Thomas Middleton and the Plural Politics of Jacobean Drama 9781501513763, 9781501518195

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments
Contents
Illustrations
Introduction: Thomas Middleton’s Plural Politics
Chapter 1. “He that knows how to obey, knows how to reign”: James as The Phoenix
Chapter 2. “And in all times, may this day ever prove / A day of triumph, joy and honest love”? The Witch and the Overbury Trials
Chapter 3. “Two ways at once”: The World Tossed at Tennis and the Thirty Years War
Chapter 4. “If this be virtue’s path, ’tis a strange one”: A Game at Chess’s Competing Histories
Conclusion: “Use but your royal hand”
Works Cited
Index

Citation preview

Mark Kaethler Thomas Middleton and the Plural Politics of Jacobean Drama

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)

Mark Kaethler

Thomas Middleton and the Plural Politics of Jacobean Drama

ISBN 978-1-5015-1819-5 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-1376-3 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-1399-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2021932134 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. © 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: GG 686 workshop, Peter Paul Rubens: Alboin und Rosamunde, © KHM-Museumsverband Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

For Katie, Then, Now, Always

Acknowledgments Publication Acknowledgments This book has had a long journey that began as a dissertation at the University of Guelph. Although the present monograph differs substantially from that previous labor, some ideas and language are reproduced from this earlier study as well as from an article previously published in Upstart. For the former, I am grateful to my former institution for its support, and I am thankful to Upstart editor Will Stockton and Clemson University for permission to present those thoughts anew here.

Personal Acknowledgments This book would not be possible without the help, guidance, and support of Viviana Comensoli, Mark Fortier, and Paul Mulholland at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. Viviana’s attention to detail and argumentation; Mark’s counsel and judgment; and Paul’s vast knowledge of Middleton and training in all facets of academic practice resonate through these pages, and where they do not, those moments are my own failings. I am indebted as well to my external examiner James Doelman for his encouragement to revise the dissertation into a book; the suggestions he offered that helped that ambition; and his ongoing efforts to connect since the defense. My interest in Middleton began in a wonderful graduate course Rachel Warburton taught at Lakehead University, and I thank her for believing in me, which sparked all of this. The wonderful Erika Gaffney met with me as a fresh PhD graduate in 2016 at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to discuss plans for a book project. I count myself extremely lucky to have worked with such an enthusiastic, supportive, knowledgeable, and kind acquisitions editor. I was equally fortunate to have met and received guidance from series editors Cristina León Alfar and Helen Ostovich. I am thankful to both mentors for lending a careful eye and offering final suggestions on the revised submission; taking the time to check in with me at conferences throughout the process; and giving me the extra year to submit this monograph. It was an absolute pleasure and privilege to work with all three of you. The anonymous external reviewer’s report was incredibly important in improving this book, and my thanks go out to that person for their time, advice, and brilliance. Thanks of https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513763-202

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Acknowledgments

course go out to everyone at Medieval Institute Publications and De Gruyter involved in making this happen, particularly Marjorie L. Harrington, Rebecca Straple, Christine Henschel, Theresa Whitaker, Nijandhanraj Elumalai, and Jonathan Hoare. I am grateful to the terrific academic communities that have sustained, advised, and helped me through this process. I have shared the ideas in these pages at the Renaissance Society of America, the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Shakespeare Association of America over the course of the past four years. I am especially thankful to the last of these groups for the lessons I have learned, particularly from panels on critical race studies that introduced me to the scholars whose work is cited in these pages, especially Kim F. Hall and her book Things of Darkness, which has been vital to the composition of the present study’s small contribution. The SAA likewise allowed for meaningful seminar discussions organized by Rory Loughnane, Kelly J. Stage and Gordon McMullan, and Tracey Hill and Andrew Gordon, which allowed us to talk about Middleton. My friends and colleagues in the field at these venues are fortunately for me too numerous to name, so I will just say thank you and you know who you are. I am grateful to the Harry Ransom Center, particularly Aaron Pratt, for the gratis images for this book from their collections as well as to the National Library Scotland for supplying the title page to Middleton and Rowley’s masque and to the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna for the cover image of Rubens’s painting from their collections that depicts the events upon which Middleton’s The Witch is based. During the course of proposing, writing, revising, and publishing this book, I have had the luck of working in a department with not only brilliant and terrific colleagues, but also outstanding friends. Thank you to my fellow academics in the humanities and social sciences and other areas, past and present, for listening to me talk about these ideas over the past four years and offering insight, care, and comradery. Medicine Hat College also kindly awarded me a research fund in my first year to begin this work. I am grateful to them for this support as well as for matching funds with the Notley government’s past Student Temporary Employment Program, which bestowed me with the best research assistant anyone could have asked for, Michael Gurski. Thanks is deserved as well to all my students at Medicine Hat College over the past five years and those previously at the University of Guelph, especially those who read Middleton, for simply being a pleasure to teach. Near or far, throughout this process Katie Ryan has been a supportive, devoted, and loving partner, and none of this would be possible without her love. This, as with everything else in my life, is for her. To our families and friends, thank you for respite, love, and laughter that always sustain me, especially to

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my parents, Diane and Alfred, for our regular phone calls. Lastly, to our cats, Arlo and Virtute, whom we adopted less than a week after I met with Erika to discuss submitting a proposal and have been devoted supervisors throughout the process, whether on shoulders or lap, you are great cats, even if you cannot play the fiddle like Malkin.

Contents Acknowledgments Illustrations

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Introduction: Thomas Middleton’s Plural Politics 1 Plural Politics and Poiesis 1 Middleton’s Political Theology 5 Challenging James’s Image as Sovereign 14 Middleton’s Political/Poetical Style and Influences 19 Patriarchy and Middleton 32 From Opera Basilica to Political Awareness, from Parrhēsia to Xenophobia 37 Chapter 1 “He that knows how to obey, knows how to reign”: James as The Phoenix 43 Introduction 43 From Tudor Ashes and Parrhēsia’s Flame 45 Fluid Sovereignty; or, the Boy Actor and the Phoenix Teaching the Monarch to Act 60 Middleton’s Contractual Theater 69 Conclusion: Disguised James 71

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Chapter 2 “And in all times, may this day ever prove / A day of triumph, joy and honest love”? The Witch and the Overbury Trials 73 Introduction 73 Middleton’s Earlier Satires of Howard, Essex, and Carr 76 Witches, Aristocrats, and Tragicomedy 82 Blackfriars and the Theatricality of Injustice 90 Providential Theater or the Satire of Containment 98 The Changeling; or, Howard Six Years Later 102 Chapter 3 “Two ways at once”: The World Tossed at Tennis and the Thirty Years War 111 Introduction 111 Middleton’s Political Irony 114

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War, Peace, White Supremacy, and Middleton, 1616–1620 120 The World Tossed at Tennis as Intended Performance 130 The World Tossed at Tennis Performed 136 Collaborative Governance and Political Awareness 145 Conclusion 151 Chapter 4 “If this be virtue’s path, ’tis a strange one”: A Game at Chess’s Competing Histories 153 Introduction 153 Conflicted Charles and Bad Buckingham 156 Jacobean Janus 159 Allegory in Pieces: Royalty and Pawns 163 Satirizing Aristocracy 166 Unpredictable Providential Morality 176 “She that knows sin, knows best how to hate sin.” 180 “Dissembler! – that includes all” 187 Conclusion: Still Binary 189 Conclusion: “Use but your royal hand” Works Cited Index

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Illustrations Figure 3.1 Title page of A Courtly Masque: the Device called, The World Tossed at Tennis, 1620. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland. Photo: National Library of Scotland 127 Figure 3.2 Taken from Thomas Middleton’s Peace-maker. Generously provided by the John Henry Wrenn Library, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. Shelfmark: Wh J231 618p WRE 129 Figure 3.3 Taken from Henry Peacham’s Minerva Britanna. Generously provided by the John Henry Wrenn Library, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. Shelfmark: Wh P313 612m WRE 147 Figure 3.4 Taken from Henry Peacham’s Minerva Britanna. Generously provided by the John Henry Wrenn Library, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. Shelfmark: Wh P313 612m WRE 148

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Introduction: Thomas Middleton’s Plural Politics Plural Politics and Poiesis What remains of Thomas Middleton’s work as a dramatist for the stage begins and ends with politics. His first play, The Phoenix (1604), clearly corresponds with the accession of James I, and his final satire, A Game at Chess (1624), sketches the recent debacle of the Spanish Match. Despite these bookends signaling an ongoing interest with political affairs and the fact that James’s reign (1603–1625) perfectly overlaps the playwright’s extant dramatic canon, there has never been a full-length study dedicated to Middleton as a Jacobean dramatist devoted to topical matters.1 Swapan Chakravorty’s Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton comes closest, but the book attends to a variety of sociopolitical issues without a sustained interest in Middleton’s responses to James as a governor. The image James cultivated previously as king of Scotland was imported early on through London’s booksellers vending his reprinted works Basilicon Doron and The True Law of Free Monarchies. These publications among other later writings purported the divine right of kings and claimed James could not be tyrannical because he had been appointed by God. Although the book will illuminate that this habit of thought was not foreign to Elizabeth I, and that it was not uncommon for Elizabethan (or Tudor) authors to engage with political matters, it maintains that Middleton styled himself as a political writer and that the circumstances of James’s government, era, and image leant themselves toward or provoked a dialogical and subtly challenging political art. Middleton was therefore not an entirely original political artist, but his dramatic works offer a sustained lens into the unique features of James’s governance and the ways in which theater could respond to the monarch’s politics. James’s tracts concerning the divine right of kings are grounded in what contemporary criticism has labeled political theology. While the term is associated with the writings of Carl Schmitt, who was preoccupied with the early modern era, it has been used in a historical manner to examine the implications of political thought in eras that intertwined these interests with religion. Debora Kuller Shuger, for instance, explores the ramifications of James’s political theology in relation to William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. This play, which

1 With the exception of a few early poems (The Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased, Microcynicon, and The Ghost of Lucrece), one work of Elizabethan prose (The Penniless Parliament of Threadbare Poets), and one Caroline mayoral show (The Triumphs of Health and Prosperity), Middleton’s extant literary corpus can be defined exclusively as Jacobean. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513763-001

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Middleton would revise later for the 1623 Folio, was initially written shortly after Middleton’s Phoenix and exhibits a shared focus on accession.2 Shuger’s work points to the manner by which James’s new monarchy offered an augmented interest in matters of divine right, wherein “such rhetoric acquires a polemical valence” after 1604.3 Middleton criticism, however, rarely broaches the subject of political theology despite the dramatist’s ongoing fascination with sovereignty’s limitations.4 What makes Middleton’s political art interesting with respect to James’s political theology is its challenge to unified or singular models of politics. His dramatic art uses the fragmented nature of the theater’s multiple perspectives and distracted atmosphere to generate plural politics for audiences. These competing outlooks concerning what action should be taken gradually allow citizens to judge the proper direction as news media begin to proliferate, but the multifaceted reality of the political landscape also challenges James’s intransigent approach. Middleton’s poetics thus intervene in the sovereign’s singular agenda and destabilize unified and hierarchical traditions of political theology. This challenge to Jacobean authority represents a novelty according to what Victoria Kahn contends has been neglected in studies of political theology. Kahn’s study of political theology examines how “poiesis is the missing third term in both early modern and contemporary debates about politics and religion.”5 With the exception of Shakespeare, however, Kahn pays little attention to early modern dramatists, and Shakespeare’s work is more ambiguous and paradoxical or at least its allusions to topical matters are less sustained than Middleton’s.6 Middleton’s

2 John Jowett notes that Middleton was not only a collaborator on Timon of Athens with Shakespeare, but he incorporated portions from The Witch as well as perhaps other material into Macbeth; moreover, Middleton had a hand in later adjustments to texts in the first folio between Shakespeare’s initial composition of his plays and the folio’s publication seven years after his death: “The more recent case for Middleton treating Measure for Measure in a comparable way is now widely accepted. Middleton is likely also to have added the ‘fly scene’ in Folio Titus Andronicus, and to have made adjustments to All’s Well That Ends Well.” John Jowett, Shakespeare and Text: Revised Edition, p. 21. As Jowett and others have noted, different authors making later alterations to early modern plays was common practice. 3 Debora Kuller Shuger, Political Theologies in Shakespeare’s England, p. 57. 4 The one exception is David Glimp’s study of emergence in Middleton’s work. David Glimp, “Thomas Middleton and the Theatre of Emergence,” in The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton. 5 Victoria Kahn, The Future of Illusion: Political Theology and Early Modern Texts, p. 3. 6 Kahn likely addresses Shakespeare because he has been a topic of discussion when it comes to political theology since Carl Schmitt’s early writings, but his analysis of Shakespeare’s Hamlet illuminates the problems with attributing a clear political allegory in Shakespeare’s canon. Schmitt claimed that in tragedy “the common public sphere (which in every performance

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elaborate allegories offer prolonged engagement with recent affairs and are rife with irony. These rhetorical devices offer Middleton a means to destabilize political meaning in order to produce unease and critical thought concerning James’s sovereignty. The Elizabethan rhetorician George Puttenham, for example, recognizes that allegory and irony are potentially dangerous forms of poiesis because of their potential to generate multiple interpretations.7 By applying this understanding to Middleton’s political theology, it is possible to return to Kahn’s suggestion that poiesis and political theology be considered in conjunction with one another to examine the manner by which Jacobean drama questioned the sovereign’s ostensible infallibility to establish a course of political action. In the case of Middleton, his poiesis offers a means to perceive early challenges to the sovereign’s politics. By fragmenting the political landscape, Middleton’s political art illuminates that the dominant habits of thought that the sovereign prescribes are not necessarily the only way to govern and that other methods might better suit the crises or new developments at hand. The means to stage such a political intervention at the time was parrhēsia. As David Colclough states, “[t]he pervasiveness of rhetorical education in sixteenth-century England means that a great many Englishmen would have been aware of the figure.”8 This

encompasses the author, the actors, and the audience) is not based on the accepted rules of language and play, but upon the living experience of a shared historical reality.” Carl Schmitt, Hamlet or Hecuba, p. 45. This “reality” for Schmitt, however, was based upon the ostensible fact that Hamlet represented King James and that the action of this tragedy was “impossible to fictionalize or relativize.” Ibid., p. 45. Aside from the suspicious historical “facts” he locates in a play that does not clearly beckon its audience to make these topical associations, Schmitt treats the play’s fictional world as though it overtly mirrors the audience’s reality, which is imprecise for a play like Hamlet. This is not to say that Shakespeare’s works do not have the potential to elicit political thought. Peter Platt perceives Shakespeare’s use of paradox as resembling something akin to the plurality this book addresses with the device’s “doubleness and wonder,” but ultimately the general lack of topical political content makes it difficult to establish political readings. Peter Platt, Shakespeare and the Culture of Paradox, p. 2. Chris Fitter, on the other hand, perceives an attention to portrayals of sovereignty in Shakespeare and locates an “ambiguating perspective” that he perceives as “daring and dissident.” Chris Fitter, Radical Shakespeare, p. 32. The depictions, however, draw no substantive or sustained correspondences with England’s government. 7 George Puttenham, The Art of English Poesy, p. 238. 8 David Colclough, Freedom of Speech in Early Stuart England, p. 60. Early modern rhetorical manuals advocate that parrhēsia should be expressed with courtesy to the ruler. Henry Peacham describes parrhēsia as “when speaking before them whome we ought to reuerence and feare, & hauing something to say, which either toucheth themselues, or their friends, do desire them to pardon our boldnesse.” Henry Peacham, The garden of eloquence, conteyning the fitures of grammer and rhetoric, sigs. M2v–M3r. Angell Day humorously describes the trope as “libertie to speake, when by winning of curtesie to our speech we seeke to auoyd anie offence

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rhetorical device provides Londoners with the necessary oratory skill to be frank with authorities without risking punishment, something Middleton managed to accomplish even with his last scandalous play.9 This early form of free speech corresponds with Michel Foucault’s understanding of parrhēsia in his final lectures The Government of Self and Others and The Courage of Truth.10 Foucault perceives the rhetorical device as establishing a contractual relation between the sovereign and the people. Michelle O’Callaghan has observed the manner by which Foucault’s parrhēsiastic contract is established from the outset of James’s English reign in the speech delivered by Richard Martin, a gentleman of the Inns of Court, welcoming James into the city.11 As we will see in the chapters that unfold, Middleton draws upon this entry into Jacobean London early on and sustains this interest in establishing a parrhēsiastic contract between Londoners and their monarch. The challenge to James does not defy or question his authority, but rather addresses the limitations and obligations of his governance. The book therefore does not suggest that Middleton’s theater surreptitiously promotes political insurgence or riots; instead, it argues that its plural political dimensions cultivate political awareness, promote a parrhēsiastic contract of limited sovereignty, and challenge James’s infallible image. These features define Middleton’s political writings and his drama’s responses to the political theology of the Jacobean era.

thereof, as thus. Pardon if I be tedious, the circumstance requireth it.” Angell Day, The English secretory, vol. 2, sig. O2r. 9 Previous studies have regarded Middleton as adopting similar techniques of mixing praise with critique, which has been a literary employment since Erasmus’s Praise of Folly or earlier. Paul Yachnin, “A Game at Chess: Thomas Middleton’s ‘Praise of Folly’,” Modern Language Quarterly. In a broader sense, scholars have noted Middleton and other dramatists like Jonson from the Jacobean era demonstrating an interest in undermining systems of order. Mathew R. Martin, for instance, perceives Middleton’s city comedies as efforts “to interrogate the production of early modern English culture’s key discourses as knowledge, the construction of the knowing (and doubting) self, and the impossible epistemological fantasies of power.” Mathew R. Martin, Between Theater and Philosophy, p. 14. 10 In The Courage of Truth, Foucault defines a parrhēsiast as one who assists someone “in their blindness,” but more specifically “their blindness about who they are, about themselves.” Michel Foucault, The Courage of Truth, p. 16. Middleton’s political art similarly reveals the truth of James’s interdependency or his kingdom’s divided nature. In The Government of Self and Others, Foucault frames the act as a challenge to authority or “a combat, a conflict” that defies tyranny or the possibility of it taking shape. Michel Foucault, The Government of Self and Others, p. 156. The competing perspectives or plural politics of Middleton’s drama facilitate this “conflict.” 11 Michelle O’Callaghan, The English Wits: Literature and Sociability in Early Modern England, pp. 14–15.

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Middleton’s Political Theology As a branch of thought, political theology concerns the intersection of secular political affairs and theology, a crossway that is ubiquitous throughout the early modern period. The term is commonly associated with the writings of Carl Schmitt, as aforementioned, though the terminology was used previously in the nineteenth century. In recent years, early modern scholarship has explored the correspondences between contemporary theories and the historical circumstances of the early modern period. Schmitt’s conception of the sovereign decider has dominated these interests,12 and its historical applications have yielded results ranging from confirming its prominence in early modern England to locating alternative politics. Surveying literature on the subject, Jennifer Rust observes this polarity with respect to the major studies at the time: “Lupton is able to transcend the Schmittian focus on the singular person of the sovereign ‘decider’ who remains the dominant focus of Shuger’s political theology.”13 This summary accurately delineates the spectrum of approaches. Shuger’s study of Jacobean governance and Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure identifies a sacred kingship that recognizes James’s sovereign power as God’s deputy. Julia Reinhard Lupton’s Citizen-Saints diverts the focus of political theology away from the sovereign and toward “the many faces of the multitude.”14 Both of these realities were present simultaneously in the early modern political landscape, and Middleton’s political drama situates itself between these habits of thought. Rather than attributing these politics to a particular message, this study approaches the simultaneous acknowledgment of sovereign authority and presentation of plural perspectives as a result of the parrhēsiastic contract, which both signals devotion and questions the limitations of the ruler’s authority.15 By praising and upholding James’s sacred right as king while also offering challenges to the monarch’s idealized self-image, Middleton stages a nuanced political theology through multivalent art that can appeal to those of either political inclination while also staging parrhēsia. Middleton’s drama can therefore be reconceived as presenting a plurality of politics in its representation of sovereignty rather than

12 Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, pp. 2–3. 13 Jennifer R. Rust, “Political Theology and Shakespeare Studies,” Literature Compass, p. 178. 14 Julia Reinhard Lupton, Citizen-Saints: Shakespeare and Political Theology, p. 5. 15 Previous scholarship on Middleton has attempted to align the playwright with one political standpoint or another, but this tendency results in issues with authorial intention. In an anecdote, Gary Taylor compares those who would attempt to discern the dramatist’s political affiliation or underlying message with Gloucester’s blindness on the heath in King Lear. Gary Taylor, “Forms of Opposition,” English Literary Renaissance, p. 287.

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only a dutiful replication of sacred kingship or a recalcitrant opposition to it. This interrogative framework is in keeping with the political theology of the early modern period. Julia Reinhard Lupton and Graham Hammill theorize that “political theology confronts its readers as crisis and not content, as recurrent question rather than established doxa.”16 The matter of questions rather than statements returns in some ways to the work of Joel B. Altman,17 but whereas the Tudor playwrights that Altman surveyed in his still relevant study The Tudor Play of Mind initiated a rhetorical imaginary of dialectic uncertainty that could guide spectators toward their own truths, Middleton, as a Stuart dramatist, peppered this tradition with the topical matters of the day that were increasingly circulated in London’s bookshops and streets through literary and oral popular cultures of libel and news that blossomed during James’s reign.18 The necessity of a bond between ruler and ruled is never questioned, but the sharper attention to pressing concerns generates a challenge through parrhēsia. In this manner, Middleton’s theater poses the questions that Altman claims are central to early modern drama, but his political art’s questions address the degree to which James’s sacred kingship and politics are actually as impeccable as he claims them to be and propose alternative methods of governance. The poignancy of this parrhēsia sharpens over the course of Middleton’s dramatic career as he moves from an initial play counseling the king to a public drama mocking him and his recent actions. What begins as traditional parrhēsia thus gradually transforms into more abrasive and direct forms of criticism like satire or divided and overtly plural rhetorical devices like irony. Middleton’s poiesis therefore adapts to the political circumstances of the times. Although Middleton’s canon is littered with political allusions, this book focuses on moments of significant change or crisis since, as Lupton and Hammill suggest, political theology is best understood as existing at these intervals, and they offer sustained and specific dramatic instances to analyze Middleton’s political poiesis. This study is therefore not a comprehensive study of politics in Middleton’s writing but rather an examination of his elaborate engagements with the political theology of the time in allegories that clearly map out current events.19 16 Graham Hammill and Julia Reinhard Lupton, “Introduction,” in Political Theology and Early Modernity, p. 3. 17 Joel B. Altman, The Tudor Play of Mind, p. 6. 18 This flurry of literary commercialism is in part due to the exponential expansion of London. Paul Seaver notes that the city’s population grew from between 80,000 and 100,000 at Middleton’s birth in 1580 to 300,000 by his death in 1627. Paul S. Seaver, “Middleton’s London,” in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 59. 19 The result of this study, then, is not an attempt to provide a comprehensive or definitive understanding of Middleton’s politics or art, but merely his political poiesis as it applies to James’s governance. Previous studies have attempted to provide this holistic reading of Middleton’s

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The plays surveyed in these pages therefore engage in scandalous or provocative ways with topical subject matter concerning the sovereign and at times challenge his decisions or actions. In this literary marketplace, questions become indirect challenges to a monarch fashioning himself as God’s deputy on earth, especially when views and politics other than the monarch’s own are given space to compete onstage within worlds that clearly mirror, though not exactly, the king’s policies, actions, or even character. This is not to say that James was an absolutist dictator operating within an entirely tyrannical regime, as has been previously surmised.20 As Debora Kuller Shuger has observed, what has typically defined James as a ruler is the anachronistic term “absolutism.” The attribution of this quality to James, or to the Stuarts more broadly, can lead to the misunderstanding that James was an unwavering and intransigent dictator, which was not the case. The king had to operate in the court’s English legal systems and was answerable to parliament, even though he frequently disbanded this political collective. Shuger observes that the modern usage of the term “absolutism” seems to refer most commonly to a ruler governing independently of his kingdom: “Modern historians of Stuart political thought generally understand” absolutism “as the opposite of the view that power derives from the community.”21 Although Shuger is correct that this contemporary polarity is incorrect when applied to the historical realities of early modern London, the idea of absolutism found its opposite in the idea of a consensual monarchy. This concept derives from Sir John Fortescue’s distinction between “two kynds of Kyngdomys,” which he labels Dominium Regale and Dominium Politicum & Regale.22 The difference is that “the

canon. David M. Holmes, for instance, dismisses cynical and disinterested readings of Middleton’s plays, but replaces these interpretations with an overly simplified view of his drama as inflected with “faith and fundamental philanthropy.” David M. Holmes, The Art of Thomas Middleton, p. 40. A more apt assessment of the playwright’s dramatic works is Leslie Thomson’s suggestion that Middleton has a double vision defined by “the coexistence of overt amorality and equally overt moralizing.” Leslie Thomson, “Morality and Amorality in the Drama of Thomas Middleton,” p. 1. 20 Glenn Burgess identifies John Neville Figgis’s important study The Divine Right of Kings (1896) as unfortunately leading to a general understanding that this political theology was directly connected to “a theory of royal absolutism.” Glenn Burgess, “The Divine Right of Kings Reconsidered,” The English Historical Review, p. 838. More accurate assessments of James’s politics and literature examine the specific policies and models he implemented and projected. Jonathan Goldberg’s observation that James unevenly paired Roman subterfuge with Stoic perspicuity, for example, exposes James’s contradictory image without reducing him to an absolutist governor. Jonathan Goldberg, James I and the Politics of Literature, p. 115. 21 Debora Kuller Shuger, Political Theologies in Shakespeare’s England, p. 56. 22 Sir John Fortescue, The Difference Between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy; As it more particularly regards the English Constitution. Being a Treatise Written by Sir John Fortescue, Kt.,

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first may rule his People by such Lawys as he makyth hymself,” thereby allowing the monarch to impose what he sees fit “without their Assent,” whereas in the other monarchy means the king “may not rule hys People, by other Lawys than such as they assent unto; and therfor he may set upon them non Impositions without their own Assent.”23 The language of the second government bespeaks a contractual relationship that sets limits and allows for challenges to the monarch’s methods.24 By framing this bond and its power dynamic as commonplace while disrupting authority through parrhēsiastic reminders of obligation and consent, Middleton dramatizes a plural political reality that connects with Lupton’s vision of multiple horizons while still upholding the sacred kingship that Shuger perceives as a dominant habit of thought in the early modern era. Through his poiesis, then, Middleton questions the sovereign and either negotiates or presents new political realities onstage. These challenges to the sovereign, however, were not merely political but also grounded in theology and Middleton’s texts contain ongoing references to Calvinism and its doctrine of double predestination.25 Some critics have tended

Lord Chief Justice, and Lord High Chancellor of England, under King Henry VI, edited by John Fortescue-Aland, sig. B1r. It is important to note that the more convenient terms absolutist monarchy and limited monarchy derive from Sir John Fortescue’s early eighteenth-century editor John Fortescue-Aland’s coinage rather than Sir Fortescue’s original writings. The title uses the terms absolute and limited, but these do not appear in the body of the work. For these reasons, this author uses Fortescue’s language around consensual rule that predates rather than postdates Middleton’s era. 23 Ibid., sigs. B1v–B2r. 24 This is not to say that we have the clear understanding of contractual theory that would come about in the Restoration era, but there are antecedents here and elsewhere in early modern political thought. J. W. Gough perceives ways in which Aristotle’s and Plato’s writings contain some traces of contractual political theory, even if “only sketched in lightly and incidentally.” J. W. Gough, The Social Contract, p. 14. He also notes that the Magna Carta “is contractual in effect if not actually called.” Ibid., p. 33. There is no formal contract in place, but there are earlier points of contact that allow for us to locate the parrhēsiastic contract historically. 25 Middleton’s The Two Gates of Salvation (1609), later reissued as The Marriage of the Old and New Testament (1620) and God’s Parliament House (1627), is frequently used as a means for critics to establish Middleton’s Calvinist beliefs based upon this single instance of overt references to this religion. The last of these titles presents the text as tied to English politics. The work is framed in the tradition of Christian typology: Middleton juxtaposes corresponding passages from the Old and New Testaments across adjacent pages of the printed book. In The Two Gates of Salvation, Middleton refers at one point to “the elect” and “the reprobate” (703), as well as to “Predestination” (713), all of which are tenets of Calvinism. Readings that argue for clear codifications of God’s chosen elect versus those destined for hell stem from Paul Mulholland’s observation that The Two Gates of Salvation is heavily indebted to the Geneva Bible

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to see Middleton as Calvinist rather than as a playwright preoccupied with Calvinism, which has led to the codification of characters as either reprobates or elected.26 We can garner more knowledge of his religious habits from an effort to examine the dilemmas of Calvinism rather than viewing his writings as fervent espousals of Calvinist tenets and beliefs that zealous Puritans of early modern London promulgated, for as Joseph Campana puts it, “Attempts at sermonizing fail in Middleton.”27 Calvinism’s interpretive game of occluded divine truth and equivocal worldly knowledge produces an endless puzzle, but one with real consequences. This paradox gives way to unclear or plural spiritual conclusions as well as a need for interpretive vigilance, a technique that carries through into Middleton’s political poiesis. In discussing A Mad World, My Masters, for instance, Derek Alwes provides an apt overview of God’s absence and the audience’s role in Middleton’s theater: “the world of the play is one that God has apparently abandoned to its own devices. The only way spiritual values can be present in the plays is paradoxically by virtue of their absence, a void that the audience has to fill.”28 The ethical responsibility that Middleton’s

and that Middleton has a preoccupation with the ideas of predestination in the text’s marginal notes. Mulholland claims that these glosses are at times likely Middleton’s own given a lack of source material and suggest a Calvinist interest. Paul Mulholland, “The Two Gates of Salvation,” English Language Notes, pp. 27–36. Mulholland, however, regards Calvinism in the text as a singular instance rather than as a trend that pervades the entire canon. It is therefore problematic to presume that Middleton’s religious inculcation programs him to assign the roles of elect and reprobate to his stage personae, or that his treatment remains constant across his canon. 26 For instance, although Jack Herbert Heller’s reading of the character Master Penitent Brothel from Middleton’s A Mad World, My Masters (1605) appreciates the fluctuations in Penitent’s spiritual state, his approach to the Calvinist implications reinforces the binary either/or structure of the doctrine rather than attending to the ambiguous continuum the play presents. Heller declares Penitent Brothel “Middleton’s sharpest piece of irony,” but claims that the conversion from Brothel to Penitent is a seamless spiritual transmutation, which shows that “the way to be excluded from the world [of sin] is to repent.” Jack Herbert Heller, Penitent Brothellers, pp. 86–87. This either/or scenario ignores the ongoing process that repentance entails, a tendency that Heller had acknowledged earlier when he described repentance as “an ongoing responsibility” that he claims differs from conversion “because Christians continue to sin.” Ibid., p. 35. Despite Heller’s insistence that there is a difference between repentance and conversion, both require vigilance. Converts and repentant Christians are thus always at risk of reverting to their sinful habits. 27 Joseph Campana, “Middleton as Poet,” in The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton, p. 473. 28 Derek Alwes, “The Secular Morality of Middleton’s City Comedies,” Comparative Drama, p. 107.

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interrogative dramas can inspire in attuned audience members is thus of their own devising, but remains in accordance with Protestantism’s values. As Ron Huebert suggests in his article on Middleton’s style, the compulsion to act ethically is a common element in Middleton’s drama: “When the world is changing faster than might be comfortable for most human beings, when old values are under attack and new ones uncertain, the modest disastrous course of all is the decision to simply drift.”29 Middleton’s Calvinism is informed by an unknowable outcome for citizens who must nevertheless persevere to maintain a righteous inner balance in the hope that they are elected. This middle state complements the author’s plural politics, and their crossway indicates the necessity to achieve a balanced government with the awareness that the times are always changing. The dramatist uses this fact to spur interpreters to be conscientious about their spiritual condition and that of their political state, encouraging them to remain aware and to avert error wherever possible. Turning to Middleton’s earliest religious text, The Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased (1599), readers can garner how this outlook on Calvinism influences his depictions of political theology. Early modern political theology (involving the intersection of religion and politics) suggests that the sovereign is aligned with God and allocated the power and right to rule the multitude, but in her introduction to The Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased, Shuger identifies a “radical duality” in Middleton’s writing that does not tend to depict authorities in this manner.30 The following passage from The Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased

29 Ronald Huebert, “Middleton’s Nameless Art,” The Sewanee Review, p. 608. 30 Shuger claims that this dualism “pervades the whole poem, opposing nature to grace, morality to eternity, earth to heaven . . . In Middleton’s hands, in fact, the distinction between nature and grace takes a curious, almost gnostic, turn, where nature at moments seems an autonomous, demiurgic force opposed to divine wisdom.” Debora Kuller Shuger, “Introduction to The Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased,” in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1917. This reading derives from the poem’s place in a Christian universe that sees the afterlife in heaven as an ideal state, which establishes an apotheosis in relation to the lesser condition of this world. As my ensuing reading of the poem will show, I do not disagree with Shuger that this was a reality for early modern Christians; however, those who lived in this fallen world were left to face this cruel nature that was ostensibly created by God, leaving them in a middle state that is full of strife, regardless of Calvin’s promises of grace. My reading of Middleton’s Calvinism does not therefore disagree with Shuger’s, but I ponder instead upon the responsibilities that are left to those who are (pre)destined to deal with the politics of this world in an ethical Christian manner. When politics are intertwined with theology and the monarch’s authority is questioned, citizens’ political awareness inspires a critical engagement and responsibility to interpret mirrors of their own realities or recent past.

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reveals Middleton’s attitudes to the sovereign and the ways in which Calvinism’s mysteries can level political relations: For God hath no respect of rich from poor, For he hath made the poor and made the rich. Their bodies be alike, though their minds soar, Their differences naught but in presumption’s pitch. The carcass of a king is kept from foul, The beggar yet may have the cleaner soul.31 (37–42)

The ironic questioning of whether a king or a beggar is more virtuous under the surface again shows Middleton’s consistent interest in Calvinism, given the lingering uncertainty of who are reprobates and who are the elect. However, a blending of politics and religion also occurs with the reminder that mortality renders everyone common and that what lies beyond worldly existence remains unknown for everyone from kings to beggars.32 Divine providence thus remains a mystery in the Middleton universe rather than a quality that monarchs can presume to wield naturally. Rulers remain important for Middleton, but not inherently superior or infallible, as James presented himself to be. These limitations deny authorities complete control and invite audiences to question their utter faith in the abilities of their governors, leaving the ultimate judgment of God silent in the drama’s plurality of possibilities. Middleton’s texts do not offer conclusive answers because the problems they stage cannot be completely resolved in their present moment or at least not through worldly means. Even if interpreters find ways to overcome the politically charged dilemmas that Middleton stages, the hermeneutics of their competing politics are only temporarily quelled, for new events will give way to “emergent” issues. David Glimp applies such a lens to Middleton, claiming that the playwright’s theater correlates with the concept of political emergence or emergency, a topic of interest in studies of political theology: “States of emergency prompt both critical reflection, an evaluative state requiring cognitive distance from the

31 All quotations, unless otherwise specified derive from Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino’s compilation Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works. Thomas Middleton, Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, edited by Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino. 32 The contents of the passage show an interest in the monarch’s place in God’s world and the poem’s subject matter is clearly biblical, but critics have also deduced that the piece contains topical subject matter pertaining to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. G. B. Shand argues that The Wisdom of Solomon is an indication of Middleton’s early interest in politics; he reads the work as infused with “patriotic Protestantism.” G. B. Shand, “The Elizabethan Aim of Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased,” in “Accompaninge the Players,” p. 68.

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action and characters’ duress, and the affective intensity that derives from the complex interplay of sympathy and distance.”33 Although Middleton stresses the importance of dealing with current, pressing matters, the greater, ongoing emergency in his works concerns a future trajectory that extends beyond the present emergency and is collective in its scope. In this way, Middleton’s work gradually counters political theology’s tendency to confer the power to resolve such emergent matters upon the sovereign. While Middleton upholds the sovereign as the people’s leader, he constructs him as a fellow member of this body politic, even if he is allocated the responsibility of its head. This study therefore extends Glimp’s observation by arguing that, for Middleton, emergency is an ongoing condition that entails common dilemmas and perpetual renovation. These remain a matter for an individual decider (i.e., James) to resolve, but he is reminded of his shared fallen condition with the people and is encouraged to make decisions with collective interests in mind. Art, either for the monarch or for his subjects, ultimately facilitates this critical and ethical political concern, thereby tying poiesis with the political but also the theological. In Middleton’s universe, a person’s conversion or repentance depends upon their interpretation of texts and theatrics. In A Mad World, My Masters, the transition from Brothel to Penitent, from sinner to saved, relies upon a confrontation with both literature and sin in order to change for the better. Penitent Brothel enters reading a religious tract advising him against adultery. Having recognized the folly of his ways and having pledged to the audience that he will “ne’er embrace her [sin] more – never – bear witness, never” (4.1.29), a Succubus enters and attempts to entice him into lascivious conduct. In this scene, the audience watches literature’s transformative capacity in action followed by theater’s ability to confirm the legitimacy of this conversion through the public dimension and testing procedure of temptation. Although Penitent Brothel banishes her from the stage, expunging it of her sinful presence from the early modern Christian audience’s perspective, the Succubus’s call to “Remember!” seems two-fold (4.1.42): despite the fact that the text asks its audience to interpret this call as a memory of deviance – so that Penitent might return to his former corrupt state – it also reminds us that Penitent’s journey forward is fraught and that he has learnt this lesson from a devil, which he must “Remember!” He has not perfected his existence, meaning that he remains in a middle state. Hence, he must remember the Succubus, but in such a way as to eschew her. The past is not where he ought to reside, but he cannot presume that his present state is

33 David Glimp, “Middleton and the Theatre of Emergency,” in The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton, p. 362.

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static. He remains in an uncertain liminal zone, like Jane in Middleton’s A Trick to Catch the Old One (1606), who perceives that a person “that knows sin, knows best how to hate sin” (5.2.151). Middleton’s savvy characters thus do not presume to be free of sinful temptations, and other characters’ presumed superiority or overzealous faith remains the target of his plurality. This equivocal presentation of Calvinism does not lead persons to be able to ascertain their predestined state; it instead entertains a degree of free will. Christopher Haigh suggests that although Calvinism was widespread in early modern England, its tenet of double predestination was not always strictly adhered to by preachers or warmly accepted by subjects: “Although the simplest catechisms avoided the issue of predestination, from the 1580s the more advanced texts and many sermons taught election and assurance. But these proved to be highly unpopular doctrines, and writers such as Gifford, Perkins, Dent and Bayley had to devote much attention to meeting popular criticisms.”34 Middleton relies upon a predestination model, but certainly challenges the severity of “[w]hat is clear[:] that predestination was thought to bring about melancholy and despair – as Calvinist writers from Gifford and Dent to Bolton and Sibbes admitted.”35 Middleton’s theater delivers entertainment rather than sermons, meaning that his lessons are pluralistic rather than polemical.36 The 34 Christopher Haigh, “The Taming of the Reformation,” History, p. 577. Double predestination is a Calvinist belief whereby persons are predestined by God to be saved or lost. 35 Ibid., p. 581. 36 Middleton’s Elizabethan antecedents influence his Calvinism in ways that offer further understandings for how Calvinism in literature was not always sermonized. Like Middleton’s, Nashe’s literary corpus is frequently inflected with Calvinist tones. Mauricio Martinez sees Nashe, in works ranging from Terrors in the Night (1594) to Pierce Penniless to Christ’s Tears Over Jerusalem, following the theological fascination with “the interior spaces of the closet and bedchamber” that “occupy a privileged position in a theology of presence,” and these depictions are influenced by religious thinkers such as Calvin himself and later Calvinists William Perkins and John Norden. Mauricio Martinez, “Terrors of Conscience,” Renaissance and Reformation, p. 46. As Kristen Abbott Bennett points out, however, in Lenten Stuffe (1599) Nashe “mocks the Calvinist theory of predestination.” Kristen Abbott Bennett, “Red Herrings and the ‘Stench of Fish’,” Renaissance and Reformation, p. 104. While Calvinism is of interest to Nashe, his wavering portrayals of its tenets maintain an ambivalent attitude toward the religious discourse. As with Middleton, it remains difficult if not impossible to determine with any degree of certainty the author’s positions on the various aspects of Calvinism, discrediting efforts to attribute a puritanical or zealous lens to Middleton’s theology. An even more ambivalent portrait of Calvinism can be found in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, to which Middleton occasionally refers. In addition to the mention of Doctor Faustus in The Black Book, the woodcut from the title page of Middleton’s The Owl’s Almanac (1618) pays homage to the imprint of the later printed edition of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (1616). Between the production of Doctor Faustus that Middleton recalls (circa 1588–1589) and the second printed edition, or B-text

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playfully serious tension of Middleton’s playhouse produces a Calvinist world in which audiences and characters are preoccupied with their religious state but cannot unveil its mysteries. The drama thus provides plural possibilities in a world that God rather than humanity ultimately determines, but this vision is nevertheless infused with a political imperative to interpret these dilemmas. In the case of a sovereign audience, this means re-evaluating the proper course of action, but in the commercial or private theater it means determining whether or not the sovereign’s politics are in line with God’s plan. Although Calvinism does not allow for a complete realization of what this entails, it nevertheless becomes clear to audiences that the sovereign’s actions do not align with even an adumbrated understanding of divine intention in a Protestant nation.

Challenging James’s Image as Sovereign In Jacobean London, these challenges to sovereign authority represent criticisms of patriarchal monarchy, but the systems by which James operated and benefited preceded him and had been adopted by Elizabeth as well. The notion that the monarch was divinely appointed by God to serve in his stead was a dominant habit of thought in the early modern era long before James became king, and this branch of political theology has been widely discussed in early modern studies since Ernst Kantorowicz wrote The King’s Two Bodies. This view of monarchy, however, was neither entirely accurate nor the sole manner by which government was envisioned. More recent studies of early modern political theology

(1616), several changes were made to Marlowe’s original play text. In what is commonly referred to as the A-text (1604), the Good Angel states, “Never too late, if Faustus can repent.” Christopher Marlowe, The tragicall history of D. Faustus, sig. C2v. Playwrights were likely later hired to update the A-text and one of their changes was the alteration of this line, which reads in the B-text as “Never too late, if Faustus will repent.” Christopher Marlowe, The tragicall history of the life and death of Doctor Faustus, sig. B4r. In his library edition of the play, Michael Keefer observes that the Calvinist ambivalence of the A-text is stripped away in the B-text with the single emendation that Samuel Rowley or William Bird made: “Enfolded in that conditional clause . . . is the brute question of fact on which the doctrine of double predestination hinges. If Faustus is going to be able to repent, then he is eternally out of trouble and it is never too late; but if he cannot, it will always have been too late.” Michael Keefer, ed., Doctor Faustus, p. 84. The radical uncertainty of the line in the A-text, which suggests that Faustus might in fact be unable to achieve salvation, is circumvented by the alteration in the B-text, which guarantees that Faustus has a choice of whether or not to repent. The B-text thus extirpates the interpretive oscillation that Paul Yachnin identifies in Marlowe’s oeuvre. Paul Yachnin, Stage-Wrights, p. 94.

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have offered corrections of Kantorowicz’s study of sovereignty. As Richard Halpern suggests, for instance, in England the idea of the king’s two bodies “tended to bind the king to the rule of the law and the consultation of Parliament.”37 In the same special issue on Kantorowicz’s legacy, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Lorna Hutson identifies the challenges to his work based upon anachronistic claims of absolutism that were “strongly challenged by David Norbrook in 1996.”38 Hutson identifies the ways in which Shuger similarly challenges this vein of scholarship, but instead of pursuing Shuger’s model of sacred kingship, Hutson observes the ways in which Kantorowicz’s work can allow for legal “fiction-making” wherein “the ‘common good’ itself is redefined” in a mutual fashion between ruler and ruled.39 Indeed, despite advocating for a model of mutual love,40 James did not adhere to this philosophy consistently. Kristin M. S. Bezio, for instance, has identified Sir Edward Phelips’s reminder to James that the isolated and independent mode of governance he espoused was not in keeping with the accountability and mutual governance England expected of him.41 Middleton’s challenges to James’s authority are therefore not entirely atypical in elucidating the limitations of the Crown’s power and its interdependency on the mutual party of the people. There are likewise extant alternative ways in the period of conceptualizing the relationship between ruler and ruled beyond the body politic. Pauline or Mosaic political theologies, for instance, subvert sacred kingship by opening up political action or imagination in the early modern era. Julia Reinhard Lupton diverts the focus of political theology away from the sovereign and toward “the many faces of the multitude.” In doing so, she accentuates “the always-emergent future implied by [political theology’s] sacred tropes of fellowship rather than the termination of its mythic past on the public stage of deposition and regicide.”42 Graham Hammill outlines a similar shift in focus from the sovereign to the community by examining Mosaic constitution’s role in early modern political theology and its ability to offer “a model, and an imaginative ground for exploring, 37 Richard Halpern, “The King’s Two Buckets: Kantorowicz, Richard II, and Fiscal Trauerspiel,” Representations, p. 70. 38 Lorna Hutson, “Imagining Justice: Kantorowicz and Shakespeare,” Representations, p. 120. 39 Ibid., p. 123. 40 Noah Millstone labels this James’s “economy of love,” which functioned through “cooperation, status, and reward” and was presented as “a deeply moral economy that functioned through a grammar of honour and affection, joining participants together in a collective enterprise.” Noah Millstone, Manuscript Circulation and the Invention of Politics in Early Stuart England, p. 87. 41 Kristin M. S. Bezio, Staging Power in Tudor and Stuart English History Plays, p. 160. 42 Julia Reinhard Lupton, Citizen-Saints, p. 5.

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critiquing, anatomizing, and reformulating divine authority as a product of political and literary imagination.”43 There were therefore politics antithetical to or divergent from sovereignty that were not alien to early modern subjects,44 and James’s continued insistence on the divine right of kings through actions, speeches, proclamations, and writings throughout the course of his reign signals not necessarily that his sovereignty went unchallenged, but rather that it needed to be reiterated to counter these differing habits of thought.45 By contrast, Elizabeth understood the need to present an image of collaboration with Londoners, even if what she presented did not necessarily always match the political reality. Where Elizabeth was an active participant, James was a remote and withheld spectator. Where Elizabeth seemed receptive to advice, James pronounced himself the authority. Where Elizabeth managed counsel, James reluctantly adhered to the English customs of parliament and mutual league. And where Elizabeth ruled as though she was divinely appointed, James incessantly reminded his counsel and public that he was decidedly so. Surveying these differences between the two monarchs, Curtis Perry remarks that the people’s gradual lack of favor with James “contributed to the production of nostalgia for Elizabeth,” and “idealized images of the late queen also helped to shape England’s apprehension of James.”46 Elizabeth had cultivated a more ameliorative image through her conscientious relations with London and her country by means of progresses and iconography,47 and the stark

43 Graham Hammill, The Mosaic Constitution, p. 3. Hammill shows that some works could uphold imagination as a sovereign quality (Sidney’s Defense) whereas others, like Marlowe’s, could reclaim “the force of making against sovereignty by staging the very effects of sovereign power in and as imagination.” Ibid., p. 134. 44 Aside from the divergent communal forms of political theology that took shape in the period, the Roman notion of republicanism also encouraged a communal model of politics that ran contrary to the tenets of James’s sovereignty. As Andrew Hadfield indicates, “personal and public interaction of friends and allies is shown to be infinitely preferable to solitary action. The former leads to cooperation, the exchange of valuable advice and the establishment of a desirable body politic among equals; the latter to solitary, hierarchical rule, which invariably degenerates into tyranny.” Andrew Hadfield, Shakespeare and Republicanism, p. 74. There was therefore a host of differing politics from James’s own. 45 These observations of James’s governance in relation to his publications speak to Alan Sinfield’s observation that “the reiteration of a doctrine by authority may indicate not that it was generally accepted, but that it was widely misunderstood.” Alan Sinfield, Literature in Protestant England, p. 3. 46 Curtis Perry, The Making of Jacobean Culture: James I and the Renegotiation of Elizabethan Literary Practice, pp. 154–55. 47 Mary Hill Cole illuminates that Elizabeth surpassed her monarchal predecessors “in the range, frequency, and design of her travels.” Mary Hill Cole, The Portable Queen, p. 18. Julia M. Walker

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contrast James brought to the throne produced this nostalgic legacy. This distinction is what Kevin Sharpe speaks to when he states that “James paid too little attention to his image,” namely that he did not care for “the numinosity and mystification of his person which had characterized Elizabeth’s rule.”48 Image for James was derived from divine emulation and printed word rather than presence or proximity, and power was gained through divine right by accession instead of divine authority through cultivating public favor.49 By ignoring or overlooking the need to develop favor and allegiance amongst his people as Elizabeth did, James was neglecting the emergence of what Jeffrey S. Doty has identified as a burgeoning “publicity” that “had only just begun developing in late Elizabethan England.”50 Doty’s examination of Shakespeare’s novel approach to this concept in relation to politics likewise bears significance for this study’s examination of Middleton’s interventions in monarchal imagery, as the theater was a space that became invested in this political poiesis. James knew that he was expected to act on a stage, given his statement that “Kings being publike persons . . . were set (as it was said of old) vpon a publike stage, in the sight of all the people.”51 This passage derives from the address “To the

summarizes Elizabeth’s iconography as a “manifestation of earthly and heavenly power” and an “emblem of power” whose legacy and following extended well into James’s reign and beyond. Julia M. Walker, The Elizabeth Icon, 1603–2003, p. 2. 48 Kevin Sharpe, Image Wars, p. 133. 49 The distinction is evident from the differences between the monarchs’ reactions to and engagements with their coronation ceremonies in the streets of London. Elizabeth responded to Richard Mulcaster’s pageantry by accepting the gift of a Bible from the actors, promising them: “be ye well assured, I will stand your good Queen” (95), and then holding “up her hands to heavenward and will[ing] her people to say Amen” (98). Richard Mulcaster, The Receiving of the Queen’s Majesty, in The Queen Majesty’s Passage & Related Documents. Dekker, on the other hand, relays “that his Majesty should not be wearied with tedious speeches,” so the speeches are recorded in the printed book rather than ever performed, given that James found the entertainment to be less than magnificent (2720–21). Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton, The Magnificent Entertainment, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works. On the other hand, Elizabeth’s reaction to the pageants is documented as something the people celebrated and commended. In an anonymous account of Elizabeth as spectator to a boy actor’s speech, it was recounted that she had “a perpetual attentiveness in her face,” and that “the child’s words touched either her person or the people’s tongues and hearts.” Anna Riehl, The Face of Queenship, p. 86. D. J. Hopkins surmises that this contrast between Elizabeth and James signals a reluctance on the latter’s part to participate theatrically; whereas Elizabeth occupies the platea with the people, James is disinterested and retains his political and theatrical power in the locus, removed from the people. D. J. Hopkins, City/Stage/ Globe, pp. 118–20. 50 Jeffrey S. Doty, Shakespeare, Popularity, and the Public Sphere, p. 3. 51 James I, Basilicon Doron, in Political Writings, p. 4.

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Reader” in the new edition of Basilicon Doron for English book buyers. James’s acknowledgment signals his awareness of his English public’s expectations, but the king was much more comfortable as an actor to be seen by an audience than to share power with them. James considered himself divinely appointed as lead actor. The transition from Elizabeth to James and the changing perspectives with respect to sovereignty were not entirely due to the new monarch’s habits. The circumstances of the final years of Elizabeth’s reign likewise contributed to this change. As Bezio identifies, in the final years of Elizabeth’s reign, the queen’s age and health led her to rely more heavily upon the assistance of her councilors, which elucidated that “the government was capable of functioning sans the direct intervention of the monarch” as well as “that monarchy itself derived its authority from an infrastructure of officials and laws rather than the personal authority and charisma of the individual monarch.”52 Although the influence of Elizabeth that Perry notes shows the power of this legacy and its importance for cultivating favor with her public, the fact that its gradual dissipation while the country maintained adept governance highlighted that the monarch was not necessarily essential to securing and stabilizing the kingdom. James was not therefore the equivalent of what Schmitt would perceive as the sole decider in matters of state or what historians labeled an absolutist monarch. Not only did English culture and politics prevent this from becoming a reality, but James also remained accountable to and dependent upon a city that financed his entertainments and regulated his policies. As Perry puts it, “the two groups needed each other. The crown relied on the financial resources of London’s elite, while London’s merchants in turn relied on privileges and concessions from the crown.”53 This dynamic echoes the constitutional understandings of early modern people. As Glenn Burgess historicizes, earlier notions of constitutionalist principles or contractual bonds between the monarch and citizens “committed people to the belief that authority resided originally in the people as a corporate entity and was conferred on kings by their people for certain purposes only.”54 These contractual bonds anticipate formalized royalist contracts in the later years of the

52 Kristin M. S. Bezio, Staging Power in Tudor and Stuart English History Plays, p. 146. 53 Curtis Perry, The Making of Jacobean Culture, p. 216. 54 Glenn Burgess, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution, p. 111. Burgess speculates as well that a “largely unspoken implication of this might be that under some circumstances the people might choose to revoke the authority they had granted away in order to discipline an erring ruler.” Ibid.

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Caroline era,55 but earlier conceptions of relations between the monarch and commons promote responsibility on the ruler’s part to maintain amicable bonds.56 Although this mutual interest was not always harmonious,57 it nevertheless exemplifies what Perry terms the “selective” nature of “James’s absolutist rhetoric,” namely that the monarch was prone to presenting himself as the apotheosis but in reality was tempered by moral questions of legitimacy should he become tyrannical rather than mutual in his governance.58 His insistence on consistently projecting an image that fashioned him as an isolated and infallible authority despite these realities signals a change from Elizabeth. It is this image that Middleton’s drama resists while addressing the monarch’s limitations and need to govern his polis collaboratively.

Middleton’s Political/Poetical Style and Influences While there were several instances over the course of his reign wherein James’s authority and governance were challenged or questioned, the invitation to do so started immediately upon his arrival in London. As Michelle O’Callaghan observes, Richard Martin was chosen by the city in 1603 to usher the monarch 55 Victoria Kahn examines the contractual bonds that form out of early modern literature in the early years of the civil war and perceives that they are constructed out of a gendered reading of power between monarch and people with the former party as the dominant member of the relationship. Victoria Kahn, “‘The Duty to Love’,” Representations, p. 86. Kahn perceives this as “the constitution of the affective subject,” which “is central to early modern contractual theory.” Ibid., p. 85. 56 Robert Eccleshall details the importance of the English parliament for establishing a sense of common interest between the monarch and the people, especially after the Reformation. Robert Eccleshall, Order and Reason in Politics: Theories of Absolute and Limited Monarch in Early Modern England, pp. 34–35. Eccleshall interprets Henry VIII’s words as an acknowledgement of the ways in which this mutual interest augments the sovereign’s political power: “we at no time stand so highly in our estate royal as in the time of Parliament, wherein we as head and you as members are conjoined and knit together in one body politic.” Ibid., 35–36. This contractual understanding requires consent between both parties, which Eccleshall perceives as tied to the same relation subjects have with the divine who has ordained that the monarch rule in God’s place on earth. Ibid., p. 140. But he also sees evidence in Hooker’s writings: “the notion of consent was vital given Hooker’s overall intention.” Ibid., p. 141. 57 For tensions between crown and city, see Tracey Hill’s discussion of James and the Goldsmiths, and for a broader sense of the limitations of the divine rule of kings, see Glenn Burgess’s critique of the trend to see Jacobean governance as absolutist. Tracey Hill, Anthony Munday and Civic Culture, p. 149; Glenn Burgess, “The Divine Right of Kings Reconsidered,” The English Historical Review, p. 839. 58 Curtis Perry, The Making of Jacobean Culture, p. 113.

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Introduction: Thomas Middleton’s Plural Politics

into London because of his prowess as an orator. His speech “invited the king to play the role of the god and wise ruler in the parrhesiastic game.”59 While praising James, Martin presents England as the Scottish king’s school and “constructs a powerful subject position for the truth-teller” who would offer the king counsel.60 Either witnessing or later reading this speech evidently inspired Middleton’s earliest writings for James, as will be shown in chapter 1, but the dramatist likely looked to Martin for inspiration as well due to his affiliation with the Inns of Court. Not only did Middleton write plays for the boy company at St. Paul’s replete with legal references that catered to their law students from the Inns of Court, but he also self-identified with the status of a gentleman. His earliest printed works through to later collaborations frequently list him as “Gent.” on their title pages, and although Gary Taylor notes that the practice of including this status on title pages was “very common in the period,”61 Middleton’s early attention to Martin and others from the Inns of Court marks a concerted interest in an interpretive community that was intellectually and politically empowered. The students from these spaces that Middleton in part wrote his early extant plays for “were entitled to style themselves gentlemen.”62 Although the rank held certain privileges that Middleton did not possess,63 it took on new political resonances in the Jacobean era, as the title began to exceed the reputation of knights with James’s mass distribution of knighthoods from 1603 to 1604. Curtis Perry claims that this shifting sense of rank gradually led to “the distinction between the citizen (Stow’s ‘playne man’) and the gentleman” becoming “blurred.”64 As Taylor remarks elsewhere, one of the few things that can be garnered of his reputation from his contemporaries is that Middleton “preferred to be called ‘Plain Tom’.”65 Although this title can be taken as modesty, it can equally be said to connect this title with a political duty of parrhēsia. The plain man Perry refers to is ostensibly the alderman who challenged Mary I. Stow notes that the queen had decided to move her crown and parliament to Oxford because the city was presenting her with difficulties and that this

59 Michelle O’Callaghan, The English Wits, p. 14. 60 Ibid., p. 15. 61 Gary Taylor, assisted by Celia R. Daileader and Alexandra G. Bennett, “The Order of Persons,” in Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, p. 45. 62 Michelle O’Callaghan, The English Wits, p. 13. 63 Christopher Lee notes that to be a gentleman meant that the person “did not have to labour” because of their property. Christopher Lee, 1603, p. 57. Middleton could be ironically playing with this meaning as well. 64 Curtis Perry, The Making of Jacobean Culture, p. 190. 65 Gary Taylor, “Lives and Afterlives,” in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, pp. 48–49.

