutchinson’s Memoirs. England was no place, the seventeenth century no time, for Sporus and Locusta.⁷¹

Now, Sporus was a young boy whom Nero had supposedly castrated and married after killing Poppaea. One gathers that Macaulay was shocked at James’s relationship with his favorites, and, at the end of this chapter, this historian’s argument that Jacobean (and Caroline) Britain could not be viewed like the Roman empire under the Julio-Claudian dynasty is easily disproved. Given the widespread claims of translatio imperii circulating in early modern Britain, politicians and intellectuals regularly compared those two epochs and tried to represent them as contiguous: if female poisoners had once put at risk the survival of glorious Rome, their conspiracies could definitely endanger Stuart Britain. Authors used the crimes and political ambition of the veneficae both as negative exempla to be decried and as juicy material to depict events at court, while in early modern drama their representations were used to interpret the political, religious, and gender dynamics of the age. This paralleling did not stop at the outbreak of the Civil War. In many pamphlets of the Roundheads, Henrietta Maria was regularly portrayed as a toxic pestilence that had corrupted the British Court into a potentially absolutist, Roman (and Romish) domain. The veneficae kept being in-

 Macaulay, “Lord Nugent’s Memorials of Hampden,” 154.

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voked to “poison on,” to the general consternation and excitement of the country.

Works Cited Anon. Le Roy Hors de Page. A la Royne Mere. N. p., 1617. Armstrong, Katherine. “Possets, Pills and Poisons: Physicking the Female Body in Early Seventeenth-century Drama.” Cahiers Élisabéthains 61 (2002): 43 – 56. Bellany, Alastair. The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England: News Culture and the Overbury Affair, 1603 – 1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Bellany, Alastair. “Thinking with Poison.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare, edited by Robert Malcolm Smuts, 559 – 79. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Bellany, Alastair and Thomas Cogswell. The Murder of King James I. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015. Bowers, Fredson T. “The Audience and the Poisoners of Elizabethan Tragedy.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 36 (1937): 491 – 504. Brathwaite, Richard. An Excellent Piece of Conceipted Poetry. London, 1658. Brewer, J. S., James Gairdner, and R. H. Brodie, eds. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII. 21 vols. London: H.M.S.O., 1862 – 1932. Britland, Karen. “Buried Alive: Thomas May’s 1631 Antigone.” In The 1630s: Interdisciplinary Essays on Culture and Politics in the Caroline Era, edited by Ian Atherton and Julie Sanders, 138 – 53. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006. Britland, Karen. “An Under-Stated Mother-in-Law: Marie de Médicis and the Last Caroline Court Masque.” In Women and Culture in the Courts of the Stuart Queens, edited by Clare McManus, 204 – 23. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003. Chester, Allan Griffith. Thomas May: Man of Letters 1595 – 1650. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1932. Clarke, Lyndsey. “Introduction” to The Tragedy of Julia Agrippina, Empress of Rome by Thomas May. Sheffield: Sheffield Hallam University, 2003. https://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/ iemls/renplays/intro.htm. Culham, Phyllis. “Women in the Roman Republic.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic, edited by Harriet I. Flower, 127 – 48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Dio, Cassius. Roman History. Edited by E. H. Cary. 9 vols. London: Heinemann, 1914 – 1927. Dacres, Edward. Machiavels Discourses Upon the First Decade of T. Livius. London, 1636. Dolan, Frances E. Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England 1550 – 1700. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994. Firpo, Luigi. Bibliografia degli scritti di Tommaso Campanella. Torino: Vincenzo Bona, 1940. Gallo, Ernest. The Poetria Nova and Its Sources in Early Rhetorical Doctrine. The Hague: Mouton, 1971. Gwinne, Matthew. Nero. Edited by Dana F. Sutton. Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1997 – 2017. http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/nero/. Hallissy, Margaret. Venomous Woman: Fear of the Female in Literature. New York: Greenwood, 1987. Hay, Peter. A Vision of Balaams Asse […]. London, 1616.

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Hopkins, Lisa. The Cultural Uses of the Caesars on the English Renaissance Stage. Farnham: Ashgate, 2008. Hopkins, Lisa and Sharon McDonnell. “Romish Poison: Claudius Tiberius Nero.” In The Uses of Rome in English Renaissance Drama, edited by Domenico Lovascio and Lisa Hopkins. Thematic issue. Textus: English Studies in Italy 29.2 (2016): 103 – 22. Jonson, Ben. Sejanus His Fall. Edited by Tom Cain. In The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, edited by David Bevington, Martin Butler, and Ian Donaldson, 7 vols., 2:212 – 391. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Keenan, Siobhan C. “Staging Roman History, Stuart Politics, and the Duke of Buckingham: The Example of The Emperor’s Favourite.” Early Theatre 14.2 (2011): 63 – 104. Macaulay, Thomas Babington. “Lord Nugent’s Memorials of Hampden.” In Essays, Critical and Miscellaneous. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1841: 151 – 70. Martin, Randall. Women and Murder in Early Modern Pamphlets and Broadside Ballads, 1573 – 1697. Vol. 7. London: Routledge, 2016. Martin, Randall. Women, Murder, and Equity in Early Modern England. London: Routledge, 2008. May, Thomas. The History of the Parliament of England. London: 1647; rpt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1854. May, Thomas. The Tragedy of Julia Agrippina, Empress of Rome. Edited by Lyndsey Clarke. 2003. https://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/iemls/renplays/mayindex.html. May, Thomas. A New Yeares Gift to Her Maiestye. Bodleian MS Rawl. poet. 116 [n. d.], fol. 48v. McOmish, David, and Steven Reid. “Robert Ayton: From a beloved Carr to her dear Carr.” Bridging the Continental Divide Project. 2015. https://www.dps.gla.ac.uk/delitiae/print/? pid=d1_AytR_005. Nashe, Thomas. Pierce Pennilesse. In The Works of Thomas Nashe, edited by Ronald B. McKerrow, 5 vols., 1:137 – 246. London: Basil Blackwell, 1904 – 1905. Nichol, John W. “Melville’s ‘Soiled’ Fish of the Sea.” American Literature 21 (1949): 338 – 39. Nordland, Howard B. “Nero as an Exemplum for James I of England.” In Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Monasteriensis: Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies (Münster 2012), edited by Astrid Steiner-Weber and Karl A. E. Enenkel, 399 – 407. Leiden: Brill, 2012. O’Hara, James J. True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay: New and Expanded Edition. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017. Perry, Curtis. Literature and Favoritism in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pliny the Elder. Natural History. Edited by Harris Rackham, W. H. S. Jones, and D. E. Eichholz. 10 vols. London: Heinemann, 1938 – 1962. Pollard, Tanya. Drugs and Theater in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pollard, Tanya. Shakespeare’s Theatre: A Sourcebook. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. Randall, Dale B. J. Winter Fruit: English Drama 1642 – 1660. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1995. Richards, Nathanael. The Tragedy of Messalina, The Roman Empress. Edited by Samantha Gibbs. 2004. https://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/iemls/renplays/mess%20contents%20page. htm.

