Transnational connections in early modern theatre 9781526139184

Table of contents :
Front matter
Contents
List of illustrations
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I West
If the shoe fits, or the truth in pinking
Freedom and constraint in transnational.comedy: The ‘jest unseen’ of love letters in Two Gentlemen of Verona and El perro del
‘La voluntad jamás permite señor’: Transnational versions of cross-class desire in Cardenio and Mujeres y criados
The African ambassador’s travels: Playing black in late seventeenth-century France and Spain
Part II North
Migration and drama: Amsterdam 1617
London and The Hague, 1638: Performing quacks at court
‘Why, sir, are there other heauens in other countries?’: The English Comedy as a transnational style
The Re-Inspired and Revived Bernardon: Metamorphoses of early modern comedy in eighteenth-century bourgeois theatre
Part III South
Northern lights and shadows: Transcultural encounters in early modern Italian theatre
Representations of female power: Musical spectacle at the Paris court of Maria de’ Medici, the Italian Minerva of France
Ebrei and Turchi performing in early modern Venice and Mantua
Ragozine’s beheading: Dramatic and civil logics of the European state-form
Afterword
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

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Transnational connections in early modern theatre

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Transnational connections in early modern theatre

Edited by M. A. Katritzky and Pavel Drábek

Manchester University Press

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Copyright © Manchester University Press 2020

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While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 15261 3917 7 hardback First published 2020 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-​party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Cover image: Fiddler (Lustig : macher), pen, ink and wash, friendship album (c.1650). Reproduced by permission of Stiftung Historische Museen Hamburg, Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte (Inv.-Nr. 1928,509 S. 8v)

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Contents

List of illustrations List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction – Pavel Drábek and M. A. Katritzky

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Part I:  West 1 If the shoe fits, or the truth in pinking – Natasha Korda 2 Freedom and constraint in transnational comedy: The ‘jest unseen’ of love letters in Two Gentlemen of Verona and El perro del hortelano – Susanne L. Wofford 3 ‘La voluntad jamás permite señor’: Transnational versions of cross-​class desire in Cardenio and Mujeres y criados – Barbara Fuchs 4 The African ambassador’s travels: Playing black in late seventeenth-​century France and Spain – Noémie Ndiaye

23 39 58 73

Part II:  North 5 Migration and drama: Amsterdam 1617 – Nigel Smith 6 London and The Hague, 1638: Performing quacks at court – M. A. Katritzky 7 ‘Why, sir, are there other heauens in other countries?’: The English Comedy as a transnational style – Pavel Drábek

89 114 139

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vi  8 The Re-​Inspired and Revived Bernardon: Metamorphoses of early modern comedy in eighteenth-​century bourgeois theatre – Friedemann Kreuder

Contents

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Part III:  South  9 Northern lights and shadows: Transcultural encounters in early modern Italian theatre – Eric Nicholson 10 Representations of female power: Musical spectacle at the Paris court of Maria de’ Medici, the Italian Minerva of France – Janie Cole 11 Ebrei and Turchi performing in early modern Venice and Mantua – Erith Jaffe-​Berg 12 Ragozine’s beheading: Dramatic and civil logics of the European state-​form – Jacques Lezra

181 197 222 242

Afterword – Robert Henke

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Bibliography Index

266 298

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Illustrations

1 (Cover and frontispiece). Fiddler (Lustig: macher), pen, ink and wash. Friendship album illustration (c. 1650). Reproduced by permission of Stiftung Historische Museen Hamburg, Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte (Inv.-​Nr. 1928,509 S. 8v). 2 ‘Europa Regina’ (Europe as the Queen) from Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia (1628), reproduced by permission of Universitätsbibliothek Basel (EU I 61a). 3 Slip-​on left shoe, with zigzag slashes across the vamp and pinked patterning on the heel, found in MoLA excavation of the Rose Theatre. Length 20.5 cm. Photograph: Andy Chopping. Museum of London Archaeology. Reproduced by permission. 4 Vincent van Gogh (1853–​1890). Shoes. 1886. Oil on canvas. 38.1 × 45.3 cm. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation). Reproduced by permission. 5 Dirck Cornelisse Swart, ‘Amstelredam anno 1623’ (map of Amsterdam). Collectie Atlas Dreesmann, Stadarchief, Amsterdam. Reproduced by permission. 6 Inigo Jones, Antimasques for the King’s Masque 1637, page of costume sketches (including, lower right, members of a quack troupe), for Britannia Triumphans, performed 17 January 1638, pen & brown ink, 30 × 18 cm. © Devonshire Collection (Inigo Jones drawings O&S 343). Reproduced by permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. 7 Supplication for a temporary licence to practise medicine in Dijon, signed by Giovanni Paulo Alfieri (also giving his stage name: ‘Alfier dit Braguette’), dated 6 July 1639. Reproduced by permission of the Archives de la Ville de Dijon (I.134).

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Illustrations

8 Responce des Chimiqves Au Cartel des Chevaliers Bataves, French single-​sheet broadsheet bound into a collection of ephemera published in connection with the 1638 wedding festivities at The Hague (Verscheyden, 1638, sig. A4v). Reproduced by permission of Ghent University Library (BIB.TIEL.002640). 9 Englischer Bickelhering /​jetzo ein vornehmer Eysenhändeler /​mit Axt /​Beyl /​Barten auff Praag Jubilierende (1621), broadsheet. © Trustees of the British Museum (1948,0623.10). 10 ‘Begin. Marke well the effect, purtreyed here in all’, [London, 1580], woodcut (representing Death with Bishop, King, Harlot, Lawyer and Clown). © The British Library Board (Huth.50.(63)). 11 Playbill for a guest performance of Joseph Felix von Kurz (Bernardon), Le Mercuere Gallante Oder der in die Feder verwandelte Degen, Nürnberg, 1766. Reproduced by permission of Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg (Nor. 1305.2°(1766)). 12 Il Volo del Turco (The Flight of the Turk), 1816, after the original of c. 1548. Museo Civico Correr, Venice, Gabinetto dei disegni e delle stampe, inv. St. PD 8114. 2016 © Photo Archive –​ Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia. Reproduced by permission. 13 Leone de’ Sommi to Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga, 30 October 1579, B 2409, C757r. Courtesy of the State Archives of Mantua (Archivio di Stato di Mantova). 14 Frontispiece, Hugo Grotius, De mari libero: et P. Merula de maribus. Lugd. Batavorum: Ex officina Elzeviriana, 1633. Reproduced by permission of Czech National Library (Národní knihovna), Prague (A X 000012). 15 Frontispiece and title page, Charles Molloy, De jure maritimo et navali: or, A treatise of affaires maritime and of commerce (London, 1677). © The British Library Board (502.e.9).

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Contributors

Janie Cole is Visiting Professor at the University of Cape Town’s South African College of Music, and founder of Music Beyond Borders (www. musicbeyondborders.net). Her books include A Muse of Music in Early Baroque Florence: the Poetry of Michelangelo Buonarroti il Giovane (Olschki, 2007)  and Music, Spectacle and Cultural Brokerage in Early Modern Italy, 2 vols. (Olschki, 2011). Pavel Drábek is Professor of Drama and Theatre Practice at the University of Hull (UK). A theatre historian, theorist and practitioner, his interests range from Shakespeare and early modern drama, translation and adaptation, to scenography and playwriting. He writes and translates for opera, radio and stage. Barbara Fuchs is Professor of Spanish and English at UCLA. She is founder and director of “Diversifying the Classics”:  http://​diversifyingtheclassics. humanities.ucla.edu/​. Her books include The Poetics of Piracy:  Emulating Spain in English Literature (Penn 2013), 90 Monologues from Classical Spanish Theater ( Juan de la Cuesta 2018)  and The Golden Age of Spanish Drama (Norton 2018). Robert Henke is Professor of Comparative Literature at Washington University. He has published books on Italian drama and Shakespeare’s late plays, the commedia dell’arte, representations of poverty in Renaissance theatre, and co-​edited, with Eric Nicholson, Transnational Exchange in Early Modern Theater and Transnational Mobilities in Early Modern Theater. Erith Jaffe-​Berg is a Professor in the Department of Theatre, Film and Digital  Production at the University of California at Riverside. She has published two books, Commedia dell’ Arte and the Mediterranean: Charting Journeys and Mapping “Others” (Ashgate and Routledge 2015)  and The Multingual Art of Commedia dell’ Arte (Legas 2009) and is a member of the Son of Semele Theatre Ensemble in Los Angeles.

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List of contributors

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M. A.  Katritzky is Barbara Wilkes Research Fellow in Theatre Studies (English Department) and Director, The Centre for Research into Gender and Otherness in the Humanities (School of Arts & Humanities), in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences of The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK. Natasha Korda is Director of the Center for the Humanities at Wesleyan University and President of the Shakespeare Association of America (2020–​2021). She has published four books and over thirty articles on gender, material culture and early modern theatre historiography. Friedemann Kreuder is Professor for Theatre Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. He has published books and articles about the theatre of the director Klaus Michael Grüber, Richard Wagner, the bourgeois theatre of the eighteenth century and medieval theatre. Jacques Lezra is Professor of Spanish at the University of California at Riverside. His most recent books are On the Nature of Marx’s Things (Fordham 2018), Untranslating Machines:  A Genealogy for the Ends of Global Thought (Rowman & Littlefield 2017) and Contra todos los fueros de la muerte: El suceso cervantino (La Cebra, 2016). Noémie Ndiaye is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Chicago. She is currently at work on her first monograph on embodied representations of blackness in early modern European theatre and performance culture. Eric Nicholson teaches theatre courses at NYU and Syracuse University Florence, where he also directs productions of early modern plays. He has co-​edited, with R. Henke, Transnational Exchange in Early Modern Theater and Transnational Mobilities in Early Modern Theater. Nigel Smith is William and Annie S. Paton Foundation Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature at Princeton University. He has published mostly on early modern literature, especially the seventeenth century; his work is interdisciplinary by inclination and training. Susanne L.  Wofford is Dean of NYU Gallatin School and Professor of English at NYU. A scholar of classical and Renaissance epic and drama, she has served as the President of the Shakespeare Association of America. Current projects treat transnational intertexts for Shakespeare, Shakespearean comedy and Italian pastoral, Euripides and ancient Greek tragedy.

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Acknowledgements

This volume is an outcome of the international research initiative Theater Without Borders (TWB), a collective of scholars from around the world exploring transnational and intercultural aspects of early modern theatre and performance, which meets annually to present and discuss research at conferences in Europe, the US and elsewhere. This volume and its constituent chapters gained their present shape over time, developing from research and ideas initially presented at TWB conferences, generously debated, interrogated and collegially commented on by TWB members, often over the course of many years. Like its predecessors (Henke and Nicholson 2008, 2014), this third volume in the series produced by TWB does not represent conference proceedings. Rather, it is conceived as a tightly focused thematic unit, for which all the individual chapters have been specially invited and adapted. The core of this volume started to take shape from selected papers presented at the colloquium ‘Borders and Centres: Transnational Encounters in Early Modern Theatre, Performance and Spectacle’, hosted by the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, Germany, on 20–​24 May 2012, organised on behalf of TWB by M. A. Katritzky, and attended by most of the contributors to this volume. It was in Wolfenbüttel that Natasha Korda presented on the transnational contexts for the archaeological find of the shoe from London’s Rose Theatre site. Here, Pavel Drábek attempted a first articulation of the dramaturgical specifics of the English Comedy in Germany. Friedemann Kreuder’s presentation was on ‘The Mask as the Other of the Bourgeois Self: Alternative Forms of Representation in the Early Wiener Volkstheater of Joseph Felix von Kurz’, Nigel Smith’s on early modern Dutch drama, and Eric Nicholson’s Chapter 9 in this volume is directly descended from his 2012 paper: ‘Northern Lights and Shadows: Transcultural Encounters with Germans et alia in Early Modern Italian Theatre’. The remaining chapters in this collection were commissioned on the basis of research presented at other Theater Without Borders annual conferences. In Prague in 2007, Jacques Lezra delivered a paper on ‘Hostis humani generis: Pirate Histories in the Early Modern Mediterranean’. In Madrid in 2011,

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Acknowledgements

Susanne Wofford presented on the ‘jest unseen’ (the letter theatergram) in Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Lope’s The Dog in the Manger; and Janie Cole on Maria de’ Medici, the Minerva of France. It was in Madrid that Janie Cole first presented her discovery of invaluable archival documents on Maria’s ballets. Since then, her important finding has been exploited by other scholars –​some of whom have, unfortunately, failed to acknowledge Cole adequately. Pavel Drábek elaborated on his project at the TWB conference at New York University in 2013. In Paris in 2015, Barbara Fuchs presented on her staged translations and ‘Hispanic Classical Theater for New Audiences in Los Angeles’; M. A. Katritzky on discoveries related to the 1638 festivities in The Hague; and Noémie Ndiaye on ‘Scripting Blackness: Embodied Techniques of Racialization’. Finally, Erith Jaffe-​Berg’s Chapter 11 develops research presented in Cologne in 2017, in her paper on ‘The Circulation of Ideas and Performative Practices of Minority Communities of Early Modern Italy’. Selected, reworked and even reconceived to align with the theme of the collection, these twelve chapters are in many ways pars pro toto:  just as we have all benefited from the intellectual discussions and the generous milieu of Theater Without Borders events, we are presenting in print the fruits of this inspiring collective. Necessarily, some of the indirect contributors to the knowledge base we rely upon are absent from this collection. However, we would like to acknowledge their help, advice, feedback and collegial support  –​in particular, Richard Andrews on the commedia dell’arte; Michael Armstrong Roche on Lope de Vega, Cervantes and their relationship with English drama; John Astington on the travelling actors; Christian M.  Billing on classical reception and early modern intercultural influences; Tom Bishop on drama and early modern games; Anston Bosman on transnationalism; Pamela Allen Brown on early modern divas; Ton Hoenselaars on transnational reception of Shakespeare; Stefan Hulfeld on the Italian comedy in Germany; François Lecercle on antitheatrical prejudice; Véronique Lochert on theatrical genres; Clare McManus on gender on stage; Peter W. Marx on early modern performance in Germany and local theatre cultures; Karen Newman on Spanish and Italian drama; Shormishtha Panja on early modern iconography and Asian exchanges; Bärbel Rudin on performance in Germany; Jane Tylus on Italian comedy; David Schalkwyk on global Shakespeare; Melissa Walter on the Italian novella; Will West on the early modern clowns; Enrica Zanin on early modern dramatic genres. We thank them, the numerous other colleagues and TWB members whose work we value and have benefited from, and all of our colleagues, friends and families for their help, support and advice. For permission to publish images in this volume, we thank:  Archives de la Ville de Dijon, Archivio di Stato Mantua, Julian Bowsher (Museum of London Archaeology), British Library, British Museum, Chatsworth

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Acknowledgements

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Devonshire Collection, Czech National Library, Ghent University Library, Musei Civici Venice, Stadsarchief Amsterdam, Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, Stiftung Historische Museen Hamburg, Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte, Universitätsbibliothek Basel, Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation); and for support with funding image and research costs, our thanks to the Open University (FASS, Research Fund) and the University of Hull (FACE, Research Fund). Additionally, we thank the Herzog August Library (Volker Bauer and his colleagues) for hosting our 2012 conference; our predecessors as TWB editors, Robert Henke and Eric Nicholson, for their generosity in sharing their insights and encouragement; our commissioning editor at Manchester University Press, Matthew Frost, for his support, care and perfect professionalism, and the anonymous reader, whose meticulous comments have been immensely helpful in taking our volume to this final version.

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Introduction

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Pavel Drábek and M. A. Katritzky

Remember thee? Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee? (Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.5.100–​2)

This volume is an outcome of intensive long-​term academic and practicebased collaborations between members of the international research initiative Theater Without Borders (TWB), a global collective exploring transnational and intercultural aspects of early modern theatre, drama and performance.1 Arranged as a map of sorts, it presents twelve chapters, newly invited, researched and written to create this collection, divided into three sections, loosely cosmographically grouped into three parts: (I) West, (II) North and (III) South. A major focus of previous TWB collections is Venice and Italy (Henke and Nicholson 2008, 2014). While Italy also features strongly here, our omission of East maps a conscious decision to celebrate less familiar aspects of the broad geographical remit of the TWB collective, most particularly with a vigorous westward expansion into the Iberian peninsula. In an anthropomorphic conceit reminiscent of the head-​to-​foot arrangement of early modern medical treatises, and reflected in the map of Sebastian Münster discussed below (Figure 2), the chapters are both literally and metaphorically arranged, as it were, from foot to head. Maps and theories During the early modern period, engaging with and comprehending evolving perceptions of the world was greatly facilitated for those privileged elites and classes whose education or means granted them exclusive access to strategic material objects, such as atlases, maps or globes. As Brotton perceptively notes, ‘It was through both the image of the map and the globe and their existence as valued material objects that the astronomers, historians, lawyers, grammarians, travellers, diplomats and merchants… made sense of the shifting shape of their world’ (1997: 21). However, making sense of our world has always been a vitally necessary ontological activity for every individual. ‘To be learning something is the greatest of pleasures not only to the philosopher but also to

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the rest of mankind’, writes Aristotle in his Poetics, when discussing the causes of the origin of poetry and the joy of knowing:

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though the objects themselves may be painful to see, we delight to view the most realistic representations of them in art […] one’s pleasure will not be in the picture as an imitation of it, but will be due to the execution of coloring or harmony and rhythm. (Gerould 2000: 47)

In our ontological activities, we construct our own metaphorical, immaterial maps; we create images in our minds through which we understand the world around us. Before periodical media was made possible by cheap print, news of the world was circulated orally –​through sermons and publicly proclaimed decrees, by word of mouth, and, very importantly, through performative genres such as songs, ballads and theatre.2 This last is the focus of Aristotle’s Poetics, in which he analyses drama as an imitation of the world we live in –​its history and material reality, as well as the metaphysical narratives and wisdoms that we live by. In the early modern period –​perhaps even to a greater extent than before or after –​theatre in its broadest sense represented a tool for making sense of the world. Legends and myths were retold and remembered through performance; histories were recreated in virtual reality, in the very presence of the spectator; and actors told fictional stories ‘to th’yet unknowing world’, playing out ‘how these things came about’. Perennially hungry for sensation, audiences could hear, and see: Of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts, Of accidental judgements, casual slaughters, Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause. (Shakespeare, Hamlet, 5.2.331–​5)

In doing so (‘in this upshot’), the bigger pictures of causes and consequences emerged: ‘purposes mistook | Fall’n on the inventors’ heads: all this’ could the stage ‘truly deliver’ (336–​8).3 There are profound epistemological connections between early modern maps and theatre  –​both of which, in their own way, create physical representations and mental images of the world. This affinity was explicitly acknowledged by early modern cartographers  –​among them perhaps most famously by Abraham Ortelius, whose highly influential and magnificent atlas –​a collection of seventy maps –​was published in Antwerp in May 1570 under the title Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (A Theatre of the Terrestrial World). Theatre was a mode of display, presenting, narrating  –​and colourfully and tellingly imaging and imagining  –​the terrestrial world. Furthermore, early modern cartographers acknowledged the humanism and human dimension of their efforts. By charting and portraying not just places, but also their

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Introduction

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inhabitants, habits and myths, their maps retained the human explorer at their centre: the spectator of the theatrum mundi, trying to make sense of its mysteries. Some of these maps acquired anthropomorphic features –​as perhaps most explicitly with the 1570 Europa Regina, charting the European continent portrayed as a Queen (Figure 2). Early modern cartographers were as yet uninfluenced by the paradoxical theoretical viewpoint of the natural sciences  –​which assumed and even imposed an objectivity onto the physical world: the dehumanised and dehumanising conviction that it is possible to measure or even discover the great divine, God-​created mechanism of this universe as if it exists outside the individual’s mind. Of course, unprecedented discoveries were being made thanks to the new science, but eventually the notion of scientific objectivity had to be reassessed: yes, objectivity was possible, but only on terms created by human observers. This humanist corrective was already omnipresent in early modern maps –​populated by inhabitants, travellers and human-​related factual realities relevant to the routine lives of travellers: cities, routes, rivers, mountains, seas and winds. In our approach to the understanding of early modern theatre and its world we retain the humanist corrective; this collection re-​emphasises it in relation to previous generations of historiographers. The great philosopher of atomic physics Niels Bohr asserted that: ‘It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature’ (Lindley 2007: 196).4 In a similar vein, acknowledging our limitations as historiographers, rather than making statements about how early modern theatre actually was, we ask questions about what we are able to say and know about it. Our metaphorical, immaterial maps, the images of early modern theatre we create in our minds, are necessarily constrained by the available documentary evidence and material objects  –​a notorious problem of the theatre historiographer. On our maps of early modern theatre, there are blanks and terrae incognitae. Additionally, we acknowledge our epistemological bias by reflecting on the basic concepts that we operate with –​and which, in turn, direct our inquiries. One of the crucial concepts inherently relativised in our inquiries is that of theatre itself. What is theatre? Classically educated scholars of early modernity must have been aware of the word’s Greek origins, and perhaps deployed theatrum and its derivatives in the etymological sense in their disciplines –​be they cartography, philosophy or medicine. The word originated in the ‘Greek θέᾱτρον, a place for viewing, especially a theatre’, itself derived from ‘θεᾶσθαι to behold (compare θέα sight, view, θεατής a spectator)’ (OED, ‘theatre | theater, n.’). Defining the theatre as a place for viewing in the broadest sense, was perhaps stretching terminological fixity to its limits. (The present discussion

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Figure  2  ‘Europa Regina’ (Europe as the Queen) from Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia (1628), reproduced by permission of Universitätsbibliothek Basel (EU I 61a).

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would need to be stretched even further to include the significant entrepreneurial and artisanal aspects of early modern theatre-​making –​the individual playing companies and troupes engaged in producing these viewings.) It is worth reminding ourselves that the root θεᾶσθαι provides not only theatre but also theory: ancient Greek θεωρία action of viewing, contemplation, sight, spectacle, in Hellenistic Greek also speculation, theory < θεωρός (also θεαορός, attested in an inscription) envoy, ambassador, spectator (< stem of θεᾶσθαι to behold, view, contemplate (see theatre n.) (OED, ‘theory, n.’)

The observer, the spectator, the artist, the explorer and the theorist are profoundly connected through their shared endeavour of viewing and trying to understand what they see. These processes of making sense through the creation of images, maps and models are cognitive enquiries common to theory, science, art and theatre. Philip Sidney, in his The Defence of Poesie, published in 1595, but written in the late 1570s, reflects on and compares the work of scholars and scientists, and argues for the unique position of the poet among them. Drawing, again, on Greek etymology (‘ποεῖν, ποιεῖν to make, create, produce, to compose, write’: OED, ‘poet, n.’), Sidney identifies the poet as the true maker among them. In describing the scholars’ activities, Sidney deploys theatrical terms –​ apparently as a rhetorical device for emphasising his points. Clearly, Sidney follows the Aristotelian tradition in thinking of poetry in the performative sense, as oral, dramatic poetry, delivered as live performance: There is no Arte deliuered to mankinde, that hath not the workes of Nature for his principall obiect, without which they could not consist, & on which they so depend, as they become Actors and Players as it were, of what Nature will haue set foorth. So doth the Astronomer looke vpon the starres, and by that hee seeth, setteth downe what order Nature hath taken therein. […] The naturall Philosopher theron hath his name, and the Morrall Philosopher standeth vpon the naturall vertues, vices, and passions of man; and followe Nature (saith hee) therein, & thou shalt not erre. The Lawyer sayth what men haue determined. The Historian what men haue done. […] onely the Poet, disdayning to be tied to any such subiection, lifted vp with the vigor of his owne inuention. (Sidney 1595: C1r–​v, emphasis added)

Sidney then narrows down his debate of learning to a comparison of the philosopher, the historian and the poet. The philosopher dryly sets down ‘with thorny argument the bare rule’, while the historian is ‘tied, not to what shoulde bee, to what is, to the particuler truth of things’ (D2v–​D3r). In contrast: [T]‌he peerelesse Poet performe[s] both: for whatsoeuer the Philosopher sayth shoulde be doone, hee giueth a perfect picture of it in some one, by whom hee presupposeth it was doone. So as hee coupleth the generall notion with the

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Pavel Drábek and M. A. Katritzky particuler example. A  perfect picture I  say, for hee yeeldeth to the powers of the minde, an image of that whereof the Philosopher bestoweth but a woordish description. (Sidney 1595: D3r)

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The poet is creating ‘a perfect picture’ for ‘the minde, an image’ by which even the dryest notion can be learned: Poesie therefore is an arte of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in this word Mimesis, that is to say, a representing, counterfetting, or figuring foorth:  to speake metaphorically, a speaking picture: with this end, to teach and delight. (Sidney 1595: C2v)

In our historiographic investigations, we accept theatre in its broadest sense, comprising any performative activities that propound possible paths of human interaction –​from court ballet, through festival entries, shows and displays, improvised routines, children’s games, to theatrical practices proper. These are taken as historic realities, facts, informing and defining our open concept of the theatre, whose reality is diverse, and resists simple definition or coherent formulation. Defining this concept by its outward show or by its function would necessarily impose a restrictive view. While we aim to identify and present objective findings about early modern theatre, we are constrained by our recognition of the uncertainty, relativity and often frustrating fuzziness of the objects of our study. While we may have a playtext, an archival document, or even an eyewitness account of a performance, that does not allow us to make conclusive assertions. And yet, the indeterminacy and uncertainty of the material does allow us a quantum of knowability –​through the concepts it evokes, which we can reflect on. Our collection does not narrow down the definition of theatre as a performative activity in the early modern world, but rather embraces different sorts of performative manifestations, and by contemplating (theor-​ising) them, portrays the multiplicity of forms and shapes theatre could assume, before later eras compartmentalised and institutionalised them within specific, fixed architectural and social spaces. Nonetheless, our inclusive notion of theatre is narrowed down by a s­ pecific agenda: we study theatre as a connective instrument –​engendering, sustaining, shaping and cultivating connections between cultures, peoples and nations, and across borders. The early modern theatre we study figures forth –​to use Sidney’s expression –​people, behaviours, politics, places and worlds beyond the local. This theatre operates through transnational connections, encounters and networks. In keeping with the early modern notion of poetry –​what we now think of as theatre-​making –​theatre is a social event in a particular, physical place and at a particular time. It is created in concrete material conditions; using, interrogating and innovating cultural conventions, and figuring forth images, ideas and concepts for the spectator to contemplate (theorise) and respond to. Viewed from this perspective, historiography is a set of equations

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with many unknowns and variables –​with theatre at its heart as its greatest unknown and variable. One possible and productive approach to exploring it is to focus on the connections  –​links, synapses, interstices, nexuses and networks  –​that theatre forges. This shift of attention from the nominal to the relational  –​a dialogical turn of sorts  –​is significant. We view current developments in philosophy, psychology, and the digital humanities relating to this shift, as a helpful contemporary theoretical framework, without allowing their agendas to restrict our wide-​ ranging studies into the interactions, encounters, points of contact and exchanges that enrich our understanding of the early modern world of theatre and its connections. Contexts and connections Theatrum mundi is here understood not only as metaphor but even more as literal display; a viewing, performative model and speculative, inquiring image of how material practice, social reality, politics and, above all, individual perception can be mapped, viewed and theorised. We combine disciplines and methods for studying transnational connections in early modern theatre, approaching our subject as historians, philosophers and poets, and our collection as a whole represents an atlas of sorts, charting different, interconnected and complementary themes, from the material, concrete and foundational to the abstract and cerebral, or –​if you prefer –​from foot to head. The theoretical ‘maps of meaning’ (Peterson 1999) we offer are not simply metaphorical or rhetorical expressions of discoveries, realisations and assertions, but are always firmly grounded by a material foot on dry land. Our chapters are underpinned by an explicit methodological approach:  we are methodical in linking abstract notions of wider theatre historical significance to concrete historical facts:  archaeological findings, archival records, visual artefacts and textual evidence; we reference our generalised ‘mapping’ of early modern theatre historiography with verifiable specificities. Methodologically, this is a crucial feature of all the chapters in this volume:  the systematic yoking of theories (views and maps) to surviving historical evidence for the performative event –​whether as material object, text, performative routine, structural pattern (theatergram), social realities (rituals, festivities, genres), archival evidence or visual documentation. Each of our chapters has this fixed historical grounding: its own historiographical ‘footing’. Given the foot to head arrangement of our collection, fittingly, Natasha Korda’s chapter on the early modern shoe opens our volume with a pleasingly firm historiographical footing in our exploration of transnational connections. Korda’s chapter developed from two of her TWB presentations: ‘ “ The Sign of the Last”:  Gender, Material Culture and Artisanal Nostalgia in Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday’ (Wolfenbüttel, 2012)  and ‘If the Shoe