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“playne man” questioned her judgment by asking if she would take the Thames with her as well.66 Given Middleton’s sustained connections with the city of London and his interests in the Inns of Court, it is quite likely that “Plain Tom” was not simply modesty but rather a signal that he identified as a burgeoning practitioner of parrhēsia. This association seems especially true, given the characterization of Plain Thomas that Ivan Lupić identifies in Thomas of Woodstock. As Lupić states, “outward plainness and the plainness of language are linked.”67 Plain Tom’s modesty, therefore, is also Plain Tom’s parrhēsia. Middleton’s adoption of “Plain Tom” and possible deliberate alignment of himself with the gentleman rank also signal an effort to develop an authorial style. Douglas Bruster draws attention to the ways in which print culture in the 1590s rendered “an author’s style into a thing (and the naming of that thing after the author)” that ultimately generated a personality or “celebrity of authors” in the later years of Elizabeth.68 Whereas Middleton preferred Plain Tom within his literary circle, the poet coined a different sort of namesake in his writings. Early on in Middleton’s career we see him pun on his name in one of his first writings. G. B. Shand’s translation of Middleton’s Latin opening of The Ghost of Lucrece (1599) provides us with a late example of the trend that Bruster notes in print from this decade: To the most chaste and pure Ghost of Lucrece: Thomas, in a moderate and weighty voice [with a pun (Medius . . . Tonus) on “Middleton”], cries out the first “Arise.”69

This middle tone pun on Middleton’s name is not only utilized here, but also much later in his poem celebrating John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. Middleton thus consistently and conscientiously draws attention to this play on his

66 John Stow, “Singularities of London,” in Survey of London, 1598, p. 472. This history, Perry’s point, and the rhetorical device of parrhēsia that Martin utilizes all indicate that the gentry were not as ill-equipped as Glenn Burgess estimates: “there was no language of localism that can satisfy the self-containment and coherence laid down from above. The gentry were the users not the generators of language.” Glenn Burgess, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution, p. 118. Although parrhēsia operates within the contours of monarchal authority, it nevertheless points to the need for new language. In this manner, Middleton’s drama, like Martin’s welcoming speech, offers some respite for the gentry. 67 Ivan Lupić, Subjects of Advice: Drama and Counsel from More to Shakespeare, p. 160. Lupić’s discussion of plainness is in relation to parrhēsia, though mainly in King Lear and with an understanding that the rhetorical device is overly frank and not conducive to polite decorum. However, the early modern rhetorical manuals referenced in this book suggest otherwise. See page 3, note 8. 68 Douglas Bruster, Shakespeare and the Question of Culture, p. 79. 69 G. B. Shand, ed., The Ghost of Lucrece, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1989.

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name as a characteristic style or signature in his writings. Its implications for this poem offer some grounds to consider what this means for his parrhēsia in political dramas. Middleton writes himself into the narrative by introducing himself as the speaker and then declaring arise. By doing so, he takes on the role of a conjuror, breathing ghostly life into his title character. Lucrece’s resting place, however, remains as ambiguous as her author. Despite this tension, there remains “a moderate and weighty voice” with which Middleton identifies and which is intended for readers, who are tacitly urged to reflect upon the material they are reading. Although Middleton is facetious in adopting the role of conjuror, his readers are nevertheless plunging into his ghoulish necromancy. The underlying premise is that by partaking in this imaginative venture they have a duty to remain vigilant. The middle tone of Middleton’s writings thus appears to be a development upon the common conceit of a middle way or via media. Its implications for his drama’s parrhēsiastic challenges to James’s government have to do with the difference between how James conceptualized the via media and how the dramatist’s middle tone operates. Although scholarship indicates that James was amenable to politics other than his own and promoted a via media, or middle way,70 the conditions of these dialogic enterprises were not as open as they seemed. Jane Rickard, for instance, observes that James’s writings did not necessarily promote a distant and isolated ruler, for the king entered into a writing community wherein authors responded to one another, but even Rickard admits that these efforts resulted in attempts to control the dialogue when James attempted in the later years of his reign to intervene in the burgeoning culture of news that the Thirty Years War precipitated.71 Likewise, while James cultivated an image of himself as the Peacemaker (modeling himself after Solomon’s credo, blessed are the peacemakers), the via media James paved actually enforced uniformity rather than entertaining a balanced consideration of multiple politics. This view is in keeping with historical work on James’s via media. Gregory Dodds suggests that James’s via media, like Erasmus’s before him, is primarily a means “to reinforce the status quo, and to function as personal self-fashioning.”72 James’s supposedly participatory politics are in fact more concerned with sustaining the image of himself as the primary and dominant agent.

70 The roots of the middle way, in early modern English drama at least, likely derive from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, specifically the line “In medio tutissimus ibis” (2.137), which translates to read, “in the middle course you will go most safely.” Ovid, Metamorphoses. 71 Jane Rickard, Writing the Monarch in Jacobean England, p. 251. 72 Gregory Dodds, Exploiting Erasmus, p. 170.

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Middleton’s political art is characterized by a different kind of via media than James’s governance. He enmeshes the via media with the via diversa to form an alternative middle way that draws the interpreter into a conscientious engagement with his work. Thomas Sloane identifies that the via diversa operates in the early modern period by “contrarianism, irony, pro-con reasoning, and critical thinking” and perceives that the rhetorical device “conflicted with the increasingly hard line being drawn by religious and political leaders of the period.”73 The device’s interpretive political challenge correlates with the works of earlier Elizabethan authors discussed below and corresponds with Catherine Belsey’s modern conception of an “interrogative text,” one that “disrupts the unity of the reader” and invites “the reader to produce answers to the questions it implicitly or explicitly raises.”74 Middleton’s political drama tempers the via media’s potential to end rather than perpetuate plurality by implementing the via diversa to create interrogative drama that challenges James’s uniform vision of the kingdom’s politics. Whereas James deploys the via media to unite competing views as a patriarchal sovereign, Middleton’s political dramas illuminate the impossibility of this ambition. In allowing tension to linger, Middleton adumbrates rather than defines future politics and presents an oscillating continuum of power rather than surreptitious dominance through unity. The unattained coalescence prompts attuned audiences to acknowledge that the current political situation remains unresolved and that the challenge to sovereign dominance needs to be considered. Middleton’s variation of the via media therefore allows for parrhēsia to take shape because of its presentation of issues in a middle tone for a ruler to resolve rather than an oppositional demand for particular politics. Middleton likely learned the need to evoke a middle tone rather than offering an aggressive challenge early on in his writing career after Microcynicon: Six Snarling Satires (1597), one of “ten books” suppressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, was “publicly burned on 4 June 1599.”75 The prohibition of Middleton’s second work shows an early interest in sensational political writings that was likely generated out of the Martin Marprelate affair from the later years of the previous decade. As Robert Weimann notes,

73 Thomas Sloane, “Rhetorical Selfhood in Erasmus and Milton,” in A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism, p. 119. 74 Catherine Belsey, Critical Practice, p. 91. In his introduction to Middleton’s Plato’s Cap, Paul Yachnin suggests a similar interrogative dimension in the writer’s art when he notes that the mock almanac “develops a degree of reflexiveness on its own nature and conditions of production.” Paul Yachnin, ed., Plato’s Cap, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 197. 75 Wendy Wall, ed., Microcynicon, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1970.

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this was the “greatest popular scandal” to date of the Elizabethan period.76 According to Bruster, both these events were highly influential with respect to the politics of print during the early modern era and had lasting effects.77 With Middleton this meant a tempering of the satiric through the use of techniques like parrhēsia to develop a middle tone that allowed him to continue his style in a subtler manner. Rachel E. Hile, for example, notes that in Father Hubburd’s Tales (1604) Middleton derives inspiration from Edmund Spenser’s Mother Hubberd’s Tale (1591) to develop what had become a less overt form of social critique, as Melpomene satire had been rendered harmless by this point. Although Spenser’s text was controversial when it was first printed, by the time Middleton composed his own tales, Spenser’s work seemed “a more acceptable model for satires.”78 Middleton took inspiration from other Elizabethan predecessors to develop his middle tone and collect techniques for how to advance political intrigue in surreptitious fashions. We find an earlier example of a via media embroiled with via diversa, for instance, in Thomas Nashe’s Christ’s Tears Over Jerusalem (1593). The work’s focus on the fall of Jerusalem, personified by Nashe as the grandmother of London, is not entirely a history of what was, for it is also a lesson for correcting current affairs. Nashe breaks from the narrative by beginning a paragraph with an address to his fellow citizens: London, looke to thy selfe, for the woes that were pronounced to Ierusalem are pronounced to thee. Thou, transgressing as greiuously as shee, shalt be punished as grieuously. Fly from sinne, take no pride or vaine-glorie in it; for pryde or vaine-glory in sinne, is a horrible sinne, though it be without purpose to sinne.79 (112)

Nashe does not allow his readers to assume a privileged position of superiority in relation to the circumstances set out in the text, for Londoners transgress “as greiuously as” Jerusalem’s inhabitants have, meaning readers should “take no pride or vaine-glorie in” these follies, as they reflect the present state of things. Nashe’s tendency to leave readers to their own devices suggests the lingering influence of Erasmus on later early modern literature. This is not an isolated case in Nashe’s canon. The via diversa that imbues the via media of Christ’s Tear’s Over Jerusalem is a blunter version of his sharp and abrupt conclusion to Pierce Penniless, his Supplication to the Devil (1592): “And so I break off this

76 Robert Weimann, Authority and Representation in Early Modern Discourse, p. 90. 77 Douglas Bruster, Shakespeare and the Question of Culture, p. 68. 78 Rachel E. Hile, “Spenserianism and Satire before and after the Bishops’ Ban,” Spenser Studies, p. 305. 79 Thomas Nashe, Christs Teares Over Ierusalem, in The Works of Thomas Nashe, vol. 2.

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endless argument of speech abruptly” (145).80 Nashe’s texts are interrogative in their habit of prompting readers to consider their implications and meanings individually, thereby leaving them in an unresolved middle state. Evidently, Nashe’s work served as inspiration for Middleton, given that Middleton frequently emulates Nashe in his writing. Middleton refers to Pierce Penniless and Nashe himself in The Black Book (1604): I was led by Pierce Penniless and his hostess, like a feeble farmer ready to depart England and sail to the kingdom of Tartary[.] (582–84) I am not a little proud, I can tell you, Barnaby, that you dance after my pipe so long, and for all counterblasts and tobacco-Nashes, which some call railers, you are not blown away[.] (780–82)

Even earlier than The Black Book, we see the influence of Nashe in Middleton’s The Penniless Parliament of Threadbare Poets (1601). The name Pierce Penniless echoes Nashe’s original invention Pierce Penniless, his Supplication to the Devil, in which the author refers to himself as a threadbare poet. As Swapan Chakravorty observes in his introduction to The Penniless Parliament, Middleton’s use of the pen name “Simon Smellknave[,] . . . a pseudonym of Thomas Nashe,” further links him with the Elizabethan writer. Chakravorty contends that the author “seems to have viewed himself as Nashe’s literary heir”; moreover, it is clear that Nashe’s satiric prose inspires Middleton’s via diversa.81 Jason ScottWarren summarizes Nashe’s style: “Nashe bites (the pun on ‘gnash’ was current in his lifetime). His satirical vein is like a sword-thrust, a punch on the nose, a bee-sting; his words are steeped in gunpowder, or inspired by drinking it, as well as by fits of head-banging and wall-scratching.”82 Such a writer serves as a suitable inspiration for Middleton’s Microcynicon, given that Nashe’s own works were burnt alongside it in the fires. Middleton did not look to Nashe and Spenser alone to develop his middle tone. In The Black Book he also mentions a performance of Christopher

80 Thomas Nashe, Pierce Penniless, in The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works. Nashe commences Christ’s Tears, written after Pierce Penniless, with one “hundred vnfortunate farewels to fantasticall Satirisme” (12). Thomas Nashe, Christs Teares Over Ierusalem, in The Works of Thomas Nashe, vol. 2. The fact that the text still contains sociopolitical content means that Nashe is being somewhat facetious in this statement; he retains a social commentary, but with a blunter edge. 81 Swapan Chakravorty, ed., The Penniless Parliament of Threadbare Poets, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1999. 82 Jason Scott-Warren, “Nashe’s Stuff,” in The Oxford Handbook of English Prose, 1500–1640, p. 207.

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Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus “when the old Theatre cracked and frighted the audience” (156–57), and critics have noted similarities between the two playwrights. Paul Yachnin establishes a correlation between Marlowe’s and Middleton’s dramatic works with the concept he calls “Marlovian interpretive oscillation,” a mode of writing that does not allow the reader or audience member to rest comfortably upon a definitive interpretation.83 Meaning and intention remain unstable, leaving the interpreter unable to reconcile the competing ideological representations within the narrative scope of a given performance. Like Yachnin, Scott McMillan observes Marlowe’s influence on Middleton: Middleton obviously listened to Marlowe from an early age – one stanza of The Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased (16.97–102) is a paraphrase of Edward II (5.1.11–15), for example – and his mature work deepened the relationship. His ironic tone in both comedy and tragedy draws upon The Jew of Malta and The Massacre at Paris; the sharp focus and relentlessness of his satire are secular versions of the religious intensity of Doctor Faustus.84

Although Marlowe is generally praised for his use of the via diversa in plots that make outsiders into heroic figures, or at least protagonists, and render Christians into hypocrites, Andrew Duxfield perceives a regular theme of unity in Marlowe’s work: “Marlowe’s tragedies exhibit a profound interest in the . . . ideal of unity” that Elizabeth “and her Privy Council approached pragmatically by offering a via media.”85 Duxfield is not rash enough to suggest that Marlowe prescribes or produces unified politics or meaning in his dramatic canon, but the playwright’s dual attention to unity and flux lends a complex dimension to his works that resembles Middleton’s political art’s dual influences of the via media and the via diversa. Middleton’s poiesis differs from Marlowe’s and Nashe’s techniques not only by virtue of him being his own poet, but because of the shifting print cultures of his own time. When we observe his later political dramas especially in the context of Jacobean London’s libel and news cultures, what emerges is not an ironic embedding of underlying meanings into a seemingly harmless narrative, but a horizon of potential political realities. The full spectrum of this interpretive network was easier for spectators to observe when political matters became more commonplace and tendentious for Londoners. Over the course of James’s reign, Londoners heard about recent events in the streets through balladeers or read about them in coranatos or other printed news pamphlets. Middleton was familiar with this discourse early on in his career. Around the same time as he

83 Paul Yachnin, Stage-Wrights, p. 94. 84 Scott McMillan, “Middleton’s Theatres,” in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 76. 85 Andrew Duxfield, Christopher Marlowe and the Failure to Unify, p. 1.

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was composing The Phoenix, he wrote a plague pamphlet with Thomas Dekker that presented itself as news. The authors implicate their reader, stating that it would disturb the Stationers “to see thee at their stalls reading my News” (271).86 Although News from Gravesend is not actually news from our modern standpoint,87 it reveals Middleton’s early involvement in this burgeoning informational literary enterprise and its ability to antagonize Londoners to have the “papers burnt (like heretics) at the Cross” (269). Even mock news, then, remains aware of its capacity to challenge dominant habits of thought. In the theater, these competing political narratives produce plural perspectives on topical events that speak to a particular audience, gentlemen or otherwise, who were attuned to the social issues of the era. This interpretive paradigm corresponds with Noah Millstone’s characterization of “political awareness” as a unique invention of the Stuart era. Political awareness derives from considering various perspectives on a political issue during a new dynasty that precipitated an increase both in manuscript circulation and in general participation in politics. By seeing themselves “as active participants in the making of political life,” Londoners did not enact radical social change, but instead perceived themselves “as ‘citizens’ rather than subjects,” given that “participation and collaboration were simply how monarchical government worked.”88 These participatory politics to some degree complement James’s own approach to literature, given that he was a prolific writer himself. In her study of James as a literary king, Jane Rickard remarks that he “was keen to engage in . . . collaboration,”89 but within the “parameters” he set.90 Contrary to popular belief, then, James was not actually an

86 Dekker’s influence points to Middleton’s early inclination to see news discourse as a subversive enterprise. As Viviana Comensoli argues in her analysis of The Wonderful Year (1603) and other news pieces by Dekker that playfully straddle the line between fact and fiction, “Dekker affirms the absence of a clear distinction between reporting and storytelling, or between history and fiction.” Viviana Comensoli, “‘This Straunge Newes’,” in News in Early Modern Europe, p. 203. 87 Although as a plague pamphlet it does comment on recent events, News from Gravesend also exhibits the qualities of the dramatic works that Stephen Wittek perceives as entailing “imaginative interpretation, or play” while also being informative. Stephen Wittek, The Media Players, p. 2. As Wittek contextualizes, news began to appear frequently in London between 1591 and 1610, leading eventually in the 1620s to Nathaniel Butter and others establishing “England’s first news syndicate.” Ibid., p. 3. 88 Noah Millstone, Manuscript Circulation and the Invention of Politics in Early Stuart England, p. 8. 89 Jane Rickard, Writing the Monarch in Jacobean England, p. 21. 90 Ibid., p. 55.

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entirely reclusive or tyrannical absolutist, but instead a conflicted monarch who invited conversation, but was anxious to retain his dominant image as the primary and ultimate authority in these writings and politics more broadly. Middleton’s challenge to this domineering persona and efforts to identify the limitations of James’s governance speak to the content in his dramas for a courtly venue, and his poiesis’ transition to or intentions for commercial or private theaters on other occasions cultivate the culture that gentlemen and other aspiring Londoners sought to participate in through literature. This is not to say that the theater replicated what James set out in print or that it echoed exactly the polemics of early news pamphlets; it was its own medium with its own limitations. James was not a dramatist, but drama faces difficulties when it comes to articulating a political message. Paul Yachnin has astutely observed that the early modern theater is powerless insofar as it cannot channel a distinctive agenda, message, or intention due to its distracted and plural nature.91 What Middleton accomplishes instead is far more akin to what Yachnin and others have since identified as a public, which depends upon playgoers possessing prior knowledge of a theatrical event’s allusions, specifically those that mirror either topical culture phenomena or previous performances.92 But when these events revolve around political matters and present an array of possible perspectives, a different kind of awareness takes shape. Rather than taking pleasure simply in identifying the associations between one production and another or between a given play world and their own realities, Middleton’s audiences, in the plays surveyed in this book, are invited to think critically about the political situation at hand by considering multiple viewpoints on a given issue in order to formulate their own understandings of the matter. This is not to say that audiences can take monarchal action, but they can develop a broader understanding of the political issue as a multivalent rather than uniform event, much like a theatrical performance. Moreover, these interpretive dynamics frequently lead, especially in the later years of James’s reign, to challenges concerning the monarch’s authority, thereby placing more onus in the audience’s ability to discern politics. If Middleton has a political intention, it is not to promulgate a particular message or incite riot, but rather

91 Paul Yachnin, “The Powerless Theatre,” English Literary Renaissance, p. 58. 92 Yachnin defines a “public” in the playhouse as follows: “The playhouse public is not a mere fantasy, but it is hardly an undoubted reality either. It is in the realm of make-believe in as much as the theater represents itself as the purveyor of fiction and as powerless to effect any social ends except recreational ones.” Paul Yachnin, “Hamlet and the Social Thing,” in Making Publics in Early Modern Europe, pp. 86–87.

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to engage an audience who were attuned to topical matters.93 Inspiring political awareness could be critical in purpose, but it was probably used to profit commercially as well, given this trend for gentlemen and other playgoers to regard themselves as citizens rather than subjects. Challenges to the image of divine sovereignty thus found not only a space in the theater but a market as well that profited from parrhēsia. While this book attends to the plural politics of a selection of Middleton’s dramatic texts, it does not purport that this fracturing of sovereign authority is the primary purpose or underlying intention of Middleton’s writing. The plays analyzed in these pages served multiple functions within the spaces they were performed and were interpreted in various ways by the audiences who witnessed them. Middleton knew this fact, for the prologue to No Wit, No Help Like a Woman’s (1613) admits to such variety. Having listed the plethora of things that spectators and auditors attend the theater to see and hear, ranging from costumes to speeches, the speaker recognizes the impossibility of establishing a unified perspective in the playhouse: How is’t possible to please Opinion tossed in such wild seas?

In spite of this distracted and powerless Globe, Middleton nevertheless acknowledges the possibility for encouraging attendees to garner varying degrees of understanding: Yet I doubt not, if attention Seize you above, and apprehension You below, to take things quickly, We shall both make you sad and tickle ye. (10–14)

There is no expectation here that playgoers should have a particular preconceived notion of what the play should do; in fact, a spectrum of expectations

93 Instead of looking for secret messages and intentions, this work explores the political ramifications of theater’s plurality and how this shift in perspective can offer new ways to consider the power relations that constitute sovereignty. In revisiting Annabel Patterson’s approach to politics in early modern literature, we can perceive that these questions of unilateral authority are not necessarily the result of veiled political motives resulting from a culture of censorship. Patterson states that “ambiguity becomes a creative and necessary instrument” in the early modern period. Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation, p. 11. The poetic techniques are more likely the product of a medium that manifested itself in plural and conflicting ways in order to produce jarring effects and dislocate meaning, generating political awareness and commercial profit.

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and interpretations is presupposed. By recognizing the chaotic realm of the theater, Middleton is able to cater to various desires, but he also divides interpretation along class lines, with those “above” using “attention” and those “below” relying upon “apprehension.”94 The idea is that the play can be appreciated on many different levels that resonate with divergent groups of spectators. Middleton’s work thus represents an early acknowledgment that theater establishes “interpretive communities.” Susan Bennett adopts and adapts this term from Stanley Fish, revising it to account for the variegated nature of theater and the fact that history involves “change.”95 This book is concerned with the interpretive community in the Jacobean era that came into the theater with “some shared socio-cultural background” of the political matters at hand,96 and it attends to the questions or conflicted outlooks that Middleton’s drama posed for that group of playgoers, given that they were left with dilemmas rather than denouements.97 This multiplicity of audience responses is how audience reception was oriented in the early modern theater.98 It is also how playwrights evoked reactions from their crowd. According to Jeremy Lopez, playwrights would revise theatrical conventions to shock their audience “out of its complacency . . . to insist upon the importance of . . . the incongruous.”99 Middleton’s theater employs these techniques as well; however, the plural politics they create challenge uniform

94 John Jowett’s annotation points to the way in which Middleton divides his focus between the lower class in the pit “below” and the wealthier members of society who are able to afford seats “above.” Middleton nevertheless prompts “apprehension” or “attention” from both social groups, indicating that pleasure could derive from decoding the complexities of drama. John Jowett, ed., No Wit/Help Like a Woman’s, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 783. 95 Susan Bennett, Theatre Audiences, p. 40. 96 Ibid., p. 142. Cyndia Susan Clegg has recently called these constellations of playgoers “reading clusters,” namely groups of people who were able to make the same “discursive connections” between texts they had read outside of the theater but were referenced onstage. Cyndia Susan Clegg, Shakespeare’s Reading Audiences, p. 3. 97 Unlike Middleton, this author does not associate this particular appeal of the plays with a societal or theatrical tier, nor does he prioritize this interpretive avenue into these plays or others as the primary or dominant intention of the playwright, but he instead considers it an interpretive dimension of the texts. 98 As Jeremy Lopez has documented in his encyclopedic study on audience reception, early playgoers were fascinated with double meanings produced from devices such as puns, and playwrights were invested in creating new approaches that emerged out of identifiable conventions. Jeremy Lopez, Theatrical Convention and Audience Response in Early Modern Drama, pp. 35–37. 99 Ibid., p. 133.

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authority, specifically when “the incongruous” concerns the superiority of the audience’s sovereign in a topical drama. These instances do not question the need for the sovereign, but they do stress that something is out of joint with the play world that reflects the audience’s reality. This tempered critique stages parrhēsia and offers an incongruous political scene that requires remedy through resolving its parrhēsiastic contract. In applying this thinking to sovereignty, Middleton refashions James’s monarchal image from an individualist enterprise to a participatory and split concept. He often accomplishes this feat by reminding his audiences of the king’s multiple bodies as well as his position within a longer line and legacy of sovereignty than just himself. Later plays that look toward Charles’s looming accession in particular accentuate this plurality of power by dividing attention. In this manner, Middleton playfully addresses the incongruity of what Roberto Esposito has theorized as the contradictory nexus of political theology, namely its reliance upon a paradoxical vision of the sovereign as two yet one, divided yet whole.100 In arriving at this observation, Esposito draws upon Kantorowicz’s tome on the body politic historicized within a medieval tradition in which the king had both a body natural, his own person, and a body politic, the polis and country he or she governed.101 Although it is important to remember, as aforementioned, that James did not in fact operate in an absolutist government and in some ways invited dialogue, he nevertheless frequently did not express gratitude at having to be accountable to others. In a parliamentary speech from 1610, for instance, James chastised his auditors, stating that he had “now accomplished [his] apprenticeship of seuen yeeres [in England]; and seuen yeeres is a great time for a Kings experience in Gouernment . . . I must not be taught my Office.”102 Four years later, James complained again of parliament to the Spanish Ambassador Sarmiento, or Count Gondomar, in words that suggest a desire to be the sole decider in the body politic: The House of Commons is a body without a head. The members give their opinions in a disorderly manner. At their meetings nothing is heard but cries, shouts, and confusions. I am surprised that my ancestors should ever have permitted such an institution to come

100 See also Giorgio Agamben’s statement that “Sovereignty is always double.” Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer, p. 47. 101 As Esposito states, “duality is not only the outcome but also the constitutive character of Western politics,” which “emerges from Ernst Kantorowicz’s studies on the two bodies of the king.” Roberto Esposito, Two, p. 4. 102 James I, “A Speach to the Lords and Commons of the Parliament at White-Hall, on Wednesday the XXI. of March. Anno 1609,” in Political Writings, pp. 190–91.

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into existence: I am a stranger, and found it here when I arrived, so that I am obliged to put up with what I cannot get rid of.103

The king’s conversation illuminates the ways in which he differed from Elizabeth and other monarchs in finding the English institution unpleasant and disorderly, and his affiliation with Gondomar, which will be discussed further in chapter 4, is in part explained by his identity as a “stranger” to these customs, seeing as James was first a Scottish king who then reunited the two kingdoms back into Britain. In other words, there are clearly reasons for James’s dismissal of these practices, but his remarks on the English political system clearly portray a king who was not receptive to the plural politics of its parliament. James’s printed works promote this image of an isolated authority as well, sometimes quite explicitly, as with a piece entitled God, and the king, or, A dialogue shewing that our soueraigne lord King Iames beeing immediate vnder God within his dominions, doth rightfully claime whatsoeuer is required by the Oath of allegiance (1616). The release of this work during his controversial decisions pertaining to the Overbury trials, which will be discussed further in chapter 2, elucidates James’s anxious need to maintain his dominant image to his people. It is this image that Middleton’s plural politics playfully dismantle by addressing the monarch’s failings, flaws, or multiplicities.

Patriarchy and Middleton James’s need to stress his sovereignty and politics repeatedly in publications or proclamations exemplifies an anxious preoccupation with securing a dominant authoritarian image, which corresponds with the time period’s conception of masculinity. Mark Breitenberg identifies that in early modern England masculinity operates in a conflicted manner; “it reveals the fissures and contradictions of patriarchal systems and, at the same time, it paradoxically enables and drives patriarchy’s reproduction and continuation of itself.”104 James’s repeated publication of his works and proclamations declaring his supremacy during his reign certainly exemplifies this form of masculinity. Middleton’s critiques thus attempt to dismantle this image, but they also concern a newly established patriarchal authority in England after Elizabeth had ruled for forty-five years. Although this shift had ramifications for how political drama was orchestrated, as

103 Stephen Clucas and Rosalind Davies, “Introduction,” in The Crisis of 1614 and the Addled Parliament, p. 3. 104 Mark Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England, p. 2.

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we will see, Elizabeth also operated by similar conventions but merely in different ways. Not only was James a man who fashioned himself as a dominant ruler over an effeminized country, but even before his arrival in England, early modern politics were already imagined in two ways that supported his vision of governance. Following Debora Kuller Shuger’s study of political theology, early modern politics are an instantiation of government onto a collective body, and Melissa Sanchez has more recently discussed the ways in which these politics are conceived as a power relationship between ruler and subjects in both Elizabethan and Jacobean England.105 After the Elizabethan era, these habits of thought reverted back to a patriarchal authority controlling and regulating an ostensibly obsequious body politic that regularly perceived itself collectively as a woman bonded to their male ruler, but Middleton’s plural politics resist this simplistic rendering of power relations. Instead of reinforcing the singular patriarchal lens of a sovereign, his plays offer audiences a spectrum of possibilities in the Jacobean political landscape. They likewise challenge the domineering image the sovereign purported, something James himself was anxious of in his writings with the looming association of divine right veering into tyranny if it was abused. Rebecca Bushnell has examined the ways in which this dynamic plays out in the theater, often with tyrannical abuses of power dramatized as lustful abuses of power, particularly in the Stuart era. What seems unique in James’s era is the focus on a loss of civic agency or consensual governance: “While they recall sixteenth-century moralities depicting the tyrant’s lust, the Stuart tyrant plays also redirect our attention to that lust’s impact on a subject’s life and liberty.”106 In the Middleton plays covered in this book’s chapters, the abuse of the interdependent relation often manifests in a central woman who represents the collective identity of Londoners and allegorically corrects or is disregarded by a negligent and flawed patriarch representing James. The collective manifestation of that interest varies, however. Although Middleton is keen to critique systems of patriarchal power and playfully dismantle their dominant and adroit representations, he frequently does so at the expense of women whom he renders into targets of satire or misogyny. A play like A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1613), for example, can be said to comment on the absurdity of a marriage market that renders women into commodities whose dowries are valued above their love interests. The titular character Moll in the play, however, only has a dozen or so lines, and while the character of Susan 105 Debora Kuller Shuger, Political Theologies in Shakespeare’s England, p. 141, note 4. Melissa Sanchez, Erotic Subjects, p. 3. This study therefore examines early modern politics as patriarchal impositions of authority onto an effeminized body politic. 106 Rebecca W. Bushnell, Tragedies of Tyrants, p. 158.

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ensures that the play ends as a comedy, she is absent for the duration of the play and Touchwood Senior dominates the orchestration of the play’s concluding scene. Middleton might be satirizing patriarchal systems of order, but on the other hand, even if he is accomplishing this, his women tend to remain in the background as property.107 The playwright’s manipulation of women here and elsewhere is questionable insofar as Middleton’s women are given agency but remain toys within the playground of patriarchy.108 When Beatrice-Joanna attempts to dissuade her father from marrying her to a man she does not desire, Vermandero responds by saying, “Tush, tush, there’s a toy” (1.1.202). Turning later to De Flores, whom she loathes, in order to resolve her situation, BeatriceJoanna laments that she was born a woman, stating that to be a man is “the soul of freedom” (2.2.110), and that this gender would give her the “power . . . to oppose my loathings, nay, remove ’em / Forever from my sight” (2.2.112–14). The ability or inability to enact or challenge politics is therefore gendered, and the only means Middleton indicates is available to women is what Jonathan Dollimore has identified as transgressive mimesis in his examination of Middleton and Dekker’s cross-dressing Mary Frith, or Moll Cutpurse, in The Roaring Girl (1611). Dollimore’s concept involves miming the conventions of the dominant authority in order to undermine or playfully subvert its codifications.109 But whereas Moll is celebrated in the end with the converted Sir Alexander stating that he has “cast the world’s eyes from” him and looks on her for who she truly is (11.243), this is not the case for all of Middleton’s women. As chapter 2 will illuminate, for instance, Beatrice-Joanna in The Changeling is mocked and condemned when the play is viewed as a political drama. The implication is therefore that Middleton challenges patriarchy, but occasionally at the expense of the women he represents. As Audre Lorde has stated, the master’s tools only

107 Nancy Mohrlock Bunker, Marriage and Land Law in Shakespeare and Middleton, p. 33. 108 In examining both A Chaste Maid in Cheapside and The Changeling, Gail Kern Paster determines that it is the ecology the plays’ women are placed within that determines their circumstances. Gail Kern Paster, “The Ecology of the Passions in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside and The Changeling,” in The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton, pp. 150–51. This outlook confirms Middleton’s consistent interest in the social environments and the ways in which subjects act or react within them. The ongoing focus is therefore probing the system rather than necessarily upholding women on the stage. 109 Jonathan Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence, p. 299. Gary Taylor’s historical overview of Middleton witnessing his mother maneuver the law in order to gain power over her second husband, Thomas Harvey, who was attempting to rob Middleton and his sister of their inheritance, provides some context for where this gendered understanding of power and politics derives. Gary Taylor, “Thomas Middleton: Lives and Afterlives,” in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, pp. 30–31.

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“allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game,” and it is often unclear whether or not Middleton himself is relinquishing those tools.110 Middleton’s theater thus complicates sovereignty and identifies the compromised situation of women in this patriarchal realm, but women’s vulnerability is often part of the interpreters’ pleasure by establishing their superior interpretive stance. In The Ghost of Lucrece, Lucrece can articulate her anger in Middleton’s adumbrated afterlife, which Shand perceives as likely hellish,111 but the poet nevertheless frames her voice within the Prologue and Epilogue in which he, the author, is controlling the events that the reader can see unfold in the theater of their mind. Middleton’s women exhibit strong characteristics but remain the inventions of a masculine imagination and are often, as with Bianca in Women, Beware Women, a pawn in someone else’s game, which in turn makes them the troublesome object of the spectator’s fascination, the author’s control, and frequent misogyny. Although Celia Daileader interprets this misogyny as ironic in nature, the opposite reaction and/or intention is equally plausible, and this conundrum indicates that Middleton’s drama nevertheless relies and thrives upon a culture of misogyny and perpetuates it, purposefully or not, through repetition.112 In his political drama, Middleton can offer his women opportunities to speak truth to masculine power, but this study does not exonerate him of the misogyny that these challenges are often contingent upon in their staging. Therefore, although Middleton’s political drama unsettles the unified masculinity of James’s sovereignty and early modern patriarchy, it is often at the expense of women or the use of them as allegorical figures, rather than individual personae, to represent educated men’s political anxieties instead of women’s struggles. It is crucial to consider this conundrum for the plays studied in this book since at the center of each text is the male governor’s (or governors’) relation to a woman whose identity and social position determines the effectiveness of the male ruler’s politics. These characters range from lower ranking women, such as the Jeweller’s Wife in The Phoenix or the White Queen’s Pawn in A 110 Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” in American Misogyny, p. 2. 111 G. B. Shand, ed., The Ghost of Lucrece, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1985. 112 Daileader interprets the misogyny in Hamlet and The Revenger’s Tragedy as deliberately ironic given “the masculinity of the melted object” in these works and others. Celia R. Daileader, “Middleton, Shakespeare, and the Grotesque,” in The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton, p. 458. Although Middleton certainly portrays the leaky grotesque male bodies that Daileader identifies and likely employs an ironic commentary, he still arguably deploys this misogyny as part of the drama’s attraction, resulting in the potential for misguided pleasures if audiences miss the irony.

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Game at Chess, to aristocratic women, namely Francisca in The Witch (an allegorical depiction of Frances Howard), to goddesses, as with Pallas in The World Tossed at Tennis. Through each of these women, Middleton utilizes his masculine puppetry to voice a challenge to the monarch’s methods and, in some cases, to generate an affective community in his audience. In this manner, however, the women often allegorically configure a collective audience rather than individual women, and early modern women’s experiences are conflated with the political uneasiness of men. When real women are represented, as with Frances Howard in the role of Francisca, the Duchess, and others in The Witch, they are targets of satire. The relation between sovereigns and these allegorical or real women, however, reflects the conditions by which political power dynamics were imagined in early modern England. By moderating early modern politics, these women present the formation of politics as an ongoing relationship, something Middleton would be familiar with from having contributed to Dekker’s accession celebrations for James. In these festivities, the polis was personified as James’s bride. This outlook was not alien to James, who established in his 1603 coronation speech to parliament that the body politic was an unruly female body that he governed as its masculine head. Melissa E. Sanchez has shown a similar relation at work in the monarchies of Elizabeth and James, which adhered to the commonplace “claim that sovereign and subject, like husband and wife, are bound as much by reciprocal love as by law or necessity.”113 In Basilicon Doron, however, James differentiated himself from Elizabeth by framing this relationship in a dominant manner wherein the Prince is the head that orders the unruly civic woman: “Ye are the head, shee is your body; It is your office to command, and hers to obey; but yet with such a sweet harmonie, as shee should be as ready to obey, as ye to command; as willing to follow, as ye to go before; your loue being wholly knit vnto her, and all her affections louingly bent to follow your will.”114 Rather than presenting himself as amenable, flexible, or collaborative, James instead repeatedly reinstated his prerogative to govern as a solitary head to an unruly political body who was happy to be commanded. Despite the flaws in his representations of women, Middleton at least offers challenges to this patriarchal outlook through parrhēsia or other politicized poiesis, such as irony and allegory. These challenges do not fully dismantle the patriarchal establishment of sovereignty, but they do encourage the more loving and communal bond that

113 Melissa E. Sanchez, Erotic Subjects, p. 3. 114 James I, Basilicon Doron, in Political Writings, p. 42.

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Laurie Shannon’s Sovereign Amity suggests underlies “the hierarchical relations of monarchal sovereignty.”115 For Shannon, “friendship tropes comprise the era’s most poetically powerful imagining of parity within a social form that is consensual. Consent . . . serves as a terminological switching point, carrying the weight of both a condition of likeness (‘agreement’ in its grammatical sense; correspondence) and the actions of assent or contract (‘to agree’).”116 The contractual form of sovereign and subject(s) that Middleton’s political dramas frequently establish or the ideally ameliorative and collaborative politics they stage suggest that this relation is preferable to James’s patriarchal dominant image.

From Opera Basilica to Political Awareness, from Parrhēsia to Xenophobia The book begins where Middleton’s political drama did, at the intersection of writing a play for the newly appointed monarch and composing a speech for the delayed coronation celebrations. The first chapter returns to earlier scholarship that examined the play as a didactic moral concerning James’s new kingdom. It reconsiders this critical thread by situating the play in close chronological proximity to The Magnificent Entertainment and observing similar opera basilica for the monarch in conjunction with the parrhēsia of Martin’s welcoming speech for James. In his Advancement of Learning (1605) for the newly crowned King James I, Sir Francis Bacon identifies that politics are the works of the monarch (“opera basilica”),117 but Middleton’s play tempers this view by staging parrhēsia and destabilizing the idealistic view of the monarch, thereby establishing his own political poiesis in relation to other tracts written for the new monarch. The depiction of James as Phoenix both flatters his self-image and humbles him through calling attention to recent issues with newly implemented policies concerning knighthoods and portraying him as a boy actor onstage. This latter element fragments James’s sovereignty by fashioning him as green in his rule of England despite being wise through having governed Scotland for most of his life. Not only is the king’s complete mastery of the throne questioned, but so are his actions and perfect image. By bringing Phoenix into the fold of his second body as a disguised duke, Middleton implicates him in the immorality of the body politic. Although Phoenix manages to secure his soul by means of an exception to the law or good

115 Laurie Shannon, Sovereign Amity, p. 7. 116 Ibid., pp. 7–8. 117 Sir Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, in The Major Works, p. 174.

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trick, he and other characters continually reflect upon either his own imperfections or those of the kingdom he manages. The allegory’s questioning culminates, however, with the figure of the Jeweller’s Daughter, who challenges Phoenix’s conclusions by means of parrhēsia and remains a morally ambivalent person beyond the play’s supposed denouement. The chapter argues that like other disguised-duke plays of the time, Middleton represents citizens through women here and in his civic pageantry from the same year, offering a model of mutual governance in which the female counterpart is not subservient to a dominant male authority, but a member of the body politic whose grievances must be heard. Following Aristotle’s philosophy, which is quoted in the play, to rule well, one must serve well too. Continuing the theme of sovereignty and the law, chapter 2 turns to a case where James revealed not only his fallibility and limitations, but also susceptibility to corruption by allowing aristocrats to be exceptions to the law in pardoning Frances Howard, who pleaded guilty, and Robert Carr for murdering Sir Thomas Overbury. This momentous event and the various scandals leading up to it were commented upon in verse libels and were widely known across and beyond London. Until recently Middleton’s The Witch had been typically neglected in relation to this political fiasco, but new findings have solidified a performance date that allows for a thorough analysis of its multidimensional allegory of these topical matters. James’s questionable legal recourse to exact his sovereign law and dole mercy is one dimension of the play’s satire, but Middleton couples this with developing suspicions concerning witchcraft, a topic that James was a fervent believer in and wrote extensively on in his Daemonologie. Middleton’s allusions in the play, however, are not to James’s work but to the English skeptic Reginald Scot, whom James deplores in his English edition of Daemonologie. The implication of citing Scot is a subtle questioning of the king’s judgment, and this commentary extends beyond the supernatural to the courtroom with clear allusions to Frances Howard. The Witch thus highlights the fictional nature of both witches and justice, illuminating the imperfections in James’s sovereign image that were beginning to reveal themselves in this case and in previous matters concerning the Addled Parliament. In Blackfriars theater, Middleton found an audience that was keenly aware of these political matters and who were guided in this space to develop political awareness concerning the broken parrhēsiastic contract through the interpretation of theater. Like the verse libels that circulated, the portrayal of Frances Howard in these affairs is not flattering. Despite challenging James’s masculine sovereignty, Middleton delivers plenty of misogyny concurrently, and his collaboration with William Rowley six years later when Howard and Carr were eventually released from the Tower of London staged a twisted misogynist revenge fantasy of

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justice in The Changeling that was never carried out in reality. The Changeling read in tandem with The Witch and this particular political event therefore elucidates the ways in which Middleton is not as consistently progressive in his treatment of women onstage as some have previously thought. The last two chapters turn to the outbreak of war in Bohemia, which precipitated the Thirty Years War, and the Spanish Match, two political events that coincided with and resulted in James’s failed politics. Much as Middleton’s challenges to the sovereign in chapter 2 result in simultaneous violent misogyny toward Howard, in these later years, his works contribute to general hatred for the Spanish. Middleton makes the conflict between the English and Spanish in the late 1610s and early 1620s not just about religion but also race by staging England as a white and supreme force of virtue that should champion the Protestant cause in Bohemia and avoid miscegenation with a marriage between the English Prince Charles and Maria Anna, the Spanish Infanta. Although these chapters reveal the questions Middleton (and Rowley) posed to Jacobean sovereignty, then, they nevertheless contribute to a xenophobic English culture at the time. Race studies have only recently broached the subject of political theology. Urvashi Chakravarty’s examinations of natality’s impact on who belongs to a body politic, for instance, illuminate the ways in which the material circumstances of bodies and the racialized understandings of them contribute to early modern political thought’s systems of oppression.118 Although the intersection of political theology and race has been attended to within the past decade, earlier studies of empire and race offer expansions of this discussion. Kim F. Hall has noted that in James’s England “the appearance of blackness in plays responds to growing concerns over English national identity and culture when England develops political and economic ties with foreign (and ‘racially’ different) nations.”119 The animosity toward James’s aim to unify as peacemaker, which Hall points out runs contradictory to his colonial agenda,120 is directed not only toward the king himself, but also toward the nations, particularly Spain, that James seeks to unite with England. As Imtiaz Habib puts it, drawing upon Hall’s discussion of James’s seemingly cosmopolitan attitudes,

118 Chakravarty’s discussion of Othello and The Merchant of Venice centers upon circumcision and how mentions of the practice at times of impending or looming tragedy signal a theological, political, but also racialized distinction between characters and the dominant or implicit community of the play-text or audience. Urvashi Chakravarty, “Race, Natality, and the Biopolitics of Early Modern Political Theology,” Early Modern Cultural Studies, pp. 140–42. 119 Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England, p. 125. 120 Ibid., p. 124.

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“the monarch’s blazon of rex pacificus or royal peacemaker” contrasts with “Elizabeth’s motto of semper eadem or always the same,”121 but elements of the former still linger and foster racial animosity in new ways with the Spanish.122 The characterization of Londoners as a collective allegorical figure of woman onstage takes on new meaning in these contexts, as efforts to remain purely “English” (white) are played out in narratives condemning miscegenation or framing Spanish forces as looming rapists to a woman their monarch has left vulnerable. Arthur L. Little, Jr., has identified this tendency in early modern literature that stems from writings much earlier than Middleton, whereby even if a Black man is not represented onstage, he “frequently stands in . . . place, at least the symbolic place, of the rapist.”123 Little’s study reveals the manner by which blackness is so frequently associated with this symbolic force that the English empire’s fears are regularly characterized as blackness threatening to contaminate its whiteness. When James therefore abandons the militant Protestantism Elizabeth had cultivated in favor of peace and unity with Catholic nations, the anxieties of this merger are played out on the stage as parrhēsia that challenges the sovereign, but also through xenophobic condemnations of the Spanish as corrupt invasive forces that threaten to undermine the purity and whiteness that playwrights falsely characterized Londoners as embodying. The idea of the gentry plays into these displaced anxieties. As Burgess notes, the gentry is associated with a fervent “localism,”124 and Theodore K. Rabb provides further context for what this means, namely that the Jacobean gentry class increasingly saw themselves as required “to preserve and advance” the “order and harmony” of their society, “a duty that required constant vigilance amidst troubles and uncertainties” in “an age of rapid religious, social, and economic change.”125 It is the angle of this study that in Middleton’s later works these

121 Imtiaz Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500–1677: Imprints of the Invisible, p. 128. 122 While Habib is preoccupied with offering an important correction to the notion that Black lives were not present in early modern England, his observation that whereas Elizabeth’s England, especially in the latter half of her reign, “makes black people in London known as a denigrated entity, the second [James’s ambitions of unity] formalizes that construction by assuming a social place for them in that denigrated capacity.” Ibid., 149. Considering the ways in which Black lives were cruelly defined and then relegated according to that past history, when blackness becomes affiliated with the Spanish in the 1620s, that ostracization and hatred is rendered visible again anew. 123 Arthur L. Little, Jr., Shakespeare Jungle Fever: National-Imperial Re-Visions of Race, Rape, and Sacrifice, p. 4. 124 Glenn Burgess, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution, p. 118. 125 Theodore K. Rabb, Jacobean Gentleman, pp. 59–60.

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sentiments breed white supremacist values that not only frame the Spanish as a religious enemy to the country but also as not being fair in appearance. Although Middleton’s drama challenges the image of patriarchal authority, it thus simultaneously fuels an oppressive insular agenda. Whereas A Game at Chess depicts this tension overtly, Middleton’s collaboration with William Rowley, The World Tossed at Tennis (1620), is less obviously concerned with this racialized opposition. Nevertheless, when read in tandem with Middleton’s previous Masque of Heroes (1619) and earlier depictions of the Spanish, it becomes clear that the black devil on the title page resonates with an emerging racialized dichotomy between the English and the Spanish. This xenophobia plays out onstage through the competing interests of a prince advocating a militant Protestant agenda at the outset of the Thirty Years War and a king bent on furthering his peaceful aim to avoid war and marry his son to the Catholic kingdom of Spain. The World Tossed at Tennis therefore focuses on the manner by which England increasingly saw Charles as its encroaching ruler, especially in James’s later years when he experienced bouts of illness and no longer appeared to have the country’s interests at heart. The masque plays on this by dividing sovereignty between the current body natural and the incoming body natural, and it portrays their split political interests through the goddess Pallas who paradoxically combines their competing politics. Although the masque was never performed at Denmark House as intended, it found its place in the bookshops and the playhouse, especially since news concerning the war was circulating in the former venue and beginning to be commented upon in the latter. This tri-medial entity thus profited on the news market in which Londoners coveted information on the latest events abroad, as it was perceived to be fashionable and important. The World Tossed at Tennis plays upon the subversive nature of this new phenomenon, however, given that James had released proclamations against the circulation of such materials containing views that countered his own politics. The last chapter continues with this fascination concerning a burgeoning news culture in London, and turns to Middleton’s final play of his career, A Game at Chess. This sensational drama’s depiction of the recent foibles over the course of the Spanish Match as well as the fervent nationalistic response to its aftermath result on the one hand in a simplistic moral narrative, but on the other hand, in a rigorous critique of the English monarchy. The chapter expands upon the recent work of Paul Yachnin and Stephen Wittek, who have identified the political entertainment and multivalent news narratives the play incorporates, by contributing an examination of the Black Queen’s Pawn, whose role in the success and security of the White House has gone relatively unnoticed. Building upon previous investigations of the White Queen’s Pawn

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as a figure representing the audience and England, the chapter shifts the focus away from the royal plot involving James; Charles; Don Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Count of Gondomar; and other courtly figures of England or Spain, and centers attention on the pawn plot, whose allegory is less straightforward but arguably more vital to the storyline. By doing so, it is possible to identify the historical crossroads between Duke of Buckingham George Villiers’s illusory account of him and Charles as England’s heroes and the actual circumstances wherein chance was the country’s savior. Not only, then, does the staging of previous attempts at parrhēsia from Londoners criticizing James for the Spanish Match demonstrate the monarch’s negligence, but Charles and Buckingham are also ridiculed for seeming to offer salvation but never having followed through on their promise. Although the chapter mainly attends to this questioning of England’s governors and the play’s troubling of binary morality, it nevertheless concludes by addressing the fact that A Game at Chess still perpetuated a white supremacist narrative that demonized the Spanish through a xenophobic view to their prince marrying Maria, a Spanish Infanta.

Chapter 1 “He that knows how to obey, knows how to reign”: James as The Phoenix Introduction Elizabeth I’s encroaching death spurred anxiety amongst Londoners with the uncertainty of who would assume the throne in her place, so there was considerable relief when James was announced as her successor. This transition was characterized according to the political theology of the era as the continuation of the body politic with a new monarch’s body natural assuming the throne after the queen’s death. The mythical bird of the phoenix commonly represented the transition this year as in previous instances: “In the affairs of the English Church, continuity was equally the order of the day, ‘The Phoenix of her ashes reigns over us’ was the comment of one rising churchman on the new Supreme Governor.”1 The phoenix emblematizes the everlasting kingdom and its body politic. Royalty are therefore commonly associated with the creature in artistic representations. Elizabeth aligned herself with this creature in her Phoenix Portrait, and James was widely depicted as a phoenix after being announced as England’s new king. This phoenix, however, had a considerable journey from Scotland to make, which was followed by a prolonged bout of plague. The mythical iconography and these circumstances both contribute to Middleton’s play and its titular character. Middleton’s The Phoenix begins with the old Duke reflecting that he has reigned for “[f]orty-five years” (1.7), the exact duration that Elizabeth had ruled as Queen of England. This announcement within the first ten lines of the play therefore immediately establishes that Middleton’s first extant single-authored play preoccupies itself with the new monarch’s politics and the middle point between the rulers. Middleton’s protagonist Phoenix serves as an allegorical representation of the king, for whom the play was initially performed, but also of the monarchy that had come to pass. The play thus establishes a mirror of the times with topical allusions that manifest a didacticism for its audiences at court and for aspiring gentlemen and lawyers in attendance at St. Paul’s, but the drama has been interpreted as both Jacobean propaganda and critical of the newly established monarch’s actions. This chapter locates a middle ground between these scholarly views and in so

1 Patrick Collinson, “The Jacobean Religious Settlement: The Hampton Court Conference,” in Before the English Civil War, p. 27. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513763-002

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doing claims that Middleton’s drama unsettles the early image of masculine superiority James promoted in his reprinted tracts, Basilicon Doron (1603) and The True Law of Free Monarchies (1603). The play instead points to work that James had yet to complete, namely his travels through London as part of his coronation celebrations, The Magnificent Entertainment (1604). The notion that the phoenix reigns over the people lamenting their departed queen is therefore fitting, as the city had yet to celebrate their new monarch. The play has not commonly been read in connection with these ceremonies, though, so this chapter first substantiates recent suggestions that 1604 was the year in which the play was first performed. The play’s preoccupation with a disguised ruler’s navigation of his polis concerns this real journey that James would soon take and to which Middleton contributed a speech. The contractual nature of both this speech and the play that preceded it is influenced by Richard Martin’s own speech welcoming James into London as king. Martin’s parrhēsiastic contract praises the monarch while reminding him of his obligation and sets the stage for ideal governance as mutually constituted with, rather than imposed upon, citizens. Theater frames this fluid vision and dependent bond more indirectly, but nevertheless in a vein of political performance spanning the course of the early modern era. This historical backdrop establishes an interpretive framework for the monarch: James is encouraged to wrestle with the issues presented to him – which echo topical matters in his first year as king – and to enact contractual governance – as he would also be encouraged to do when he embarked on his progress through the city. These coronation celebrations establish a camera regis in which London is personified as a bride newly married to James and represents the king’s bedchamber, symbolizing a union and power relation between city and monarch. Drama from this transitional period is regularly preoccupied with similar allegories. As Julia Reinhard Lupton elucidates, Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, which borrows from Middleton’s play, represents the city through Isabella.2 Performed before Shakespeare’s play, The Phoenix offers some initial influences for this gendered allegory with the figure of the Jeweller’s Wife, whose parrhēsia Phoenix cannot readily dismiss. The gendered politics of the play thus remind the ruler of his limited capacity, which is why its indications of James’s fallibility are especially poignant. In both The Phoenix and The Magnificent Entertainment, Middleton dismantles James’s image as dominant and almighty masculine authority through renegotiating the terms of the city’s union with him to establish a reciprocal bond.

2 Julia Reinhard Lupton, Citizen-Saints, pp. 151–52.

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James’s diminished authority results as well from the material circumstances of the drama. Middleton’s The Phoenix is one of the plays he wrote for the later reassembled boy company of St. Paul’s, but what differentiates Middleton’s political allegory from his other plays for these actors is that James is rendered into a young man. As aforementioned, James presented himself as engaged with and interested in literary dialogue, so the notion of him as a novice learning of his kingdom and engaging in a dialogic literary work would not be presumptuous on Middleton’s part. Middleton’s lessons address these opera basilica, which point to matters that linger and thereby signal the state’s perpetual renovation. This fluidity takes material shape in the boy actor’s body, which corresponds with the mythological bird that informs the play’s political theology. By having a boy actor play Phoenix – the allegorical representation of James – Middleton stages the adult monarch as younger, metaphorically addressing the infancy of his reign in England. However, Middleton is also careful to praise Phoenix (and therefore James) for his wisdom. This chapter therefore posits that Middleton both questions and upholds James’s abilities as a ruler, perceiving him as fit to reign while reminding him that he has not been infallible, even early on in his reign. The myth of the phoenix and its connection to the king’s body natural and body politic accentuate his shared humanity and fallen state, indicating a fluid embodiment of sovereignty that destabilizes James’s intransigent masculinity and situates him in dialogue with other members of the body politic as a limited governor.

From Tudor Ashes and Parrhēsia’s Flame Scholars hypothesize that The Phoenix may have been performed at some point between March 24, 1603, when James assumed the throne, and 1604, when the theaters reopened after a prolonged outbreak of plague. However, James Leeds Barroll’s historical documentation and evidence concerning the 1603–1604 plague period indicates only brief windows – between April 28, 1603 and May 5, 1603 or between May 9, 1603 and May 19, 1603 – during which The Phoenix could have been performed before the theaters fully closed.3 Middleton’s reference to “the plague that never leaves the city” makes it even less likely that The Phoenix was performed during these intervals, as the line suggests that the plague had already lasted for some time (15.231). A likely topical reference Middleton makes to “the Turk” as an “Infidel” near the end of the play contributes as well to this timeline

3 James Leeds Barroll, Politics, Plague, and Shakespeare’s Theater, p. 102.

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(15.252, 253). Given that the play was performed for James, this late mention in the play likely refers to the king’s line of verse “cruell Turkes and Infidels” in his poem Lepanto.4 Like Basilicon Doron and The True Law of Free Monarchies, Lepanto was another Scottish text reprinted for English book buyers “[w]ithin three weeks” of Basilicon Doron’s March 1603 release date.5 Although “Turks” are regularly referred to as infidels in early modern literature,6 the use of this phrase with a court performance in mind likely caters to James, especially given that “Turks” are not mentioned until this concluding scene. The ability to cater to the monarch’s interests, especially in the concluding scene, makes it likely that Middleton had read Lepanto in preparation for The Phoenix, and its print date would have given him insufficient time for a performance before the full outbreak of plague occurred. Basing the play’s date upon Lepanto alone, however, remains tenuous given the unfortunate ubiquity of this white supremacist association, indicating that more evidence is required in order to situate the play in relation to James’s accession. Looking to other disguised-duke narratives offers further answers. John Marston’s The Malcontent (1603) was most likely performed in 1603 and printed in 1604.7 At the beginning of act 2, scene 3, Pietro observes: “The night growes deepe and fowle.”8 This same line appears interrupted in The Phoenix. Near the end of Phoenix and Quieto’s meeting, Phoenix begins to say, “The night grows deep, and – ” before he is cut off by two Officers who enter the scene (12.203). I have been unable to locate another concatenation of these words in Early English Books Online (EEBO) and therefore conclude that Middleton gained inspiration to write The Phoenix from seeing Marston’s The Malcontent in 1603 before the theaters closed or somehow gaining access to a manuscript copy, and that he reproduced this line, consciously or not, from memory.9

4 James I, His Majesties Lepanto, sig. B1v. 5 James Doelman, King James and the Religious Culture of England, p. 23. 6 Dennis Austin Britton writes on the racial binary that manifests religiously between “the baptized race” of English white Protestants and the infidel, specifically in James’s Lepanto. Dennis Austin Britton, Becoming Christian: Race, Reformation, and Early Modern English Romance, pp. 36–37. Britton’s study will be engaged with in greater detail in later chapters where the matter of race becomes more central and consistent with Middleton’s political theology, but it is important to note here that Middleton takes an early interest in political theology’s associations with race in The Phoenix. 7 In The Selected Plays of John Marston, MacDonald P. Jackson and Michael Neill provide 1603 as the year of performance, following G. K. Hunter’s persuasive case for this date. MacDonald P. Jackson and Michael Neill, eds., The Selected Plays of John Marston, p. 190. 8 John Marston, The malcontent, sig. D1v. 9 Lawrence Danson and Ivo Kamps in their textual essay on the play agree with John Bradbury Brooks’s earlier conclusion that the quarto is based upon “an author’s draft,” which is

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Another text or oration offers further confirmation for a later date of composition and performance. Master Richard Martin’s A Speech Delivered to the King, performed upon James’s arrival to London in 1603, contains language extremely reminiscent of The Phoenix. There was clearly interest from dramatists in this event. Middleton’s collaborator Thomas Dekker had written a pageant for James’s entry into the city that was unfortunately not performed as initially planned,10 so it is very likely that both dramatists were in attendance or aware of what was spoken. The printed record offers several correspondences with Middleton’s play. There is the common association of James with the phoenix who rises “Out of the Ashes,”11 but there are also references to “Vnconcionable Lawiers, and greedie officers . . . no longer spinn[ing] out the poore mans cause . . . and the delay of iustice,” which correspond with Falso and Tangle; the fact that “No more shall bribes blinde the eyes of the wife,”12 which speaks to the Jeweller’s Wife’s affair with the Knight; and the mention of ports and sea ventures “shall now” wash “away our reproach of vniuersall pirats and sea-wolues,” which connects with the play’s portrayal of a deplorable Captain.13 Even after setting aside the recurring analogy of James to a phoenix, then, Middleton’s play takes inspiration for multiple plotlines from Martin’s speech and sets these actions to life onstage. These various details indicate that The Phoenix is written for performance after James’s accession and likely composed during the time in which the playhouses were closed.14 This chapter therefore positions The Phoenix historically as a play that was first performed before James at court in the winter of 1604 and later in the year at St. Paul’s for theatergoers. This dating is in keeping with E. K. Chambers’s suggested court performance of February 20, 1604, which he based on the title page’s indication that the play was staged before James, and the corresponding moments in the records at which

why I argue for a memorial reconstruction of Marston’s line here. Lawrence Danson and Ivo Kamps, “The Phoenix,” in Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, p. 529. 10 Anne Lancashire details the history behind Dekker’s unperformed pageant and its recording in his Magnificent Entertainment publication. Anne Lancashire, “Dekker’s Accession Pageant for James I,” Early Theatre, pp. 42–44. 11 Richard Martin, A speach deliuered, to the Kings most excellent Maiestie in the name of the sheriffes of London and Middlesex, sig. A3v. In this instance and all others, this book preserves the italic font of speeches and stage directions as recorded in the printed texts. 12 Ibid., sig. B1r. 13 Ibid., sig. B1v. 14 Although The Magnificent Entertainment (1604) occurred on March 16, 1604, ushering the monarch through the streets of London in celebration of his accession, James had already been crowned King of England on March 24, 1603. The public festivities had been significantly delayed as a result of the plague.