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Richards, Nathanael. The Tragedy of Messallina The Roman Emperesse, edited by A. R. Skemp. Louvain: A. Uystpruyst, 1910. Scot, Reginald. The Discoverie of Witchcraft. Edited by Montague Summers. New York: Dover Publications, 1972. Suetonius. Suetonius. Edited and translated by J. C. Rolfe. 2 vols. London: Heinemann, 1965. Sutton, Dana F. “Oxford Drama in the Late Tudor and Early Stuart Periods.” Oxford Handbooks Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. http://www.oxfordhandbooks. com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935338.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935338-e-99? rskey=lUECRe&result=1921. Sylvain, Alexander. The Orator Handling a Hundred Seuerall Discourses, in Forme of Declamations. Translated by Anthony Munday. London, 1596. Tacitus. The Histories, The Annals. Edited and translated by John Jackson. 4 vols. London: Heinemann, 1931 – 1937. Thomas, Catherine E. “Toxic Encounters: Poisoning in Early Modern English Literature and Culture.” Literature Compass 9 (2012): 48 – 55. Wilson, Miranda. Poison’s Dark Works in Renaissance England. Plymouth: Bucknell University Press, 2014.

Notes on Contributors Domenico Lovascio is Ricercatore of English Literature at the University of Genoa and was a Visiting Scholar at Sheffield Hallam University in 2016. He received the Ben Jonson Discoveries Award for outstanding contribution to The Ben Jonson Journal in 2020 as well as the AIA/ Carocci Doctoral Dissertation Prize in 2014. In addition to the first English-Italian edition of Ben Jonson’s Catiline (2011) and his monograph Un nome, mille volti. Giulio Cesare nel teatro inglese della prima età moderna (Rome: Carocci, 2015), his articles have been published in English Literary Renaissance, Renaissance Studies, Early Theatre, and elsewhere. He is the Italian Advisor for the Oxford edition of The Complete Works of John Marston and contributes to the Lost Plays Database. He has recently edited an issue of Textus on “The Uses of Rome in English Renaissance Drama” (with Lisa Hopkins); the Arden Early Modern Drama Guide to Antony and Cleopatra; and a special issue of Shakespeare, “Shakespeare: Visions of Rome.” He is currently editing The Householder’s Philosophy for The Collected Works of Thomas Kyd to be published by Boydell & Brewer. Other current work in progress includes a monograph on the Roman plays in the Fletcher canon and a critical edition of Fletcher and Massinger’s The False One for the Revels Plays. Fabio Ciambella holds a PhD from the University of Rome Tor Vergata. He is Assegnista di Ricerca at Tuscia University, Viterbo, and Adjunct Instructor at Sapienza University, Rome. He was awarded the AIA/Carocci Doctoral Dissertation Prize in 2016. His main research interests are early modern drama, nineteenth-century Gothic fiction, the relationship between dance and literature, and media adaptations. He published a monograph on dance in nineteenthcentury British literature (2012), an Italian translation of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé (2012), a monograph on dance and the Copernican revolution in Shakespeare’s canon, “There was a star danced.” Danza e rivoluzione copernicana in Shakespeare (Rome: Carocci, 2017), and a critical edition of A. C. Swinburne’s unpublished manuscript The Statue of John Brute (2018). Michela Compagnoni is a PhD candidate at Roma Tre University, where she is currently working on a research project about paradigms of monstrosity in the plays of Shakespeare. She holds an MA from the University of Bergamo and was a Visiting Scholar at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2014. She has published on the revival of Elizabeth I’s ambiguous gender construct in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, on the structures of time in the Weird Sisters’ prophecies in Macbeth, and on Poor Tom’s performance of monstrosity in King Lear in Cahiers Élisabéthains. Michele De Benedictis holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Cassino and collaborates with eCampus-Università Telematica. His main research interests are Renaissance drama, early modern court studies, Shakespeare’s relocations, and interdisciplinary approaches to dramatic literature. Relevant publications include articles and chapters on the rhetoric of suicide in Shakespeare’s Lucrece, ekphrasis in The Winter’s Tale, Ben Jonson’s masques, and Fascist interpretations of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. He is currently completing an article on James Joyce’s lifelong relationship with Jonson, and another on Shakespeare and Futurist avant-garde.