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Fits:  The Truth in Pinking’ (NYU, 2013). Korda’s point of departure is the archaeological find of a shoe on the site of London’s Rose Theatre. Exploring connections between this significant and much-​discussed artefact and early modern drama –​specifically, Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday, or The Gentle Craft, performed at the Rose Theatre in 1599, ‘around the time that this shoe might have trod the boards on the foot of an actor, or the pit or galleries on the foot of a spectator’ –​Korda theorises the boundaries between artistry and art. While the artefact Korda analyses and theorises is, literally, firmly grounded in London soil, the ‘gentle craft’ of making and decorating early modern shoes was recognisably influenced by, and operating within, a network of transnational trade connections. Korda situates her explorations within this international context, not only documenting the links existing between artisans across Europe and beyond but also, more particularly, with drama and theatre. Trades of this kind –​working with animal skins, whether for shoes, gloves or clothes  –​also establish transnational connections between the greatest playwrights of the early modern period:  the shoemaker’s son Christopher Marlowe, the glover’s son William Shakespeare and embroiderer’s son Lope de Vega (on whom see Susanne Wofford and Barbara Fuchs, Chapters 2 and 3, below), the tanner’s son Pierre Corneille, the cobbler Hans Sachs, or the shoemaker’s son G. A. Bredero (on whom see Nigel Smith, Chapter 5, below). The particularity and materiality of the shoe, the centrepiece of Korda’s chapter, and her focused exploration of the labours, trades and professions associated with the theatre, are important reminders of the practical skills, crafts and artistry on which and from which theatre grew, in every culture of early modern Europe. Korda traces connections between everyday objects and crafts, and the more abstract and cerebral matter that also contributes to the fabric of theatre –​from making a shoe and wearing it to treading the boards, and from the philosophical concepts of pointure (Derrida) to the ‘thingly aspect of the art work [as] something else over and above this thingly element’ (Heidegger 1971:  19, cited by Korda). In evidencing and reflecting on the scale between the mundanely material and the metaphysical, Korda not only raises and discusses an important methodological principle, but in many ways also lays out the model we follow throughout this volume. Susanne Wofford bases Chapter 2 on her TWB presentation: ‘Freedom and Constraint in Courtship across the Boundary of Rank: The “Jest Unseen” of Love Letters in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Lope de Vega’s The Dog in the Manger [El perro del hortelano]’ (Madrid, 2011). The centrepiece anchoring it is the letter as an instrument of mobility, exchange and connection –​explored as a dramaturgical pattern, or theatergram, through the letter scenes of these two great, near contemporary plays. Firmly rooted in rigorous textual analysis, Wofford analyses the dramatic potential of their letter scenes. Developing from her succinct formulation and meticulous exploration of ‘freedom and

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constraint in courtship across the boundary of rank’, Wofford’s chapter proceeds to an argument that contextualises the theatergrams of letter-​ writing and misdirected letters within a thick network of early modern culture. This encompasses Italianate novellas, romances and plays, as well as the transnational relations between Spanish and English theatre. The letter as stage property and performance object has a universal performative potential, which creates its own specific realm of extra-​textual connections between stage practices and conventions across cultures, be it on the stages of London, Madrid, or elsewhere in early modern Europe. In Chapter  3, Barbara Fuchs draws on her TWB presentation on her staged translations and ‘Hispanic Classical Theater for New Audiences in Los Angeles’ (Paris NYU, 2015). Like Susanne Wofford, she examines the theme of cross-​class, or mimetic desire (Girard), and compares two plays by the eminent contemporaries, Lope and Shakespeare. Fuchs builds her discussion on complex historiographical foundations. Capitalising on her own practical experience with staging early modern classics, and drawing on the current scholarly fashion for expanding the Shakespearean canon, Fuchs examines the global search for Cardenio, a lost play Shakespeare and John Fletcher wrote around 1611, apparently inspired by an episode in Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1607). There have been several attempts to revive Cardenio. Stephen Greenblatt tried to reinvent the play in thirty different countries with the help of local practitioners, in a scheme uncannily reminiscent of global corporate capital (Greenblatt et al. 2010). At the Royal Shakespeare Company, Greg Doran and Antonio Álamo reconstructed the play for Doran’s 2011 production (Doran 2012), from Lewis Theobald’s Double Falsehood, or The Distrest Lovers (1727), a problematic revival of Shakespeare’s lost Cardenio that Theobald probably wrote in a bid for notoriety. At around this time, Shakespeare scholars contributed to a collection of authoritative essays, in which they drew on their specific methodologies to ascertain all they could about this ‘unresolved mystery’ (Carnegie and Taylor 2012). This interrogation was closely followed by the publication of practice-​based findings, drawing on Terri Bourus’ 2012 staging of Taylor’s ‘re-​created’ Cardenio (Bourus and Taylor 2013). Cardenio was becoming, in absentia, a substantial presence in the Shakespearean canon, a problematic quasi-​addition, as it were; accepted with surprisingly little dissent, given the dubious textual history of Theobald’s play. Following the play’s stage success, Theobald defended its provenance to Shakespeare in his editions of Double Falsehood of 1728, but did not include in his 1734 edition of Shakespeare’s works the (now lost) Cardenio script he allegedly worked from (see also King 2012; Kirwan 2015: 32). More historiographically rigorous, Roger Chartier attempted to affirm as much as could be learned of the lost play from a transnational literary context in the early modern period, extending the perspective from London to the widespread

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community of readers and admirers of Cervantes; in this context, his analysis of the popularity of Don Quixotiads in French theatre is particularly valuable (Chartier 2011). The original path proffered by Fuchs has sobering implications for Shakespeare-​centric scholarship. In 2013, at the height of the Cardenio craze, the discovery of an unknown Lope play raised surprisingly limited international response. While unrelated to the Don Quixote plot, Fuchs argues that this play, Lope’s Mujeres y criados (Women and Servants), offers unprecedented performance material pertaining to gender stereotypes and social hierarchies, and explores issues that would have been at the core of Shakespeare’s lost Cardenio. In this way, Fuchs infers, Lope’s play can be regarded as a worthy surrogate, besides being a remarkable play in its own right. Her approach is all the more convincing in that it is supported by practice-​based exploration: Fuchs has translated the play, produced a staged reading, and published the playtext in English (Lope de Vega 2016). Her chapter is an important contribution to Lope studies, and helps establish the newly discovered play alongside the playwright’s other masterpieces, such as The Dog in the Manger. Noémie Ndiaye bases Chapter  4 on her 2015 TWB presentation of the same title at NYU Paris. The last chapter of the first section, it completes this volume’s cosmography of the West through an exploration of a French theatergram: the conventional routine of blackface (barbouillage) as a plot device in romantic comedy. This maps out another web of transnational connections –​ between France, Spain, Turkey, Africa and the Caribbean. Ndiaye breaks new ground by analysing a group of late seventeenth-​century plays of predominantly French provenance, previously unexplored in English criticism. Besides making important contributions to our knowledge of French theatre, Ndiaye’s profound analysis takes the theatergram of blackface far beyond mere stage practice: it encapsulates fascinating realities of early colonial politics, transnational aristocracy, legacies of medieval theatre and iconography, and notions of race avant la lettre. The comical disguise in blackface may serve the needs of the romantic marriage plots. At the same time, it is indicative of the social aspirations (mimetic desire once more) of the stage characters; and although the blackface disguise of a Turkish or African ambassador may induce comedic mockery, infernal horror or the unsettling encounter with the cultural Other, characters engage in these exchanges and operate more or less effectively within a transnational perspective. Ndiaye also importantly fills in gaps in the performance history of blackface –​an indispensable but troubling stage convention whose legacy, while theatrically inspirational, also bears witness as a haunting memento of the colonial past. In Chapter 5 Nigel Smith, drawing on his TWB presentation: ‘International Politics and Drama in the Dutch Republic’ (Madrid, 2011), metaphorically shifts the ground of this volume’s explorations to the cultural North.

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Rooted in Amsterdam and the Dutch region of Brabant, Smith’s chapter offers a detailed analysis of an undeservedly less well-​known masterpiece of early modern drama –​G. A. Bredero’s The Spanish Brabanter (Spaanschen Brabander) of 1617. Smith outlines the numerous national and transnational connections that form the bedrock on which Bredero created this remarkable stage adaptation of the great picaresque novel Lazarillo de Tormes (1554). The Dutch Republic had come into being in 1581, and its existence was frustrated by protracted wars and conflicts with Spain, aided and fuelled by the many allies of the House of Orange and Spanish Habsburgs. Bredero’s The Spanish Brabanter appeared at a crucial moment in history, in the heat of this transnational conflict, and Smith methodically identifies the many historical realities contributing to the play’s context. Seeing the world through the lens of Bredero’s characters  –​be it the eponymous Spanish Brabanter Jerolimo, a merchant who fell on hard times, his motley dual heritage servant, the picaresque trickster Robbeknol, church beadle Floris Harmensz, the boys who prank him, prostitutes Tryn Jans and Bleecke An, junk dealer and bawd Beatrice, or mean landlord Gierighe Geeraart –​offers spectators of his play a view from an abyss. On the obverse side of this comedic tapestry is a harsh and disconsolate reality inhabited (in the words of King Lear) by ‘poor naked wretches’, brought to this place at this moment in time, and at the mercy of the ‘pitiless storm’ of wars, cruelty and poverty which constitutes the ever-​present challenge of early modern life. Smith presents the Amsterdam of 1617, the playground of The Spanish Brabanter, as a crossroads of these many transnational routes and lives –​all accurately compressed into Bredero’s haunting comedy. The memorable aristocratic wedding held at The Hague in 1638 –​some two decades and two days’ walk from the Amsterdam of Spaanschen Brabander –​ is the focus of Chapter 6, which M. A. Katritzky bases on the TWB presentation: ‘London and The Hague –​Performing Quacks in Antimasques of 1638’ (Paris NYU, 2015). As a major early modern court festival, this grand event at The Hague brought together, in the manner of an early festival of the performing arts, a great variety of performers and shows –​some exclusively for the private entertainment of the wedding guests, others shared with the paying public. On a historiographic level, it is in many ways a catalogue of transnational theatre of the early modern age. Katritzky meticulously establishes connections between the individual acts of the festival programme, as documented by eyewitness accounts, and the many international traditions, renowned performers, writers and artists on which the event drew. Several remarkable connections stand out: The Hague saw the private staging of two recent hits of the Parisian stage: Charles de Beys’ L’hospital des fous (1636), an adaptation of Lope de Vega’s Los locos de Valencia (printed 1620), and Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid (1637), itself based on Guillén de Castro’s play Las

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mocedades del Cid (1605–​15). Conspicuous similarities between the final entry of the tournament parade presented at The Hague and several recent and subsequent London court masques, bear witness to considerable cultural contact between the two courts. In addition, the surviving details of the wedding festival allow Katritzky to identify influences on the stage names chosen by this entry’s noble participants, based on commedia dell’arte performers, itinerant physicians, charlatans, and quacks –​among them the famous Parisian Mondor and the mysterious Zan Bragetta. Katritzky’s detailed analysis of the documents of this wedding festivity gives the 1638 wedding considerable historiographical significance, as a crossroads of transnational connections in early modern theatre. In Chapter 7, Pavel Drábek extends his researches into the dramaturgical specifics of the English Comedy (Englische Comedie) in Germany, which he first explored in two TWB presentations:  ‘Worlds-​in-​Between and their Inhabitants’ (Wolfenbüttel, 2012) and ‘Tricksters, Enchantment and Trance-​ mission in Early Modern Theatre in Europe’ (New York, 2013). English travelling actors on the European continent have often been studied as exporters of London plays, predominantly those of Shakespeare. Drábek argues that there is inconclusive evidence to support these traditional claims. Instead, he resituates the English Comedy as a distinctive genre, born on the road in mainland Europe as a performative rival of the Italian comedy –​with its own specific ‘English’ style and dramaturgy, predominantly presenting plays with plots based on transnational (or specifically local) stories, and catering for local tastes and predilections. The specific style of the English Comedy is, Drábek argues, best symbolised by the English itinerants’ clown persona (most commonly called Pickelhering) –​the trickster and border-​crosser who uses specific English dramaturgical tricks to overcome the seeming alterity of ‘other heavens in other countries’. Tracing what the traveller Fynes Moryson called ‘peeces and patches of English plays’, Drábek establishes points of similarity between London plays, the scripts of the English comedians in mainland Europe, and the transnational culture from which both grew. His conclusions suggest that the phenomenon of English travelling actors is not an early instance of English colonial or religious propaganda and textual culture (Miller 2012: 107–​57; Schlueter 2016), or of the influence of Shakespearean drama as a form of national culture (Cohn 1865; Chambers 1923; Limon 1985). Rather, it is an original theatrical style formed, existing and thriving within an itinerant, transnational context. Pieces and patches of plays play an important part in Chapter 8, based by Friedemann Kreuder on his TWB presentation: ‘The Mask as the Other of the Bourgeois Self: Alternative Forms of Representation in the Early Wiener Volkstheater of Joseph Felix von Kurz’ (Wolfenbüttel, 2012). The international playwright, entrepreneur and comedian of the mid-​eighteenth century, Joseph

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Felix von Kurz, better known by his stage name of Bernardon, constructed his plays out of scenes, arias, songs, comedic routines (lazzi) and other short performative fragments, in the best tradition of early modern comedic styles –​be it the Italian commedia dell’arte, the English Comedy, or their descendants. In so doing, Bernardon was wittingly or unwittingly shadowing the local contemporaneous practices of Baroque Italian opera in Vienna, which frequently (in opera pasticcios) brought together numbers from different works, composers, authors and styles. Kreuder revisits the traditional historiography, derived from Marxist dialectics, and offers a revised interpretation of the early modern self: a process by which ‘individuals negotiate their idea of the self in confrontation with the cultural memory of their time, their leading philosophical concepts, their mentality, and particularly with the existing contemporary ideals of behaviour in view’. Kreuder’s concept of the self, as shaped on the civic stage of early modernity, operates with Habermas’ notion of the public sphere (Öffentlichkeit), asserting that theatre plays ‘a crucial role in reformulating the ideal of the modern self ’. The social aspirations of the middle classes were often played out in the theatre, which was an opportunity and instrument for self-​presentation –​in many ways a variant of the mimetic desire here interrogated by Fuchs and Wofford. For Kreuder, Bernardoniads are not only the documents of the birth of the modern self from popular comedy, but also historiographical treasure troves that conserve early modern transnational practices. Eric Nicholson bases Chapter  9 on his TWB presentation:  ‘Northern Lights and Shadows: Transcultural Encounters with Germans et alia in Early Modern Italian Theatre’ (Wolfenbüttel, 2012).5 Like Kreuder, Nicholson presents a long view of early modern transnational theatre –​chronologically covering the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. Geographically and thematically, it is also positioned as a transitional chapter, metaphorically spanning the Alps to link our volume’s cosmography of the North with the South. Portrayal of the cultural Other is a universal theme in its own right; Nicholson focuses on theatrical portraits of Northerners –​themselves a transnational and heterogeneous assortment of regional types, from the English and Scottish, through the Dutch and the Poles, to the diverse cultures of the tedeschi (Teutons), or Germans. In Nicholson’s chapter, numerous examples of Northerners in Italian drama and theatre are read as catalogues of images of other northern cultures, cross-​referenced with underlying realities that might have inspired those works. Culminating with a study of probably the last early modernist, Carlo Goldoni, Nicholson’s exploration expounds his late works, which were created from the venerable Italian tradition of the commedia dell’arte, but transposed into a new transnational setting  –​an imaginary cultural space situated somewhere between Venice and London. From a historiographical perspective, Nicholson’s chapter (like Kreuder’s) repositions the concept of

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early modernity  –​as no longer purely temporal, but also aesthetic:  a distinctive cultural mode surviving deep into the eighteenth century and beyond. Nicholson and Kreuder’s enquiries open new perspectives onto tracing and historiographically analysing early modern performative traditions, through the examination and interrogation of texts and practices that, in some cases, survive into our own times. In Chapter 10, Janie Cole presents new information on Maria de’ Medici’s performative diplomacy during her ill-​fated regency in France. Cole generously shared her discovery of invaluable and previously unknown archival documents on Maria’s ballets at two Renaissance Society of America conferences (Los Angeles, 2009; Washington, 2012), and in her TWB presentation:  ‘Maria de’ Medici, the Italian Minerva of France:  Music and Theatrical Spectacle between Florence and Paris during the Early Seventeenth Century’ (Madrid, 2011). Since then, her important Italian archival findings, notably including Traiano Guiscardi and Vittoria dalla Valle Guiscardi’s substantial eyewitness accounts to the Mantuan court, of Maria’s Paris performance of the 1609 Ballet de la Royne, have been extensively utilised by other scholars. Here in our volume, she first publishes these highly significant documents in full, and provides them with thorough contextualisation. Cole argues for a revision of the history of Maria’s usage of personal symbolism –​the image of Minerva/Astraea adopted from Giambattista Guarini’s libretto Giunone e Minerva of 1600. Cole’s version of Maria de’ Medici’s theatrical presence in Paris asserts Maria’s much more profound and extensive impact on the arts, the patronage of a cohort of international artists, and the spread of the novel genre of Florentine opera in the early decades of its existence. Whether as sponsor, producer or participant, Maria’s direct involvement in hundreds of Italy-​inspired Parisian court ballets served important political agendas. While several preceding chapters in our volume document the mimetic desire and social aspirations of characters, theatre practitioners or theatregoers, Cole’s chapter elaborates on an analogy from the highest tiers of the social hierarchy:  aristocratic ambitions, dynastic and political power efforts, and expressions of establishment, by means of transnational theatre. Although the confines of this volume could neither permit us to venture beyond Europe, nor even to accommodate a dedicated section addressing the theatrical cosmography of the East, chapters in every section pay attention to the influential presence of various ethnic, religious and social minorities, migrant or resident, in Europe’s everyday life or performance culture. Ndiaye contributes substantially to the portrait of early modern multicultural diversity in the West; Smith, Katritzky and Nicholson interrogate aspects of this in the North and South; our two final chapters look strongly towards the Orient. From their shared focus on the Mediterranean South, both Jaffe-​Berg

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and Lezra study connections and distinctions between wealthy and (notionally) civilised Western Europe, and the more elusive, inaccessible and even mystical East. Chapter  11, ‘Ebrei and Turchi Performing in Early Modern Venice and Mantua’, which Erith Jaffe-​Berg develops from her TWB presentation:  ‘The Circulation of Ideas and Performative Practices between the Jewish and Christian Communities of Mantua and Venice in the Early Modern Period’ (Cologne, 2017), documents the under-​researched and only seemingly marginal performances of the Hebrew and Turkish communities in early modern Italy. Contributing significant knowledge to the history of performance in the sixteenth century, Jaffe-​Berg proffers a crucial counterpoint that complements the picture of early modern cultural identity in Venice and Mantua. Marginalised minorities  –​not only Hebrew and Turkish, but also Greek, Albanian, Dalmatian, Armenian or (as also discussed by Nicholson) German –​played a crucial role in annual, civic and court festivities and rituals confirming the status quo of the Italian majority. Through her groundbreaking investigation, Jaffe-​Berg indirectly makes a fundamental point: the vital importance of the reverse side of the historiographical tapestry, and the need for historians to responsibly present inclusive and tolerant narratives, of the frequently troubled and disconsolate histories they investigate and uncover. While marginalised in, and often omitted from (Western) histories of theatre, minority communities –​such as the Ebrei and the Turchi of early modern Italy –​operated within transnational networks that were voluminous and influential, extending far beyond the borders of the known (historiographically mapped) world. Chapter  12 stems from Jacques Lezra’s longstanding interest in early modern piracy and its role in constituting early modern polity. It developed from his paper presented at a TWB conference in Prague (Charles University, 2007) under the title ‘Hostis Humani Generis: Pirate Histories in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Braudel, Measure for Measure, Pericles, Henry VI, Scarron, Le Prince Corsaire)’. Combining the disciplines of theatre, history of ideas, and philosophy, Lezra traces the birth of the legal nation-​state –​with its codes, decrees and punitive measures –​in the treatment of the ultimate social castaway –​the pirate. Lezra’s exploration starts with an enigmatic moment in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, the quasi-​beheading of ‘Ragozine, a most notorious pirate’ (4.3.54), and extends to early modern legal and philosophical tracts and royal decrees, on the treatment of pirates as the extremes of political abjection, the true hostis humani gentis: ‘enemies of humanity’. It is not incidental that the ‘most notorious pirate’, whose beheading is presented as a prime instance of exemplary punishment, is a Ragusan (Ragozine)  –​a toponym of the inhabitants of Ragusa (Dubrovnik), a maritime city in the Adriatic, beyond Venice, Gate of the East, and on the very fringes of the unruly Orient.

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To continue our cosmographical metaphor, the argument made by Lezra may be deployed to infer that Western Europe shapes and uses its civic aspirations to define itself against and in contrast to the enemy beyond, so often associated in the early modern imagination with the East in the broadest sense of cosmography –​be it the dangerous and wily Ottoman Empire, the Islamic world, African tribal kingdoms, or the enticing realm of the mystical Orient with the Holy Land at its heart. Ever since Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1581), the crusades to the Holy Land were inseparable from the allures of the forbidden fruit –​the pleasure repressed in early modern civic codes of behaviour. The emblem of this taboo and yet irresistible charm is Tasso’s Islamic princess, Armida. An early modern version of Medea, the sorceress from the East (Colchis), Armida enchants her Jason, the illustrious Christian knight Rinaldo. A desire to discover the unknown and the forbidden makes Rinaldo forget the grand and sacred design of his crusade mission. Originating with Tasso, and continuously adapted well into the twentieth century, Armida was a universal theme in transnational theatre –​an emblem of the enigmatic and beautiful unknown. Although Rinaldo’s enchantment with Armida has often been portrayed as a passing lapse in the indomitable scheme of (Christian) teleology, the fascination with the ‘undiscovered country from whose bourn | No traveller returns’ kept ‘puzzl[ing] the will’ (Hamlet, 3.1.85–​6) and inspiring theatre-​makers, discoverers and cartographers of the early modern world to find new paths, territories, peoples and experiences, and to enrich and extend the known world by connecting it to as yet unknown worlds. Theatre Without Borders Unrestrained by the need to conform to traditional borders and limits, the twelve explorations of this volume revisit, rethink and problematise certain fundamental historiographic and theoretical concepts too often taken for granted and ossified in criticism. Most prominently, these include the terms used in our volume’s title. The notion of the transnational is addressed by members of the Theater Without Borders research collective, including our twelve authors, not merely as a mechanical transfer, traffic or bilateral exchange across national borders. Transnationality is a fundamental quality of the performances, works of art and events; in itself, it is a lived culture that is supranational, exceeding any notions of borders or delimitations. This holds true for all our chapters. Korda’s chapter is firmly rooted in a concrete physical and material moment, focusing on one specific archaeological item, from Elizabethan London. However, its analysis draws on and invokes practices and artisanal cultures that transcend one nation, let alone a single city. Wofford’s and Fuchs’ chapters compare dramaturgies, dramatic practices and motifs in early modern Spain and England. The connections and affinities they identify

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likewise transcend national cultures, or any simple notions of intercultural binaries. While Ndiaye predominantly focuses on French drama of the late 1600s, her exploration evokes a cultural world extending far beyond France and Spain, towards a transmediterranean and transatlantic purview. Her discussion of dramatic portrayals of race conjures a map that radically contravenes assumed notions of national or cultural boundaries. Drábek’s chapter analyses the English Comedy not as a national style, but rather as an aesthetic one, that assumed this name without providing any conclusive proofs of English provenance –​as Italian ice cream or pizza has little in common with the Apennine Peninsula, the Italian nation or their culture. Concluding the volume, Lezra’s chapter analyses the image of the national enemy as the legal and cultural basis on which the concept of statehood, and even nationhood, is formed. Lezra captures the national state in statu nascendi, in a discussion painstakingly evidencing the transnational dimensions on which these processes take place. Analogically, our chapters reconsider the fundamental assumptions underpinning what is understood by early modernity. It is not a routinely, numerically determined epoch but a cultural type, symptomatic for its specific epistemologies and modes of operation. These encompass economic systems based on aristocratic status, theocratic models, mercantile practice and guild hierarchies, epistemic modes of textuality or residual orality (to use Walter Ong’s concept, 2012: 20, 168), nascent notions of authorship and art, as well as, self-​reflectively, the existing historiographic traditions of textual and iconographic exegesis. If we abandon the received historiographic and methodological traditions and revisit the historical facts, the concept of early modernity becomes a terminological quicksand. By no means all recognisably or characteristically early modern practices can be limited to a particular historical epoch. Many are direct continuations from what we define as the medieval period, and many survive well into recent centuries, often lingering on in depleted or decrepit states ridiculed by progressive contemporaries. As historiographers, we try to avoid the progressive bias that frontlines trends in the ascendant, and ignores those on the wane. Revisiting ‘late’ styles or surviving rudiments of a phenomenon offers illuminating historiographic challenges, which may shed new light  –​provided we abstain from the traditional historiographic predilection for a chiliastic history of vanguards. So Nicholson’s and Kreuder’s chapters extend far into the eighteenth century to analyse the late stages of live and still thriving performative traditions. Their explorations contribute novel findings for the immediate artistic context of their times. In hindsight, they also trace important features of theatrical traditions that cannot be fully identified in the extant earlier evidence. Similarly, Jaffe-​Berg’s chapter, while rooted firmly in the 1500s and early 1600s, is richly suggestive of surviving practices from earlier centuries. Smith’s analysis of Bredero’s The Spanish Brabanter focuses on Amsterdam in 1617, but his discovery of the

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Pavel Drábek and M. A. Katritzky

play’s microcosm  –​the dense description of this nodal point  –​opens up a window to a longer and profoundly transnational history of cosmopolitan migration, poverty and European warfare. Explorations in this volume are also inclusive in relation to its understanding of theatre and performance. The broadest possible sense of performative activities is adopted, comprising the familiar public and private activities of professional acting companies; of institutional frameworks such as activities of guilds, academies, fraternities, schools or municipalities; and of cultural artefacts and events, from published playtexts and surviving material objects, to seasonal celebrations and festivals. Several explorations cover a range of practices that oppose a simple, standard definition of performances in traditionally recognised settings such as playhouses or courts, or in familiar methodological genres (playscripts, visual evidence, biographies). Rather than limiting its discussion to ballets or operas, Cole’s performative portrait of Maria de’ Medici expands the framework to explore ways in which her activities and efforts transcend performance, towards cultural diplomacy, artistic patronage and certain agency work avant la lettre. Katritzky’s chapter explores a 1638 festival in The Hague which defies conventional historiographical categories in multiple ways. At the height of the Thirty Years’ War, this festival was an epicentre of dynastic and political negotiations; it was also a commercial enterprise attracting paying visitors, as well as a showcase of new theatre trends from all over Europe, and a retrospective, a kind of pantheon of renowned European performers, combining numerous performative genres and modes of display. Such terminological inclusivity crucially relates to the underlying interdisciplinarity of this volume. While interdisciplinarity is a standard expectation of many ambitious research projects, its practical application is fraught with challenges. Our explorations acknowledge and embrace them, negotiating these challenges as the differing horizons of disciplinary expectations, methodologies and discourse styles, and disciplines’ differing individual stylistic rhythms, communicative densities or focal points. Our chapters cover a wide range of disciplines and fields of study: theatre history, cultural history, race studies, art history as well as other special histories, ethnography, imagology, iconography, musicology, literary studies, comparative literature, translation studies, philosophy, aesthetics and –​very importantly –​several artistic practices. Embracing such a variety of methodologies and disciplinary perspectives has its difficulties and demands:  a reader may find themselves confronted with historical events, artefacts and practices that have never been explored in their own specialist disciplines. Some of these practices may well fall outside their definition of theatre or performance. Some of the works analysed may be unfamiliar or even obscure, despite their significance to a particular early modern culture. And, some of the critical or cultural perspectives adopted in these chapters may seem unsettling or counterintuitive. These

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Introduction

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challenges constitute a crucial part of this volume’s novelty, and also represent its methodological and historiographic purpose: to explore the infinite variety and riches of early modern performance culture by expanding the discourse, questioning the received canon, and rethinking the national restrictions of conventional maps to more accurately reveal a theatre that truly is without borders. Notes 1 The origins of this volume go back to presentations and discussions at the TWB annual workshop ‘Borders and Centres:  Transnational Encounters in Early Modern Theatre, Performance and Spectacle’. Hosted by the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, Germany, on 20–​24 May 2012, and organized by Volker Bauer (HAB) and M. A. Katritzky, it was attended by eight of our contributing authors. Further chapter draw on research presented at the following TWB annual conferences:  TransEuropa:  Early Modern Drama between East and West (Charles University Prague, 2007); Mobility, Hybridity and Reciprocal Exchange in the Theatres of Early Modern Europe (NYU Madrid, 2011), Action, Language, Text:  Crossing Translational and Transnational Boundaries in Early Modern Theater and Performance Culture (Gallatin School, NYU, 2013), Translation, Imitation and Boundary-​Crossing in the Transnational Theatres of Early Modern Europe and Beyond (NYU Paris, 2015), Early Modern Theater as Transnational and Transhistorical Nexus: Performance/​Text/​ Acting/​Embodiment (Universität zu Köln, 2017). 2 On early modern news networks, see Raymond and Moxham (2016), and especially Ahnert (2016). 3 Unless specified otherwise, Shakespeare is cited from Bate and Rasmussen’s RSC edition (Shakespeare 2007). 4 Lindley draws on Peterson (1963); additionally, he is offering a parallel between Bohr’s assertion and Wittgenstein’s statement in his Tractatus Logico-​ Philosophicus:  ‘Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent’ (Lindley 2007:  196), another crucial impulse in our modern epistemology, relating to the knowability of our objects of study. David Schalkwyk explores Wittgenstein’s thought with reference to transnational early modern theatre in several of his presentations and publications for TWB (Schalkwyk 2014). 5 Eric Nicholson’s presentation, delivered on Wednesday 23 May 2012 in the Bibelsaal of the Herzog August Library, concluded with an impromptu masked performance of the London coffee house scene of Goldoni’s The Good Spirit and the Evil Spirit (1767, Act 3), starring several of this volume’s contributors. Its ‘improvisation and physical beating scenes’ proved incongruously hilarious in this august setting.