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a performance at court might have occurred.15 Chambers substantiates his historical inquiry with a letter by Philip Gawdy dated February 20, 1604, in which Gawdy writes: “Ther hath bene ij playes this shroftyde before the king and ther shall be an other to morrow.”16 Lawrence Danson and Ivo Kamps have supported Chambers’s groundwork with reference to Gawdy’s records and to Chambers’s reference to payment made to Edward Pearce, who was master of the children of Paul’s. Based upon these details, they surmise that “it is reasonable to conclude that one of the plays referred to by Gawdy is the same for which the Paul’s Boys were paid on 20 February 1604; and, if the title-page of the 1607 quarto speaks true, that play was The Phoenix.”17 The supposition is based upon the quarto text of The Phoenix, first printed in 1607 with a title page stating that the play “hath beene sundry times Acted by the Children of Paules, And presented before his Maiestie.”18 Although there is no unequivocal extant evidence to establish that the play was definitely performed before James at court, it remains highly probable, especially given Thomas Pendleton’s account of the title pages of Paul’s children’s company’s plays: “the title pages of all but two of these quartos claim their plays had been acted ‘lately’ or ‘sundry times’ or ‘divers times’ at Paul’s, but only The Phoenix is said to have been played at court.”19 Pendleton was likely unaware of the variant 1608 title page of A Trick to Catch the Old One, which adds to the information from the 1608 quarto’s title page that the play had also been performed at Blackfriars and “before his Maiestie on Newyeares night [1607] last.”20 Paul A. Mulholland suggests that these details were likely provided by Henry Rocket, the publisher, after his purchase of the edition, to George Eld, the printer, for commercial reasons: “Rockytt probably supplied

15 E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, vol. 3, p. 439. 16 E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, vol. 4, p. 118, note 4. Shrovetide festivals were a cause for concern in the early modern era: “in the Tudor and early Stuart period . . . the civic elite became increasingly hostile to such rituals of misrule,” like Mayday and Shrovetide celebrations. Michael Berlin, “Civic Ceremony in Early Modern London,” Urban History Yearbook, p. 19. The fact that Shrovetide often led to “conflicts between the upper and lower ranks” may help to explain Middleton’s choice to stage a disguised-duke play that levels the systems of rank and uses this carnivalesque atmosphere to generate a lesson not only on order but also collaborative governance. Jennifer C. Vaught, Carnival and Literature in Early Modern England, p. 14. 17 Lawrence Danson and Ivo Kamps, “Works Included in This Edition,” in Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, p. 346. 18 Thomas Middleton, The Phoenix, sig. A1r. 19 Thomas A. Pendleton, “Shakespeare’s Disguised Duke Play,” in “Fanned and winnowed opinions,” p. 84. 20 Thomas Middleton, A trick to catch the old one, sig. A2r.

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additional details of performance and authorship and insisted on displaying this information prominently on the reset title page to promote sales.”21 The attention paid to correcting or adding these specifics as they relate to performance in the quarto text’s printing leads to the fair assumption that the details on The Phoenix’s title page are accurate, namely that the play was performed before James at court. Dating The Phoenix after the outbreak of plague in 1603 and before the king’s accession celebrations allows us to appreciate the play’s lessons. By staging Phoenix’s travels at home for James on February 20, 1604, prior to the king’s own journey through the city on March 15, 1604, Middleton provided the new monarch with a governing model to emulate. Middleton’s dramatic work is not unique in this aim to edify the monarch, for it draws upon a long-standing Tudor tradition. Earlier dramatists’ efforts to counsel monarchs on political matters offer indirect lessons, thereby leaving matters to the monarch’s interpretation and discretion. Tudor dramatists were careful to avoid reprimand or more severe punishment for being too bold in their instructional performances for royalty. John Skelton’s and John Bale’s Tudor plays adopted and adapted medieval moral play frameworks in order to guide sovereigns through more topical sociopolitical content, but they couched their agendas subtly in the dramatic action rather than overtly questioning current politics.22 As Dermot Cavanagh puts it, “earlier theatre did not simply promulgate a new doctrine of temporal sovereignty . . . it could also explore its limits and contradictions.”23 Sarah Carpenter identifies similar dramatic tensions in the mid-sixteenth century with Respublica (1553), performed for Mary I shortly after her coronation ceremonies.24 This history of political and allegorical interludes and instruction continued into Elizabeth’s reign, beginning early on with Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton’s Gorboduc, which Alice Hunt perceives as “a dramatic mirror into which rulers and ruled should peer and learn.”25 In the later years of Elizabeth’s reign, this model of drama took shape

21 Paul A. Mulholland, ed., A Trick to Catch the Old One, p. 9. 22 Peter Happé, “Henry VIII in the Interludes,” in Henry VIII and His Afterlives, pp. 15–16; James Simpson, “John Bale, Three Lawes,” in The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama, p. 115. 23 Dermot Cavanaugh, “Reforming Sovereignty: John Bale and Tragic Drama,” in Interludes and Early Modern Society, p. 193. 24 Sarah Carpenter, “Respublica,” in The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama, pp. 514–18. As Alice Hunt notes, both the coronation celebrations and Respublica instructed Mary in matters of governance, even if it is unlikely that they were staged in tandem. Alice Hunt, “Legitimacy, Ceremony, and Drama: Mary Tudor’s Coronation and Respublica,” in Interludes and Early Modern Society, p. 344. 25 Alice Hunt, “Dumb Politics in Gorboduc,” in The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama, p. 561.

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again with John Lyly’s court dramas staged by the boys of St. Paul’s theater.26 Contributing to this long history, Middleton’s The Phoenix sharpens the political edge by means of Martin’s recent parrhēsiastic contract. The ushering in of a new king for the first time in almost half a century led to widespread interest in literary counsel. Tracts and literature contributing to this public discourse consistently address the monarch’s image as an ideal ruler, but some temper this obsequiousness with the realities of a mutable political world or body politic that requires ongoing negotiation with its other members. Sir Francis Bacon’s Advancement of Learning, for example, takes advantage of this opportunity to counsel an erudite monarch by presenting opera basilica, works for the king. James’s inspiration to conduct these acts properly derives, according to Bacon, from investments in historical legacy: “the images of men’s wits and knowledges remains in books, exempted from the wrong of time and capable of perpetual renovation.”27 Although Bacon is attempting to flatter James by stating that literary works, such as the present one he is dedicating to the king, can continually renew a governor’s greatness in perpetuity through printed record, he nevertheless simultaneously points out the fluctuating nature of the world he governs, which is subject to change. This fact coupled with the king’s mortality, of which Bacon has reminded James in the prior passage, tempers this praise with an anxiety that James might not be the whole and complete patriarchal leader he envisioned or depicted himself as in his many publications. Middleton’s The Phoenix presents a different kind of perpetual renovation. His play still recognizes the sovereign’s role as head of state and thus adheres to Bacon’s notion that “the endeavours of a private man may be but an image in a crossway, that may point at the way but cannot go it.”28 In other words, Middleton does not go so far as to provide James with a particular message, but instead with this “crossway.” Unlike Bacon or Martin, however, Middleton did not have to be as concerned about appearing to present himself as superior to the monarch in offering this counsel. Theater’s abilities to elucidate plural political paths and stage

26 Jeanne H. McCarthy sees Lyly’s plays functioning as means for Elizabeth to exercise her authority over unruly male courtiers, who are represented as children, whereas Theodora Jankowski perceives a more nuanced outlook wherein Lyly’s plays “are simultaneously implicated in the opposite side of the image, thus all of his images of the ‘light Elizabeth’ bring forth simultaneously images of the ‘dark queen’.” Jeanne H. McCarthy, “Elizabeth I’s ‘picture in little’,” Studies in Philology, pp. 426–27; Theodora A. Jankowski, Elizabeth I, the Subversion of Flattery, and John Lyly’s Court Plays and Entertainments, p. 17. 27 Sir Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, in The Major Works, p. 168. 28 Ibid., p. 174. Bacon states that only the sovereign may enact these politics, hence opera basilica.

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parrhēsia voiced by stage personae rather than the author himself toward figures that resemble but are not the monarch offer valuable grounds to frame a crossway that is in keeping with past traditions of court performance that delight and instruct. This approach to the play provides an answer to prior scholarship’s tendency either to label the play as propaganda or to discover hidden radical political messages. Middleton’s The Phoenix is certainly instructional and moral, which can lead to it being categorized as didactic because of its atypical nature in comparison to other early Middleton plays. Clifford Davidson has interpreted The Phoenix as a close cousin of the moral play derived from the popular dramatic tradition of the medieval period, which was adopted and reworked in the early modern theater. More specifically, he associates the genre’s overt religiosity with the proto-nationalism and idealism that he sees in The Phoenix and Middleton’s mayoral shows.29 Davidson’s generalization about the play corresponds with Leonard Tennenhouse’s new historicist interpretation of the denouement to The Phoenix as an example of the subversion-to-containment model that obliterates the social vices that have contaminated the body politic over the course of the play.30 Tennenhouse’s interpretation of The Phoenix’s politics is certainly one way of viewing the structure of the play, but its morality is more nuanced than Tennenhouse’s theoretical approach or Davidson’s moral critique suggest. Looking at the advice that Quieto offers Phoenix provides us with a clear instance of unresolved rather than closed morality: Law is the very masterpiece of heaven. But see yonder. There’s many clouds between the sun and us, There’s too much cloth before we see the law. (12.194–98)

This counsel given to the prince suggests an apotheosis that cannot be attained. Quieto’s message is not one of perfection or divine rule but rather of monarchal limitations. His likening of himself and Phoenix with the collective “us” reminds

29 Clifford Davidson, “The Phoenix: Middleton’s Didactic Comedy,” Papers on Language and Literature, p. 122. 30 Leonard Tennenhouse, Power on Display, p. 159. Stephen Greenblatt provides a popular example of this dynamic in Measure for Measure, which as aforementioned was influenced by Middleton’s Phoenix, and a more recent example of this trend with respect to The Phoenix is Trish Thomas Henley’s passing generalization of the play as “a utopian fantasy about a new heir who will see and correct the corruption of his subjects.” Stephen Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations, pp. 21–65. Trish Thomas Henley, “Tragicomic Men,” in The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton, p. 266.

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the audience of the ruler’s shared mortality and limitations. Material circumstances such as “clouds” and “cloth,” parallel the ruler’s own mortality and constrain him from fully realizing the acme of heaven. The law is therefore an instrument of heaven, but like the monarch it does not achieve divine status, and absolutism or independent governance remains illusory. Middleton’s identification of the ruler’s limitations corresponds with the impossibility of achieving stability in the body politic. Near the conclusion of a concocted false trial that the judge Falso holds for one of his accomplices, Furtivo, the accused makes a statement on the turbulent and ever-shifting nature of the world and then turns to the moral quandary this reality produces: “If we were all true men, we should be of no trade. What a pitiful world would here be. Heaven forbid we should be all true men: then how should your worship’s next suit be made?” (10.160–63). While we are led to agree with Phoenix’s reaction that Furtivo is a “notable rogue” (10.169), given that Furtivo is attempting to justify his corruption, there is nevertheless a degree of truth to the ways in which the world cannot be perfected. Alan C. Dessen provides a nuanced moral perspective on this fluid equilibrium that the monarch must maintain. He examines The Phoenix as an “estates play” and notes that the exposure of all the vices of Ferrara represents “a larger thematic unity, the health of the kingdom.”31 The limitations of the monarch are thus extended to the political body he manages as well. As Jonathan Gil Harris has illuminated, the notion of political health was difficult to comprehend, as early modern medicine proved an ailment occasionally to be a cure and applied this thought to the political wellbeing, or commonweal as well.32 The king’s two bodies are therefore fallible and limited in nature, but the monarch himself might not always be able to distinguish clearly between panacea and poison. The critique of James is therefore broader in its scope and less targeted to specific topical issues than has been previously imagined. The play’s allegory has led scholars like William Power to speculate that Proditor represents Sir Walter Raleigh.33 The topical Main Plot, supposedly involving Raleigh, and the

31 Alan C. Dessen, “Middleton’s The Phoenix and the Allegorical Tradition,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, p. 293. 32 Harris observes that “Jacobean writers frequently argued that political ‘poisons,’ if properly administered by the body politic’s ‘physicians,’ could serve a medicinal function; in many cases, however, this . . . model generated problems which served to question rather than confirm the legitimacy of the body politic’s rulers.” Jonathan Gil Harris, Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic, p. 14. 33 William Power, “The Phoenix, Raleigh, and King James,” Notes and Queries, p. 57.

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trial centering upon it, however, could easily correspond instead with Furtivo and Falso rather than Proditor, and there is no concrete association between Proditor and Raleigh.34 Allusions to James’s plethora of knighthoods within the first year of his reign are more readily apparent, which prompts the reader to consider whether or not Middleton has subversive intentions. Margot Heinemann and Douglas F. Rutledge, for example, each claim that the play is satirical, a supposition they support by examining the problematic character of the dishonorable Knight.35 James’s decision to create a slew of knights threw established ideas of status into disarray by obliging those of a certain income bracket to purchase them. If someone was unable to pay the amount, then they turned to those who could afford them. Hence, the station of a knight could be purchased as well as earned, causing knights to become less reputable and more common.36 In the play, the Knight’s presence and his sordid conduct reflect this recent debacle. While the play certainly satirizes these circumstances, it is risky to view the inclusion of this material as an intention to lambast the new monarch. Given references to the court’s “presence chamber” in the play (15.20), where The Phoenix would likely have been performed, it would be puzzling for the budding dramatist Middleton to use this opportunity purely for satire. Much like the Tudor dramatists before him, he was careful with its inclusion. As N. W. Bawcutt states, “Middleton wrote his play with a royal audience in mind,”37 but we should avoid hazarding guesses as well that the play attempts to offer James a rigid lesson or that it maps Jacobean reality comprehensively onto the

34 As Christopher Lee notes, the Main Plot’s supposed involvement of Raleigh with Lord Cobham and the Earl of Northumberland was most likely false or at the very least suspect. Christopher Lee, 1603, p. 101. He does identify that real plots against James did exist, such as the Bye Plot which involved a priest named William Watson who “planned to kidnap James and force him to accept religious toleration.” Ibid., p. 274. 35 Douglas F. Rutledge, “The Politics of Disguise,” in The Witness of Times, p. 101; Margot Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre, pp. 70–71. Another example of this critical trend is Albert H. Tricomi’s examination of anti-court drama; however, unlike Rutledge and Heinemann, Tricomi reads the references to knights as a failed effort on Middleton’s part to achieve a militant position. Albert H. Tricomi, Anticourt Drama in England, p. 20. Tricomi’s insistence that the play be read as recalcitrant reveals his proclivity to interpret political early modern drama through a narrow lens that perceives plays as either radically oppositional or wholly propagandist. 36 Lawrence E. Stone provides the following values concerning James’s prodigal award of knighthoods: “in the first four months of the reign he dubbed no fewer than 906 knights. By December 1604 England could boast of 1,161 new knights, which means that the order had suddenly been increased almost three-fold.” Lawrence E. Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, p. 74. 37 N. W. Bawcutt, “Middleton’s The Phoenix as a Royal Play,” Notes and Queries, p. 287.

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play world.38 It is necessary, then, to reconsider Marilyn L. Williamson’s observation that The Phoenix is “the most sententious and didactic of all Thomas Middleton’s plays” by reconsidering the lesson she observes as fractured and interrogative rather than static and contained.39 Despite the play’s championing of James by means of its virtuous protagonist, The Phoenix’s didacticism produces opera basilica by means of Middleton coupling criticism with praise through parrhēsia to highlight the need for perpetual renovation, namely that the king’s work is just beginning rather than finished as he prepares to set out on his coronation celebrations through the city.

Fluid Sovereignty; or, the Boy Actor and the Phoenix This perpetual renovation challenges the complete image of patriarchal authority James had already begun promoting in his republished works, and the play materializes a challenge to this conceit onstage through the body of the boy actor playing Phoenix, or James. Although the decision to cast a boy actor as James is partially made in order to avoid censorship, given that it was illegal to stage living monarchs at the time and James was certainly older than the eldest boy actor, the choice indicates more than merely an effort to distance the allegorical representation of James from the king himself. By loosely tying the monarch to a boy actor, Middleton destabilizes attempts to regard Phoenix as perfect, as he remains a person in the course of development rather than a complete man. Middleton still has the Duke open with commendations of Phoenix’s “serious studies, and . . . fruitful hours” which shall “grow up into judgment” (1.34; 1.35), suggesting that Phoenix is already erudite at the outset of the play. The republications of Basilicon Doron and The True Law of Free Monarchies would have demonstrated James’s “serious studies,” but the adult

38 Kevin A. Quarmby astutely cautions against the tendency to see the emergence of disguised-duke plays as an oppositional response to James’s monarchy, given that the genre has a trajectory that precedes his reign. Quarmby suggests that the Whig bias that develops after the Restoration leads to anti-Stuart attitudes that seep into modern scholarship. This is a warranted caveat, but Quarmby at times seems to go so far as to preclude any reading of the dukes as representing James. Kevin A. Quarmby, The Disguised Ruler in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, p. 6. This chapter’s approach retains an attention to these fictional rulers as figurations of James without imposing a modern factional politics onto the early modern period or attributing a political message beyond the reproduction of current, competing, or ongoing political issues in a pluralistic dramatic framework that presents opera basilica. 39 Marilyn L. Williamson, “The Phoenix: Middleton’s Comedy de Regimine Principum,” Renaissance News, p. 183.

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ruler still needed to “grow up” as a mature governor of his new body politic, namely England. Hence, the youth of the boy actor stands in for the metaphorical inexperience that James has of England and its politics. Although Fidelio proclaims Phoenix the “wonder of all princes, precedent, and glory” (1.136), as well as the “[t]rue phoenix” (1.137), Phoenix must first develop the vaster wisdom of a king by learning of his second body, the body politic or kingdom, and traveling through it. Despite any successful achievement of harmony and maturity that Phoenix makes along this journey, Middleton’s plural vision indicates that the kingdom and Phoenix’s own body remain transitional and transformative entities that cannot be stabilized with any sense of longevity. Critics’ previous readings of the boy actor conflict with this line of argumentation, as Phoenix remains prominent and authoritarian – regardless of whether or not the play had been staged by a boy company – but textual evidence suggests otherwise. Michael Shapiro maintains that Phoenix would have been played by an older boy actor, especially given the sophisticated language and elegant speech that the role demands.40 The prophecy Phoenix tells to Proditor shortly before they are about to execute their plot to assassinate Phoenix’s father, however, suggests that even if Phoenix was played by the eldest boy in the company, who was roughly eighteen years of age, he did not appear to be the tallest. Proditor’s metaphorical dream vision that ostensibly foreshadows his downfall indicates the discrepancy between Phoenix’s age and size: There was a villainous raven seen last night Over the presence chamber in hard jostle With a young eaglet. (15.19–21)

A raven is a rather large bird and obviously correlates with Proditor in its “villainous” description. The reference to Phoenix as the “young eaglet,” on the other hand, is a compliment, for such birds were symbolically regal, but it also likely draws attention to the shorter stature of the actor playing Phoenix when compared to Proditor.41 Phoenix is not a pipsqueak boy, for he has a demanding

40 Michael Shapiro, Children of the Revels, p. 117. 41 E. M. W. Tillyard explains: “The aspray, or osprey, was a small eagle, king among birds, and fish were supposed to yield themselves voluntarily, turning their bellies up to him.” E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture, p. 35. This early modern understanding suggests a natural devotion that other members of the body politic should show to Phoenix, regardless of their size. Hence, even though the phrasing literally diminishes James’s stature through the boy actor’s body and the bird metaphor, it simultaneously works to compliment him on his deserved place as sovereign.

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part; however, these lines reveal that he is not the largest boy in the company. This discrepancy compromises attempts to interpret Phoenix as an idealized embodiment of James. Such poignant staging does not clearly target James in a satiric vein, for as already mentioned, the text’s likening of Phoenix to an eaglet is a compliment; instead, the text, when performed, merely levels the playing field: James is “one of the boys.” The ruler stands on equal or comparable footing with his subjects, allowing the boy company to frame governance in a mutual manner, wherein the Machiavellian villain Proditor is presumably the largest figure who looms over the other boys. By communicating that Phoenix is the lead actor but still inexperienced in some capacity, Middleton’s play reminds James that his monarchy is provisional rather than solidified. The play prompts him to see himself two ways at once: old and young. James had been King of Scotland for many years, but he had only just become king of a new country with which he was unfamiliar. The transition between past and present rulers is likewise encapsulated in the boy actor’s body. It represents an appropriate vehicle to communicate that the nature of monarchy involves change and transformation. Boy actors represent liminal bodies in early modern scientific discourse. Their stage of development is neither fully man nor woman, according to these understandings.42 Phoenix is both Elizabeth and James. This developmental ideology and trajectory had wider implications with respect to the present king’s age and masculinity. As Edel Lamb observes, the boy actor “exposes the temporal process of becoming adult and becoming masculine. Moreover, this cycle is commonly represented in the period as circular and old age is often imagined as a second childhood. Images of childhood thus signal the unstable nature of manhood through a variety of associations to gender, age, the body and temporality.”43 The Phoenix conveys this metaphorical arc of life by fusing it with the symbolic conception of royal lineage as a phoenix that is everlasting yet transitional. Given the few lines that Middleton allocates to the old Duke, we can infer that he too would have been played by a smaller member of the company. The cyclical nature of human life and governance that the boy actor’s body stages stresses the point that James, like Phoenix, is part of a legacy

42 Thomas Lacquer contextualizes early modern children’s liminal nature with respect to their sex with the story of “a girl . . . Marie, who became Manuel when she sprouted a penis ‘at the time of life when girls begin their monthlies’; . . . A bit more heat or acting the part of another gender can sometimes bestow a penis, which entitles its bearer to the mark of the phallus, to be designated a man.” Thomas Lacquer, Making Sex, p. 126. 43 Edel Lamb, Performing Childhood in the Early Modern Theatre, pp. 30–31.

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greater than himself.44 The Duke pronounces at the outset, “We know we’re old, my days proclaim me so” (1.6). He indicates that the current condition of the body politic (“We”) is currently old and that it is because of his personal age (“my days”) that this is so. Phoenix, on the other hand, must attain the necessary experience in order to rise out of his father’s ashes and assume the throne. However, by opening the play with the old Duke stating “we . . . have seen our face / In our grave council’s foreheads,” Middleton portrays James’s end as much as his beginning, given that the old Duke represents the inevitable end he faces (1.2–3). No matter how robust Phoenix’s body and character are, the play reminds us that the monarch’s natural body is susceptible to change. Middleton presents the cycle of kingship not only through the body of the boy actor, but also through the myth of the phoenix, which its prince allegorically represents. The name Phoenix suggests fluidity and change, especially in relation to governance. Ernst Kantorowicz contextualizes the mythical bird’s relation to the body politic: The species, of course, was immortal; the individual, mortal. The imaginary bird therefore disclosed a duality: it was at once Phoenix and Phoenix-kind, mortal as an individual, though immortal too, because it was the whole kind. It was at once individual and collective, because the whole species reproduced no more than a single specimen at a time.45

By loosely representing James as a young prince of eighteen – when he was thirty-seven years old at the time – and pitting him onstage with an equally incongruous allegorical representation of his predecessor – given that Elizabeth, unlike the Duke, was neither a man nor alive at the time of James’s accession – Middleton presents James as both “Phoenix and Phoenix-kind.”46 He is one ruler in a long lineage that precedes him and proceeds from him, and he is new to this role as King of England, despite having been King of Scotland his entire life. Martin’s speech also makes subtle reference to James’s novice stature by stating that his “youth needes no excuse,” which is likely not directed at the thirty-seven-year-old king’s actual age.47 The play’s allegory communicates the incongruity between James’s wisdom as a governor and his inexperience with the kingdom of England at the play’s outset when Lussurioso comments that

44 The convention of young boys playing older men is also not an uncommon practice on the early modern stage. In his epigram for the boy actor Salomon Pavy, for example, Ben Jonson recounts the boy’s striking ability to play older men. 45 Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, pp. 389–90. 46 Middleton also averts censorship, given that the youth of Phoenix makes it not immediately apparent that the character correlates with James. 47 Richard Martin, A speach deliuered, to the Kings most excellent Maiestie in the name of the sheriffes of London and Middlesex, sig. A4r.

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Phoenix is “elder in virtues than in years” (1.17). Phoenix already possesses the necessary abilities and character to govern, but he lacks the experiential knowledge that the time and action of the drama will provide. As the Duke remarks: “what is in hope begun, / Experience quickens; travel confirms the man” (1.25–26). The Phoenix therefore champions James as an admirable ruler, but the play advances the notion that the monarch must still gain an understanding of his kingdom in order to manage England adeptly. The play thus frames governance as interdependent in nature, wherein the sovereign must also learn from and be managed by the people. Middleton resorts to classical texts to situate this perspective in the play. The Duke commends Phoenix for understanding the following “true knowledge” (1.58): “He that knows how to obey, knows how to reign” (1.57). This maxim derives from Aristotle’s Politics.48 When discussing a learned constitutional rule to which the monarch ought to adhere, Aristotle suggests “that men are praised for knowing both how to rule and how to obey, and he is said to be a citizen of excellence who is able to do both well.”49 This model of concomitant politics communicates a power dynamic in which the ruler relinquishes his mastery over his subjects and shares governance as well as service with his people. Middleton’s deployment of Aristotle questions the ostensible supremacy that James articulates in Basilicon Doron. Despite the king’s references to “loue” and “affections,”50 these qualities are not mutual since James advocates that the prince’s wife, and metaphorically his subjects, ought to “obey” and the governor should “command,” whereas Middleton, like Aristotle before him, asserts that in order to rule, a leader must first learn to obey. Middleton’s fluid conception of the prince’s governance differs significantly from the image that James presented to his people. Soon after he was hailed King of England, James’s works on governance, Basilicon Doron and The True Law of Free Monarchies – written initially for the Scottish people – were reprinted for the English public. Given the educational scheme of his play, Middleton would likely have read these works, especially the former, or at least have been aware of their existence before composing the play, for the printed books were more than likely available before The Phoenix was performed.51 Middleton’s familiarity with James’s writing also remains a possibility given

48 It is worth noting that it also resembles the motto of the Haberdashers, one of London’s livery companies, “serve and obey.” 49 Aristotle, The Politics, in The Politics and the Constitution of Athens, p. 66. 50 James I, Basilicon Doron, in Political Writings, p. 42. 51 James Craigie notes that preparations for the March 1603 editions of these texts began as early as September 22, 1602, which Craigie bases on the earliest mention of the new edition

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that in Thomas Dekker’s printed text of The Magnificent Entertainment’s reception, intentions, and performances Dekker credits Middleton with a contribution to his pageantry. In his speech for Zeal that he wrote for these ceremonies, Middleton advances a shared political relationship between the monarch and his city that corresponds with the power dynamics in The Phoenix. The Phoenix’s Aristotelian conception of mutual governance relates to Zeal’s request that James see himself as accountable to the city rather than as its decider. Having aggrandized James as an exemplary ruler in his reunion of Britain, Middleton concludes Zeal’s speech by making a polite request: “lowly I entreat / You’d be to her as gracious as you’re great” (2178–79). This verse mirrors Martin’s rhetorical address to James. Although Martin obsequiously champions James’s wisdom and exemplar in his works that are “now fresh in euery mans hands,” he also holds him accountable by trusting that he will “neuer transgress” these lessons as he instructs his own son not to do,52 and he makes reference to the thin line between the divine right to rule and “Tyrants” earlier by indicating that both can be said to pursue justice.53 His description of James’s relation to the “wearied Commons,” represented by the City of London that James is about to enter, is represented by “a rich ring” James wears on his “royall finger,” but one worn by a king who will hear and see injustices protested politely by his people.54 These resonances in Middleton’s speech that Zeal delivers for James echo the parrhēsiastic contract that Michelle O’Callaghan notes in Martin’s words welcoming James to London.55 The narrative structure of The Magnificent Entertainment in which James is cast as the bridegroom to the personified London continues Martin’s work. Middleton’s verse delineates a conditional bond of love based upon mutual affection that recognizes James’s right to rule, but asks that he pledge to rule kindly, thereby establishing a subtle contractual bond. The speech therefore attempts to constitute a new vision of governance between the monarch and the city, but James was not attentive or engaged. His disinterest distanced him from the people, unlike Elizabeth, who accepted

that is located in a letter from Nicolson to Cecil. James Craigie, ed., Basilicon Doron, p. 28. Although James’s preface to Basilicon Doron notes that pirated copies were in circulation and that this new edition is an effort to provide an authentic copy, there are no records of such printed materials. Craigie thus surmises that this might be a reference to manuscript copies. Ibid., p. 21. 52 Richard Martin, A speach deliuered, to the Kings most excellent Maiestie in the name of the sheriffes of London and Middlesex, sig. B2r. 53 Ibid., sig. A4r. 54 Ibid., sig. B1v. 55 O’Callaghan, The English Wits, pp. 14–15.

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gifts, participated in dialogue, and acted as part of the ceremonies in her royal entry.56 Nevertheless, in The Phoenix and later in The Magnificent Entertainment, Middleton sets out opera basilica that encourage the sovereign to enact mutual politics, thereby attempting to teach James how to be an English governor (and actor).

Teaching the Monarch to Act [A] prince need not travel farther than his own kingdom, if he apply himself faithfully, worthy the glory of himself and expectation of others. And it would appear far nobler industry in him to reform those fashions that are already in his country than to bring new ones in . . . therefore I hold it a safer stern upon this lucky advantage, since my father is near his setting, and I upon the eastern hill to take my rise, to look into the heart and bowels of this dukedom, and in disguise mark all abuses ready for reformation or punishment. (1.92–97, 1.100–104)

With this speech in the first scene, Middleton conveys the plot his audience are about to see unfold, namely a disguised-duke narrative in which they share Phoenix’s perspective through the sustained dramatic irony of the prince’s disguise. As a result, the audience witnesses Phoenix developing a sense of theatrical governance. This complicit experience and its valiant aim to “mark all abuses” establish a virtuous structural framework that complicates critics’ desire to see The Phoenix as satirical. However, the dramatic irony Middleton creates between his audience and Phoenix allows for spectators to see the common condition that the people share with their sovereign, as Phoenix often draws attention to the slight mischief that his disguise entails, thereby preserving a critical dimension to the drama. As Peter Hyland reminds us, disguise “was historically almost always seen in a negative light, and so even disguises in romantic comedy that are presented in a positive light often demonstrate some anxiety about it.”57 Indeed, Phoenix shows “some anxiety” during his involvement in the Captain’s sale of his own wife to Proditor. Phoenix bemoans in an aside that he is unable to enact justice due to the necessity of his disguise: “If I were as good as I should be – ” (8.97). The implication is that if Phoenix were as good as he should be, then he would not take part in these acts; he would dismantle the scheme before it took shape. He is, of course, unable to do so because his true self would be revealed. The entrapment he partakes in is therefore necessary in order to purge the state

56 See note 49 in the Introduction to this book. 57 Peter Hyland, Disguise on the Early Modern English Stage, p. 13.

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of its abusers. Phoenix thus exerts what Shuger refers to as a bonus dolum, or good trick.58 This legal tactic and exception to the law justifies deception if it exposes a greater culprit.59 At the very outset of his journey, for example, Phoenix shares a harmless untruth with the audience by pointing out that he still travels, fulfilling the dialogue with his father, but at home rather than afar: “By absence I’ll obey the duke my father, / And yet not wrong myself” (1.87–88). Theatricality thus becomes a means to enact proper justice and governance; however, the play nevertheless portrays Phoenix as conscientious regarding the use of such deceptive techniques. While Phoenix is never at risk of sinning, he must remain vigilant so that he does not cross the invisible line between a good and a malicious trick. Through Phoenix’s example, then, Middleton demonstrates that a prince must know how to act well. Phoenix’s subterfuge can therefore be rationalized as necessary for the society to thrive,60 and his tactics portray the prince as nearer to the people and the audience by allowing him to traverse the cityscape. Phoenix’s mission remains righteous, but he adopts the guise of a lower station in order to execute it: I cannot otherwise think but there are infectious dealings in most offices, and foul mysteries throughout all professions. And therefore I nothing doubt but to find travel enough within myself, and experience, I fear, too much. Nor will I be curious to fit my body to the humblest form and bearing, so the labour may be fruitful: for how can abuses that keep low come to the right view of a prince? Unless his looks lie level with them, which else will be longest hid from him, he shall be the last man sees ’em. (1.110–19)

The passage confirms the aforementioned suggestion that Phoenix needs to traverse his second body; he must explore the body politic and detect its corrupt activities. Phoenix acknowledges that this quest depends upon his looks lying “level” with his abusers, which entails him fitting his “body to the humblest form and bearing,” making him common. His descent in rank is emphasized by

58 Debora Kuller Shuger, Political Theologies in Shakespeare’s England, p. 94. 59 As Agamben points out in his discussion of exceptions to the law and sovereignty: “What is at issue in the sovereign exception is not so much the control or neutralization of an excess as the creation and definition of the very space in which the juridico-political order can have validity.” Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer, p. 19. Phoenix likewise operates through disguise and its bonus dolum to create a liminal zone wherein justice can be comfortably enacted through clandestine and suspicious means. 60 Ivo Kamps reminds us that early modern subjects often desired a managed social world, and he distinguishes Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure’s subversion-to-containment model as different from the dramatization of such Christian governance in The Phoenix. Ivo Kamps, “Ruling Fantasies and Fantasies of Rule,” Studies in Philology, p. 250. Whereas Shakespeare’s Duke is panoptic and Machiavellian, Middleton’s is moderate and cooperative.

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the gradual transition Phoenix makes from speaking formal verse with a courtly audience to conversing in prose with Fidelio in the passage above, after his fellow nobility have exited the stage. This entire process is deemed necessary because otherwise “abuses that keep low” would not “come to the right view of a prince.” Ferrara’s vicious dealings and Phoenix’s deceptive actions are thus justified because such engagement with sin is warranted in order to purge and avoid it, but Phoenix and the audience must remain vigilant during their encounters with vice. The scene in which the Jeweller’s Wife steals Phoenix away represents the end of Phoenix’s journeys, as he makes clear in the following statement: “He travels best that knows when to return” (14.105). She mistakes Phoenix for her Knight and pulls him into her dark parlor where Phoenix’s attempts to illuminate his surroundings are thwarted by the Jeweller’s Wife, who repeatedly blows out his candle. As Jeremy Lopez notes, the scene entails a pleasurable dynamic for the audience in which they share superiority with Phoenix over the events.61 Phoenix anxiously reconstitutes his authority in order to achieve this effect. He begins by relaying to the audience the way in which they should view the scene and the Jeweller’s Wife: “Fair room, villainous face, and worse woman. I ha’ learned something by a glimpse o’th’ candle” (13.18–20). Middleton toys here with Phoenix’s vulnerability, but never allows the Jeweller’s Wife to gain the upper hand. When asked for a kiss at the closing of the scene, for instance, Phoenix exclaims, “Enough!” (13.102). In this final dolus bonum, which Phoenix identifies as such when he states that the “age must needs be foul when vice reforms it” (14.65–66), the audience is complicit in a “good trick” that unveils the Jeweller’s Wife’s corrupt dealings, but the conclusion to this dramatic irony in the next scene brings the wider implications of her actions to light, which entail a satire of the real Crown’s acts concerning the sale of knighthoods. The Jeweller’s Wife disrupts the unifying ambitions of Dessen’s estates allegory by retaining a degree of uncertainty with respect to the overall cleanliness of the body politic; she thus adds an element of the via diversa to the play’s moral conclusion. Although Phoenix’s final dialogue with the Jeweller’s Wife represents a pinnacle in the play, given that it merges the two plotlines, by dramatizing this anticipated moment as a rupturing of the seamless fabric crafted by Phoenix in the final scene, Middleton’s sustained allegory extends beyond its narrative’s parameters and leaves matters unfinished. This interpretation of

61 Jeremy Lopez, Theatrical Convention and Audience Response in Early Modern Drama, p. 104.

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Middleton’s jarring interplay of The Phoenix’s two plotlines revises Swapan Chakravorty’s reading: If the disguised-ruler device solves some problems, it also creates others. The separate plots, for instance, are made to revolve round a moral commentator [Phoenix] like “a multi-ringed circus with a single ringmaster.” This inhibits the possibility of connecting the plots by the less intrusive logic of irony, and risks stifling the fun with the heavy moralizing.62

While Chakravorty is correct to note that Phoenix functions as a centrifugal point that merges the two narratives of Middleton’s play and as the interconnector of the predominant narrative and its subplot, Phoenix’s bridging of the plots precipitates a conundrum that hints at perpetual renovation rather than absolute closure. The tension that his encounter with the Jeweller’s Wife yields is not “the less intrusive logic of irony”; the play instead prompts an audience to expect structural moral cohesion, but Middleton instead stages parrhēsia through the Jeweller’s Wife. This perpetual renovation leaves the interpretation of her character open-ended for Phoenix and produces opera basilica for James by drawing attention to the unruly behavior of knights. The verbal exchange between Phoenix and the Jeweller’s Wife thus lends a degree of humility to the supreme and righteous demeanor that Phoenix exhibits in the final scene.63 Phoenix’s direction of the play’s final events is challenged when the Jeweller’s Wife rebukes his misogynist chastisement of her and those like her for the corruption of the city by suggesting that his knights, too, are to blame for Ferrara’s unruly body politic. Prior to her riposte, Phoenix codifies the Jeweller’s Wife, as he already has the Captain and Falso, as a contaminant of the body politic that needs to be purged: Stand forth – thou one of those For whose close lusts the plague never leaves the city. Thou worse than common – private, subtle harlot, That dost deceive three with one feigned lip: Thy husband, the world’s eye, and the law’s whip. (15.230–34)

Phoenix’s blame of the Jeweller’s Wife for “the plague [that] never leaves the city” resembles James’s proclamation from September 16, 1603, calling for suburban buildings to be demolished as a precaution to prevent further spread of

62 Swapan Chakravorty, Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton, p. 34. 63 Their heated conversation thus disperses “authority among multiple voices,” creating a plurality that Michael Bristol observes in the early modern period and interprets as having the capacity to counter “philosophically unified forms that reveal a singular, sovereign voice.” Michael Bristol, Carnival and Theater, p. 21.

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the plague. Although The Phoenix might not draw attention to these specific regulations, its protagonist nevertheless identifies an unfaithful spouse as the cause of the epidemic much as James had accused “idle, indigent, dissolute and dangerous persons” for the spread of the plague.64 The Jeweller’s Wife becomes both a victim and a culprit in the ruler’s allegorical cleansing of the body politic, but she speaks back against her accuser: ’Tis ’long of those, an’t like your grace, that come in upon us, and will never leave marrying of our widows till they make ’em all as free as their first husbands. (15.243–46)

Phoenix draws attention to her parrhēsia, represented in the recalcitrant, ironic inversion of culpability that this passage conveys, when he can only respond by saying, “I perceive you can shift a point well” (15.247).65 In showing that she is a victim of her circumstance and that her male betters are in fact no better than she, the Jeweller’s Wife reveals that the errant knights, whom Phoenix has not dealt with and whom James has created, are the real culprits. Earlier scenes in which she mistakes Phoenix for the Knight accentuate the creation of such knights with James, as it is possible given these instances in the text that the actor doubled as both characters. Kamps and Dawson’s chart of potential doubling roles confirms the likelihood of this occurring in a performance, and although Phoenix’s role is demanding, the Knight’s is not.66 The material circumstances of the same body

64 James I, A Proclamation against Inmates and multitudes, sig. A1r. Jonathan Dollimore notes the unjust correspondence between disease and sex workers, or what the early modern state labels social contaminants, in James’s proclamation and Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: “Here, as with the suppression of prostitution, plague control legitimates other kinds of political control.” Jonathan Dollimore, “Transgression and Surveillance,” in Political Shakespeare, p. 77. The Phoenix’s plot involving the Jeweller’s Wife likely serves as loose inspiration for the narrative involving Mistress Overdone, her house of misrule, and her customer, Lucio, given that Middleton’s play was written before Measure for Measure. 65 Preceding Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (1604) and Marston’s The Fawn (1604), this segment from The Phoenix perhaps inspired Shakespeare’s silent but unwavering Isabella at the denouement of Measure for Measure and Marston’s Princess Dulcimel, whose subtle rebuke of her father’s query, “Royally wise, and wisely royal father – ”, is clarified by Dondolo when he remarks, “That’s sententious now, a figure called in art Ironia” (5.458, 5.459). John Marston, Parasitaster, or the Fawn, edited by David Blostein. The Phoenix’s influence on The Fawn is particularly likely given that both plays take place in Ferrara. In his edition of The Fawn, David Blostein notes that critics have drawn connections between Duke Gonzago, Princess Dulcimel’s father, and James. David Blostein, ed., Parasitaster, p. 32. All three plays are similarly shaped by their indirect allegorical representations of James and conclusions that subtly question the idealistic portrait of that protagonist. 66 Lawrence Danson and Ivo Kamps, eds., The Phoenix, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 127.

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playing Phoenix and the Knight would readily convey James’s errors and provide further explanation for why she mistakes the prince for the knight. Scholarship has acknowledged The Phoenix’s aforementioned topical allusions to knighthoods and the ways in which they target the monarch as a subject of ridicule, but these readings do not often take into consideration the fact that it was written for a performance at court and for gentlemen from the Inns of Court at St. Paul’s, whose rank meant more as a result of this ridicule of those of supposedly higher status. The Jeweller’s Wife finances her adulterous relationship with the Knight so that she may gain sexual pleasure and hopefully an audience at court (suggesting possible metatheatrical commentary), and so that he might afford the knighthood recently demanded of him, echoing James’s decree. Her father Falso’s satirical apology to the Knight elucidates this topical concern: Why this is but the second time of your coming, kinsman. Visit me oftener. Daughter, I charge you bring this gentleman along with you. Gentleman? I cry ye mercy, sir! I call you gentleman still, I forget you’re but a knight. You must pardon me, sir. (9.1–5)

The number of newly dubbed knights threw the customary order of rank into disarray. Traditionally, a gentleman’s station was lower than a knight’s, but as Falso’s sardonic comments to the Knight suggest, the status of a gentleman now carries more clout than that of a knight. The pleasures Middleton and others who held the rank of or identified as gentlemen experienced during these scenes and others in Middleton plays for St. Paul’s aligns them with Master Richard Martin in their ability to interpret and counsel on the state of politics. Situating The Phoenix as an interregnum play that precedes James’s politics, Paul Yachnin provides an alternative to this interpretation by suggesting that the knights in question refer to several knighthoods Essex doled out rather than James’s.67 However, Middleton frequently and satirically mentions knights in plays we know to have been written after James’s accession to the throne of England.68 It thus remains more likely that Middleton’s allusions are to James’s knights rather than to Essex’s. Yachnin’s hesitation to interpret the knights as James’s rather than Essex’s stems from warranted skepticism over why the budding playwright would present such an obvious offense to the king. If the play was performed at court on the date Chambers proposes, then it is possible that the Knight or certain lines concerning his character could have been cut from the performed text to avoid 67 Paul Yachnin, “The Significance of Two Allusions in Middleton’s The Phoenix,” Notes and Queries, p. 376. 68 See Michaelmas Term (1.2.188; 3.1.47–50; 3.4.62–63); A Trick to Catch the Old One (2.1.167–69); A Mad World, My Masters (1.1.61–72; 2.1.4–5; 5.2.18–19); and Your Five Gallants (2.4.54–56).

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offending the king.69 However, the inclusion of the Knight might instead represent recent history, specifically James’s suggestion that he had debased the social station. In a proclamation dated January 11, 1604, the speaker describes James’s approach to determining the good character of his future members of parliament: As he is about to summon Parliament (which he would have done before but for the Plague), and is anxious that h[e] first should set a good example to others, the King lays down the following regulations. Great care to be shown in selecting Knights and Burgesses of good ability and sufficient gravity and modest conversation, men neither of superstitious blindness nor turbulent humours, not bankrupts or outlaws but regular taxpayers.70

The proclamation communicates an indirect acknowledgment on James’s part that he has caused the chain of rank to fall into disarray by appointing too many knights, some of whom do not uphold the quality of the station. Although all knights should be just and noble, James’s proclamation indicates that he must carefully select virtuous knights to comprise parliament, tacitly indicating that his recent actions have produced several errant knights. The Knight thus functions as a reminder of James’s past errors and of his previous recognition that he has unsettled the social order.71 The model governor Middleton conveys onstage, like James himself, is both susceptible to fallibility and responsive to the people’s criticisms. Even after Phoenix attains his dukedom in the final scene following his grandiose discovery, his governance remains imperfect because he is incapable of determining the condition of all the members of his body politic, as he cannot fully

69 Andrew Gurr and Mariko Ichikawa speculate that cuts were made “to censor dubious pieces of dialogue which might give offence.” Andrew Gurr and Mariko Ichikawa, Staging in Shakespeare’s Theatres, p. 44. 70 Robert Steele, ed., Catalogue of Tudor and Stuart Proclamations, 1485–1714, p. 113. Stone remarks that 255 more knighthoods were distributed between March 1604 and December 1604. Lawrence E. Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, p. 74. These figures remain outside of the purview of this study, which focuses on the historical events leading up to The Magnificent Entertainment (1604), but the commentary on knighthoods would have become increasingly satirical when the play was performed at St. Paul’s in the ensuing months and years after James’s accession celebrations. These references would certainly have delighted the reader of the 1607 edition as well, given that Middleton continued to ridicule James’s knights onstage by that point. 71 Hence, The Phoenix represents a blunter edge of the typical satire that David Kathman sees transitioning into boy company dramas after the Bishop’s Ban: “commercialization and competition, along with the banning of prose and verse satire in 1599, led the boys’ companies to become increasingly topical and satirical in their plays.” David Kathman, “The Boys’ Plays and the Boy Players,” in Thomas Middleton in Context, p. 163.

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discern the quality of the Jeweller’s Wife’s character. After his logic is questioned with her turn of phrase, which suggests lewd knights are the real cause of the city’s corruption, the Jeweller’s Wife promises that she will live a virtuous life if Phoenix pardons her. Her suggestion that she will repent restores a degree of uncertainty to the play’s didactic allegorical framework; the Jeweller’s Wife cannot be neatly codified as a vicious or virtuous element of the body politic.72 The Niece, the Jeweller’s Wife’s cousin, heightens this ambiguity by proposing that the Jeweller’s Wife’s “birth was kin to mine; she may prove modest. / For my sake, I beseech you pardon her” (15.263–64). Preceding her plea, Falso offers to stand as “her warrant,” but Phoenix dismisses his efforts, with the rationale of “lust being so like” – in other words, like father like daughter (15.257, 15.262). The Jeweller’s Wife remains an unknown variable positioned in the middle of a binary opposition constructed out of familial relations. From one angle, Falso’s relation to her would define her as lustful, but the Niece’s affiliation to her signals virtue. The uncertainty of the Jeweller’s Wife’s spiritual state retains a tension that remains unresolved and does not allow Phoenix to categorize her as fundamentally corrupt. Phoenix instead complies with the Niece’s proposal and follows up with another proposal: For thy sake I’ll do more. Fidelio, hand her. My favours on you both; next, all that wealth Which was committed to that perjured’s trust. (15.265–67)

Continuing with his plan to restore the social order, Phoenix conveniently shifts his and the audience’s attention away from the uncertain matter of the Jeweller’s Wife to his marriage of Fidelio and the Niece, leading into Phoenix and Quieto’s purging of the “barretor” Tangle’s madness.73 These comedic actions represent Phoenix’s restitution of governance. His sudden redirection of events, however, calls attention to the artificiality of his control, and the matter of the Jeweller’s Wife’s inner worth lingers as an ongoing issue, no matter how harmonious the play’s various conclusions might seem.

72 Even if the play has codified her as a vice, this characterization of the Jeweller’s Wife does not necessarily make her endemic to the body politic’s condition, as aforementioned. Jonathan Gil Harris, Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic, p. 14. 73 Drawing upon John Cowell’s legal dictionary The Interpreter (1607), Subha Mukherji clarifies that Tangle “is a barretor – ‘a common wrangler, that setteth men at ods, and in himselfe . . . at brawle with one or other’.” Subha Mukherji, “Middleton and the Law,” in Thomas Middleton in Context, p. 110.

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The outcome depends equally upon Phoenix’s judiciousness concerning the mercy that he shows the Jeweller’s Wife. Phoenix’s travels have aimed to reduce the gap between the eyes of the court and the base crimes of citizens: For oft between king’s eyes and subject’s crimes Stands there a bar of bribes; the under office Flatters him next above it, he the next, And so of most, or many. Every abuse will choose a brother: ’Tis through the world, this hand will rub the other. (1.120–25)

However, as Phoenix comes to see, the gap is not so easily closed. Later in the play, Quieto provides Phoenix with a more nuanced and accurate image of the law that perceives humanity’s incapacity to comprehend divine truth and law entirely (12.194–98). Quieto’s lesson provides Phoenix with the necessary equitable perspective to reconsider his riposte of the Jeweller’s Wife.74 In Basilicon Doron, James promoted a similar lesson to Henry. After having instructed his son in the ways of the law, he broadens the scope to include several other facets of early modern culture: “as I said of Iustice, so say I of Clemencie, Magnanimitie, Liberalitie, Constancie, Humilitie, and all other Princely vertues; Nam in medio stat virtus.”75 Johann P. Sommerville translates the final Latin phrase to read, “For virtue lies in the middle.”76 However, whereas James, like Bacon, allocates such judgment to kings and princes, Middleton shows Phoenix learning lessons from his subjects (Quieto), listening to culprits’ counterpoints (the Jeweller’s Wife), and adhering to counsel from others (the Niece) to arrive at a merciful and just verdict. Likewise, Middleton shows the limitations of the monarch to ascertain this veracity, whereas James suggests to his son that he is innately capable of locating it. The Jeweller’s Wife thus complicates any structural closure to the hypocritical nature of Phoenix’s disguise that frames the play by serving as an exception to the law and retaining a degree of ambiguity with respect to her spiritual state. James’s intransigent middle way is tempered through the perpetual renovation of Middleton’s drama, which the Jeweller’s Daughter draws attention to through exercising parrhēsia.

74 According to Mark Fortier, early modern Christian equity entailed this balancing of perspectives: “Equity is not a force for extremity, but for religious, political, and social moderation.” Mark Fortier, Culture of Equity, p. 47. 75 James I, Basilicon Doron, in Political Writings, p. 43. 76 Johann P. Sommerville, ed., Political Writings, p. 277.

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Middleton’s Contractual Theater These incongruities demonstrating the limitations of the monarch and the legal system would also have been of interest to the later audience at St. Paul’s, which would have comprised a significant number of law students from the Inns of Court and offered an intimate and private environment for viewing this play and others.77 The interrogative and provisional circumstances of the law, in addition to the character of the Jeweller’s Wife and the play’s conclusion, disavow the comic unity that Steven Mullaney ascribes to all boy-company plays by virtue of their private venues and the limited genres that they staged: “Over 85 percent of the boys’ plays were comedies, largely satires: in terms of dramatic genres, a contained form of social criticism, one that relies, as preElizabethan drama had always done, on a stable and circumscribing social structure.”78 Lucy Munro counters Mullaney’s generalization by observing that in spite of Paul’s smaller audience, we cannot presume that the drama shaped a uniform reaction: “even relatively small audiences such as those in Blackfriars or Whitefriars theatres might have contained sufficient social identities and allegiances to make a uniform interpretation virtually impossible.” She continues by arguing that comedy’s “social aberrance . . . could actually work against comedy’s movement towards closure and harmony.”79 While Munro is apt to note that boy-company productions accommodate plural and contentious reactions, the ending to The Phoenix unravels the isolated and privileged viewing that St. Paul’s afforded spectators not only through staging radical “social aberrance,” but also by framing the circumstances that have transpired in the play world as a provisional contract that Phoenix offers to the audience at St. Paul’s and to their monarch in the play’s initial court performance. The Phoenix’s conclusion promises unity, but by looking forward toward this harmony, it leaves matters unresolved. During the final speech, it is unclear whether it is the character Phoenix or the boy actor playing him who

77 W. Reavley Gair notes that the private nature of Paul’s theater would have allowed for “4 square feet per person as this was a ‘select house’.” W. Reavley Gair, The Children of Paul’s, p. 67. Such a space differed significantly from a public theater like the Globe, which would not have afforded audience members any significant degree of privacy or individual space during a performance. This venue therefore allowed for a more individualized experience of the theatrical production and likely a more rigorous and critical interpretation of the theatrical event. 78 Steven Mullaney, The Place of the Stage, p. 53. 79 Lucy Munro, Children of the Queen’s Revels, p. 72.

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delivers the lines. He speaks from a liminal position by reflecting upon the play world while establishing a contrast with the audience’s reality: We both admire the workman and his piece. Thus, when all hearts are tuned to honour’s strings, There is no music to the choir of kings. (15.348–50)

The reflection upon the dramatic work indicates that the actor playing Phoenix steps out of his role as Phoenix in an imaginary landscape to assume either the actor or a character speaking between the fictional Ferrara and the real Jacobean court (or St. Paul’s). Hence, “We” no longer only speaks for a royal We, despite the fact that the Duke has bequeathed his throne to Phoenix. “We” also implies a collective that extends beyond the play world to the audience. Although this truncated epilogue resembles conventional addresses to the audience for applause and approval, the regal audience, the topical matters, and the temporal language of these closing words must give us pause to consider the final lines’ unique implications. Not clearly Phoenix nor the actor playing Phoenix, the character/actor represents an authority governing both the politics of the imagined play world of Ferrara and the theatrical event that extends to the audience’s reality. The conclusive thrust of “[t]hus” amplifies the importance of this spatiotemporal dissonance that requests the audience to reflect upon the fictional world they have witnessed in relation to their social world. The “when” that follows creates a disjuncture between the space and time of the play world that has been mostly set in order by a ruler who has navigated its landscape and that of the current social world, thereby indicating that such purification, however imperfect it remains, has not yet been brought about in Jacobean London. James is therefore subtly encouraged to conduct such travail in his forthcoming civic ceremonies, or the audience at St. Paul’s witnesses a monarch who is expected to undertake this work before he attains the proper status as King of England. Overlooking the differences between the play’s time and the audience’s real-time has caused critics to miss this complex conclusion to The Phoenix. Kelly J. Stage’s reading of networks of legal documents and the purging of Tangle’s practice with Phoenix’s own is correct insofar as it does place “the power of judgment in the hands of the ruler and relocates the center of the legal network at court,” but this interpretation does not take into account the final call for the regal audience to bring this fiction to fruition.80 Although

80 Kelly J. Stage, “Networking with Middleton and Jonson: Theater, Law, and Social Documents,” English Literary Renaissance, p. 69.

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Linda Phyllis Austern is correct in her recent interpretation of what the play’s final lines promise, she misconstrues Phoenix’s final words as a unified ending: “The concluding lines of the play, spoken by the morally upright Prince Phoenix after he emerges unscathed from the political corruption around him, refer to the reflection of heavenly concord into his court and kingdom.”81 But not “all hearts” are conclusively “tuned to honour’s strings,” as this remains to be proven with the Jeweller’s Wife’s future conduct. Phoenix’s references to “the workman” (i.e., Middleton) and his “piece” represent a metatheatrical commentary on the play, positioning Phoenix as an intermediary in a liminal space between the play world and the audience’s immediate reality. Danson and Kamps’s gloss of “piece” as “masterpiece” provides further insight on the play’s projected contractual bond.82 Middleton’s “masterpiece” reflects that of the law – Quieto describes the law as “the very masterpiece of heaven” (12.195) – and in doing so is crafted in order to provide a means by which the king and the aspiring lawyers at St. Paul’s could enact justice in everyday life by emulating but never achieving the perfection of the heavenly kingdom. Both parties were also qualified to evaluate the contractual language of the play. The Phoenix’s didacticism is thus dynamic, and its metatheatrical final speech stages parrhēsia through Middleton’s openended contract that extends beyond the dramatic action, awaiting a response or action from the sovereign. Middleton’s perpetual renovation holds James accountable, then, to more than his own image and legacy. The play’s allegory of James’s accession to the English throne provides a stage cue for its king to enact these works, for he is about to embark on his own travels through London.