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Alice Equestri holds a PhD from the University of Padua. She is now Visiting Fellow at the University of Sussex, where she was a was Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow in 2017 – 19. She was also Assegnista di Ricerca in English Literature at the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari in 2016 – 17. She was awarded the AIA/Carocci Doctoral Dissertation Prize in 2015. Her research interests include folly in early modern English literature, Robert Armin’s works, Shakespeare’s last plays, English verse translations of Italian novelle, and connections between medieval and early modern English literature. She has published the monograph “Armine … thou art a foole and knaue”: The Fools of Shakespeare Romances (Rome: Carocci, 2016); articles in Renaissance Studies, Notes and Queries and Cahiers Élisabéthains, as well as several chapters in edited collections. She also contributes to The Year’s Work in English Studies. Maria Elisa Montironi holds a PhD in Intercultural European Studies from the University of Urbino, where she currently teaches English Literature. She taught “Shakespearean Drama and Cultural Contexts” at Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen (Germany) in 2017 – 2018. Her research interests lie in the areas of dramatic literature, literary reception, Shakespeare studies, and intercultural studies. She has written a monograph on the political reception of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (2013), a book on female characters by contemporary women playwrights (Women upon Women in Contemporary British Drama (2000 – 2017), 2018), and essays on Shakespeare, early modern drama, and intercultural literary reception. Her current research projects include a collection on Shakespeare and advertising. Cristina Paravano holds a PhD in English Studies from the University of Milan, where she was Assegnista di Ricerca from 2014 to 2019 and is now Adjunct Instructor of English at the University of Milan and the University of Piemonte Orientale. Her research interests lie in the areas of early modern drama, modern-contemporary theatre studies, source studies, dystopia, and young adult fiction. She authored a monograph on Shakespeare and Ovid, Metamorphosis: Shakespeare e Ovidio, due maestri a confronto (2011), and one on Richard Brome, Performing Multilingualism on the Caroline Stage in the Plays of Richard Brome (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018). She has published articles in Shakespeare, Notes & Queries, Borrowers and Lenders, The SEDERI Yearbook, and New Theatre Quarterly, as well as various chapters in edited collections. Cristiano Ragni is Assegnista di Ricerca at the University of Turin. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Perugia. His research interests lie in the connections between political thinking, religion and drama in early modern England, with a particular focus on Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Alberico Gentili, and Giordano Bruno. He is also interested in early modern neo-Latin drama and its refashioning of the classical past. He has authored an English-Italian edition of Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris, and his monograph La Nazione e il Teatro. Gentili, Shakespeare e l’Inghilterra elisabettiana is in preparation. Other articles and chapters have been published or are forthcoming in Textus, Annali di Ca’ Foscari, InVerbis, The SEDERI Yearbook, Notes & Queries, and The Sixteenth Century Journal. He also contributes to The Year’s Work in English Studies. Emanuel Stelzer is Assegnista di Ricerca at the University of Verona and Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Bergamo, where he obtained a PhD in Intercultural Humanities in co-tutelle with Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. His main research areas are early modern English literature and drama, textual studies, and visual culture studies. His publications include Por-

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traits in Early Modern English Drama: Visual Culture, Play-Texts, and Performances (Routledge, 2019), an English-Italian edition of Philip Massinger’s The Picture (2017), as well as articles in Early Theatre, Critical Survey, Notes and Queries, and The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. He also contributes to The Year’s Work in English Studies. Angelica Vedelago is a PhD candidate in Linguistic and Literary Studies at the University of Padua. She holds a Master of Studies in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford, where she was a Visiting Student. She spent one year at the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität in Munich thanks to a scholarship of the German Service of Academic Exchange (DAAD). Her research interests lie in the reception of Greek tragedy in early modern English drama, the reception of the classics in Shakespeare’s Roman plays, and early modern English translations of classical texts. She has published an article on the reception of Aeschylus in England in The International Journal of the Classical Tradition.

Index Aaron (Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus) 24–26, 29 f., 32 f. Adams, Thomas, Mysticall Bedlam 154 f., 210 Adelman, Janet 4, 9, 40, 42–44, 48 Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius, Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex 107, 156 Agrippina (May’s Julia Agrippina) – Henrietta Maria, comparison 197, 215, 220, 222 – Marie de’ Medici, comparison 215–217 – masculinity 1, 8, 10, 40, 42, 44, 46, 49 f., 52 f., 155, 173, 181 – on Cicero 1 – poisoner 208 f., 212 – political power 12, 23, 148, 157 – repentance 147 – self-made woman 150 Agrippina (May’s Julia Agrippina) 6, 9, 11, 13, 79 f., 82 f., 86–94, 122–125, 127, 129–136, 142 f., 145–152, 154 f., 158– 160, 202, 210–215, 217–219 Agrippina Minor (Gwinne’s Nero) 86 – ghost of 84, 91, 200, 213, 217 – Nero 11, 13, 79–95, 130 f., 142, 146 f., 150–152, 154, 171, 207 f., 210–219, 222 – attempts to control 89 – Octavia, relationship 6, 9, 82 f., 87 f., 90–93, 147, 166, 215 – poison, use of 13, 207–211, 213–221, 223 – reputation 214 – self-sacrifice 86, 181 – wife of Claudius 83, 217 Agrippina the Elder (Jonson’s Sejanus) 112, 122 – CA 119, 127 f., 130–133, 136 – virtus 1, 3, 49, 52, 64, 67, 123 f., 220 Allman, Eileen 170 f. Aristotle, De sensu 30 Armstrong, Katherine 207 f. Asinius Lupus 110 https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501514203-013

Augustus, Emperor, law against promiscuity 11, 83, 93, 99 f., 104, 106–113, 115, 122 f., 151, 210 Aurelia (Fletcher/Massinger’s Prophetess) 126, 153, 159, 166–169, 172–174, 181 – masculinity 1, 8, 10, 40, 42, 44, 46, 49 f., 52 f., 155, 173, 181 Aylmer, John 157 Ayres, Philip J. 120 f. Ayton, Robert, Carina Caro 212 Barton, Anne 121 Beaumont, Francis & Fletcher, John, Cupid’s Revenge 176 Becon, Thomas 61 Bellany, Alastair 208, 211 f. Binns, J.W. 81 blood 26, 28, 45–47, 49 f., 87, 108, 114, 123, 125, 156, 168, 191, 195, 199, 207, 213–215, 220 f. Boas, Frederick S. 80 f. Boccaccio, Giovanni, De mulieribus claris 69 Boleyn, Anne, and poison 211 Bonduca (Fletcher’s Bonduca) – agency 5–8, 12 f., 23, 31, 54, 66, 68, 72, 75 f., 111, 112, 114, 134, 141 f., 144, 147, 150, 158, 160, 165, 167, 169 f., 172–174, 179 f., 185 f., 194, 196, 202, 208, 214 Bonduca (Fletcher’s Bonduca) 12, 166, 174, 176 Borgia, Lucrezia 54, 210 Bott, Robin L., on Lavinia 19 Bradley, A.C. 75 Brooke, Tucker 81 f. Buckley, Emma 81 f., 92, 94 Bushnell, Rebecca W. 6, 198 Butler, Martin 185 CA (Conversation Analysis) – Agrippina the Elder (Jonson’s Sejanus) 112, 122