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Part I

West

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Natasha Korda

Among the ‘small finds’ unearthed in the Museum of London’s archaeological excavations of the sites upon which early modern English playhouses once stood –​theatrical ephemera including fragile filaments of costume-​wire, bits of lace and fringe, bent dress-​pins, tiny glass beads, scattered hooks, buttons and buckles, shards of ceramic tobacco-​pipes and drinking vessels, broken combs and cosmetic implements –​lies an unusually intact artefact found at the Rose Theatre, namely, a slip-​on left shoe (see Figure 3), just over twenty centimetres in length, or slightly larger than would fit in the palm of one’s hand –​or my hand at least –​and roughly the size of an Elizabethan adolescent boy’s or woman’s foot (Bowsher and Miller 2009: 138–​57, 191–​2, 200–​8).1 While holding the shoe, as I  did at the Mortimer Wheeler House in London where it is stored, I asked myself the question that is the focus of this chapter: what are we to make of the material remains of early modern theatrical production and commerce, which have endured in spite of Prospero’s prognostication that ‘the great [G]‌lobe itself ’ would merely ‘dissolve’ and ‘Leave not a rack behind’ (The Tempest, 4.1.153–​6)?2 The surprising survival of such stage ephemera, all too easily dismissed or disregarded as insignificant, challenges us to recall and attend to the ‘stuff ’ that theatrical dreams are made of –​but how, and to what ends? What, if anything, might a shoe tell us about the plays performed at the Rose, a repertory that notably included Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday, or The Gentle Craft, first performed there in 1599, around the time that this shoe might have trod the boards on the foot of an actor, or the pit or galleries on the foot of a spectator?3 The methods of material culture studies, adopted by the ‘material turn’ in Shakespeare studies, would seem ideally suited to the task of studying what a play about the ‘gentle craft’ of shoemaking might tell us about the Rose shoe, and vice versa. Indeed, if ‘[o]‌ne of the attractions of the historical investigation of material culture is the very materiality of things’, which promises to put us ‘in contact with the past’, as Giorgio Riello maintains (2010: 41), shoes would seem to cry out for such investigation as their very lowliness –​their proximity to terra firma –​turns our

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Natasha Korda

Figure 3  Slip-​on left shoe, with zigzag slashes across the vamp and pinked patterning on the heel, found in MoLA excavation of the Rose Theatre. Length 20.5  cm. Photograph:  Andy Chopping. Museum of London Archaeology. Reproduced by permission.

attention to the seemingly solid, tangible world of substance. Situated at the point of contact between the actor’s body and the stage, shoes continually call to mind, with each strut, step, stride or stomp of the actor across the boards, the material substrate upon which theatre, that most ephemeral of art forms, is grounded. Insofar as the methods of material culture studies are ordinarily focused on static historical artefacts, however, we might well ask: to what extent are these methods useful in illuminating the material artefact animated by the actor, when taken up or trodden upon in performance? In what follows I consider

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what the study of material culture, and of shoes in particular, may tell us about plays in performance, while also addressing where the traditional methods of the discipline find their limits. Finally, I suggest the need for a broadened approach to the study of the material culture of the stage, one that would allow us to consider material forms of translation within transnational networks of commerce and exchange, by tracing not only costumes and properties as they move across borders into various cultural contexts and markets across Europe, but also the travelling feet of embodied actors as they move from stage to stage, transporting and transmuting technologies of footwear and foot skills in the process. That the epithet treading the boards (or the stage) has long been synonymous with the actor’s art suggests the reliance of that art upon foot skills and footwear, despite the fact that this phrase is often invoked as a deliberate (and literal) understatement.4 Yet theatre historians have devoted far more attention to analysing the ‘manual eloquence’ of chironomy, or what the actor conveys through hand-​gestures, than they have to fancy footwork or -​wear (see Bulwer 1644). This tendency may be attributed to what Tim Ingold, in an evocative article entitled ‘Culture on the Ground: The World Perceived Through the Feet’ (Ingold 2004: 321), terms the ‘imagined superiority of hands over feet’, which may be traced back to classical antiquity. According to this view, bipedal locomotion’s primary purpose is to liberate the hands to become agents of the intellect, thereby subordinating the feet; whereas the feet merely ‘undergird and propel the body within the natural world, the hands are free to deliver the intelligent designs or conceptions of the mind upon it’, and in so doing to enable ‘man’s mastery and control over his material environment’ (Ingold 2004: 317–​18, emphasis in original). As Ingold demonstrates, this triumph of the head and hands over the heels was reinforced by ‘a wider suite of changes that accompanied the onset of modernity’, including everything from Darwinian science to ‘modalities of travel and transport […] the education of posture and gesture […] the evaluation of the senses [… and] the architecture of the built environment’. Now ‘deeply embedded in the structures of public life in western societies’, this hierarchy has likewise shaped ‘mainstream thinking in the [academic] disciplines’ (Ingold 2004: 321, 330). This is true not only of theatre history, as noted above, but of material culture studies, which, construed as a vehicle for putting us ‘in contact’ or touch with the past, conceives of this touch in manual rather than pedestrian terms through its focus on the handwork or artisanal skill manifested in the crafted object. Ingold’s essay challenges us to consider the slow and uneven historical processes through which ‘the arts of footwork’ came to be subordinated to those of handwork by studying everything from changes in modes of transportation and the built environment to the history of foot etiquette, bodily postures and techniques, and technologies of footwear, as they ‘mediate a

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Natasha Korda

historical engagement of the human organism, in its entirety, with the world around it’, including the engagement of the actor with the stage (Ingold 2004:  331). Although this wide-​ranging approach would of necessity draw on the traditional methods of material culture studies, it also challenges these methods to attend to foot skills as well as hand skills, worn shoes as well as crafted shoes, and the haptic interface between the two. It reminds us that if theatre is without borders, it nonetheless requires boards upon which to tread, and other material forms of support: theatre does not float magically above the material world, but rather is defined by its points of contact and modes of interaction with that world. A survey of Dessen and Thomson’s Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, 1580–​1642 (1999) reveals just how much attention was paid to actors’ foot skills in early modern playtexts, although the precise nature of those skills is not always clear, as when an actor is instructed to ‘Practise footing’ in Brome’s The Court Begger (Dessen and Thomson 1999:  96; see also 64–​5).5 Not surprisingly, this and many other stage directions for feet concern dancing onstage: there are almost 350 examples of stage directions to ‘dance’, some of which indicate a particular manner of dancing, such as ‘Dances looking on his Feet’. Other stage directions specify the technical name of the dance, including both native forms (such as ‘The two dance a gig devised for the nonst [i.e., nonce]’, ‘Hobbinall and the Shepherds dance a Morris’ or ‘Dances Sellenger’s round’ [65]) and foreign imports (such as ‘The Spanish Pavin’ [209], the French ‘Coranto’ [56], the German ‘Almaine’ [235] or the Italian ‘Lavolta’ [142]). In performing the latter, actors translated foreign foot skills for native theatregoers’ eyes and ears, as well as for their feet. Anyone who has witnessed a post-​play jig in the wooden O of the reconstructed Globe will have experienced the quite visceral effect of such onstage dances, where the vibrations of the trodden boards resonate not only acoustically in the ears, but up through the feet and bodies of the ‘Audients’.6 The sophisticated foot skills upon which actors relied were by no means limited to dance. Stage directions reveal a diverse lexicon of expressive foot movements, comprised of leaps, runs and reels (as in ‘leaps over the stool and runs away’ [130], ‘Here she runs about the stage snatching at every thing she sees’ [185], and ‘Exit reeling’ [178]), scuffles and skirmishes (as when Hamlet and Laertes ‘In scuffling […] change Rapiers’ [189] or when Iachimo and Posthumous ‘enter againe in Skirmish’ [202]), and marches and stands (as in ‘the soldiers march and make a stand’ [138] or ‘They march about the Stage’ [140]), to name just a few. Such choreography and blocking are suggestive of the ways in which actors used their feet to take possession of stage space, and deployed foot skills as vehicles of power or status. Whereas assertive or graceful footwork conveyed status, staggering or stumbling conveyed weakness or subordination (in stage directions such as ‘staggers on, and then falls down’ or ‘staggers with faintness’

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[213]). Such ungainly movements required no less skill on the part of the actor, however; indeed, they necessitated what we might call a kind of sprezzatura of the feet, through which the actor dissimulated the practised skill required to make footwork appear spontaneous. Clearly, the actor’s skill involved not only speech uttered ‘trippingly on the tongue’ (Hamlet, 3.2.2), but the nimbleness of foot with which he ‘trip[ped] about the stage’ or ‘tripped up [the] heels’ (Dessen and Thomson 1999: 237) of another actor to assert dominance. In order to ‘o’erstep not the modesty of nature’ (3.2.19) actors thus had to be decorous of foot as well as of voice, as Hamlet himself recognises when he excoriates players who ‘strut’ as well as ‘bellow’ onstage (3.2.32–​3). Stage directions further reveal that the arts of footwork were put in service not only of motion, but of a wide range of ambulatory emotion, as when actors were instructed to ‘walk passionately’ or ‘fearfully’, ‘sadly’, ‘fantastically’ or ‘discontentedly’ (Dessen and Thomson 1999: 245). Moreover, just as particular hand gestures were associated with particular emotions  –​as when ‘we clappe our Hands in joy, wring them in sorrow, [or] advance them in prayer and admiration’ (Bulwer 1644:  A5v)  –​so too were gestures of the feet. Stamping one’s feet, for example, was commonly associated with anger, as in stage directions indicating ‘She reads the letter, frowns and stamps’ or ‘chafing and stamping’ (Dessen and Thomson 1999: 213).7 With so much attention paid to footwork and foot skills on the raised platform of the thrust stage, it is not surprising that actors were known to wear eye-​catching and fashionable footwear, including chopines with raised cork soles, which originated in the Orient and came to Europe via Venice and Venetian courtesan culture, and eventually to England where they were more commonly known as pantobles or pantofles (Semmelhack 2009: esp. 26–​80; see also Semmelhack 2013). By the early seventeenth century, actors were also wearing shoes with wooden heels and laces fastened with decorative shoe roses or ribbons, innovations from France (Semmelhack 2009: 80–​96). There are many references to such foot attire in playtexts and stage directions, which sometimes make them focal points, as when a servant enters ‘with Shooes, Garters and Roses’ in Massinger’s The City Madam (1632, sig. B3r),8 or when characters are instructed to take them on and off, or kiss them, or further draw them to our attention by asking, for example, ‘See you this pantofle?’ (Heywood 1636: sig. I1r). It is perhaps the increasing sophistication of foot attire onstage in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that prompted Puttenham, in his Arte of English Poesie (1589), to make them the focus of his history of ‘Drammatick’ poesie. Whereas ‘common players of interludes’ in antiquity ‘played barefoote upon the floore’, he claims, ‘later Comedies [were played] upon scaffolds, and by men well and cleanely hosed and shod’, and tragedies ‘upon lofty stages’ by actors who wore

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upon their legges buskins of leather called Cothurni […] and for a speciall preheminence did walke upon those high corked shoes or pantofles, which now they call in Spaine and Italy Shoppini. And because those buskins and high shoes were commonly made of goats skinnes very finely tanned, and dyed into colours.

Because ‘a goate in Greeke is called Tragos, therfore these stately playes were called Tragedies’. Puttenham grounds tragedy’s lofty style and ‘preheminence’ in the material substrate upon which actors stood: their ‘lofty stages’ and ‘high shoes’ served to highlight ‘the feate and dexteritie of mans body’ through which dramatic poesy was ‘put in execution’ and ‘lively represented to the ear and eye’ (Puttenham 1589: 49, 47). The increasing elevation and sophistication of actors’ footwear on the early modern stage was not without its critics. Hamlet famously teases a boy actor in a travelling troupe for being ‘nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine’ (2.2.425–​7), and later derisively asks, ‘Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers […] with [two] Provincial roses on my raz’d shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players?’ (3.2.275–​8). His satire of players’ fashionable foot attire rebukes in order to reform, implying that there is a higher ‘purpose of playing’ that cannot be measured by the ‘altitude of a chopine’. In so doing, he forecasts Ben Jonson’s subordination of the ephemeral, effeminised ‘body’ of stage spectacle, to the enduring intellectual ‘soul’ of theatre. In Hamlet’s view, the actor’s fancy shoes epitomise the former: like those worn by Gertrude at his father’s funeral, they will be ‘old’ –​both in the sense of worn out and out of fashion –​‘within a month […] A little month’ (1.2.145, 147). Four hundred years later, the survival of the Rose shoe poses a challenge to Hamlet’s view of the frailty of footwear, a challenge not unlike that voiced by the gravedigger, who knows all too well that tanned leather endures in the earth because it ‘keep[s]‌out water’, which is a ‘sore decayer’ (5.1.171–​2) of shoes as well as of corpses. It is for this reason, he claims, that a tanner’s corpse will outlast that of a ‘pocky’ courtier: his work in the leather industry has made ‘his hide […] so tann’d with his trade’ (5.1.166, 170) that it will last as long as the products he manufactures. The gravedigger’s understanding of matter is gleaned from his trade, not at the University of Wittenberg. He lays claim to the artisanal know-​how of the craftsman, viewing himself as a ‘grave-​maker’ (5.1.58–​9) whose products, like those of a skilled tanner, are made to last. Indeed, he boasts that he ‘builds stronger [than] a mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter’ (5.1.50–​1), because ‘the houses he makes lasts till doomsday’ (5.1.59). In contrast to Hamlet’s assertion that ‘the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense’ (5.1.69–​70), the gravedigger manifests a hands-​on sensitivity to the multifarious qualities of the material world, an artisanal, haptic knowledge gleaned, or so he claims, through making. The liveried tanners, shoemakers and other skilled artisans in the audience

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would, of course, have found this assertion risible –​akin to Abhorson’s claim that the hangman’s occupation ‘is a mystery’ in Measure for Measure (4.2.41). From their perspective, no less than that of Prince Hamlet, the gravedigger is a base ‘peasant’ (5.1.140), whose low status and subjacent understanding are visually signalled by his literally standing under Hamlet, his feet planted in a ‘pit of clay’ (5.1.96, 120) as he digs. His claim to hand skills, like his discourteous knocking about of courtier’s skulls with his spade, are deemed ‘o’erreach[ing]’ (5.1.79) by Hamlet –​but curiously, as an overreaching of the feet, in which ‘the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe’ (5.1.140–​1). Rather than penetrating Hamlet’s mind, the gravedigger’s view from below chafes at his heels like an ill-​fitting shoe that rubs until it breaks through the skin. This seems only appropriate, given the gravedigger’s disregard for the head as the seat of the intellect; from his perspective, ‘fine pate[s]’ are filled with nothing but ‘fine dirt’ or grey matter (5.1.107–​8). I have dwelt at some length upon the gravedigger scene, and its juxtaposition of two divergent attitudes towards the world of matter, because they are in certain respects reminiscent of the divergent attitudes towards the study of material culture in contemporary academe:  if Hamlet’s lofty perspective resembles that of the theorist who refuses to sully himself with mere stuff, the gravedigger’s know-​how resembles that of scholars who bury themselves in archives and defensively lay claim to a quasi-​artisanal mystery, a hands-​on, haptic form of knowledge overlooked by haughty theorists. Although both of these perspectives have something to contribute to our understanding of the Rose shoe as an artefact of theatrical culture, the divergence between them has occluded investigation of ‘culture on the ground’ as ‘perceived through the feet’, to borrow Ingold’s phrase, by positing that the worn shoe, the crafted shoe, the theorised shoe, the textual shoe, the performing shoe, the travelling shoe and so forth, travel along divergent paths, and can have no meaningful contact other than chafing against disciplinary boundaries. What new paths might be opened up by viewing the Rose shoe as a point of convergence where the material, textual, theoretical and theatrical worlds meet? Held in the palm of one’s hand, the Rose shoe at first glance appears quite humble, even crude by present-​day standards. Its sturdy, rough-​hewn form seems to hearken back to an artisanal age of skilled craftsmanship, in which the hand or touch of the artisan was fully evident in the crafted artefact’s unique attributes. It is quite easy to fantasise, as Riello suggests, that one is touching or maintaining ‘contact’ with this lost work world, and that one might even resurrect this world via the shoe, which proudly displays, rather than concealing, the labour or handicraft congealed in it (2010: 41). This is a fantasy to which The Shoemaker’s Holiday strongly appeals, yet one that it also invites us to question.

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At the start of the play, Simon Eyre’s journeyman Ralph, after being conscripted to fight in France, defines the product of his craft in precisely these terms, when he presents a pair of shoes to his newly wedded spouse Jane at his leave-​taking: Here, take this pair of shoes cut out by Hodge, Stitched by my fellow Firk, seamed by myself, Made up and pinked with letters for thy name. Wear them, my dear Jane, for thy husband’s sake, And every morning, when thou pull’st them on, Remember me, and pray for my return. Make much of them, for I have made them so, That I can know them from a thousand moe. (The Shoemaker’s Holiday, 1.228–​35)

The skilful hand of the artisan and poet converge in Ralph’s speech, in crafting shoes that are at once artisanal and textual artefacts. Not only is the speech crafted in surprisingly lyrical iambic pentameter, unusual for a journeyman (albeit one of the ‘gentle craft’), the skill with which both it and the shoes are made is manifested in the form of writing, or literally inscribed in letters. Uniquely identifiable, the shoes bear the stamp and artistry of their maker, which take the form of his beloved’s proper name or initials (and, we later learn, of ‘true love knots’), and are thereby crafted ‘So | that [he] can know them from a thousand moe’. This claim is later substantiated when Ralph returns from France, recognises one of the shoes, and is ultimately reunited with Jane. Taken up as props onstage (‘here, take this pair of shoes’), they assume significance within, as they become constitutive of the here and now of theatrical performance, becoming performative in every sense of this overused term. Presented to Jane in lieu of a ring  –​‘Rich men at parting give their wives rich gifts, | Jewels and rings to grace their lily hands,’ Ralph says, but ‘Thou know’st our trade makes rings for women’s heels’ (1.225–​7)  –​they become performative in the sense that they ‘relat[e]‌to an utterance that effects an action by being spoken or by means of which the speaker performs a particular act’ (OED, ‘performative, adj. and n. A. adj.’). Ralph’s speech does not simply describe the shoes’ already existing material attributes, and thereby craft words to fit the world. Rather, it seeks to craft or fit the world to his words via the material agency of the shoes (Austin 1962: 47ff.). Although the scene resembles a wedding, Ralph and Jane are already, albeit newly, married. The act he performs is thus not one of claiming Jane’s hand, but rather of materialising a memory in shoes that can be worn on her feet ( Jones and Stallybrass 2000: esp. 2, 204–​5, 248). ‘Remember me’, he commands, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father; yet unlike Hamlet, Jane need not agonise over how

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best to inscribe a memento in the tablet of her memory, because Ralph has already inscribed one in her shoes. As we shall see, however, Dekker’s play reveals that Ralph’s performative speech act is not as felicitous as it first appears. As if to remind us of the infelicitous circumstances posed by his conscription to fight in France, Scene 1 thus concludes immediately after his speech with the stage direction: ‘soldiers […] pass over the stage, Ralph falls in among them’ (1.237–​8). The tread of the soldiers’ footsteps as they march across the stage reminds us that the vicissitudes of the worn or travelling shoe, and of the shoe pressed into action on the battlefield, may trump the well-​crafted shoe’s intended longevity, and will at the very least leave its mark on the foot that wears it. Closer attention to the Rose shoe’s material form, and indeed to its very solidity and durability, likewise leads us to less utopic terrain, insofar as the emergence of the ‘welted’ shoe with its doubly reinforced sole in the second half of the sixteenth century has been linked to the increasing prevalence of road surfacing in towns, which required a sturdier shoe than could be produced by medieval ‘turnshoe’ manufacture (i.e., making shoes inside out and then ‘turning’ or reversing them).9 As Goubitz et al. explain: The advent of road surfacing made it necessary to wear footwear with thicker, more impact-​absorbing and less wear-​prone soles. Whereas hard debris might previously have been pressed into the ground when trodden on, walking on a rubbish-​strewn paved street was quite a different matter. […] After going about on single-​soled shoes for hundreds of years, people were forced within a few generations to switch to shoes with thick soles. […] In northern Europe, the double sole was not commonly adopted until around 1550. (Goubitz 2001: 79)

The sturdy, welted sole of the Rose shoe is thus an artefact of the topographical expansion of early modern London, its exponential population growth and emergence as an entrepôt of commerce and international trade. The imbrication of Eyre’s shop in an expanding market of consumer goods, and broader networks of global trade, is emphasised by the famous deal Eyre negotiates with a Dutch skipper, for the purchase of ‘a ship[load] of silk cypress […] cambric, end a towsand towsand tings’ (7.91, 120–​1), by which Eyre earns the fortune that spurs his social ascent to Lord Mayor. It is against the backdrop of the ‘towsand towsand tings’ available in London’s expanding market that Ralph’s claim to know the shoes he has made with his own hands ‘from a thousand moe’ is set. This increased production transformed the shoemaking industry in the late sixteenth century in fundamental ways. Crucial among these was the advent of ready-​ to-​ wear shoes, which severed the intimate relationship between artisan, customer and bespoke product (Egan 2005:  22; Goubitz et  al. 2001:  31). Unlike made-​to-​order shoes, which are crafted to suit their wearers’ size and specifications, ready-​to-​wear shoes are

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anonymous, requiring no direct contact between the hand of the shoemaker and the foot of the wearer. In The Shoemaker’s Holiday, the tension between these two modes of production is registered in Scene 14, when a servingman arrives at Eyre’s shop to buy a pair of shoes for an unnamed ‘gentlewoman’ (whom the audience knows to be Jane). In his hand, the servant carries one of the uniquely crafted shoes Ralph gives to Jane in Scene 1, so the audience is primed for a scene of recognition that will reunite them. When paired with the earlier scene, however, this one reveals that all has not gone according to plan: the pair of shoes has been divided, just as Ralph has been sundered from Jane. Jane’s absence from the scene contrasts with her presence in Scene 1, signalling the prospect of a new mode of production, in which artisans and their clients are separated by distance and anonymity in an ever-​expanding metropolis. At the start of the scene, the servant appears lost amid London’s urban sprawl, but is guided by the sign that hangs in front of Eyre’s shop: ‘Let me see now… the sign of the Last in Tower Street’ (14.1), he says. The painted image of ‘the Last’, or wooden form on which shoes were made, seems to promise that he has found what he is looking for: this shop alone and no other can produce the unique commodity his mistress desires. Yet it also intimates that Eyre’s shop is ‘the Last’ of its kind, the last in which shoes are crafted to mean what they say, when they speak (with proper names and ‘true-​love knots’) of the artisan’s love for and fidelity to his craft, tools, products and customers. Although Ralph would clearly have us read the two-​in-​one of the pair he gives to Jane as a sign of their marital union, in so doing we are confronted with the problem posed by a single shoe, arriving at the shop in the hand of a stranger, rather than as a united pair on the feet of his wife. Further compromising the felicity of Ralph’s performative speech act is the fact that the servant brings the unpaired shoe with instructions from his mistress to have a copy made. Separated from Ralph by war and believing him dead, Jane is about to marry a gentleman named Hammon and requires a new pair for the wedding: ‘I must have a pair of shoes,’ the servant says, ‘A pair of shoes, two shoes, made by this very shoe, this same shoe’ (14.13–​4). His emphasis on the duality of the copy versus the singularity and self-​sameness of the original reminds us that shoes come in pairs, and thus can never be truly unique because the original is itself a copy. That the unpaired shoe’s return to the ‘sign of the Last’ signals not the achieved recuperation, so much as the perceived loss, of the crafted artefact’s uniqueness, is further indicated by the last’s association with the advent of ready-​ to-​ wear, welted shoes. (Although rudimentary lasts were used in turnshoe manufacture, they were not strictly necessary, whereas they were indispensable in the construction of the new, sturdier, welted shoes [Goubitz et al. 2001: 103–​4].) Beginning in the mid-​sixteenth century, a series of size-​ graded lasts in various shapes, according to footwear types and trends, were

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introduced, allowing shoemakers to make shoes ‘in advance in standard sizes, and to sell them “off the peg” ’ (Goubitz et al. 2001: 103–​4). Registering this innovation, Eyre refers to one of his boy apprentices as ‘my last of the fives’ (4.104), or his diminutive, size five last.10 The single last on Eyre’s sign thus points to the residual uniqueness of bespoke shoes in an emergent ready-​ to-​wear world. When the servant first requests a new pair of shoes for his mistress by the following morning, Ralph appears to consider providing a ready-​made pair, asking only ‘what length’s her foot?’ (14.6). The exchange relation is reduced from one of intimacy and particularity, to generality and abstraction. Perhaps the most striking attribute of the shoes Ralph gives to Jane, an attribute they share with the shoe found at the Rose, is their ‘pinked’ ornamentation or perforated slits and eyelet holes.11 The technique of pinking, first popularised in the early sixteenth century by mercenary German foot soldiers or pikemen known as Landsknechte, originally in imitation of the slashes soldiers received in battle, reached its height as a fashion trend across Europe in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (Arnold 1975:  22; see also Pratt and Woolley 1999: 16). First used on leather garments and shoes as a practical means of easing their stiffness, the technique eventually took on a purely decorative function in revealing the contrastive colour or texture of stockings, shirts and garment linings worn underneath (Ashelford 1996: 28; see also Channing Linthicum 1936: 153–​4). The initial use value of pinking thereby gave way to an ornamental one, which –​in the case of shoes at least –​ worked to undermine their utility. As this brief history demonstrates, the worn shoe and the crafted shoe form a circuit in which use and abuse lead to technical innovation that may variously accommodate or inhibit functionalism, forming and deforming the foot that wears the shoe and vice versa. This circuit is manifested, or rather traversed, in The Shoemaker’s Holiday when Ralph returns wounded and ‘lame’ (10.54) from the wars in France in Scene 10, having himself been pricked or pinked in battle by the French. His impeded motion is contrasted with that of Eyre’s wife Margery, who enters the stage at the beginning of the scene, unable to keep up with her foreman as they make their way to Guildhall, where Eyre is about to be appointed sheriff: ‘Thou goest too fast for me, Roger’ (10.1), she says. No stage direction is needed to indicate the cause of her impeded progress, as she soon asks, ‘Hans, pray thee, tie my shoe’ (10.24). That Margery’s shoe has come untied may seem mundane to modern audiences, but shoes with laceable latchets, fastened with French ribbons or shoe-​roses, would have been a novelty to the average playgoer at the Rose, as they had only recently come into fashion in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. During the succeeding decades ribbon shoe ties ‘grew large enough to become decorative features in themselves, and large bows or rosettes began to adorn the front of the shoe’ (Pratt