Conclusion: Disguised James It is worth considering that James might have taken Middleton’s advice and that Middleton could have had knowledge of the king’s previous clandestine travels as inspiration for Phoenix’s disguise. Sir Roger Wilbraham records in his journal, for instance, that in April 1603 James was . . . met 4 miles from London by the lord mayor & such unspeakable number of citizens as the like number was never seen to issue out upon any cause before. 4 nights he lodged

81 Linda Phyllis Austern, “Music on the Jacobean Stage,” in Thomas Middleton in Context, p. 191. 82 Lawrence Danson and Ivo Kamps, eds., The Phoenix, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 126.

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at Charter House. Four nights more he lodged at the Tower, during which time he secretly in his coach & by water went to see London, the Whitehall & the jewels there.83

Perhaps from having gained some knowledge of these ventures and having seen Marston’s The Malcontent, Middleton devised a disguised-duke play that might have contributed to James’s decision to travel through London with Queen Anne the day before The Magnificent Entertainment. Unfortunately, James did not follow Phoenix’s example of mutual governance when he was discovered during a visit to the Royal Exchange. In The Time Triumphant (1604), a citizen writing under the name of Gilbert Dugdale summarized the event: [C]ountrymen let me tell you this, if you heard what I heard as concerning that you would stake your feete to the Earth at such a time, ere you would run so regardles vp and downe . . . this shewes his loue to you, but your open ignorance to him, you will say perchance it is your love, will you in loue prease vppon your Soueraigne thereby to offend him, your Soueraigne perchance mistake your loue and punish it as an offence, but heare me when hereafter [he] comes by you, doe as they doe in Scotland stand still, see all, and vse silence[.]84

James’s demand that his citizens accord him the same respect the Scottish people knew to give him – by standing in quiet and still devotion to him – is portrayed here as proper love.85 If the king learnt anything from Middleton’s play, it was certainly not mutual or collaborative governance. James’s image as the kingdom’s decider, however, would be shaken twelve years later in the aftermath involving a lady of court rather than the effeminized city.

83 Donna Woodford, Understanding King Lear, p. 75. 84 Gilbert Dugdale, The Time Triumphant, sig. B2r. 85 Jeffrey S. Doty has previously applied this demand for silence and proper devotion to Isabella’s response to Vincentio in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. Jeffrey S. Doty, “Measure for Measure and the Problem of Popularity,” English Literary Renaissance, p. 50. However, there remains room to question whether or not Shakespeare’s compliance with James’s decree is ironic, insofar as Isabella cannot actually articulate her obedience.

Chapter 2 “And in all times, may this day ever prove / A day of triumph, joy and honest love”? The Witch and the Overbury Trials Introduction In 1616 Frances Howard pleaded guilty to the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. This climactic event in what was the most widely publicized scandal concerning the Jacobean aristocracy, coupled with James’s immediate pardoning of Howard and her accomplice, Robert Carr, prompted unrest and blemished the image James had constructed of himself as an ideal ruler.1 Although scholarship has tended to veer away from anachronistic absolutist perceptions of James, these trials are still regarded as marking a turning point in Jacobean governance wherein James became increasingly unwavering and questionable in his actions.2 Middleton’s The Witch carefully construes a multivalent satire of the scandal’s acme and the various other events involving Howard, Carr, and others that led up to the trials.3 Although Middleton was cautious to avoid overt references or a concrete mapping of the allegory, he was not careful enough. The Witch had a single performance during Middleton’s lifetime, and the epistle that precedes the text in the surviving manuscript suggests that the play was unsuccessful. The acknowledgment of this briefly lived stage history in the manuscript’s epistle might be taken as an indication that the bizarre plotlines did not align with one another or fare well aesthetically at Blackfriars, but it is more likely that the text’s satiric nature caused it to be what Anne Lancashire labels a stage flop.4

1 Alastair Bellany documents Chamberlain’s account of the displeasure the “common people” expressed with James’s verdict. Alastair Bellany, The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England, p. 244. He also identifies John Rous’s memory of James claiming initially that he would severely punish Overbury’s murderers, but then ended up pardoning Howard and Carr. Ibid., p. 246. The result contrasts with the image of James that had been cultivated up until this point as Overbury’s avenger. Ibid., pp. 224–30. James’s actions likewise conflicted with his own writings to his son on how to be a good governor. Ibid., p. 232. 2 James Knowles, Politics and Political Culture in the Court Masques, p. 54. 3 In the introduction to her edition, Marion O’Connor notes the need to create multiple possible allegorical representations of Howard across the play in order to avoid censure. Marion O’Connor, ed., The Witch, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1126. 4 Anne Lancashire, “The Witch: Stage Flop or Political Mistake?” in “Accompaninge the Players,” pp. 165–66. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513763-003

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The plot does have its share of bizarre moments, but these incongruities typically have more to say about recent politics than poor writing. The play’s final lines, quoted in the title of this chapter, cannot be taken seriously given what has transpired in the narrative. Having conspired with witches, as well as figures at court whom she has manipulated into assisting in her subterfuge, the Duchess has finally been unveiled as the Duke’s murderer and is convicted. Regardless of whether or not her husband actually lives, as the Duke then magnificently comes back to life, the Duchess’s actions are absurdly forgiven without any evidence that she has acknowledged her erroneous ways. Likewise, no dialogue takes place between her and the Duke that remedies her former atrocities. Even if there is triumph and joy in the comedic ending, there is certainly not “honest love,” hence the question mark added in the title of this chapter. As Marion O’Connor observes, this bizarre and sudden shift reflects the failures of the justice system concerning the trials of Frances Howard and Robert Carr, namely their roles in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. This matter has been the primary subject of critical discussion concerning The Witch for several decades, but Alastair Bellany’s historical work on the theatricality of the courtroom has not been applied to the play. Examining accounts from Edward Palavacino and John Chamberlain, Bellany reveals how these men observe Howard as though she is acting a tragic part to cultivate empathy with varying results. Palavacino claims that she produces “the most commiserate spectacle, and the best wished unto that ever presented itself before a scene of death” while Chamberlain admits she “won” his “pity” but did not act the part “fit for a lady in such distress” all that well due to her curiosity and confidence.5 In both cases, the men judge the woman as though they were spectators in a theater who expect tragedy but are given tragicomedy, as in The Witch. This chapter examines the play’s similar toying with expectations. By exploring the many topical references in the play that have been previously identified, as well as some new findings, this chapter compares this theatricality of legal governance with the witchcraft Howard was also accused of during the events that led up to the trial. Both the supernatural and legal discourses displace the blame gradually or entirely onto Howard, revealing a misogynist public shaming that renders Howard into a spectacle. One thing Howard was rumored to have used was witchcraft, and although witchcraft is the other topic that criticism on the play has gravitated toward, it has rarely been discussed in relation to the political underpinnings of Middleton’s drama. The Witch revels in the overt theatricality of both its court and

5 Alastair Bellany, The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England, p. 242.

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coven, and Middleton’s continual oscillation between these places beckons the audience to draw comparisons between the Duke and Hecate’s governance of them. This lack of attention is especially noteworthy given Middleton’s frequent allusions to Reginald Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft (1584), a text James abhorred and refuted in his own tract on the subject, Daemonologie (1597), in tandem with suspicions that Howard herself had employed witchcraft to render her previous husband Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, impotent in order to marry Carr. Increased skepticism about the validity of witchcraft, especially as something the law was supposedly able to prove, makes this intersection particularly important to address, as James’s monarchal law and authority were questioned both on this subject and following the proceedings of Howard and Carr’s trials. Although Middleton’s play offers critiques of James and the social order of English society, The Witch nevertheless still contributes to the misogynist portrayals of Howard by perpetuating the public narrative that framed her in particular as the chief villain. This chapter therefore examines the correlation between Middleton’s staging of topical matters relating to the trials of Frances Howard and Robert Carr and the play’s witches, arguing that by aligning both matters, Middleton is commenting on James’s fallibility as a governing authority and portraying him as an agent of misrule in God’s providential theater rather than His deputy. In order to elucidate this underlying connection, Blackfriars is investigated for its topical embroilment in this scandal as well as for its metatheatrical commentary on the absurdity of witchcraft. Where aristocrats and witchcraft are concerned, Middleton shows the ineffectual nature of the law through its illusory and theatrical qualities, thereby establishing a space at Blackfriars that encourages a similar aristocratic critique of the political scandal that is akin to Chamberlain’s or Palavacino’s interpretations of the courtroom’s theatricality. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Middleton’s sustained interest in Howard in later years when she was released from the Tower. His collaboration with William Rowley, The Changeling (1622), is even less flattering with respect to Howard than The Witch. In both plays, the failures of male authority are amplified through staging their misrule and inability to control and contain women. This critique, however, is coupled with a vilification of the plays’ women. This misogyny was inspired by various libels that were circulated, leading to a general condemnation of Howard in popular texts. The gradual misogynist focus on Howard alone led commentators to forget about the equal involvement of Carr or other parties. When read in tandem with Howard and the circumstances concerning her release from the Tower, The Changeling becomes a grotesque misogynist revenge fantasy. Middleton therefore playfully disrupts the image of sovereign male authority, but he perpetuates the misogyny of political drama surrounding the public event simultaneously.

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Middleton’s Earlier Satires of Howard, Essex, and Carr The various scandals associated with Frances Howard represented the most publicized political event in English history at the time. Infatuated with Robert Carr, the Earl of Southampton and James I’s “favourite,”6 Howard sought to annul her marriage to the Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux, on the grounds that they had not consummated their marriage.7 James had initially devised the union of these two young aristocrats, as he saw an opportunity to establish peace between the rival families and settle court factions. Ben Jonson was commissioned to write Hymenaei (1606) for this occasion, and it is possible that Middleton mocks this masque later in Women Beware Women (1621) and The Changeling.8 Although the hyperbolic chaos of the masques in these later plays echoes the aftermath of several scandals that would demonize Frances Howard, it is worth considering that Middleton’s interest in the events was not always adversarial toward Howard or other parties involved. In fact, it can be better characterized as merely opportunistic. The marriage of Howard and Essex was not initially worthy of satire. It only became a topic of mockery after the couple disbanded. Essex and Howard were too young to cohabit after their marriage, as Howard was fourteen and Devereux was thirteen.9 As a result, they did not consummate their marriage rites at the time, and Essex then ventured abroad for two years. Between Essex’s departure and return, or more likely sometime after, Howard had lost interest in Essex, and eventually she and Robert Carr became infatuated with one another. Essex too seems to have had little interest for Howard, for it was rumored that both desired to annul their marriage, as they were unhappy together.10 In any case, Essex instead claimed impotence, solely toward Howard, allowing them to annul the marriage.11 Although neither party seems to have wanted to

6 The term was used by persons at the time, such as Chamberlain, to describe those James bestowed privilege upon because of a personal infatuation, but as Bellany notes, the power and influence a favorite had varied from year to year. Ibid., p. 29. 7 David Lindley, The Trials of Frances Howard, pp. 81–82. 8 A. A. Bromham and Zara Bruzzi perceive the masque in Women Beware Women as satirically echoing Jonson’s Hymenaei by representing a corruption of the masque’s ideal form to move toward order, given that the play instead concludes in a bloodbath of disorder. A. A. Bromham and Zara Bruzzi, The Changeling and the Years of Crisis, 1619–1624, pp. 260–61. 9 David Lindley, The Trials of Frances Howard, p. 43. 10 Ibid., p. 80. 11 Ibid., pp. 95–96. As Lindley details, the incredulity of early modern subjects concerning Essex’s lack of virility led them to displace blame onto Howard and fabricate the accusation that she had bewitched him. Ibid., pp. 96–98.

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sustain their marriage, the blame appears to have been displaced gradually onto Howard. At first, however, Essex bore the brunt of these satires. Several early libels mock and ridicule Essex’s impotence. These nevertheless still establish Howard as the primary target of satire: When shee let no occasion slip To gett a mast unto her shipp A mast she had both straight and long Butt when itt prov’t not fully strong To Sommersett she quicklye hide To trye what fortune would betyde.12 (11–16)

Although Essex’s abilities are called into question here, as his “mast” is “not fully strong,” the composer still prides it on being “both straight and long.” The central attention is the lascivious portrait of Howard who is an inconstant, fluid woman longing for a mast. In another libel, she likewise travels from port to port, until she arrives at “Sum-ar-sett” who manages to “stopp her leake . . . And make her fitt for any sporte” (12–14).13 Howard remains the sexual operator as well as the object of ridicule between the aristocratic men. The misogyny escalated as Howard gradually came to be blamed for Essex’s condition. As Alastair Bellany has identified: “Since this selective impotence could not be satisfactorily explained by any physical defect, it was attributed in the hearings to an act of ‘maleficium’. This explanation was silently dropped before the end of the proceedings – it is not mentioned in the final decree of nullity – but not before it had aroused a good deal of debate.”14 The tacit yet 12 “Were itt nott a brutish crueltye,” in Early Stuart Libels, http://www.earlystuartlibels.net/ htdocs/essex_nullity_section/F3.html. For this chapter in particular I am thankful for the Early Stuart Libels database, which has allowed for this research. 13 “From Katherins dock there launcht a pinke,” in Early Stuart Libels, http://www.earlystuar tlibels.net/htdocs/essex_nullity_section/F4.html. The libel’s crude imagery perpetuates the era’s conception of women’s bodies “as leaky vessels,” which Gail Kern Paster perceives as generating a sexist imagination of early modern biology in which “the issue is women’s bodily self-control or, more precisely, the representation of a particular kind of uncontrol as a function of gender.” Gail Kern Paster, The Body Embarrassed, p. 25. In her discussion of this concept in the early modern era, Paster draws upon Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, which as the chapter will show alludes to the scandal. Ibid., pp. 50–63. 14 Alastair Bellany, The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England, p. 148. As Helen Ostovich and Lisa Hopkins state, maleficium (magic with intention to “damage”) differs from beneficium (magic “intended to effect improvement”). Helen Ostovich and Lisa Hopkins, “Introduction,” in Magical Transformations on the Early Modern English Stage, p. 3.

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central nature of witchcraft in the cause that prompted the verdict nevertheless meant that rumors lingered: “The annulment of the Essex-Howard marriage was eventually granted without explicit reference to maleficium versus hanc in the text of the decision, which referred instead to ‘some secret, incurable, binding impediment’.”15 By contrast Middleton overtly depicts what many imagined had occurred as a result of the legal proceedings, and he capitalizes upon this public rumor with the character of Antonio, who finds himself impotent following the arrangement Aberzanes has made with Hecate regarding a charm to disrupt his libido. While Bellany notes that these allegations were not originally attributed to anyone, he points out that after the Overbury murder trials, the misogynist libels condemning Howard as a “maid, a wife, a countess, and a whore” now labeled her a “wife, a witch, a murderer, and a whore.”16 Although the impotency is not immediately connected with Howard, she is later inferred to be the cause. A witch-hunt then takes shape out of this concatenation of earlier scandals with new ones in an emergent model of history that frames events as escalating rather than isolated. Middleton’s interest in the scandal likewise does not immediately vilify Howard, but rather makes her sexual misadventures with Essex the topic of satire. A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1613) mocks Sir Oliver’s impotence with his wife Lady Kix. Sir Oliver’s confession that he is “not given to standing” mirrors Essex’s admittance to impotence with Howard (3.3.115).17 The couple only manage to avert Sir Walter Whorehound inheriting their wealth after Lady Kix emerges pregnant after meeting with the extremely fertile Touchwood Senior, thus bestowing the family fortune to their new, though secretly illegitimate, heir. In this play, Middleton capitalizes upon this recent news through satire, but he also profited from the new union, as he wrote Masque of Cupids (1613) for the newlyweds. Although we do not have an extant copy of the masque in print, M. T. Jones-Davies and Ton Hoenselaars reproduce two songs from A Chaste Maid in Cheapside and More Dissemblers Besides Women that they claim are likely remnants of this masque.18 The editors’ introduction observes the difficulty Middleton and other writers would have had with developing material to celebrate the marriage of Howard and Carr, given the dubious morality of the event. Middleton, as they suggest, likely turned to irony as a means to allow the masque to appear celebratory in nature while

15 Eric Pudney, Scepticism and Belief in English Witchcraft Drama, p. 163. 16 Alastair Bellany, The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England, pp. 148–49. 17 As R. B. Parker notes, the plot is clearly “influenced by the Essex divorce.” R. B. Parker, ed., A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, p. xxxv. 18 M. T. Jones-Davies and Ton Hoenselaars, eds., “Introduction to Masque of Cupids,” in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1033.

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also guising a degree of skepticism or satire regarding the appropriateness of their union.19 Cupid’s chaotic yet amorous nature fuels this ironic vision, but Middleton also provides an abundance of sexual connotations that all metaphorically pertain to sexual penetration, establishing violent pornographic imagery with lines such as “He shoots fiery darts so thick / They wound poor ladies to the quick” (13–14). The result is a crude and misogynist celebration of their consummation, an act that Middleton sets in verse for comic effect. The song likely plays upon the public imagination that sexual gratification will finally arrive for Howard,20 thereby making her the punchline, but these songs exaggerate the bawdy wordplay to such a degree that it makes one question whether the playwright is in fact serious about Howard’s virginity. If these songs were indeed the same ones performed for Howard and Carr, then their placement within Middleton’s plays raises suspicion of how seriously they are meant to be taken by the audience. In A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, the Welsh Gentlewoman sings the song for Tim, who has misconstrued her as incapable of speaking English, but then becomes infatuated with her following her song. The integration of Cupid in More Dissemblers Besides Women, however, is far more intriguing. Prior to Cupid descending in the play to deliver a song, the Duchess states that she will “come forth / And show [her]self to all. The world shall witness / That, like the sun, my constancy can look / On earth’s corruptions, and shine clear itself” (1.3.54–56). Given recent events concerning Frances Howard and knowing now that Middleton will later portray her as a Duchess in The Witch,21 it is difficult not to see this dialogue with the Lord Cardinal as an allusion to recent events, especially just before a masque containing Cupid is performed in a play staged after Masque of Cupids.22 In all these cases, however, Middleton seems to maintain an ambiguous position regarding the Howard and Carr marriage. It is equally plausible that Middleton is confirming that Howard has in fact validated her chastity to the world as it is that Middleton doubts the veracity of these events. All of these subtle allusions are, moreover, 19 Ibid., p. 1029. 20 This verse likely plays upon a libel from around the time of the annulment claiming that Howard, “desirous to be made a mother, from time to time, again and again yielded herself to his power,” but Essex could not perform. David Lindley, The Trials of Frances Howard, p. 81. 21 Following this logic, both The Witch and More Dissemblers Besides Women would have been performed at Blackfriars and both would have represented Howard as “Duchess.” 22 As John Jowett notes in his introduction to the play, here and elsewhere in the Middleton canon, “the socially cohesive Platonic harmonies of the masque are inverted.” John Jowett, ed., More Dissemblers Besides Women, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1035. This observation complements Jones-Davies and Hoenselaars’s previous suppositions regarding Masque of Cupids.

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fleeting – or in the case of Masque of Cupids unknowable – rather than sustained satiric commentary. What the various cases do indicate is a gradual interest on Middleton’s part regarding the scandal, particularly Howard’s role. Given her status as a woman, her part and character were tied to her sexual and marital conduct, the two of which were not mutually exclusive. Before she was able to marry Carr and divorce Essex, Howard first had to prove that she was indeed still a virgin. As a result, virginity tests were conducted to prove that Howard retained her chastity or hymen.23 Her body was thus inspected by “two midwives and four matrons” while Howard herself remained veiled.24 Rumor immediately spread regarding whether or not she was in fact the person under the veil, leading to suspicions that Howard faked her virginity test to annul the marriage and wed Carr. The following crude ballad, for example, clearly mocks the test: There was a Madam a did study to frame a Devise to draw upp a perpuse She drew itt so narrow a Carr might go through O there was a slender sluce.25 (13–16)

Despite these looming conspiracies, Howard was determined to demonstrate her virginity, which allowed her to divorce Devereux and wed Carr.26 In More Dissemblers Besides Women, Middleton either suggests that Howard has proven herself virtuous or is mocking the circumstances of these tests, as she did and did not “show” herself “to all,” given that her face remained veiled during these inspections. The paradox is not poignant enough to detect whether or not the text upholds Howard’s claim to be a virgin, only that its author is perfectly comfortable with making her the subject and spectacle of popular ridicule. These comically intended satires, overt or veiled, turned serious when the trials of Howard and Carr concerning Sir Thomas Overbury’s murder began. Originally imprisoned in the Tower of London for essentially disapproving of the marriage between Howard and Carr, Overbury – a former friend of Carr’s – died while jailed in the Tower and was later discovered to have been poisoned.

23 Myths of such natural chastity still abound today, but the supposed biological truth with respect to the hymen has been disproven and shown to be the product of systemic patriarchal fictions of control concerning women’s bodies. Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth, pp. 73–75. 24 David Lindley, The Trials of Frances Howard, p. 109. 25 “There was an ould ladd rode on an ould padd,” in Early Stuart Libels, http://www. earlystuartlibels.net/htdocs/overbury_murder_section/H1.html. 26 At her wedding to Carr, Howard “wore her hair freely flowing at the wedding as a sign of her virginity.” David Lindley, The Trials of Frances Howard, p. 132.

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Howard and Carr were suspected for having committed this wrongdoing and later indicted. Howard confessed to the murder and absolved Carr.27 As previously mentioned, Howard’s former accusations of witchcraft concerning Essex’s impotency were revisited when Howard pleaded guilty, leading to her gradually becoming vilified once again as a witch. Although the association of Frances Howard with Middleton’s The Witch has been a topic of discussion for some time,28 it is only recently that Marion O’Connor’s edition of the play for Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works has established a strong case for the results of the Overbury trial as influential in the composition of the manuscript. As O’Connor identifies, Middleton alters his source text, Machiavelli’s Florentine History, so that the character resorts “to a witch for poison, . . . a point which does not appear in the source but was well publicized at the Countess’s trials.”29 O’Connor uses such deviations from the source material, the author’s stylistic development (Middleton’s turn to tragicomedy and then tragedy during this period of time), and topical matters pertaining to the Overbury trail (notably the inclusion of the libelous maid, wife, widow, and whore riddle; the printed image of Lady Pride in Mistress Turner’s Farewell to all Women; and the trial’s verdict) to build a convincing argument for mid-1616 as the date of composition.30 As far as the trial is concerned, O’Connor identifies the parallel between it and the Lord Governor’s verdict that the Duchess shall “Die, then a murd’ress only” with the Duke’s sudden response that she shall “Live a duchess” within the same line (5.3.125). Looking to this sudden flux in judgment, O’Connor points out that a similar absurd judgment was presented at Howard’s trial: The conclusion of her trial was outrageous: Lord Ellesmere, acting as Lord High Steward, virtually assured the Countess of a royal pardon with the same breath – indeed, in the middle of the same grammatical sentence – as he pronounced legal sentence of death upon her.31

27 Ibid., p. 149. 28 Anne Lancashire was the first to question whether the play was in fact a stage flop, pointing to the fact that Middleton alluded frequently in the text to events related to the scandals associated with Frances Howard. Anne Lancashire, “The Witch: Stage Flop or Political Mistake?,” in “Accompaninge the Players.” These findings led to a window of 1613–1616 that O’Connor has since narrowed to 1616. Marion O’Connor, ed., The Witch, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, pp. 1124–25. Scholars such as Stephen Wittek have since confidently used this date for the play in their studies of Middleton. Stephen Wittek, The Media Players, p. 63. 29 Marion O’Connor, ed., The Witch, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1125. 30 Marion O’Connor, “Works Included in This Edition,” in Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, pp. 382–83. 31 Marion O’Connor, ed., The Witch, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1125.

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These additional findings bolster Anne Lancashire’s earlier contention that the play failed as a result of its topical political content and not because of poor entertainment value. Given that it was performed at Blackfriars, most audience members would have been well versed in these scandals and recent news of their developments, as the privileged audience would be aware of such topical issues and their history. As Paul Yachnin argues, however, theater operated in a different way from these other media. The stage circulated information and commented on political matters, thereby making The Witch a different kind of entity in this discourse. Contrary to what Elizabeth Schafer and later Bruzzi and Bromham assert,32 Yachnin is apt to conclude that The Witch did not present a polemic, but the play nevertheless began to integrate the various printed and oral tracts on the scandal that could generate political awareness regarding the ongoing circumstances of the trial and other affiliated events stemming from or leading up to it. The humorous jokes about impotence and the satiric remarks about chastity that Middleton had included in previous dramatic works thus eventually became serious defamatory commentary after the trial’s outcome, especially as James orchestrated it. What ensues is an explication of the ways in which Middleton’s play challenges the verdict of the trial and James’s governance, especially since Chamberlain and others had interpreted this legal case like a theatrical event. The play invites the audience at Blackfriars, albeit in a manner less overt and aggressive than that of the libels to which it alludes, to critique governing authority and evaluate their politics, as persons like Chamberlain already had done during and after the trials. By dramatizing the events of these public spectacles and narratives, The Witch renders not only the players in the trial into spectacles, but also the governing monarch, who dealt unsatisfactory justice as a result of the accused parties’ social privilege. The commentary on this fictionalization of justice, however, needs to be considered in tandem with that of witchcraft, given its role in Howard’s demonization. The supernatural was another matter on which James had considered himself an authority, but his tracts were gradually and recently exposed as fallible.

Witches, Aristocrats, and Tragicomedy Hecate’s opening lines in the second scene of the play derive from Reginald Scot’s A Discourse of Devils and Spirits, which he “appended to The Discoverie

32 Paul Yachnin, “Scandalous Trades,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, p. 218.

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of Witchcraft.”33 By opening with Scot, an extremely skeptical writer on the subject of witchcraft, Middleton guides the interpretive community who is familiar with Scot’s tract to regard the witches as superficial and outlandish, or theatrical. As Meredith Molly Hand claims in her discussion of Middleton and skepticism, Middleton’s fascination with Reginald Scot’s tract results in his shared judgments on the mystical and a similar satirical portrait of the supernatural.34 He augments the satire by also playing upon commonly understood manners by which witches were imagined to interact with people, namely as “a type of shopkeeper” who “agrees to help and to serve” but “on her terms.”35 As Kathleen Kaplan Smith points out, Hecate is “keenly aware of what her audiences expect to, or hope to see when they interact with her,” and Middleton deploys these conventions in tandem with references to Scot to elucidate that the witches are products of the illusory space of the theater.36 Middleton combines these stage practices with several more allusions to Scot’s work to concoct an interrogative metatheatrical event that addresses the absurdity of displacing blame onto these fabricated entities.37 Middleton also likely aligned his writing with Scot’s treatise given the fictional status that Scot attributes to witchcraft throughout literature. Having recounted various aspects of witchcraft, Scot lists those who purport the existence or validity of these things, including James Sprenger, Henry Institor, Nider, Cumanus, Danaeus, Hyperius, Hemingius, Bodinus, and Bartholomaeus Spineus. After delineating these authorities on witchcraft, he states: “But bicaus I will in no wise abridge the authoritie of their power, you shall have also the testimonies of manie other graue authors in this behalf; as followeth.”38 The only named author that actually “followeth,” however, is Ovid, with frequent mentions of “others” who write on these subjects, leading the reader to discern that Scot is referring generally to poets. The segment concludes with the Latin phrase, “Miranda canunt sed non credenda Poete,”39 the English translation

33 Marion O’Connor, ed., The Witch, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1133. 34 Meredith Molly Hand, “‘More Lies Than True Tales’,” in The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton, p. 314. Frances Dolan had also previously recognized Middleton’s adoption of Scot as signaling skepticism in this text. Frances E. Dolan, Dangerous Familiars, pp. 210–13. 35 Kathleen Kaplan Smith, Gender, Speech, and Audience Reception in Early Modern England, p. 116. 36 Ibid., p. 116. 37 O’Connor has located these references at the following instances: 1.2.37–42; 1.2.49–52; 1.2.102–5; 1.2.159–61; 1.2.207. Marion O’Connor, ed., The Witch, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, pp. 1133–35. 38 Reginald Scot, The discouerie of witchcraft, p. 10. 39 Ibid., pp. 10–11.

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thereof is roughly, “But it is not to be believed, the poets sing of the wonderful.” These remarks from Scot lead Cora Fox to make the following conclusion regarding Scot’s deployment of Ovid: “Debates about witchcraft . . . are shown to be grounded in more fundamental societal speculation about what counts as fictional, and where authority lies.”40 Essentially Scot is identifying that witchcraft is, like fiction, imaginary rather than factual. Middleton would have been familiar with this passage concerning Ovid and other authors, as directly following the Latin phrase is the following passage: “They can also bring to passe, that charme as long as you list, your butter will not come” (11). Hecate makes reference to this fraudulent claim against witches when she complains about her mistreatment by farmers: . . . their marrows are a-melting subtly And three months’ sickness sucks up life in ’em. They denied me often flour, barm and milk, Goose-grease and tar, when I ne’er hurt their charmings[.] (47–50)

Like Scot, Middleton mocks the supposition that witches are able to curse farmers’ production, suggesting that Hecate has not effectively performed this charm. In fact, there is never a point in the play where it can be definitively concluded that the witches’ charms have actually worked. Aberzanes procures a charm from Hecate to make Antonio impotent in an obvious allusion to Essex, but although he is revealed to be unable to perform in the following act, this kind of logic is exactly what Scot’s tract counsels against. Disbelief of such witchcraft is especially purported on grounds of location, namely that if something occurs at a far remove from the place itself, it is illogical to conclude that the action is to blame. Middleton’s conflation of court and coven onstage enhance this trickery, as the audience is cajoled into the logical fallacy that the ostensible cause in coven leads directly to the effect in court because the stage space envelopes both sites. It remains entirely plausible, however, that the charm is the cause per accidens of the impotency. Middleton would have been familiar with this paradigm from seeing Doctor Faustus, the B-text of which had already been printed the same year that The Witch was staged. Mephistophilis reveals to Faustus that the Doctor’s belief that he has summoned the demon through his necromancy is in fact the cause “per accident,” and that Faustus actually summoned the devil when he said adieu to divinity in his opening

40 Cora Fox, “Authorising the Metamorphic Witch,” in Metamorphosis, p. 178.

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speech.41 The implication is that witchcraft is all show and no substance; therefore, like theater, it only seems to have power. Middleton brings this Elizabethan skepticism into the present moment through allusions to actual court cases regarding witchcraft. Although this topicality might indicate a competing perspective concerning the validity of witchcraft, the context suggests otherwise. Mary Smith was convicted of witchcraft and pleaded guilty to allegations of witchcraft, but the circumstances were questionable. Alexander Roberts, who was involved in these proceedings, writes in A Treatise of Witchcraft (1616) of “a great Cat” that was exceedingly difficult to kill and survived serious injuries.42 A cat also “came vnto her,” when she was in bed and “sate vnto her breast, with which she was grieuously tormented, and so oppressed, that she could not without great difficulty draw her breath.”43 The cat was suspected of having demonic influences on Mary, and it was rumored that her husband’s efforts to murder the animal failed, which contributed to its suspected nature as an evil spirit. Middleton echoes this imagery with Firestone’s reference to “The great cat” who Hecate should lie with that night instead of him (1.2.93), but he transforms the cat into a comic anthropomorphism rather than a horrific figure.44 The familiar was often envisioned as a liminal being that was partially human in its form,45 but Middleton’s comic great cat is clearly an exaggeration of this device and contrasts with the fraudulent other great cat whose fearsome size and dexterity suggests something more than it is. In so doing, he alters the anticipated tragic figure of the cat weighing on her in bed to the bawdy indication that Hecate will gladly sleep with Malken instead of Firestone – replacing incest with bestiality in what is clearly hyperbolic satire of witchcraft’s veracity. The scene plays with what is likely suspected, that Mary’s devotion to the supposedly demonic cat bordered upon a sexual relation, but Middleton’s comic portrait mocks these assumptions about the cat and Mary’s witchcraft as well.

41 Christopher Marlowe, The tragicall history of D. Faustus, sig. B2r. 42 Alexander Roberts, A treatise of witchcraft, sig. H3v. 43 Ibid., sig. H4v. 44 As Christopher Clary argues, Hecate is also empowered through this sequence, so the comic nature of the scene does not necessarily reduce her to a figure of ridicule. He claims that “the animal familiar stands as both the replacement for a male sexual partner and, perhaps, a preferred figure for whom ‘to sing and dance and toy and kiss’.” Christopher Clary, “Familiar Creatures,” Early Modern Culture, p. 70. Although Middleton mocks the supposed demonic powers of the great cat in the historical account, he does not compel his audience to laugh at Hecate, or at least not in the same way. 45 Helen Parish, “‘Paltrie Vermin, Cats, Mise, Toads, and Weasils’: Witches, Familiars, and Human-Animal Interactions in the English Witch Trials,” Religions, p. 9.

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The cat Malkin, however, is not necessarily only associated with this case. He plays the fiddle, an act that connects him not only with the illegal practice of traveling minstrels but also with a London tavern named the Cat and the Fiddle.46 Almachildes suggests as much when he reacts to Malkin with, “The Cat and Fiddle? An excellent ordinary!” (1.2.230). The latter allusion is significant because of Scot’s claim that those at alehouses believe that witches have deceived them when the underlying claim is that the alcohol is to blame.47 A. Lynn Martin observes “the link between drunkenness and hallucinations” with respect to witchcraft and notes that alcohol could “also help detect” witches.48 The associations between intoxication and witchcraft were thus established, and this connection is particularly important to consider given Almachildes’s speech upon his return in act 2, scene 2: What a mad toy took me, to sup with witches! Fie of all drunken humours! By this hand, I could beat myself when I think on’t. And the rascals made me good cheer too And to my understanding then Eat some of every dish and spoiled the rest. But coming to my lodging, I remember, I was as hungry as a tired foot-post. (2.2.1–9)

It remains debatable whether or not these occurrences transpired due to witchcraft or drunkenness, but the allusions to Scot suggest the latter or at least draw attention to the illusory nature of the theater. The cat’s association with the legal case is thus blurred with performance and alehouses, leading to a skeptical outlook that comments on the absurdity of evidence supplied in a real legal case implying that “a great Cat,” who cannot be convicted, was the true agent behind the suspected witchcraft. Allusions to these “real” rather than metaphorical witches could, of course, function as a way for Middleton to deflect anticipated accusations that he was satirizing the Howard and Carr scandal. The playwright appears to indicate that the witches were in fact the problem in his epistle to Thomas Holmes: “Witches are (ipso facto) by the law condemned, and that only (I think) hath made her lie

46 Edward H. Sugden notes that the Cat and the Fiddle was an “ordinary or eating-house, in Cheapside, near the Cross.” Edward H. Sugden, A Topographical Dictionary to the Works of Shakespeare and His Fellow Dramatists, p. 106. 47 Reginald Scot, The discouerie of witchcraft, pp. 273–74. 48 A. Lynn Martin, Alcohol, Sex and Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, p. 107.

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so long in an imprisoned obscurity” (Epistle, 5–7). The parenthetical inclusion of “I think” opens the reason the feminized text has been hidden from view open to question, especially given the circulation via manuscript rather than print.49 The obvious answer that Lancashire discovered and O’Connor and others have since attributed to Middleton’s reasoning is that the epistle’s language points to the Howard and Carr scandal as the likely reason for the play’s poor reception. Although there is no reason to disagree with this view, given O’Connor’s findings, Middleton is also making a more complex statement about the witches’ relation to the Howard and Carr debacle. For instance, “[w]itches are (ipso facto) by the law condemned,” but the Duchess in the play and Howard in Jacobean reality were not. While the play’s witches veil Middleton’s satire of Howard and Carr, the interconnections between the two plots make a more poignant suggestion about the failure of the law and its governing authority. The juxtaposition of an absurd court with an absurd coven, both of which concern James’s writings or actions, guides an audience aware of these contentious matters and the king’s standpoint on the topics to laugh at their monarch’s judgments. Middleton is not the only one to adopt this technique. In close proximity to The Witch, Ben Jonson’s The Devil Is an Ass (also staged only once, at Blackfriars, and in the same year) combined the supernatural and the political. As W. Todd Furniss notes, Jonson previously adopted Scot’s work on witchcraft more subtly in his Masque of Queens (1609),50 but given its nature as a courtly masque, the drama was most likely not satiric in nature. In The Devil Is an Ass, Jonson presents a more skeptical view of witchcraft, but his reasons relate more to contemporary events than a clear disbelief in witchcraft. As G. L. Kittredge points out, Jonson identifies the illusory performance of exorcism by aligning his aspiring aristocrat Fitzdottrel with a young boy who counterfeited demonic possession, according to a letter of Sir John Chamberlain.51 Brian P. Levack recounts how the boy had managed to have nine women executed through his false accusations before James happened to be visiting Leicester, “examined the boy[,] and immediately suspected fraud,” thereby

49 Grace Ioppolo points out that Middleton safely provided this manuscript and various copies of A Game at Chess during 1624, but the circulation of these two plays, one of which had been banned from the stage, lends a scandalous nature to the private correspondence of the manuscript, even if the creation of these manuscripts was sanctioned by multiple parties. Grace Ioppolo, Dramatists and Their Manuscripts in the Age of Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton and Heywood, pp. 170–71. 50 W. Todd Furniss, “The Annotation of Ben Jonson’s Masqve of Queenes,” Review of English Studies, pp. 346–47. 51 G. L. Kittredge, “King James I and The Devil Is an Ass,” Modern Philology, pp. 197–98.

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managing to save another five “witches” the boy had named.52 As Peter Happé has identified, the reference to the event “echoes the attack by James on false conjuring.”53 Although Jonson’s play abounds with devils and witchcraft, these aspects serve as a backdrop to the real subject of Jonson’s satire: projectors. The play refers to the failed ambitions of Sir William Cockayne to reinvent the English wool industry, and it is likely this subject matter that led to its removal from the stage.54 More recently, Anthony Parr observes that Jonson probably used both topical matters to generate influence with the court, given the ability to frame James also as a saving grace to these accused women.55 As in Middleton’s The Witch, the theater is used to unite both political commentaries through a shared skepticism – in this case fraudulent business paired with illusory demonic possession and exorcism. Middleton may have adopted a similar technique either before or after Jonson in his own play for Blackfriars, but in either case the similarities illuminate an interest in topical political matters and witchcraft circa 1616 at Blackfriars. In Middleton’s play, the blending of superstition and politics involves a more overt dramatic back-and-forth dynamic between the court and coven, and as a result, the playwright establishes commonalities between them and conflates the two sites within the place of the stage. The coven contains a hierarchical system with Hecate as its governor, and the courtly realm involves grotesque and macabre ceremonies or rituals before the audience is even introduced in the ensuing scene to the litany of references to Scot’s text. Middleton’s source material for the narrative wherein the Duke has everyone at the wedding drink from a skull cup made of the head of his bride’s vanquished father is Machiavelli’s Florentine History. Alboin’s act in Machiavelli’s history is represented as deplorable: “mooued

52 Brian P. Levack, Witch-Hunting in Scotland: Law, Politics and Religion, p. 53. 53 Peter Happé, ed., The Devil Is an Ass, p. 14. 54 Robert C. Evans, “Contemporary Contexts of Jonson’s The Devil Is an Ass,” Comparative Drama, pp. 142–50. 55 Parr perceives the event involving the fake exorcism as “endorsing royal actions,” since James had saved “the lives of six women awaiting execution,” which allowed Jonson to “exert influence in more intractable areas of government policy, and this might explain some of his blunter interventions.” Anthony Parr, ed. The Devil Is an Ass, in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, p. 470. However, Parr also indicates that Jonson had come to understand “how complex the links between court and city had become, so that behind the apparently straightforward royal measures to regulate London’s growth and control its economic activity, there lurked a tangle of influences and alliances that would always frustrate such an endeavour.” Ibid., p. 471. What this indicates, then, is that Blackfriars in 1616 was perceived by playwrights as a place where political matters could be broached to influence audiences and that the political systems of London were becoming increasingly complicated.

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by the crueltie of his nature, hee made a cup of her fathers hed, whereof in memorie of the victorie... he vsed to drinke.”56 Attributing this action to the governor of a court therefore signals from the outset that the world of the court is disorderly and that the actions of its governor are deplorable.57 This horrific ceremony is also the only thing that can be tied to the one and only death in the play. As the cup circulates, Antonio remarks, “That’s an ill bride-cup for a marriage day; / I do not like the fate on’t” (1.1.123–24). Shortly thereafter the Duchess drinks to him, “Sir to you, / The lord of this day’s honour” (1.1.129). Antonio is the only person to die in the play, and this opening scene suggests the systemic root of that death. The link is tenuous, but only as tenuous as that between the charm and Antonio’s impotence, and this loose connection seems to be the point. The logic of impotence arising from a witch’s charm is just as logical as an ominous toast from a skull cup leading to the recipient’s death. Middleton’s implication here is not necessarily that one form of the supernatural trumps the other, but rather that we cannot confidently or perspicuously discern the root of either cause or displace blame onto the supernatural.58 However, whereas the witches’ later death-incurring acts do not work, this macabre ceremony seems to serve its underlying purpose. The suggestion appears to be that providence guides the actions of the play, a force which Scot turns to in order to suggest that witchcraft has no power. Scot laments that “we flie from trusting in God to trusting in witches,”59 and he claims that all worldly action is in nature’s domain so it is a natural action.60 The tragicomic stage draws conclusions that suggest providential or mysterious workings outside the scope of human comprehension. All the world is a stage, as the popular theatrum mundi of the era pronounced, but life was also conceived of in terms of genre. In a 1606 epigram, John Owen likened humanity’s uncertain state of affairs to a tragicomedy: “Mans Life’s a Tragicke

56 Machiavelli, The Florentine historie, sig. B3v. 57 The cup could also be an allusion to Scot’s mention that love cups often in fact prove fatal and that history shows us that they are instead often filled with poisons. Reginald Scot, The discouerie of witchcraft, p. 123. Poison is one of the realities that Scot notes witchcraft is often mistaken for, and it is what Howard and Carr used to murder Overbury. Ibid., 11. 58 The audience may also have been attuned to see Antonio immediately as a figure who would meet some tragic end. In her edition of The Revenger’s Tragedy, Gretchen Minton points out that Antonio is “a generic nobleman’s name, often associated with ineffectuality . . . in early modern drama.” Gretchen Minton, ed., The Revenger’s Tragedy, p. 109. This convention Middleton previously uses thus suggests that audiences may have perceived Antonio as a character prone to misfortune. 59 Reginald Scot, The discouerie of witchcraft, p. 11. 60 Ibid., pp. 13–14.

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Comedie, / Hope is his Argument; / The Prologue Faith; the Acts are Love, / The Stage Earths Continent.”61 From this perspective, the tacit hope is that God leads humanity through these motions, but this is not the case for Antonio, whose death is wanted, as John Fletcher writes, to bring about a more harmonious closure of tragicomedy.62 However, the stage’s technology, rather than a human agent, enacts this justice. Antonio’s death is not performed onstage, but Hermio relays to the audience that “a false trapdoor” was the culprit (5.3.30). Melissa Walter remarks upon the power of the trapdoor when she states that it “apparently act[s] on its own [and] creates an even more radical picture of an animated object functioning to punish a misguided patriarch.”63 Since the culprit is Antonio’s misguided blindness, a result of his “wrath and jealousy” (5.3.29), the suggestion seems to be that audiences must be wary of their environs and remain vigilant in order to avoid the perils and traps of this tragicomic world that spiritual entities, divine or necromantic, are controlling. Providential design cannot be gleaned, but sinful conduct can be avoided. This interrogative framework contributes to the political awareness generated by the play’s allegory; the audience is invited through theatrical cues to critique their monarch’s handling of recent events. The polite parrhēsiastic contract promoted in The Phoenix has been abused and violated through James’s inability to uphold the tenets of justice set out in his own writings. The Witch’s satire now reworks this challenge to patriarchal governance as a far more direct challenge and stages it for the private theater audience at Blackfriars rather than James.

Blackfriars and the Theatricality of Injustice The majority if not all of the audience at Blackfriars would have known about the scandal and would likely have been familiar with James’s attitudes toward witches and Scot’s tract. The social standing of audience members would have been more elevated than at a commercial theater like the Globe;64 this discrepancy ostensibly

61 John Owen, Epigrams of that most wittie and worthie Epigrammatist, sig. D2v. 62 Fletcher defines a tragicomedy as a play that “wants death” in his epistle to The Faithful Shepherdess. John Fletcher, The faithfull shepherdess, sig. A3v. 63 Melissa Walter, “Drinking from Skulls and the Politics of Incorporation in Early Stuart Drama,” in At the Table, p. 101. 64 Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London, p. 5. This is not to say that someone could not feign a higher social status and use accumulated wealth to enter the theater, as with Fitzdottrel in what Sarah Dustagheer refers to as Jonson’s “most explicit metatheatrical effort”

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made the Blackfriars’ audience more likely to be familiar with recent affairs. Blackfriars was a private theater, meaning it was indoors and allowed for a more individual and certainly more privileged reception of a play than the commercial theater did, but it also took on a different kind of metatheatricality with audience members paying to sit on an already cramped stage and “inter-act music,” which repeatedly caused the performance to be interrupted with reality.65 As a result of these added luxuries, it cost more to attend a private theater than it did the Globe or other commercial theaters. These higher admission fees led to audiences who were primarily aristocratic or at least able to afford to attend the private theater. These persons would be in tune with political affairs either through connections at court, the aforementioned libels, or manuscript circulation. Even if they were not privy to the scandal through such means, they would have heard about the topical issues, as they were widespread and common knowledge in London. The publication and reprinting of Daemonologie made it clear to Londoners that their monarch saw witches as a real threat and that he disliked the opinions of the previous English authority on the topic, Scot.66 Given that these audience members were part of an upper social echelon, it is safe to presume that they would at least have some sense of the discourse around witchcraft and their king’s position on it, even if they had not actually read his Daemonologie. The Witch has regularly been discussed for its fascination with courtly spectacle and performance, but its tragicomic genre and staging at Blackfriars offered a means to further political awareness as well. As Garth Kimbrell surmises, the rise of tragicomedy, established primarily by Beaumont and Fletcher, had already contributed to making Blackfriars a playhouse notorious for its associations with higher ranking Londoners. By the 1610s, Blackfriars had also become a space in which “one acquires a sophisticated wit and learns how to perform

in The Devil Is an Ass. Sarah Dustagheer, “Acoustic and Visual Practices Indoors,” in Moving Shakespeare Indoors, p. 151. 65 David Lindley, “Blackfriars, Music and Masque,” in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s Last Plays, pp. 30, 35. As Mariko Ichikawa puts it, “The intervals between acts did not mean the disconnection of the audience from the dramatic world, and it was sometimes used to present in musical terms the event taking place in the play world during the time between the acts.” Mariko Ichikawa, “Continuities and Innovations in Staging,” in Moving Shakespeare Indoors, p. 91. 66 The king disagreed with Scot’s ideas, but this fact has led to rumors, which S. F. Davies addresses: “A myth persists that James I had Scot’s work burnt when he acceded to the throne, but there is no evidence for this, and copies of the first edition are not rare.” S. F. Davies, “The Reception of Reginald Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft,” Journal of the History of Ideas, p. 383. Scot was therefore not as controversial as one might suppose, even though James’s polemic ran contrary to his, and Middleton’s audiences could access his writings.

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one’s class”;67 indeed, it “was the academy for the acquisition of cultural capital.”68 Middleton’s interest in the venue appears to have centered on utilizing such a space to capitalize on the Frances Howard scandals in particular. Aside from The Witch, Middleton also wrote More Dissemblers Besides Women and The Widow (1616) for the King’s Men to perform at Blackfriars. The former has already been discussed in this chapter for its vague allusions to Masque of Cupids and topical references to Howard, but the second has been dated to 1616 based upon a brief reference to “yellow bands” as out of fashion, which links the play to Mrs. Turner’s execution that resulted from the Overbury trials (5.1.54).69 Playing to his audience’s political interest, Middleton appears to have transgressed too overtly with this fashion for political theater in The Witch. The location had garnered further significance since More Dissemblers Besides Women was staged, given the audience’s knowledge that Frances Howard had occupied a residence at Blackfriars before moving to the Tower of London. The reason she was inhabiting this space between the court’s verdict and her imprisonment in the Tower was that she was pregnant. These events more than likely influenced Middleton’s composition, which O’Connor surmises was in mid-1616 with an autumn performance date.70 In a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton, John Chamberlain notes that on March 27, 1616, “the Lady of Somerset [Howard] was committed to the Towre upon so short warning that she had scant leysure to shed a few teares over her litle daughter at the parting.”71 She had been imprisoned in Lord D’Aubigny’s house at Blackfriars since November 2, 1615.72 Spectators would have known about the pregnancy and her residency at Blackfriars because of a libel beginning with “A bird ill hatchd, from out a Cuckowes nest,” which speaks to the Countess’s pregnancy as well as her imprisonment in “a place whilome blackfriers hight” (6). The libel frames her pregnancy as an act of adultery by taking “a page [Carr], and leav[ing] a

67 Garth Kimbrell, “Taste, Theatrical Venues, and the Rise of English Tragicomedy,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, p. 288. 68 Ibid., p. 291. 69 Taylor and Michael Warren note that yellow bands were “a fashion for collars and ruffs stiffened with yellow starch, reputedly introduced to the court by Mrs. Anne Turner,” but that this trend fell out of fashion after she “was ordered to wear them at her execution in 1615 for her part in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury.” Gary Taylor and Michael Warren, eds., The Widow, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1115. 70 Marion O’Connor, “Works Included in This Edition,” in Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, p. 383. 71 Norman Egbert McClure, ed., The Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 1, p. 619. 72 David Lindley, The Trials of Frances Howard, p. 147.

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wrothye Earle [Essex]” (4).73 Looking to act 2, scene 3, we can see an instance at which Middleton could be alluding to this event with Francisca’s own pregnancy through adultery. Aberzanes passes the child born surreptitiously out of wedlock to an Old Woman who will leave it on a porch. Francisca’s self-loathing and characterization of herself as “monstrous” when she enters the scene perhaps speak to the regret Howard later experienced for her crimes, as evidenced in Chamberlain’s letter from April 6, 1616 that goes on to state that Howard was unsettled by having to leave her child shortly after giving birth, a result of her criminal status.74 She likewise pleaded not to be roomed in the same chamber Overbury had been in the Tower, indicating a sense of grief. Although Aberzanes states that she is “[n]ot monstrous,” he follows by observing that she is a “little sharp i’th’ nose, like a country woodcock,” thereby inviting the audience to see this bird as a subject of mockery like the “bird” from the libel (2.3.33–34). This satire continues to the end of the scene when the Boy suggests that he will “give her a fine whip” (2.3.49). Although he refers to the horses he has prepared, these animals are specifically referred to as Aberzanes’s “mares,” thereby symbolically rendering them women and referring to the real punishments for whoredom (2.3.53).75 Aberzanes’s aside also points to this conclusion by aligning him with Carr for a moment: “we have both deserved it” (2.3.52). The comic wordplay between the men makes the real punishments Howard would face if the libel’s statements were proven into misogynist laughter. Although Middleton implicates Aberzanes as well, there is little to no evidence to associate him with Carr, making Francisca (playing on Frances), and thus Howard, the real target of satire, whose body is made to suffer the misogyny of the crowd and their imagined punishments associated with her supposed crime that she managed to avoid through her aristocratic privilege. The lighting and stagecraft of Blackfriars theater complements this reading. Because it was an indoor theater, Blackfriars used candles for lighting. The candles needed to be relit at various points over the course of the show, a necessity that Middleton began his playwrighting career with at St. Paul’s. During this time, interludes were held to keep the audience entertained; however, playwrights enjoyed playing with these moments in which performance continued while the adjustments were made. By having persons come out to relight the candles with inter-act music that had the potential to blend with the rest of the

73 “A bird ill hatchd, from a Cuckowes nest,” in Early Stuart Libels, http://www.earlystuartlibels. net/htdocs/overbury_murder_section/H16.html. 74 Norman Egbert McClure, ed., The Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 1, p. 619. 75 Elizabeth Schafer notes this in her edition of the play. Elizabeth Schafer, ed., The Witch, p. 43.

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narrative, it announced to the audience that they were watching a play. These interludes allowed for opportunities in which the onstage action could blur into the audience’s reality.76 At times, a playwright or company might choose to blend the theatrical action of the play into this customary task, allowing the theatrical event to function as the interlude and deliberately bring the audience into its dramatic action. As Mark Hutchings notes, Middleton would later employ this technique with William Rowley in The Changeling; the stage direction concerning De Flores at the end of act 2 and the beginning of act 3 derives from a practice of carrying out dramatic action during one of these intervals.77 What results is that De Flores blends in with the audience, and the line between play world and audience reality is made increasingly liminal. If we return to the aforementioned scene involving Francisca’s pregnancy, we can perceive that Middleton is accomplishing something similar by bringing this event into the immediate reality of the audience. The nighttime setting establishes the already looming darkness of both the theatrical world and the audience’s real-time,78 but the way in which this darkness signaled an act change could also draw attention to the well-known fact that Howard had resided in Blackfriars while pregnant. The reminder to the audience that they are in Blackfriars theater in conjunction with allusions to the verse concerning Howard’s residency there makes Francisca, whose name already connotes her own, a more striking and topical embodiment of her. This moment in the play is thus brought into the reality of the audience, or at least those in the interpretive community who were aware of such information from libels or news and could identify the allusions. The Witch concludes acts with scenes, such as the pregnancy episode, that work with the theatrical space to draw connections between reality and the play world through interpreters’ shared knowledge of popular texts and the

76 Tiffany Stern, David Lindley, and Mariko Ichikawa have all noted this occurrence taking shape at times in the Blackfriars’ theater. Tiffany Stern, “Taking Part,” in Inside Shakespeare, pp. 46–47; David Lindley, “Blackfriars, Music and Masque,” in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s Last Plays, pp. 30–31; Mariko Ichikawa, “Continuities and Innovations in Staging,” in Moving Shakespeare Indoors, p. 91. 77 Mark Hutchings, “De Flores between the Acts,” Studies in Theatre and Performance, p. 104. As David Nicol has since identified, this particular scene would have stood out for an early modern audience, given its immediate re-entrance, which is “extremely rare on the early modern English stage” and was a convention redeployed amongst dramatists writing for the Cockpit (or Phoenix) theater. David Nicol, “‘Exit at one door and enter at the other’: The Fatal ReEntrance in Jacobean Drama,” Shakespeare Bulletin, p. 205. 78 Performances at Blackfriars were “mounted in the evening,” thereby amplifying the metatheatricality of the scene by establishing a correspondence between real and theatrical time. Tiffany Stern, “‘A ruinous monastery’,” in Moving Shakespeare Indoors, p. 108.

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theater. However, acts 1 and 3 contain further reasoning to perceive that Middleton deliberately established a dissolution between the fictional world and the audience’s reality. As records indicate, music was a common form of entertainment during the interludes between acts at Blackfriars, and both of these acts conclude with musical arrangements that allow the play’s action to continue. This recurring feature increases the likelihood of a more seamless transition between the narrative of the play and the necessary adjustments to the stage space. Malkin, the great cat, enters at the end of act 1 and plays “a fiddle” for the entertainment of the coven (1.2.229). As previously mentioned, the performative aspects of the scene combined with the experience of visiting a London ordinary stress the fictional nature of the coven and witchcraft. Middleton’s decision to end the scene with this action brings these events increasingly into the lived experience of playgoers by rendering the line between play world and audience reality increasingly liminal. The conclusion to act 3 likewise finishes with the song “Come Away, Hecate,” sung by Hecate, Malkin, and the witches. Given Middleton’s deployment of Scot’s treatise rather than James’s, the witches are already made to be hyperbolic and ridiculous, but the song furthers this reading by portraying them as theatrical cons rather than the real threats James believed them to be. The dissipation of a distinction between illusion and reality makes the concluding line of the song that no one to “our height can reach” (3.3.80) absurd, as their power is a trick of the eye rather than a reality. Firestone’s concluding words stress this satire of James’s conviction in the supernatural: Well mother, I thank your kindness; you must be gambolling i’th’ air and leave me to walk here like a fool and a mortal. (3.3.81–83)

Why draw attention to this distinction if it was not for the fact that it adds to the humor of witchcraft’s illusory power? As Middleton has already pointed out at the end of the first act, the witches are “tumblers, methinks, very flat tumblers” (1.2.194) that are not immediately comprehended as witches: “thou’rt a witch I think” (1.2.202, my emphasis). It is worth noting that such dances, as suggested with act 1’s descriptor of “tumblers” and act 3’s mention of “gambolling,” were also popular entertainments during interludes at Blackfriars.79 The two concluding scenes correspond with Scot’s remark that he marvels “that no bodie else heareth nor seeth this troope of minstrels, especiallie riding in a moone light night.”80 At the conclusion of act 3, prior to the

79 Irwin Smith, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars Playhouse, p. 149. 80 Reginald Scot, The discouerie of witchcraft, p. 185.

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song, Firestone makes metatheatrical references to “a noise of musicians,” namely those at Blackfriars who lend music to the song that ensues, and Hecate asks him to “[l]ook well to the house tonight; I am aloft,” likely referencing those in the playhouse who must also “walk here” during the intermission “like a fool and a mortal” (3.3.37; 3.3.34), but comprehend that those who ascend above them do so through trickery rather than real powers. The theater is the only place where people collectively observe the occurrences that Scot claims never actually transpire.81 Beyond establishing the theatricality of witches, the intervals gradually unfold the play’s framework, which not only collapses the distinction between court and cauldron but renders the authority of both places inept. The play’s representation of witchcraft as false challenges the law by calling the 1604 Act of Witchcraft into question as well,82 but the final scene calls more recent and serious legal acts from the king into question. The logic is established through a back-and-forth scheme. Acts 1 and 3 end with witches who are drawn into the action of the interlude; topical allusions to the physical space of Blackfriars conclude act 2; and mishaps in the dark bring the audience into the real-time of their evening in the conclusion to act 4 when Antonio mistakenly believes he has wrongfully murdered two persons. The culmination of the play in the fifth act brings this metatheatricality to the court, and unites the threads concerning James’s errors in legal and supernatural matters. The Duke’s revival appears to have ramifications not only in terms of the Howard and Carr scandal but also with respect to James’s views on witchcraft. James lambasted Scot in his preface to the reader in Daemonologie: “the one called Scot, an Englishman, is not ashamed in public print to deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft, and so maintains the old error of the Sadducees in denying spirits.”83 What often goes unnoticed is the manner by which James condemns Scot in this note to English readers. While the modern term Sadducee means one who does not

81 It is likely that the spectacle was not able to suspend the audience’s disbelief either. As Irwin Smith identifies, “A car, throne, or chariot was the vehicle normally used in celestial flights . . . one or another of the three was presumably used . . . in . . . The Witch.” Irwin Smith, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars Playhouse, p. 418. 82 James was most certainly interested in the 1604 Act, but it is more likely the case that “the arrival of the new King raised interest in James’s demonological writings,” thereby “making it an opportune time for a new bill on this theme to be raised.” John Newton, “Introduction,” in Witchcraft and the Act of 1604, p. 12. The topical matters of 1616 that weaken the monarch’s claims in Daemonologie and the Howard trials are therefore more likely what prompts Middleton’s portrayals of witchcraft in his play. 83 James I, Daemonologie, p. 45.