232

Index

– Fulvia (Jonson’s Catiline) 9, 124–127, 129 f., 134–136, 141–145, 151–153, 158 – Jonson’s women 122, 127 – Livia (Jonson’s Sejanus) 13, 100, 123–125, 127, 129 f., 132–134, 136, 151, 210, 212 – maxims 127 f., 131 f. – origins 166 – overview 31, 127 CA (Conversation Analysis) 119, 127 f., 130– 133, 136 Caenis, (Massinger’s Roman Actor) 189– 191, 197, 200 f. Cain, Tom 110 Caligula, Emperor, and poison 83, 122, 130, 171, 194, 217 Calpurnia (Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar) – barrenness 69 – silence 10, 44, 59–63, 65–77, 83, 99, 106, 135, 170, 193, 199, 218 Calpurnia (Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar) 9 f., 54, 60, 66, 68 f., 147, 154, 166 Cantarella, Eva 40 f., 53 Carter, Sarah 23 Catiline Conspiracy 135 f., 143 f., 158 Catiline (Jonson’s Catiline), criticism of wives 11 f., 119–122, 124–127, 129 f., 132, 134– 136, 141–144, 146, 152 f., 155, 158–160 Chapman, George, Ovid’s Banquet of Sense 113 chastity, economic description of 1, 5, 9, 12, 20–26, 30, 64, 106, 123, 169 f., 172, 174–181, 187, 220 Chester, Allan Griffith 142, 215 Chiron (Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus) 24, 28, 30, 34, 62 f. “churl”, readings of 23 Ciambella, Fabio 11, 119 Cicero 1, 71 f., 120, 124, 126, 135, 141, 143–146, 152 f., 158 – Tusculanae Disputationes 1 Clark, Ira 31, 154 f., 177, 179, 186 f., 211, 215 Clark, Sandra 31, 154 f., 177, 179, 186 f., 211, 215 Claudius, Emperor (Gwinne’s Nero) 83–89, 92, 123, 146–150, 207 f., 210, 213 f., 218, 221

Claudius, Emperor (Richard’s Messalina) 83– 89, 92, 123, 146–150, 207 f., 210, 213 f., 218, 221 Cleopatra (Fletcher/Massinger’s False One) 3, 54 f., 120, 150, 166, 169, 172–174, 181, 190 Compagnoni, Michela 10, 39 concubinage 125 Conversation Analysis see CA Cordelia (daughter of Lear), Virgilia, comparison 3, 60, 75, 86 Corinna see Julia Maior Coriolanus 10, 39, 41–56, 60, 70–76, 120, 166 – body, anatomizing and theatricalization of 2, 4, 9, 19, 22, 25 f., 28 f., 31, 40– 42, 45–51, 53, 56, 64 f., 114, 134, 144, 169, 173, 186, 196, 216 – contempt for words 71 – Volumnia 9 f., 39–56, 60, 70–73, 75 f., 166, 181 – bond 43 f., 46, 50, 56, 108, 113, 198 – wounds 2, 29, 47–50, 192 – display of 23, 103 crossdressing, women 154–156 Curran, John E., Jr. 5 f., 177, 180, 185 Cytheris (Jonson’s Poetaster) 101, 103, 105 De Benedictis, Michele 11, 99 Delphia (Fletcher/Massinger’s Prophetess) 166–169, 173 f., 181 – agency 5–8, 12 f., 23, 31, 66, 72, 75 f., 111, 134, 141 f., 144, 158, 160, 165, 167, 169 f., 172–174, 185 f., 202, 208, 214 Del Sapio Garbero, Maria 2 f., 39, 47 De Luna, Barbara N. 120 Demetrius (Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus) 24, 26–28, 30, 34, 62, 113 Dixon, Susan 40 f., 43 Domitia (Massinger’s Roman Actor) 147, 185, 187–202 – ambition 12, 32, 81, 85, 123, 142, 146, 149, 152, 168 f., 173, 213, 222 – artistic judgment 193 – Domitian, relationship 185–194, 197–202 – literary education 194 – pride 151 f., 179, 195, 202

Index

– singing 103, 144, 193, 196 Domitian, Emperor (Massinger’s Roman Actor) 12, 185–194, 197–202 – death 28, 35, 54, 68–70, 80, 84 f., 87, 89– 91, 94, 107, 109, 112 f., 121–123, 147, 150, 167, 170, 172, 174, 178, 180, 190, 200–202, 207, 209, 212 f., 217 f., 221 Domitilla (Massinger’s Roman Actor) 189– 201 – degradation 167, 191 Drusilla (Fletcher/Massinger’s Prophetess) 166, 168, 173, 210 Dryden, John, on Jonson’s Catiline 143, 145 education, women 5, 12, 71, 103 f., 136, 141, 144, 156–158, 160, 194 Eliot, T.S., on Act 2 of Jonson’s Catiline 142–144 Elizabeth I, Queen of England 54, 73, 82, 94, 110, 121, 157, 212 English Renaissance drama, Rome in 3, 39 English society, and Roman plays 10, 60, 165 Equestri, Alice 10, 19 Eudoxa (Fletcher’s Valentinian) 1, 8, 9, 10, 40, 42, 44, 46, 49 f., 52 f., 155, 166, 173, 169–174, 181 feminist scholarship 8 Field, Nathan 11, 25, 46, 141, 156, 175, 177 Finkelpearl, Philip J. 165 Fitzpatrick, Joan 27, 30 Fletcher, Angus, on kosmos theory 12, 21, 165–182, 185 Fletcher, John 9, 12, 21, 165–182, 185 – plays – A Wife for Month 175 – Bonduca 12, 166, 174, 176 – The Humorous Lieutenant 167 – The Triumph of Death 175 – Valentinian 12, 166 f., 169–172, 174, 180 f. – characters 2 f., 6, 9, 19 f., 22, 29–32, 34 f., 39 f., 55, 59–61, 66, 86, 88, 94, 99, 115, 124 f., 127, 129–132, 144 f.,