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and Woolley 1999: 23; see also Turner Wilcox 1948: 91; Arnold 1988: 213). Thus, it may be that Margery is not only unwilling to tie her own shoe, due to her newly elevated status, but unable to do so, due to a lack of know-​how. The crippling of the English body politic through its increased consumption of foreign fashions is synecdochically figured in the scene through Margery’s sartorially induced hobble. The gravity latent in her comedic predicament is underscored when the wounded Ralph returns from the French wars, limping onto the stage just after the stage-​business with Margery’s shoe. Importantly, Ralph’s lameness is immediately contrasted with that of Margery, in that it does not disable him, as Margery is incapacitated by her new-​fangled, French shoe ties. Hodge the foreman insists that Ralph’s lost limb will not inhibit his ability to work in his craft: ‘Limbs? Hast thou not hands, man? Thou shalt never see a shoemaker want bread, though he have but three fingers on a hand’ (10.74–​6). Although Ralph has been pinked by the French, his craft (identified with his skill at pinking) will compensate for his loss. In spite of his injuries, he is proclaimed ‘a good workman, and a tall soldier’ (10.55), and in the following scene joins his fellow shoemakers in a vigorous English morris dance (11.50). The French threat to the English bodies politic and natural is thus disarmed in the play by the industry and ingenuity of its native artisans, who, far from being crippled by the growing demand for foreign fashions, are enriched by it, for they have acquired the skills to manufacture such fashions domestically. Comedy’s generic drive to repair what has been sundered by re-​pairing the unpaired shoe with its lost mate and thereby reuniting Ralph with Jane, cannot restore Ralph’s injured limb, however, which continues to serve as a visual reminder in the second half of the play of what has been lost. We might conclude by asking: why does the play so persistently call our attention not only to the well-​crafted shoes manufactured by Eyre’s shoemakers, or to the efficacy of their foot skills as they dance the English morris, but to shoes that are removed, detached or unpaired from their proper contexts, and thereby rendered useless? And how might the unpaired Rose shoe help us to answer this question? It is here that the traditional methods of material culture studies seem of little use, insofar as they aim to re-​pair the lost or unmatched artefact with its fit or proper context, thereby treating both in a utilitarian manner that fails to account for that which exceeds or inhibits instrumentality (Heidegger 1971: 37). The methods of material culture studies can take us only so far in addressing what Heidegger terms the ‘thingly aspect of the art work’, insofar as ‘the art work is’ –​ in his words –​‘something else over and above this thingly element’ (Heidegger 1971: 19). From a Heideggerian perspective, the attempt to illuminate the work of art via the thing occludes this ‘something else over and above’. For the path to the latter in his view ‘leads not from thing to work, but from work to thing’ (Heidegger 1971: 38). The example he famously chooses to demonstrate this

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Figure 4  Vincent van Gogh (1853–​1890). Shoes. 1886. Oil on canvas. 38.1 × 45.3 cm. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation). Reproduced by permission.

claim is a shoe painting by Van Gogh (see Figure 4), which reveals the ‘thingly character’ of shoes precisely by decontextualising them. He observes: There is nothing surrounding this pair of peasant shoes in or to which they might belong –​only an undefined space. There are not even clods of soil from the field or the field-​path sticking to them, which would at least hint at their use. (Heidegger 1971: 33)

The shoes seem to hover just slightly above the surface upon which they are depicted, reminding us that this surface is not the earth or sodden soil of the field-​path, but rather that of the painted image, which is at once material and immaterial, both thingly and ‘something else over and above’. For our purposes, it is Derrida’s unfolding of Heidegger’s essay in his ‘Restitutions of the Truth in Pointing’ that points the way back from the useless, abandoned and unmatched shoes of Dekker’s play to the shoe found at the Rose, and towards a reconceptualised approach to the fragmentary material remnants of early modern theatrical culture unearthed by archaeologists and

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stored for future study by scholars who would seek to make sense of them (Derrida 1987:  256). For Derrida’s ‘pointing’ or pointure refers not to the indexical function of the work of art (whether it be a painting or a play), construed as pointing to some contextualising thing, reality or fact that stands outside it, and whose truth emerges by re-​pairing the artwork with this context, an approach adopted by Meyer Schapiro in his well-​known critique of Heidegger, which argues that the shoes in Van Gogh’s painting belonged not to a peasant-​woman, as Heidegger imagines, but rather to Van Gogh himself, and that the painting’s ‘truth’ may therefore be grasped by contextualising it in relation to biographical facts pertaining to the artist’s life (Schapiro 2009 [1968]). Rather, Derrida underscores the non-​utilitarian status of the artwork’s truth, pushing Heidegger’s reading still further in this direction by suggesting that the shoes in Van Gogh’s painting are not simply decontextualised, and thereby detached from use, but that they are unmatched or unpaired, not to mention unlaced and ill-​fitting, even clumsy, in the manner of shoes worn by two left feet (Derrida 1987: 261, 265). As I understand his intervention, Derrida is not suggesting that the work of art is or should be decontextualised, detached from all reference, that reference should simply be ‘suspended’, but rather that the space between the thingly shoe and the painted shoe which stands ‘over and above’ it should  –​in his words –​be ‘traversed’ (Derrida 1987: 329). The term he uses to describe this traversal, through which the inside and outside of the shoe-​as-​artwork may be brought into relation, is pointure –​ a technical term of shoemaking signifying the prick or hole made by the shoemaker’s awl. Derrida identifies this pointure, through which inside and outside or text and context are traversed, with the eyelet hole through which a shoe is laced, but we might, in even less utilitarian terms, translate pointure as pinking. The method through which we would then arrive at what Derrida terms ‘the truth in pointing’ or pinking would move not unidirectionally from thing to work, or from work to thing, but would work back and forth between the two, traversing the differential space between them. In this way, we might read the unpaired Rose shoe in relation to Ralph’s lost shoe and injured limb in Dekker’s play, which point not to the skilful pinking that characterises the shoe as a crafted artefact, but to a quite different hole cut into the vamp of the worn shoe, ‘possibly to accommodate a toe deformity or bunion’ (Bowsher and Miller 2009: 196; and see Figure 3). The archaeological evidence of early modern shoe finds suggests that such ‘foot abnormalities were far more common than they are today’, and that in the absence of specialty footwear, the shoe as material interface between humans and their environment had to be continually adapted. There are ‘many examples of shoes widened by their owners, who made cuts in tight places […] to make shrunken shoes fit again or to relieve the pressure of the leather on a sore toe, instep or ankle’ (Goubitz et  al. 2001:  12, 14). Archaeologists

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have attributed such casualties to the advent of road paving to accommodate commercial expansion, to the thickened, welted soles developed to accommodate the friction caused by the foot’s tread upon them, and to an emergent ready-​to-​wear world in which shoe size, and pinking or pointure, could not guarantee that a shoe would fit. My argument is that a juxtaposition of the pinked shoe staged in Dekker’s play with that found at the Rose need not take the form of a utilitarian pairing of the textual with the contextual shoe, so as to better understand both as chapters in the history of human handicraft. For to do so would be to view both playcraft and handicraft through the lens of the hand’s hegemony, its imposition of ‘man’s mastery and control over his material environment’ –​to return to Ingold’s apt formulation (2004: 318). What if instead we were to view this juxtaposition as akin to that of the unmatched shoes in Van Gogh’s painting? The single, materially textured and luminously brilliant brushstroke through which Van Gogh illuminates the underside of the shoe hovers between the material and immaterial, elevating the sole of the shoe ever so slightly above the ground of the painting. It thereby calls our attention to the way in which artistic media reshape, redefine and reorient us towards our everyday contact with our material environs. So too did the two-​hours’ traffic of actors’ feet treading the boards of the elevated, thrust stage enable theatregoers to glimpse from below –​and thereby understand anew –​the form of their everyday traffic with the world. Read from this vantage, the ‘truth in pinking’ is not simply or solely a chapter in the history of fashion trends, techniques and technologies, or even of their traversal of national borders in service to commercial expansion and international trade. It is a truth that invites us to reflect upon shoes as they ‘mediate a historical engagement of the human organism, in its entirety, with the world around it’, including the engagement of the actor with the stage. The study of a ‘theatre without borders’ is from this perspective not merely a matter of mapping the coordinates of theatrical cultures across Europe and the myriad ways in which the boundaries between them were traversed, but of understanding that the ‘truth’ of the work of art –​whether the work in question is that of pointing or pinking, painting or playing –​resides not ‘over and above’ its thingly aspect, but rather in the work of illuminating and foregrounding the ground that shapes and is shaped by it. Notes 1 I wish to express my deep gratitude to Julian Bowsher for generously sharing with me his expertise and data on the Museum of London Archaeology’s shoe finds at the Rose, and to Leslie Thompson for sharing her expertise on stage directions. I  especially wish to thank the TWB research collaborative for their encouragement and intellectual colloquy over many years, and in particular Pavel Drábek

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and M. A. Katritzky for their valuable feedback on this chapter, portions of which represent a reworking of material found in Korda (2013; 2015). On early modern shoe sizes, see Goubitz et al. (2001: 11). 2 All further references to Shakespeare are to the Riverside 2nd edition (Shakespeare 1997). 3 The dates of plays cited parenthetically in this essay refer to the estimated year of first performance found in Harbage (1989). All references to the play, unless otherwise indicated, are to Jonathan Gil Harris’ edition (Dekker 2008). 4 The OED dates the earliest usage of treads the Stage to 1691 (Gerard Langbaine, An Account of the English Dramatic Poets) and of trod the boards to 1858 (Edward G. E. Bulwer-​Lytton, What Will He Do with It?), respectively (‘tread, v.’). As Jonson’s dedicatory poem in Shakespeare’s First Folio attests, however, to tread the stage was in usage in Shakespeare’s time. Other early usages of this phrase may be found in Thomas Nash, The Unfortunate Traveller (1594), sig. F2r; John Marston, Histrio-​ mastix, Or, The Player Whipt (1610), sig. C2r; William Browne, Britannia’s Pastorals (1625), 62; William Hawkins, Apollo Shroving (1627), 26; John Hall, Poems (1647), 27; Richard Brome, Five New Playes (1653), sigs. A2r, A3v. Michael Drayton uses the related phrase strut the stage in Idea the Shepheards Garland Fashioned in Nine Eglogs (1593), sig. H3v. The phrase to tread unhallow’d Boards, referring to the stage, appears in the Prologue to Thomas Horde’s The Pretended Puritan. A Farce of Two Acts (1779), 1. The reliance of acting upon foot-​skills is likewise suggested by the superstitious catchphrase break a leg!, of uncertain origin, but apparently not in common usage until the early twentieth century (Partridge 1977: 56). 5 Henceforth page numbers will be cited parenthetically. 6 On jigs, see Baskerville (1965) and Clegg and Skeaping (2014). On amphitheatres as acoustic sounding boards see Smith (1999). Early modern English spelling often underscores the status of audiences as Audients or hearers and listeners, as in ‘They [are] highlie to bee commended, which can furnish out their matter with such pleasaunt rehearsals, to keep the audientes waking’ in G. Gilpin, Bee Hive of Romishe Church (1579), fol. 269v, and ‘Those Industrious hands that have so often acted his words, | When they moved Audients passions to Love, | To Hate, to Mirth, to Tragedy’ in A. Bailey, Spightful Sister (1667), I.7 (see OED, ‘audient, n. and adj.’). 7 The stamping of an actor’s foot might also be used to signal or trigger another action onstage, as in ‘stamps with his foot: to him a Servant’ or ‘she stamps: the chair and dog descend’ (Dessen and Thomson 1999: 213). 8 I am grateful to Leslie Thompson for bringing this reference to my attention. 9 The ‘welt’ connected the upper and the insole to the treadsole. The novelty of shoes with doubly or even triply reinforced soles as part of their original construction is registered in numerous Elizabethan texts. See, for example, Eliot (1593: 19). 10 The association of ‘the fives’ with diminutive size was commonplace by the early seventeenth century: so, for example, a ‘Love Sonnet’ in ballad meter included in the miscellany Description (1620) blazons: ‘Her wast exceeding small, | The fives did fit her shooe’ (D1r). 11 A number of other contemporary shoes found at the Rose likewise have pinked decoration; see Bowsher and Miller (2009: 145, 192–​9).

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2 Freedom and constraint in transnational comedy: The ‘jest unseen’ of love letters in Two Gentlemen of Verona and El perro del hortelano Susanne L. Wofford

Both Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona (c. 1593–​94) and Lope de Vega’s El perro del hortelano (The Dog in the Manger, c. 1613–​15) emerge from, and embody in drama, a complex cultural matrix of lazzi and theatergrams taken from romance, novelle and transnational dramatic practices, a parallel emergence that this chapter highlights through a close look at a shared theatrical device involving a woman of higher rank, and in one case greater wit, who instructs her ‘servant’ (in one case a courtier, in the other a secretary) to write a love letter for her, which, unbeknown to him, she intends to give to the writer himself.1 This scenario, an apparent elaboration from various letter-​ writing scenes and misdirected letters from Jorge de Montemayor’s influential Diana enamorada and other romances and novelle, could be seen as a translation from narrative to drama that creates a specifically theatrical lazzo or ‘conceit’ out of a convention from narrative.2 Using this scene as a means of theorising the expressive significance of theatergrams in the context of a transnational dramatic practice, I will consider whether a parallel critique of social hierarchy, aristocratic distinction and ‘hierarchical service’ (Schalkwyk’s expression, 2008: 23–​4) is embedded in the scenario and appropriated by each playwright, albeit in very different ways. Arguably, transnational theatre, with its shared theatergrams and cultural interconnections, enacts the blending of many literary traditions with the seeming purity of a national canon, creating what in Spanish drama would be called the ‘impure blood’. This challenges the notion that there are distinct national literary cultures, and questions whether the canons of Spanish, English or European drama in this period are truly separable. Both plays are set in Italy (El perro del hortelano takes place in the palazzo of the Countess of Belflor in Naples, then a Spanish possession), and both draw on various

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Italian and Spanish sources. These include the Diana of Montemayor, possibly Bandello’s novelle, and certainly Boccaccio. Day 10, novella 8 of The Decameron, the story of Titus and Gisippus, is crucial for Two Gentlemen; one likely source for Tristan’s fictional account of Teodoro’s origins, in El perro, is Day 5, novella 7, which tells of ‘a Teodoro abducted by pirates and recognized fifteen years later by his aged father’ (Dixon in Lope de Vega 1999: 15–​16). The very concerns in the plots of these two plays about the danger of the high-​born marrying a person of the lower gentry, or of mixing royal or high aristocratic blood with blood of lower status, are also enacted at the level of dramatic practice, including the ways in which playwrights mix English or Spanish with Italian sources, or take devices and plot tricks from narratives like the Diana and transform them into a theatrical space for unveiling not only the emotions of the characters but the affective and political costs of the social structure itself.3 Both Silvia in Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona and Diana in El perro del hortelano use a device that tricks the male ‘servants’ whom they love, as a ruse to overcome the limitations in place to prevent them, as women of high rank, from courting men of lower standing. Each play also ends with a cross-​rank marriage: celebrated and accepted in one case, and transgressively maintained through a ‘secret’ the audience must keep in the other. Each of the two high-​born women causes the man she loves to write a love letter to himself, and avoids having it marked as being from herself. Shakespeare’s Silvia is the daughter of the ruler of Milan, although, perhaps to convey the extent to which this social position exceeds that of the two gentlemen of the play, there is some vagueness about whether he is a duke or an emperor: both Proteus and Panthino in 1.3 refer to him as ‘the Emperor’. Diana is the Countess of Belflor, an heiress who rules her household. Silvia, as the Duke’s daughter, is not free to woo her ‘servant’ Valentine, a gentleman, but nonetheless far below Silvia in rank and prestige. Both women are severely constrained in their freedom to marry, then, and both plays dramatise their predicaments by including ridiculous but class-​ appropriate lovers who must be avoided. The extent of the limitations placed on each are made apparent through the play’s dramatic economy as expressed in key plot elements. In Two Gentlemen, Silvia and Valentine must escape the court entirely by running away to the woods, while in El perro the two socially acceptable suitors, also rivals and one a relative, cooperate to try to kill the secretary receiving Diana’s favours. The extremes represented in both these strategies underline the absolute social limitations within which these plots of cross-​rank desire, love and marriage unfold. Shakespeare may have invented the specifics of this particular theatergram, as an extension of the many redirected and misdirected letters in romance, and especially in Diana enamorada.4 Lope was very fond of the paradox too, and

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used it in a somewhat different form in an earlier play, El secretario de si mismo (Hernández Valcárcel 1990: 483 n. 8). Both playwrights clearly extrapolate from romance contexts in developing the use of the letter, and having himself served as a secretary, Lope had good personal experience for adopting this as a central metaphor in several plays. It is unlikely, although perhaps not impossible, that Lope may have known Shakespeare’s play; he certainly knew Shakespeare’s probable source. Shakespeare’s elaboration of the device of letter-​writing in Two Gentlemen emerged specifically from the scene he imitated directly from the Diana enamorada, in which a love letter is torn and then reassembled (Two Gentlemen, 1.2). This popular theatergram also appears in a German play, published in 1620 (Brauneck 1970: 427–​59; further discussed below), suggesting ways in which the plots of Two Gentlemen and El perro were entwined in a network of theatergrams and narrative devices out of which Shakespeare and Lope fashioned their plays.5 This theatrical dynamic is of interest to literary scholars for suggesting a different way in which radical ideas may have travelled in early modern Europe, here expressed not through the language of philosophy, pamphlet, legal or political debate, but through dramatic scenarios.6 This approach suggests how a travelling theatergram can become a source of political expression even without the author necessarily intending it, for the playwright may or may not highlight the full political implications of the scene, and yet that politics is still woven into the fabric of the play. Such a transnational and trans-​medium shift (moving from romance narrative to stage) can also become explicitly enabling for an author, who may draw on the scenario because of its politically rich potentiality. Importantly, however, this need not be so. There does not need to be any intention on the part of the playwright to criticise social norms if the scenario itself carries within it an embedded political or social critique. The theatergram of the ‘servant’ writing a cross-​rank love letter to himself transports within its own structure and aesthetic logic a disruption to the very aristocratic hierarchy that the play may elsewhere seem to endorse. This suggests a distinction between broader cultural and literary exchange, and the useful idea of the theatergram.7 Louise Clubb first coined the concept of ‘theatergram’ to describe how specific elements of theatrical lazzi or scenarios could be repeated, transferred, and even sent from culture to culture like a theatrical telegram. Further elaborated by her and others, the term has become a valuable concept for defining one of the ways in which transnational theatre functioned in the early modern period (Henke 2007; Andrews 2008b). The multiple uses of lovers’ letters, whether ignored, ripped up or misdirected, exist as part of broader cultural networks from the romance tradition. Combining several of these uses, Shakespeare joins the device of the ripped-​up letter, and of the letter requested by a lady of high standing,

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to a specific form of the scene that can be copied and carried to other plays. Important here is the question of what is imported or transported with the theatergram, as it moves within the broader cultural context, and whether it carries with it a set of cultural expectations, political possibilities or social criticism that is implicit even if not highlighted, always present in potential. Both Two Gentlemen and El perro look at the ‘servant’ of the high-​ranking woman as dominated, willing to turn and twist according to the will of their mistress, but also expose the high-​ranking lady herself as suffering substantial constraint. In Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen, the fantasy of escape from this hierarchy, albeit sharply qualified in the final scene, becomes more important than the courtly scenes illustrating the problems of status hierarchy in love. In El perro, a radical critique of the structure of the aristocracy and of society’s reliance on fraudulent concepts of ‘honour’ emerges through Lope’s exploration of the risks of realism that haunt the plotting of a dangerous if apparently happy ending. Both plays imply that the ladder of service is one of domination, with no liberty at its top, and especially not for women, whose figures of highest rank are also shown to be constrained and lacking in freedom. The social order itself in both plays is represented as dominating individuals within it, and comedy as a genre participates in both representing that degree of domination, and imagining an escape from it. This double domination is vividly dramatised by the theatergram of the lover made to write a love letter to himself. Thus both plays dramatise the need for liberty while suggesting that comic compromises that appear to reconcile desire and the social order do not in fact allow the protagonists to escape from the social dilemma. These two scenes and situations thus demonstrate that liberty and freedom from domination must include a recognition that bondage is both literal and figurative, both actual and a matter of mental constraint. The power of this theatergram is demonstrated in part by focusing on the kinds of constraint that prevail in the highly ranked society of the imaginary aristocracies of the plays. Each play is concerned to show that the character with the most power (Diana), or most likely to inherit positions of wealth and rule (Silvia), is as much disempowered by rank as liberated by it; while the parallel sense of constraint on the part of the ‘servants’ is shown to be, especially in the Spanish play, even more potentially destructive. Understanding how the ‘danger’ and threat, represented by seeking free choice in marriage across the boundaries of rank and status, are negotiated in these comedies, and with what effect, contributes to understanding how drama represents and enacts constraint while using wit, fiction, ruses and deceit to trick its characters and audience into believing briefly in a world where these constraints can be evaded, if not abolished entirely.

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Shakespeare’s imitation from romance: Letters read and torn on stage Considering the earlier scene involving letters on stage in Two Gentlemen helps to contextualise the shared device of the ‘jest’ of the letter. Here, a love letter from Proteus is brought to Julia by her servant Lucetta, a letter Julia needs to appear to reject, because accepting it would compromise her chastity –​she refers to the letter as including ‘wanton lines’ (1.2.42).8 Julia pretends anger at both the young man and Lucetta for bringing the letter. Initially, Julia rejects it. Later, when Lucetta ‘drops’ the letter, Julia picks it up and, to make her pretended lack of interest seem more believable, rips it up. After Lucetta exits, Julia grabs the shreds of paper and tries, unsuccessfully, to reassemble the letter, finding only single words and phrases: ‘Love-​wounded Proteus’, ‘to the sweet Julia’ and ‘Poor forlorn Proteus’. She ends by folding the shreds together, causing the names to kiss: ‘Thus will I fold them, one upon another; | Now kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will’ (1.2.128–​9), she says to the pieces of paper. As Carroll notes: ‘These letters […] become metonymies for sexual desire’ (Shakespeare 2004: 59). The words in the letter seem to Julia in this moment to stand for herself and Proteus as she imagines their kiss. The scene between Julia and Lucetta belongs to a large class of theatergrams involving letters on stage. Perhaps the most common is that of the misdirected letter, when letters are confused and the wrong person reads the letter. Bullough (1957: 128) cites Scala’s commedia dell’arte scenario Flavio Tradito, which involves exactly this kind of confusion of letters, as an analogue for several scenes in Two Gentlemen of Verona. In the scene involving Julia pretending not to want to read the letter and then ripping it up, Shakespeare dramatically revises the source scene in Montemayor’s Diana enamorada, in which Felismena describes how her servant Rosina brought her the love letter from Don Felix that started her unlucky affair, and how she first rejected it, and then through a ruse, when Rosina drops the letter, picks it up, reads it and falls in love. This text was available to Shakespeare in the original Spanish, in French translation, and possibly in a circulating manuscript English translation preceding Yonge’s published translation of 1598. It deeply influenced Two Gentlemen, and provides the principal episodes of the Julia-​Proteus love story. Montemayor’s Felismena does not rip up the letter, although the scenes are otherwise remarkably similar. Alan Stewart, who in Shakespeare’s Letters devotes a whole section to the theatergram ‘Ripping up Letters on Page and Stage’, believes that ‘Shakespeare also turns to the story of Eurialus and Lucretia, a fifteenth-​century erotic Latin novella by Enea Silvio Piccolomini (later Pope Pius II), familiar to sixteenth-​ century English readers in verse and prose adaptations, multiply printed from 1515 to 1596’ (Stewart 2008:  62). Here, Lucretia at first rejects the letters

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from Eurialus, but then claims to want them so that she can ‘caste them in the fyre’ (Piccolomini 1553: B4v). She snatches the paper from the bawd who brought it, tears it in pieces, treads it under her feet, spitting at it, and casts it in the ashes. Following a change of heart after the bawd leaves she: ‘soughte vp the peeces of the lettre, and sette eche in theyre place, and ioyned soo the torne woordes, that shee made it legeable whych when shee hadde redd it a thousande tymes, a thousande tymes she kyssed it’ (Piccolomini 1553: C1r). For both Lucretia and Julia, the tearing of the letter represents a strong emotional outburst against the object ‘that represents her wooer’ (Stewart 2008:  62). In the Tragœdia von Julio und Hyppolita, a German variation of Two Gentlemen of Verona published in the collection Engelische Comedien und Tragedien (1620), Hyppolita, the Prince and Julius each tear up a letter on stage as an ‘answer’ to the messenger Grobianus (Brauneck 1970:  441). As Stewart points out (2008:  62), seeing the tearing up of a letter on stage is very different from reading about it in a romance (another romance example is George Gascoigne’s The Adventures of Master FJ (1573), in which letters are torn and then reassembled and read). Appropriately, then, Shakespeare’s Julia cannot reassemble the letter. She can bring fragments together to make the parts of it kiss but she cannot reassemble it. It is as if she has read the romances and tries to copy the heroines who reassemble their letters, but the stage reality of the letter fragments prevents her from putting it back together. The theatergram of the letter written to oneself in Shakespeare’s hands In Act 2, Scene 1, Valentine expresses his frustration to Silvia: As you enjoined me, I have writ your letter Unto the secret, nameless friend of yours, Which I was much unwilling to proceed in But for my duty to your ladyship. (2.1.95–​8)

And Silvia says a little later in return: Ay, ay, you writ them, sir, at my request, But I will none of them. They are for you. I would have had them writ more movingly. (2.1.116–​8)

Speed amusedly comments on how slow Valentine is to interpret the jest: O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible As a nose on a man’s face, or a weathercock on a steeple! My master sues to her, and she hath taught her suitor, He being her pupil, to become her tutor. O excellent device, was there ever heard a better? That my master, being scribe, to himself should write the letter? (2.1.125–​30)

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He then explains the jest: speed  […] Why, she woos you by a figure. valentine  What figure? speed  By a letter, I should say. valentine  Why, she hath not writ to me. speed  What need she, when she hath made you write to yourself ? Why, do you not perceive the jest? valentine  No, believe me. […] speed  Why, she hath given you a letter. valentine  That’s the letter I writ to her friend. speed  And that letter hath she delivered, and there an end. valentine  I would it were no worse. speed  I’ll warrant you, ’tis as well.    For often have you writ to her, and she, in modesty    Or else for want of idle time, could not again reply,    Or fearing else some messenger that might her mind discover,    Herself hath taught her love himself to write unto her lover.    All this I speak in print, for in print I found it. (2.1.137–​56)

The exchange begins with Speed’s witty pun on the figure and the letter –​here the material letter, and indeed the actual writing of it, is in fact the figure, the rhetorical device or indirection that allows Silvia to speak her love: ‘Why, she woos you by a figure.’ ‘What figure?’ ‘By a letter, I should say.’ The collapse of the letter/​spirit distinction suggests a topsy-​turvy quality of the world of love as dramatised in this play: whether love’s intention is literal or figurative remains a question throughout the play. The literal and the figurative are collapsed in many scenes, and even Proteus’ mimetic desire, which feels real to him, becomes a figure, a way to point to his forgotten love of Julia. Even the famous lyric ‘Who is Silvia? what is she’ expresses a sense that Silvia is both letter and figure, both herself and yet a figure for the transcendence of beauty and the imaginary fulfilment of desire.9 The obscuring of the distinction between the physical or literal and the figure allows a multitude of desires to be hidden. Whether in her praise of Valentine’s letter [‘Yes, yes, the lines are very quaintly writ, | But, since unwillingly, take them again.’ 2.1.113–​14] which, as Carroll points out, conveys a sexual pun (Shakespeare 2004: 61), heard but not acknowledged, or whether in the device itself of having Valentine write the letter she would write, Silvia uses this topos at once to seize agency and to avoid appearing to have done so, to express her love while projecting it metaphorically onto someone else. The rhetorical conventionality of love  –​along with the obliviousness of Valentine as lover (after all, what does he think his name means?)  –​again