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believe in the resurrection or angels, Middleton’s England would have associated a Sadducee with the former connotation in particular. In An English Expositor, John Bullokar defines “saduce” as “An Heretical sect among the Iewes, which denyed the resurrection: they called themselues Saduces of the Hebrew word Tsedek.: Which signifieth Iustice, because they tooke themselues to liue more vprightly, and iuster then other men.”84 Nowhere in his book does Scot deny the resurrection of Christ, so what James is referring to is Scot’s dismissal of the woman Samuel consults regarding Saul’s spirit, which she supposedly summons. Scot states that Justin Martyr, who wrote on the subject, “was not onlie deceiued in the actuall raising vp of Samuels soule, but affirmed that all the soules of the prophets and men are subiect to the power of witches.”85 This resurrection of spirits had been commonly taken as biblical evidence to support the existence of witches, and it is Scot’s refutation of this case that James must be referring to, as Scot never disputes Christ’s resurrection. Given his support of Scot’s skepticism, Middleton likely alludes to this sole condemnation of Scot from Daemonologie by having the Duke’s spirit miraculously resurrect. This finale mocks both James’s belief in witchcraft, which as aforementioned was increasingly called into question, and his pardoning of Howard, given the incredulity of both the Duke’s pardon and revival in this final moment. Like the addition of the poison to Machiavelli’s history, the sudden resurrection is Middleton’s invention. In Machiavelli’s history, we are told that the murder was performed, and we are left to presume that it was carried out properly.86 The novelty of this final event makes it unexpected, and its excessive theatricality works with the developing act structure of the play thus far. Acts 1 and 3 end with witches, whereas acts 2 and 4 end with matters concerning members of the play world’s (and at times the Jacobean) court. Act 5, on the other hand, ends at court, breaking this back-and-forth symmetry and beckoning the audience to associate this resurrection with the theatricality of the witches and the skepticism we have been led to associate with these characters and the space of the coven, both of which have been shown to be demonic and wayward in their governance. Reflecting back on James’s statement about Scot’s writings, this scene also contains a satire of the king’s writings and challenge to Scot, likely playing into a year where accounts concerning feigned exorcisms had generated increasingly skeptical views regarding witchcraft. The Duke’s sudden resurrection with no anticipation whatsoever offers a recalcitrant statement in Scot’s defense wherein 84 John Bullokar, An English Expositor, 1616, in Lexicons of Early Modern English, https:// leme.library.utoronto.ca/lexicon/entry/323/3502. 85 Reginald Scot, The discouerie of witchcraft, p. 141. 86 Machiavelli, The Florentine historie, sig. B4r.

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James believes that all spirits can be resurrected in contrast to Scot’s inference that Christ alone was resurrected. The ability of a dead man to rise, much like the ability for a woman to fly, is a result of theatricality.87 The stage is the only place where those who are “dead” can return or rise. However, one cannot help but link the rising of the Duke, the custom of rising in the court or coven, or the rising of spirits with the inability of Essex’s appendage to rise as the libels satirized. Indeed, in Middleton’s providential theater and in Jacobean London, determining the cause of things lies outside the scope of human apprehension. The connection with James’s sole criticism in Daemonologie of Scot’s work extends this inadequate performance to the king, who rises out of no clear volition of his own but merely because God’s tragicomic theater wills it. The Witch thus stages the governance of the Jacobean court, much like that of the coven, as politically ineffectual, or as absurd tragicomedy. Its Duke rises, though not of his own volition it seems, thereby rendering his governance impotent.

Providential Theater or the Satire of Containment James’s defiance of order by pardoning Howard, who according to the law should have died, is here mocked by Middleton as a perversion of God’s law on earth. James’s governance had been diminishing in popularity amongst the English people even before the scandal. He reunited parliament on April 5, 1614, having dissolved it in 1611, only to dissolve it again on June 7, 1614. The Addled Parliament of 1614 provides a later development of James’s increasingly centralized power. Although parliament does not clearly figure in The Witch, this history contributes to the plural and resistant voices that began to take shape in early modern London’s literary culture as well as a general will to question and satirize the monarchy, which we see in libels. This is not to say that there was a definitive uprising or “riot” against James, as Bruzzi and Bromham suggest, but rather that Londoners developed a sense of political awareness as a result of this major scandal.88 As Michelle O’Callaghan points out, supporters of the Essex circle responded with libels “undermining the reputation of Carr and Howard” in

87 While the deux ex machina is a feature of tragicomedy, the execution here is absurd even by the genre’s standards. By comparison, Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside also offers a resurrection of both Touchwood Junior and Moll, but the text gives us some explanation by way of a plotline we have not been privy to involving a servant by the name of Susan. Although the scene is unexpected and suddenly transmutes tragedy into comedy, it is far less expedited when judged in relation to The Witch’s final fifteen lines. 88 A. A. Bromham and Zara Bruzzi, The Changeling and the Years of Crisis, pp. 25–26.

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response to the dishonor to Essex that the annulment had brought.89 By targeting and defending aristocrats, libels were not merely popular, “if the term popular is being used in opposition to the elite,” since “verse libels crossed social boundaries and attracted audiences from a range of social classes, including the nonliterate.”90 The Addled Parliament also led Londoners to resent the monarch’s favoritism. A passage from John Hoskyns’ poem “Mee thought I walked in a dreame,” written while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following the Addled Parliament, was widely circulated and reveals this commonly shared view: The worst is tould the best is hide Kyngs know not all I would they did . . . What if my husband once have erdd, Men more to blame are more preferrd. He that offends not doth not lyve Hee erde but once, once Kynge forgive.91 (43–44, 66–69)

The king’s knowledge is brought into question here, indicating that he does not have the providential wisdom one would expect of God’s deputy. The poem links this fallible nature with his lack of judgment regarding favorites: “Men more to blame are more preferrd.” William Davenport provides a marginal gloss to this line: “Lord Howard chamb: Lord Somersett et multis aliis,” which indicates those involved in the divorce proceedings.92 This analysis is in keeping with O’Callaghan’s observation that the Frances Howard and Robert Carr scandal effectively created a public discourse around the event that libels effectively spread in print and oral forms across the city, country, and continent.93 This is not to say that Londoners experienced a proto-democratic energy that is akin to the modern day conception of the term, but that the scandal facilitated the development of an interpretive commercial network that engaged Londoners in politics and led them to question their monarch’s capacity to make proper judgments. James has broken the parrhēsiastic contract Middleton staged in The Phoenix, and as a result, citizens are provided with a more direct satirical challenge to their

89 Michelle O’Callaghan, “‘Now thou may’st speak freely’,” in The Crisis of 1614 and the Addled Parliament, p. 64. 90 Ibid., p. 64. 91 John Hoskyns, “Mee thought I walked in a dreame,” in Early Stuart Libels, http://www. earlystuartlibels.net/htdocs/addled_parliament_section/G2.html. 92 Ibid., note 12. 93 Michelle O’Callaghan, “‘Now thou may’st speak freely’,” in The Crisis of 1614 and the Addled Parliament, p. 65.

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government, which is still couched in the plurality of allegory. As aforementioned in the book’s introduction, events in the later years of the Elizabethan monarchy, such as the Martin Marprelate controversy, had already generated similar interests and publics. This chapter’s focus on verse libels and their connection to ballads, however, draws attention to what Eric Nebeker has argued, namely that earlier ballads helped to set the stage for this scandal and previous publics. As Nebeker remarks, “ballad flytings shaped both the Marprelate controversy and the pamphlet wars by shaping readers’ expectations across class and educational boundaries.”94 In The Witch, then, Middleton returns to these public discourses, but instead of recreating Sir Philip Sidney’s “paper stage,” which Bruster identifies as ushering in the personal style of early modern literary publics, Middleton establishes a stage of paper by remediating these ballads in Blackfriars.95 The attuned audience therefore witnesses these allusions onstage and are beckoned to interpret them in concert with their monarch’s questionable actions, thereby generating political awareness.96 As aforementioned, The Witch situates itself within this discourse at multiple points, and its conclusion draws attention to the final verdict and pardon of Frances Howard. It does so ambiguously with a Governor and a Duke, much as the Archbishop proclaimed what the king had commanded. James’s presence in the theater, as in the courtroom, is not clearly evident, but his part in securing Howard’s pardon lingers in both spaces. The tragicomedy of the play, namely its sudden denouement, speaks to the ways in which the courtroom event is ultimately overseen by providential design. While God’s deputy, ostensibly the sovereign, is ultimately responsible for steering the country in a righteous direction, this chapter has examined The Witch as questioning the degree to which the reigning monarch is in fact aligned with providential design. Middleton doles justice haphazardly with the stage, or “Earths Continent,” swallowing Antonio. Such events lead one to wonder whether the ruling authorities have any power, especially given their questionable behavior and judgment. The ending, then, with the Duke suddenly reviving, leads the audience to see the

94 Eric Nebeker, “The Broadside Ballad and Textual Publics,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, p. 15. 95 Douglas Bruster, Shakespeare and the Question of Culture, p. 93. 96 In some ways, this approach reminds us of Jean Howard’s claims that the early modern theater was “a vehicle for ideological contestation and social change,” “that in this period theatrical power was real power,” and that efforts to control this commercial enterprise were impossible, but it clarifies that these attempts to regulate the theater were difficult because of its interconnections with a host of other subversive media that coordinated to facilitate political awareness. Jean Howard, The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England, p. 18.

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Duke’s resurrection as a sudden turn of events that renders the characters helpless. Middleton had utilized this device previously in A Chaste Maid at Cheapside, but its effect here does not produce an uplifting comedic ending but rather a bizarre and abrupt finale to what has already been an absurd drama. The action occurs just before the final speech, also delivered by the Duke. This sudden merry conclusion leaves one to wonder whether what is spoken is actually merited and whether or not these words resolve matters, which is why the title to this chapter reframes the lines as a question. The action certainly remedies the suggestion of an impending tragedy, much as the promise of a royal pardon did in the courtroom for Frances Howard, and it is thus the typical deux ex machina of tragicomedy. However, the fact that God is presumed to control the circumstances of the stage world and the real world complicates the typical satisfaction of this outcome. The witches of the play have already been revealed as powerless in their governance of the material world, and their likeness to the realm of the court has already suggested a similar dynamic at work. What the audience supposes is a governor’s corpse likewise suddenly comes to life, revealing that what was presumed to be a stage property is in fact a person. This would have been the expectation in regal funerals according to English standards. As Sergio Bertelli notes, James’s own funeral procession involved a mannequin, and before that Elizabeth’s did too, as commented on by Henry Chettle, one of Middleton’s collaborators.97 In this final scene in which the theatrical nature of the court is heightened, given the conclusion of the act, the sudden shift from mannequin to living body renders the Duke’s and the Governor’s power questionable. The Duke here rises suddenly without any indication he has been waiting for the right moment; this leads the audience to perceive him acting according to God’s will and frames him less as a powerful deputy and more as a puppet. But the Duke delivers a questionable verdict, given what the audience have witnessed onstage and have experienced in their shared reality concerning Howard. The puppet king is therefore mocked as ineffective. Although the Duke does not directly correspond with James, O’Connor’s work in identifying the clear correlations between the trials and the play’s ending leads the audience to view the Duke, the play’s chief authority, delivering an ironic deux ex machina as James did in these trials. The tragicomic structure of the play, well-known to Blackfriars’ audiences by this time, presents a containment model by its conclusion, but an overly swift one. Providential theater, with the Duke as deux ex machina, has the ability to assure an audience of

97 Sergio Bertelli, The King’s Body, p. 51.

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divine authority and governance, but in this case it also points out the absurdity of its worldly governor by identifying his puppet-like nature – something Middleton will go on to show later by making the king a piece on a chessboard – rather than his ostensible role as supreme mover. At the end of The Witch, Middleton emphasizes this powerlessness that the king shares with his subjects, but he also points out the flaws in his governance and thinking along the way. In mocking the process of the justice system that James had manipulated for Howard’s benefit, Middleton invites playgoers to question their monarch and view his actions as possibly misaligned with God’s, who remains the primary mover of all. The Witch thus contributes to an ongoing discourse surrounding the scandal rather than advocating that specific action be taken. Middleton did not aim to incite a riot with the play, but he pushed the limits of satire a bit too far in this particular drama. The Witch’s topical subject matter, sustained political allegory, and questioning of central authority’s justification made it far more sensational than the subtle allusions to Howard and Carr in More Dissemblers Besides Women in previous years or the brief mention of Turner’s execution in The Widow later that year. As a result, the play ended up being a stage flop in its own time, but it can now be appreciated for the political awareness and challenge to corrupt sovereignty that it attempted to cultivate.

The Changeling; or, Howard Six Years Later Based upon the paper Crane used for the manuscripts of A Game at Chess, O’Connor surmises that the manuscript of The Witch “can therefore be dated, with them, to 1625.”98 This observation reveals a sustained interest on Middleton’s and his readers’ part in the topical subject matter and sheds new light on the epistle to Thomas Holmes: For your sake alone she hath thus far conjured herself abroad and bears no other charms about her but what may tend to your recreation[.] (7–10)

Much like Middleton’s subtle references to the reason that The Witch had been out of circulation for so long, these lines carry underlying significance regarding these scandalous figures, who had remained a topic of interest while they

98 Marion O’Connor, “The Witch,” in Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, p. 995.

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were in the Tower of London.99 Howard and Carr had been released from the Tower in 1622 and then resided in Oxfordshire at Lord Wallingford’s home, with orders from the council to remain there. Late in 1623 they were living in Aldenham, Hertfordshire, but were now eager to move to Surrey. During the summer of 1624 Somerset at last petitioned James for a pardon, and in October the document was drawn up . . . Fully pardoned, Somerset moved to a house in Chiswick, but was required to promise he would attend neither court nor parliament. The earl and countess were still living in Chiswick when the countess died on 23 August 1632.100

This information comes to bear on the epistle to The Witch. Although our modern sense of the word “abroad” would correspond with overseas, the adverb carried an alternative connotation in early modern London. Claude Hollyband’s A Dictionary French and English (1593) provides the following understanding of the word in translating French: “Parmy les rues, abroade in the streetes.”101 Although Middleton is referring to the manuscript he has supplied Holmes, it is difficult not to regard this as a reference to Howard, who was “the witch” in the libel and who had been granted leave of the Tower in recent years. Middleton may have been somewhat sympathetic to Howard previously, but in later years this inclination seems less likely. In part this was due to the public discourse concerning the termination of Howard and Carr’s sentence. The circumstances of their release was rumored, according to Sir John Chamberlain, to be dubious: “The Marquis Buckingham hath contracted with the Lord and Lady Wallingford for their house neere White-hall, for some monie, and the making of Sir Thomas Howard baron of Charleton and Vicount Andover, and some thincke the deliverie of the Lord of Somerset and his Lady out of the Towre was part of the bargain.”102 Regardless of whether or not this gossip is true, the murmurings indicate lingering resentment and suspicion of the two clandestine murderers. Howard and Carr were news once again. Six years after The Witch’s one and only performance, Middleton brought Frances Howard back to the stage with the help of William Rowley in their collaboration The Changeling (1622). Staged at the court and the Cockpit shortly

99 Chamberlain describes a dispute between the couple, Carr’s part in a mock counsel in the Tower, and visits that various figures had with them. Norman Egbert McClure, ed., The Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 2, pp. 170–71. 100 Alastair Bellany, “Carr [Kerr], Robert, Earl of Somerset,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/4754. 101 Claude Hollyband, A Dictionary French and English, 1593, in Lexicons of Early Modern English, https://leme.library.utoronto.ca/lexicon/entry/205/14365. 102 Norman Egbert McClure, ed., The Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 2, p. 421.

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after Howard and Carr left the Tower,103 the play establishes a clear parallel between the virginity tests Howard underwent and those that Beatrice-Joanna must undergo according to the absurd patriarchal quasi-science in the play. The first concerns her reaction to Alsemero’s bizarre kit from his cabinet. Using Diaphanta as her avatar, Beatrice-Joanna has her imbibe the concoction that is supposed to prove her chastity. After observing that Diaphanta does indeed gape, sneeze, and then laugh, as the accompanying guidebook indicates a virgin will, BeatriceJoanna then applies these acting lessons later to dupe Alsemero into believing that she is chaste.104 The farce continues with a bed trick she orchestrates in which Alsemero is convinced that Beatrice-Joanna was a virgin when he has in fact had sex with Diaphanta. These scenes in The Changeling resonate with the circumstances involving Howard’s divorce from Devereux, wherein she was forced to undergo public virginity tests in which her genitalia were inspected to confirm that her hymen remained intact. Since Howard wore a veil during these investigations, rumor purported that someone other than Howard attended in her place. Although one could speculate that the deployment of a bed trick in The Changeling is a common device, its overlaying with virginity tests and the fact that Howard wore a veil (another potential mechanism of theatrics) bring Howard back to the stage and remind the audience of this scandal that was still in the collective memory. The dramatists also go to great lengths to connect with prior knowledge of Howard and the scandals involving her. David Lindley points out that Frances Howard “has been represented ever since 1616 as ‘the deed’s creature’,” a label De Flores applies to her during his coercion of her, “and the deed that defines her is the murder of Overbury.”105 Although Alonzo does not readily correspond with Overbury, Howard’s use of servants to orchestrate the murder corresponds with the ways in which Beatrice-Joanna employs De Flores. John Higgins elucidates that Howard’s servant Weston pleaded ignorance concerning the affair and saw himself as a mere instrument to her plan, attempting to alleviate himself of guilt or at least implicate his aristocratic betters as complicit.106 From this perspective, 103 Mark Hutchings points out that the opening scene makes a likely allusion to their release from the Tower, inviting the audience early on in the dramatic action to connect the dots between topical politics and the play world. Mark Hutchings, “Introduction,” in The Changeling: A Critical Reader, p. 6. 104 This is further complicated by the fact that it remains unclear whether Diaphanta herself knows of the test from previous knowledge we are not privy to and is feigning the conditions for Beatrice-Joanna. 105 David Lindley, The Trials of Frances Howard, p. 78. 106 Higgins notes that Weston’s “testimony consistently places Weston in a submissive position; the Countess gives him the poison without informing him of its contents, and he does

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De Flores’s refusal of monetary payment causes him initially to avoid the same fate as Weston. The ensuing rape and its troublesome means of coercion through establishing mutual culpability with De Flores for the murder is also indirectly connected with Howard.107 Jennifer Panek further establishes the connection between Howard and Beatrice-Joanna by noting that part of the exchange between her and De Flores, specifically his command, “shroud your blushes in my bosom” (3.4.170), echoes language from Jonson’s Hymenaei, his wedding masque for Howard and Essex.108 Lisa Hopkins has also noted this intertextuality, but she concentrates primarily on the scene’s concluding couplet (3.4.172–74).109 Panek, however, further illuminates that De Flores’s words to Beatrice-Joanna remind the audience of Howard’s virginity trials, during which “her blushes” were “literally shrouded.”110 These various allusions to public events concerning Howard’s virginity over the course of her life, which remained an ongoing topic of satire, are compacted into the four final lines of act 3 and delivered by a servant; this aggregation thus subtly generates an allegorical depiction, but one with troublesome implications. Given the history involving Howard’s servant’s execution in place of her own, a series of violent sexual libels concerning her virginity, and the recent resurgence of public displeasure concerning her release from the Tower, the end of act 3, scene 4, when viewed as political allegory, seems a horrible revenge fantasy based in lingering disdain concerning aristocratic privilege, which manifests as violent misogyny.111 Michael Neill’s examination of the ways in which De Flores

this for pay rather than another motive.” John Higgins, “‘Servant obedience changed to master sin’,” Journal of Early Modern Studies, p. 237. 107 Although Frances Dolan questions whether or not The Changeling stages a rape, I respectfully disagree based upon the fact that De Flores’s coercion of her is alluded to as a rape before the act is committed. Frances Dolan, “Re-reading Rape in The Changeling,” Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies. When Beatrice-Joanna states that De Flores’s “reward shall be precious” (2.2.131), he responds by saying that he knows “it will be precious: the thought ravishes” (2.2.133, my emphasis). Even if the legal terminology of the era speaks more to coercion than rape (and I do not distinguish between the two), Middleton and Rowley invite the audience beforehand to perceive De Flores understanding his actions as premeditated rape (theft or sexual) of that which is precious to both (Beatrice-Joanna’s virginity, which is only sexual in this case). 108 Jennifer Panek, “Shame and Pleasure in The Changeling,” Renaissance Drama, p. 203. 109 Lisa Hopkins, The Female Hero in English Renaissance Tragedy, p. 20. 110 Jennifer Panek, “Shame and Pleasure in The Changeling,” Renaissance Drama, p. 204. 111 Higgins documents the ways in which servants attempted to claim that they needed to comply with their masters’ instructions; with De Flores, the lower ranking person manipulates the situation to his advantage. John Higgins, “‘Servant obedience changed to master sin’,” Journal of Early Modern Studies. De Flores’s rape of Beatrice-Joanna would thus seem to convey

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expresses “indignation at the degrading nature of household service,”112 but is able later to deploy his privileged knowledge of and access to the Castle’s spaces augments this image of the servant class taking power back, but in opprobrious ways.113 Viewing The Changeling from this historical perspective offers an important caveat that Middleton’s questioning of a patriarchal order is not always in favor of women. Unlike The Witch, Middleton does not employ any supernatural element to the narrative aside from Alonzo’s ghost, which is more symbolic of guilt and memory than maleficium.114 Beatrice-Joanna does not consult with witches in order to ensure that the virginity test works; instead, she relies upon human agents and illusions. This framing of the circumstances corresponds with the rumors concerning Howard’s potential theatrics with respect to her own virginity test, but it could also point to Middleton’s view of the scandal as highly theatrical in nature. In other words, it is possible to glean from the portrait of Howard in The Changeling a better case for the ineffectual nature of witches and justice in The Witch. The double plot structure of The Changeling produces another similarity with The Witch in this regard. Middleton and Rowley use this structure to comment upon the disorder of a courtly space by paralleling it with that of an asylum. In both plays, the back and forth between the settings establishes a parallelism that demands a comparative evaluation from the audience.115 As in The Witch, order and regulation appear to be ineffectual or performative rather than attainable. The allusions to Frances Howard thus bring this dissolution of order into the realities of playgoers. While this allegory is more sustained and provocative in The Witch, it is nevertheless played out in The Changeling as well and demonstrates that Middleton likely learned to be more cautious after his “flop.” The combination of both elements might have been used in a similar way to the witches and the scandal, wherein the former functioned to deter offended parties away from the latter. By this time, the scandal would have been old news and no longer offensive, so Middleton and Rowley might have implemented allusions to it in the play in order to guise subtle references to the Spanish Match a misguided misogynist revenge from the disenfranchised servant class who were punished for the aristocrat’s actions. From this angle, the play is hardly feminist, but as aforementioned, this reading does not preclude others that would seek to find other historical or contemporary methods for perceiving the playwrights’ less opprobrious depictions of Beatrice-Joanna. 112 Michael Neill, Putting History to the Question, p. 34. 113 Ibid., p. 39. 114 The ghost could be a subtle allusion to John Ford’s lost work, Sir Thomas Overbury’s Ghost (1615). 115 Michael Neill notes this parallelism coming to a head with the cries from Beatrice-Joanna in the play’s final scene and “the howls of the madman.” Michael Neill, ed. The Changeling, p. 121.

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instead.116 However, if this was the case, it is difficult to comprehend or discern a comprehensive statement about the Spanish Match in The Changeling. Indeed, political references seem to be fleeting in The Changeling; it is not the same intricate political allegory that Middleton maps in The Witch. In 1622, Frances Howard and Robert Carr, however, were a topic that came back into conversation, as James had recently released them from the Tower of London. In a libel entitled “Some would complaine of Fortune & blinde chance,” the author complains about the ways in which justice is improperly conducted in relation to the space of the Tower. The following passage refers to Howard and Carr: The Lorde and Ladie are by equall Peers founde guiltie and condemn’de: (lawe nothinge cleers) And soe comitted to the towers charge as interdicted not to goe at large.117 (181–84)

The libel was likely written in close chronological proximity to the release of the two culprits and the original staging of The Changeling, illustrating an ongoing dissatisfaction with justice pertaining to aristocrats.118 The allusions to Howard and Carr in the play combined with a frequent reference to the space of a Castle and the confined space of performance in the Cockpit create a theatrical atmosphere that resembles the space of the Tower. The concluding imprisonment and deaths of Beatrice-Joanna and De Flores can be said to provide audiences attuned to the political contexts with an alternative history. While there has been a critical history of locating ways in which Middleton and Rowley undermine the patriarchal order of the imagined society that reflects their own,119 the cultivation of Howard’s persona onstage through Beatrice-Joanna

116 Mark Hutchings, “Introduction,” in The Changeling: A Critical Reader, p. 5. 117 “Some would complaine of Fortune & blinde chance,” in Early Stuart Libels, https://earlystuartlibels.net/htdocs/fortune_section/K1iv.html. 118 This literary history in tandem with Chamberlain’s letter indicates that Bruce McIver is likely incorrect to note that Lawrence Lisle’s “last and eleventh printing of his bestseller,” Sir Thomas Overbury’s A Wife Now the Widow, “followed shortly upon Howard’s scarcely noticed release from the Tower in 1622.” Bruce McIver, “‘A Wife Now the Widdow’: Lawrence Lisle and the Popularity of the Overburian Characters,” South Atlantic Review, p. 39. It is now evident that Lisle was capitalizing upon public knowledge of Howard and Carr’s release. 119 Jennifer Panek has recently identified the ways in which early modern women’s pleasure was imagined to depend upon sexual shame; Sara D. Luttfring elucidates the paradoxical nature of the real and fictional virginity trials of the era, given that “both require the opening of the virginal female body”; and Gregory M. Schnitzspahn states that “the play undermines patriarchal order by showing that the stability and security of ideal human constructs . . . are always threatened by the disordered, untameable flesh that lurks within.” Jennifer Panek,

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provides audiences with a fictional display of justice, but one derived from the same violent misogyny that fueled allegations of witchcraft six years ago. Howard rather than Carr is once again the subject of satire, thereby displacing public resentment concerning systemic flaws in the law onto this ostensibly nasty woman. The parenthetical comment that “(lawe nothinge cleers)” indicates public resentment concerning the release of Howard and Carr, which is presented as a direct result of a corrupt justice system. However, it is difficult to find any parallels between Carr and DeFlores, as The Changeling is not a political allegory but rather a play that alludes to Howard and the events related to her in the scandal. Middleton and Rowley, from the lens of this particular political allusion,120 enact justice onstage by locking Beatrice-Joanna (Howard) up and killing her, thereby giving a misogynist satisfaction to audience members displeased with the results and aftermath of the trial. Beatrice-Joanna’s final words perhaps show some empathy for Howard, as she asks not only Alsemero to forgive her, but for “all” to do so as well, perhaps implicating the nearby audience in the Cockpit (5.3.178); however, the accompanying line that it is “time to die, when ’tis a shame to live” seems less empathetic and more fulfilling of the justice James failed to dole out as sovereign (5.3.179). Despite the play’s further vilification of Howard and misogynist depictions, there are clear indications that the playwrights are also mocking the ability of patriarchal authorities to govern bodies or the spaces that they inhabit, whether it be a castle or an asylum. The play’s title draws attention to this inability to localize or codify all aspects of a social system. Although a changeling is commonly understood as a human child who is swapped with another by fairies, Regina Buccola has pointed out that it more commonly referred to “one posing or taken to be someone else.”121 While the actions of Antonio, Franciscus, Isabella, De Flores, and Beatrice-Joanna all clearly align with this definition, already rendering the singularity of the title’s article absurd, Alsemero remarks that he himself “changed embraces / With wantonness,” and that Tomazo’s “change is come too: from an ignorant wrath / To knowing friendship” (5.3.200–201, 5.3.202–3).

“Shame and Pleasure in The Changeling,” Renaissance Drama; Sara D. Luttfring, “Bodily Narratives and the Politics of Virginity in The Changeling and the Essex Divorce,” Renaissance Drama, p. 110; Gregory M. Schnitzspahn, “‘What the Act Has Made You’: Approving Virginity in The Changeling,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, p. 79. 120 At this point it is important to clarify that this reading of Howard’s presence in the play is not to say that this is the sole agenda the playwrights had in composing The Changeling, but one avenue of inquiry that can be pursued to offer one angle concerning its initial reception. 121 Regina Buccola, “‘None but Myself Shall Play the Changeling’: Fairies, Fortune-Tellers, and Female Autonomy in The Spanish Gypsy,” Preternature, p. 185.

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Likewise, Isabella calls for her husband Alibius to change for the better, namely from an anxious patriarch to a trusting husband, and he responds that he “will change now / Into a better husband” (5.3.213–14). The implication of Alsemero’s initial mention of “that moon / That last changed on us” (5.3.196–97) seems to be that there are larger forces at work that are also susceptible to change and that Alibius or Vermandero are unable to govern absolutely. The confined spaces these figures govern resemble the intimate and at times stifling atmosphere of the Cockpit (or Phoenix) theater where the play was initially staged. As Mark Hutchings points out, this “intimate space was well suited to the claustrophobic setting and intrigue of” The Changeling,122 but this parallel takes on more topical significance when considered in tandem with Howard’s release from the Tower. As Kristen Deiter points out in her study of the Tower and early modern drama, specifically with reference to this scandal, “James’ use of the Tower as a symbol of his authority served his personal interests so well as to be considered tyrannical.”123 The failed patriarchs in the drama, then, reflect James’s own misjudgments and poor governance, especially as the theatrical space and imagined spaces both correspond with this political dungeon that resonated with James’s own patriarchal authority. The failure of these men in the final scene and the mutability of the political world they oversee therefore reflects the Jacobean state’s own flaws. The changeling is thus not only the play world itself but also the reality it emulates. The failure of the father and a call for new politics resonate with the situation at hand in Jacobean London. A later staging of The Changeling perhaps reveals as much. The play was performed at court before Charles following his return from Spain. The Prince’s unsuccessful efforts to expedite marriage negotiations had resulted instead in an end to James’s effort to establish peace between England and Spain. We have no records of how the performance was received by the prince, but as Mark Hutchings suggests, the play likely took on new meaning in the aftermath of the Spanish Match.124 These failures were coupled with James’s previous failures concerning the Howard and Carr scandal, resulting in a performance that would have mocked approximately ten years of Jacobean policy staged for the incumbent king. This is not to say that Middleton and Rowley or the company who produced it were courting the favor of Charles or attempting to send him clandestine messages; rather, Charles, increasingly

122 Mark Hutchings, “De Flores between the Acts,” Studies in Theatre and Performance, p. 99. 123 Kristen Deiter, The Tower of London in English Renaissance Drama: Icon of Opposition, p. 63. 124 Mark Hutchings, “Thomas Middleton, Chronologer of His Time,” in Thomas Middleton in Context, p. 26.

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portrayed as a militant defender of the Protestant faith, may have taken pleasure in witnessing a play that adumbrated the various foibles of his father’s government. The Witch marks the beginning of Middleton’s satire of Jacobean governance and the scandal that caused the first crack in James’s foundation of immaculate monarchy, but The Changeling bridges this earlier event with the Spanish Match and its gradual implosion with the outbreak of the Thirty Years War. This study therefore turns to another Middleton and Rowley collaboration that sought to counsel not only James but Charles as well in these political affairs.

Chapter 3 “Two ways at once”: The World Tossed at Tennis and the Thirty Years War Introduction Scholars have regarded the Frances Howard affair as the moment when James’s political image began to crumble,1 but it was the Thirty Years War that shattered James’s iconography as peacemaker of Europe. James made considerable efforts to bind European Protestants and Catholics through strategically arranged marriages between these nations and his children, but he refused to admit his plan had flopped when this religious war precipitated the end of his ambition to unite all of Europe in peace. The war effectively reduced him from a little god to a fallible governor whose overly ambitious politics had failed to materialize. As this chapter will show, during the late 1610s, Middleton appears to have oscillated between supporting James’s peacemaking mission and challenging it with keen militant Protestantism. The latter politics were in keeping with Prince Charles’s sentiments on the Thirty Years War, especially because his sister Elizabeth had recently been married to Frederick, the Elector of the Palatinate in the Kingdom of Bohemia. During these years, Charles received considerable attention not only because his initial responses to the Thirty Years War were in keeping with popular Protestant views in London, but also because James’s health and age during these years – in tandem with Charles’s appointment as Prince of Wales in 1616 following his brother Henry’s death – fashioned Charles into a monarch in waiting who might not be waiting much longer to assume the throne. The tension in opinion on the matter of whether or not England would support Frederick in the Thirty Years War led to an association of James with peace and Charles with war. Although this dynamic does not equate to factionalism or civil strife, Londoners saw a division in interests between their current king and future king concerning politics. The division of authority splits the body politic between its current body natural and a future body natural, and these competing politics offer Middleton and Rowley an ideal means to dramatize a parrhēsiastic challenge to both rulers with their masque The World Tossed at Tennis (1620). James Knowles notes that unlike traditional masques, “The World Tossed at Tennis espouses a more interventionalist approach to the Palatine, and differs from Jonsonian form” in which a 1 James Knowles, Politics and Political Culture in the Court Masque, p. 54. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513763-004

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grotesque antimasque is gradually reconciled with a proper masque that restores the order of things.2 Elsewhere, Knowles perceives Middleton’s The Masque of Heroes (1619), which precedes The World Tossed at Tennis, as presenting antimasque “forces” differently, whereby they “are not expelled but absorbed into the proper order.” Knowles likewise speculates that Middleton’s regular spelling of antemasque rather than antimasque distinguishes his approach from Jonson’s, regarding these portions of the masque as a precursor, as ante suggests, rather than in opposition to the masque proper.3 In Masque of Heroes, however, the entire drama is a series of six antemasques before Harmony and Time, within the final fifteen lines, instruct the masquers and ladies in attendance to dance the masque proper. Although the dance of masquers was a customary conclusion, Masque of Heroes has a truncated variation of the masque proper’s establishment of order prior to this audience engagement. Unlike Jonson who presents an idealized final masque that resolves the energies of the antimasque and sycophantically praises the court, Middleton’s technique is to have the audience enact the resolution themselves. These theatrics are not necessarily Middleton’s alone. Middleton not only wrote The World Tossed at Tennis with William Rowley, but Rowley also played Plumporridge in Masque of Heroes. Moreover, as Caroline Baird notes, the first Middleton and Rowley collaboration, Wit at Several Weapons (1613), personifies antemasque and masque in the conversation between the Old Knight and Sir Gregory. Baird remarks that the implication here and elsewhere in the Middleton canon is that the court, particularly James, was more fond of the antimasque, despite its grotesque energies, and that the playwright utilized this attraction in his dramatic works to create an interrogative interpretive framework for his audiences.4 In The World Tossed at Tennis, Middleton and Rowley continue this work by fracturing attention and authority through presenting Charles and James’s competing interests onstage with the Soldier and Scholar. The vehicle they use to counsel the monarchs and convey the political dilemma is ironia. Much like parrhēsia, their irony is couched in a polite yet critical address of recent events and questionable governance, but it allows for an added plurality that moves beyond alternative politics concerning the present governor’s own methods and toward the split attention the country had recently adopted between their present king and heir apparent. The alternative here is made all the more viable therefore because it is the political approach of the

2 Ibid., p. 106. 3 James Knowles, “Introduction to Masque of Heroes,” in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1323. 4 Caroline Baird, “From Court to Playhouse and Back: Middleton’s Appropriation of the Masque,” Early Theatre, pp. 68–70.

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monarch in waiting. The lingering parrhēsiastic contract involves unifying these two governors, whose politics differ markedly, and the parrhēsia the playwrights present them with is an identification of the flaws in their individual rather than collective methods. In applying this political approach to irony, the chapter offers new insights on the often-used phrase Middletonian irony. The rhetorical device has a long history in Middleton studies, but scholarship has ignored the multivalent and political underpinnings of this sole usage in the entire Middleton canon. While the chapter does not presume to mine the entirety of Middleton’s ironic vision, it does provide an interpretation of Middleton’s political irony based upon the playwrights’ definition of the term and acknowledges its place in a collaborative text. The poiesis of ironia in the masque has ramifications for challenging the individual and supreme image James purported by fragmenting sovereignty. Middleton and Rowley’s questioning of singular authority corresponds with questions of masculinity. Pallas, a goddess, embodies the “complete man,” as she couples arms and arts, which furthers this irony, as the rulers are compelled to see idealized masculine leadership as ethereal and feminine. Although Pallas is a construction of the male imagination,5 the implementation of this paragon in order to humble ruling masculine authorities still works to undermine singular approaches to politics and complicates the unified image of the sovereign decider. Whether Middleton and Rowley are advancing James’s or Charles’s agenda is unclear. Middleton’s writings between 1616 and 1620 fluctuate between seeming to advance peace or war depending on the publication, but the chapter identifies a common thematic focus on establishing peace at home while maintaining opposition to religious adversaries abroad. The material circumstances of these dual approaches manifest in racial depictions that promote early white supremacist virtues at home that must fend off adversaries deemed demonic threats associated with blackness, specifically from Spain at this time with the simultaneous beginnings of the Thirty Years War and ongoing marriage negotiations between England and Spain. Despite efforts to counsel their monarch and prince on these matters, Middleton and Rowley failed to see a court performance actualized. They converted the masque into a playhouse drama and later printed it. The chapter perceives this change of venue as capitalizing upon popular interest in the Thirty Years War, and the later printed book’s manufacturers’ interest in the burgeoning print

5 Sue-Ellen Case has illustrated how dramatizations of feminine deities are merely patriarchal constructions that place women on a pedestal. Sue-Ellen Case, “Classic Drag: The Greek Creation of Female Parts,” Theatre Journal, p. 318.

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culture of news that this momentous event precipitated situates The World Tossed at Tennis within this emerging discourse. Nevertheless, the text is still a dramatic work, but one that is palimpsestic in nature, beckoning its reader to interpret it as news, masque, and drama simultaneously. The printed book contains pieces for a court performance that never transpired, for staging in the commercial theater, and for the print marketplace. These multiple media highlight a history of intended and actual reception, thereby indicating that the royal game became public sport. The printed book’s attention to preserving this history of composition and performance further decenters monarchal authority by transforming the parrhēsiastic contract and its opera basilica for James and Charles at Denmark House into political critique of these royal figures for audiences’ and readers’ amusement. Although its initial purpose was never achieved and its intended audience likely never encountered the text, it still therefore succeeded with public audiences and readers. In retaining the courtly features and political irony for Londoners, the royal game of political interpretation can now be played by anyone with access to the text. Middleton and Rowley’s masque-turned-playhousedrama thus encourages the members of the body politic to evaluate the political landscape as though they were its rulers.

Middleton’s Political Irony The rhetorical device that facilitates these various political interpretations in The World Tossed at Tennis is ironia. Middleton’s writing is frequently characterized as ironic, leading several critics to use the phrase Middletonian irony when discussing his work. Irony, however, can range from literal to situational to dramatic, among other variations. What Middletonian irony seems to refer to is instead the playwright’s playful meddling with theatrical conventions or dominant habits of thought. Dorothy Farr sees such irony as central to Middleton’s “equivocal view of life,”6 but the earliest observation seems to belong to R. B. Parker, who states that Middleton’s irony creates a “tension and significance” in his works.7 The Oxford collected works is clearly influenced by this critical history. Paul Yachnin refers to “Middletonian irony” in his edition of Plato’s Cap; Leslie Thomson observes that “Middleton’s conclusions are . . . ironic”; and, for Peter Saccio, Middleton’s A Mad World, My Masters provides grotesque

6 Dorothy Farr, Thomas Middleton and the Drama of Realism, p. 1. 7 R. B. Parker, “Middleton’s Experiments with Comedy and Judgment,” in Jacobean Theatre, p. 187.

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and amoral irony.8 However, only M. T. Jones-Davies and Ton Hoenselaars remark upon the one instance in the entire Middleton canon where irony is actually mentioned.9 This reference is from The World Tossed at Tennis where ironia is defined as when “one eye looks two ways at once” (125). Although this definition, which does not readily align with any from the period, speaks to the tension Parker identifies or the equivocation that Farr perceives, it indicates a more plural rather than necessarily conflicted or bifurcated outlook. The early modern period had various understandings of irony, but the definitions in early modern rhetorical handbooks and early translations of classical rhetorical manuals are consistently associated with mockery or dry humor. Richard Sherry’s early modern treatise on grammatical and rhetorical figures provides one such example when he acknowledges the troubling nature of ironia, which is based upon “dissimulacion, not so muche perceiued by the woordes, as either by pronunciation, or by the behauior of the perso[n], or nature of the thing.”10 Likewise, in his Nicomachean Ethics, which was assigned reading in early modern universities, Aristotle perceives this form of irony as being a derisive correction of “the vulgar.”11 The ironist’s sarcasm is usually comprehended through the delivery or intonation of the author or speaker. Linda Hutcheon regards such elitist condescension that remains in use today as generating “targets” or “victims.”12 The ironist’s inflection in these circumstances erases the division between the literal and the intended meanings, closing the gap and reducing irony to one meaning. This common definition leads Claire Colebrook to the general statement that in medieval and early modern England, irony “was a specific device, not a sensibility or attitude.”13 The greater complexity of Middleton and Rowley’s terminology in The World Tossed at Tennis, however, speaks to what Dilwyn Knox identifies as the competing Socratic irony of the era, which “was motivated by a dislike for ostentation.”14 Rather than the ironist supposing they are superior, the rhetorician using Socratic irony presents a broader range of meaning. The plurality of this kind of irony means that interpretation is less predictable, and this 8 Paul Yachnin, ed., Plato’s Cap, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 197; Leslie Thomson, ed., Anything for a Quiet Life, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1596; Peter Saccio, ed., A Mad World, My Masters, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 416. 9 M. T. Jones-Davies and Ton Hoenselaars, “Introduction to Masque of Cupids,” in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1029. 10 Richard Sherry, A treatise of the figures of grammer and rhetoricke, sig. D2r. 11 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, p. 70. 12 Linda Hutcheon, Irony’s Edge, p. 8. 13 Claire Colebrook, Irony, p. 8. 14 Dilwyn Knox, Ironia, p. 127.

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uncertainty leads to anxieties regarding irony during the period. George Puttenham, for instance, perceives irony as one of several “abuses or rather trespasses in speech.”15 His concern over the trope and others, such as allegory, stems from their “doubleness.”16 Such rhetorical plurality, however, is not always regarded as a negative quality. In a section of his dialogic work, Certaine questions and answeres (1591), entitled “Trueth spoken by contraries,” William Burton offers this optimistic view of irony: Q. Yet God spake by contraries, and is that truth? A. Euery contrarie speech is not sinne. For sometime there is a figure vsed therein, which is called amongst the learned Ironia, and . . . euery ironicall, or contrarie speeche, is not vnlawfull.17

Burton reveals that even the creator, the ultimate voice of truth for early modern people, spoke ironically. Like Socratic irony, this form eschews correction in favor of a mode of rebuttal that decenters authority. This outlook resembles the skepticism that Mathew R. Martin attributes to Middleton’s (and Jonson’s) city comedies wherein a Janus-like vision of English culture on the stage reveals the impossibility of “epistemological fantasies of power.”18 Doubleness or plurality could thus stress the limitations of worldly knowledge, leaving the mysterious uncertainty of irony’s equivocation as the closest approximation of truth that humanity could hope to achieve. It establishes a crossway that points toward work that must be completed and signals that the state is in perpetual renovation rather than perfected by the sovereign’s politics. In the case of The World Tossed at Tennis, however, there are two sovereigns with two political visions, which leads to a parrhēsia that looks “two ways at once” to find something in the middle: peace at home and war abroad. But is this Middletonian irony given that William Rowley collaborated with Middleton on The World Tossed at Tennis? While collaboration can make pinpointing an authorial signature difficult, two things indicate that the definition of ironia found in The World Tossed at Tennis is more likely Middleton’s invention than Rowley’s. Outside of a critical tradition that ascribes an ironic tone to Middleton, there is one other reference to the concatenation “two ways at once” in the early modern dramatic canon, and it is located in a Middleton play.19

15 George Puttenham, The Art of English Poesy, p. 208. 16 Ibid., p. 238. 17 William Burton, Certaine questions and answeres, sig. F4v. 18 Mathew R. Martin, Between Theater and Philosophy, p. 14. 19 It is important to note that this search is limited by what is available through the Text Creation Partnership project associated with Early English Books Online. There could be other texts not yet transcribed that contain this string.

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At the conclusion of More Dissemblers Besides Women, after the Duchess has given Aurelia, previously disguised as a “Gypsy girl,” leave to choose whom she will marry, Aurelia decides to pursue Lactantio, who declines her offer. Realizing that she has made an ill-fated decision between him and the now offended Andrugio, Aurelia laments that she has “undone” herself “[t]wo ways at once” (5.2.153, 5.2.154). The context of this phrase provides a distinctly different meaning from that in The World Tossed at Tennis. Rather than using irony as a way to see the whole political landscape in an evaluative manner that increases the audience’s appreciation for other perspectives, Middleton fractures Aurelia’s identity. Both situations, however, offer problems that need to be resolved and question the present social order by establishing a spectrum of possible identity formations or politics. In the case of The World Tossed at Tennis, the creation of new politics is likened to a tailor fabricating clothing, as it is through the tailor’s needle that the spectator sees two ways at once. The analogy between rhetorical formulation and tailored clothing connects with another text in Middleton’s oeuvre. In his Epistle to The Roaring Girl (1611), his collaboration with Dekker, Middleton describes “[t]he fashion of play-making . . . as the alteration in apparel” (Epistle, 1–2). While such comparisons can be found in Dekker’s work as well as that of other dramatists,20 the Epistle bears Middleton’s signature, showing a penchant for this analogy that is not evident elsewhere in Rowley’s canon. Rowley individually authored two extant plays (A Shoemaker, A Gentleman and All’s Lost for Lust), neither of which refers to the tailor device. Rowley likely agreed and perhaps elaborated upon the definition of ironia, given how Tiffany Stern elucidates that inventors (as the playwrights are credited on the title page) and plotters (as they would have been) were responsible for the vision and structure of the work.21 Middleton, however, can be reasonably credited with this definition of irony. Nevertheless, this chapter still recognizes The World Tossed at Tennis as a Middleton and Rowley work. This is important because irony is something that speaks not only to Middleton’s individual works, and collaborative works have been all too frequently disregarded or read as the result of one author’s genius hindered in some way by the less regarded collaborator. It is therefore important to avoid isolating Middleton as a unique genius and ignoring Rowley’s potential contribution.22 David Nicol’s book on Middleton and Rowley remedies Rowley’s previous neglect and asks readers to appreciate the differences in

20 Anna Bayman, Thomas Dekker and the Culture of Pamphleteering, p. 83. 21 Tiffany Stern, Documents of Performance in Early Modern England, pp. 10–12. 22 The habit to ignore Rowley’s potential contribution is quite common. For instance, Michael Dobson notes that Wit at Several Weapons contains “characteristic Middletonian irony” in “the struggle between the Old Knight and his son,” as there is “no ethical dimension whatsoever.”

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collaboration. It is equally important not to conflate the two and instead to appreciate the tensions between their differing styles; in his study of Middleton and Rowley, he examines “moments at which two personalities and styles rub against each other.”23 Although the present book attends primarily to Middleton, then, this chapter does not discount or ignore Rowley’s influence on the book’s primary subject or pretend that the masque is solely authored by Middleton. Instead of reinforcing an oppositional binary with their ironia, Middleton and Rowley frame the differing politics of the Soldier and the Scholar with the same seasonal metaphor they invoke in the buildings’ dialogue from the masque’s Induction, which was intended for the court performance. The Soldier, for instance, uses seasonal metaphors to describe the purposes of different vocations: When there’s use for me, I shall be brave again, hugged and beloved. We are like winter garments, in the height And hot blood of summer, put off, thrown by For moth’s meat, never so much as thought on Till the drum strikes up storms again[.] (42–47)

The Soldier’s language conveys images of decay and transition that are associated not only with vocations or clothing but also with their wearers. As with the buildings, persons serve a purpose related to a greater cause than their individual concerns, and it lies outside of the scope of their limited, personal purview to determine that their policy is the correct habit. They must instead look to the times, as a tailor would, to ascertain what the right fit is for the body politic.

Michael Dobson, ed., Wit at Several Weapons, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 982. Whether Rowley shared such an outlook already with Middleton or whether he adopted it through Middleton’s influence cannot be determined, but he isolates this trope as distinctly Middletonian and overlooks the potential that this device might be present in Rowley’s work as well. Ethics are certainly absent or at least suspended in Rowley’s All Lost for Lust (1620). For instance, in the final act, the clown Jacques enters upon Lothario, who is about to hang himself. This scenario leads to a macabre dialogue between the two in which Lothario bargains with Jacques (the clown and likely Rowley himself, who played clowns) so that the clown might hang him instead. Eventually Jacques comes to the conclusion that, “well I will hang, but my conscience beares me witnesse, tis not for any good will I beare unto thee, nor for any wrong that I know thou hast committed; but innocently for thy lands, thy leases, they clothes, and thy money.” William Rowley, A tragedy called All’s lost by lust, sig. H3v. Although it is possible that Rowley might have obtained inspiration for scenes like this one through collaborating with Middleton, it is dangerous to occlude his potential influence upon Middleton. 23 David Nicol, Middleton and Rowley, p. 7.

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This lesson carries through into matters of governance given that James adamantly clung to his peacekeeping agenda despite the fact that his daughter’s country was at war with his nation’s rivals.24 The entrenched and intransigent politics stemming from James’s singularly imposed policies do not work when the world is at war, especially when it involves members of the royal family, whom Charles was anxious to support.25 The unsettling and double nature of Middleton and Rowley’s political irony portrays an inchoate world that disavows attempts to solidify politics with any sense of longevity. Looking again to the metaphor of fashion and vestments as a symbol for change, the playwrights have the Scholar describe the method of the “devout weaver” (110). This tailor’s actions resemble the patchwork of Denmark House or Pallas that the playwrights have woven in the Induction and again in the dialogue between the Soldier and the Scholar: . . . by His deep instructive and his mystic tools, The tailor comes to be rhetorical . . . By his needle he understands ironia, That with one eye looks two ways at once[.] (116–18, 124–25)

Denmark House in the Induction and Pallas in the first portion of the masque both offer this ability to see “two ways at once.” C. E. McGee provides a contextual reading of ironia as a “figure of speech in which the literal meaning is opposite to the intended one.”26 As discussed earlier, however, Middleton and Rowley provide a more complex understanding of irony here than the traditional rhetorical usage. In other words, neither way is the better way. Having looked to early understandings of the term ironia or irony, nothing readily equates with Middleton and Rowley’s definition; however, the notion that one “looks two ways at once” is not only found elsewhere in the Middleton

24 Trust on both James and Frederick’s part that their agenda would be supported by the other party seems to have been a mutual folly for both rulers: “The Bohemian project was . . . known to all those who signed the alliance, but while the Elector’s advisers assumed that the English king would help them to put it into action, the King had equally assumed that these remote German follies would never enter into the actual politics of Europe.” C. V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War, p. 52. 25 Charles’s support derived in part from the letters his sister wrote to him, one of which beseeches him “earnestly to move his majesty that now he would assist us.” Peter H. Wilson, The Thirty Years War, p. 53. 26 C. E. McGee, ed., The World Tossed at Tennis, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1415.

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canon but also in the Puritan teachings of Stephen Jerome and Thomas Adams. Jerome’s and Adams’s applications, however, do not coincide with Middleton and Rowley’s use of the phrase, for the Puritan authors dissuade the reader from pursuing such a plural vision. In 1614, Stephen Jerome paraphrased Matthew 6:24 to advance such a polemic, arguing that one could not pursue both God and the world because “one man” cannot “serue two Masters” and “one Riuer, by one streame,” cannot “runne two wayes at once.”27 Middleton and Rowley suggest otherwise – as their masque presents two masters, James and Charles, and two streams, war and peace, suggesting a via media, but one with a sustained via diversa. The playwrights’ art also counters Thomas Adams’s claim that a bifurcated outlook leads to folly for those who have vowed to pursue a Monkish life. Adams states that they cannot “[v]nlesse they haue squint-ey’d soules, that can looke two wayes at once. But I rather think, that like watermen, they looke one way, and rowe another: for hee must needs be strangely squint-ey’d, that can at the same instant fasten one of his lights on the light of glory, & the other on the darknes of iniquitie.”28 But we do not see such a complicated path in The World Tossed at Tennis; instead, the playwrights challenge such Puritan polemics by elucidating plural virtuous pursuits (peaceful scholarship and military duty) as righteous. For Middleton and Rowley, the rower of Adams’s and Jerome’s metaphorical boat is able to maintain a steady course toward virtue, paddling the oar on either side of the boat in order to arrive at that destination and avoid the devil. When read in conjunction with the canon on these politics that precedes it, The World Tossed at Tennis presents this religious binary as one between a demonic Spain associated with blackness and a virtuous England connected with whiteness. According to Middleton and Rowley’s white supremacist rhetoric, then, Charles’s and James’s independent missions can be pursued simultaneously as long as they both agree to prioritize their homeland in a xenophobic fashion.

War, Peace, White Supremacy, and Middleton, 1616–1620 The contentious racial understanding of English and Spanish relations develops over the course of four years of collaboration and undulating politics that focus on the tensions at home and abroad. Middleton’s earlier collaborations

27 Stephen Jerome, Moses his sight of Canaan with Simeon his dying-song, p. 259. 28 Thomas Adams, The happines of the church, p. 291.

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with Rowley turn to the topic of civil strife, specifically dueling. James had issued proclamations condemning dueling,29 but the practice nevertheless persisted. Wit at Several Weapons demonstrates their early interest in presenting and resolving civil conflicts. The pair’s focus on staging remedies to dueling eventually benefited from courtly actions, especially since James had to repeat his efforts to regulate the use of weapons in civil disputes. Their later venture on this topic, A Fair Quarrel, might have been, as David Nicol surmises, engineered to accord with the king’s politics.30 This play was also one in a series of dramas that Middleton and Rowley wrote for Charles’s players. Following his coronation as Prince of Wales, Charles launched a substantial theatrical season, leading to considerable business for his new company, The Prince’s Men. Middleton and Rowley wrote A Fair Quarrel (1616) shortly after Charles’s appointment as well as The Old Law (1619) and The World Tossed at Tennis (1620) in later years.31 Regardless of whether or not Charles directed the playwrights to compose a play based upon the same subject matter as Wit at Several Weapons, Middleton and Rowley entertained audiences at court and in the city with a similar narrative. Although the topic might have been tired by this point, Suzanne Gossett notes that roaring boys were particularly troublesome at the time,32 and the play’s roaring school plot involving Chough and Trimtram addresses this other form of aggressive masculinity. Such boisterous masculine civil misconduct accompanied by plots referencing weaponry and dueling would have made the play highly topical and would cater to James’s politics. A Fair Quarrel concerns itself with honor, but reveals the fragile masculinity involved in the codes of dueling men devise. As Anita Pacheco observes, women’s honor is equally fragile, given that virginity is likened in the play to a “cupboard of glasses” (1.1.8).33 The indication here seems to be that true honor exists not in

29 The topical proclamation from 1613, dated 1612 in the printed copy, likely influenced Wit at Several Weapons. James decreed that “no person or persons shall beare or carry, about him or them,” any “Dagges, Pistols, or other like short Gunnes, by what name so ever they be, or may bee called or knowen.” James I, A Proclamation against the vse of Pocket-Dags, sig. A1r. 30 David Nicol, Middleton and Rowley, p. 109. 31 Middleton also wrote Civitatis Amor for Charles’s coronation as Prince of Wales. 32 Suzanne Gossett, “Works Included in This Edition,” in Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, p. 399. 33 Anita Pacheco, “‘A mere cupboard of glasses’,” English Literary Renaissance, p. 458. This reference may serve as an earlier reference point for Alsemero’s cabinet of glasses that tests women’s virginity in The Changeling. This concatenation would later appear not only in The Changeling, but also Christopher Massey’s sermon Microcosmography, which draws upon biblical verse in order to conclude that all earthly possessions are like “a cupboard of glasses,” and that all the world is glass. Christopher Massey, Microcosmography, sig. C1r.

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worldly representations of honor – be they chastity or dueling – but rather in one’s spiritual conduct. In these ways the playwrights uphold James’s critique of the civic masculinities of their day. When the playwrights turn the glass on their monarch and prince, however, things begin to change, especially after 1616 with the end of the Howard scandal and James’s declining health. David Nicol explains that The Old Law emerges after a time when James was extremely ill and Charles was in position to take the throne.34 This event precipitated Charles to fashion himself and prompted others to envision the prince as an encroaching successor, both at this interval and in future years. The Old Law seems to function as an apology for Charles’s ambitions to rule, as James did recover, and the play dramatizes a speculative narrative that Jeffrey Masten has likened to modern euthanasia.35 The notion that James had reached his expiry date and Charles was set to succeed certainly influences the sensitive issues in the play that imagine a world in which the old are executed if they have not died before a certain age. By the time the playwrights composed The World Tossed at Tennis, then, they were already well versed in issues of martial masculinity and social harmony, but they had developed an eye not only to the king’s politics but those of the young prince and encroaching monarch, causing their drama to look “two ways at once.” Middleton’s own writings signal an ongoing oscillation in interest between pacifist and military masculinities. Although it is easy to dismiss this wavering back and forth by attributing it to opportunism and possibly patronage, it is worthwhile to examine what remains constant at the core of this body of work, regardless of what the primary motivation is. The aforementioned collaborations with Rowley show a dislike for conflict at home despite playing upon audiences’ desire to witness quarreling or to read about it. The title page to A Fair Quarrel, for example, includes an engraving of two men dueling. This image suggests that this was the main attraction for book buyers and previous audience members, but its absurd presentation of the combat can also be said to dissuade its reader from the activity and instead stress its message of civic peace.36 When it comes to matters abroad, however, Middleton seems less eager to advance James’s irenic mission. In The Triumphs of Honour and Industry (1617),

34 David Nicol, Middleton and Rowley, pp. 138–40. 35 Jeffrey Masten, ed., An/The Old Law, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1331. 36 John Astington remarks that the image differs significantly from the more elegantly crafted engraving for The Roaring Girl, perceiving that the image on the title page of A Fair Quarrel conveys “phantasmagoric effects of distorted proportions and stiff postures,” as though the art “were possibly originally meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek.” John Astington, “Visual Texts,” in Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, p. 233.