233

166 f., 172, 181, 186, 189, 194, 201, 217, 221 – Roman women 2–13, 40, 54, 59 f., 66, 76, 83, 94, 111, 115, 122, 124, 129, 135, 142 f., 156, 158, 160, 165 f., 169 f., 172, 174, 177, 181, 186, 202, 210, 222 – plays 1–9, 11–13, 22, 28, 54 f., 59, 65 f., 79, 81 f., 85, 88, 91, 93 f., 110, 119, 134, 136, 145, 154, 156 f., 165 f., 169–172, 175, 177–182, 185 f., 192 f., 197 f., 207– 209 Fletcher, John & Massinger, Philip – plays 1–9, 11–13, 21, 22, 28, 54 f., 59, 65 f., 79, 81 f., 85, 88, 91, 93 f., 110, 119, 134, 136, 145, 154, 156 f., 165 f., 169, 171, 172, 175, 177–182, 185 f., 192 f., 198, 207 f. – The Double Marriage 177 f., 182 – The False One 12, 166, 169, 172 f. – The Prophetess 12, 166 f., 173 food, forbidden (Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus) 10, 21, 26 f., 29 f., 34 Fulvia (Jonson’s Catiline) 9, 124–127, 129 f., 134–136, 141–145, 151–153, 158 – CA 119, 127 f., 130–133, 136 – motivation 20, 35 Fumerton, Patricia 21 f. Gager, William 79, 82 Galla (Jonson’s Catiline) 124–126, 144 f., 155 Gentillet, Innocent, Discours…contre Nicolas Machiavel 88 Gillen, Katherine 4, 20 f. Goodburn, Celia 82 Goodcole, Henry, Murder Upon Murder 211 Goths (Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus) 19, 23 f., 27, 32, 61 Greene, Robert 64, 67, 72–75 – Penelope’s Web 67, 73 f. – Philomela 61, 63 f., 67, 72 f. Grice, Paul, on Cooperative Principle (CP) 127 f., 130, 132, 135 Griffin, Julia 2, 67, 79, 178 Gwinne, Matthew, Nero 9, 11, 13, 79–95, 207, 212–215, 217 f. – Latinity, excellence of 82

234

Index

– merits 76, 81, 196 – neglect 195 Hand, Molly 19, 24, 28, 30, 32 f., 49–51, 55, 69, 88, 99, 102, 115, 134, 136, 151, 165, 169, 173, 181, 185, 187 f., 190 f., 194, 218 Harris, Bernice 2, 22 Hastings, Henry, fifth Earl of Huntingdon 165 Hayes, Tara J. 119, 122, 124 f., 136 Henderson, Katherine U. & McManus, Barbara F. 4, 155, 157 Henrietta Maria, Queen 197, 215, 220, 222 Hila, Marina 167, 169–171 Hoby, Margaret 158 f. Hogan, A.P. 187 Hopkins, Lisa 2–4, 65, 185, 208 f., 215 Hopkins, Lisa & McDonnell, Sharon 2–4, 65, 185, 208 f., 215 Howes, David 19 f. Hoy, Cyrus 178 f. identity, in Coriolanus 3 f., 6, 19, 26, 39, 41, 43, 47, 51, 70, 134, 150, 160, 199 Innes, Paul 3, 39 f., 47 f., 52 Isabella I, Queen of Castille 54 Italy, and poison 3, 53 f., 64, 210 James, Heather 54, 80, 102, 104, 111, 113, 115, 120–122, 124, 155, 159, 186, 211 f., 222 Jesuits, and poison 211 Jonson, Ben Catiline His Conspiracy 9, 11 f., 99–116, 119–136, 141–146, 151– 160, 186, 210, 215, 217 – Act 2 19, 25 f., 31, 61, 64 f., 68–73, 75, 80, 82, 89, 91, 93 f., 99, 102 f., 108, 113, 123–125, 127, 129–135, 143–145, 150, 170 f., 173–175, 185, 192–195, 199 f., 209 f., 212 f., 215, 221 – failure of 119 – women in 2–5, 9, 11 f., 40, 53 f., 66 f., 82 f., 100, 103, 106, 125, 141 f., 148, 154, 156 f., 159, 165, 186 f., 191, 210 – Catholicism 65, 121, 208 – Eastward Ho! 159

– Poetaster, or His Arraignment 11, 99, 101–116, 145 – anachronisms 99 – blasphemous banquet 105 – sources 12, 31, 39, 54 f., 60, 74, 79, 82– 87, 89–91, 94, 99, 110, 120, 122, 124, 142 f., 146, 149, 155, 160, 166 f., 171, 182, 185 f., 209, 217 – Roman women 2–13, 40, 54, 59 f., 66, 76, 83, 94, 111, 115, 122, 124, 129, 135, 142 f., 156, 158, 160, 165 f., 169 f., 172, 174, 177, 181, 186, 202, 210, 222 – agency 5–8, 12 f., 23, 31, 66, 72, 75 f., 111, 134, 141 f., 144, 158, 160, 165, 167, 169 f., 172–174, 185 f., 202, 208, 214 – CA 119, 127 f., 130–133, 136 – Sejanus His Fall 11, 109, 119 f., 186, 210, 217 – The New Inn 114 – Underwood 100 f. Julia Maior (pseud. Corinna) (Jonson’s Poetaster) 11, 99–101, 104 f., 107 f., 111 f., 116 – and Ovid 60, 64, 99, 104, 111–113 – exile, reason for 53, 99 f., 106, 108 f., 111 f., 131 f., 200 – presence 5, 11, 28, 41, 52, 69, 103, 111, 133, 189, 192 – self-determination 115 Julia (Massinger’s Roman Actor) 11, 87, 90, 99–101, 103–116, 188–197, 199–201 Juliana (Fletcher/Massinger’s The Double Marriage) 177–180, 182 – bravery 46, 148 Juliet (Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet), selfdetermination 115 Kahn, Coppélia 2, 8 f., 43 f., 46, 49, 63, 65 f. – Roman Shakespeare – Warriors, Wounds and Women 2 Keeble, Neil H. 4, 134 Kennedy, Gwynne 4, 170 f., 200 kneeling 47 – Volumnia, before Coriolanus 9 f., 39–56, 60, 70–73, 75 f., 166, 181