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allows for this confusion. Valentine can write Silvia’s love to him without knowing it, because the rhetorical expressions of love can be transferred from person to person: the words are conventional, formal, something you read in a love letter or love lyric, ‘in print’, as Speed puts it. This may be the meaning of Speed’s comment: ‘Herself hath taught her love himself to write unto her lover. | All this I speak in print, for in print I found it.’ Carroll interprets ‘in print’ to imply that Speed might have quoted the lines from a handbook, as if the lines –​and indeed the whole jest –​are so conventional that it must be something quoted from elsewhere. The OED actually cites these lines as an example for a now obsolete sense of ‘in print’: ‘In a precise and perfect way or manner; with exactness, to a nicety; in a neat and tidy condition.’ This sense of niceties, of exactness, reflects the high-​class manners Valentine mimics here (as parodied by Speed), and the word coming as it were at the closure of the jest suggests that Shakespeare  –​and perhaps Silvia  –​has indeed read this story before. In fact, Silvia begins by saying that the lines Valentine has written are not passionate enough: ‘I would have had them writ more movingly.’ Similarly, the important word for her is that he has written it ‘unwillingly’. He cannot consent to write a love letter to an unknown person; again his consent can only be commanded by her. Not understanding the ‘jest’, he is unwilling to write for another. Her anger, which on stage reflects her frustration at his obtuseness, also reflects her irritation at his being unable, apparently, to understand why she needs to use this indirection. Speed comments at the opening of the scene, ‘O excellent motion! O exceeding puppet! | Now will he interpret to her’ (2.1.87–​8). The ‘interpreter’ is the one who explains what the puppet is thinking or doing; the puppet show or ‘motion’ becoming the metaphor for the relation by which Silvia seeks to have Valentine voice her desires. But despite Speed’s metaphor, she also makes him her puppet, and interprets his gesture of writing the letter to him, explaining what his desires should be and by doing so authorising them. Again, the scene suggests two readings, both important:  (1) that a well-​born lady of high rank can only seize agency in wooing her lover indirectly, by transforming herself to become a puppet to his interpretation; but also (2) that each lover’s expression of desire is metaphorical in the first instance, becoming literal only when stated or written as the love of the other. This latter point is deeply connected to the play’s analysis of the mimetic or triangulated basis of love, but what is interesting here in the Silvia/​Valentine plot (as opposed to Proteus’ mimesis of Valentine’s love) is that this is also the model for the love that is successful. By grasping this strange confusion of letter and figure, by being both puppet and puppeteer, Silvia does indeed find a way to woo Valentine. Indeed the betrothal quickly follows the letter-​writing, confirmed only three scenes later, when Valentine tells Proteus ‘Why, man, she is mine own’ (2.4.166), and in Act 4 by Silvia

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herself: ‘Valentine thy friend | Survives, to whom, thyself art witness, | I am betrothed’ (4.2.105–​7). Two Gentlemen is filled with many letters that go astray, which Carroll argues are figures of ‘the errancy of desire’ (Shakespeare 2004: 60).10 Remarkably, unlike so many letters in the play, the letter I am focusing on does not go astray: it is properly delivered to both addressees: to Silvia as a sign of Valentine’s devotion, and to Valentine as an expression of Silvia’s love. It is the only letter in the play that is never misdirected or read by the wrong person. Perhaps this is because it starts with a double addressee, as a kind of ‘jest’ or figure, aware of its own inability to become literal. In other words, it starts in the political and social positionality of the lovers, and reads that difference of status as requiring the collapse of the distinction between the physical or personal expression of love –​ the literal love expressed by the letter  –​and the metaphorical and properly rhetorical, which can shield the speaker from the threat of literal enactment. The ‘jest’, then, has the same doubleness as comedy itself. Because she is constrained by rank and gender in different ways, Silvia cannot utter the statement: ‘I authorize you to love me.’ She cannot ignore the political and economic wishes of her family, here embodied in her father’s desire to make her marry the suitor he chooses. Simultaneously, she does not have within the political order the authority to authorise Valentine’s love, because she is a daughter, and woman who will become a wife. Thus Carroll may be correct in suggesting that ‘Valentine’s claim to Silvia is both poetic and patriarchally possessive’ (Shakespeare 2004: 189), but by using this figure of the letter, one she never wrote and yet is delivered by her to the man she loves, Silvia seizes her destiny in a way that belies a simple patriarchal analysis. The mutuality and mirroring of the loves felt by Silvia and Valentine, as discovered via the ruse of the letter written by one yet expressing the love of the other, surely has something to do with the security and certainty they both express about each other, the fidelity that makes Silvia’s flight to the forest less risky than it first seems. If we see her fleeing the world of constraints and finding through this ‘jest’ a means of expression and command that enables this flight, the play ends by following Silvia to a conclusion where she is almost closed within another kind of constraint. Although the comedy ends by presenting the social fantasy that the limitation on the aristocratic woman can be lifted by means of wit (using the letter as a figure, for instance), and utopian escape (to the forest of gentle bandits), the ending –​which allows that fantasy to survive in the satisfactions of love –​reminds us of the power of these social constraints. It momentarily threatens to place Silvia back within a new bondage, and leaves the audience not knowing whether she would have had to accept Valentine’s ‘gift’ of her body and self to Proteus. She is saved from this new constraint by another mimesis ( Julia imitating herself ), but it is an important if indirect reminder in the play of the ways in which the comic structure is designed

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precisely to make us believe, if only for the brief moments of a play’s ending, that social constraint and hierarchy can be circumvented if not erased. In the letter scene, Valentine too is constrained –​he cannot say what he thinks or feels –​he can use only the highly artificial language that Speed parodies. His language of service is itself also filled with double entendres: he is her ‘servant’ in the way of love, but not in the way that Speed is his servant. Indeed Speed, whose satirical edge cuts through the pretences of courtly politesse, seems freer than his master, as does Tristan, El perro’s gracioso or ‘fool’. Although Valentine experiences domination in his scene with Silvia in Act 2, the attention of this part of the play seems more on Silvia’s ruse and her wit than on her domination of him, and the fantasy of escape begins quickly. That these issues need to be interpreted in relation to hierarchy becomes clear when we meet Valentine writing a letter, this time a poem, on his own behalf, for it expresses his desire in political as well as romantic and sexual terms. The Duke finds this letter on him in Act 3, and reads it out. This reading of the ‘servant’s’ rebellious statements by the master also provokes the Duke to political anger: [Reads.] My thoughts do harbour with my Silvia nightly, And slaves they are to me that send them flying. O, could their master come and go as lightly, Himself would lodge where, senseless, they are lying. My herald thoughts in thy pure bosom rest them, While I, their king, that thither them importune, Do curse the grace that with such grace hath blessed them, Because myself do want my servants’ fortune. I curse myself for they are sent by me, That they should harbour where their lord should be. What’s here? Silvia, this night I will enfranchise thee. (3.1.140–​51)

Valentine writes of himself as ‘king’ and ‘lord’, and imagines his thoughts as ‘slaves’. He plans to seize the rights of liberty in order to ‘enfranchise’ Silvia. But his language gives away the fact that this may be no real enfranchisement –​as she will remain subject to his will. Here he risks simply inverting the order of domination: although he wishes to enfranchise her, if he becomes ‘king’ and ‘lord’, she will not find her will or desire unconstrained. The Duke also responds with explicitly political language: ’Tis so; and here’s the ladder for the purpose. Why, Phaëton, for thou art Merops’ son, Wilt thou aspire to guide the heavenly car, And with thy daring folly burn the world? Wilt thou reach stars because they shine on thee? Go, base intruder, overweening slave […] (3.1.152–​7)

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Valentine is immediately recognised and banished for his ambitious aspiring desires. Now no longer a ‘servant’ in a love drama, he has become an ‘overweening slave’, a description that exposes his lack of freedom and independence within the hierarchy he had participated in so eagerly as a servant. The sudden appearance of this strong set of political terms underlines how this seemingly light comic play is raising serious issues about aristocratic privilege, and is using the idiom of comedy to disguise its more radical import. Domination, freedom and the political language of these plays Two Gentlemen of Verona and El perro del hortelano, in their treatment of freedom and constraint, can be connected to political theories about liberty, consent and the importance of a society that will not allow for domination of one by another.11 But both plays, albeit in a different dramatic mode and idiom, use the language of erotic intrigue, and the resistance of lovers to the expected marital and class order, to express resistance to established, rigid social norms. Both operate within the genre of comedy, draw on understandings from romance, and invoke the generic expectations of comedy to find a way to appear not to challenge the social order, while actually doing so –​to allow audiences to feel comfortable with the ending while enjoying its transgressive implications, or, to use the metaphor from eating that motivates the title of Lope’s play, to have their cake and eat it too, as opposed to not eating and preventing others from doing so. Two Gentlemen finds a way through comedy to affirm a rebellion against a father and ruler, and against a social order built on the status differences that the Duke, or comic senex, tried to defend, while Lope’s play challenges a rigid social hierarchy of domination and subjection, from which fiction and theatrical ruses allow two individuals to escape. Neither play overtly suggests a new political order emerging that would not depend on such status hierarchy, but both show the enormous personal and private costs of the system of social rank, and strongly affirm the strategies of resistance made believable in their plots. Thus while the Countess Diana is accused of being the Gardener’s dog, or ‘dog in the manger’, who cannot herself eat the straw in the manger or the fruits in the garden and so keeps others from doing so, in fact the play devotes most of the tragic-​comic plotting of its final acts to making sure that she does indeed eat. Maria Mercedes Carrión writes of El perro: In staging illicit desires in a theatrical space heavily regulated and policed by the crown, and by playing creative games about such desire […], Lope’s El perro plants the seed for a collective imaginary in which the theatrical building of slapstick masochism could be used by audiences to free themselves from social bonds and the dictates of the caste system mandated by limpieza de sangre programs and ideologies. (Carrión 2010: 104)

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She sees the masochistic acts that tie Doña Diana, Teodoro, Marcela and Tristan, and the way they rise above the limitations of the Estatutos and marital regulations, as resting on ‘the powerful development of theatre as a medium and a space in which a subject could be moved out of his/​her social inferiority’ (Carrión 2010: 105). While Edward Friedman (2000) also argues that Lope’s play satirises class and honour, Carrión takes this further, by linking the transgression of boundaries of rank, which begins with the slaps or bofetónes to Teodoro’s face, to the mechanics of the stage itself, most notably the about-​ face machine, also called a bofeton, which enabled a character to appear or disappear suddenly or to change disguise and appear with a different identity.12 Carrión and Friedman both suggest the radical nature of El perro, while evaluating differently its political impact. Carrión’s reading highlights the role of theatricality, with its comic energies erupting into a contesting of marital legislation, which, she argues: ‘turned the public theater into the magical locus of production of libidinal economies and redefined marital negotiations of property, propriety, and desire’ (Carrión 2010:  102). Here, I  show how one theatergram may express and transform the political implications of its play to enable the kind of theatrical transgression Carrión describes. Each play beautifully and powerfully illustrates the extent and costs of domination felt by these characters, and dramatises two kinds of constraint and two ways in which individuals in a monarchy or hierarchical system lose freedom. In emphasising consent, the political theorist Pettit comments: ‘where liberals after Bentham came to care only about coercion of the body or the will, republicans had cared about dependency on the good will of another, even dependency in the case where there is no actual coercion’ (2002: 341). As Schalkwyk argues, Shakespeare was ‘less interested in ambition and avarice than in the complexities of abjection that arise from deeper forms of intimacy’ (2008:  39). Both plays take up a condition of subjection and explore its effects on those above and below on the ladder of service (see Rivlin 2012: esp. 27–​52). This is particularly true of Lope’s play, in which many kinds of political subjection are illustrated by the ways in which Teodoro is dominated by the Countess.13 The hierarchies of service, in which even a courtier like Valentine is also a ‘servant’, is shown in these plays to be a ladder of domination, and women at the top in particular embody this contradiction as there is little more liberty for them at the top of the hierarchy where rulers and their heirs, especially female heirs, are bound by social propriety and lack freedom. Thus the social hierarchy is exposed as a system of domination, while comedy as a genre exposes that domination while inventing an escape from it. Valentine’s time in the woods with the outlaws, although brief, thus involves the Robin Hood and golden age topoi Shakespeare will develop more fully in As You Like It. There, too, escape seems the only solution to the corrupting effects of social hierarchy. Thus both plays dramatise the need for liberty, while celebrating

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comic escapes that reconcile desire and the social order. As Teodoro turns to the audience asking us not to reveal his secret: ‘a nadie digáis se os ruega | el secreto de Teodoro’ (I pray that you tell to no one the secret of Teodoro; my translation), the audience is left sharing in the explicitly transgressive trick that enables the fulfilment of Teodoro and Diana in a cross-​caste marriage and romance. The theatergram of the letter written to oneself in Lope’s hands (El perro del hortelano) The argument that the device of the lover writing to himself represents the lack of freedom of characters on both sides of the hierarchical divide gains greater weight when we see this topos or theatergram at work in Lope’s El perro, in which again letters are misplaced and exchanged and a lover is made to write a love letter that ends up being delivered to himself. Teodoro, on whom Diana’s ruse is executed, is her secretary, a servant of her household whose life is devoted precisely to writing her personal letters, although, as Marcela (the lady-​in-​waiting and the fellow ‘servant’ Teodoro will desert for Diana) says without realising its implications: Es diferente el sujeto de una carta en que le pruebas a dos títulos tus deudos, o el verle hablar, más de cerca, en estilo dulce y tierno, razones enamoradas. (I, 294–​9) (That’s another matter. You know the style he uses when you’re writing To noble relatives; I know the way he whispers fond endearments, rather closer.)14

While this distinction seems at first compelling, Lope’s own autobiographical experiences suggest that like letter and figure, the writing of business letters will cross over into the writing of love letters –​after all he had been a secretary, and had notoriously written love letters (Cañadas 2005: 31; Río Parra 1999). Teodoro and Diana are caught in a darker comedy than Valentine and Silvia’s, and Teodoro himself deduces the implications of Diana’s request: Fuése. ¿Quién pensó jamás de mujer tan noble y cuerda este arrojarse tan presto a dar su amor a entender? Pero también puede ser que yo me engañase en esto.

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52 Mas no me ha dicho jamás, ni a lo menos se me acuerda: ‘¿Pues qué importa que se pierda, si se puede perder más?’ ¿Perder más? Bien puede ser por la mujer que decía… Mas todo es bachillería, y ella es la misma mujer… Aunque no, que la Condesa es tan discreta y tan varia, que es la cosa más contraria de la ambición que profesa. (I, 841–​58) (She’s gone. Whoever could suppose a woman so noble and so shrewd would own to loving so suddenly. But maybe I’m mistaken. And yet she’s never said, as I remember, ‘What matter that it’s lost, if much more may be?’ of whom she spoke… But surely that’s dissembling; that ‘other woman’ must be herself. But no, the countess is too proud, too prudent, And such a love would cross her clear intention.)

David Johnston’s translation for the 2004 Royal Shakespeare Company production more dramatically captures the effect of the Spanish, translating ‘ella es la misma mujer’ as ‘The friend is a masquerade. It’s her’ (Lope de Vega 2004: 46). Having herself written a love letter, ostensibly for a friend, Diana asks Teodoro to write a better one. When handing this second letter to Diana, he explains at length the danger to a servant of outclassing a master in writing. ‘Pésame, pues no es pequeño | principio de aborrecer | un criado, el entender | que sabe más que su dueño’ (I, 775–​8), he says to Diana, trying to withhold his letter: ‘I’m sorry; if a servant’s known to know | more than his master, he’s well on the way | to falling out of favour’ (Lope de Vega 1999: 56). Both her first statement of love, an initial expression of desire, and the letter he writes in response to her request are in sonnet form. Teodoro, who seemingly has no family, is keenly aware of the dangers that Valentine, young lover that he is, ignores, perhaps because Valentine is ‘a gentleman’ and not a secretary. Teodoro explains the danger: Sírvenla príncipes hoy en Nápoles, que no puedo ser su esclavo. Tengo miedo, que en grande peligro estoy. (I, 859–​62) (In Naples princes daily come to court her Whose slave I couldn’t be; I’m in great danger.)

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However, the Countess shares his sense of constraint and domination. In fact, Diana seems more constrained, perhaps through her own internal endorsement of her social superiority and her right to dominate, particularly dramatising the kinds of limitation and even ‘bondage’ that existed on both sides of class and nobility divides in Renaissance society. Here we see that writing –​both literacy and education, for Diana writes and speaks in sonnet form –​provides a means of liberty of expression: the audience hears her innermost thoughts of love and ambivalence in the sonnet she writes about her feelings for Teodoro. Her passion and divided emotions are expressed in beautiful, complex, even labyrinthine language. She can perform this to herself and to the audience, but requires the ruse of his writing the love letter to express her thoughts to him. The differences in the court settings between the two plays suggest a greater Spanish realism about social rigidity. Diana’s absolute power to punish and control those below her, even while she lacks the freedom to make her own romantic choice, is felt by all the servants as domination. A comic plotting in the second half changes these political realities, as with Shakespeare’s play, which turns towards a comic fantasy to produce a social compromise by which the Duke can be made, by plot device, to favour a marriage that goes against his own interests. But the Spanish play also invokes romance topoi  –​the possibly Boccaccio-​inspired ‘Turkish Tale’ invented by Tristan to create an acceptable genealogy and family name for Teodoro (Decameron Day 5, novella 7) –​and a theatrical lie to create a comic rather than melodramatic resolution. The Spanish play, two decades later than Shakespeare’s, feels more realistic, because it relies on a permanent ruse that must be perpetuated in order to ensure the happy ending. Teodoro, as Epilogue, tells the audience: ‘Con esto, Senado noble, | que a nadie digáis se os ruega | el secreto de Teodoro’ (III, 3378–​80; as you yourselves are noble, sirs, I pray, | please play the game; don’t give the game away!). This request not to reveal Teodoro’s secret is ironic, as the play has just presented this secret in public and in a public theatre. Yet it is also a radical gesture, implicating the audience in a wish to outwit the very society and social order within which they themselves also live.15 The radical nature of El perro’s ending is highlighted in several studies of Lope’s plays which focus on similar themes. In contrasting El perro with seven other Lope plays that treat the topic of the lady enamoured of her secretary, for instance, Carmen Hernández Valcárcel finds that only El perro ends with a marriage that equalises the social status of the two protagonists and also achieves a happy ending, made possible only by maintaining the lie about Teodoro’s origins: Se trata de transgredir la norma social de impermeabilidad de clases. En general al final el disfraz se pone de manifiesto y no se quebranta la norma salvo en El Mayordomo [de la duquesa de Amalfi] y El perro. (Hernández Valcárcel 1990: 488)

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(What is at stake is transgression against the norm of impermeable social classes. Play ending usually strips the disguise and the norm is not disrupted, but not so in El Mayordomo and El perro.)

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El Mayordomo, like The Duchess of Malfi, has a tragic ending; uniquely, among these plays focusing on cross-​rank love, El perro enables the marriage without death.16 Comic conclusions My study of this shared theatergram across two different national dramatic traditions helps to suggest why dramas showing characters who break those bonds, required to maintain aristocratic privilege and social hierarchy, represent an important discursive addition to the analysis of freedom and service that took place on a more legal, philosophical and political plane in early modern societies. Through a study of these theatergrams of the theatrical letter, we see that interrelations of Spanish and English theatre should be mapped within a wider literary culture, in which the travelling theatergrams make their implications apparent. In considering the interconnections of Spanish and English drama in this period, we should register the role of romance as both an idiom and a mode that mediates many of the interdramatic relationships, and complicates and intensifies the intercultural dialogue between English and Spanish drama. Just as the Italian novella is a crucial part of the intercultural dialogue between Italian and English theatre, so the romance, and especially in this case the pastoral novel and Montemayor’s first crucial example of it in Spain, shaped the theatrical interrelationships this chapter and volume hope to define. Without the context of Montemayor, the depth and power of the letter, whether misdirected or ripped, to reveal a repressed selfhood and a desire that explicitly rejects social taboos and constraints, would be less clear. The scenes are funny, but they are also more than that, and Lope’s scenes express a sense of gathering menace that brings his play closer to romance and tragicomedy. Michael Armstrong Roche (2009) convincingly suggests the ways in which romance adventure expressed resistance to political and social rigidities. Rather than functioning as a conservative genre that distracts from realism and real life, the Montemayor subtext –​and the broader European pastoral romance subtext –​enabled Lope and Shakespeare to create a space in these two dramas where the real resistance of the subject, and the struggles of the higher-​class woman, can be expressed and made visible not only to the other lover but to the audience. Second, the shared theatergram, and the implicit politics and expressive possibilities it entails, along with the broader traditions of the use of letters on stage and in romance to enable the expression of forbidden emotion, helps to

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illuminate the politics implicit in Shakespeare’s play, which otherwise can be read simply as a light comedy. Lope’s play more radically celebrates the wit by which Diana and Teodoro escape from the limits they live within, and shows that they will consummate a cross-​caste marriage where Teodoro’s impure blood will blend with Diana’s pure aristocratic blood. But the marriage of Silvia and Valentine retains the political colouring created by the fact that Silvia is the agent who enables it, and her wit comes to feel equivalent to the very comic plotting of the play. One important role of the disturbing ‘friendship’ ending of Shakespeare’s play, where Valentine seems to ‘give’ ‘all that was mine in Silvia’ (5.4.83) to his friend Proteus, may well be to diminish the extent to which it celebrates Silvia’s agency. The love story of Silvia and Valentine is eclipsed by this gesture and by the conclusion of the Julia-​Proteus plot that thus interrupts it, preventing us from ever knowing Silvia’s reaction to Valentine’s ‘gift’. Mimetic desire is central to the play throughout, but here the mimetism between the ‘two gentlemen’ apparently disguises the truly transgressive nature of Valentine and Silvia’s marriage, by making it appear to be identical to the match being finally affirmed between Julia and Proteus. Of course, the play does not end with the ‘gift’ scene, but rather with the entry of Turio and the Duke, and Valentine’s challenge to them:  ‘Turio, give back, or else embrace thy death’ (5.4.124). When Turio basely refuses to fight for Silvia, the Duke’s admiration for Valentine allows him to affirm the marriage, and the play to achieve a happy ending. Thus, its final scene focuses on varieties of masculine agency, as if to eclipse Silvia’s initial centrality in bringing about the marriage. To return to my opening analogy, the theatergrams from novella and romance bring an ‘impure blood’ from many traditions into Spanish and English drama, as the impure blood of Teodoro’s romance blends with the tragicomic celebration of the aristocratic Countess Diana. Aristocratic lovers get what they want in many comedies, but here the deeper sense of rebellion on both Diana’s and Teodoro’s parts is felt most strongly. Transnational theatre with its theatergrams and devices from romance brings the impure blood from many traditions to the national literary scene, challenging the notion of national ‘purity’ itself. In the scenario in which the high-​born lady asks her servant to write a love letter for her and then redirects it to him, we have a plot device –​and it is especially funny in the Shakespeare version –​ whose comic energy imports into these plays a different political tone, a tone the playwright can emphasise or not. The politics embedded in this theatrical scenario, implied in the theatergram’s very structure and theme, offer these playwrights a way to ‘speak without speaking’, just as their brilliant aristocratic ladies do, and to create a strong political critique of aristocratic hierarchy. This critique becomes a part of the meaning of the play precisely because it is framed by, and expressed from within, an apparently comic lazzo.

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Thus comedy becomes a prophylactic against moralising and constraint, while the theatergram becomes a vehicle for a powerful political critique, exposing social contradictions and ideological tensions even as the play may disguise that critique within witty and comic scenes. This paradox helps to explain how powerful this theatrical scenario can become. It defines the tragicomic tone of submerged political criticism and distress of many parts of El perro, while indicating that the conflicted ending of Two Gentlemen may function in part to provide an escape from the danger of the social critique embedded in this scenario. Here a release from the transgression of the play’s first romantic plot is momentarily found in the fantasy of absolute brotherly equality. In short, this theatergram imports into these plays an expressive politics that radically redirects their social import but that the plays do not need to explicitly acknowledge. In this way it enacts precisely the double twist of early modern comedy with its celebration of radical transgression joined with an apparently conservative affirmation of social hierarchy. Notes 1 Special thanks to Michael Armstrong Roche of Wesleyan University for his extensive comments and advice. Thanks also for their comments and feedback on presentations and drafts to the members of the TWB research collaborative at the TWB conference on ‘Mobility, Hybridity and Reciprocal Exchange in the Theatres of Early Modern Europe’ (Madrid, 2011), to Oliver Arnold of Princeton University and members of his Shakespeare Association of America seminar ‘Liberty and Bondage’ (2011), and to the participants of the DramaNet conference (Berlin, 2012). 2 See Stewart (2008:  60–​6) and Kiefer (1986) for the role of letters in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. 3 To carry this analogy further, the marriage of Diana and Teodoro at the end of El Perro suggests that foreign romance can provide a narrative that can allow the blending of high and low; that successful ‘Spanish’ drama will make the foreign seem local and the local foreign (see also Wofford 2013). The background of Montemayor, who was Portuguese –​and almost certainly of converso origin –​but wrote in Castillian and spent his life at various Spanish courts, intensifies this sense that the intertextuality and intertheatricality at issue here can also be felt as a metaphor for the marriage of pure and unpure blood that the play endorses. See also Carrión (2010: 118–​24) for an account of the role of Arabic love traditions and the Turkish novella as a challenge to limpieza de sangre in Lope’s plays. 4 No predecessors in Italian drama or narrative for this specific scenario are known, although letter-​writing scenes in general abound in narratives, and also occur in the Latin tradition (e.g. Ovid’s story of Byblis). 5 On sources for this scene see Stewart (2008: 61–​2); Bullough (1957: 128); Carroll (Shakespeare 2004: 128).

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6 See Hadfield (2005) on republican ideas and their influence on Shakespeare, and Burnett (1997, introduction and ch. 5) on explicitly political, ethical, religious and programmatic issues. For Spanish drama see Carrión (2010: 5–​52). 7 For theatergram see Clubb (1989 and 2007); for ‘novellagram’ see Walter (2008: 65–​8). 8 All references to The Two Gentlemen of Verona are to Carroll’s Arden 3 edition (Shakespeare 2004). 9 See Goldberg (1986: 68–​72) and Carroll (Shakespeare 2004: 66–​7) for a reading that sees Silvia as ‘placed within a discourse not her own’, and which understands this tension of letter and figure as a sign that words become ‘bonds’. Goldberg sees Silvia as doubly disabled since her power is ‘a trope within a discourse that she cannot control’ (1986: 74). But neither Carroll nor Goldberg see this as an explicitly political situation, as I show here, in comparison with the Spanish play. 10 See also Simmons, whose Lacanian reading sees the letter as dividing Valentine into two, the ‘forlorn Valentine’ who writes the letter and the ‘Passionate Valentine’ who receives it, and sees the letter as figuring therefore ‘an autoerotic strategy in so far as it textually negotiates fearful desire’ (1993: 870). 11 See Pettit (2002: 350): ‘A relationship of domination leaves the dominated person in a position where it is likely to be a matter of common knowledge that he or she is exposed to the possibility of arbitrary interference and cannot, therefore, speak his or her mind without risk of falling out of favour and cannot be ascribed a voice that claims the attention and respect of others.’ Special thanks to Oliver Arnold who pointed me to Pettit’s essay. 12 See Tigner (2012) for the importance of disguise and crossdressing plots, popular with actresses and of using the bofeton. Tigner explores in important detail the parallels between the actresses’ seizing of agency and the agency of the female audiences in the cazuela. 13 Dixon comments on the unusual frequency of the phrase ‘Vuestra Señoría’ which ‘heavily underscores the rank of the person addressed’ –​it appears thirty-​five times in this play. 14 All citations from Dixon’s English translation (Lope de Vega 1999). Johnston’s has also been also consulted (Lope de Vega 2004). 15 See McKendrick (2000: 111): ‘The technique that Lope repeatedly uses to speak his mind from a platform of safety combines subversive intent with ambiguous procedure in a manner at once obviously disingenuous and exactly calculated.’ McKendrick’s (1974) study of Lope’s undermining of monarchical ideology is also relevant to the undermining of marital laws and aristocratic hierarchies in El perro. 16 See Cañadas (2005:  45–​60) for the relation of Lope’s female characters to the professional actresses on the stage. Looking closely at Lope’s La dama boba, similarly dated to El perro, Cañadas comments that the heroines of both plays ‘subvert patriarchal ideals of feminine decorum by taking active romantic roles’ (52).