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a mayoral show for the Grocer George Bolles, Middleton has a “Spaniard” utter words “in zeal as virtuous as he” (127), which the chaplain to the Venetian embassy in London Orazio Busino’s account reveals to have been an ironic mockery of the Spanish: “a Spaniard was perfectly impersonated, the gestures of his nation expertly mimicked . . . He was continually blowing kisses to the onlookers; but to the Spanish Ambassador, who was a short distance from us, he did it to such a superlative degree that the entire crowd roared with laughter.”37 The animosity toward the Spanish that Busino’s account describes in greater detail earlier is here dramatized through the actor’s mockery of the Spanish Ambassador, Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, or Count Gondomar.38 While Middleton is certainly preoccupied with establishing peace at home, he is not necessarily concerned with upholding peace abroad, especially after Sarmiento had initiated discussions about the Spanish Match around this time. The exception to this statement is, of course, The Peacemaker (1618), a work that overtly draws inspiration from James’s motto “Beati pacifici” or blessed are the peacemakers, which is taken from Solomon, as it quotes this phrase several times at the outset (64, 70, 85, 104, 118). The emphasis, however, seems to be on London and England again (51–56, 113–18). When Spain is mentioned, the peace Middleton establishes is illogical: Spain, that great and long-lasting opposite, betwixt whom and England the ocean ran with blood not many years before, nor ever truced her crimson effusion: their merchants on either side trafficked in blood, their Indian ingots brought home in blood (a commerce too cruel for Christian kingdoms), yet now shake hands in friendly amity and speak our blessing with us, Beati pacifici. (86–92)

As Paul Mulholland indicates in his edition of the text, the unity between nations with “yet now shake hands” refers to the treaty James made with Spain in 1604.39 Middleton’s reference only to Spain and immediately beforehand to Ireland confirms this observation, as both of these countries had been ostensibly united in “perfect Amitie” with England, Scotland, and France through this peace treaty, but in reality England was still experiencing tensions with these countries.40 The statement thus seems insincere. This agreement had been made fourteen years earlier to the printing of The Peacemaker and was clearly

37 Orazio Busino, “Orazio Busino’s Account,” in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1269. 38 Ibid., p. 1266. 39 Paul Mulholland, ed. The Peacemaker, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1308. 40 James I, Articles of peace, entercourse, and commerce concluded in the names of the most high and mighty kings, and princes Iames by the grace of God, King of Britaine, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith, &c. and Philip the third, sig. B1r.

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not the dominant opinion of the city, lending an irony to the immediacy of “now,” and Middleton’s elaborate reminder of Spain as England’s “great and long-lasting opposite” more subtly perpetuates the xenophobia his mayoral show of the previous year blatantly displayed. Even when discussing discord in London, Middleton’s description gestures toward an ironic and inevitably imperfect body politic. As Susan Dwyer Amussen notes, The Peacemaker is not without its ironies, especially given its substantial dedication to matters of drunkenness – a vice its king notoriously exhibited.41 These references could serve as subtle indications that James himself was susceptible to “the ringleader” of the “impious and turbulent peacebreakers,” regardless of whether or not this spoke as well to a common epidemic in London’s taverns (247, 295). The result of these lingering tensions in the body politic produces a landscape that cannot attain the ideal that James projects onto it. Middleton emphasizes this concern though The Peacemaker’s suggestion that such an aim is difficult to establish in London and England, let alone the wider continent that James sought to govern harmoniously in peace. The monarch’s ambition is therefore overzealous, for as James Doelman aptly puts it, “Middleton does not anticipate the kingdom of God on earth; for him the peaceful kingdom will be less than a perfect one. There will still be envy, schism, law, drunkenness, and pride.”42 Despite consistently reiterating James’s mantra, The Peacemaker remains a work that reveals the unlikelihood and limitations of this ambition even while it promotes this agenda as righteous. Between The Peacemaker and The World Tossed at Tennis, Middleton individually composed another masque that was performed for its intended audience, and while the tensions between the English and Spanish nations were present in the earlier text, it is at this point that they manifest in a racialized manner onstage. Like the previous works discussed, military conquest informs this piece’s subject matter, but The Masque of Heroes establishes a white supremacist message that portrays the English as inhabiting a virtuous, white kingdom. Kim F. Hall regards white supremacy as an apt term to use when speaking about the hierarchies early modern habits of thought racialized. In these power dynamics, virtue is almost always aligned with whiteness, whereas blackness is frequently demonized.43 James’s peacemaking ambitions during

41 Susan Dwyer Amussen, “Introduction to The Peacemaker,” in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1303. 42 James Doelman, King James and the Religious Culture of England, p. 92. 43 Hall draws upon bell hooks to show the ways in which “white supremacy” may be the best term for discussing race in early modern studies. Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness, pp. 265–66. However, I am also inclined to agree with Hall’s point that just because the word “race” did

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this time lead increasingly to an alignment of whiteness with England in Middleton’s works, beginning here. Hall’s remarks on the paradoxical nature of James’s unifying aim come to bear in these instances where a disdain for the Spanish results in increased Protestant animosity and displeasure with the king’s plan.44 This white supremacy materializes in Middleton’s first masque of the Thirty Years War. The underlying subject matter of Masque of Heroes (1619) was the beginnings of the Thirty Years War and resentment concerning the burgeoning marriage negotiations between England and Spain. The Spanish Match’s embroilment in the early stages of the religious war between Catholic Spain and the Protestant Kingdom of Bohemia meant that Londoners were particularly prone to exhibit hatred toward the Spanish, as this country was perceived as the greatest threat to their faith. However, England’s anxiety and animosity was two-fold, for the country had recently been betrothed symbolically to Bohemia, through Princess Elizabeth’s actual marriage to Frederick. In the early years of the Thirty Years War, the union of the two kingdoms generated fervent militant Protestantism. There was a general desire to protect English royalty and uphold the Protestant faith, and the fact that the most powerful Catholic adversary was Spain consequently intensified matters. The Masque of Heroes thus reveals a developing interest in military masculinity and the Thirty Years War that challenges James’s singular political lens, but also perpetuates xenophobia. As James Knowles indicates, its performance at the Inns of Court by Prince Charles’ Men suggests an affiliation with militant Protestantism given this space’s and company’s associations with the Thirty Years War at the time.45 The focus on the gentleman class that this space establishes offers further insights on the xenophobic attitudes of the time. As previously mentioned, Theodore K. Rabb notes that Jacobean gentlemen sought to uphold supposed core English values in the midst of a turbulent era, which resulted in xenophobic and parochial attitudes.46 The conservative aspirations of gentlemen desiring stability in mutable and rapidly changing times leads to an insular focus on England that is falsely characterized by whiteness. not mean then what it means now it “does not make early modern English culture (or Shakespeare) race-neutral.” Ibid., p. 261. Hall offers further historical reasoning for her use of race and white supremacy earlier in her book. Ibid., pp. 3–4. 44 Hall’s point is that James’s colonial mission of unity ignores the “highly contested” relations that result from these unions and trade relations. Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness, p. 124. While this ambition occludes difference, it simultaneously produces a different kind of white supremacy through the fervent opposition to peace that results from Protestants who dislike the Spanish. 45 James Knowles, ed., Masque of Heroes, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1322. 46 Theodore K. Rabb, Jacobean Gentleman, pp. 59–60.

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The attention paid to motion at home rather than abroad in the masque therefore has consequences for a proto-nationalist agenda that takes on racialized material circumstances in its final antemasque’s overt allegory. Middleton’s depiction of Good Days, Bad Days, and Indifferent Days, played by eight boy actors in a drama concerning white male worthies or heroes for the entertainment of aristocratic white ladies, signals an early oppositional and white supremacist rhetoric. In the case of Masque of Heroes, Middleton does not sanction the middle ground portrayed by Indifferent Days, who are “hypocritical, parti-coloured varlets, / That play o’ both hands” (264–65). Unlike Pallas, an ostensibly white woman (played by a boy actor as well) who paradoxically unites the Scholar’s and Soldier’s, or James’s and Charles’s, aims, the Indifferent Days are portraits of mixed loyalties and colors that signal fears of the resultant miscegenation between the English and Spanish kingdoms.47 The factional visual rhetoric of this drama thus foreshadows the religious polarity audiences witnessed in performances of The World Tossed at Tennis. The masque’s title page aligns blackness with the Devil, who, along with Deceit, is positioned as an outsider to the group commanding the World and an invasive threat (Figure 3.1).48 In The Masque of Heroes, this hierarchy is more explicit. Harmony commands the worthies to obey their English qualities and whiteness during the dance of the nine worthies or heroes. The importance of this message is conveyed through the repetition of the following verse twice in the text: Move on, move on, be still the same, You beauteous sons of brightness, You add to honour, spirit and flame, To virtue, grace and whiteness. (307–10, 319–22)

47 Although early modern people would not be familiar with the term miscegenation, their conceptualization of their phobia concerning the union of their Prince and Spain materialized on the stage as an unwanted sexual bond. As Michelle O’Callaghan indicates, “the metaphor of the permeable body was a recurrent feature of anti-Spanish propaganda in the 1620s.” Michelle O’Callaghan, Thomas Middleton: Renaissance Dramatist, p. 157. The eventual manifestation of this in Middleton’s drama is the White Queen’s Pawn being threatened by the Black Bishop’s Pawn in A Game at Chess, which will be discussed in chapter 4, but we see earlier antecedents after the beginnings of the Thirty Years War. In the case of the Indifferent Days of Masque of Heroes, these anxieties represent an early form of resistance to miscegenation, indicating that similar sentiments were expressed regardless of whether or not the word existed. 48 The motion of the tennis match likewise remains within the English body politic, excluding the black Devil and his associate Deceit. Mark Kaethler, “Against Opposition (at Home),” in Games and Game-Playing, p. 214.

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Figure 3.1: Title page of A Courtly Masque: the Device called, The World Tossed at Tennis, 1620. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland. Photo: National Library of Scotland.

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The emphasis on motion and fluidity is combined with a requirement that they “be still the same,” and the description of the English dancers as “sons of brightness” who add “whiteness” to “virtue” establishes the white supremacy that was cemented in opposition to the Spanish as a result of both the Spanish Match and the Thirty Years War. Unlike the white boys donning blackface as Bad Days or the Indifferent Days with “faces seamed with that parti-colour” (265), the English dancers are likened to the white Good Days. The masque therefore imbues the dancers with a fairness that speaks metaphorically to the religious spiritual war with white as virtue and black “noted . . . for badness” (259), but also associates their physical whiteness with this virtue, offering an early indication that those who are not perceived as white find themselves on the other half of the binary. With respect to the Spanish Match, which was ongoing at this time, the material conditions of performance thus communicate a xenophobia concerning miscegenation. Hall observes in her discussion of “‘Mixed’ marriages” and the Jacobean court that these unions represent “signs of blackness.”49 In applying this conceit to Masque of Heroes, we can see that Middleton portrays the Indifferent Days as corrupted and contaminated variations of the Good Days, who remain the only viable and virtuous signifier on his stage. Across all these works perpetual motion is encouraged at home, but this dynamic, fluid energy is erased in favor of opposition when politics extend beyond the English kingdom. Although Middleton portrays this spiritualized national polarity more subtly in The Peacemaker, his perseverance toward stasis in the midst of fluidity remains constant through both works. At the conclusion of The Peacemaker, Middleton offers a visual rhetoric wherein Mount Ebal is on the left column and Mount Gerizim is on the right column, the former associated with various sins, including “Pride” to “Revenge” and the latter corresponding with “Peace” but also “Mercy” and other virtuous qualities (Figure 3.2). Between these pillars of words is inscribed the following text: “Here we have our choice, and we are ever going on in this passage. O let us pass by Gerizim, the Mount of Blessings, the right hand and the right hill. Turn thy back to Ebal, but let none of her curses fall upon thee” (738–45). The reader remains “ever” in “this passage” between the mountains, allowing the plea “O let us pass by Gerizim” to indicate a prayer for future blessedness while encouraging a vigilance to the present reader to direct oneself away from “Ebal” but remain aware that “her curses” could still fall upon the reader. Middleton’s continued attention to spiritual vigilance in a changing world is therefore located across these texts, but whether a middle ground is commended or not depends upon whether it means fully embracing

49 Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness, p. 125.

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Figure 3.2: Taken from Thomas Middleton’s Peace-maker. Generously provided by the John Henry Wrenn Library, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. Shelfmark: Wh J231 618p WRE.

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the other half of that binary. If it is an inevitable acceptance that one cannot achieve spiritual purity or Gerizim in this earthly life, then that means acknowledging that one remains susceptible to Ebal; if it is a civil tension between two competing political agendas, then they will coalesce, however paradoxically; but if it represents a religious or military conflict between countries of opposing religions, then one must choose a side. These factions are presented not only as ideologies, but also materialize through racial representations of white actors’ bodies. The World Tossed at Tennis portrays all three of these trajectories through its depiction of English forces putting aside their competing political agendas and instead uniting against the title page’s black Devil and his companion Deceit, whom they must avoid. The depiction of both parties as external agents to the collective enterprise surrounding the world is coupled with the engraving’s paralleling of Deceit’s hand and arm with the Devil’s phallus, thereby rendering this invasive force sexual as well (Figure 3.1). In the midst of this complicated union and reinforced polarity is an underlying suggestion that the World cannot be wielded perfectly. The elaborate stage property of the World is humorous. No one should be able to hold it, as anyone can only be within the world rather than outside of it, and its movement from one party to the next indicates that local government relies upon shared power while nevertheless aiming for temporary stability. Participation rather than panacea appears to be the drama’s suggestion, but in so doing it produces politics of exclusion and supremacy. Likewise, it is important to note that even though the emphasis is on collectivity, the playwrights nevertheless purport an ideal and complete (and thus individual) model of governance.

The World Tossed at Tennis as Intended Performance Prior to or after The World Tossed at Tennis’s publication, Middleton names the ideal man that Pallas speaks of in her speech to the Soldier and Scholar. Unlike these two figures, who represent Charles and James, Lord Mayor and Lord General William Cokayne, whom Pallas speaks to in The Honourable Entertainments (1620), does embody the complete man. Despite being loathed by various Londoners for the failed Cokayne project, Middleton glorifies Cokayne both because of the patronage he received from the Skinners for his mayoral show The Triumphs of Love and Antiquity (1619) and because of Cokayne’s dual associations with civic governance and civic militia. The mayoral show confirms readings of The Peacemaker’s depiction of the Spanish since Middleton seems to omit them deliberately from his catalog of nations in Orpheus’s speech (189–92). He also depicts Cokayne as wedded to the city, much as a monarch would be (437–45).

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Such prowess is augmented in the fourth of Middleton’s Honourable Entertainments, performed shortly after The World Tossed at Tennis, wherein Pallas speaks to Cokayne. She bears his heraldic emblem of a cock and claims that he unites both militarism and governance, combining “war and peace” as “Fieldgeneral and city-magistrate” (15, 18). As Anthony Parr aptly asserts, Middleton exaggerates Cokayne’s “authority over the city militia,” and his descriptions in the celebrations are due to “his own pragmatic attitude to self-betterment,”50 but when read in tandem with The World Tossed at Tennis, Middleton indicates here that Cokayne, the city’s mayor, is a better man and governor than England’s king or prince. Cokayne’s legacy brings itself to bear on the printed book of The World Tossed at Tennis, which includes a dedication from Middleton to Cokayne’s daughter and newfound son-in-law. In his dedication, Middleton presents the text to Charles Howard and Mary Effingham as a belated wedding gift. While the connections to Cokayne and militarism are obvious with his daughter, they are equally present with his new son-in-law. Howard’s familial legacy involves successfully protecting England against Spanish invasion. His father “secured his renown by leading the English forces against the Spanish Armada in 1588 and at the capture of Cadiz in 1596.”51 Middleton seems to dedicate his and Rowley’s work to the child of a great military leader who was victorious in battles against the Spanish and that of a martial and mayoral man, after its failure to gain a royal audience: To whom more properly may art prefer Works of this nature, which are high and rare, Fit to delight a prince’s eye and ear, Than to the hands of such a worthy pair? (7–10)

As McGee notes, the masque was printed in “July 1620” and the couple’s marriage had taken place on “22 April 1620.”52 The gap between these events makes the dedication seem odd, but Middleton’s characterization of Charles as “truly noble” and Mary as “virtuous and worthy” would seem to make them exemplary figures (1, 2). The appositive clarification that the piece is a masque

50 Anthony Parr, ed., Honourable Entertainments and An Invention, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1432. 51 C. E. McGee, ed., The World Tossed at Tennis, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1409. 52 C. E. McGee, “Works Included in This Edition,” in Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, p. 409.

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that was “[f]it to delight a prince’s eye and ear” seems odd, however, given that it is being dedicated not to royalty but to nobility. While the dedication was likely intended as part of Middleton’s ongoing commitment to his regular patron, the inclusion nevertheless unsettles royal claims to centrality by remarking that the masque is better suited to a noble rather than a royal readership by making it worthy of their patronage instead. As with the Honourable Entertainments, then, this text indicates that figures other than the reader’s king or prince are capable of exemplifying the kind of masculine governance required of the English state. Given the text’s capacity to evoke political ideas contrary to the Crown’s aim and its potential to critique Londoners’ rulers, Middleton and Rowley delicately present their ironia. The playwrights take special care to stress the powerless quality of the text because it has this subversive potential to elicit political awareness even if it does not promulgate a particular agenda. Simplicity (or Rowley) frames the work for the reader as a moderate piece, but one with suggestive critical undertones. The clown’s description of The World Tossed at Tennis oscillates between extremities in order to develop a middle ground (Epistle, 10–22).53 The Epistle frames an ironic interpretive experience that must be described as harmless in order to avoid provoking ire or censorship. The lessons that James and Charles would have observed are transferred not only to playgoers but also to readers. Middleton and Rowley attempt to prompt a sense of duty when they warn them “that Deceit is entering upon you (whom I pray you have a care to avoid)” (Epistle, 28–29). Readers are left to imagine the same opera basilica that were intended for James and Charles and were actually staged for public audiences (of which they might have been part), but the implications remain the same for them as they were for their royalty: there is interpretive work to be done. Readers are therefore invited into the political dramatic framework that unfolds for them in their imagination, cultivating a sense of duty and political critique. This work thus contributes to national unrest regarding the onset of the Thirty Years War. Printed news texts circulated through London in the form of ballads and coronatos by this time,54 and The World Tossed at Tennis appears to have benefited from this burgeoning market. As C. E. McGee identifies, although Tennis’s title page indicates that it was printed by Edward Wright and

53 David Nicol remarks upon Rowley’s propensity to play clowns as well as the reputation he gained for this role. David Nicol, “The Stage Persona of William Rowley, Jacobean Clown,” Cahiers Élisabéthains, p. 23. Nora Johnson states that “Simplicity the clown” was “Rowley’s part.” Nora Johnson, The Actor as Playwright in Early Modern Drama, p. 152. As aforementioned, in Middleton’s Masque of Heroes in the previous year, Rowley played Plumporridge. 54 Stephen Wittek, The Media Players, p. 3.

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sold by the bookseller George Purslowe, the Stationers’ Register lists John Trundle as involved in this venture as well. Drawing upon R. B. McKerrow, McGee notes that Trundle had a vested interest in the more topical and secular literature whereas Purslowe was more interested in religious literature, and Trundle became increasingly interested in news-books.55 A later piece Trundle sold, for instance, entitled The Post of Ware: With a Packet full of strange Newes out of diuers Countries (1622) encourages Londoners to undertake military action in order to avoid “Doomes-day” and mentions that “Truth doth abound, In euery Taylors Shop to bee found.”56 The general call to arms and the religious imagery of a vague impending threat resembles that found in Tennis, as neither printed work would have been overt in its politics. The reference to the tailor must also give one pause, as it explains the association of ironia with the tailor, especially when paired with Ben Jonson’s The Staple of News (1626) in which the tailor Fashioner in the opening scene converses about news with the other men. Later in scene two, Cymbal refers to “tailors’ news” as well (1.5.10), indicating a general propensity that the 1622 printed news-book also directs our attention to in its reference to a tailor’s shop as a common place for such discussions.57 The Post of Ware contributed to this oral culture, as the title suggests it was set to “a pleasant new tune” as a ballad. The public discourse The World Tossed at Tennis profited from offers us a better means to understand its hypothetical tailor’s ironia. As the rhetoricians of the device, Middleton and Rowley thus present themselves as tailors soliciting news to their royalty, playgoers, and book buyers. The printed text surreptitiously situates itself in the emerging print culture of news through depicting Londoners’ rulers’ politics concerning the Thirty Years War, but it remains a masque. These works, however, were nevertheless purchased regularly by book buyers who were preoccupied with presentations for royal figures. As Lauren Shohet has observed, masques were a “bi-medial” enterprise that frequently disrupted the private and elitist nature of the performance by printing it for a public market.58 Middleton and Rowley’s work continues in this vein; however, it is uniquely tri-medial, given that it also transmuted into a play, and beckons to be interpreted in this fashion. The dedication and epistle

55 C. E. McGee, “The World Tossed at Tennis,” in Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, p. 667. 56 The post of vvare with a packet full of strange newes of diuers countries, sig. A1r. 57 Ben Jonson, The Staple of News. Jayne E. E. Boys likewise explains that news “penetrated into different social groups, following visitors back to the countries and reaching down the social scale.” Jayne E. E. Boys, London’s News Press and the Thirty Years War, p. 155. 58 Lauren Shohet, “The Masque in/as Print,” in The Book of the Play, p. 177.

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are clearly meant for the print publication, but the prologue and epilogue were designed for the playhouse rather than the court. Likewise, the inclusion of the Induction involving a dialogue between James’s and Charles’s properties St. James’s, Richmond, and Denmark House would not have been performed in a playhouse. The Induction would make no sense in this venue given that it was written for the originally intended location, Denmark House, and contains speech directed specifically to the king and prince. The remaining dramatic action was intended for performance at court as well, but it would have been staged recently in London at a commercial playhouse – as is indicated by Simplicity in the epistle. Given this patchwork of courtly masque, book, and playhouse drama, the reader is invited to imagine each manifestation, thereby witnessing the royal game of The World Tossed at Tennis that was intended as well as the transition of that royal game to the reader’s commercial playhouse and then into their own hands. The playwrights thus emphasize the manner by which their text not only transported the private masque into the public market, but also its transmutation of courtly performance into playhouse drama. All of these changes make the interpretation of political matters that were initially intended for regal figures into a feeling of political agency for readers, who can assume the interpretive position their king and prince were supposed to have. The epistle directs the reader by indicating that the masque was intended for a royal night, but the entertainment found its way into the playhouse. Because of this guidance, the reader is able to ascertain that the Induction is intended for James and Charles at Denmark House, where The World Tossed at Tennis was supposed to have been performed. This segment prepares the courtly audience for the similar dramatic dynamic that will follow with Pallas, the Soldier, and the Scholar. After some dramatic action entailing the anxiety of Richmond and St. James’s, as they believe they will be abandoned now with the refurbished Denmark House, the personified Denmark House enters to reassure them that they will each have their time and place according to the seasons. Following this assuagement, Denmark House addresses James: . . . first, to you, my royal royal’st guest, And I could wish your banquet were a feast; Howe’er, your welcome is most bounteous, Which, I beseech you, take as gracious. (Induction, 72–75)

Denmark House repeatedly refers to James as the prime figure, and she gives welcome mainly to James, who is given leave to direct her in all things. However, the speech divides praise between James and Charles. The repetition in her praise of James as “royal royal’st” indicates the need to stress James’s

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greater role, albeit almost absurdly, in order to distinguish which royal figure she addresses. This remark subtly undermines James’s authority. Denmark signals a competitive tension for power between the two royalties, which will predominate in the masque’s plot. She augments the double focus further by welcoming Charles as her “owner, master, and . . . lord” only to emphasize their united legacy: That I shall able be to keep your names Unto eternity. Denmark House shall keep Her high name now till time doth fall asleep And be no more. (Induction, 89–92)

However, the playwrights then tactfully have Demark House announce her allegiance primarily to James: Meantime, welcome, welcome, Heartily welcome! – but chiefly you, great sir, Whate’er lies in my power, command me all, As freely as you were at your Whitehall. (Induction, 92–95)

The recent events of James’s illness and the possible expedition of Charles’s rise to the throne likely prompted this fluctuation in attention.59 These events more than likely contributed to Middleton and Rowley’s decision to counsel plural governors, thereby disrupting a unified or central authority.60 For the reader, this disruptive dramatic dynamic allows them to entertain different political vantage points before topical issues even appear onstage. The reader is likewise able to draw connections between the way in which Denmark House absolves the problems and concerns that Richmond and St. James’s have and Pallas’s lessening of the tensions between the Soldier and the Scholar. In both circumstances, the seasons shape and govern the habits of persons and the purposes of the buildings or vocations. This humbling technique displays a larger providential force at work beyond the earthly authorities, and it offers a mutable outlook on governance that challenges James’s intransigent

59 David Nicol, Middleton and Rowley, p. 139. 60 Their action, however, is not entirely unique. Martin Butler notes that Jonson accomplishes a similar double effect in his masque Oberon (1611), given the competition for attention between Prince Henry and James that Jonson stages. Martin Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture, p. 188.

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model.61 As readers are made aware that their king and prince are meant to watch an entertainment within a larger space that speaks to them, they are able to draw connections between this peacekeeping monarch and the Scholar and between the militant Protestant prince and the Soldier, both of whom also watch an entertainment within the masque. The metatheatrical instructional approach for Charles and James thus finds a place for the reader who is accustomed to reading printed masques but also recently versed in digesting news and establishing opinions on political matters. The reader is situated in the point of view of the courtly audience, but also assumes superiority by imagining themselves watching James and Charles onstage as pupils with the Scholar and Soldier, respectively.

The World Tossed at Tennis Performed Unlike other printed courtly masques, however, the unfortunate reality is that Middleton and Rowley’s masque was never staged. There is no conclusive evidence for why it was not performed as planned, but it was played in the commercial theater. The masque-turned-playhouse-drama offers audiences an experience akin to what Paul Yachnin calls populuxe theater,62 which David Nicol summarizes with respect to The World Tossed at Tennis as a performance that “gives a lower-class audience the feeling of having experienced the lifestyle of aristocrats.”63 By bringing the masque into the commercial theater, the playwrights imbued the space with the prestige and responsibility that is associated with the court, and in so doing the playwrights and the acting company

61 In a sense, the dramatic action’s focus on continual motion and likening this to the natural changes of seasons, draws attention to Foucault’s claim that power is always in motion and that trenchant demands for one’s conception of peace ignore the fact that the world does not stay still and entails internal struggles, namely “peace itself is coded war.” Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”, p. 51. 62 Yachnin defines “populuxe theatre” as a theatrical moment wherein audiences take pleasure in experiencing the trends of the court in the theater, as when a masque appears in a play like Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy or Your Five Gallants. These moments “afforded the cultural consumers of Shakespeare’s time an opportunity to play at being their social ‘betters’ and a limited mastery of the system of social rank.” Paul Yachnin, “The Populuxe Theatre,” in The Culture of Playgoing in Shakespeare’s England, p. 41. As with Middleton’s masques in The Revenger’s Tragedy, Your Five Gallants, Women Beware Women, and other dramas, however, the circumstances mock the courtly custom and render the populuxe drama into a critical rather than merely pleasant entertainment. 63 David Nicol, Middleton and Rowley, 136.

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transformed not only their masque into a play, but their commercial and popular theater into an esteemed and regal space. The specific theater at which the audience saw the play is uncertain, but the remaining evidence points toward the Swan. It is clear from the Stationers’ Register that The World Tossed at Tennis was performed at the Prince’s Arms. E. K. Chambers and G. E. Bentley, turning to Rendle and Lawrence respectively, provide two possible candidates for the location, the Swan or the carriers’ inn in Leadenhall Street.64 In a later volume of his survey, however, Bentley presents Lawrence’s claim as highly unlikely; he supports W. W. Greg’s suggestion that it is a reference to the Swan, which aligns with that of Rendle and later Chambers.65 Chambers’s other historical inquiries into the Swan theater reveal that the playhouse was being used at around the time that The World Tossed at Tennis would have been performed for the public: “The accounts of the overseers show one more payment from the ‘players’ in 1621, which perhaps supports the statement contained in one of Malone’s notes from Sir Henry Herbert’s office-book, that after 1620 the Swan was ‘used occasionally for the exhibition of prize-fighters’.”66 Regardless of whether or not Malone is correct that prizefighters were exhibited on the Swan’s grounds, the oppositional energies of war and peace most likely found a place on its stage, leading to the probable conclusion that the Swan was the theater “on the Bankside of Helicon” to which Simplicity refers in the epistle (Epistle, 11). Even if the irony did not manage to serve its instructional purpose for royalty, then, it at least entertained the public. Moving The World Tossed at Tennis to the Swan would have offered Middleton and Rowley some opportunities to envision the drama’s staging anew. Middleton is the only playwright of the era known with absolute certainty to have composed an extant play for the Swan, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, and although Andrew Gurr notes that there are some suspicions concerning the accuracy of Johannes De Witt’s notorious drawing of the Swan,67 Middleton’s play confirms that the playhouse’s double doors are more than likely accurate despite the typical three-door theater structure, wherein one operated as a discovery space.68 The double doors would have functioned well to convey the divided attention between authorities as well as ironia’s ability to make an eye look “two ways at once.” For the transition from the first portion of the masque involving the

64 E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, vol. 2, p. 414, note 1; G. E. Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, vol. 1, p. 201, note 2. 65 G. E. Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, vol. 4., p. 910. 66 E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, vol. 2, p. 414. 67 Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage, 1574–1642, p. 164. 68 Ibid., p. 167.

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Soldier and Scholar to the final masque involving the World tossed amongst several parties, it would have been possible to have the Soldier and Scholar watch with Jupiter and Pallas from the lord’s box, which would offer an experience akin to Blackfriars for “the privileged who went to their superior places” and “could chat to the players.”69 Having the Soldier and Scholar in the lord’s box would also reduce clutter on a commercial stage and retain visibility, given that De Witt’s drawing indicates that the persons in the lord’s box are still visible to a spectator. Although Gurr notes that playgoers at the Swan witnessed plays during the later years of Elizabeth that were “patriotic,” unlike the more subversive drama at locations like the Globe,70 this supposition actually confirms the popularity of a drama like The World Tossed at Tennis at such a venue given that it historically shares the militant Protestant ethos of the Elizabethan era at a time when James was aiming to unite England with Spain. The Swan would therefore have been an ideal space to transfer the masque and to profit commercially. The masque-turned-playhouse-drama, however, would have also served as an interrogative political experience for commercial audiences who were attuned to these matters. Beyond the aforementioned news publications from Trundle and other printers, the circulation of manuscripts also precipitated the development of a political culture during the Stuart era, according to Noah Millstone.71 Londoners would also have been well aware of the “Declaration of Elector Frederick V of the Palatinate” from November 7, 1619, which was “published across Europe.”72 Defending his claim to the throne and the righteousness of his cause, Frederick vilifies Catholics for their use of “public writings to drag into dangerous debate all past religious concessions,” and refers to them as “hot-headed people,” who “were unable to abide such peaceful prosperity.” By contrast, Frederick’s own use of “public writings” and militant behavior is rationalized by his desire to “avoid further disaster through more moderate means and ways.”73 Frederick’s bizarre intermingling of war and peace aligns with and lends some explanation for Middleton and Rowley’s paradoxical advancement for war and peace simultaneously through the idealized figure of Pallas. This popular text would likely have influenced the ways in which theatergoers would have been able to rationalize a seemingly contradictory outlook on the religious conflict. Although the irony is set out initially for James and Charles to wrestle with so as to

69 Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London, p. 22. 70 Ibid., p. 186. 71 Noah Millstone, Manuscript Circulation and the Invention of Politics in Early Stuart England, p. 4. 72 Frederick V, “Declaration of Elector Frederick V of the Palatinate (November 7, 1619),” in The Thirty Years War: A Documentary History, p. 31. 73 Ibid., p. 34.

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imagine a new political landscape at home and abroad, the audience at the Swan are invited to do so as well. Although their capacity to effect social change is more limited than that of their monarchs, the Epilogue’s hailing of “Gentlemen” potentially signals the class responsibility to uphold English values. By framing the play as a masque-turned-not-quite-play, the Epilogue’s address could be an invitation to carry out the final act of a masque and dance as they see fit, much like Middleton did with The Masque of Heroes. The audience’s engagement with this courtly performance has previously been discussed in terms of pleasure, but political critique constitutes a dimension of that pleasure as well. Although David Nicol aptly applies Paul Yachnin’s concept of populuxe theater to discuss The World Tossed at Tennis,74 there is more than a courtly mimesis afoot in the entertainments a commercial theater audience experienced at the Swan. Audiences and readers are invited to view a critique of both their king and prince by witnessing neither figure’s politics to be functional. This appeal is clearly exhibited through the character Pallas. The stage directions, “Music. Pallas descends” (148), indicate that Pallas is lowered from the heavens, appearing as gods and goddesses did on the early modern stage. Her speech addresses the fact that neither the Scholar nor the Soldier is currently suited to govern the world or to resolve the crisis at hand. Unlike Denmark House, Pallas does not assuage their anxieties to create an ameliorative bond; rather, she establishes her superiority by announcing herself as a “patroness unto ye both” and calling the Scholar and the Soldier “ignorant / And undeserving favourites of my fame” (155–56). Having informed the Soldier that to him she is also known as “Bellona” (159), she turns to the Scholar and begins her speech: To thee I am Minerva, Pallas to both, goddess of arts and arms, Of arms and arts, for neither has precedence. For he’s the complete man partakes of both, The soul of arts joined with the flesh of valour, And he alone participates with me. Thou art no soldier unless a scholar, Nor thou a scholar unless a soldier. You’ve noble breedings both, worthy foundations, And will ye build up rotten battlements On such fair groundsels? – that will ruin us all. Lay wisdom on thy valour, on thy wisdom valour, For these are mutual coincidents. (161–74)

74 David Nicol, Middleton and Rowley, 136.

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The fusion of scholarly and military prowess points toward an improved model of masculine governance.75 It functions as well as a precursor to Henry Peacham’s Complete Gentleman (1634), which Malcolm Smuts identifies as advocating for “military prowess with a knowledge of all subjects necessary to a statesman” in order “to serve the commonwealth,” despite the fact that the gentleman’s “pursuits simply distinguish him as a man of learning and intelligence.”76 The duality of this ironic coupling is foregrounded in its articulation by a goddess, a non-worldly figure, who claims to exhibit a “complete” image of governing masculine authority. Pallas remains ethereal rather than earthly, meaning that this identity cannot be fully realized. The conclusion of her lesson articulates this message when she advocates “mutual coincidents” in place of definitive answers. Governance for Pallas is mutually devised and executed, encouraging coexistence and shared rule, as mortals are unable to achieve the perfection she possesses as a goddess. Although critics have recently upheld Charles over James as a target of Pallas’s and Jupiter’s (and by extension, Middleton and Rowley’s) praise in the masque, the irony remains plural in its praise and criticism rather than inflected in favor of the heir apparent. McGee is correct to note the various points at which The World Tossed at Tennis disrupts James’s comfortable image of himself as superior to all other worldly agents, but he also leans too heavily on Charles, presuming that the playwrights favor him because the Prince’s Men staged the masque: “this prominence given to Charles, particularly the valiant Charles,

75 The dynamic Middleton and Rowley create in which Pallas represents an ideal form that lies beyond the attainment of the mortal rulers resembles the early modern concept of the new man, not to be confused with the Roman novus homo. In a 1590 sermon, the popular London preacher Henry Smith asserted that “to put on Christ, is to put on the new man with all his virtues, vntill we be renewed to the Image of Christ, which is like a new man amongst men.” Adrian Streete, Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern England, p. 15. Adrian Streete notes that religious writers like Francis Clement and John Calvin advocate that Christ functions as a means to selffashion the body from its innate vileness to a religious purity. Ibid., p. 95. These writers do not make Christ’s perfection attainable, however, and rely upon rhetorical figures like “synecdoche” – which Middleton and Rowley refer to shortly after they define ironia (127) – that reduce humanity’s significance in light of a God they cannot entirely comprehend and never fully emulate. Ibid., p. 95. James Knowles perceives Middleton’s fascination with this concept in The Masque of Heroes from the year before, adding that the new man “also defines a Pauline spiritual metamorphosis for individuals and for the nation.” James Knowles, ed., Masque of Heroes, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1323. Therefore, although the idealistic combination of arms and arts was ubiquitous in the early modern era, at least as early as Sir Philip Sidney, Middleton and Rowley utilize it here in order to promote the merits of plural politics. 76 Malcolm Smuts, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England, p. 153.

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implies support for his policies, specifically for the valorous exercise of arms in Europe.”77 Nicol supports this claim by examining the same speech from Pallas in conjunction with the ending to the masque, but arrives at a slightly inaccurate conclusion: Under normal circumstances this would be an innocuous moral, but as McGee notes, in 1620 it could have been read as an attack on the scholarly James’s failure to support Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine militarily. Not only that, the masque goes further by overtly promoting Charles, not James, as the “complete man”: Pallas announces that “the Prince of Nobleness Himselfe, / Proves our Minerva’s valiant’st, hopefull’st Sonne, / And early in his Spring puts Armor on” (865–7), probably referring to Charles’s first tilt on 24 March that year.78

Jupiter, however, rather than Pallas delivers lines 865 through to 867, which complicates matters, as Jupiter rather than the middle agent condones this course of action. Nicol’s claim that the speech does uphold the Soldier, and therefore Charles, over the Scholar remains apt, however, and the direction to the Scholar to use “Honors hand” to write “golden Letters” may indicate James’s ability to send support to Frederick, something he – and Elizabeth – repeatedly requested of their father.79 Although these lines do not confirm that Charles is the complete man, as they refer to Minerva rather than Pallas (half rather than full) and point toward a future event in spring, the verse can be said to support a militaristic campaign. Given James’s associations with wisdom and scholarship, “our Minerva” likely refers to him and his connections with the Soldier (Charles) rather than Pallas; therefore, it is unclear whether or not Charles is represented as possessing scholarly wisdom, only that he must aspire to achieve a double identity that comprises military and erudite activity: “Scholar and soldier must both be shut in one; / That makes the absolute and complete man” (870–71). The recent historical circumstances of the king’s health would have provoked the people and the country to look to their next ruler, but Middleton and Rowley do not go so far as to discredit James’s current station, wisdom, or position; the playwrights merely question the king’s stubbornness.80 What goes unnoticed in previous readings is Charles’s capacity to exhibit questionable behavior, for the masque contains criticisms of the Soldier as well

77 C. E. McGee, ed., The World Tossed at Tennis, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1407. 78 David Nicol, Middleton and Rowley, p. 135. 79 Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, A courtly masque, sig. F2r. 80 As McGee puts it, “The main thrust of Tennis opposes any ruler who, like James in 1619–20, would take advice ‘from no one but himself’.” C. E. McGee, ed., The World Tossed at Tennis, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1407.

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as the Scholar, much as it praises both parties. While the Soldier is given several lines that favor his character by having him voice and support the central theme of seasonal and political change, the Scholar articulates the masque’s rhetorical function. Like the Scholar, the Soldier is also critiqued by the greater powers that attend on them; however, whereas the Scholar is chastised for being intransigent, the Soldier is reprimanded for his upstart character. The Soldier interrupts the main masque they are watching to proclaim that it is his time, but Jupiter reminds him of his place: SOLDIER Now ’tis the soldier’s time, great Jupiter; Now give me leave to enter on my fortunes. The world’s our own. JUPITER Stay, beguiled thing, this time Is in many ages discrepant from thine. This was the season when desert was stooped to, By greatness stooped to, and acknowledged greatest; But in thy time, now, desert stoops itself To every baseness and makes saints of shadows. Be patient, and observe how times are wrought, Till it comes down to thine, that rewards naught. (615–24)

Through his outburst, the Soldier attempts to master the time of the play and his reality, with which he foolishly believes it directly correlates. Jupiter clarifies that “this time,” or that of the play world, is “many ages discrepant from” that of the Soldier, thereby directing him, and by implication Charles, to see that there is a disjunction between his present moment and the past age that he witnesses.81 In seeing what he believes is “the soldier’s time,” the Soldier thus

81 There are historical reasons that would likely influence this discretion. Richard Cust provides important context on Charles’s rash nature as well as James’s ability to temper the young prince with his wisdom: “According to Peter Heylyn, the Laudian polemicist, when James lay in the grip of his near-fatal illness at Royston in 1619, [Lancelot] Andrewes approached his bedside and expressed his concern about the church’s future in the hands of a prince who was ‘not well principled by those which had the tutelage of him, either in the government or liturgy of the Church of England’. James acknowledged this and promised that, if he recovered, he would make amends. He was apparently as good as his word. Years later Charles remarked with some pride that the chief ‘instructor’, ‘who laid in me the grounds of Christianity’, had been his own father.” Richard Cust, Charles I: A Political Life, p. 15. The Prince was therefore not necessarily an ideal alternative to James and was seen to be in need of James’s scholarship and wisdom if he were to govern adeptly.

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instead witnesses a soldier’s moment, which is passing rather than constant, signaling the perpetual renovation of the seasons. Jupiter’s requests for the Soldier to “stay” and to be “patient,” calling him a “beguiled thing,” indicate that the playwrights would have been just as concerned with disrupting comfortable praise of their hypothetical patron as they would have been of their king. Although the entertainment is hardly radical, the audience’s limited participation in this royal game still entails controversial pleasures. The playwrights call attention to the masque’s populuxe quality in the Prologue, and also hint at its subversive pleasures. The Prologue serves to prepare the audience for an anomalous playhouse entertainment: This, our device, we do not call a play, Because we break the stage’s laws today Of acts and scenes. Sometimes a comic strain Hath hit delight home in the master vein – Thalia’s praise. Melpomene’s sad style Hath shook the tragic hand another while. The muse of history hath caught your eyes, And she that chants the pastoral psalteries We now lay claim to none, yet all present, Seeking out pleasure to find your content. You shall perceive by what comes first in sight, It was intended for a royal night. There’s one hour’s words, the rest in songs and dances. Lauds no man’s own; no man himself advances, Say he could leap, he lights but where he stands. Such is our fate: if good, much good may’t do you, If not, sorry, we’ll lose our labours wi’you. (Prologue, 1–18)

Their mention that the play was meant for royalty indicates to playgoers that they are experiencing something that has been written and crafted for James and Charles. They are able to take in the lavish spectacles and props, but they are also made aware that the instructive quality of the masque was intended for their governors. The indication that the audience “shall perceive by what comes first in sight” that “it was intended for a royal night” perhaps suggests that the Induction with the buildings was performed, but this would be nonsensical at a playhouse. What is much more likely is that the Prologue establishes the Scholar and Soldier as royal allegorical figures. The playwrights’ staging of the Scholar and the Soldier for playgoers, given the news of war in Bohemia, makes the line in which Middleton and Rowley admit “we break the stage’s laws today” carry more weight than the ensuing reference to “acts and scenes” indicates. The law stated that players could not stage

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any living monarch.82 Whereas the populuxe marketplace augments the power of the court by making it a coveted yet still distant realm, its ability to make sovereignty into a similar performance entails a threatening unraveling of the Crown’s claims to true power. Although The Phoenix provides a similar dynamic by staging the monarch, The World Tossed at Tennis entails a more provocative allegory, as it clearly challenges the king’s peacekeeping agenda and divides attention between James and Charles, both of whom have work to undertake and both of whom are loci of power. The Prologue’s statement that its genre is comedic, tragical, but also historical draws attention to the fact that the topical material would be evident to the audience who attended the performance, and the pronouncement that it “[l]auds no man’s own” shows from the outset that the masque “praises no individual” in particular.83 The Prince’s Men staging it at the Swan might cause it to lean more in Charles’s favor, especially given the militant Protestantism of the time, but as we will see in the next chapter, the King’s Men performing A Game at Chess did James no favors. If anything, the playful reversal of power wherein the players are no longer the rulers’ actors but instead play their rulers for the people’s entertainment seems to be the point. The combination of topical subject matter and plural interpretive pathways thus generates political awareness by targeting and potentially mocking the audience’s rulers, but the drama also challenges authority and empowers spectators.84 The pleasure attuned audience members experience is gained both from occupying the imagined seat of privilege that the envisioned royal spectators held and from a shared sense of fallible humanity with their superiors by seeing their rulers’ ineffectual governance. The irony’s disruptive ability to see sovereignty “two ways at once” challenges unified and centralized politics, and the playwrights’ decision to stage allegorical representations of the king and prince facilitates a pleasurable social leveling in which their rulers are students. The dialogue between the Soldier and the Scholar, however, leads into the final

82 Gary Taylor notes Middleton’s interest in disobeying this command, as he later did in A Game at Chess. Gary Taylor, ed., A Game at Chesse: An Early Form, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1778. The inclusion of the Induction in the printed text could be a way of obfuscating blame by claiming this was the portion referring to royal figures. 83 C. E. McGee, ed., The World Tossed at Tennis, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1410. 84 Looking back to the idea of parrhēsia from chapter 1, it is possible to see such acts as a protodemocratic action. David Colclough examines the ways in which Plato discourages against the trope for its associations with democracy. David Colclough, Freedom of Speech in Early Stuart England, p. 18, note 26. In the case of ironia, however, we have a device that encourages diverse ways of thinking and challenges the unified approaches of rulers. Audiences can therefore deduce and interpret their own politics, even if they do not have the same power as governors to enact them.

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masque of an era past, which Jupiter stages for them. The metadrama that Middleton and Rowley establish for James and Charles’s viewing beckons them to observe themselves as the Soldier and the Scholar watching the play, and the playhouse transmutes this into a dynamic wherein the spectators see representations of James and Charles as spectators. The Prologue sets up the audience to see their rulers allegorically onstage, but the ironic structure of the masque does the rest of the work, allowing them to view a dialogic relationship between their rulers. The audience’s pleasure is politicized and derives from seeing loose representations of their intransigent king and upstart prince learning through watching a world that reflects their country’s present dilemma and history.

Collaborative Governance and Political Awareness The World Tossed at Tennis derives its name from this final part of the masque that the Scholar, Soldier, and audience witness in performance. Jupiter presents this performance-within-a-performance to the Soldier and the Scholar, whom the audience observes watching this drama concerning the World and its various possessors over the ages. The narrative begins in medias res, as the figure of Simplicity – played by Rowley – happens upon the World after having left it alone for an indeterminate period of time (419–34). He comments that it has changed since he last left it. By having Simplicity begin with surprise over the condition of the World he is responsible for guarding, Middleton reveals that the World’s original ruler is not entirely in control of the thing he governs. The dialogue that ensues after the King’s entrance upon the scene, however, suggests that such ineffectual control pertains not only to Simplicity, for the King also exhibits a relative ignorance. He must seek Simplicity’s counsel in order to gain the necessary knowledge to govern adeptly: KING Look, what are those? SIMPLICITY Tents, tents. That part o’ the world Shows like a fair, but, pray, take notice on’t, There’s not a bawdy booth amongst ’em all. You have ’em white and honest as I had ’em. Look that your laundresses pollute ’em not. KING How pleasantly the countries lie about, Of which we are sole lord. What’s that i’ the middle? (539–46)

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The scene absurdly comments upon the limits of governance and sovereign power, for one cannot stand outside of the World and experience or know it, but beyond these comic effects, the exchange between the two speakers reveals the King’s dependency upon a simpler subject in order to gain an understanding of the realm he ostensibly governs. The depiction’s pedagogy derives from the emblem tradition that Middleton was familiar with from his earlier work on mayoral shows.85 Two emblems from Henry Peacham’s collection of emblems, Minerva Britanna (1612), correspond with Middleton and Rowley’s vision. The first depicts country youths playing a game of “football” that visually connects with the world being volleyed at tennis in the masque (Figure 3.3). The accompanying text connects this rambunctious game and the minor perils it can produce with the tribulations that adults can impose upon others through a careless play with the world: “This worldly wealth, is tossed too and fro, / At which like Brutes, each striues with might and maine, / To get a kick, by others overthrow.”86 The indication here, as in The World Tossed at Tennis, seems to be that competition should not exist at home in Minerva Britanna or during the Thirty Years War.87 Peacham’s Latin gloss for “worldly wealth” derives from Valerius’s sixth book of Memorable Doings and Sayings, and it translates to read, “Frail and fragile surely and like children’s toys are the so-called power and wealth of humankind.”88 Much like Middleton’s boy-company play Phoenix, James is counseled in this vein to view himself as susceptible to childish behavior and irresponsibility. He too is prone to simplicity. The second emblem, which specifically refers to tennis, furthers the emphasis on humility by reminding the reader that “the Gods aboue” control “men as balls” (Figure 3.4).89 The irony of staging the world as a possession that can be grasped and controlled by a mortal – even a ruler – would have been a common source of ridicule, given the hubris that such emblems counseled against. The dramatic action likewise makes efforts to prompt James to see aspects of state 85 Tracey Hill, Pageantry and Power, pp. 160–68. 86 Henry Peacham, Minerua Britanna, sig. M4v. 87 The notion that The World Tossed at Tennis advocates for collaboration at home and opposition abroad has been discussed elsewhere. Mark Kaethler, “Against Opposition (at Home): Middleton and Rowley’s The World Tossed at Tennis as Tennis,” in Games and Game-Playing, pp. 210–16. 88 Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings, vol. 6, p. 99. 89 Henry Peacham, Minerua Britanna, sig. R2v. It is worth noting as well here that the reference to men as tennis balls that God controls derives from the prologue to Plautus’s The Captives, in which the Prologue states, “the gods really treat us humans like footballs.” Plautus, The Captives, in Plautus, Prologue 5.

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Figure 3.3: Taken from Henry Peacham’s Minerva Britanna. Generously provided by the John Henry Wrenn Library, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. Shelfmark: Wh P313 612m WRE. Sig. M4v.

he would have been ignoring. Simplicity directing the monarch’s gaze toward military tents indicates that James should be attending to the wars that are actually occurring in the world. The scene both refers to and undermines his supremacy as a little god. Having stated that he is the “sole lord” of the countries that lie so pleasantly about, the King then asks “[w]hat’s that i’ the middle?” This humorous shift from sovereign to pupil again reveals his dependency upon Simplicity, but also his inability to perceive a clear middle way or to interpret the crossway on his own. The mutual governance represented in this scene establishes what would likely have been a pleasurable experience for audiences: seeing their current and future monarchy educated by a subject and playwright. Middleton and Rowley’s opera basilica challenge the model that James had set out in God and the king (1616), whereby “all higher powers, and especiallie such as haue Soueraigne authority, as the Kings and Princes of the earth” should hold the same unwavering power over subjects as fathers do over their

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Figure 3.4: Taken from Henry Peacham’s Minerva Britanna. Generously provided by the John Henry Wrenn Library, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. Shelfmark: Wh P313 612m WRE. Sig. R2v.

children.90 Although it is written as a prose dialogue, James’s tract still perpetuates the patriarchal relationship that the king communicates in his earlier works; however, in this text James does not merely metaphorically associate himself with fathers but demands that his subjects worship him above their fathers – a lesson that is particularly relevant given that the king desired that the text be taught to all young scholars, publicly or privately. The release of this short tract during the same year the Howard and Carr trials concluded likewise highlights an anxious patriarch keen to maintain his control and perfect image. The audience at the Swan could take pleasure in seeing their king reduced to a member of the company, a move that Middleton and Rowley carefully maneuver by tempering this satire with praise of James’s stature. Near the end of

90 James I, God and the king, sig. B1v.

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the masque, when the Devil and Deceit chase after the other actors in an attempt to seize the world, the King commands that he and his fellow governors – with whom he has previously shared the World – move in a collective fashion to secure the globe from their foes: KING Let this be called the sphere of harmony, In which, being met, let’s all move mutually. OMNES Fair love is i’th’ motion, kingly love. (811–13)

The success of the group and the failure of the Devil and Deceit both depend upon mutual motion. Kingly love in this event entails collaborative governance, making the “sphere of harmony” one in which tension and oscillation still occur, as the World must be passed from one member to the next in order to elude the Devil and Deceit. Through these motions, the final masque enacts the mutual governance that the playwrights’ ironic Induction and earlier dialogue between the Soldier and the Scholar theorize. Although the players all allocate authority only to the player King and give him the World at the conclusion of this climactic dance (19), the Flamen’s ensuing words suggest a contractual rather than determined outcome.91 This agreement is conditional in nature and reflects the parrhēsiastic contract since it is mutually devised between ruler and world: That if the world form itself by the king, ’Tis fit the former should command the thing. (821–22, my emphases)

As with The Phoenix’s brief epilogue, the audience is given an interrogative ending that suggests an unresolved matter concerning the Soldier and the Scholar and, by implication, Charles and James. The reference to tragedy’s association with the drama in the Prologue perhaps refers to the fact that the parrhēsiastic contract was never fulfilled or that James never supported Frederick as he could have done. While the audience members at the Swan were by no means encouraged to enact such conclusions in their everyday lives, as James and Charles would have been, they likely enjoyed such a collaborative image of their monarchy, which was presented as dependent upon them and as needing

91 C. E. McGee identifies the contractual nature of these lines. C. E. McGee, ed., The World Tossed at Tennis, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1406.

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to learn. However, the ending reminded them that English governance was dependent upon mutually orchestrated “kingly love” in a parrhēsiastic contract that they could challenge. Although the audience was therefore limited in their capacity to effect social change, they were made aware that their monarch’s government and authority were limited as well. Despite these provisional moments, Middleton and Rowley nevertheless project an image of unity, but one that preserves difference and tension. The Soldier and the Scholar make amends and allegiances in order to move forward together and consolidate to form an ideal governance with the Soldier fighting “the most glorious wars / That e’er famed Christian kingdom” (878–79) and the Scholar peacefully settling “Here, in a land of a most glorious peace / That ever made joy fruitful” (880–81), presumably England. The joint effort is symbolically framed onstage with the request made by the Soldier to the Scholar: “Give me thy hand” (884). With these words the two characters presumably join hands, and then speak the following words: SOLDIER. . . Prosperity keep with thee. SCHOLAR And the glory Of noble action bring white hairs upon thee. Present our wish with reverence to this place, For here’t must be confirmed or ’tas no grace. (884–87)

The change in venue complicates these lines, making “this place” no longer Denmark House but instead the commercial playhouse. The audience at the theater would not have been expected to feel the imminence of the playwrights’ words, which were intended for their monarchy’s ears, because they did not have the eminence to make these events occur. The final lines of the masque do, however, imbue the space of the theater with the same degree of “reverence” as Denmark House. In this manner, the populuxe theater transmutes the popular space of the theater into the respectable atmosphere of the court. The play’s initially intended performance for royalty thus changes the techniques of reception from common enjoyment to interpreting the opera basilica written for James and Charles. This remains a pastime rather than an obligation for citizens, but nevertheless sparks political awareness in the theater through an ironic division of power between king and prince. While the Epilogue only clarifies and apologizes that masques are rare and not commonly seen (ironically framing this rarity as an inconvenience when it is in fact the drama’s main attraction), it finishes by asking that the audience not “soon forget” what they have experienced (Epilogue 9). As a dramatic performance and later text that

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bears associations with the masque genre, the Epilogue thus corresponds with the ending of Masque of Heroes, whereby the audience are invited to finish the action or at least take something away from it. Middleton and Rowley thus imbue their commercial theater audience with responsibility tied to the parrhēsiastic contract between ruler and ruled.

Conclusion Although The World Tossed at Tennis remains a stage oddity, this chapter has embraced its atypical nature and explored the ramifications of its tri-medial residue. Although playgoers and readers could not encounter or carry out the opera basilica of the text as intended for its royal audience, these citizens and the playwrights were able to morph these royal actions into a pleasurable interpretive royal game that they allowed anyone to play. Fueled by the news of the time, the drama’s plural politics find a place in the midst of this burgeoning subversive print culture by centering upon the divided interests of the royal parties and the ironia therein, troubling the unity of sovereignty and the solidity of James’s politics. In reducing the king and prince to naive audience members onstage, Middleton and Rowley offer an entertaining political critique of audiences’ and readers’ betters. Following The World Tossed at Tennis, Middleton set aside concentrated interest in the Thirty Years War while nevertheless remaining invested in matters of governance with his mayoral shows. Topical references still appeared in his drama, though, and range from a brief allusion to James in Women Beware Women (1621),92 to underlying commentary on naval battles coupled with antiSpanish sentiment in The Changeling (1622),93 to a slightly more overt “political allegory” in The Nice Valour (1623).94 However, even if sustained or overt allegories were not a staple of the early 1620s for Middleton, this small sample

92 When Bianca asks how old the Duke is, the Mother responds that he is “About some fiftyfive” (1.3.91). John Jowett, J. R. Mulryne, and William C. Carroll all concur that the dating allows for this reference to correspond with James’s age at the time of performance, but they all agree that the connection stops short here. There is no allegory, just a brief allusion. John Jowett, “Works Included in This Edition,” in Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, pp. 414–16; J. R. Mulryne, ed., Women Beware Women, p. 32; William C. Carroll, ed., Women Beware Women, p. 24. 93 Mark Hutchings, “‘Those rebellious Hollanders’,” SEDERI, pp. 145–46. 94 Gary Taylor, “Thomas Middleton, The Nice Valour, and the Court of James I,” The Court Historian, p. 22.

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illuminates his sustained interest in political awareness. He also maintained his identification with the via media tradition. At the end of his poem celebrating John Webster’s “monument” The Duchess of Malfi, Middleton signs it, “Thomas Middletonus,” continuing a pun on his name that he initially made in The Ghost of Lucrece. His final political drama, however, would mark the end of this middle tone’s politics on the early modern stage.