Index

Knox, John, on women Ko, Chanmi 120

157

Lactantius, De opificio Dei 1 Lake, Peter 121 Lakoff, Robin T., four rules of style 128, 130, 136 Lamia (Massinger’s Roman Actor) 187 f., 192 f., 196, 198 Latinity, excellence of, Gwinne’s Nero 82 Lavinia (Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus) 9 f., 19–35, 60–66, 69, 73, 166, 194 – as honey 27 – as ornament 29, 31 – commoditization of 22, 31 – hands 26, 29, 46, 61 f., 71, 90, 171 – objectification of 29, 34 – Ovid’s Metamorphoses, use of 63, 186, 194 – Ovid’s Philomela, comparison 64, 66 – silence 10, 44, 59–63, 65–77, 83, 99, 106, 135, 170, 193, 199, 218 – Tamora, comparison 10, 24, 27, 30, 32– 35, 54, 61 f., 190 – tongue 26, 29, 61 f., 64 f., 67 Leech, Geoffrey 128, 130 f. Legge, Thomas, Richardius Tertius 79, 81 Leidig, Hans-Dieter 79–81, 87, 91, 93 f. letter-writing skills – and politics 4, 12, 40, 71, 177 – petitioning letter 159 – Sempronia (Jonson’s Catiline) 9, 124–127, 129 f., 132, 134–136, 141–145, 152 f., 155 f., 158–160 Livia (Jonson’s Sejanus) 13, 100, 123–125, 127, 129 f., 132–134, 136, 151, 210, 212 – CA 119, 127 f., 130–133, 136 Locusta, poisoner 13, 209–215, 218, 222 Lovascio, Domenico 1, 3 f., 67, 121, 143, 165, 172 Lucina (Fletcher’s Valentinian) 9, 45, 166 f., 169–174, 180 f. – passivity 71, 169 f., 172, 180, 182 Luckyj, Christina 59–64, 66 f., 70 f., 74 Lucrece 2 f., 6, 64, 169–171, 175–177, 189, 198

235

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, on Jacobean Britain 222 Maguire, Laurie 75, 188 Marcus (Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus) 28 f., 62 f., 111, 147, 177, 207, 219 Marlowe, Christopher 81, 87, 102, 104, 220 masculine anxieties, and silence 5 masculine women 154–156 – Agrippina (May’s Julia Agrippina) 6, 9, 11, 13, 79 f., 82 f., 86–94, 122–125, 127, 129–136, 142 f., 145–152, 154 f., 158– 160, 202, 210–215, 217–219 – Aurelia (Fletcher/Massinger’s Prophetess) 126, 153, 159, 166–169, 172–174, 181 – Eudoxa (Fletcher’s Valentinian) 9, 166, 169–174 Massinger, Philip 9, 12, 166, 168 f., 173, 177–180, 185–202 – The Bondman 197 – The Maid of Honour 197 – The Roman Actor 12, 179, 185–196, 198– 202 – female characters 2–9, 11 f., 19, 59–61, 66, 70 f., 73, 76, 79 f., 82, 85, 94, 103, 119, 122, 124 f., 134–136, 141 f., 160, 165 f., 172, 177, 180, 185 f., 189, 193, 197, 202 – sources 12, 31, 39, 54 f., 60, 74, 79, 82– 87, 89–91, 94, 99, 110, 120, 122, 124, 142 f., 146, 149, 155, 160, 166 f., 171, 182, 185 f., 209, 217 – staging 4, 9, 30, 87 f., 119 f., 185, 197, 200, 207 f., 212 May, Thomas 4, 9, 12 f., 55, 64–71, 73–75, 79, 81 f., 84–88, 90 f., 102, 104–106, 108, 111, 121, 123, 126, 129–131, 141– 143, 145–152, 154–160, 165 f., 171, 174, 177–180, 185, 188, 191 f., 194, 196 f., 201 f., 207 f., 214 f., 217–221 – History of the Parliament of England 217 – Julia Agrippina 12 f., 141 f., 207, 215–219 McKeithan, Daniel Morley 178 McMullan, Gordon 165, 173, 175 f. Medici, Caterina de’ 54, 88, 216

236

Index

Medici, Marie de’ 88, 215–217 – Agrippina (May’s Julia Agrippina), comparison 6, 9, 11, 13, 79 f., 82 f., 86–94, 122– 125, 127, 129–136, 142 f., 145–152, 154 f., 158–160, 202, 210–215, 217–219 – and poison 207 f. Mendelson, Sara, & Crawford, Patricia, on Elizabeth I 141, 148, 157 Messalina (Gwinne’s Nero) 6, 11, 13, 79 f., 82–86, 92, 94, 207, 210 f., 213, 219–221 Messalina (Richards’s The Tragedy of Messalina) – death 28, 35, 54, 68–70, 80, 84 f., 87, 89– 91, 94, 107, 109, 112 f., 121–123, 147, 150, 167, 170, 172, 174, 178, 180, 190, 200–202, 207, 209, 212 f., 217 f., 221 – lust 4, 6, 19, 24, 62, 79, 94, 149, 152 f., 167, 173, 175, 192 f., 199 f., 207, 219–221 #MeToo Movement 8 Mincoff, Marco 171 Minerva, (Massinger’s Roman Actor) 185, 200 Monteverdi, Claudio, Incoronazione di Poppea 222 Montironi, Maria Elisa 10, 59 motherhood, malevolent 10, 39–42, 45, 47, 51, 53–56 Mulcaster, Richard, on women’s education 156 Munro, Lucy 30, 180 Murphy, Jessica C., on Penelope 73 f. Neely, Carol Thomas 9, 198 Neill, Michael, on power of silence 59, 65, 76 neo-Ovidianism, Elizabethan 102 nobility, discussions on 25, 27, 156, 158, 172 noblewomen, influential 11, 124, 157–160 non-Roman women 3, 12, 166, 172, 174, 181 – in Fletcher 167, 172, 175–177, 181 – qualities 6, 20, 103, 158, 160, 165, 170, 181 non-speech see silence Norland, Howard B. 79, 81, 91 North, Thomas, translator 39, 60