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3 ‘La voluntad jamás permite señor’: Transnational versions of cross-​class desire in Cardenio and Mujeres y criados Barbara Fuchs

Even as we examine transnational connections in early modernity, as this volume does so ably, we should not lose sight of how those connections are expressed today, as both practitioners and critics negotiate the very different stakes and the uneven reception of early modern authors in our own cultural landscape. This chapter explores the connections, both explicit and less so, between the lost and/​or rediscovered texts of Shakespeare, Cervantes and Lope de Vega. Beyond the actual similarities between the recreated Cardenio that brings together the first two authors, on the one hand, and Lope’s recently rediscovered play Mujeres y criados, on the other, I am interested in the parallels and divergences in their performance, as they are mobilised to promote particular versions of Spain. In turn, a more precise understanding of these connections allows us to qualify the broad Girardian notion of ‘mimetic desire’ to consider the evolving class dynamics that enable or complicate erotic rivalries in the texts.1 Although Mujeres y criados offers new and revolutionary possibilities, I  suggest that they emerge only if we disentangle it from the Cardenio story –​both the Cervantine source and later dramatic recreations. The decade of Cervantine anniversaries (2005–​15) leading up to the quatercentenary of both Cervantes and Shakespeare in 2016 brought the two figures together in a number of dramatic creations and recreations. Critics, dramatists and directors in the US, the UK and Spain yoked the two authors by supplementing the missing Cardenio –​the ‘lost’ play that Shakespeare and Fletcher purportedly based on an episode in Don Quijote  –​with a number of more or less modern recreations and productions. As several scholars, including Gary Taylor, Roger Chartier and myself, turned our critical attention to the missing Cardenio, theatrical practitioners also took note of the remarkable opportunity to bring together the hypercanonical authors.2 Various productions of Double Falsehood, Lewis Theobald’s often flatfooted 1727 redaction or reimagining of the purported Jacobean Cardenio, did not particularly help the fate of the play, however, and Taylor’s own Cardenio largely remained

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within academic circles. In addition to writing his own Cardenio with Charles Mee, Stephen Greenblatt launched an international ‘Cardenio Project’, which, as I  have argued, raised the stakes and ethical complications of the transnational adaptation of Cervantes, particularly for Spaniards themselves. The most successful recreation by far was Gregory Doran’s 2011 Cardenio at the Royal Shakespeare Company. A critical and box-​office success, it essentially staged Double Falsehood with some effective textual additions, in a lavish production that rehearsed English notions of Spain.3 As icons of their respective national traditions, Cervantes and Shakespeare were also linked by the multiple commentators who noted the discrepancies between the generalised Shakespearean quatercentenary hoopla around the world, and the much more muted celebration of Cervantes, even within Spain (see Mantilla 2016a, 2016b; Hernández and Quílez 2016). Despite the decade of Cervantine anniversaries, Spanish commentators recognised that the scale of the Shakespeare celebrations and the national adoption of Shakespeare in England set an example that was almost impossible to follow.4 The desire to emulate ‘Shakespeare’ –​understood not just as the texts of the early modern author but the modern Shakespeare cultural industry, thus exerts a considerable pull on Spain’s own sense of how the classics must be handled, even when, as with the Cardenio phenomenon, the source texts are actually Spanish. Into this heightened context of comparing Cervantes and Shakespeare comes a third element: Lope de Vega, and his own rediscovered text. Ironically, while despite the flurry of recreations no Shakespearean Cardenio has been found, a long-​lost Lope comedia was actually recovered in 2013. Alejandro García-​Reidy’s rediscovery of Lope’s Mujeres y criados (Women and Servants, c. 1613–​14) in Madrid’s Biblioteca Nacional in 2013 was greeted with great delight among scholars.5 Yet the lack of reverberation in the culture at large underscores how the breadth of the Golden Age dramatic corpus conditions its reception. Whereas a lost Shakespeare play would have revolutionised that well-​tended field of English, as well as the Shakespeare industry; one more Lope play, when critics can barely attend to his several hundred extant works, does not, on the face of it, alter the shape of the corresponding area of Hispanism, much less of the broader cultural field. Thus, beyond its intrinsic interest, Mujeres y criados usefully informs our understanding of the contemporary transnational reception of early modern texts, in a context already marked by more or less explicit borrowings and imitations. In what follows, I make a case for the play’s significance within the Lope canon and the broader field of early modern theatre studies, and suggest how the pull of Cardenio may be distorting that significance in production. Set in a fashionable and urbane Madrid, Mujeres y criados focuses on the loves of Luciana and Violante, the two daughters of the gentleman Florencio, for Teodoro and Claridán, secretary and valet to Count Próspero. The plot gets

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underway when the Count decides to pursue Luciana, although he suspects that Teodoro loves her. Meanwhile, Florencio’s friend Emiliano proposes to him that Violante marry his son, the rather foppish Don Pedro. With great skill and determination, the sisters reject the more favourable alliances available to them, and instead manipulate the action in order to marry the men they choose. Violante wittily puts Don Pedro off with her rhetorical prowess, while Luciana manages to deflect the Count, stringing him along while she hides her beloved Teodoro, under an assumed identity, in her own father’s house. So successfully do the sisters manipulate obligation and expectation that all the noblemen in the play –​the Count, their father Florencio, the rival suitor Don Pedro and his father Emiliano –​are forced to recognise the love matches as done deals that cannot be impeded, whatever their own prerogatives. Meanwhile, the lacayos of lower rank –​Marte and Lope –​compete for the criada Inés, in a plot that parallels what occurs among their masters. Mujeres y criados shares with the Cardenio story in Cervantes, as with the various recuperated versions of Double Falsehood/Cardenio, an interest in powerful male figures who use sexual competition to assert their privilege or, conversely, deploy that privilege to achieve their erotic ends. Cervantes’ Cardenio plot, preserved by Theobald with different character names, and restored to the original nomenclature in Doran’s eponymous production, is a tale of mimetic desire inflected by rank and class. The noble Fernando, having already seduced Dorotea, an upwardly mobile, rich farmer’s daughter, is so intrigued by his friend Cardenio’s description of his beloved Luscinda that he decides to abandon Dorotea and pursue Luscinda himself, and sends Cardenio off to court on a fool’s errand to get him out of the way. Luscinda manages to send a message, and Cardenio rushes back to try to stop Fernando from marrying her. Hidden behind a curtain, he proves unable to intervene in the wedding, and goes mad at what he perceives as a double betrayal from his friend and his beloved. If Cardenio’s response is ineffective, so is Luscinda’s: although she flees Fernando, he tracks her down at the convent where she takes refuge, and kidnaps her. So pronounced is Fernando’s privilege that, in Cervantes’ text, it is only his own willing reformation through shame that can bring about a satisfying resolution, as Dorotea forcefully argues for her due, and convinces him to marry her and leave Luscinda to Cardenio. Theobald’s version introduces an older brother to Fernando, named Pedro in Doran’s redaction, who enforces this resolution from a position of equal or even greater privilege. Doran’s Cardenio systematically emphasises Fernando’s outsized masculinity for its theatrical potential. The exaggerated portrayal of Fernando is presumably part of beefing up Theobald’s text:  Doran, in his reflections on the production, cites his own letter to movement director and choreographer

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Mike Ashcroft, discussing the need to ‘put the Iberian “cojones” back into the play’ (2012: 142). As Maryrica Lottman has shown, the decision to foreground equine motifs in the production also reinforces the outsized masculinisation of Fernando, as in the striking saddle-​room scene that Fernando spends almost entirely mounted upon a saddle stand, in a none-​too-​subtle reference to his approach to women.6 Fernando’s ‘centaurian position’, Lottman argues, ‘reveals the hyper-​masculine aspects of his character’. Making Fernando larger than life has the reactionary effect of granting a character who already holds power by virtue of his rank additional resources of physical and emotional strength. In the production, Fernando is a bully, but an effective and marvellously theatrical one, as he embodies all the masculinity that Cardenio apparently lacks. His aggressive demeanour makes Cardenio seem almost effeminate by comparison, a dynamic reinforced by the hierarchical difference between them, and by Fernando’s ability, through his rank, to compel Cardenio to his side at court, or to send Cardenio away from Luscinda in order to secure her for himself. As Huw Griffiths argues, ‘the politico-​erotic forms of subjection and domination’ (2012:  241) between men that characterise early modern texts would have been anachronistic by Theobald’s time –​hence, perhaps, Doran’s need to underscore Fernando’s control over Cardenio, in ‘restoring’ the play to approximate its source version.7 By emphasising Fernando’s power, Doran constructs a feudal, hypermasculinised Spain where might trumps right until the very end. Yet, at least within Don Quijote, the Cardenio story can also be read as a marvellous, very modern fable of class mobility, as Dorotea persuades Fernando that true nobility lies not in the blood but in virtuous action, and manages to marry far above her class. The heightened ‘Spanishness’ that Doran seeks for his production, however, foregrounds instead a kind of primeval masculine violence and excess, the ‘cojones’ that Fernando embodies in the performance. Although this may be theatrically effective, it reinforces a stereotypical vision of Spain as a locus of machismo and masculinist obsessions. Lope’s Mujeres y criados is also centrally concerned with questions of rank and power, but it has a far less deferential approach to aristocracy than even Cervantes’ original Cardenio narrative. Count Próspero is at all points a figure of fun in the text, an antagonist whose primary weapon is his money. Although Teodoro bemoans his fate as the Count decides to pursue Luciana –​‘Mal con el señor, señora, | competirá su criado’ (Lope de Vega 2014: 649–​50; ‘A servant cannot compete with his master, my lady’, Lope de Vega 2016, 42) –​Próspero never becomes a serious threat. Lope’s play seems much too knowing and urbane to take the threat of cross-​class mimetic desire seriously. In fact, the servant Inés, in appeasing her own competing suitors, links erotic triangulation to homosocial aristocratic vanity:

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inés Señores, el pretender sea pleito de señores porque mientras son mayores más juntos suelen comer. (Lope de Vega 2014: 635–​8) Good sirs, let the lords have their rivalries, for the greater they are, the more they share the same dainty dish. (Lope de Vega 2016: 42)

If Fernando’s betrayal of Cardenio verges on the tragic, this is erotic competition in a comic key, identified even by the servants as posturing and jockeying for advantage. From the start, Lope goes out of his way to deflate Próspero’s authority. The play opens with the Count returning home after a long night of gambling, wilfully delaying the moment when he will finally retire to bed and allow his servants to move on to their private lives. While they are eager to pay visits to their ladies, he is reduced to enquiring about the public women on the Calle del Pez. When he changes his mind about retiring, and dresses again in order to ‘ver cierta señora’ (2014:  99; ‘see a certain lady’, 2016:  16), he is neither expected nor welcomed by Luciana. The diminution of Próspero is perhaps clearest when the nobleman follows the lovers into the park, and contrasts his own discomfiting position as voyeur with the protection offered to Aeneas’ ships by the sheltering trees of Carthage: conde Árboles, no como Eneas os pido que me ocultéis, pues que celos no daréis a vuestras verdes oreas. Sólo quiero averiguar celos; prestadme favor, pues tantos bienes de amor sabéis cubrir y callar. (2014: 763–​70) count Trees, you need not hide me as you did Aeneas, or turn your nymphs green with envy! I just want to see whether I am right to be jealous. Favor me, you who shade and give cover to so many lovers! (2016: 44)

The comic invocation of the Aeneid ironically recalls all the things Próspero is not: heroic, virtuous, civic-​minded. Thus the play reinforces its basic premise –​ the self-​sufficiency of women and servants –​by withholding from Próspero the marks of nobility or authority. When Don Pedro meets Próspero in Act 2, he greets him with elaborate praise that paradoxically underlines the count’s lack of heroism, in contradistinction to his exalted line:

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don pedro La nobleza que acompaña aquel antiguo valor que publican vuestras armas, las banderas enemigas, la coronada celada, los anales, las historias que reverencia la fama y en los archivos del tiempo para memoria se guardan, ¿qué podrían prometer sino que esa mano franca mi protección tomaría…? (2014: 1700–​11) The nobility that matches the ancient valor of your arms, the captured flags, the crowned helmet, the annals, the histories that fame reveres, kept as embraces in the archives of time itself –​what could these all foretell except that this generous hand would take me under its protection…? (2016: 71–​2)

While ancient valour, as recorded in those annals, may well mark the family’s history, Pedro’s hyperbole here simply underscores the distance between those forebears and the present Count, who hides behind bushes in the park. Teodoro’s position in the erotic competition established in Mujeres y criados is very different from that of Cardenio in one important sense  –​ there is no pretence here that Próspero is his friend, and the difference in their rank is constantly foregrounded. Yet in other ways the dynamics are very similar:  Próspero, like Fernando, seems particularly interested in Luciana, because he suspects she is already the object of another’s attention. Once he has identified Teodoro as his rival, he attempts to clear the way for seducing her, by invoking his authority to remove that competitor from the scene. In Women and Servants, however, rank does not convey the same advantages in the pursuit of shared erotic objects, and the text charts instead the waning of feudal servitude, as new domestic and economic arrangements emerge. Neither is this a bluntly materialist world, however:  wit is the privileged currency, while the two sisters scheme in order to marry men of a lower class. Part of the rich ambiguity of the play lies in the status of the criado, a servant brought up in his master’s house. Covarrubias’ early modern Spanish dictionary Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (1611) offers various definitions, based on the near-​homonymy between crear (to create) and criar (to raise): criado Lo criado vale tanto como lo que Dios crió. Criado, el que sirve amo, y le mantiene y da de comer. Criado, lo que ha llegado a su sazón. Mal criado, el descortés. Bien criado, el que tiene buenos respetos. (Covarrubias 1611: 370)

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(Criado: criado is what God has created. Criado: one who serves a master, who supports him and feeds him. Criado, what has reached the point of ripeness. Mal criado: one who is ill-​mannered. Bien criado: one who is respectful.)

In Lope’s comedia, criado is broad enough to encompass both a secretary and menial servants (lacayos), while emphasising the mutual obligation that binds servants and masters: criados are, etymologically and otherwise, their masters’ creatures. Yet in the play’s title, as in its various plots, Próspero’s criados are bound to mujeres instead, and their refusal to accommodate their master marks the fissures in a feudal structure that is quickly giving way to an urban context of mobility and self-​sufficiency. Lope here envisions a world in which the key arrangements and obligations are economic and contingent: rather than an essentialised hierarchy, the play gives us shifting and dynamic social relations. In such a world, criados become employees, able to imagine themselves beyond their master’s house, in other (subject) positions. Although they might not escape being servants, their subjectification involves seeking employment, rather than obeisance to a feudal lord. As the servants themselves recognise, there are limits to their obligation to Próspero: Claridán reassures Teodoro that to defend his relationship with Luciana is not a betrayal of his master (Lope de Vega 2014: 943–​50), and Teodoro muses that he can always turn to Florencio, the sisters’ father, as a new master should the Count reject him (2014: 1036–​8). The political obligation of service to a nobleman wanes as Teodoro contemplates not abjection following his betrayal of Próspero, but simply a new post. The plot of Mujeres y criados quickly sets up the choice for Teodoro, in particular, of whether to respect his ties to his master or to protect his own love interest. In this, he is helped by the far more resolute Luciana. She foils Próspero’s plot to get Teodoro out of the way, anticipating his master’s duplicity and explicitly urging Teodoro’s disloyalty in response. When Teodoro comes to say goodbye, before departing with a letter for Próspero’s distant cousin, Luciana immediately urges him to open it and read it: luciana  ¿Hasla abierto? teodoro  ¿Yo, abierto? luciana  ¿De celos cierto    te parece desatino?    ¿No lleva cubierta? teodoro Sí. luciana  Pues echarle otra cubierta. teodoro  Esa es traición descubierta    y poca lealtad en mí. luciana  Amando hay breve de amor    para toda deslealtad.    ¿No ves que la voluntad    jamás permite señor

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   y que todos los desprecia;    que solo hay un duque en ella    y es el elegido por ella    como Génova o Venecia?    Rompe la cubierta. teodoro Ya    de la cáscara salió. (2014: 1124–​40) luciana  Have you opened it? teodoro  I, open it? luciana  You know full well that he’s jealous, and yet you think it mad?    Does it have an envelope? teodoro Yes. luciana  So you’ll give it a new one. teodoro  That would be an outright betrayal, and show no loyalty on my part. luciana  All is fair in love and war. Love has no master, but disdains them all. It has only one lord, and that one elected, as in Genoa or Venice. Open the letter! teodoro  There –​it’s come out of its shell. (2016: 54)

The timid Teodoro makes the letter, rather than himself, a new-​born chick, but the hypallage cannot disguise his own discomfort. Luciana’s own metaphor, comparing voluntad to a republic that chooses its own leader, is the clearest statement in the play of the connection between personal freedom –​ the ability for a subject to marry at will –​and the rejection of feudal strictures for the polity.8 Her betrayal on Teodoro’s behalf of the ties that bind him to the Count announces a move to a very different state of affairs, as the middling sort increasingly claim the right to decide on their own fates, and as women, too, insist on their right to a marriage freely chosen. The transition is thus not simply from the homosocial to the familial, in Griffiths’ terms (2012), but from the feudal to a new and more fluid economy of service. Although the 2015 Fundación Siglo de Oro production of Mujeres y criados, directed by Rodrigo Arribas and Laurence Boswell, was described as a full version, omitting only an extraneous scene of Turkish servants bearing gifts, it cut Luciana’s crucial comparison above. The omission removes what I  would argue is the most trenchant critique of orthodoxy in the play, and signals the overall conservative thrust of the production.9 While Lope’s text emphasises female agency, underscoring the inability of señores to prevail over women and the servants they prefer, the production foregrounds a more traditional emphasis.10 Thus, Alejandra Mayo and Lucía Quintana’s performances as Luciana and Violante emphasise the charm of the sisters, rather than their sharpness, softening what the text often presents as resistant figures. At the same time, Pablo Vázquez’s Count Próspero takes on some of the outsized physicality that I noted in the portrayal of Fernando in the RSC Cardenio: he

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swaggers on stage, imposing his physical presence in scene after scene. Like Fernando in Doran’s production, Próspero wears a lot of leather, and even an animal skin flung jauntily over his shoulder. In his climactic scene with Luciana in Act 3, where he loses patience with waiting for her love, he resorts to an aggressive approach and becomes sexually threatening, so that she accompanies her ‘¡Tened las manos, señor!’ (2014: 2587; ‘Hold your hands, my lord!’, 2016: 96) with a slap. Yet the alpha-​male physicality seems more forced in Mujeres y criados: after all, this is a count who gambles rather than hunts, and who spies on his servants and their intendeds from behind the trees. The text also pokes fun at masculinity –​or the lack thereof –​via the fop Don Pedro (stereotypically attired in pink stockings, lilac silk and glasses), and the miles gloriosus Marte, who fails to win Inés, suggesting a more general nod to gender stereotypes. The resolution of Mujeres y criados involves the revelation of Luciana’s complicated plot, and the confession that women and servants are already married to each other. Count Próspero, the spurned Don Pedro and the unwitting Florencio are all outmanoeuvred, and presented with the faits accomplis of viable, if not authorised, marriages. Teodoro, in an attempt to sidestep his master’s anger, unchivalrously blames Luciana: teodoro Señor, cuando me envïaste al Marqués, vine turbado a despedirme a esta casa, donde habrá más de seis años que sirvo a Luciana, y ella, sospechosa de mi daño, abrió la carta y, leyendo tu crueldad y mis agravios, sin darme parte trazó el engaño en que has estado… (2014: 2804–​13) Sir, when you sent me to the Marquess, I  came in my distress to say my goodbyes in this house, where for more than six years I have served Luciana. She, suspecting a great wrong, opened the letter, and reading of your cruelty and this offense done to me, without consulting me came up with this trick that has taken you in. (2016: 103)

Despite his attempt to explain his betrayal of Próspero by invoking his Petrarchan service to Luciana, Teodoro cannot afford to recognise any part for himself in her plot. He instead stresses his complete ignorance and Próspero’s own responsibility for what transpired. Luciana’s plan thus upends not only the order of rank –​Teodoro’s obligation to the Count –​but also the patriarchal gender order that would make her subservient to her husband. Not only does Teodoro not know best, he claims not to know at all. Arguably, it is

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Luciana’s rank, below Próspero but above Teodoro, that empowers her –​her father has money, and she grows up as the daughter of the house, not a criada. In this light, marrying beneath her station becomes the canniest way to ensure her own agency after marriage, in practical if not legal terms. In the concluding scene, Teodoro’s excuses make little difference. The text makes reference to the physical threat of the Count’s anger, Teodoro states his preference for dying by Próspero’s sword rather than spending time away from Luciana, and Violante expresses surprise at the idea that Próspero would take arms against his own criado (2014:  2819–​24; 2830–​1), while Próspero blusters, ‘Pues hoy moriréis entrambos’ (2014: 2847; ‘This day shall be your last’, 2016: 104). Although there are no stage directions to offer any specifics on Próspero’s response to the revelations, the Fundación stages it with outsized masculinity, as the count pulls out his sword and threatens his two servants, in a greater display of physicality than any he has previously exhibited, while Don Pedro predictably takes out a very small dagger and Florencio uses his own sword to block the Count’s. The 2015 production thus invokes a world where the lord has the authority of life and death over his servants, despite the fact that the entire text of the play to that point has systematically questioned and diminished that authority. In fact, in the text as in the production, Próspero quickly retreats, and is left with little recourse but to display his great wealth: ‘usando de ser quien soy’ (2014: 2876; ‘as I am who I am’, 2016:  104); he will provide a generous dowry for the sisters, even though Florencio has made it clear that he does not need his largesse (1554–​55). The Fundación’s decision to underscore the physical threat of the aristocratic male, despite his striking powerlessness in this scene and what is arguably an ironic recourse to violent pronouncements, may express the needs of theatricality. As the RSC Cardenio confirms, the display of physical prowess or conflict on stage can be marvellously effective. Yet it also makes the production far more conservative, emphasising a power that the aristocrat in this play no longer has. This emphasis also brings Mujeres y criados more closely in line with the gender/​class system of Cardenio, however forced that move might be. Could the potential congruences between Cardenio, as it was so vividly staged in 2011, and Mujeres y criados have influenced the choices for the production of the latter in 2015? Although there is no explicit evidence in the promotional materials that Cardenio served as inspiration for the Fundación production, I am struck by the similarities. Moreover, the recent history of the Fundación, as a Spanish company that travelled to the UK as part of the Shakespeare Olympics, and that has repeatedly collaborated with British director Laurence Boswell, perhaps the most renowned advocate of the Spanish Golden Age in contemporary British theatre, suggests an awareness of UK dramatic versions of Spain and of the advantages in connecting modern Spanish productions of Hispanic classical theatre to the immensely prestigious British Shakespeare

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tradition.11 Thus a transnational purview on performance choices reveals how early modern influences, such as the Shakespearean/​F letcherian turn to Cervantes for Cardenio, are inverted in contemporary production. Whereas in the Elizabethan, and especially the Jacobean period, Spanish texts provided an irresistible source for English authors, contemporary dynamics are very different. Due to not only Shakespeare’s place within contemporary Anglo-​ American culture, but also the global dominance of English, the Spanish now turn to the UK construction of Shakespeare as a model for how to mobilise their own classics. In this context, basing a production of rediscovered Lope on ‘rediscovered Shakespeare’ has a certain logic. At the same time, the game of mirrors between Spain and the UK can prove problematic:  if, as I  have suggested elsewhere (Fuchs 2013: 119–​26), even the most thoughtful of contemporary UK productions trade in stereotypes of Spain, emulating those models may reimport a conventional, recognisable past, denying truly challenging texts such as Mujeres y criados their full force. This is of particular concern given the frequent oversimplification of Hispanic classical theatre in its contemporary reception. Especially beyond the Hispanic world, the comedia is still considered a conservative form, fundamentally obsessed with honour. Despite recent studies that attempt to historicise this conception, and to underscore the variability of the enormous corpus, old stereotypes die hard (see Wheeler 2012; Fuchs 2016). Mujeres y criados has the potential to impact the larger debates about the variable ideological stances of the comedia and the broader comparison between Spanish and English early modern drama, but its very unconventionality requires that productions resist stereotypical orthodoxies. Mujeres y criados is an especially resonant addition to the corpus in light of the recent critical valorisation of Lope’s play of the same years, El perro del hortelano (The Dog in the Manger, 1613), which Susanne Wofford discusses in Chapter  2 of this volume.12 El perro also involves cross-​c lass mimetic desire:  Diana, Countess of Belflor, is in love with her secretary, also here named Teodoro, but appears to want him most of all when he pursues Marcela, one of her serving women. It quickly becomes clear that Teodoro would prefer Diana, if only she could make up her mind to have him. Given that there are no male relatives to constrain Diana’s choice, the main complication of the plot then becomes how to make her union with Teodoro across a class divide less unseemly. In this text, there is no question that the figure of higher rank has the advantage in the erotic competition –​Marcela is little more than collateral damage in the play. Yet Diana’s desire seems enhanced by the difference in rank between herself and both her servants; she easily outshines Marcela, but she also is intent on making Teodoro want his mistress –​however inappropriate this may be –​instead of a woman of his own rank.