Chapter 4 “If this be virtue’s path, ’tis a strange one”: A Game at Chess’s Competing Histories Introduction Middleton’s A Game at Chess had a short run on the stage, but it was also the greatest commercial success of the early English theater. Staged while James, Charles, and other powerful members of the court were touring the countryside, Middleton and the King’s Men put on a satire of the English and Spanish courts by staging them as the White and Black Houses, respectively, of a chess game. This event loosely depicted recent historical events, namely negotiations related to the Spanish Match as well as its unamicable denouement. Needless to say, the play has generated considerable scholarship concerning these politics, and the most recent studies have revolved around the concept of a “public.”1 Paul Yachnin identifies that A Game at Chess allowed audiences to enjoy “the ‘pleasure of seeing the whole’ – seeing the political world as a legible text and seeing themselves as a politically meaningful gathering.”2 While this is true, especially of “the play of Gondomar” (as the play was widely known in its contemporary moment), this chapter seeks to address the ways in which this atmosphere allows for alternative responses through staging plural histories of the Spanish Match that would have circulated in public discourse. Although A Game at Chess does not actually enact or encourage playgoers to create politics, it does comment upon their realities through its fictional allegorical world. The contrast of the two histories that the royal and pawn plots produce is an ambiguous representation of what occurred. The White Queen’s Pawn narrowly escapes,3 but there is nevertheless a zealous celebration of the White House’s victory at the play’s conclusion. Although the finale can be celebrated as an early form of jingoism, it can

1 Paul Yachnin defines a “public” in the early modern theater as a theatrical occurrence or event in which an audience experiences pleasure through their shared knowledge of a cultural phenomenon. Paul Yachnin, “Hamlet and the Social Thing,” in Making Publics in Early Modern Europe, pp. 86–87. 2 Paul Yachnin, “Playing with Space,” in The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton, p. 38. 3 This chapter uses simplified names for the chess pieces since there are never two of a given figure (i.e., there is only one White Knight or Black Knight’s Pawn), but it adopts Gary Taylor’s names for the various chess pieces from his later edition of the play in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works for speech prefixes when necessary in quoting from the text. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513763-005

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equally be interpreted as a satire of the English monarchy.4 In this manner, A Game at Chess retains the pleasure of viewing the entirety of the public discourse and its players, but it also implicates the Protestant multitude within that whole through the allegorical figure of the White Queen’s Pawn, who reflects their vulnerable position in the affair, articulates a parrhēsiastic challenge that goes unheard by the White King, and is seemingly forgotten by the White Knight. Middleton denies the attuned interpreter comfortable and pleasurable mastery of the events onstage and instead prompts citizens to see themselves as part of a wider whole that they are responsible for interpreting and challenging. Other recent work on publics shares this interest in multiple and fractured interpretations of the Spanish Match as depicted in A Game at Chess. Stephen Wittek has identified that Buckingham’s account of what occurred during his and Charles’s voyage to Spain as well as its asymmetrical relation to historical fact inform Middleton’s play.5 The militant Protestantism with which Charles and George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, fashioned their politics after the Spanish Match corresponds with elements of Charles’s habit before entertaining the marriage. Indeed, we have already observed Middleton and Rowley casting Charles as the Soldier in 1619–1620, but Buckingham’s suggestion that they always had English national interests at heart ignores the Spanish customs that Charles assumed between late-1620 and mid-1623, which also inspired his clandestine journey to Madrid.6 Although Middleton’s play certainly celebrates the prince’s homecoming and the anti-Spanish zeal it brought about, it does not adopt these sentiments wholeheartedly. Behind the satire of Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Count Gondomar, as the Machiavellian Black Knight and the more subtle mockery of the White King (James), who is staged as a dupe to the Spanish, is a wider critique that speaks to Wittek’s recognition that “Middleton effectively depropagandized the discovery narrative by bringing it into conversation with competing viewpoints.”7 The scope of Wittek’s study, however, does not allow him to consider the perspective that the pawn plot generates, which was of prime concern to an audience whose faith and safety were in the hands of Catholic colluders. By situating the pawn plotline as the primary

4 Yachnin has previously suggested this competing outlook. Paul Yachnin, “A Game at Chess: Thomas Middleton’s ‘Praise of Folly’,” Modern Language Quarterly, p. 108. 5 Stephen Wittek, The Media Players, pp. 65–66. 6 Charles’s earlier militant Protestantism can be said to influence his travels as well, given that the Spanish Match would hopefully lead to peace between the religious nations and end the crisis that afflicted his sister and brother-in-law. These projected outcomes likely enticed Charles to see the union as amicable and beneficial for Protestants. 7 Stephen Wittek, The Media Players, p. 66.

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narrative of A Game at Chess, this chapter examines the political anxiety that affected playgoers who managed to observe the fragility of their kingdom in the midst of this haphazard game reflecting recent English history. The play communicates this vulnerability through the central figure of the White Queen’s Pawn, whose chastity reflects the religious purity its citizens desire to secure in the face of xenophobic disdain for the Spanish Match. With frequent references to English-Spanish conflicts from 1588 to the present day and a two-plot scheme, Middleton concocts a loose allegory of the Spanish Match that resounds with national anxieties and produces multiple histories of what occurred. What has gone unnoticed or unexamined in this allegory (likely due to its inability to be cogently mapped onto particular political players) is the role of the Black Queen’s Pawn in securing the White House’s salvation. By having the White Queen’s Pawn avert tragedy only by the coincidental fact that the Black Queen’s Pawn’s desires happen to align with the needs of the White Queen’s Pawn, Middleton presents her avoidance of tragedy as either luck or divine providence. Her chastity is therefore not the result of any intentional or calculated action on the part of the White House. The pawn plot thus shows us that divine grace has saved London, implying that the failure of the Spanish Match is a tragicomedy or an averted tragedy at best rather than a final battle between good and evil, especially given that the actions of an “evil” character (the Black Queen’s Pawn) precipitate the fortunate outcome for the White House. Playgoers can choose the history they wish to see, but the complex allegory that informs the two competing historical narratives produces unrest for savvy Londoners, who become aware of their conflicted political past. Those perceptive of this uneasy state that Middleton’s allegory leaves them with are imbued with a sense of hermeneutic political duty or responsibility that transmutes opera basilica into interpretive work for citizens. In calling attention to Jacobean governors’ inability to manage foreign affairs with English Protestantism in mind, A Game at Chess inspires political awareness coupled with militant Protestantism. Playgoers are thus encouraged to maintain their allegiance to and faith in God even when their rulers fail to do the same and lose sight of their people’s interests in the process. Despite the play’s toying with the black and white binary construction, it nevertheless remains insistent on perpetuating what Kim F. Hall identifies as the era’s contrast between fairness (as both Protestantism and race) and blackness (as both sin and race), aligning supremacy with the former in a hegemonic fashion.8 Although the White Queen’s Pawn

8 Hall offers an array of examples of this common binary construction tied to understandings of beauty and morality, especially with respect to women. In discussing the early modern

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requires instruction from the Black Queen’s Pawn, then, she still does not become black through using these tactics to avoid the advances of the Black Bishop’s Pawn, thereby still perpetrating the same white supremacist framework.

Conflicted Charles and Bad Buckingham As discussed in the previous chapter, the negotiations concerning the Spanish Match began in 1614 as part of James’s peacemaking ambitions, but interest in them decreased significantly after the outbreak of war in Bohemia. James nevertheless managed to persuade parliament in 1621 to support the Spanish Match in order to put pressure on Spain to remove their forces from the Palatinate.9 This tactic on James’s part helped to convince Charles of the marriage’s importance, given the Prince’s desire to assist his sister and brother-in-law. Charles’s emotions, however, fluctuated between extreme ire and melancholy as a result of the prolonged marriage negotiations as well as his conflicted sentiments regarding Spain. His desire for a “portrait” of Maria Anna, the Spanish Infanta, and his decision to undertake “Spanish lessons” both signal a keen romantic interest bordering upon the obsessive on the prince’s part.10 While these actions might suggest that Charles adhered to his father’s plans for the sake of his sister and brother-in-law, it is equally likely that he desired Maria, whom he was desperate to meet. Maria, however, was kept out of his sight. It would seem that Charles’s affections resembled his political inclinations insofar as he experienced emotional extremities that did not allow him to rest comfortably with a decision. Desiring to expedite the negotiations, on February 17, 1623 Charles and Buckingham departed for Madrid in disguise and arrived there on March 7, 1623 to the surprise of King Philip and the rest of the Spanish court.11 Although their venture may seem to run counter to the people’s interest, Charles and Buckingham’s incognito journey and its goal to solidify ties between the Protestant and period’s conceptualization of whiteness as beautiful, Hall examines sonnet sequences such as Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella to show that these racial constructions attribute whiteness to the celestial and blackness to the terrestrial, thereby elevating whiteness. Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness, p. 92. As Hall later points out, the Jacobean court and its poets continued “the damaging imposition of white standards of beauty” with Ben Jonson’s Masque of Blackness and Masque of Beauty as clear examples. Ibid., p. 133. 9 Mark A. Kishlansky and John Morrill, “Charles I,” in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/5143. 10 Richard Cust, Charles I: A Political Life, p. 32. 11 Thomas Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution, p. 36.

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Catholic countries speak to England’s fascination with Spanish culture in the early 1620s. Charles’s and many Londoners’ general interest in Spanish culture generated a cosmopolitan attitude of Hispanophilia; however, this trend was met with fervent xenophobia and generated the concept of “English Gypsies.”12 The conflicting fetishism and phobia of Spain resulted in repeated portrayals of the court’s appropriations of what it perceived as exotic. Literature from the period, such as Jonson’s The Gypsies Metamorphosed (1621) as well as Middleton and Rowley’s The Spanish Gypsy (1623), both celebrated and critiqued EnglishSpanish relations. Charles’s tendency to adopt Spanish fashion during this time thus highlights the prince’s desire to become Spanish. Critics who claim that Middleton establishes an idealistic image of Charles as the White Knight in A Game at Chess neglect the fact that Charles’s ambitions were brash, personal, and conflicted as well as politically motivated. Charles’s character was worrisome for the English people, who were anxious about his wavering concern for the security of their Protestant nation. As Ania Loomba states in her discussion of the “blurring of boundaries between English people and gypsies”: “blackness (both as a moral quality and as skin colour) can more readily contaminate whiteness rather than itself be washed into whiteness.”13 Opponents to the marriage held this white supremacist view and were fearful of not only Catholic but also Spanish contamination of what they viewed not only as their Protestant but also white country. However, the Spanish also had reason for concern, given that they perceived Charles’s behavior toward Maria as aggressive. Charles, for instance, violated Spanish customs in June when he and Buckingham were in Madrid; during this time, “he leapt the wall of the Casa del Campo, where the Infanta was taking the air, and ‘advanced towards his lady-love, who responded by running in the opposite direction, shrieking for her virtue’.”14 It is extremely difficult to equate the prince’s rash actions with the calculated strategies of the virtuous White Knight in A Game at Chess, especially given that the White Knight deliberately voyages to the Black House in order to

12 Suzanne Gossett, “Introduction to The Spanish Gypsy,” in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1725. While paying attention to the general mockery and dislike of Spain that Londoners exhibited, Trudi L. Darby points out that Spanish texts, such as translations of Don Quixote, were popular at Paul’s and that there was a general desire to learn Spanish. Trudi L. Darby, “The Obsession with Spain,” in Thomas Middleton in Context, pp. 145–46. The 1620s are thus characterized by competing sentiments of Hispanophilia and Hispanophobia. 13 Ania Loomba, “‘Delicious Traffick’: Alterity and Exchange on Early Modern Stages,” Shakespeare Survey, p. 209. 14 Suzanne Gossett, “Introduction to The Spanish Gypsy,” in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1725.

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overthrow the Black House by discovery whereas Charles ostensibly travels to Spain in order to expedite a union between the adversarial countries. Public support for Charles seems to have been unwavering in spite of these fears, and any animosity concerning his choices was deflected onto either John Digby, the English ambassador to Spain who was in charge of the marriage negotiations, or Buckingham. The latter is clearly depicted in Middleton’s play, and although he seems to be a favorable sidekick, there are points at which Middleton is clearly satirizing the Duke. Gary Taylor has identified that the homophobic jest the Duke makes concerning the Duke and King of the Black House at the play’s conclusion mirrors the same relationship between James and Buckingham in the White House.15 An undated epigram “To Buckinghame” makes it clear that their bond was public knowledge: The Kinge loves you, you him Both love the same You love the kinge, hee you Both buck-in-game. In game the king loves sport Of sports the buck But off all men why you, Why see the luck.16

While this connection with a favorite was nothing new, as James was suspected to have had a close sexual relation with Carr previously,17 the public sentiment concerning Villiers was soured by his enthusiasm for the Spanish Match and decision to accompany Charles in disguise to Spain to expedite the negotiations. An early 1621 libel comparing Buckingham to “Sejanus” and another from 1623 crudely mocking the Duke and his family after having blessed the king and prince make it clear that public outcry to the Spanish Match targeted Buckingham instead of directly satirizing James or Charles.18 Middleton’s portrayal of Gaspar de Guzmán, Count Olivares or the Black Duke, and the White Duke’s vehement opposition toward him and the Black House at the end of the

15 Gary Taylor, ed., A Game at Chess: A Later Form, p. 1883. 16 “The Kinge loves you, you him,” in Early Stuart Libels, http://www.earlystuartlibels.net/ htdocs/king_and_favorite_section/L6.html. 17 Michael B. Young, King James and the History of Homosexuality, pp. 42–43. 18 “When Charles, hath got the Spanish Gearle,” in Early Stuart Libels, http://www. earlystuartlibels.net/htdocs/monopolies_section/Miii2.html#f30; “Heaven blesse King James our joy,” in Early Stuart Libels, http://www.earlystuartlibels.net/htdocs/king_and_favorite_section/ L10.html#f3.

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play, however, also indicates some more favorable depictions that were competing with popular displeasure toward Buckingham. In later negotiations, Buckingham was said to have “irritated the Spanish, soured debates, and repeatedly threatened the prince’s departure,” but also later “mollified his conduct” at Charles’s request.19 There were competing understandings of Buckingham’s character, then, and Middleton plays upon both angles in his depiction of the White Duke. Underlying these public critiques of Buckingham, however, was additional public displeasure with James’s and Charles’s actions concerning a Spanish Match that Protestant London was less than agreeable to see fulfilled.

Jacobean Janus If The World Tossed at Tennis profited from the emerging news culture of the Thirty Years War, then A Game at Chess intervenes directly in it. Lena Steveker’s discussion of news and A Game at Chess reveals as much, given her evaluation that the play “is linked to the burgeoning news industry of the 1620s and its conflicted relationship with the English Crown.”20 Indeed, James’s 1620 proclamation censoring the circulation of news and his later ban on public outcry to his arrangement of the Spanish Match suggest that the play was a political event. Stephen Wittek contends that A Game at Chess works in tandem with various facets of news culture to function as a “direct challenge” to the king’s decree, making “public participation seem possible not only for theatergoers but also for English society at large – for anyone who heard news that the ‘play of Gondomar’ existed.”21 In this regard, Middleton’s play is likely provoked in particular by the repetition of the proclamation’s command that subjects not “give attention, or any manner of applause or entertainement to such discourse, without acquainting some of Our Priuie Councell, or other principall Officers.”22 This statement from the king makes the discourse of news theatrical, as its readers are susceptible to applaud it. Although he was condemning the

19 Brennan C. Pursell, “The End of the Spanish Match,” The Historical Journal, p. 712. 20 Lena Steveker, “English News Plays of the Early 1620s,” in News in Early Modern Europe, p. 216. 21 Stephen Wittek, “Middleton’s A Game at Chess and the Making of a Theatrical Public,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, p. 440. 22 James I, A proclamation against excesse of lauish and licentious speech of matters of state, sig. A1r. This proclamation was published multiple times, indicating that it was largely ignored.

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circulation of news, James nevertheless simultaneously seems to have recognized theater’s capacity to partake in the circulation of information. The predominant concern of the play, of course, was its overt satire of Spain, which appealed to its audience’s Hispanophobic sentiments. The primary target of this xenophobia is Gondomar, depicted as the Black Knight, who was a primary engineer of the Spanish Match.23 The audience’s recognition of the actor’s impersonation would have given them a sense of pleasurable mastery over the events.24 They could also gradually spot other familiar political figures who were not impersonated and therefore not readily identifiable. Their knowledge of what would loosely transpire in the play – given the widespread discourse regarding the events leading up to the failure of the Spanish Match – added to their enjoyment, allowing them to laugh at Spain’s expense and gloat in their Protestant victory. However, the play also mocks James’s and Charles’s support of the Spanish Match, suggesting that Gondomar functioned as the aim of Middleton’s jokes in order to make more subtle commentaries on English authorities.25 Although some may claim that the content was included for the sole purpose of generating substantial capital for the theater,26 there are other draws that Middleton’s political

23 Gondomar first “came to London late in 1613” as the Spanish Ambassador to England. Gondomar served as the primary instigator and player in arranging the Spanish Match between 1614 and 1623. His ability to persuade James during this time “of crisis,” namely the Thirty Years War, demonstrated his skill in handling “the king with a masterly combination of subtle tact and overpowering firmness.” David Harris Willson, King James VI & I, pp. 362–63. During the course of the early 1620s especially, Gondomar managed to convince James that the Spanish Match was worthwhile even after the monarch made “a formal declaration [in early fall of 1620] that he would defend the Palatinate,” and his tactical manipulation of James led the court to become “outraged” with their king. Alan Stewart, The Cradle King, p. 307. Gondomar’s actions resembled those of a Machiavellian villain, an image which was popularized in Thomas Scott’s Vox populi (1620): “we are met now by his Majesties command to take account of you (Seigneur Gondomar) who haue been Embassador for England, to see what good you haue effected there towards the advancement of this work” establishing a universal church. Thomas Scott, Vox populi, sig. A4v. 24 The actor’s impersonation of him drew a crowd and likely generated a cacophony of laughter. Janet Clare summarizes what the accounts tell us of his stage persona: “John Chamberlain, in a letter to Dudley Carleton on August 21, 1624, referred to Middleton’s play not as A Game at Chess but ‘our famous play of Gondomar,’ and describes how Gondomar was counterfeited ‘to the life, with all his graces and faces’ and that the actor had a discarded or replica costume (‘a cast sute of his apparel for the purpose’) and rode in his litter.” Janet Clare, “The Theatre and Political Control,” in Thomas Middleton in Context, p. 181. 25 Yachnin suggests that the play is critical of Spain, James, and Charles. Paul Yachnin, “A Game at Chess: Middleton’s ‘Praise of Folly’,” Modern Language Quarterly, p. 116. 26 How much profit the play garnered is uncertain, but it stands to reason that it might have been as much as £1500. Commenting on the anonymous manuscript record inscribed within a

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drama utilizes to captivate its audience. Popular news pamphlets at this time advocated a zealous Protestant attitude toward the Spanish Match insofar as they slandered and demonized Catholics, promoting their readers as inherently righteous as a result of their spiritual beliefs.27 Middleton’s play differs from this convention, for as will be shown, the drama inscribes plural politics that do not allow interpreters to rest comfortably in a reaffirmation of their beliefs, safety, and governance. It is possible, as with all the other works surveyed thus far, that the plurality would go unnoticed. In fact, several Puritans seem to have approved the play’s condemnation of the Spanish, especially Gondomar, and missed the ways in which Middleton critiqued their overzealous spirituality.28 This myopic interpretive practice corresponds with Puritans’ reading habits with respect to the news. As Jayne E. E. Boys points out, “the puritan Wallington . . . read . . . the news . . . [to] reflect . . . on its meaning . . . He used the news to look for the working out of God’s will in public events and interpreted what he read in a way that reinforced his beliefs.”29 By looking to reinforce his own beliefs rather than to obtain a different perspective, Wallington, like Middleton’s Puritan readership, missed the wider scope of A Game at Chess’s social commentary. Zealous Puritan readers, like Wallington, who would have championed polemical news pamphlets from the era, read only one dramatization of politics when the play’s allegory allows for competing models. It is important to be wary of replicating these proclivities in scholarship by focusing too intently on the religious discourse, especially when the play allows for competing narratives and histories to emerge. The play’s allegory establishes an inchoate vision with figurations that are easily discernible and others that are impossible to pinpoint, leaving the audience

quarto of A Game at Chess, Sara Jayne Steen states: “In part because fifteen hundred pounds seemed an outlandish figure, some scholars argued that the note was a later forgery, but the discovery of a Renaissance commonplace book with the poem increased the likelihood that the comment in the quarto is, if not accurate in its information, at least authentic.” Sara Jayne Steen, Ambrosia in an Earthen Vessel, p. 51. 27 Scott’s pamphlets Vox populi, parts one and two, and Vox Dei are the most popular examples of this trend and were widely circulated. Subtlety was not Scott’s strong suit; the title page of The second part of Vox populi (1624) features an illustration of Gondomar and his customized seat, which served to reduce the pain of his anal fistula. Thomas Scott, The second part of Vox populi, sig. A1r. Although Scott’s works clearly influenced A Game at Chess, Middleton’s approach to the matter remained less polemical. 28 Margot Heinemann draws upon Chamberlain’s notes on the crowds that flocked to performances of A Game at Chess to point out that Puritans enjoyed the play. Margot Heinemann, “Middleton’s A Game at Chess: Parliamentary-Puritans and Opposition Drama,” English Literary Renaissance, p. 232. 29 Jayne E. E. Boys, London’s News Press and the Thirty Years War, p. 191.

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with a play world that distinctly resembles their own history but cannot be fully mapped. Although various attempts have been made to ascertain the possible political persons corresponding with the various chess pieces, it is important to heed T. H. Howard-Hill’s advice concerning scholars’ efforts to pinpoint the fictional game’s characters fully onto Jacobean reality.30 Howard-Hill claims that such critics illustrate “a prevalent tendency . . . to take it as a puzzle that will yield its secrets if only the right key can be found.”31 Any political interpretation of the play should acknowledge this warning as well as Paul Yachnin’s point that the play invites multiple interpretations rather than offering a specific or unified political intention. Examining A Game at Chess in relation to Jonson’s Neptune’s Triumph (1624), which also broached the aftermath of the Spanish Match (though at court and with clearer didactic intentions), Yachnin concludes: “Middleton’s play is directed in part toward King James, in part toward the prince, in part toward that segment of the audience for whom Prince Charles represented the hope of England, and in part toward those who believed that the king and prince were fools indeed.”32 Whereas Middleton and Rowley initially had a royal audience in mind for The World Tossed at Tennis and then transferred their drama to the public theater, A Game at Chess, unlike Jonson’s or Middleton’s masques, begins as a public drama. In this way it presents a plural perspective that Yachnin explains with recourse to the Janus face analogy.33 Yachnin is correct that the play is two-faced in its simultaneous praise and mockery of James and Charles, but a wider Janus face offers a means to view competing English histories of success and failure as well

30 For example, while the Black Knight is clearly Gondomar, the pawns remain general or collective allegorical figures instead of representations of specific persons. The exception is the White King’s Pawn. Unlike the other pawns, he only occupies the plot concerning the primary chess pieces. T. H. Howard-Hill gathers from Holles’s account that the pawn was identified as Digby, Earl of Bristol by this time, but also lists a host of other possibilities, thereby making the White King’s Pawn “a pastiche of topical allusions.” T. H. Howard-Hill, “Unique Eye-Witness Report,” The Review of English Studies, p. 173. In a later work, Howard-Hill adds yet another allegorical layer to this character by suggesting that he might also be Sir Toby Matthew, who was exiled for refusing to swear the oath of allegiance. T. H. Howard-Hill, Middleton’s “Vulgar Pasquin,” p. 36. Suffice it to say, Middleton’s pawns may connote real persons, but unlike the Black Knight or White King it is not easy to deduce with certainty their singular allegorical matches, spurring a full allegory of perpetual doubling. 31 T. H. Howard-Hill, “Political Interpretations of Middleton’s A Game at Chess,” The Yearbook of English Studies, p. 227. 32 Paul Yachnin, “A Game at Chess: Middleton’s ‘Praise of Folly’,” Modern Language Quarterly, p. 116. 33 Yachnin identifies the play’s doubleness in a long literary history that precedes and extends from Middleton’s A Game at Chess: “Like Erasmus before him and Swift after him, Middleton learned the art of seeming to praise the thing he meant to mock.” Ibid., p. 108.

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that not only satirize English royalty but also question their ability to govern in a sound manner. This broader Janus face encompasses multiple and competing histories that project ongoing matters and tension rather than an ironic commentary on a climactic event. Although audience members and the theater remain powerless to effect social change, the Globe facilitated an early form of political awareness and responsibility by directing theatergoers to perceive the incongruity of the play’s propaganda and history. Those familiar with emblem books would know this wider Janus face from Geoffrey Whitney’s A choice of emblemes (1585). His depiction of Janus looking two ways at once emphasizes the need for a “double looke” to “the yeares both oulde and newe,” in order to “alter with the yeare, / And make amendes, within the yeare begonne.”34 This blended (both/and) approach differs from the verbal irony (either/or) that Janus is commonly associated with and to which Yachnin refers in his article. The interpretive community that was cognizant of this wider Janus face recognized their English Protestant faith as their savior, thereby reducing their rulers to misguided pieces rather than sovereign English heroes.

Allegory in Pieces: Royalty and Pawns The play’s shifting back and forth between what this chapter refers to as “the royal plot,” which involves the main chess pieces, and “the pawn plot” facilitates this tension between two competing histories of the Spanish Match. The chapter approaches the royal plot as a “mixed allegory,”35 in which audiences take pleasure in drawing connections between allegorical chess pieces and their corresponding political players. Although the royal plot has often been interpreted as the basis of the radical and subversive pleasure of A Game at Chess, given that it overtly stages living monarchs and recent political events, the scandal operates as a buffer to the pawn plot, the complicated nature of which makes it the play’s greatest challenge to the status quo. People crowded the Globe to witness the

34 Geoffrey Whitney, A choice of emblemes, sig. O2v. This understanding of the Janus face reappears later in George Wither’s 1635 collection of emblems wherein he describes Janus as such: “in a Morall-sense, we may apply / This double-face, that man to signifie, / Who (whatsoere he undertakes to doe) / Lookes, both before him, and behinde him, too.” George Wither, A collection of emblemes, p. 138. 35 As Brian Cummings notes, mixed allegory occurs “when the author glosses his own allegorizing and offers an interpretation of the meaning of the figure even in the act of making a figure his meaning.” Brian Cummings, “Protestant Allegory,” in The Cambridge Companion to Allegory, p. 186.

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play of Gondomar, but the wider game of chess communicated a different kind of entertainment. The pawn plot’s nature as a “full allegory” provides deliberately incomplete representations of recent political affairs that leave topical connections to the audience’s imagination.36 The implications of this plot are imperative, as its main character is sought after and threatened by agents of the Black House, making pawns important rather than expendable. The pawn narrative is a full allegory insofar as it does not allow its audiences to associate the pawns directly with particular persons and, like Spenser’s Faerie Queene, offers a plethora of potential associations. Unlike the mixed allegory of the royal plot, the play’s full allegory disavows the audience’s mastery of the circumstances that transpire in the pawn plot. They do not have a definitive knowledge of who the pawns represent in their political reality, if the pawns are meant to signify anyone. The pleasurable experience of laughing at their governors’ folly or mocking the Spanish court no longer applies. The audience’s superior gaze is replaced with the intrigue of a loose allegorical chronicle of playgoers’ recent anxieties, for they have been the powerless pawns in their governors’ political game. By channeling the fears and emotions related to an impinging union to a Catholic nation through the central allegorical figure of the White Queen’s Pawn, Middleton establishes an ambiguous identity for the multitude and its Protestant body politic. The Janus face Middleton produces by overlaying these two narratives creates two competing histories of the Spanish Match: the mixed allegory presents Charles as England’s savior, whereas the full allegory strips the English monarchy of this power in favor of coincidence as the country’s saving grace. The incongruity of the pawn plot and the royal plot creates a discomforting experience for those able to recognize the uneven mesh of the narratives, unsettling placid illusions of militant Protestant or proto-nationalist sentiment for the early modern audience and debunking the essentialist moral binaries that have dominated scholarship on A Game at Chess.37

36 Cummings describes “full allegory” as a narrative in which “everything is left to the reader’s imagination and conjecture.” Ibid., p. 186. One cannot master the allegory in these circumstances, prompting awareness that there is something greater than the interpreter. Such an event inspires a providential allegory in which “God or the One, true goal, cannot accept predication and, therefore, must remain concealed.” Michael Murrin, “Renaissance Allegory from Petrarch to Spenser,” in The Cambridge Companion to Allegory, p. 167. The primary player of Middleton’s game remains unseen, but the nature of rulers as chess pieces instead of players makes us constantly aware of the greater forces that move them. 37 Ian Archer, for example, argues that by “presenting the struggle as a cosmic battle between black and white, Truth and Error,” Middleton “was presenting the binary view of Catholicism as the antireligion. While the actions of the white pieces are guided by the Christian God, the

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In paying closer attention to the pawn plot, it is clear that the text suggests that Londoners were saved by coincidence rather than by the strategies or tactics of their rulers. Charles traveled clandestinely with Buckingham to Spain to expedite the marriage negotiations rather than to serve as England’s hero.38 Although his choice can be construed as an effort to save the Protestant nation, it is equally foolish, given that it was an attempt to affiliate further with what the majority of Londoners regarded as their enemy. Charles’s competing interests and conflicted sentiments do not present a unified narrative of English-Spanish relations or the Crown’s religious allegiances. If A Game at Chess is a history play,39 then it contains multiple histories, as evidenced by its double plot of pawns and major pieces. In his discussion of the play as history, Taylor insists on the need to recognize this plurality: “History is not just big institutional official time; it is also small, personal, private time, the time of pawns as well as bishops.”40 Half of the play’s vision nevertheless champions a unified English zeal. The royal plot upholds Charles as the victorious savior of the Protestant nation, reading every action between the Spanish Armada of 1588 and the Spanish Match as leading to this climactic moment.41 David Glimp is therefore correct to identify an emergent history in A Game at Chess that sees the present black pieces are doing the Devil’s work.” Ian W. Archer, “Religious Identities,” in Thomas Middleton in Context, p. 143. Janet Clare likens A Game at Chess’s characters to those of a moral play, but simplifies the meaning of the medieval tradition in Middleton’s play: “In its allegory and abstractions, evoking English Protestantism threatened by European Catholicism, Game is closer to a morality drama than it is to Middleton’s psychologically probing tragedies or to the material world of his comedies.” Janet Clare, “The Theatre and Political Control,” in Thomas Middleton in Context, p. 181. Critics are not incorrect in these readings of the play’s binary nature, but the drama also offers greater complexity in its moral and allegorical scope. 38 As David Coast puts it, “they hoped to force the pace of negotiations and find out once and for all whether Philip IV, who succeeded his father in 1621, was negotiating in good faith.” David Coast, News and Rumour in Jacobean England, p. 18. 39 Although Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works labels A Game at Chess as a history play, Suzanne Gossett questions the viability of this category. Suzanne Gossett, “Middleton and Dramatic Genre,” in Thomas Middleton in Context, pp. 238–40. 40 Gary Taylor, “History · Plays · Genre · Games,” in The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton, p. 54. 41 A Game at Chess contains a reference to the Spanish Armada of 1588 near the end of the play when the White Duke, representing Buckingham, reports to the White Knight, Charles: “Sir, all the gins, traps, and alluring snares / The devil has been at work since ’88 on / Are laid for the great hope of this game only” (4.4.5–7). There are also several allusions to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Ignatius’s name resonates with the idea of igniting something, and he establishes a link between himself and the plot by punning on his name: “My wrath’s up, and methinks / I could with the first syllable of my name / Blow up their colleges” (Induction, 33–35). Later allusions to the Gunpowder Plot in the play include the Black Queen’s Pawn’s

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problem as the pinnacle rather than one matter in a larger continuum.42 However, the pawn plot counters this narrative by producing a variation of history that signals perpetual renovation that will continue beyond the game’s end. The pawn plot disrupts the royal plot’s conclusion as a climax; instead, it is an escalating series of historical events that elucidates the happenstance nature of the denouement and the White House’s narrow victory. The game has not ended and will be played again.

Satirizing Aristocracy Before discussing the pawn plot, it is necessary to contextualize the historical circumstances further and to pay attention to the royal plot, as it was the main draw for Londoners and stages the play’s parrhēsia when it intersects with the pawn plot. The implications of its re-mediatization of political documents, moreover, has not been fully considered. For some time, James had been attempting to finalize marriage negotiations between England and Spain, furthering his mission as peacemaker that had begun with the peace treaty between England and Spain in 1604. His actions spurred public anxiety over the possibility of a closer tie with the powerful Catholic nation. James, however, did not sanction a platform or medium for his opponents to voice their grievances. As Gary Taylor states, James’s proclamations banned dissent over the Spanish Match. By effectively “‘castrating’ the Protestant opposition, King James was widely perceived as a dupe and agent of Spanish Catholics.”43 Like many other comment to the White Queen’s Pawn – “I spied / A zealous primitive sparkle but now flew / From your devoted eye / Able to blow up all the heresies / That ever sat in council with your spirit” (1.1.26–30) – and Gondomar’s following passage: “Pray, let’s see’t, sir. / ‘To sell away all the powder in the kingdom / To prevent blowing up.’ That’s safe; I’ll able it” (2.1.209–11). The Fat Bishop reminds the audience of two other historical events that were considered Spanish or Catholic plots when he seeks a means to pardon the Black Knight’s Pawn for his crimes: “Promised also to Doctor Lopez for poisoning the Maiden Queen of the White Kingdom, ducats twenty thousand” (4.2.116–18) and “a gratuity for killing of an heretical prince with a poisoned knife, ducats five thousand” (4.2.112–14). The latter refers to the assassination of Henry IV of France, which James ordered not to be mentioned in England, and the former reminds the audience of Elizabeth’s physician Dr. Lopez, who was rumored to be attempting to poison her. These numerous historical allusions augment the anxiety of the recent history that the play stages, keeping audiences engaged and aware of this history that their governors seem to have ignored. 42 David Glimp, “Middleton and the Theatre of Emergency,” in The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton, p. 372. 43 Gary Taylor, Castration, p. 82.

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plays of the period, however, A Game at Chess did not incite radical political action or have a deliberate intent. This means that the play was not as zealously binary as its Puritan supporters would have liked to believe it was; it merely spurred their ire like the news did those Puritan readers discussed above. The Globe certainly profited from the vibrant depiction of Gondomar, who is the most memorable figure of the play. Middleton and the King’s Men went to great lengths to recreate the ambassador’s habit, but Puritans and some modern critics, predominantly Margot Heinemann, have taken this characterization as revealing a militant Protestantism that seems at odds with the play’s multifaceted quality.44 Thomas Randolph, a poet and close friend of Ben Jonson, identified the ways in which Puritans gravitated toward Middleton’s defamation of Gondomar while despising Jonson for his portraits of Puritans: Thay Quakte at Iohnson as by hym thay pase because of Trebulation Holsome and Annanias, But Middleton thay seemd much to Adore fors learned Exercise gaynst Gundomore.45

The reference to Tribulation and Ananias, from The Alchemist (1610), points to Jonson’s satirical portraits of two Puritans. In the play’s final scene, Jonson depicts these two characters recounting to Lovewit what has transpired in his home during his absence, vehemently lambasting the con artists who have committed such vice and trickery while overlooking their own involvement. Although they bring justice to light, Jonson mocks their fundamental righteousness and hypocrisy, particularly Ananias’s. Lovewit addresses Ananias as “Good zeal,” but asks him to “lie still / A little while” (5.5.23–24). He acknowledges Ananias’s virtue when he commends him – “Mine earnest vehement botcher, / And deacon also, I cannot dispute with you” (5.5.105–6) – but immediately threatens him thereafter, showing that he does not tolerate his intransigent nature and hypocrisy: “But if you get you not away the sooner, / I shall confute you with a cudgel” (5.5.107–8).46 While Protestant zeal is not discouraged in Middleton’s work, it is certainly tempered, as when Zeal awaits Truth’s permission in order to ignite Error and his company in flames in the concluding pageant of The Triumphs of Truth (1613). Like Jonson, Middleton values considered judgment rather than vehement righteousness, and A Game at Chess is no exception.

44 Margot Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre. 45 Sara Jayne Steen, Ambrosia in an Earthen Vessel, p. 54. 46 Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, vol. 3.

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There are moments where the audience can readily perceive a degree of satire toward the Puritan sect despite the ostensible popularity of A Game at Chess among Puritans, an oddity for the theater.47 The figure of the White Bishop’s Pawn, for instance, loosely represents the nation’s emasculated Protestantism. Taylor describes him as “[a]n English Puritan minister; formerly betrothed to the White Queen’s Pawn, before he was castrated by his romantic rival (the Black Knight’s Pawn).”48 Moreover, he and his assailant are both referred to by the Black Bishop’s Pawn as “inhuman enemies” (1.1.206). The two characters are extreme opposites and while the Black Knight’s Pawn is certainly made to be more reprehensible, the White Bishop’s Pawn is not highly esteemed, nor is he clearly a source of identification for the audience. In this fashion, Middleton slightly mocks Puritans and other outright challengers to the Spanish Match by displacing the emasculation generated by James’s censorship of counterblasts to the Spanish Match onto their habit of thought. The White Bishop’s Pawn does, however, have some sense of theatricality after losing what the play construes as his “manhood.” He speaks aside, for instance, of his plan before accepting his attacker’s offer to converse regarding a reconcilement between the two: No truth or peace of that Black House protested Is to be trusted; but, for hope of quittance And warned by diffidence, I may entrap him soonest. – I admit conference. (1.1.238–41)

But the pawn never manages to pull off a successful revenge, and the Puritan habit is repeatedly undermined by the White Queen’s Pawn’s naivety, which continues until she is able to understand how the game is played. As James Doelman observes, “her religious strengths – she is ‘zealous,’ ‘primitive,’ and ‘devoted’ (1.1.27–8; cf. 2.1.31–40), all terms valued by Protestants – are . . . used against her, as the black characters work ‘to catch / Her inclination’ (1.1.108–9), and her novice-like zeal for more opportunities for obedience . . . leaves her vulnerable.”49 Middleton’s play is not as kind to Puritans as they believed it to be, which perhaps points to their inability to interpret the allegory beyond what their predetermined morality allowed them to see.

47 As aforementioned, it is reasonable to deduce that the Puritans fixated upon what they desired to see in the play rather than attending to its broader scope. This makes sense, given that the binary nature of the chessboard and the play’s depictions of Catholics would have been its major appeals. 48 Gary Taylor, Castration, p. 25. 49 James Doelman, “Claimed by Two Religions,” Studies in Philology, p. 338.

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The Puritans’ admiration of Middleton’s depiction of Gondomar points to their fixation upon easily identified personages, as Gondomar is clearly represented as malevolent. Despite his malicious nature, his character would likely strike a public audience as harmless, given his hyperbolic theatricality and the audience’s knowledge that his scheme, namely the Spanish Match, will not succeed. He is a Machiavel, which was a stock villain of the early modern theater, and the Black Knight proudly and overtly associates himself with this common figure. He also resembles traditional evil characters such as Deceit and the Devil from The World Tossed at Tennis and echoes them when he recounts his past efforts and ongoing central aim: But let me a little solace my designs With the remembrance of some brave ones past To cherish the futurity of project Whose motion must be restless till that great work Called the possession of the world be ours. (3.1.82–86)

The phrase “possession of the world” correlates with the universal mission of the Catholic Church, which is global conformity to its religion and confirms earlier association of The World Tossed at Tennis with the threat of Spanish invasion. As Taylor surmises, “The monsters, for Middleton, are those who want to impose a ‘universal monarchy.’ A Game at Chess champions localism against the assaults of a global unifying imperialism, dressed up in the vestments of ‘monster holiness’.”50 As their prime deceiver, Gondomar dominates the stage as a master manipulator and the play’s main foil. Middleton’s creation of Gondomar’s persona leads Paul Yachnin to compare him with the Vice of medieval drama; Barbara Fuchs to note that Gondomar resembles Marlowe’s Barabas in “his dreams of world domination and unlimited power”; and T. H. Howard-Hill to see “him as . . . Richard of Gloucester in [Shakespeare’s] Richard III.”51 Gondomar belongs to this list of villains from medieval and Elizabethan dramatic past, all of whom are theatrically and comically attractive while nevertheless presented as incorrigible in their diabolical motives. Hence, Middleton makes Gondomar wonderfully entertaining while repulsively vile in his machinations. Like Barabas, Richard, and the Vices that influence them, Gondomar occupies a liminal threshold of theatrical pleasure while exhibiting immoral conduct that will ultimately fail according to the moral tradition as well as recent 50 Gary Taylor, Castration, p. 232. 51 Paul Yachnin, “The Literary Contexts,” pp. 32–37; Barbara Fuchs, “Middleton and Spain,” in The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton, p. 406; T. H. Howard-Hill, Middleton’s “Vulgar Pasquin”, p. 74.

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history. Through the actor’s impersonation of him, Gondomar is the most real and proximate figure in the play; however, he remains ineffective as a threat to the audience, as they already know that his plots and schemes will collapse. In this manner Gondomar is not only the foil by which Middleton can avoid punishment for briefly satirizing English aristocrats, he also functions as the super villain of the play’s dominant emergent historical narrative. The audience can comfortably watch this history unfold as they know it will be averted tragedy. The Protestant audience’s superiority to the Black Knight and his followers is made all the more prominent by the eminence Gondomar holds in relation to his pawn. His dialogue with the Black Knight’s Pawn stretches his theatrical villainy to absurd proportions, but it also directs the audience’s attention to the need to understand such Machiavellian strategies. Knowledge of the theatrical conventions associated with Gondomar’s character allows Protestants to spot these faulty and malicious politics, for spectators would have noted the same correlations with his forebears that Yachnin, Fauchs, and Howard-Hill identify. The theater thus functions as an institution that teaches audiences about corrupt politics. Like Gondomar’s pawn, the Protestant audience is helpless to effect political change, but their faith contrasts with what Middleton presents as the Black Knight’s Pawn’s uninformed Catholic ignorance: BLACK KNIGHT GONDOMAR Thou hast seen A globe stands on the table in my closet? BLACK KNIGHT’S PAWN GELDER A thing, sir, full of countries and hard words? BLACK KNIGHT GONDOMAR True, with lines drawn some tropical, some oblique. BLACK KNIGHT’S PAWN GELDER I can scarce read; I was brought up in blindness. BLACK KNIGHT GONDOMAR Just such a thing, if e’er my skull be opened, Will my brains look like. BLACK KNIGHT’S PAWN GELDER Like a globe of countries. BLACK KNIGHT GONDOMAR Yes, and some master politician That has sharp state-eyes will go near to pick out The plots and every climate where they fastened; ’Twill puzzl’em too. (3.1.132–42)

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The intricacies of Gondomar’s brain would have confused even the best governor, suggesting that Gondomar projects and proliferates schemes onto the world that exceed the lines and “hard words” of the globe in his room, words which the Black Knight’s Pawn cannot discern. The metaphor, however, also directs our attention to the Globe theater, which was a place where Londoners could be informed and learn. On the topic of hard words, for example, the English theater served as a space in which audiences could comprehend hard words by their auditory proximity to more common words.52 The ignorant Catholic “brought up in blindness” is effectively contrasted with the English playgoer who gains knowledge of hard words and politics from a conscientious interpretation of the theater. However, this is another way the play distinguishes the black Spanish house from the white English house. As Ian Smith has identified, barbarism was used in rhetorical manuals to distinguish proper from improper speech. Although Smith is mainly preoccupied with “errors in language” rather than a lack of knowledge, his assessment of “access” in relation to “education, regional usage, geographical provenance, immigrant acculturation, and the range of attitudes toward these cultural factors that determine social interaction” can be extended here to comprehend the way in which Middleton portrays the white English audience as superior to their Spanish counterparts.53 The vocabulary of the black pawn here is framed as weaker than that of a pawn from the white house, and therefore that of the audience. Gondomar upholds a superior stance over his subordinate pawn by retaining the knowledge he possesses of these things for himself and gloating over his unfathomable intelligence as well as his brain’s ability to concoct thousands of plots. The audience’s monarch, however, has also confined his subjects to silent complacence. In addition to the aforementioned 1620 proclamation that attempted to censor popular opinion, James composed a poem in 1623 that condemned public outcry over the Spanish Match. The poem, “O stay your teares yow who complaine,” is a direct response to “The Common’s Tears,” a rejoinder (now lost) to an unspecified matter of state at the time. Although it is uncertain

52 Ian Lancashire and Elisa Tersigni as well as Elizabeth Bernath observe that Shakespeare often follows a hard word with more common words, which assists in making these words more familiar to an audience. Ian Lancashire and Elisa Tersigni, “Shakespeare’s Hard Words and Our Hard Senses,” in Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media, pp. 27–31. Elizabeth Bernath, “‘Strangers Enfranchised’,” in Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media, pp. 66–80. 53 Ian Smith, Race and Rhetoric in the Renaissance: Barbarian Errors, p. 31.

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what the primary issue or issues were that preoccupied the lost tract, James does refer figuratively to the Spanish Match: . . . to noe use were councell tables If state affaires were publique bables. I make noe doubt all wise men knowe This weere the way to all our woe For Ignorance of causes makes Soe many grosse and fowle mistakes The moddell of our princely match[.]54 (79–85)

For James, the proliferation of public opinion is akin to the biblical story of Babel, which echoes early sentiments about democracy as a viral and monstrous political force. The implied message of James’s poem is that the singular voice of the king leads to order since he knows best what course of action to take. Parrhēsia is therefore effectively banned by this point. His “princely match” (the Spanish Match) is therefore justified, and he does not need to heed public sentiments that run counter to it. James thus imposes a singular, authoritarian rule in response to public outcry. The ensuing lines accentuate his earlier statements that governance is his domain and his alone: Take heed your paces bee all true And doe not discontents renewe Meddle not with your princes cares For who soe doth too much: hee darrs.55 (95–98)

According to the monarch, then, virtue follows the direction the monarch sets out for the country. His course, however, is in league with the Catholics. As the White Queen’s Pawn states after the king’s verdict has passed and she is conveyed to the Black House, “[i]f this be virtue’s path, ’tis a strange one” (2.1.76). Despite her naivety, the White Queen’s Pawn is nevertheless able to intuit what James cannot: that an allegiance with the Black House defies the rules of the game (wherein the White House is supposed to oppose the Black House) and

54 James I, “O stay your teares yow who complaine,” in Early Stuart Libels, http://www. earlystuartlibels.net/htdocs/spanish_match_section/Nvi1.html. 55 Ibid.

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exposes members of that house to corruption. This perception speaks to a poem that answers James’s response: Contemne not Gracious King our plaints and teares Wee are no babes the tymes us witnesse beares Yet since our father yow doe represent To be as babes to yow wee are content . . . But we must goe in saufetie to our grave Our harts for raunsome of our heads yow have O let not then disdaine but grace and love Lengthen their days whose faith yow daily prove[.]56 (2–5, 13–16)

James’s efforts to nullify the outcry to the Spanish Match actually provoked parrhēsia. The respondent’s parrhēsia is conveyed through the courteous acknowledgment of James’s patriarchal authority over “babes” coupled with a critique that the king has misused this dominant power to endanger what is ostensibly the people’s Protestant faith, as they must be allowed to go to their graves with safety. Middleton’s play likewise does not radically encourage its audience to demand a new king, but it does portray James’s historical mistake of leading his kingdom astray from the Protestant faith. This tension between monarch and people corresponds with Hall’s observation that prior to James England relied upon the notion of “Elizabethan insularity,” but James’s peacemaking efforts to unite England with opposing religious nations and the king’s own foreign Scottish ancestry did not fulfill this habit of thought. As Hall identifies, this means that “English identity comes to rely on both the appropriation and the denial of differences troped through blackness to fill this void and preserve a sense of self,” and in Middleton’s play the white militant Protestant insistence on insularity from the Elizabethan era echoes through the White Queen’s Pawn while James functions as a foil whose agenda favors Spain.57 This is not to say that the play condemns James or portrays him as a villain; rather, Middleton scrutinizes the king’s earlier actions by staging what was already popular opinion: that James was a weak king. Taylor contextualizes this view of James by drawing attention to James’s outrage in a 1621 parliamentary speech wherein he responded to comparisons between himself and Edward II.58 Taylor’s suggestion that James appeared weak also directs attention to the king

56 “Contemne not Gracious king our plaints and teares,” in Early Stuart Libels, http://www. earlystuartlibels.net/htdocs/spanish_match_section/Nvi2.html. 57 Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness, p. 176. 58 Gary Taylor, ed., A Game at Chesse: An Early Form, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1777. This is likely an early homophobic commentary on James’s weakness in

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as a chess piece. Although pawns are not able to carry out much action and are typically perceived as collateral in the grand scheme of the game, the king is not exactly a versatile or agile piece, despite being the most important item on the board. Furthermore, in Middleton’s game, the Black House does not seem interested in the king at all. They aim to possess the White Queen’s Pawn, to coerce the White Knight to their side, and to capture the White Queen, but they never indicate the slightest desire to take the king. Overall, James seems unsought and passive in A Game at Chess, or like a piece already playing into the Black House’s game. John Chamberlain’s letters and accounts from ambassadors also suggest that the king was impersonated. Janet Clare takes Chamberlain’s account of the players’ impersonation of “someone else,” in addition to Gondomar, “to be James as [represented by] the White King . . . There was, needless to say, a tacit understanding that the reigning monarch was not represented on the stage.”59 Alvise Valaresso, the Venetian ambassador, likewise provides an account that suggests that James might have had more to worry about concerning A Game at Chess than just the Spanish uproar concerning Middleton’s mockery of Gondomar: “the king’s reputation is affected much more deeply, by representing the ease with which he was deceived.”60 It was evident to playgoers – English and non-English – that Gondomar was not the only character whose actions are satirized in A Game at Chess. The ambassador’s description of James’s naivety likely speaks to Sir John Holles’s reference to James as a clock. A. R. Braunmuller draws our attention to this description, specifically his mention of the way in which Holles describes the White King moving back and forth like a clock between belief and unbelief. Since the White King is never referred to as a clock in the extant texts, Braunmuller provides further context of what Holles likely means: “Middleton [does not] use the clock metaphor: perhaps Holles is here responding to the actor’s gestures, perhaps the actors spoke and did more than was set down for them.”61 Even though the text never refers to the White King (James) as a clock, Holles’s account correlates with the speech in which James begins by voicing support for the White Queen’s Pawn but swiftly shifts like a clock’s pendulum to side with

connection to Edward’s, especially given the previously quoted verse libel concerning the king’s relationship with Buckingham. 59 Janet Clare, “The Theatre and Political Control,” in Thomas Middleton in Context, p. 181. 60 Christina Alt, “Directed Readings: Paratext in A Game at Chess and The Tragedy of Philotas,” Philological Quarterly, p. 131. 61 A. R. Braunmuller, “‘To the Globe I Rowed’,” English Literary Renaissance, p. 347.

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the Black House after Gondomar protests the charge.62 Having been previously threatened by the Black Bishop’s Pawn, the White Queen’s Pawn pleads with the White King to provide her with safety and to chastise him for his actions. The Black Knight, Gondomar, however, claims to have evidence that her assailant has not been in the country during the time she claims he has attempted to rape her. James’s question to Gondomar on this matter is comical: “Can you make this [evidence] appear?” (2.2.203). The words conjure a picture of magical devilry that correlates with theatrical illusion; the king practically asks to be duped. The audience’s real king maintained a close bond with Gondomar, which Middleton subtly indicates led to such collusion. Middleton’s allegory thus loosely but effectively mocks James when the White King demonstrates his inability to interpret the Black Knight’s fraud. The White King’s reflection upon the Black Knight’s information demonstrates his inability to interpret theatricality: Behold all, How they cohere in one. I always held a charity so good To holiness professed, I ever believed rather The accuser false than the profession vicious. (2.2.216–20)

The words “Behold all” presumably hail not only the characters onstage but also the audience at the Globe, fashioning the White King into an ignorant overseer who is unable to see the truth.63 The dramatic irony with which Middleton frames the King in relation to the audience shows their ruler’s inability to interpret politics or theater. The coherence James projects at this moment is as foolish as Gondomar’s desire for global domination: both, albeit for vastly different reasons, demand and impose singular unity onto a conflicted world. In fact, the White King’s allegiances have wavered. He claims that he “ever believed” that the White Queen’s Pawn was misguided, thereby siding with the “holiness” of the Black Bishop. The Black Knight’s ability to dupe the White King into forsaking his

62 This is plausible given that these actions are the only sustained dramatic action the White King enacts in the play, and this is the only case where he is allocated any gravity onstage. 63 Although the White King appears to be in a position of power at this moment by communicating to the audience in the platea, Erika T. Lin has explored moments like this that complicate the distinction. Power is constructed through theatrical privilege and the shared knowledge of the audience, who in this case know the White King to have been duped. This counteracts the authority an actor would typically hold, “even if the character being watched and heard communicates directly with the audience in the tradition of the platea.” Erika T. Lin, “Performance Practice and Theatrical Privilege,” New Theatre Quarterly, p. 290. James’s subjects thus know or knew better than the king himself did.

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own house and religion resembles Gondomar’s manipulation of James over the course of the Spanish Match. James’s friendship with Spain and his fervent desire for peace blind him to deceit. In this scene, then, James, as the White King, moves between belief and unbelief of the White Queen’s Pawn’s complaint, as a clock’s pendulum would. The White King’s singular mindset differs from the collaborative and theatrical tactics of the White Knight, who devises a more mutual model of governance. When the White Queen’s Pawn despairs that she is forsaken and “left a prey / To the devourer” (2.2.227–28), the White Knight interjects with words of consolation: No, thou art not lost. Let ’em put on their bloodiest resolutions, If the fair policy I aim at prospers. – Thy counsel, noble Duke? (2.2.228–31)

Although the White Knight imposes a “policy,” he recognizes that his aim could go amiss, suggesting an improvisatory preparation for failure. He also depends upon the “counsel” of the “noble Duke,” a figure representing Charles’s friend Buckingham, demonstrating his interdependence with others in enacting governance, but also possibly his proclivity to trust such a figure who, as aforementioned, was unpopular in the political literature that circulated prior to their voyage to Spain. Like Phoenix in Middleton’s first extant play, the White Knight works well with others to enact his politics, depends upon clandestine methods to do so, and conscientiously reflects upon the means by which he creates virtuous conclusions: “What pain it is / For truth to feign a little” (4.4. 16–17). The prince’s dislike for the subterfuge he deploys correlates with Prince Phoenix’s reluctance to disregard his father’s orders. James, on the other hand, has become the Old Duke of The Phoenix who is unable to see into his people’s hearts and can only observe and demand their devotion. It would seem as though Middleton promotes the heir, Charles, as the people’s champion.

Unpredictable Providential Morality There is a problem with this interpretation, however, which is that the circumstances of the play’s allegory do not mesh evenly with the history of what actually occurred. As aforementioned, this segment of the play correlates with the secret journey Charles and Buckingham took to Spain in a failed effort to court Maria when the marriage negotiations became too protracted. However, the

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history surrounding Charles’s actions does not readily align with the White Knight’s plot to save the Protestant nation from peril. This is not to say that the people did not rejoice at Charles’s return from Spain. Ian Munro provides an overview of London’s reaction to this event: The celebration on Charles’s return . . . was the closest thing early modern England produced to a spontaneous national demonstration of public opinion, and had its own subsequent print dissemination through correspondence, diary, and occasional poem. Describing the huge crowds and holiday atmosphere of this event, John Chamberlain wrote, “I have not heard of more demonstrations of public joy then were here and everywhere from the highest to the lowest,” an opinion shared by many other observers.64

However, this sentiment can be said to be a celebration less of Charles’s or James’s agenda and more of their failed politics, as England had safely evaded a marriage with its enemy. Mark Hutchings contextualizes Charles’s return and the English monarchy as a whole in such terms: “the prince had only returned from Madrid a matter of weeks before, his father’s foreign policy in ruins, and he himself an unlikely hero in English Protestant eyes.”65 This is not to say that playgoers would not have been affected by the prince’s return or that the play’s denouement would not have effectively allowed them to relive this collective sentiment. Indeed, Charles’s actions after the dissolution of the Spanish Match do suggest a fervent and adamant Protestantism. On his return to England, Charles met first on repeated occasions with the Palatine ambassador, Rusdorf, which the ambassador took to reflect the prince’s devotion to his sister and the religious cause.66 But these actions took place after the Spanish Match had fizzled, and Charles “continued to affect the Spanish dress he adopted in Madrid,” which given the play’s attention to costuming should not go unnoticed.67 Therefore, those who were cognizant of their recent history and were paying attention to what transpired onstage regarding the White Queen’s Pawn’s safety would have been attuned to this lingering tension. The incongruency of these events disavows the audience’s prince’s or king’s actions during the Spanish Match as the means to the country’s recent Protestant victory. Before attending to this incongruency, it is important to consider the ways in which the White Queen’s Pawn functions in the play and how Middleton

64 Ian Munro, “Making Publics,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, p. 210. 65 Mark Hutchings, “Thomas Middleton, Chronologer of His Time,” in Thomas Middleton in Context, pp. 26–27. 66 Brennan C. Pursell, “The End of the Spanish Match,” The Historical Journal, p. 721. 67 Jerry Brotton, “Buying the Renaissance: Prince Charles’s Art Purchases in Madrid, 1623” in The Spanish Match: Prince Charles’s Journey to Madrid, 1623, p. 24.