Oliver, Arnold 26 ornament 19–23, 25, 28, 30–33 – Lavinia as 19, 21–24, 26–34, 65 Overbury affair (1613) 13, 211 Ovid 11, 60 f., 63 f., 73, 99–109, 111–116, 194 – and Julia Maior 100 – banishment, reasons for 11, 43, 99 f., 104, 111, 147 – in Renaissance England 62, 104, 185, 208 – works 8, 13, 20, 35, 56, 60, 72, 77, 82, 95, 99 f., 113, 116, 119, 137, 144 f., 161, 182, 202, 208, 213, 217, 223 – Amores 11, 92, 100, 102 – Heroides 61, 104 – Metamorphoses 56, 61, 194 – Tristia 100, 112 Ovidian aesthetics, Marlowe 102 Palmer, D.J. 28 Paravano, Cristina 12, 185 Peacham, Henry, Garden of Eloquence 71 Penelope (wife of Odysseus) 73–75, 130, 159 – Virgilia, comparison 9 f., 43–45, 48, 52, 60, 70–75, 166 Petronius 149 f., 152 – Satyricon 149 f. Philomela (Ovid’s Metamorphoses) 61, 63 f., 67, 72 f. Pizan, Christine de, The Book of the City of Ladies 68 f. Plutarch 2, 39, 42, 46, 48, 50, 55, 60, 67, 71, 74, 120, 153, 186 – De Garrulitate 67, 74 – Life of Cicero 153 – Lives 11, 20, 32, 39 f., 42, 46, 48, 50, 60, 64, 112, 120, 185 f., 215 poison 13, 207–211, 213–221, 223 poisoners, female 12 f., 207–211, 222 – in ancient Rome 8, 10 f., 41 f., 46, 55, 103, 109, 125

Index

politics 1, 19, 54, 70 f., 121, 125 f., 148 f., 152, 154, 157–160, 165, 173, 175 f., 185 f., 208, 211, 215, 217 – women in 2–5, 9, 11 f., 40, 53 f., 66 f., 82 f., 100, 103, 106, 125, 141 f., 148, 154, 156 f., 159, 165, 186 f., 191, 210 Poppaea (May’s Julia Agrippina), marriages 9, 11, 79 f., 82, 90, 92–94, 142, 151 f., 222 Poppaea Sabina (Gwinne’s Nero) 92 – rhetorical skills 53, 92, 181 Portia (Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar) 2, 9 f., 54, 60, 66–69, 166, 176–179 – silence 10, 44, 59–63, 65–77, 83, 99, 106, 135, 170, 193, 199, 218 – suicide 54, 68, 112, 114, 147, 150, 169 f., 174, 179 f., 194, 196 PP (Politeness Principle) 128, 131 f., 136 Prynne, William, Histriomastix 197 public speaking, importance of 71 f., 141 pudicitia, ideal of 1, 5, 7, 189 querelle des femmes, controversy 155 Quilligan, Maureen 68

12, 142,

Ragni, Cristiano 11, 79, 82 rape 2, 19, 25 f., 30, 35, 62, 170, 175, 177, 192, 194, 198 rebellion, and silence 47, 110, 185, 200 Rebhorn, Wayne 71 Richards, Nathanael, Tragedy of Messalina 4, 8 f., 13, 141, 207, 219–222 Rich, Barnaby, The Excellency of Good Women 19–21, 26, 28, 59, 61, 150, 169, 186 Richlin, Amy 60, 106 Roman plays 2–4, 6, 9 f., 12, 39 f., 47 f., 52, 54, 60, 66, 119 f., 127, 165 f., 172, 174, 181, 185 – early modern England 3 f., 10–12, 20, 27, 34, 39, 46, 65, 67, 79, 81, 122, 141 f., 148, 156 f., 159, 202, 207 – Shakespeare, studies on 2–4, 8–10, 20, 23–35, 39 f., 42–56, 59–77, 79, 86, 91, 104, 110, 115, 120, 122, 150, 154, 166, 170, 177–179, 186, 191, 195, 198, 209

237

Roman Republic, virginity in 3, 66, 175, 210 Roman women 2–13, 40, 54, 59 f., 66, 76, 83, 94, 111, 115, 122, 124, 129, 135, 142 f., 156, 158, 160, 165 f., 169 f., 172, 174, 177, 181, 186, 202, 210, 222 – assertiveness 11 f., 62, 170, 174 – complexity 7, 12, 30, 41, 62, 174, 189 – depiction of 5 f., 9 f., 29, 60, 79, 165, 176, 181, 185, 187 – in Fletcher 167, 172, 175–177, 181 – in Shakespeare 2 f., 10, 20, 22, 27, 29 f., 39, 47, 63–65, 68, 70, 73, 112, 122, 154, 198 – widows 7, 12, 174, 181 Rome 1–4, 10, 12, 19–22, 28, 33, 35, 39– 45, 47–51, 53–56, 64 f., 75, 83 f., 99– 101, 104, 106 f., 111 f., 123, 125, 131, 134, 141–145, 148, 152, 154, 165, 170–172, 181, 185, 194 f., 201, 210 f., 216 f., 220, 222 – and Volumnia’s womb 43 Ronan, Clifford J. 1 f., 4, 189, 195 Roulon, Natalie 2, 66 Rubin, Gayle 21 Rymer, Thomas 120 Sackton, Alexander H. 127 Sallust, Bellum Catilinae 120, 124 f., 141, 144, 151, 156 Santoro L’hoir, Francesca 83, 91 Schwarz, Kathryn 7–9, 83 Scot, Reginald 209 Sempronia (Jonson’s Catiline) 9, 124–127, 129 f., 132, 134–136, 141–145, 152 f., 155 f., 158–160 – CA 119, 127 f., 130–133, 136 – masculinity 1, 8, 10, 40, 42, 44, 46, 49 f., 52 f., 155, 173, 181 Sempronia (May’s Julia Agrippina) 9, 124– 127, 129 f., 132, 134–136, 141–145, 152 f., 155 f., 158–160 Seneca, De Beneficiis 3, 11, 62, 79–82, 84, 87, 91–94, 111 f., 145–148, 150, 154 f., 177, 181, 185, 196, 215 sensory model 19