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Set in Naples rather than Madrid, El perro flirts with a kind of romance exoticism in order to soften its acute social critique. Tristán, Teodoro’s servant, concocts a powerful fiction to great effect, casting his master as the long-​ lost son of one Count Ludovico, captured by Ottoman corsairs as a child and brought up as a slave in Armenia. Ludovico, who longs for an heir, is delighted to welcome Teodoro into his arms, especially given the colourful details that Tristán adds about the child Teodoro has already sired. This preposterous fiction, transparent to most and yet cheerfully upheld by all those who have something to gain from it, does the trick, suturing the social divide between Diana and Teodoro and enabling their union. Importantly, Tristán’s device both exposes the artificiality of rank and class –​Teodoro can play the nobleman, irrespective of his actual birth –​and safely cloaks this revelation in a romance guise. Ludovico’s lines ironically underscore the constructedness of social hierarchy, when he exclaims of Teodoro: ‘¡Qué bien que te escribió naturaleza | en la cara, Teodoro, la nobleza’ (Lope de Vega 2000: 3115–​16; How well did nature write nobility on your face, Teodoro). The epilogue, which enlists the ‘noble senado’ (3378; ‘noble senate’) in keeping Teodoro’s secret, further ironises rank, ‘disrupting’, as Wofford notes, ‘the very aristocratic hierarchy that the play may elsewhere seem to endorse’ (Chapter 2, above). Mujeres y criados, most likely written shortly after El perro, picks up where that play leaves off. Crucially, it repatriates the questions of eroding male privilege, cross-​class desire and the decreasing force of rank in an ever less feudal world. If El perro is a comedia palatina (palace comedy) safely distanced in a ‘Belflor’ loosely associated with Naples, and bordering a colourful romance world of corsairs and invented place names, Mujeres y criados is staunchly domestic, in both its Madrid setting and its focus on the rather ordinary household of Florencio and his daughters. The comeuppance of Count Próspero, Florencio and Don Pedro is not easily dismissed as a romance flourish, as is Teodoro’s triumph over his ridiculous noble rivals for Diana’s hand in El perro. In that play, Ludovico, presented with a solution to the problem of his own inheritance, is arguably a willing dupe, even a partner in the romance plot that resolves the situation. Conversely, Luciana’s plot in Mujeres y criados is entirely her own, and even Teodoro cannot acknowledge a role in it. Mujeres y criados thus goes further than El perro in imagining alternatives to a world where subjects live in thrall to their masters, and women to men. If the secretary in El perro becomes a lord himself, albeit via a subterfuge in which the audience becomes complicit, in Mujeres y criados both women and servants seek out alternative arrangements, leaving behind the feudal obligations of criados to embrace new erotic and economic arrangements. Thus, while the Cardenio narrative, El perro del hortelano and Mujeres y criados all involve mimetic desire across ranks, with powerful figures using their privilege to pursue the love objects of lesser rivals, this similarity

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occludes important differences. Fernando manages to sideline Cardenio and violently secure Luscinda, and must be persuaded to reform. Diana effectively takes Teodoro from Marcela, yet must collude in a shared fiction in order to justify her union with her secretary. Próspero gets nowhere: Luciana and Violante manage to marry the men they love, who, however tentatively, betray their master with impunity. The texts thus present a range of possibilities, as rank becomes less and less effective in the pursuit of contested erotic objects. As the most liberatory of the three texts, Mujeres y criados challenges received notions of the comedia as a conservative form. Instead, it alerts us to the very real possibility that the enormous corpus includes texts of all ideological stripes, charting the uneven transformation of Spain in the early modern period. It seems particularly important in this light to give the play its due, despite the choice in the Fundación production to emphasise elements that take it much closer to the world of Doran’s Cardenio. While that choice occurs in the context of a transnational conversation that aspires to give both Cervantes and Lope the Shakespeare treatment, it has the potential to reinscribe unfortunate stereotypes of Spain, and to prevent us from seeing how revolutionary the comedia could be. While the Fundación has undoubtedly played a crucial role in promoting Mujeres y criados in the wake of its rediscovery, it may be up to future productions, whether in the Spanish-​ speaking world or beyond, to realise the full potential of the text. Notes 1 René Girard first offered his theory of mimetic desire in his 1961 Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque (English translation, 1965). For a trenchant critique, see Landy (2012). All translations in this chapter are mine unless otherwise noted. 2 On the Cardenio phenomenon, see Carnegie and Taylor (2012); Chartier (2011); Fuchs (2013: 79–​130). 3 Doran’s text is published in Doran and Álamo (2011), while his own reflections on the production are collected in Doran (2012). 4 Particularly notable is Shakespeare’s role in the opening ceremonies for the 2012 Summer Olympics. As part of a spectacle entitled Isles of Wonder, Kenneth Branagh recited Caliban’s lines from The Tempest describing the island: Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices That, if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,

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The clouds methought would open and show riches Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked, I cried to dream again. (The Tempest, 3.2.130–​8) Although the pageant adopts this language to describe the British Isles in order to underscore their wondrousness, the emphasis on their island nature seems uncannily to anticipate Brexit. 5 Alejandro García-​Reidy describes his find in García-​Reidy (2013). See also his subsequent edition of the play (Lope de Vega 2014) and my translation (Lope de Vega 2016). 6 I am grateful to Professor Lottman for allowing me to cite her paper ‘Equestrian Virility in the RSC’s Cardenio’, delivered at the UCLA Williams Andrews Clark Memorial Library, October 2013. 7 Without mentioning Doran’s text or production, Griffiths speculates that Double Falsehood may have omitted scenes establishing the friendship between Cardenio and Fernando in an earlier text (Griffiths 2012: 249–​50). 8 This scene more fully enacts the political transgression that Susanne Wofford (Chapter  2, above) teases out in the cross-​class union in Lope’s El perro del hortelano, which I discuss below. 9 Although I cannot focus on it here, I want to note also the exoticising focus in the advertising for the Madrid run of Mujeres y criados on the figure of the Afro-​ Spanish actor Emilio Buale, although his was a very minor role in the production. Buale was not part of the touring production that I saw in Almería on 23 April 2016. 10 Interestingly, director Rodrigo Arribas stressed in an interview about the play that the production must be ‘en servicio del texto’ (Arribas 2016; ‘in the service of the text’), while also noting its contemporaneity and ‘riskiness’. Arguably, Lope’s play is so unexpected, so mischievous, that actors do not quite know what to make of it. In a staged reading of my translation of the play at UCLA in April 2015, the actors playing the two sisters Luciana and Violante, in particular, seemed to find it difficult to assume the full agency of the characters, so unusual are they for young women in an early modern play. It is also the case that the recently rediscovered play does not yet have a substantial apparatus of critical interpretation to help guide theatrical versions, as both Jesús Fuente, who played Florencio and also worked on the adaptation of the play, and Alejandra Mayo, a cofounder of the company, who played Inés in Madrid and Luciana in the touring production, noted in a round-​table discussion about the production held at the 33rd Jornadas de Teatro del Siglo de Oro in Almería (21–​23 April 2016). 11 Fundación Siglo de Oro visited the UK in 2012 to participate in the Globe to Globe Festival that was part of the Cultural Olympiad, presenting Enrique VIII –​ Shakespeare’s Henry VIII –​at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Since then, Enrique VIII brought the company to the US, with performances at the Broad Theater in Santa Monica, California in 2013. They also presented Lope de Vega’s El castigo

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sin venganza (Punishment without Revenge) in Spanish at the Globe in 2014, becoming the first company to present there a play by a non-​English writer. In 2016, they toured in Spain with Trabajos de amor perdidos (Love’s Labour’s Lost), directed by Rodrigo Arribas and Tim Hoare and produced in association with the Globe. Arribas notes in his interview the company’s interest in ‘internationalizing’ the comedia, as Spain’s national patrimony (Arribas 2016). 12 On the recent history of performance for El perro, see Wheeler (2007).

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4 The African ambassador’s travels: Playing black in late seventeenth-​century France and Spain Noémie Ndiaye1

Between 1662 and 1682, African ambassadors were popular in Parisian theatres. Indeed, as a theatergram of design,2 African ambassadors can be found in several extant plays from that period: Le Mort vivant by Edmé Boursault (1662) –​ which is the main focus of this chapter; L’Ambassadeur d’Affrique by Norman lawyer and dramatist Nicolas Du Perche (1666); Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, Molière’s Turkish variation on the African ambassador, first published in 1670, which would acquire a more lasting fame than Boursault’s original, and finally Bel-​Isle’s Le Mariage de la reine de Monomotapa (1682). The theatergram can be described as follows: a young man loves a young woman. To marry her, he must overcome the opposition of his love interest’s father, who favours a rival for the wrong reasons. The problem is not original, but the solution is, and it comes in two flavours. In the earlier two plays of this corpus, the lover uses blackface (barbouillage) to disguise his crafty servant as l’ambassadeur d’Affrique, a black comedic tyrant with rough manners. This powerful African claims the young woman’s hand and scares away the hero’s rivals. In the latter two plays of the corpus, however, the lover uses oriental costume (not blackface) to disguise himself as the ambassador of Turkey, or of the early modern African kingdom of Monomotapa (which stretched across present day Mozambique and Zimbabwe). Excited to have his daughter marry up, the ambitious father agrees to the marriage, the wedding is performed in disguise, and it is unclear whether the father ever learns the truth about his son-​in-​law’s identity. In both versions, the theatergram of the African ambassador removes obstacles to the lovers’ marriage. That theatergram, itself relatively narrow in scope, mobilised the performance technique of blackface, which had long been used all across Europe. From medieval drama including French mystères, Spanish autos and English cycle plays where the devil was performed with soot, to the elaborate cosmetics used in most seventeenth-​century European commercial theatres to represent

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sub-​Saharan Africans, via the black veils and visors used to represent Moorish characters in commedia dell’arte scenarii and Tudor court entertainments alike, not to mention Harlequin’s intriguing black mask –​blackface covered a wide array of material practices and already had a long transnational history by 1662.3 In early modern France, it had been used to represent Moors, Ethiopians and Mozambicans in the theatre of Rouen, Normandy, in the first two decades of the seventeenth century, before becoming a popular feature of court ballets in Paris (Biet 2006; Wikström 2010; Chalaye 1998). Here, I focus on one specific historical articulation of blackface, as I bring to the fore the cultural work effected by the theatergram of the African ambassador in late seventeenth-​century France. The genealogic connections between the four plays of my corpus have already been studied, so my goal is not to unearth further evidence of this theatergram’s existence, but rather to unpack the significance of this theatergram’s transnational inception.4 That transnational inception had old roots, since the motif of the African ambassador had circulated in visual culture across Western Europe at least since the fifteenth century (Lowe 2012), and even earlier if, as I am inclined to do, we read as an ambassador the figure of the black magus Baltasar, which, Paul Kaplan notes, appeared in European representations of the Nativity in the early 1400s (Kaplan 2013: 22). In Le Mort vivant, that transnational genealogy is vividly foregrounded. Indeed, when Edmé Boursault first introduces the African ambassador to the French stage with Le Mort vivant, performed by les comédiens du roi at l’Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1662, he does so in a comédie à l’espagnole, set in Seville. This is far from incidental. Reading the racial discourse that Boursault’s play develops through the theatergram of the African ambassador in the light of the play’s transnational dimension, I  argue that Le Mort vivant captures a moment of transition in the history of racial thinking in France:  a moment when, in the context of the intensification of colour-​based slavery in the French Caribbean, ethnic difference and skin colour became racialised. Focusing on the transnational dimension of the play, I show how the play’s engagement with Spanishness, in the context of Louis XIV’s marriage to Maria Theresa of Spain, complicates its position on race. Boursault’s play, which constitutes the main focus of my chapter, evidences a conflicted relation to racial hybridity, and an anxious interrogation of French identity in the 1660s, as it embraces and celebrates Spanish cultural influence while simultaneously constructing Spanishness as Africanised. Racial twists: France, race and the Caribbean The word race entered the French language at the end of the fifteenth century, as a technical term from animal husbandry describing animals

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possessing superior qualities for the purposes of hunting or waging war. By extension, the term referred to the various royal dynasties of France, which were perceived as sharing those military qualities (Boulle 2007: 63). In the mid-​sixteenth century, race started referring to good aristocratic pedigree. As the term always does, it served to naturalise pre-​existing (or, in the early modern period, nascent) power relations between social groups, but the criterion separating those social groups had little to do with ethnicity in the sixteenth century. Indeed, the term was popularised during the crisis of the French aristocracy, when the old aristocracy –​la noblesse d’épée, the military elite, whose noble origins were medieval –​felt threatened in its prerogatives by the emergence of an educated, wealthy and ambitious bourgeois class (la noblesse de robe). Members of that bourgeois class could buy aristocratic status by purchasing the expensive administrative offices offered for sale by an increasingly domineering crown. In reaction, a discourse developed that endowed the old nobility with supposedly hereditary superior qualities –​physical, moral and intellectual, transmitted through blood, and thus non-​vendible. This discourse emphasised the need to preserve those superior qualities by policing marriages –​at the very time when many impoverished aristocrats of old and great pedigree married into wealthy new aristocratic families. A  revealing detail:  the children born from such marriages were called métis –​a term that is still commonly used today to refer to people of mixed heritage (Aubert 2004:  449). Those aristocratic children were seen as social hybrids, and thus, in sixteenth-​century French, as racial hybrids. Boulle and Aubert explain that the racial terminology and racial thinking coined in sixteenth-​century France in an attempt to preserve the privileges of the old aristocracy, were lifted and applied to ethnic differences in the late seventeenth century in an attempt to preserve the privileges of the white colonisers as a group. Indeed, in the late seventeenth century, many perceived the slavery-​based colonial order to be under attack in the French Caribbean, which included, chiefly, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint-​Martin, Saint-​Barthélemy and Sainte-​ Lucie, as well as Sainte-​Croix, Grenada and Saint-​Christophe (St Kitts)  –​ over which France would lose its dominion in the eighteenth century –​and, last but not least in terms of economic importance at the turn of the century, Saint-​Domingue. The attack came in the form of free people of colour: mostly concubines manumitted by their masters, and, even more often, mulatto children raised by their white fathers, according to the custom of each island. In Martinique, for instance, white fathers could keep their mulatto children if they paid a fine to the Church and to the master of the enslaved mother; those children became free as they reached legal majority. This custom probably has its roots in the toleration of interracial unions that had characterised the first decades of French colonisation, given the low number of white women in the

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French Caribbean. In Martinique, for instance, between 1664 and 1686, as the number of slaves boomed from 2,700 to 11,100, the number of free people of colour boomed too (Curtin 1969: 78). As Guillaume Aubert explains, this number had to be curbed if colour-​based slavery was to remain the foundation of the highly profitable social order in the colonies. Because most mulatto children were born out of wedlock, curbing their number required a policing of both formal and informal unions, and that kind of policing drew on sixteenth-​century racial thinking. That policing took two main forms:  first, encouraging the formation of mono-​racial families through legal and fiscal means. For instance, in 1665, the governor-​general of the French Islands, Alexandre De Prouville, Marquis de Tracy, used fiscal incentives to encourage the formation of white families overseas: he exempted from poll tax all white people born on the islands and all white girls and women, regardless of their birthplace. Twenty years later, the Code Noir legally forbade masters from tearing apart black families by selling separately slaves who were officially married and had young children. Although the 1685 Code Noir is well known for internal contradictions informed by its attempt at reconciling diverse interests and ideologies, it seems that it was in part informed by the metropolitan and colonial authorities’ desire to ensure that ‘Negroes and Negresses be made to marry between themselves as much as possible’ (a letter from Louis XIV to l’Intendant Bégon; cited in Aubert 2004: 465). The second way of policing interracial unions consisted in taking legal measures preventing stray white men from increasing the number of free people of colour in the colonies by manumitting their children and concubines. For instance, in 1680, an edict declared that, in Guadeloupe, mulatto children would from now onwards follow the status of their slave mother all their life. Five years later, the Code Noir stipulated that if a married master fathered a child on a slave, the concubine and the mulatto child would both remain in perpetual servitude and out of the father’s control, being confiscated for the benefit of l’Hôpital Général, an institution dedicated to confinement, correction and forced labour, to be found in every important city in the country as per a royal edict of 1662. Such a policing of unions soon extended to all mixed black and white unions in the French colonies as it was implemented not solely in the Caribbean, but also on Réunion Island (east of Madagascar) in 1674, and in the trading posts of La Compagnie du Sénégal along the West African coast in 1688. In the French colonial context, those twenty years saw the transfer of racial thinking from rank-​based difference to ethnicity-​based difference. This historical context is crucial for understanding the theatergram of the African ambassador, because ‘African Ambassador’ plays stage this transfer of racial thinking from rank difference onto ethnic difference. Indeed, a

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close reading of Edmé Boursault’s play reveals that this transfer was at work in collective thinking as early as in the 1660s. With the theatergram of the African ambassador, Boursault reintroduced the practice of blackface onto the French public stage after a quasi total forty-​year hiatus that remains unexplained to this day. While we know from playscripts that barbouillage, blackface, was used to represent Africans in French theatre as early as 1601 (in Les Chastes et loyales amours de Théagène et Chariclée by Alexandre Hardy), and as late as 1618 (in La Perséene, ou la délivrance d’Andromède by Jean Boissin de Gallardon), it almost disappeared from the public stage in the 1620s, and became a quasi-exclusive feature of court ballets featuring Mores galants stock characters. Although there were many aristocrats familiar with the court ballet performance tradition in Boursault’s audiences, most spectators at l’Hôtel de Bourgogne were bourgeois; for them, blackface must have been a fascinating visual novelty in 1662. It is likely then that the ambassador’s striking makeup thoroughly informed the audience’s perception of this character, and that the physical blackness of this character was very much on spectators’ minds. The ambassador himself confirms, in an indirect stage direction, that barbouillage is part of his costume. Indeed, in an attempt to reject his courting, Stéphanie declares: stéphanie Et j’en fais trop d’état pour oser jamais croire Que d’un honteux amour vous souilliez votre gloire. Songez, Seigneur, songez que mon rang est trop bas, Il vous faut… gusman   Mon enfant, je ne l’ignore pas; Je sais ce qu’il me faut, mais quoique je le sache Pour vous faire m’aimer je me fais une tache; Mais beauté printanière apprenez qu’il m’est doux, D’être noir comme un Diable, et d’être aimé de vous. (Boursault, Le Mort vivant, 2.2.517–​24) (stéphanie I care too much about your high rank to ever believe That you would stain your glory with such a shameful love: Consider my base rank, my Lord. No, what you need is –​ gusman   Little one, I know all of this, And I know what I need, but even so, For your love, I will stain myself. O springly beauty, know that it is sweet to be Black as a devil and be loved by you.)

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Stéphanie argues that their marriage would be unequal, which is true in more than one sense; indeed, while Stéphanie’s rank is too low for her to marry an African ambassador, the audience knows that, as a servant, the rank of the African ambassador impersonator, Gusman, is too low for him to marry Stéphanie. Gusman is playing on words here, as he turns what Stéphanie calls the social ‘stain’ attached to a misalliance with a commoner (‘you would stain your glory’) into the cosmetic stain that he is wearing on his face, in order to look as ‘black as a devil’ (‘I will stain myself ’). With a pun that calls attention to the material performance technique of blackface, Gusman links the ideas of misalliance, shame and physical blackness. In other words, Gusman is colouring the French notion of race. Similarly, rank and ethnicity overlap when Stéphanie declares: Un hymen entre nous a si peu d’apparence, Que je n’ose, Seigneur, en former l’espérance; Vous pouvez donc prétendre en me faisant la cour, D’attirer des respects, et non pas de l’amour. Vous m’aimez? Vous, Seigneur? Moi qui suis… (Boursault, Le Mort vivant, 2.3.549–​53) (A marriage between us is so unseemly That I dare not hope for it, my Lord; Thus, by courting me, you may Earn respect, but not love. Love me? You, my Lord? While I am –​)

In keeping with his unmannerly habits, the ambassador interrupts her, and yet, one can only wonder how Stéphanie would have finished her sentence: ‘While I am –​below your rank’? Or ‘While I am –​too white for you’? Both simultaneously. Here again, the play conflates the two meanings of the word race in the spectators’ minds. Not only do characters like Stéphanie and Gusman describe this interracial marriage in ‘shameful’ terms:  the plot itself indicts it. First, the role of the African ambassador is played by a servant, and not by the lover Fabrice himself, which implies that this interracial marriage proposal was never meant to be successful –​as opposed to later versions of the theatergram in the ‘African ambassador’ corpus. Second, the verbal roughness with which the ambassador courts Stéphanie evokes, in comedic mode, the supposed sexual violence of black men towards white women that early modern Europeans loved to fantasise about, a sexual violence that disqualifies the African ambassador from marrying Stéphanie. Third, Fabrice invents the character of the African ambassador to prevent Stéphanie from marrying either Ferdinand (whom she believes to be her father at the beginning of the play) or Lazarille (who is her natural brother, as she will discover by the end of the play). The ambassador

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might be too far away from Stéphanie race-​wise (that is, in both rank and ethnicity), but Fabrice’s rivals are much too close to her blood-​wise. By balancing the possibility of an interracial marriage with the possibility of an incestuous marriage, and establishing a symmetry between them, the play presents a marriage with Fabrice (a white Spanish bourgeois to whom Stéphanie is not related by blood) as the central point, the happy middle ground between two extremes that are both undesirable, shameful and unnatural. Weaving together notions of blood, misalliance, skin colour and shame, the theatergram of the African ambassador reflects and contributes to the development of a racial discourse about black Africans in France in the 1660s. The play hints at its own inscription within a transatlantic reshaping of racial thinking by alluding to the Caribbean. Indeed, when Stéphanie’s adoptive father Ferdinand tells the story of how he came to be entrusted with the baby girl, we learn that Stéphanie was born from an adulterous affair, and that when she met Ferdinand, Stéphanie’s mother was on her way to ‘Gadaloupe’: Une dame à cheval qu’avait un homme en croupe Passa par cette ville, allant à Gadaloupe. (Boursault, Le Mort vivant, 1.3.115–​6) (A Lady, riding a horse behind a man came to this city on her way to Gadaloupe.)

The play is set in Seville, so Ferdinand is most probably alluding to the city of Guadalupe in the region of Extremadura –​a city whose monastery was famous for its cult of a Black Madonna, and which gave its name to the island of Guadeloupe (Columbus himself named the island after this Madonna). This is just a detail, just a touch of Spanish couleur locale, but that couleur locale, via the strong historical ties that exist between the Spanish city and the island, evokes a Caribbean territory that had passed into French control, and had already been abundantly constructed as a place where black slavery flourished in texts such as Jean-​Baptiste du Tertre’s Histoire Générale des isles de St Christophe, de la Guadeloupe, et de la Martinique (1654), which were widely circulated in the metropole. Guadeloupe was also perceived, as previously noted, as a place where illegitimate interracial births were endemic. The presence of Guadeloupe in the background of the plot discreetly signals the influence of the Caribbean on the anti-​miscegenation politics of Boursault’s play. To understand where exactly this theatergram fits on the vertical historical axis of race relations in the Francophone world, however, we have to place Boursault’s play on the horizontal axis of transnational movements in seventeenth-​century Europe, for the transnational inception of the ‘African ambassador’ theatergram is integral to its meaning.

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The king’s race: Royal marriages, theatre and hybridity At first sight, Boursault’s play looks like the adaptation of a Spanish comedia: it belongs to the popular mid-​ seventeenth-​ century genre of the comédie à l’espagnole. Numbers confirm the popularity of this genre in France: ‘Among the 103 comedies written between 1636 and 1660, 40 plays are derived from a Spanish source; among them, 32 are plays called “à l’espagnole”, inspired from comedias’ (Hofer y Tuñon 2012: 133). The action of the play is set in Seville, the characters have Spanish names, the first half of the play focuses on one central héros ridicule, the ambassador, in the tradition of the comedia de figurón, and this ridiculous hero is performed by the gracioso Gusman. Most strikingly, the play adopts the tripartite structure of Spanish comedias, going further in this respect than most comédies à l’espagnole, which usually stick to the five-​act structure typical of seventeenth-​century French dramaturgy. The play clearly seeks to convey a strong exotic effect: it presents itself as a Franco-​Spanish hybrid, on the very stage where the Spanish actors who had arrived in France in July 1660, following the marriage of Louis XIV to Maria Theresa of Spain, performed on a regular basis. The few scholars who have tried to identify the source of Boursault’s play, such as Victor Fournel (1863) and René-​Michel Piette (1971), have followed an alternative transnational thread. They believe the original source to be the Italian Sforza d’Oddi’s I morti vivi (1578), which Lope de Vega adapted in Los muertos vivos (1599–1602), and which Le Sieur D’Ouville in turn had adapted for the French stage in 1646. This seductive genealogy disregards the fact that, despite their similar titles, Boursault’s plot has nothing to do with those plays. Whatever tenuous thematic continuities might exist between Boursault’s play and d’Oddi’s, they don’t involve the African ambassador. The African ambassador is a Franco-​Spanish hybrid creation, not an Italian theatergram. In a sense, genealogical inquiries such as Fournel’s and Piette’s, by privileging models based on linear descent rather than hybridity, replicate in the textual domain the anti-​miscegenation politics deployed in Le Mort vivant and in the African ambassador corpus. Indeed, a Spanish acting company, initially led by Sebastían García de Prado, came to Paris upon Louis XIV’s commission following his marriage, and was maintained by the French crown until leaving the country in spring 1673 (Fournier 1864: 24; Rennert 1909: 340; Esses 1992: I, 38). The comedia from which Boursault derived his play has never been identified. While various sources allude briefly to the presence of the Spanish performers in the capital, and their performances both at l’Hôtel de Bourgogne and in the Queen’s apartments, one is hard pressed to establish a list of plays they performed; the Mahelot manuscript  –​the invaluable notebook of the scenic designers working at l’Hôtel de Bourgogne from 1629 onwards  –​does not cover the

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period 1660–​71, and the Mercure Galant periodical does not reference any play performed by the Spanish actors in Paris, from its earliest issue in 1672 to their departure. Moreover, the fact that Boursault drew heavily on recent French plays –​such as Scarron’s comédie à l’espagnole Don Japhet d’Arménie, itself adapted from El Marques de Cigarral by Solerzano –​suggests that there may not have been a specific Spanish source to begin with; Boursault may simply have aimed for an overall Spanish effect. Nevertheless, it is likely that desiring to give a good sample of their repertoire to French audiences, the Spanish actors performed some of the major comedias of a national repertoire that included numerous negros characters performed in blackface. This blackface repertoire might have included, to name but a few, influential plays such as Lope de Vega’s El santo negro Rosambuco de la ciudad de Palermo (c. 1607), which had been imitated by several Spanish dramatists, Andrés de Claramonte’s El valiente negro en Flandes, printed in 1638 (written 1621–​25), which was so popular that it was eventually given a sequel and was performed as far as New Spain, and Diego Jiménez de Enciso’s La comedia famosa de Juan Latino, printed in 1652 (written in the early 1620s).5 Indeed, I would suggest that it is no coincidence that blackface was revived on the French public stage just when the Spanish actors arrived in Paris, and disappeared again shortly after their departure. Not only did those Spanish actors probably inspire Boursault with the theatergram of the African ambassador, they also ensured the subsequent transnational circulation of this motif. Indeed, in 1682, the year the comédiens du roi revived Molière’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme to celebrate the birth of the Duke of Burgundy’s heir, and when Le Mariage de la reine de Monomotapa was published in Leiden in the Netherlands, the ‘African ambassador’ crossed the Pyrenees. Pablo Polope, who had since 1674 worked in Simon Aguado’s acting company, adapted Molière’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme into a sainete, a one-​act farce, based on the account of one of the Spanish actors who had spent time at the French court in the 1660s –​possibly Simon Aguado himself (Rennert 1907: 468). The goal was to entertain Marie Louise d’Orléans –​ granddaughter of both Louis XIII of France and Charles I of England –​who had married Charles II of Spain in 1679. In other words, it was Maria Theresa of Spain’s nostalgic desire to see Spanish plays performed by Spanish actors far away from home that had enabled Boursault’s Le Mort vivant, and it was Marie Louise d’Orléans’ love for French theatrical culture that inspired the anonymous El labrador gentilhombre.6 In El labrador gentilhombre, which was performed at Buen Retiro, Boursault’s African ambassador becomes la gran princesa de Marruecos, the great princess of Morocco, in keeping with the local theatrical traditions of sexual and racial crossdressing. Not surprisingly, this farce, itself a result of intense Franco-​Spanish cross-​pollination, would go to great lengths to emphasise the cultural porosity between Spain and France, in the context of a royal marriage that was the latest in a long series, for if Louis

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XIII and Louis XIV had Spanish queen consorts, most seventeenth-​century Spanish kings (Philip II, Philip IV and Charles II) had French queen consorts. Boursault’s play may have borrowed blackface from the Spanish actors, but it did so on French terms. Indeed, the play occasionally resorts to what I call the diabolical hermeneutics of blackface; that is, moments when specific cues, drawing on the tradition of blackface in medieval theatre, superimpose the image of the devil onto the image of a black African character in the minds of the spectators  –​cues such the above-​quoted couplet ‘O springly beauty, know that it is sweet to be | black as a devil and to be loved by you’ (Boursault, Le Mort vivant, 2.2.523–​4). Such diabolical hermeneutics of blackface, extremely popular in seventeenth-​century England too, characterises several of the extant plays written for the public stage in Rouen, Normandy, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, before blackface became an exclusive feature of court ballets in the 1620s –​such as Nicolas Chrétien des Croix’s Les Portugaiz infortunez (1608) or the anonymous Tragédie françoize d’un more cruel envers son seigneur nommé Riviery, gentilhomme espagnol, sa demoiselle et ses enfants (1613). By contrast, in Spain, the diabolical hermeneutics of blackface can be found in a few autos from the Códice de Autos viejos, compiled between 1550 and 1575, but its presence in farsas and in seventeenth-​century comedia nueva is purely vestigial. In other words, by relying on the diabolical hermeneutics of blackface, Boursault’s play moves away from contemporary Spanish theatre, and reconnects with an older French performance tradition. The Frenchification of blackface in Boursault’s play goes further. Indeed, in Spanish comedias, as in English Caroline plays, when a white character decides to disguise himself (or, more often, herself ) as an African and to use blackface to that end, they typically gain agency because blackness makes them socially invisible. For instance, in the previously mentioned El valiente negro en Flandes, written by Andrés de Claramonte in the early 1620s, Leonor disguises herself as a black male page in order to join the front in the Low Countries, and she finds the perfidious captain who abandoned her. In La negra por el honor by Agustín Moreto y Cavana (published in 1668, just between L’Ambassadeur d’Affrique and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme), another Leonor disguises herself as her own black male servant to escape recognition by her would-​be rapist. She escapes, finds help and sues the serial rapist. Finally, in El negro de cuerpo blanco y esclavo de su honra, published in 1756 but written probably in the 1660s, Cesar disguises himself as a black slave in order to spy on his own wife in his own house, when he discovers that the king wants to cuckold him. Late seventeenth-​century Spanish white characters of both genders play black when they need to save their sexual honour by remaining in the shadows. This strategy works because, in Spanish theatrical culture, being black meant belonging to an invisible lower social class.