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uses her to inspire a collective but diverse political consciousness. It is safe to presume that the White Queen’s Pawn represents the Protestant identity of Londoners. She becomes an allegorical protagonist who undergoes threats from those chess pieces affiliated with Spanish Catholicism, whose ideological forces have likewise threatened to penetrate the audience’s nation. The pawn functions in this context as the moral locus for Londoners, whose king has led them away from divine grace and into the hands of their devilish foe. Taylor provides a detailed and compelling description of her similarity to the protagonist of a moral play, fashioning her as an Everyman or Everywoman.68 Following Taylor’s suggestion, this chapter focuses on the White Queen’s Pawn as the central figure of the pawn plot. By concentrating on her role, which is often neglected in scholarship on the play, this chapter discovers that her true “savior” is not the White King (James), nor the White Knight (Charles), but the Black Queen’s Pawn. The black pawn is an ambivalent figure who is lascivious and represents the Jesuit order but also utilizes theatricality, a talent that the White Queen’s Pawn must learn in order to avoid sin. Jane Sherman has also drawn from the moral tradition to suggest that the White Queen’s Pawn represents a collective rather than a singular body. As Dessen does in his discussion of The Phoenix, Sherman looks to the estates play as a way of interpreting the allegory. She claims that the pawn presents her complaint to the White King as “a figure representative of the people or the national good,” who “complains in distress to the monarch who summons the Three Estates in parliament and calls on them to account for their misdeeds or take corrective action.”69 In this case, however, the White King values the Black Knight’s word over his queen’s pawn, accentuating the Black Knight’s claim that the “court has held the city by the horns / Whilst I have milked her” (3.1.110–11). These lines align the play’s original audiences with the White Queen’s Pawn insofar as they have been rendered vulnerable to foreign religio-political predators by their court. Audience members are thus led to develop a skeptical view of their governors. The sovereign’s inability to control fate and his decision to form an alliance with his people’s foes prompt the audience to question whether or not divine providence aligns with the king’s will. In other words, is James still the decider if his decisions are foolish? Although this book has observed such a critique at work in Middleton’s other dramatic writings, in A Game at Chess it is much

68 Gary Taylor, ed., A Game at Chesse: An Early Form, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1783. 69 Jane Sherman, “The Pawns’ Allegory,” Review of English Studies, p. 153. Alan C. Dessen, “Middleton’s The Phoenix and the Allegorical Tradition,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900.

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more severe, for as Christina Marie Carlson has recently pointed out, God’s providential support of English Protestants in the play is not automatically sanctioned. As Carlson observes, “It is up to individual actors, and especially the Parliament and the king, to ensure that the narrowly averted crisis over the Spanish Match does not recur, possibly with different and more tragic consequences.”70 This outlook is made all the more prevalent when we perceive that this victory has been narrowly achieved and after collusion with England’s religious enemy. The looming threat that the White House could lose favor in the future unsettles the idea that the monarchy or the English nation is a predetermined victor and broadens the span of responsibility. Providence’s capacity to level social hierarchy finds in chess a metaphor to promote such thinking. James Doelman has recently located a passage from James Cleland’s sermon A Monument of Mortalitie (1624) that illustrates the chess game’s metaphorical ability to dismantle hierarchical rank through the leveling power of death. By pointing to the shared mortal condition of a king and a pawn, Cleland, like Middleton, reveals that no one is able to ascertain providential will: All, both good and bad are Actors on this stage of Mortalitie, every one acting a part . . . some of lesse, some of greater dignitie; and the Play being ended Exeunt omnes, every one goes off the stage, and as Chessmen without difference they are swept from the table of this World, wherein one was a King, another a Queene, a third a Bishop or Knight into Earths bagge; onely this distinction being betwixt good and bad, that the good are Actors of a Comedie[.]71

Cleland’s image of inevitable decay speaks to the ironic energies of Middleton’s final play, which augment the binary division between England and Spain, Protestantism and Catholicism, or truth and error, while troubling comfortable illusions of perspicuous control or intransigent righteousness. Moreover, Middleton’s game reflects the stage of mortality by making the pawn, typically expendable, the prize and the king of little interest to the opponents. If Middleton was familiar with Cleland’s sermon, then he would have likely identified with it, given that its imagery of common mortality echoes the sentiments from The Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased.72 Cleland provides a theatrical outlook on the social leveling that death precipitates but in the form of a chessboard rather than the common trope of theatrum mundi. From this perspective, success

70 Christina Marie Carlson, “The Rhetoric of Providence,” Renaissance Quarterly, p. 1226. 71 James Doelman, “Another Analogue,” Notes and Queries, p. 418. 72 See the Introduction to this book for a discussion of this text in relation to Calvinism, sovereignty, and providential logic.

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becomes comedic and failure translates to tragedy in the chess game of life. Cleland’s sermon cautions its audience with the same implication that Middleton’s drama makes: ultimately, we are not players but pieces.73 The director of life’s chess game is God, and his subjects, king and prince included, cannot be entirely certain of His desired outcome. Middleton expresses similar ideas in the texts we have previously explored, but with A Game at Chess he stages the English royalty as fallible and ineffective as well as not entirely in control of events, despite presenting them as the game’s victors. By teaching the people (instead of their rulers) that the way to elude vice is to understand not only vice but theatricality,74 Middleton provided Londoners with lessons in political action via their faithful obedience to God rather than James, fashioning political awareness. By bypassing the sovereign or overriding his authority as God’s deputy, Middleton’s play rewrites or reimagines the rules of early modern political theology.75

“She that knows sin, knows best how to hate sin.” The play’s instruction in politics is complicated by the fact that knowledge of sin is required in order to elude it. An earlier Middleton play, A Trick to Catch the Old One (1606), elucidates this logic when Jane defends herself against accusations of whoredom by claiming that “She that knows sin, knows best how

73 Doelman’s work on Cleland builds upon an earlier Notes and Queries piece by Jeanne Shami, who notes a similar analogy between life and a game of chess in a sermon by Robert Harris for Sir Anthony Cope’s funeral. The sermon compares Cope to Samuel and names him “a good Christian, a good Church-man, a good States-man.” Jeanne Shami, “Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chesse,” Notes and Queries, p. 368. As Shami points out, the sermon was quite popular; Harris “delivered the sermon at Cope’s funeral in 1614, but the sermon was republished in 1618, 1622, 1626, 1629, and again in 1630.” Ibid., p. 367. The connection of chess not only with providence but also with political contributions beyond those of royalty, given that Cope is celebrated as a “States-man” as well as for his religious duty, would appear to pervade the later Jacobean era and persist into the Caroline period. 74 Theatrics are associated with vice, but they are not necessarily vicious. Middleton’s depiction of trickery in A Game at Chess thus corresponds with chapter 1’s earlier application of Shuger’s identification of the dolus bonum, or good trick, in early modern political theology to Middleton’s The Phoenix. The exception is therefore not exclusive to the sovereign. 75 This notion parallels early modern understandings of chess play, the rules of which were more ambiguous and multivalent than our modern conceptions of the game are; Middleton was aware of this when penning A Game at Chess, given his references to Jean Barbier’s changes to Arthur Saul’s guide to the game. Mark Kaethler, “Jean Barbier and Thomas Middleton Rewrite the Rules of Chess,” Ludica, pp. 4–7.

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to hate sin” (5.2.151). Middleton offers a similar outlook with A Game at Chess’s suggestion that the Black Queen’s Pawn’s theatrics and trickery are necessary in order for the White Queen’s Pawn to recognize and therefore eschew sin and exercise virtue. In this manner, Middleton communicates that theater is a necessary evil that provides edification in politics. The binary established between blackness and whiteness likewise correlates with sinfulness and virtue, respectively. When tied with the religious contrast between Protestantism and Jesuitism (or Catholicism) and the racialized distinction between white England and black Spain, the binary resonates with the common contrast between the figure of the infidel and the English Protestant that Dennis Austin Britton identifies in his study of race and religion. Although the necessity of the Black Queen’s Pawn’s vice signals a rupture or destabilization of this binary, it is important to remember Barbara Fuchs’s observation that “no Blacks are secretly White” in the play, “suggesting an essentialist and racialized version of Spanish difference.”76 In this way, A Game at Chess represents a reversal of the common baptismal conversion of the “infidel woman” through marriage; as Britton notes, such “plays remained tragicomedies rather than tragedies because of the conversion of the infidel woman through sexual or other means.”77 In Middleton’s drama, the tragicomic action instead succeeds through the “infidel” pawn’s lascivious actions to deter the Black Bishop’s Pawn from the White Queen’s Pawn. The play cultivates an alliance with both women pawns by using the theatrical space to guide the audience through framing this interdependence of vice and virtue. Nevertheless, the play still insists on the essential binary through creating a narrative in which Spain is a violent invasive force. Arthur L. Little, Jr. identifies that in early modern drama “to be raped by an outsider, to be claimed by one who has or is given no local claims, signifies nothing less than an act of aggression against the body politic itself.”78 Spain is therefore framed as an essential and penetrative evil whose blackness is only valuable as lessons to their white virtuous counterparts. The White Queen’s Pawn cultivates the

76 Barbara Fuchs, “Middleton and Spain,” in The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton, p. 409. Fuchs’s observation is in keeping with Britton’s discussion of baptism’s racial significance: “the inability to wash the black figure could signify the inability of Protestant baptism either to erase original sin or to produce Christian identity.” Dennis Austin Britton, Becoming Christian: Race, Reformation, and Early Modern English Romance, p. 4. 77 Ibid., p. 156. 78 Arthur J. Little, Jr., Shakespeare Jungle Fever, p. 59.

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audience’s empathy in this situation, and she hopes that they will exercise proper virtuous and therefore white reception as well: I must confess, as in a sacred temple Thronged with an auditory, some come rather To feed on human object than to taste Of angel’s food; So in the congregation of quick thoughts Which are more infinite than such assemblies Some have been wanderers, some fond, some sinful – They’d small encouragement to come again. (1.1.130–39)

Munro suggests that the pawn’s speech alludes to the same issue Hamlet points to (1.5.96–97),79 namely the inability of the theater to unify a distracted Globe, while nevertheless establishing a communal space: [T]he image of “a sacred temple / Thronged with an auditory” also connects the space of the mind with the space of the theater itself, and suggests a parity of sorts between theatrical space and the religious space of the temple. This repositioning of theatrical space works also through the audience: while some may have come for entertainment, there is a more important purpose at work here.80

Munro is correct in his claim that the speech encourages dutiful engagement from its audience. The White Queen’s Pawn’s mention of “wanderers” indicates that, regardless of the space’s identity as a church or a theater, the audience could be equally distracted, and their eyes could “feed on human object[s]” rather than metaphorically ingesting “angels’ food.” The White Queen’s Pawn’s early statement is important for guiding the audience’s interpretive approach to the play, but the vehicle of the church is not necessarily what communicates its severity. Later on, we see the broader capacity of the White Queen’s Pawn to construe a public by drawing attention to the theater itself as a public. She illuminates that spaces other than sites of devotion can configure a public by identifying the stage conventions deriving from the medieval tradition that an audience can (and in the case of A Game at Chess easily does) spot, even if their rulers cannot. While still upholding virtuous conduct, the White Queen’s Pawn gives the following statements after having gained knowledge of vice and seen the perpetrators for what they really are. Speaking to the Black Bishop’s Pawn, she states:

79 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, edited by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor. 80 Ian Munro, “Making Publics,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, pp. 220–21.

“She that knows sin, knows best how to hate sin.”

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For decorum’s sake, then, For pity’s cause, for sacred virtue’s honour, If you’ll persist still in your dev’lish part, Present him as you should do, and let one That carries up the goodness of the play Come in that habit, and I’ll speak with him. Then will the parts be fitted, and the spectators Know which is which; they must have cunning judgements To find it else, for such a one as you Is able to deceive a might auditory. Nay, those you have seduced – if there be any In the assembly – when they see what manner You play the game with me, they cannot love you. (5.2.24–36)

Here, more than before, her speech implicates the audience. She commends them by referring to “a mighty auditory” while also reminding them that “they must have cunning judgements” in order to deduce the truth.81 The White Queen’s Pawn, however, does not possess such perceptive abilities at this moment. As Wittek deduces, her ensuing question of why the Black Bishop’s Pawn is smiling at this statement is indicative of her “hopelessly naive” demeanor: “She longs for a world that operates like morality plays, where devils look like devils and priests look like priests, and spectators do not have to exercise ‘cunning’ judgment to tell the difference.”82 The dramatic irony of this moment shows the audience that the abilities to interpret theater and politics are intertwined, for she is unable to gain an advantageous position because of her inability to discern her ironic circumstances. As Wittek states, she is naive, and although the audience does not wholeheartedly side with the Black Bishop’s Pawn in his mischievous grin, they do still perceive her as demanding a codified morality of a world that is more complex than she believes it to be. The White Queen’s Pawn does eventually learn to enact politics; however, she gains this talent by virtue of luck, or the Black Queen’s Pawn’s actions. It is only after circumstances lead to the White Queen’s Pawn’s averted tragedy that she sees things in retrospect for what they are. The Black Queen’s Pawn is the White Queen’s Pawn’s ironic saving grace not only when she inadvertently assists her in dodging her would-be rapist, but when she does so earlier on in the play as well. Before he is about to force himself onto the White Queen’s Pawn in act 2, scene 1, for example, the Black Bishop’s Pawn suddenly hears a noise

81 Her previous use of “auditory” in act 1, scene 1 to describe a place of worship further supports my point that the formation of a public is not dependent upon the space being sacred. 82 Stephen Wittek, The Media Players, p. 73.

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that causes him to halt his advance, providing the White Queen’s Pawn with time to escape (2.1.142–43). The Black Queen’s Pawn later enters and explains that she has “spied a pawn of the White House walk near us, / And made that noise on purpose to give warning” (2.1.156–57); however, in what is clearly an aside, she reveals that she has done so for her “own turn, which end in all [she] work[s] for” (2.1.158). Although the Black Queen’s Pawn diverts the impending tragedy at this moment, it is not out of any moral compunction or alliance with the White Queen’s Pawn. Rather, she acts according to her own advantage in the game. The Black Queen’s Pawn’s success is predicated upon mastery of the theatrical conventions of the aside, disguise, and offstage sound effects. These tactics allow her to thwart the Black Bishop’s Pawn after she has assisted him in luring and deceiving the White Queen’s Pawn into experiencing attraction toward him. Her governance of the silent action that constitutes act 4, scene 3 demonstrates her mastery as a director occupying a privileged seat of theatrical authority in relation to the White Queen’s Pawn and the Black Bishop’s Pawn: Enter the Jesuitess Black Queen’s Pawn with a taper in her hand, as conducting the Virgin White Queen’s Pawn in her night attire to one chamber, then – fetching in the Black Bishop’s Pawn (the Jesuit), in his night habit – conveys him into another chamber; puts out the candle, and follows him.

The stage direction presents a bed trick that allows the White Queen’s Pawn to elude her deceitful suitor unknowingly while the Black Queen’s Pawn exacts her pleasurable revenge upon him, besting him at his own horrible game. Christian morality or ethics have nothing to do with the Black Queen’s Pawn’s ambition. As before, her own “end” serves her in this scene, too (a bawdy pun that Middleton regularly uses in the play). Although the Black House’s individualistic, selfish ambitions depict Spain in a state of civil unrest, it is equally crucial to note that this wayward energy precipitates the safety and well-being of the White House. Indeed, the play’s staging continuously aligns the playgoers with the Black Queen’s Pawn in her witty and entertaining manipulation of the characters onstage. Londoners’ connection with the Black Queen’s Pawn is fully revealed in her final exchange with the Black Bishop’s Pawn prior to the White Queen and the White Bishop’s Pawn taking the two of them. In this moment, blame is displaced from the Black Queen’s Pawn onto the Black Bishop’s Pawn: JESUITESS BLACK QUEEN’S PAWN Can five years stamp a bawd? – Pray, look upon me, sir; I’ve youth enough to take it. – ’Tis no more Since you were chief agent for the transportation

“She that knows sin, knows best how to hate sin.”

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Of ladies’ daughters, if you be remembered; Some of their portions I could name, you pursed ’em, too. They were soon dispossessed of worldly cares That came into your fingers. JESUIT BLACK BISHOP’S PAWN Shall I hear her? JESUITESS BLACK QUEEN’S PAWN Holy derision, yes, till thy ear swells With thy own venom, thy profane life’s vomit. Whose niece was she you poisoned with child, twice? – Then gave her out ‘possessed with a foul spirit’? When ’twas your bastard. (5.2.95–106)

As Gary Taylor explains, the reference to the Black Bishop’s Pawn as the “chief agent for the transportation / Of ladies’ daughters” reflects the topical anxiety of the Jesuits “helping aristocratic young women secretly leave England to go to nunneries in Catholic countries.”83 Caroline Bicks elaborates upon this historical fact; her in-depth exploration of Jesuits in London at the time illuminates the ways in which Jesuits utilized women and theatricality to lure Londoners to the Jesuit religion.84 Although the Black Queen’s Pawn’s character embodies the cultural anxiety regarding conversion, she simultaneously operates in this instance as the saving grace of the White Queen’s Pawn. The ambivalent nature of the Black Queen’s Pawn is heightened when we consider the fact that these references in the play align her with English women who have been preyed upon by the Jesuit order. Like the White King’s Pawn who changes his allegiances and is remarked upon as being “half black” by the Fat Bishop (3.1.284), the Black Queen’s Pawn retains a degree of ambivalence. This is not to say that Middleton presents her as ethical or moral, but simply that her revenge upon the Black Bishop’s Pawn happens to coincide with the needs of the White House, making her, like the Jeweller’s Daughter before her in The Phoenix, more equivocal than meets the eye. The reference to the Black Queen’s Pawn as “[t]hou whore of order” encapsulates the conundrum she embodies (5.3.112). Taylor notes in his edition that this contradictory phrase fashions the Black Queen’s Pawn into a sex worker, but that the line has several connotations: “(a) of a religious order (b) on

83 Gary Taylor, ed., A Game at Chess: A Later Form, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1876. 84 Caroline Bicks, “Staging the Jesuitess in A Game at Chess,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, p. 464.

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demand (c) of ordure, excrement, filth (but also a complex paradox, since ‘whore’ epitomizes sexual and moral disorder).”85 The “complex paradox” of the Black Queen’s Pawn is situated in her inadvertent ability to derive order from vice in mysterious ways. The Black Bishop’s Pawn draws attention to this fact since she, rather than the White House, is the true savior of the White Queen’s Pawn. This oddity reveals the reliance upon theatricality in order to execute virtue. Without a working knowledge of the theater, the White Queen’s Pawn remains vulnerable to the Black Bishop’s Pawn and helpless in the face of corruption by deceit. This quandary causes her salvation to arrive unexpectedly through the crafty performer of the Black Queen’s Pawn, who happens to have ambitions that align with the White Queen’s Pawn’s interests.86 The White Queen’s Pawn’s final movements and speech highlight this necessary transformation. Having been ostensibly saved by the White Bishop’s Pawn, who takes the Black Bishop’s Pawn, the White Queen’s Pawn, in turn, saves him from the Black Knight’s Pawn: BLACK KNIGHT’S PAWN GELDER [aside] Yonder’s the White Bishop’s Pawn. Have at his heart now! VIRGIN WHITE QUEEN’S PAWN Hold, monster-impudence! Wouldst heap a murder On thy first foul attempt? O merciless bloodhound! ’Tis time that thou art taken. [White Queen’s Pawn takes Black Knight’s Pawn] BLACK KNIGHT’S PAWN GELDER Death! prevented? VIRGIN WHITE QUEEN’S PAWN For thy sake, and yon partner in thy shame, I’ll never know man farther than by name. (5.2.113–18)

This episode’s action illustrates that the White Queen’s Pawn has learnt how to maneuver politics, and in turn the world, thereby preserving her innocence and chastity. Taylor’s choice to frame the Black Knight’s Pawn’s intentions in an aside shows that the White Queen’s Pawn has learnt how to perceive the vicious from the virtuous, since she is able to anticipate the Black Knight’s Pawn’s

85 Gary Taylor, ed., A Game at Chess: A Later Form, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1877. 86 This outcome might also be the result of divine providence; however, the circumstances that transpire onstage lead us to see the Black Queen’s Pawn as the unintentional deviser of the White Queen’s Pawn’s narrow escape.

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assault upon the White Bishop’s Pawn. The White Queen’s Pawn’s assessment of the Black Knight’s Pawn’s character and actions, as well as her subsequent decision to attack him, amplifies her intuitive capacity to predict the Black Knight’s Pawn’s motions, since she does not require overt knowledge of his actions in order to map them out in advance of the outcome. Her superior mastery of the event is heightened by the Black Knight Pawn’s inability to anticipate her move, which is evident given that his charging cry of “Death!” is quickly and comically replaced by “prevented?,” suggesting that the stage direction in which she takes him ought to occur between these words. Her speech prior to her apprehension of the pawn denotes a change in her comportment. She is no longer the meek and helpless figure we have seen throughout the play. Here, she becomes the hero to the White Bishop’s Pawn instead of the locus of anxiety. By transforming from a naive interpreter who is the subject of mockery to a politically aware actor, the White Queen’s Pawn accomplishes what the White King cannot: she becomes a political actor and savvy interpreter.

“Dissembler! – that includes all” The averted tragedy of the White Queen’s Pawn reveals that the White Knight’s plot was not as effective as he believed it would be. Although he and his Duke manage to deceive the Black House and win the game, their representative, the White Bishop’s Pawn, is relatively ineffective in “saving” the White Queen’s Pawn. After the White Queen’s Pawn has successfully evaded rape, thanks to the Black Queen’s Pawn’s private scheme, the White Bishop’s Pawn suddenly enters with the White Queen. At this point, the Black Queen’s Pawn and the Black Bishop’s Pawn are in the midst of heated dialogue. Sufficiently distracted, the White Bishop’s Pawn takes the Black Bishop’s Pawn. The White Queen’s Pawn, however, is not threatened at this point and has held her ground in debate with the Black Bishop’s Pawn over the course of this scene. Neither the White Queen nor the White Bishop’s Pawn allegorically represents a direct configuration of a member of the English state. As previously noted, the White Bishop’s Pawn is most likely the muted Puritan faith; the White Queen corresponds loosely with Elizabeth of Bohemia, given that Queen Anne had died in 1619.87 These forces are associated with English faith rather than the English Crown. Thematically, then,

87 Thomas Cogswell points out that the White Queen is “a character clearly resembling Elizabeth of Bohemia.” Thomas Cogswell, “States and Their Pawns,” in Thomas Middleton in Context, p. 133.

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Middleton’s narrative suggests that English faith, rather than English government, has overcome threats to the national body, if we desire to locate any determinate cause. What remains clear is that Charles’s discovery is not a deux ex machina, as it arrives after the White Queen’s Pawn has already evaded peril. The Black Queen’s Pawn remains the actor who engineers the event that saves the White Queen’s Pawn. There is no clear evidence that the Black Queen’s Pawn has intended to save the White Queen’s Pawn, so coincidence is presented as her savior. These matters are important to keep in mind as we read the White King’s concluding speech. Having originally befriended members of the Black House and made serious errors in judgment, he is nevertheless allocated the final remarks, which seem to suggest closure, both figuratively and literally: So let the bag close now (the fittest womb For treachery, pride, and malice), [The bag closes] whilst we winner-like Destroying through heaven’s power what would destroy, Welcome our White Knight with loud peals of joy. (5.3.217–20)

While the medieval imagery of the chess bag as a hell-mouth seems fitting, it is also rather simple. Underlying James’s commands is providential language; the White House are “winner-like” rather than the game’s actual victors, and they destroy “through heaven’s power” instead of their own. The king’s commands in this scene are still effectively those of an instrument, an actor, a chess piece, rather than of a sovereign player or decider of the political game. The White Knight, who is celebrated with “peals of joy,” is also the master dissembler who achieves “checkmate by / Discovery . . . the noblest mate of all” (5.3.160–61). As Taylor notes, discovery is one of the most impressive chess moves a player can pull off in the game, but it is also the “public exposure (of [his or her] lies and other vices).”88 This is not what Charles actually accomplished in Spain, but what the public wanted to imagine that he did, given that his militant Protestant zeal piqued again after his failure to finalize the marriage negotiations during the course of his visit. Although Thomas Cogswell claims that “Middleton was highlighting, and the audience applauding, the cunning and valor of Charles – and Buckingham,” the prince’s use of dissemblance remains equivocal 88 Gary Taylor, ed., A Game at Chess: A Later Form, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1881.

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as well.89 The actor becomes the symbolic vehicle through which to communicate the collective use of deception by all political parties, as indicated both when Gondomar tells the White Knight, “What we have done / Has been dissemblance ever” (5.3.157–58), and when the White Duke reiterates a similar message after the discovery: “Dissembler! – that includes all” (5.3.164). As Taylor states, “all the actors, on both sides of the chessboard, belong to the Black House,”90 as they have all dissembled the audience as actors. Like pieces in a game of chess, all the actors leave the stage at the end of the play after the game is finished. Although the Black House exits into the bag, whereas the members of the White House presumably exeunt as actors traditionally would, Taylor points out that they have all served as pieces or instruments that are moved by greater forces. The grandiose conclusion of good trumping evil is therefore not as simple as it would seem, and for those who have been attuned to the plural politics and divergent histories, it prompts political awareness rather than security. Given that Middleton wrote A game at chess rather than The game at chess, the suggestion seems to be that more games will be played, signaling an emergent history involving perpetual renovation rather than a climactic end.

Conclusion: Still Binary Oh honoured England how art thou disgracd By Moorish faces thus to bee outfac’d? . . . State him againe he is a Lymbe of thyne. And let not that head satisfy the thirst Of Morish pride? . . . Give him but force his owne head to maintaine And like brave Scipio he will sacke proud Spayne.91 (1–2, 26–28, 33–34)

After returning from Spain and rousing English nationalism, Buckingham once again faced scrutiny, but this time from his previous colluders. The Spanish monarchy demanded that James’s favorite be reprimanded for his actions during his time in Spain and for his later condemnation of the Spanish. The verse

89 Thomas Cogswell, “Thomas Middleton and the Court, 1624,” Huntington Library Quarterly, p. 278. 90 Gary Taylor, ed., A Game at Chess: A Later Form, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1829. 91 “Oh honoured England how art thou disgracd,” in Early Stuart Libels, http://www. earlystuartlibels.net/htdocs/buckingham_at_war_section/Oi2.html#f10.

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libel above supports Buckingham and encourages James to arm Buckingham against the Spanish instead of punishing him for his recalcitrance. What is significant, however, is the racialized depictions of either side in this matter, as the Spanish have “Moorish faces.” Given early modern stage conventions, this language aligns them with blackness and racializes the English as white, thereby creating a racial opposition rather than merely a religious one.92 This portrayal is made all the more polarized as a result of Spain’s depiction in relation to Moors at the outbreak of the Thirty Years War. Although there has been some debate on whether Moor can be a determined identity category,93 the association here between the stage figure of the Moor and the Spanish through “Moorish faces,” particularly when applied to A Game at Chess and in light of Rowley’s earlier play All’s Lost by Lust cannot be ignored. As Hall has pointed out, Spain, “had its own involvement with a threatening darker ‘other’ through its history of Moorish invasion and conquest,”94 and Ian Smith has identified that Rowley’s depiction of “the Moors’ military conquest of Spain” in All’s Lost by Lust “constitutes a spectacular rupture of national sovereignty and cultural identity.”95 The pairing of the Thirty Years War with the Spanish Match likewise establishes a Hispanophobia that concatenates with other previously discussed white supremacist constructs of the period to generate this fear of losing English sovereignty over the course of the early 1620s. In this moment, the libel instantiates Buckingham by racializing him as white and connecting this race with virtue. Spain’s association with blackness, on the other hand, is linked with the country’s supposed traits (or sins), namely their “pride,” which leads them to demand just ends to Buckingham’s misdeeds (much as they would Middleton for penning A Game at Chess). Although the play is clearly critical of its own monarchy, then, it nevertheless plays into what was clearly understood as an emerging religious war involving what were increasingly understood as two different races.96

92 Joyce Green MacDonald notes the opprobrious stage conventions from the early modern era through to the Restoration in which actors playing Moors typically clothed or painted themselves in black. Joyce Green MacDonald, Women and Race in Early Modern Texts, p. 2. 93 Michael Neill, Putting History to the Question, pp. 272–73. 94 Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness, p. 17. 95 Ian Smith, Race and Rhetoric in Renaissance England, p. 13. 96 The aftermath of the Spanish Match’s dissolution saw an increasingly militaristic antagonism between England and Spain. Cogswell notes that Spain was rumored to have plans to invade Ireland and that this potential to break peace treaties possibly justified “6,000 troops” that Buckingham in particular saw fit to advance. Thomas Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution, p. 245.

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Despite Middleton’s subtle blurring of vice and virtue through black and white imagery, then, his play nevertheless accentuates the polarity of two kingdoms. As the passage above indicates, this division was popularly defined not only as religiously dichotomous but racially as well.97 Regardless of whether or not an audience member was able to perceive Middleton’s subtle critique of the White House’s method of arriving at a virtuous and fortuitous outcome, all audience members witnessed a cruel racialized satire of the “sunburnt, tansyfaced” and “olive-coloured” Spanish (5.3.212–13).98 Although the impending threat of rape from the Black Bishop’s Pawn prompts an audience member to align with the vulnerable feminine pawn and question their governing authorities, the trope nevertheless plays into the convention that Arthur L. Little Jr. has elucidated in Shakespearean literature wherein white empire imagines itself as threatened by an invading blackness that compromises not only the fair virtue of the English, but also their fair skin.99 In Middleton’s play, the white woman that the audience is allegorically led to identify with does not purify her condition through suicide, as Little observes is typically the case in previous dramas. Middleton and his audiences were well aware of this narrative convention, and by staging averted tragedy instead, he champions English but also white virtue. However, the resultant safety of the woman in this case promotes the white supremacy of the Jacobean era by associating the rapist Spanish bishop pawn with blackness and rendering him different from the white pawn. Therefore, although Middleton conveys a playful destabilization of the black/ white binary, it takes shape within a white supremacist narrative, and these plural politics play out simultaneously in order to capitalize both on political curiosities and xenophobia. In upholding white English religio-political culture as superior to a “sunburnt” Spain’s Catholicism, for all its political critique of patriarchal governance, A Game at Chess should be recognized for concurrently advocating an opprobrious racialization of chess’ systems of power, namely that white presumes to go first.

97 Taylor identifies that the political strife between the English and Spanish “is ideologically (and racially) organized” on the stage through the chess game. Gary Taylor, A Game at Chesse: An Early Form, p. 1774. 98 Although black was “the Spanish fashion,” and in “Madrid the court wore only black,” Middleton’s text and this libel clearly draw a contrast that is not only based upon clothing but also bodies. Malcolm Smuts, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England, p. 104. 99 Arthur J. Little, Jr., Shakespeare Jungle Fever, pp. 2–5. As Little points out, this history stems from the Elizabethan era with the need to protect and preserve the queen’s private body, which is imagined doubly as the body politic. Ibid., p. 33.

Conclusion: “Use but your royal hand” Following a warrant released on August 30, 1624 for Middleton’s arrest concerning his composition of A Game at Chess, the playwright penned a short poem “To the King,” which, as its title suggests, was written for James. Having mainly incurred censorship as a result of complaints from the Spanish Ambassador, the King’s Men received a nominal reprimand, but the author was to incur more severe punishment. Eventually it came to light that he had written the play. “We do not know when Middleton was found, or how long he was imprisoned,” or even if he was incarcerated,1 but we do know that he wrote this popular poem, possibly in an effort to evade chastisement: A harmless game, raised merely for delight, Was lately played by the Black House and White. The White side won, but now the Black House brag They changed the game and put me in the bag – And that which makes malicious joy more sweet, I lie now under hatches in the Fleet. (1–6)

Middleton once again refers to his work as harmless, as it is only intended for the public’s pleasure; moreover, he plays the humble subject who is at the mercy of the king and the victim of circumstance, given that it is the Black House rather than James who has brought about his unfortunate predicament. Despite the poem’s structure as a plea, Middleton utilizes his subordinate and lowly status to move the king: Use but your royal hand, my hopes are free; ’Tis but removing of one man – that’s me, Tho. Middleton (7–8)

Middleton plays the pawn, but he is in fact the player who moves the king, given that this poem was ostensibly effective or at least comments upon the success Middleton had in avoiding serious penalty.2 The sovereign remains in

1 Gary Taylor, ed., Occasional Poems, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1895. Taylor’s claim that Middleton was apprehended, however, differs from that of Grace Ioppolo, who suggests he never was jailed, though she recognizes that the popularity of this poem, which was widely circulated, would have generated a collective imagination that its poet was imprisoned for the notorious play of Gondomar. Grace Ioppolo, Dramatists and Their Manuscripts in the Age of Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton and Heywood, pp. 170–71. 2 It is possible that Middleton had connections at court that helped him avoid punishment. Thomas Cogswell has speculated that Charles, Pembroke, and Buckingham protected A Game https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513763-006

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control since he chooses the author’s fate, but Middleton’s rhetoric subtly provides the king with opera basilica in the disguise of a plea for mercy. Although Middleton feigns that A Game at Chess signified nothing beyond satirical enjoyment, his poem remains an example of the ways in which citizens could be led to imagine that a subject (Middleton) could enact parrhēsia effectively, for the playwright managed to gain James’s mercy or was at least believed to have done so. Despite the fact that James remains the decider, the playwright provides the stage directions for his decisions, thereby demonstrating the power of Middleton’s final parrhēsia for James. Middleton’s use of chess allegory to execute his escape plan speaks to the anxieties James expressed over Londoners’ knowledge of the game, for the poem demonstrates the ways in which a citizen can learn to manipulate the king’s politics to his advantage through the discourse of chess. As Paul Yachnin has shown, James regarded chess as an activity that metaphorically represented the role of governors, but he saw the game as a foolish pastime when it came to his subjects, or pawns.3 Yachnin observes two instances at which James allegorizes his role in relation to the game of chess. The first is in Basilicon Doron, where the king links his subjects’ act of playing the game with philosophical folly: “For where all such light playes, are ordained to free mens heads for a time, from the fashious thoughts on their affaires; it by contrarie filleth and troubleth mens heads, with as many fashious toyes of the play, as before it was filled with thoughts on his own affaires.”4 This passage indicates that James would prefer that his subjects deal with their own affairs instead of having “free mens heads” concoct tactics. For James, chess is a distraction from necessary tasks that allows too much freedom in everyday life. This stance suggests the king’s wariness of his subjects’ ability to recognize their individual power to manipulate scenarios. The king’s later reference to chess comes from his speech to parliament in 1609, when James asserted that he had the “power to exalt low things, and abase high things, and make [his] subjects like men in Chesse; A pawne to take a Bishop or a Knight, and to cry up, or downe any of his subjects.”5 This quotation allocates James the power of the decider, as he claims supremacy over the game by stating that as a king he is able to command his people in the same way a player rules over a chessboard. James, however, ignores the fact that in his kingdom he is a

at Chess and perhaps Middleton. Thomas Cogswell, “Thomas Middleton and the Court, 1624: A Game at Chess in Context,” Huntington Library Quarterly, p. 284. 3 Paul Yachnin, “A Game at Chess and Chess Allegory,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, p. 317. 4 Ibid., p. 317. 5 Ibid., p. 317.

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prominent piece rather than the ruling player of the chess game, which is ostensibly God. Middleton’s poem carefully positions James as the player of the game, complementing the manner in which the king saw himself, but the author doubles his own role as a pawn that James ought to move to safety, thereby pardoning him, and a greater authority, who instructs James to guard him. Hence, although the poem demonstrates Middleton’s humility toward James, it simultaneously illustrates a presumptive subject attempting to direct the king. The playwright’s deployment of flattery in order to sway the monarch could be said, then, to reveal him as enacting parrhēsia in obtaining an opportunity to speak truth to power by first acknowledging the king’s sovereignty. Middleton thus manipulates circumstances to suit his present needs, namely his safety; however, his negotiation of the dual roles of player and piece is more complex than this tradition. He sees himself two ways at once, mover and moved, and therefore establishes a middling identity or middle tone between player and piece. Likewise, James as sovereign is divided as he who rules and he who obeys. Middleton does not play God but instead subtly coerces the monarch to rescue him through plural politics that carefully navigate a middle state between control and submission. Studying Middleton’s plural politics and the power dynamics they expose has thus offered an alternative to what Martin Butler has called the “vexing subversion/containment debate that followed New Historicism everywhere” in contemporary political criticism on the era’s dramatic literature.6 Various studies of politics have promoted this model of scholarship wherein transgression is staged only to be quelled by dominant power structures by the end of the play. As Jonathan Dollimore articulates, the issue at hand in these situations is that pure transgression is impossible to attain, as it is reliant upon and voiced within existing power structures.7 Previous studies of political theology replicate a similar model in examining power by concentrating on reaffirming or escaping Schmitt’s concept of the decider.8 Middleton’s plural politics instead decenter the sovereign’s image as “decider” by reminding him of the limitations of his office, challenging his decisions, or fracturing his image as an almighty solitary ruler. All of these techniques ultimately bring James into the fold of his body politic to establish mutual governance with his people. For Middleton,

6 Martin Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture, p. 16. Mark Fortier offers a summary of the containment/subversion debate in new historicist scholarship. Mark Fortier, Theory/Theatre, p. 165. 7 Jonathan Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence, p. 299. 8 Jennifer R. Rust, “Political Theology and Shakespeare Studies,” Literature Compass, p. 178.

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sovereignty is inevitable; however, for Middleton, the power relations that constitute sovereignty are protean and perpetually renovated. Middleton’s political poiesis therefore offers a means to see sovereignty and power as fluid rather than oppositional or purely hierarchal, as subversion and containment rather than subversion/containment. The basis of the new historicist paradox was Michel Foucault’s writings on power and discourse that perceived how mercy and power ultimately reside with the sovereign,9 but by turning to Foucault’s and early modern rhetoricians’ notions of parrhēsia,10 the book has offered a means to reconsider subjects’ positioning in this power relation, as they have the tools to challenge the sovereign. In discussing sovereignty in a lecture from “Society Must Be Defended”, Foucault states that “power is not something that is divided between those who have it and hold it exclusively, and those who do not have it and are subject to it.”11 The implication here and elsewhere in Foucault’s lectures is that power circulates despite political impositions that would claim otherwise. Middleton’s work signals that underlying James’s policies and via media of peace are contradictions that identify the reality of this circular power and plural politics.12 Middleton repeatedly exposes the ways in which the sovereign relies upon his subjects, and he provides theatrical space for subjects to challenge the sovereign through early forms of free speech that acknowledge sovereign power but also its limitations. Middleton ruling and obeying James as player and pawn reminds us of the old Duke’s admiration of Phoenix for being able to adhere to Aristotle’s maxim. In this regard, the poem’s manipulation of the king is not sardonic; instead, Middleton practices what he preaches by acting obeisant toward his monarch while making requests of him, as he previously counseled James in The Phoenix. Although political authority and decisions remain the king’s business, then, this study has shed light on the ways in which Middleton’s canon questions the inherent and superior abilities of the ruler. In offering such an alternative to studies of political theology in early modern drama, this book has shown Middleton’s political art’s capacity to resist James’s image of himself as sole decider and to question his ability to make proper political choices.

9 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 53. 10 Michel Foucault, The Courage of Truth, p. 16; Michel Foucault, The Government of Self and Others, p. 156. 11 Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”, p. 29. 12 An example of this is Foucault’s identification that “peace itself is a coded war” that ignores the conflict of ideas that underlies it. Ibid., p. 51. The implication is that even when his motivations are ostensibly amicable, James’s sovereignty neglects the reality of the world and its underlying political tensions.

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197

It seems fitting to end this book by concluding in the same manner that Middleton finished his career as a writer: by still directing the interpreter’s attention to the middle state governors must continually acknowledge. The new sovereign, however, followed in his father’s footsteps by ignoring Middleton’s political art and the city at large. After James died on March 27, 1625, Charles assumed the throne, but he only cemented the division between king and kingdom. Plague again delayed the performance of the king’s processions through the streets of London, but when the opportunity to stage the pageants came about, Charles opted to cancel the royal entry altogether: “The pageants were to be torn down because they were obstructing traffic flow for London’s wealthiest inhabitants.”13 As Taylor points out in his account of the lost pageant for Charles I, “Middleton is the only writer ever named in connection with these pageants, intended to equal The Whole Royal and Magnificent Entertainment, which had officially welcomed James I into London.”14 Middleton received no further compensation for his pains and efforts beyond whatever he might have initially been given to pen these lost pageants: On 6 June, the London Aldermen ruled that “Mr Christmas and Mr Middleton referring themselves to this Court, no further moneys shall be paid unto either of them, but that Mr Christmas shall forthwith cause the said pageants to be taken down, and to have the same for his full satisfaction.” Christmas was allowed to sell off the building materials, by way of reimbursement; Middleton got nothing, although “no further moneys” indicates that he had been paid earlier, presumably for writing the speeches that should have been delivered, and perhaps for inventing the symbolism of the pageants themselves.15

Charles augmented the division between Crown and kingdom, lost the people’s love,16 and voided the mutual and contractual bond between king and people that Middleton had championed in dramatic works for both James and Charles. The dramatist’s plural politics and opera basilica failed to reach a royal audience yet again. The cancellation, however, did not stop Middleton from attempting to instruct his betters. The last text and only extant Caroline work of Middleton’s, The Triumphs of Health and Prosperity (1626), continues to focus on his middle tone, which he portrays with the common narrative of a sea journey: “The world’s a sea, and every magistrate / Takes a year’s voyage when he takes this state” (106–7). The city’s journey, like the ship’s voyage, always threatens to be

13 Gary Taylor, “Lost Pageant for Charles I,” in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, p. 1900. 14 Ibid., p. 1898. 15 Ibid., p. 1900. 16 Ibid., p. 1900.

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perilous no matter how many times it safely eschews the hazards and problems that oppose its aim. This event for the lord mayor reminds him that his term is temporary (“a year’s voyage”) and is a situation applicable to any “magistrate” in the world. Even at the end of his career, Middleton’s drama continues to encourage governors to remain vigilant and to observe a course of perpetual renovation that sees their kingdom as fluid and changing by perceiving that the “world’s a sea.” Middleton understood the difficulty of finding coherence in the midst of this fluidity when it came to his audiences. As he writes in the Prologue to No Wit, No Help Like a Woman’s, “How is’t possible to please / Opinion tossed in such wild seas?” (9–10). The rhetorical question shows the playwright relinquishing control concerning his subjects in attendance, as perfection cannot be achieved and not everyone will be satisfied. Nevertheless, the playwright must persevere to accomplish the tasks of instructing and delighting audiences through his political poiesis. But when the drama is a mayoral show or a court performance, the impetus falls on the audience that has the authority to wield and maintain the world during such turbulent storms at sea. Middleton consistently presented the warning that it is a mad world, to his masters, but as those governors became less effective at striking a middle tone in the parrhēsiastic contract and less interested in hearing subjects’ parrhēsia, Middleton’s Londoners became increasingly invested in political affairs, which at times cultivated misogyny and xenophobia through misdirected white masculine discontent and sentiments of injustice. It is therefore important to avoid hailing Middleton as having been more progressive than he actually was in his political interventions, but for better or worse he certainly was more than merely “plain Tom.”

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Index Absolutism 7; 18; 28; 73 Allegory 3; 6; 35; 36; 38; 43; 44; 45; 54; 57; 67; 71; 73; 100; 105; 107; 126; 144; 151–152; 154–155; 161–166; 176–191; 194 Altman, Joel 6 Alwes, Derek 9 Anna, Maria 42; 156–157; 176–177 Aristotle 38; 58; 115; 196 Bacon, Francis 37; 50 Baird, Caroline 112 Bale, John 49 Beaumont, Francis 91 Bellany, Alastair 73, note 1; 74; 76, note 6; 77; 78; 103, note 100 Belsey, Catherine 23 Bennett, Susan 30 Bertelli, Sergio 101 Bezio, Kristin M. S. 15; 18 Blackfriars 38; 73; 75; 82; 87–88; 90–98; 100; 139 Body politic 31–32; 37–38; 41; 43; 45; 50; 52; 55–59; 61–64; 66–67; 100–102; 111–112; 114; 118; 124; 164; 178; 181; 195–196 Boys, Jayne E. E. 133, note 57; 161 Britton, Dennis Austin 46, note 6; 181 Bruster, Douglas 21; 24; 100 Burgess, Glenn 7, note 20; 18; 19, note 57; 21, note 66; 40 Bushnell, Rebecca 33 Butler, Martin 195 Calvinism 8–14 Campana, Joseph 9 Carr, Robert 38; 73–80; 86–87; 93; 148; 158 Chakravarty, Urvashi 39 Chakravorty, Swapan 1; 25; 63 Chamberlain, John 73, note 1; 74–75; 82; 92–93; 103; 107, note 118; 160, note 24; 161, note 28; 174; 177

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501513763-008

Charles, Prince of Wales 31; 41–42; 109–110; 111–114; 119; 120–153; 154–191; 197 Cockayne, William 88; 130; 131–132 Cogswell, Thomas 188–189; 190, note 96; 193, note 2 Colclough, David 3; 144, note 84 Consent and politics 7–9; 15; 19; 36–37; 38; 44; 58–59; 140; 149–150; 195–196 Contractual politics 7–9; 18–19; 37; 69–71; 99; 114; 149–150; 197 Daileader, Celia 35 Danson, Lawrence 46, note 9; 48; 64; 71 Deiter, Kristen 109 Dessen, Alan C. 52; 62; 178 Dekker, Thomas – Magnificent Entertainment 17, note 49; 36; 47; 59 – News from Gravesend 27 – The Wonderful Year 27, note 86 – The Roaring Girl 34; 117 Devereux, Robert 75–80; 84 Doelman, James 46, note 5; 124; 168; 179 Dollimore, Jonathan 34; 64, note 64; 195 Doty, Jeffrey S. 17; 72, note 85 Elizabeth I 1; 14; 16–19; 21; 26; 32–33; 36; 40; 43; 49–50; 56; 57; 59–60 Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia 111; 119; 125; 141; 156; 173; 187 Erasmus 4, note 9; 22; 24 Esposito, Roberto 31 Farr, Dorothy 114 Fletcher, John 90; 91 Fortescue, John 7–8 Foucault, Michel 4; 136, note 61; 196 Frederick, King of Bohemia 111; 119; 125; 138–139; 141; 156 Fuchs, Barbara 169; 170; 181 Gentlemen 20–21; 125; 139 Glimp, David 2, note 4; 11–12; 165–166

220

Index

Gondomar - see Sarmiento, Diego Gossett, Suzanne 121; 157, notes 12 and 14; 165, note 39 Gurr, Andrew 66, note 69; 90, note 64; 137–138 Habib, Imtiaz 39–40 Hall, Kim F. 39; 124–125; 155–156; 173; 190 Hammill, Graham 6; 15–16 Hand, Meredith Molly 83 Harris, Jonathan Gil 52 Heinemann, Margot 53; 161, note 28; 167 Heller, Jack Herbert 9, note 26 Henry VIII 19, note 56 Hile, Rachel E. 24 Holmes, David 6, note 19 Hopkins, Lisa 77, note 14; 105 Howard, Frances 36; 38; 73–82; 86–87; 92 –110; 111; 122; 148 Howard-Hill, T.H. 162; 169; 170 Huebert, Ron 10 Hutcheon, Linda 115 Hutchings, Mark 94; 104, note 103; 107, note 116; 109; 151, note 93; 177 Inns of Court 4; 20–21; 65; 69 Irony 3; 23; 35, note 112; 36; 63; 64, note 65; 72, note 85; 79; 112–113; 114–120; 124; 132; 133; 138; 140; 144; 149; 150–151; 163; 175; 183 James I – and accession 43–44; 71 – and the dialogic 22; 27–28 – and Elizabeth 14; 16–19; 32–33; 36; 56; 57; 59–60; 173 – and Gondomar 31–32; 175–176 – and dueling 121–122 – and illness 41; 54; 111; 122; 135; 141 – and his image 1; 11; 17; 19; 31; 32; 37; 71; 72; 73; 111; 113; 148; 196 – and knighthoods 20; 37; 53; 62; 64–66 – and masculinity 32–33; 38; 45; 113; 121–122 – and news 41; 159–160; 166–167

– and patriarchy 14; 33; 36; 37; 50; 54; 90; 148 – and proclamations 63–64; 66; 121, note 29; 159; 166–167 – and the Overbury trials 32; 73; 81–82; 97–102; 108; 122; 148 – and the Thirty Years War 22; 39–41; 111–114 – and the via media 22; 23 – and witchcraft 88–89; 91–92; 95–98 – as boy actor 37; 45; 54–57 – as Decider 18; 31; 59; 72; 194; 196 – as Peacemaker 22; 110; 123–125 – as Scottish 32; 72 – Basilicon Doron 1; 17; 36; 44; 46; 54; 58; 68; 194 – Daemonologie 38; 75; 91; 96–98 – God and the King 32; 147–148 – Lepanto 46 – “O stay your tears, you who complain” 171–172 – Speech to the Lords and Commons of Parliament 31 – True Law of Free Monarchies 1; 44; 46; 54; 58 Jonson, Ben 4, note 9; 17, note 49; 112 – The Alchemist 167 – The Devil is an Ass 87–88; 90, note 64 – Gypsies Metamorphosed 157 – Hymenaei 76; 105 – Masque of Beauty 155, note 8 – Masque of Blackness 155, note 8 – Masque of Queens 87 – Neptune’s Triumph 162 – Oberon 135, note 60 – The Staple of News 133 Jowett, John 2, note 2; 30, note 94; 79, note 22; 151, note 92 Kahn, Victoria 2–3; 19, note 55 Kamps, Ivo 46, note 9; 48; 61, note 60; 64; 71 Kantorowicz, Ernst 14–15; 31; 57 King’s Men 144; 153; 167; 193 Knowles, James 111–112; 125; 140, note 75

Index

Lamb, Edel 56 Lancashire, Anne 47, note 10; 73; 81, note 28; 82; 87 Libels 26; 38; 77; 79, note 20; 80; 82; 92–93; 98–102; 105; 107; 158; 171–172; 189 Lindley, David 76, notes 7, 9, 10 and 11; 80, notes 24 and 26; 81, note 27; 91, note 65; 92, note 72; 94, note 76; 104 Little Jr., Arthur L 40; 181; 191 London 6, note 18; 18; 19; 20–21; 36; 44; 58, note 48; 59; 71–72; 124; 130; 178 Loomba, Ania 157 Lopez, Jeremy 30–31; 62 Lorde, Audre 34–35 Lupton, Julia Reinhard 5; 6; 8 15; 44 Lyly, John 50 Machiavelli 81; 88–89; 97; 169; 170 Marlowe, Christopher 16, note 43 – Doctor Faustus 13, note 36; 25–26; 84–85 – Edward II 26 – The Jew of Malta 26 – The Massacre at Paris 26 Marston, John – The Fawn 64, note 65 – The Malcontent 46; 72 Martin, Mathew 4, note 9; 116 Martin, Richard 4; 19–20; 37; 44; 47; 50; 57; 59; 65 Martin Marprelate 23–24; 100 Mary I 20–21; 49 Masten, Jeffrey 122 McGee, C.E. 119; 131–133; 140; 141; 144, note 83; 149, note 91 Middleton, Thomas – and emblems 146–148; 163 – and games 114; 126, note 48; 134; 146; 151; 172–174 – and the law 51–52; 60–61; 67; 68; 69–71; 75; 82; 101–102 – and masculinity 35–36; 113; 121–122; 130; 132; 139–140; 168–169 – and misogyny 35; 38–39; 63; 75; 77; 78; 79; 93; 105–110 – and patriarchy 33–35; 98–102

221

– and satire 23–24; 36; 38; 78; 82; 85–87; 90; 93; 95; 98–102; 153–154; 162–163; 166–176; 191 – and style 21–22 – and the via diversa 23–26; 62 – and the via media 22–26; 152 – and white supremacy 39–42 – as Gentleman 19–21 – as Plain Tom 20–21; 198 – Black Book 13, note 36; 25 – The Changeling 34; 38–39; 75; 76; 94; 102–110; 121, note 33; 151 – A Chaste Maid in Cheapside 33–34; 77, note 13; 78; 79; 98, note 87; 101; 137 – Civitatis Amor 121, note 31 – A Fair Quarrel 121 – Father Hubburd’s Tales 24 – A Game at Chess 1; 35–36; 41–42; 144; 153–191; 193–195 – The Ghost of Lucrece 1, note 1; 21–22; 35; 152 – God’s Parliament House 8, note 25 – The Honourable Entertainments 130; 131–132 – Macbeth 2, note 2 – A Mad World, My Masters 9; 12; 65, note 68; 114 – The Magnificent Entertainment 17, note 49; 36; 37–38; 44; 47, note 14; 59; 60; 66, note 70; 72 – Marriage of the Old and New Testament 8, note 25 – Masque of Cupids 78–79; 92 – Masque of Heroes 41; 112; 124–126; 128; 132, note 53; 139; 140, note 75; 151 – Measure for Measure 1–2; 5; 44 – Michaelmas Term 65, note 68 – Microcynicon 1, note 1; 23; 25 – More Dissemblers Besides Women 78; 79; 92; 102; 117 – News for Gravesend 27 – The Nice Valour 151 – No Wit, No Help Like a Woman’s 29–30; 198 – The Old Law 121; 122 – The Owl’s Almanac 13, note 36 – The Peacemaker 123–125

222

Index

– Penniless Parliament of Threadbare Poets 1, note 1; 25 – The Phoenix 1; 27; 35; 37–38; 43–72; 99; 144; 146; 149; 176; 180, note 74; 196 – Plato’s Cap 23, note 74; 114 – The Revenger’s Tragedy 89, note 58; 136, note 62 – The Roaring Girl 34; 117 – The Spanish Gypsy 157 – Timon of Athens 2, note 2 – The Triumphs of Health and Prosperity 1, note 1; 197–198 – The Triumphs of Honour and Industry 122–123 – The Triumphs of Love and Antiquity 130 – The Triumphs of Truth 167 – “To the King” 193–194 – Two Gates of Salvation 8, note 25 – A Trick to Catch the Old One 13; 48–49; 65, note 68; 180–181 – The Widow 92; 102 – The Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased 1, note 1; 10–11; 26; 179 – Wit at Several Weapons 112; 117, note 22; 121 – The Witch 36; 38–39; 73–103; 106–107; 110 – Women, Beware Women 35; 76; 136, note 62; 121 – The World Tossed at Tennis 36; 41; 111–152; 159; 162; 169 – Your Five Gallants 65, note 68; 136, note 62 Millstone, Noah 15, note 40; 27; 138 Mulholland, Paul 8, note 25; 48–49; 123 Munro, Ian 177 Munro, Lucy 69 Nashe, Thomas 13, note 36; 24–25 Nebeker, Eric 100 Neill, Michael 105–106; 106, note 115; 190, note 93 News 26–28; 41–42; 103; 107, note 118; 131–145; 159 Nicol, David 94, note 77; 117–118; 121; 122; 132, note 53; 135, note 59; 136; 139; 141 Norton, Thomas 49

O’Callaghan, Michelle 4; 19–20; 59; 98–99; 126, note 47 O’Connor, Marion 73, note 3; 74; 81; 83, note 37; 87; 101; 102 Opera basilica 37; 45; 50; 54; 60; 63; 114; 132; 147; 150; 151; 155; 194; 197 Overbury, Thomas 38; 73; 80; 82 Ovid 83–84 Panek, Jennifer 105; 107, note 119 Parliament 31–32; 38; 98–99 Parr, Anthony 88; 131 Parrhēsia 3–4; 3, note 8; 5; 6; 8; 20–21; 22; 23; 24; 29; 31; 36; 37–38; 40; 42; 44; 50; 54; 59; 63; 64; 68; 71; 90; 99; 112–113; 116; 144, note 84; 149–150; 151; 154; 166; 172–173; 194–196; 198 Peacham, Henry 139; 146–148 Perry, Curtis 16; 18; 19; 20 Philip IV of Spain 156 Political awareness 10, note 30; 27; 28–29; 38; 82; 98–102; 132; 150; 163 Political theology 1–2; 5–11; 12; 14; 31; 39–40; 43; 180; 195–196 The Prince’s Men 121; 125; 144 Publics 17–18; 28; 78; 82; 100–102; 107–108; 134; 153; 162; 182–187 Puttenham, George 3; 116 Rabb, Theodore K. 40; 125 Rickard, Jane 22; 27 Rowley, William 38; 41; 75; 102–110; 111–153; 162; 190 – All’s Lost for Lust 117 – The Changeling 34; 38–39; 75; 76; 94; 102–110; 121, note 33; 151 – A Fair Quarrel 121 – The Old Law 121; 122 – A Shoemaker, A Gentleman 117 – The Spanish Gypsy 157 – The World Tossed at Tennis 36; 41; 111–152; 159; 162; 169 – Wit at Several Weapons 112; 117, note 22; 121

Index

Sackville, Thomas 49 Sarmiento, Diego 31–32; 42; 123; 154; 159; 160–165; 167; 169–171; 174–176; 189 St. Paul’s 20; 43; 45; 47; 48; 50; 54–57; 65; 66, note 70; 69–71 Sanchez, Melissa 33; 36 Scot, Reginald 38; 75; 82–83; 86; 89; 91; 95–98 Shakespeare, William – All’s Well That Ends Well 2, note 2 – Hamlet 182 – Measure for Measure 1–2; 5; 44; 64, notes 64 and 65; 72, note 85 – Timon of Athens 2, note 2 – Titus Andronicus 2, note 2 Shand, G.B. 11, note 32; 21; 35 Shannon, Laurie 37 Shapiro, Michael 55 Sharpe, Kevin 17 Sherman, Jane 178 Shuger, Debora Kuller 1–2; 5; 7; 8; 10; 15; 33; 61; 180, note 74 Sidney, Philip 16, note 43; 100; 140, note 75 – Astrophil and Stella 155, note 8 Skelton, John 49 Smith, Ian 171; 190 Smith, Kathleen Kaplan 83 Smuts, Malcolm 140; 191, note 98 The Spanish Match 1; 41–42; 106–107; 109–110; 113; 123; 128; 154–191 Spenser, Edmund – The Faerie Queene 164 – Mother Hubbard’s Tale 24

223

Stern, Tiffany 94, notes 76 and 78; 117 Steveker, Lena 159 Stow, John 20–21 Swan Playhouse 137–139; 144; 148–149 Taylor, Gary 5, note 15; 20; 34, note 109; 92, note 69; 144, note 82; 151, note 94; 153, note 3; 158; 165; 166; 168; 169; 173; 178; 188–189; 191, note 97; 193, note 1; 197 Thirty Years War 22; 39–41; 110; 111–114; 125–153; 156; 159; 190 Tower of London 92; 99; 103; 104; 105; 107; 109 Tragicomedy 89–92; 98; 100–102; 181 via diversa 23–26; 62 via media 22–26; 196 Villiers, George 42; 156–159; 176; 189–190; Walter, Melissa 90 Webster, John – The Duchess of Malfi 21; 152 White supremacy 39–42; 120–130; 155–156 Witchcraft 74–75; 77–78; 81; 82–90 Wittek, Stephen 27, note 87; 41; 81, note 28; 132, note 54; 154; 159 Yachnin, Paul 4, note 9; 13, note 36; 23, note 74; 26; 28; 41; 65; 82; 114; 136; 139; 153; 154, note 4; 160, note 25; 162; 169; 170; 194