238

Index

Shakespeare, William 2–4, 8–10, 20, 23– 35, 39 f., 42–56, 59–77, 79, 86, 91, 104, 110, 115, 120, 122, 150, 154, 166, 170, 177–179, 186, 191, 195, 198, 209 – plays 1–9, 11–13, 22, 28, 54 f., 59, 65 f., 79, 81 f., 85, 88, 91, 93 f., 110, 119, 134, 136, 145, 154, 156 f., 165 f., 169–172, 175, 177–182, 185 f., 192 f., 197 f., 207– 209 – and identity 22 – Coriolanus 10, 39, 41–56, 60, 70–76, 120, 166 – date 121, 124, 166 – Julius Caesar 2, 10, 54, 60, 66–69, 120, 123, 145, 154, 166, 169, 177–179, 210 – Richard II 110 – Romeo and Juliet 112, 115 – The Taming of the Shrew 104 – Titus Andronicus 10, 19, 61, 63, 65, 120, 178 – Roman plays, studies on 2–4, 6, 9 f., 12, 39 f., 47 f., 52, 54, 60, 66, 119 f., 127, 165 f., 172, 174, 181, 185 – Roman women in 1 f., 7–9, 12, 66, 119, 166, 185, 202, 207 Sidney, Mary (Countess of Pembroke) 64, 158 f. sight 28, 31, 51, 73, 88, 103, 113, 154, 170, 221 silence 10, 44, 59–63, 65–77, 83, 99, 106, 135, 170, 193, 199, 218 – and death 217, 219 – and women 2, 4, 59, 83, 91, 119, 122, 124, 128, 130, 136, 153, 191, 195 – in Ovid 56, 61, 63, 114 – in Titus Andronicus 10, 19, 34, 60 f., 69, 166 – as androgynous 74 – Calpurnia 9 f., 54, 60, 66, 68 f., 147, 154, 166 – Lavinia 9 f., 19–35, 60–66, 69, 73, 166, 194 – Portia 2, 9 f., 54, 60, 66–69, 166, 176–179 – power of, Neill on 41, 59, 64, 71, 75 f., 94, 105, 159 – symbolism of 13, 26

– Virgilia, use of 9 f., 43–45, 48, 52, 60, 70– 75, 166 – virtue of, in early modern England 67, 182 – Volumnia 9 f., 39–56, 60, 70–73, 75 f., 166, 181 Silvayn, Alexander, The Orator 210 Solga, Kim 26 Speght, Rachell 155, 160 – A Mouzell for Melastomus 155 – Moralities Memorandum 160 spheres, separate, men and women 7, 136, 186 Stanley, Elizabeth 165 Starks-Estes, Lisa S. 3, 63 Stelzer, Emanuel 12 f., 207 Stuart, Arbella, Lady 121 f., 185, 208, 222 Suetonius 11 f., 79 f., 83, 85, 89, 91, 99, 104, 106 f., 120, 123, 166, 174, 185 f., 190–192, 209, 214 f., 217 – De Vita Caesarum 120, 186 Sutton, Dana F., on Gwinne’s Nero 79, 81, 87, 212 “sweet, “ in Titus Andronicus 24, 29 Swetnam, Joseph, The Arraignment of Women 5, 154 f. Tacitus 11 f., 79 f., 83, 85, 89–92, 94, 99, 109 f., 120, 123, 146 f., 149–151, 154, 186 f., 189, 195, 202, 209, 211, 214 f. – Annals 83, 90, 92, 146 f., 149–151, 189, 202 Tamora (Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus) 10, 24, 27, 30, 32–35, 54, 61 f., 190 – commoditization 19, 29, 31, 35 – Lavinia, comparison 9 f., 19–35, 60–66, 69, 73, 166, 194 taste, and touch, lowest senses 27, 29–31, 111, 148 Taunton, Nina 53 Thomas, Keith 2, 22, 39, 60, 80 f., 100, 114, 142, 154, 156, 179, 207, 210 f., 220, 222 Thorndike, Ashley H. 120 Tibullus 101, 103, 105 Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus) 10, 19, 61, 63, 65, 120, 178

Index

Traub, Valerie 2, 7, 9, 22 Tudeau-Clayton, Margaret 105, 114 valiantness, meaning 45, 51 Vedelago, Angelica 12, 141 veneficae see poisoners, female venenum (poison), Venus, etymologial connection 208 f. Vespasian, Emperor 190–192 Veturia, etymology of name 55 Virgil, Aeneid 92, 105, 111, 113 f., 208 Virgilia (wife of Coriolanus) 9 f., 43–45, 48, 52, 60, 70–75, 166 – Cordelia, comparison 3, 60, 75, 86 – Penelope, comparison 73–75, 130, 159 – silence, use of 10, 44, 59–63, 65–77, 83, 99, 106, 135, 170, 193, 199, 218 – Volumnia, relationship 9 f., 39–56, 60, 70–73, 75 f., 166, 181 virginity, in Roman Republic 5, 20, 25, 125, 173 virtus (virtue) 1, 3, 49, 52, 64, 67, 123 f., 220 – Agrippina the Elder (Jonson’s Sejanus) 112, 122 – as self-discipline 52 – female 1 f., 4, 6, 8–12, 20, 22 f., 30, 34, 40–42, 44 f., 52 f., 60–64, 67 f., 73–77, 86, 92, 94, 104 f., 112, 122, 129, 132– 134, 136, 141, 144, 154, 156 f., 160, 165, 169 f., 172, 174 f., 177, 179–182, 185– 187, 189 f., 194, 196–198, 201 f., 208 f., 211–214, 217 f. Volumnia (Shakespeare’s Coriolanus) 9 f., 39–56, 60, 70–73, 75 f., 166, 181 – Coriolanus 10, 39, 41–56, 60, 70–76, 120, 166 – bodily connection 45

239

– bond 43 f., 46, 50, 56, 108, 113, 198 – militaristic upbringing 50 – motherhood, multilayered 10, 39–42, 45, 51, 53–56 – silence 10, 44, 59–63, 65–77, 83, 99, 106, 135, 170, 193, 199, 218 – Virgilia, relationship 9 f., 43–45, 48, 52, 60, 70–75, 166 – volumen, shared origin 56 Walker, Jarret 72 f. Wiseman, Susan 119, 122, 157 womb 40, 42 f., 47, 50, 69, 91, 131, 219 – Volumnia’s, and Rome 10, 41–44, 46– 48, 50–54, 56, 72 f., 75 women 1–9, 11 f., 20–23, 26, 32 f., 40, 43, 54, 60 f., 63–70, 73–76, 82 f., 88, 93 f., 102–104, 106, 108, 112, 119, 123, 125, 127 f., 134–136, 141–144, 148, 153–160, 165–168, 172 f., 176, 178–181, 185–192, 194–200, 202, 208–211, 217 – and silence 60, 70 f., 74 – crossdressing 154–156 – education 5, 12, 71, 103 f., 136, 141, 144, 156–158, 160, 194 – in early modern English literature, studies 4fn10 2 – in politics 136, 154, 156, 159 f., 211 – mediators 158 f. – noblewomen, influential 11, 124, 157–160 Womersley, David 79 Wroth, Mary, Lady, The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania 158 f.