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But not in France, where the culture of court ballets had, since the 1620s, accustomed aristocratic audiences to the highly popular roles of the Mores galants, performed in blackface, who usually claimed to come straight from Africa, as ambassadors, in order to dance and pay homage to the French king and the beautiful French ladies in the audience.7 Boursault is appropriating that tradition, which was specific to French seventeenth-​century court culture, for the commercial public stage. In ‘African ambassador’ plays, when late seventeenth-​century French white characters play black in order to get the wife they want, the strategy works because being an African ambassador means belonging to a hyper-​visible aristocratic social class. Thus, Boursault’s African ambassador combines older French theatrical traditions for representing Africans, traditions that come from public theatre in Rouen (the diabolical hermeneutics of blackface) and from court theatre in Paris (the Mores galants). Those performance traditions had, until then, remained discrete:  by fusing them for the first time, Boursault’s play hybridises high culture and low culture to reflect on the history of blackface in French theatrical culture. Hybridity is a key word for understanding Boursault’s dramaturgy. Le Mort vivant belongs to a genre that is hybrid in itself (the comédie à l’espagnole); it is set in the land that was perceived by many Europeans as the land of hybridity par excellence, and more specifically in the Andalusian city of Seville, which was synonymous with Spanish Africanness because of its Moorish past and its important black demographics throughout the seventeenth century. Additionally, the play is performed on a multicultural stage that hosts both French and Spanish actors, and hybridises French performance traditions for representing Africans that catered to audiences of different social groups. Thus focusing on the transnational inception of the ‘African ambassador’ theatergram brings to the fore the contradictions of Le Mort vivant’s ideological position on racial hybridity. Boursault’s play indicts interracial marriages as unseemly, and thus denigrates the idea of racial hybridity, both in the rank-​based and ethnicity-​based senses of the term racial. Yet, the play itself is one of the most racially hybrid theatrical objects of the period: it hybridises performance traditions that differ in nationality (French vs. Spanish), and in social rank (court ballet culture vs. popular theatrical culture). On the one hand, Boursault’s play denigrates rank and national hybridity, and on the other hand, it visibly performs it. Granted, nationality and ethnicity are not synonymous, but in the Spanish case those concepts had started merging under the effect of the Black Legend  –​that massive international propaganda operation that blackened Spain’s reputation by emphasising the Spanish brutality towards natives in American colonies, and denigrating the ethnic mixture that resulted from centuries of Moorish presence on the Peninsula. Barbara Fuchs cites a representative example of the French perception of Spanish difference as

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racialised: the French Coppie of the Anti-​Spaniard ‘urges the nations of Europe to rally around France “and with one breath to go and abate the pride and insolencie of these Negroes”, invoking European racial solidarity against an African, black Spain’ (Fuchs 2007: 96). Given the enduring popularity of the Black Legend in seventeenth-​century France, the idea of Spanish difference implied some degree of ethnic difference for Boursault’s audience. After all, when he tries to convince Gusman to play the part of the African ambassador, Fabrice insists on the eerie physical resemblance between his servant and the real African ambassador. He states: Vous avez chacun les mêmes traits Les plus fins confondraient vos portraits. (Boursault, Le Mort vivant, 1.7.317–​8) (You have the exact same features, and even the most discerning observers would confound your portraits.)

Similarly, the roupille that is part of Guzman’s African disguise –​a ‘cassocke’ in early modern English (Cotgrave 1611) –​referred at the time, and as early as 1625, to ‘a coat that Spaniards would wrap around themselves to sleep at night’, derived from the Spanish word ropilla (Littré 1872). If we are to take this stage direction seriously, Gusman’s African costume was likely to be read as Spanish by a Parisian audience. Costume marks the slippage between Africanness and Spanishness in Le Mort vivant. In the context of the recent marriage of the King of France and a Habsburg princess –​a replica of Louis XIII’s marriage to Anne of Austria  –​this slippage between Spanishness and Africanness had implications for the racial purity of the French royal blood, and, synecdochically, for French blood itself. Indeed, the hybridisation of royal French blood with Africanised Spanish blood correlated with the ongoing hybridisation of French blood with African blood in the Caribbean in the 1660s, and both processes resonate in Boursault’s play. The tension that exists between what Boursault’s play says and what it does evidences a deeply conflicted relation to racial hybridity that was pervasive in 1660s France. Conclusion Later African ambassador plays seem much less conflicted than Boursault’s Le Mort vivant on the notion of racial hybridity. When he turned his ‘African ambassador’ into a Turk in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, Molière dropped blackface altogether, and Bel-​Isle followed Molière’s lead in Le Mariage de la reine de Monomotapa. The latter play is a pastiche that weaves elements of Tartuffe into a simplified version of Le Bourgeois gentilhomme; perceiving the continuity between the African ambassador in blackface and Molière’s Turkish ambassadors, Bel-​Isle re-​Africanised the character of the ambassador, making

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him, simultaneously, a sultan wearing a large Ottoman turban, and the ruler of the early modern African kingdom of Monomotapa. The metatheatrical allusions to makeup that systematically accompany blackface on the early modern stage in Europe are nowhere to be found in the last two plays of this corpus. Our African ambassador was whitewashed, and this whitewashing contributed to the general disappearance of blackface from the French stage in the late 1670s. In the late African ambassador plays, not only are unreasonable fathers ferociously mocked –​if not beaten on stage –​for letting Muslim strangers into their households; the blackness of the original African ambassador itself is erased. Not only do the lovers constantly remind the audience that their racial difference is purely performative, a mere costume that they will take off eventually, in order to make their interracial marriage more palatable; the racial costume that they use no longer evokes black Africa but the Ottoman East.8 This increasing reluctance to stage interracial marriages between blacks and whites is indicative of a gradual but effective hardening of racial thinking in late seventeenth-​century public opinion, both reflected in and influenced by the stage. Notes 1 My deep gratitude goes to the editors of this volume, M. A. Katritzky and Pavel Drábek, for their precious suggestions and comments; this chapter has been enriched in many ways by their intellectual generosity. Unless otherwise specified, all translations from French into English are mine. 2 I am using the term coined by Louise G.  Clubb (1986). This concept has been central to the work of the TWB research collaborative for the past fifteen years, and it is thoroughly defined and discussed by Robert Henke and Eric Nicholson (2008, 2014). 3 For thorough reviews of the history of blackface, see Chalaye (1998), Vaughan (2005) and Hornback (2018). 4 See Goulbourne (2003), who reads L’Ambassadeur d’Affrique as a rewriting of Le Mort vivant; and Irvine (2004), who also connects the four plays. 5 For more comprehensive studies of blackface plays in the Spanish drama of the Siglo de Oro, see Fra-​Molinero (1995) and Beusterien (2006). 6 These are not the only cases where the taste of foreign queen consorts influenced the circulation of racial representations across European borders (Ndiaye 2016). For more examples of transnational queen consorts’ cultural influence at large, see Britland (2006), Gough (2005) and Cole (Chapter 10 in this volume). 7 Among the most representative works in this tradition, we find Le ballet du naufrage heureux by Claude de l’Estoile (1626), Grand bal de la douairière de Billebahaut by René Bordier (1626), and Le ballet de la marine by Colletet (1635). 8 For a thorough account of the way many French concerns with colour-​based slavery and with French Atlantic colonies were transferred onto the image of the oriental East, see Dobie (2010).

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Part II

North

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5 Migration and drama: Amsterdam 1617 Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

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Migration hub The intense migration into seventeenth-​century Amsterdam is well known ( Janssen 2017; Bredero 2017: 64–​6).1 At the same time the city became the focus for the accelerated commercial activity that defined the Dutch Republic (properly the Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Provinciën, or Republic of the Seven United Provinces), even if the other nearby cities in the Province of Holland were also important places for this kind of experience: Rotterdam, Leiden, Haarlem, Delft. In 1600, 40 per cent of Amsterdam’s inhabitants were foreign born; the figure was 55 per cent in Leiden and Haarlem. There was a preponderance of skilled artisans and well-​connected entrepreneurs that made a huge difference to the Republic’s economy. To outsiders, the Dutch cities looked like they were contradictions in terms, and literally topsy-​turvy places: land made out of water, where all the citizens were immigrants, and a ‘native’ was seemingly very hard to find.2 It was the quintessential perceived environment for the unclean urbs, as opposed to the ‘purity’ or singularity of country or court. Several major Dutch writers of the period, including Daniel Heinsius and Joost van den Vondel, were migrants or from migrant families, having usually moved from the southern Netherlands, especially Antwerp, into the north. To have been an exile was an elite marker. Geert H. Janssen writes: The arrival of thousands of newcomers generated the construction of new patriotic narratives and cultural codes in Dutch society. The experience of civil war and forced migration during the Dutch revolt had already fostered the development of a national discourse that framed religious exile as a heroic experience. In the seventeenth century, the accommodation of persecuted minorities could therefore be presented as something typically ‘Dutch’. It followed that diaspora identities and signs of transnational religious solidarity developed into markers of social respectability and tools of cultural integration. The notion of a ‘republic of the refugees’ had profound international implications, too, because it shaped and justified Dutch interventions abroad. ( Janssen 2017: 233)

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Religious toleration on the one hand, and ‘booming trading businesses and relatively high wages’ ( Janssen 2017: 244) on the other were attractive draws, and were often combined incentives in the minds of migrants. The experience of Protestants encountering other Protestants in exile in the Netherlands is thought to have helped reformed creeds cohere, especially Calvinism, but also other versions of Protestantism. They came to understand themselves as like the biblical Israelites exiled in Egypt, but then returning home to the land of Canaan. Returned exiles played a prominent role in the formation of Protestant community, and the most influential political theory of the Dutch Republic, that of the De La Court brothers, themselves descendants of migrants from Ypres, explicitly asserts that migrants aided economic growth ( Janssen 2017: 246). Of the two great philosophers of the period associated with the Dutch Republic, one, Descartes, was an immigrant and the other, Spinoza, was from an immigrant Jewish family. In consequence I argue that Dutch literature overturns the customary resistance to migration in European cultural assumptions, often reflected in literature as hostile stereotypes of foreigners, not least in English texts. Migration in one region must be set against the background of the greater context of the purgation of communities that marked early modern Europe: the expulsion, execution, extermination or forced conversion of Muslims, Jews and Christian heretics in Spain and elsewhere in southern Europe; the great phenomenon of witch belief and trials in this period in many parts of the continent (Terpstra 2015). Stereotypes of the hated Other marked popular literature in early modern Europe, and also elite literature, resulting in deeply ingrained prejudice as an assumption. Enforced exile and migration were very much a part of this world, and marked the experience of major, elite authors as well as the most humble servants and labourers (Terpstra 2015:  ch. 3). Once the residents of the seven Dutch provinces that would make up the Republic had indeed freed themselves from their Spanish overlords, emergent or reinvigorated Dutch culture worked against this pattern of cultural exclusion, and in no city was this more true than in Amsterdam. The exceptionally diversified nature of the Dutch Republic was indeed often a lightning rod for the prejudiced expression we associate with the age of persecution outside of the Netherlands:  English ‘Hollandophobia’ was a way of registering economic competition with the Dutch, and by reflection was a measure of English identity formation, even as these stereotypes of the Dutch used palpable elements of earlier anti-​Spanish tropes (Nocentelli 2014; Pincus 1995: pts. I–​II). Yet the function of this kind of representation must be set aside the longstanding English military presence in the Netherlands, and the older and very integrated world of mercantile connection, with English and Dutch communities living in each other’s territory. What better literary evidence is there of this than a rederijkers morality play about the Earl of Essex, his career and his eventual revolt, written and performed in a Zeeland village, the region where English troops were most present (Hüsken 2001)?

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Migration, the perception of migration, negatively or positively, and economic integration went hand in hand.

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Migration seen through transnational literary adaptation It is well known that the literature of the Dutch Republic, especially drama, formed itself in considerable part in reaction to and even through that of its former Spanish rulers. Lazarillo de Tormes (1554), usually claimed to be one of the first picaresque novels, was the model and source for one of the most popular comedies on the Dutch stage in the seventeenth century, Gerbrand Adriaenszoon Bredero’s Spaanse Brabander (1617).3 Bredero (1585–​1618) was the son of a successful Amsterdam craftsman-​ businessman:  a shoemaker who became a militia captain, and a tax and art collector. The young Bredero grew up in houses on the Nes and the Oudezijdsvoorburgwal, in the heart of the old city (see Figure  5). Trained as a painter, he became a recognised and important playwright from 1611,

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2 5

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Figure  5  Dirck Cornelisse Swart, ‘Amstelredam anno 1623’ (map of Amsterdam). 1. Dam Square. 2. Eglantine rederijkerskamer. 3. Nes 41 (Bredero’s birthplace). 4. Netherlands Academy. 5. Oudezijds Voorburgwal 244 (Bredero youth residence; likely place of death). Collectie Atlas Dreesmann, Stadarchief, Amsterdam. Reproduced by permission.

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producing tragicomedies, farces and comedies, in addition to highly respected songs. He was a poet, songwriter and dramatist of the vernacular, intimately knowledgeable of the street life in Amsterdam. He knew neither Latin nor Greek, although he certainly exploited the French that he had been taught at school. He became associated with the leading playwrights P. C. Hooft and Samuel Coster, and from 1616 the famous, politically embattled lawyer Hugo Grotius.4 In this chapter I develop recent scholarship in order to make the case that Bredero is the quintessential early modern migration poet-​playwright, a theme whose centrality has only recently emerged in critical commentary. To do so I explore information the text of Spaanse Brabander gives us about the roots of the characters and the different parts of the city it names: this takes us out of Amsterdam to a number of places in the Netherlands, Northwest Europe and further afield, even as the new economic supremacy of Amsterdam is affirmed and explored. I spend much less time with Bredero’s language and his dramaturgy, both the subject of much attention in a long tradition of important scholarship. Since even the most famous Dutch Golden Age plays are still scarcely known in the English-​speaking world, I also describe basic details of sources, characters, plot and action where they are relevant to the migration theme. The Spanish story of the beggar boy and his tribulations was published first in 1554, went through many editions and was translated into several languages.5 There were four Dutch translation editions, and it was clear by that of 1609, with its claim on the title page to reveal the ‘schalckheyt’ (roguery) of the Spanish, and its explicitly anti-​Spanish printed marginalia, including unfavourable comparison with the Dutch, that ridicule of the Spanish was the intended response among readers. To be a Spaniard was to be a rogue ([Hurtado de Mendoza] 1609: 54). Lazarillo was in any case banned in Spain for its anti-​clerical critique, and placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum until c­hapters  4 and 5 (concerning the Pardoner and the Friar) and other passages were excised; in 1573 Philip II permitted this expurgated version to circulate. As one commentator says, the book is ‘subversive, if not blatantly heretical’ (Samson 2013: 121; see also Peterson 2014). The text has been controversially attributed to Diego Hurtado de Mendoza y Pacheco (1503–​75), a high-​born diplomat, poet and historian; a case that has recently found supporting evidence (Agulló y Cobo 2011). The narrative is a tale of survival against all the odds, even as the structures of authority in early modern Spain are exposed. Like the biblical Lazarus, Lazarillo is always returning from the dead. But what is resurrected? The text voids all positive ethical values, and blasphemously justifies theft, by twisting the sense of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:10). The point is brought home throughout the text, even in its typography:

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The tag line on the title page ‘acuerdo, olvido’ [I remember, I forget], echoes the image in the prologue of ‘la sepulture del olvido’ [the oblivion of the tomb], from which the narrator hopes his publication will rescue ‘cosas tan señaladas’ [things of such note]. (Samson 2013: 128)

The text of Lazarillo deals in stereotypes, and is an indictment of a system of hierarchy in which no change or justice is offered. Its appeal and force may very well lie in the fact that it was not settled as a generic entity when first published, the picaresque being not yet confidently established. Bredero’s adaptation of Lazarillo came nearly at the end of his career: he died young and unexpectedly in 1618, at the age of thirty-​three. The Spaanse Brabander makes much more of one of Lazarillo’s masters, the impecunious gentleman or hidalgo, who turns out to be as poor as Lazarillo himself, than is the case in the original prose fiction. Bredero’s character of Jerolimo is a once rich but fallen merchant of Hoboken, near Antwerp, who, just before the war with Spain, has relocated to the north and Amsterdam, as would many Protestants from the south after the Dutch Revolt and the following Eighty Years’ War with Spain began in 1568. But relocation is common to many characters in the play. Even the prostitutes hilariously consider trying to reconcile the different parts of Christianity that have brought so many different people to the city; they parody the idea of a universal Catholicism, in a move that they consider would be good for their trade. Jerolimo is a faithful Roman Catholic, and seeks to go to mass with nuns or Franciscans: we see a version of the city a few years before the Protestant Reformation was adopted in 1580. The play looks back in time from a position in 1617, towards the end of the twelve-​year truce between the United Provinces and Spain, a position of Protestant eminence, if not total victory, and from the stance of a newly created emergent nation-​state, to the pre-​reformed world and Spanish governance that formerly prevailed in the Netherlands. Like a good neo-​Spaniard, which is how the play presents people from the province of Brabant, Jerolimo says he has left Antwerp on a point of honour in a dispute with a fellow gentleman. That is only what he says: the truth is he is bankrupt and lives on credit in Amsterdam because he merely looks substantial. He epitomises the play’s motto, which was visible in performances on a placard: ‘Want ofmen schoon de liens (ghelayck hier staat) al siet, | Men ken daarom haar hert noch qualiteyten niet’ (41–​2; To see a man’s facade (as here we read) | Is not to gauge his heart). Bredero’s prologue also suggests that the play will be concerned with the quintessence of Amsterdam, if not also Holland: Tis Amsterdams daar gaatet veur. Het Nederlantsche doffe kruydt Gheeft voor ditmaal niet soeters uyt Als ghy en siet. (‘G. A. Brederode tot den leser’, 68–​71)

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’Tis Amsterdam’s own bud, A simple Netherlandish herb, Which gives out no more sweetness Than is looked for. (‘G. A. Bredero to the Reader’)

As events develop in the play, we learn how complicatedly diverse and extra-​ Amsterdam, extra-​Holland this Amsterdam identity is: it is many places in one place. The play also associates migration with the big historical transformation of the Netherlands across the passage of some forty-​five to fifty years, so that the audience also have a sense of time ‘migrating’. Having met and recruited Robbeknol, Bredero’s Lazarillo figure, Jerolimo tries to impress the prostitutes while forestalling on spending money he does not have. Robbeknol begs food for both of them, and in the third act discovers that Jerolimo’s purse is entirely empty. A  city proclamation bans begging, but Robbeknol wins alms by reading the Psalms. Next, finding some money by chance, Jerolimo is able to fund dinner, during which his creditors arrive; he promises to pay his debts but finally flees the city at speed. The creditors discover to their intense consternation that they have lost everything they loaned him: Jerolimo has borrowed all and spent it; nothing is coming back. Throughout the five acts we meet other Amsterdam citizens –​boys, old men, prostitutes –​who describe their origins, activities and feelings. While the play has the five-​act structure of a Roman comedy, of which Bredero had considerable knowledge by 1617, the city scenes are made up of a sequence of brief comic interactions, borrowing from the klucht (farce) tradition with which Bredero began his theatrical career (Stipriaan 1997; Bredero 1999: 386). In this way the nature of the city as migration capital, where mercantile capitalism derives fundamentally from migration, is explained. In reality, migrants from the south from the 1580s onwards may have been welcome for their skills in crafts and business, but they were sometimes resented and excluded from positions in local government, while fervent Calvinists from the south also exerted uncomfortable pressure in northern communities, where a more tolerant and broader idea of Reformation was preferred. The Dutch Republic was becoming a truly demographically diverse place, inclusive of several diasporas. Some misgiving about this situation in the population seems to have been inevitable despite its prevalence and inclusiveness: if you think you are a real native, you are deluding yourself. In the play’s second scene, we witness the preparations for the funeral of ‘Ariaan the Pint’ (Ariaan ien Pijntje), well liked, but a foreigner, a problem for at least one of the characters. Although Jerolimo is a Roman Catholic and a pre-​ revolt figure, as a Brabanter, certain regional assumptions would also have stuck to his character as experienced on the Amsterdam stage in 1617. There is therefore a curious sense of anachronism, in that the stage of Bredero’s play

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manages to be Amsterdam both before and after the revolt, before and after the Reformation. The Spaanse Brabander embodies a very detailed reconstruction of later sixteenth-​century, pre-​Reformation Amsterdam, but we should not forget Bredero’s faithful parallel to the original Lazarillo’s account of how he came into the world in the early part of the narrative. Thus Lazarillo’s enormous needy hunger remains in Bredero’s play (and is common to both Robbeknol and Jerolimo). Crucially, in the play, Robbeknol discovers that his worst fear, just like Lazarillo’s, is that he has to feed his master rather than be fed by him. The middle of the play further honours Lazarillo de Tormes in this way with the painful scene in which Robbeknol realises that Jerolimo is disguising how penniless he really is, and how homesick he feels: Wy spreken niet een woort, zoo seer zijn wy bedroeft, Niemant weet vande noot, dan diese treurich proeft. (Bredero, Spaanse Brabander, 1232–​3) (We never speak a word, so harshly we’re beset. No one knows such need until he’s suffered it.)

It is very affecting stuff. Robbeknol has begged food, and, observing that hunger is the best sauce, watches his master gnaw a cow’s hoof. This is some abasement, especially after the previous praise of Brabantine lordliness:  ‘hy het niet een scherf om zijn neers mee te klouwen’ (955; He who hasn’t yet a musselshell to scrape his arse). The linguistically stylish wallet search at the start of Act 3 climaxes in an exclamation reminiscent of Lear’s five nothings, as in no thing to eat at all: ‘Dits niet, niet, niet, niet, niet, niet, niet, nichil is hier meest’ (line 982; Nothing here, no, no, no, no, no, no – many nothings). It is pitiful, and with Robbeknol expressing common pity for Jerolimo, are we not seeing a version of the trauma of the migrant –​sheer hunger on the road? Here, it is an amplification and intensification of the original prose fiction, but now more pictorial, with key features of the enargeia that Bredero brought to Lazarillo with his colourful speeches (Lindeman 1986). This is also a matter that crucially involves racial difference in Spain. Robbeknol’s early autobiography includes the account of the liaison between his mother and the Moor (not his father, who was her previous partner); clearly replicating the situation with Lazarillo. But in the play, mother and Moor meet in Amsterdam, and it is also significant that Robbeknol’s mother and father come from further north –​Bolswerd in Frisia and Alkmaar respectively. What does this mixed-​race union mean? Robbeknol says he came to regard the Moor as more angel than man because he was a source of food (all of it filched, we soon learn). In the Spanish prose fiction this becomes a painful moment of interracial awareness, as Lazarillo confronts the alterity of

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his dark-​skinned half-​brother, which is followed by the story of the thieving Moor’s bitter punishment for theft. It is the same in Bredero’s play: the Moor is tortured, his mother chastised, banned from the Moor’s company, shortly before she willingly enters the poorhouse to save her reputation. This adaptation of the source, a literary transaction between Spanish and Dutch letters, implicitly links migration to hunger and its associated deprivations. Next, we learn from Jerolimo of the alleged cultural superiority of the Brabanters, to which Robbeknol voices deep disapproval: a way of living and being that is far, far too rich and overly complex, something to laugh at in 1617, after Amsterdam’s trading superiority over Antwerp had been achieved. But Jerolimo himself is of mixed origins since he has Spanish blood: we learn that his mother had an adulterous affair with a Spanish nobleman. Difference is thus buried deep in the text and widespread among the characters in the play: the elderly verger Floris Harmensz is described as no ‘Harlinger-​man’.6 Floris arrived with nothing but his clothes from Drenthe and Twent (line 1014), two regions each using their own dialectal variation of Low Saxon, not Dutch. He has been expelled for some kind of sex crime committed in Ditmars (Dithmarschen), to the northeast of Friesland, in what is now the German province of Schleswig-​Holstein, but from the fifteenth century until 1559 was an independent peasants’ republic within the Holy Roman Empire, with inferior trading status within the Hanseatic League. Towards the end of the play, Jerolimo wants it to be made known that he has fled to Culemborg or Vianen: free cities in the middle of the Republic (close to the River Lek, a part of the Rhine system with a huge flood plain), that functioned as refuges for criminals and bankrupt people. Despite the contempt of the Dutch, whether from The Hague or Zeeland, for the Amsterdammers in general, they respected their wealth and gladly married into their families, irrespective of virtue. The city as Bredero describes it flattens morality and levels law as it absorbs foreigners:  German rapists working on the Haarlemmerdijk are said to bribe their way to immunity, whereas the Haarlem executioner, also a rapist, was partially blinded and whipped on a wheel in punishment. Monetary gain wins over moral and distributive justice. The sum total of lived experience that follows is a calculus of economic exploitation and cheating, the way of the city and a cumulative apocalypse. The play offers in its action and speeches numerous Dutch city life portraits, each of which might be given its own canvas. They build here into a tremendous rhythm of gain by deprivation: Joost Dircksz is van daagh na Vlaand’ren ghevaren, En zijn buyr-​vryer Klaas die sal zijn Wijf bewaren, En sluyten het voorhuys te deghen na sijn sin, So komter niemandt vreemts by nacht of onty in.

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O ‘tis een veersient man, hy weet dat wel van buyten, Datter niemandt in en mach als Klaas de Poort wil sluyten. Och de voorsichticheyt is wel een gróóte deucht, Sulcken wijsheydt was hy al in syn jonghe jeucht. Warenar het syn pleyt en ‘tgroote recht verlooren. En met Gran Marchand daer staetet qualijck gheschoren. En Hillebrant Droochnap die het een sulvere schaal Van dese nacht versoent an Elsgen en Pruys-​aal. Dorst’ghe Dirckje die wil sijn ghelt niet verspeulen, Maar wel verquans’len hier aan een malle meulen. Dat kleyne Mannetgen dat op d’execusy lóópt, En de plockjes haalt op d’Erf-​goet dat men verkóópt, Bleef gister-​avont an een gróót huys hanghen. En Jan de Pypestelder is vande Ratel-​wacht ghevanghen, En Harmen de raser is van kranck-​hooft ghequest. En ons aller Hans Jongh is verlooft an een ouwe Best. En Broer Karnelis is getrout an een Waterlantse Tuytmeyt, Maer sy wil hem niet, nu sy hoort dat hy sijn ayeren uyt-​leyt. (1118–​39) ( Joost Dirksz left today to sail for Flanders, And left his brother Klaas to protect his wife. He shuts up the house just as he pleases, So that no stranger will enter in by night. Oh, Joost’s a far-​sighted man, he’d have you know: He’d have none but Klaas gain entry to the portal. Oh, prudence is a virtue. Such wisdom Joost had in early youth – And Truefool has lost his case in court. And the great merchant is saddled now with care, And Hillebrant Droochnap has kissed away Her silver plate to Elsgen and Prussian Al. Thirsty Dirky, he’d never waste his money –​ But now some sharpie’s bilked him of it all. That little man who goes to all the sheriff ’s sales, To bid the prizes up at all the auctions there? Last night they left him hanging with last bid on a mansion. And the night watch finally laid their hands on Jan the Brawler; And madman Harmen has escaped the hospital; And our own Hans Jong is about to wed, And Brother Karnelis has wed a little thing from Zeeland, But she hates him now she’s heard he’s laid some eggs away from home.)

The city government’s proclamation in Act 3 promises to solve the stress of migrants on the conventional charity systems, but plainly contradicts the fact that most are consuming foreign commodities like beer, and this further limits the profitability of the city’s own manufacturers and hence its

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prosperity. Bredero points to a kind of early modern neoliberal economics, with his exposure of the inadequate agreement of economic reality with conventional moral idealism. The play offers further pictures of human levelling conditions, such as the reworking of absolutely every piece of material acquired by Gierighe Geeraart (Geeraart Pennypinch) for profit. This may have seemed distinctive of Amsterdam to Bredero, but is not unusual at all in the early modern world (see, e.g. Camporesi 1988: chs. 11–​12). Yet death is also a leveller and there is no respect for the gross bodies of the citizens: the action takes place during a plague visitation. There is no adjustment of the moral order as there is in a Shakespeare comedy, nor a threat from excessive exchange to the system of justice and order, as there is in a Ben Jonson play, but instead a demonstration that the order is as it is because that is how the movement of people and commodities, how migration, has made the life of Amsterdam unfold. The conclusion that Bredero’s subtle comedy reaches is that cities are internationally porous. As Ton Hoenselaars (1991) indicates in an important and prescient article, England, among other nations, is also in the play in this context: it is the outer land across the North Sea to which a prodigious eel might stretch (an image itself of a trading conduit). We are told that England is a place with a language made up of loan words, it has dappled rabbits (emblematic of its mixed nature), fine table-​knives and excellent beer. Is Amsterdam truly any different from London or Norwich? The play presents radically shifting residency as very much a part of the makeup of the energy of the city, as if its tentacles of communication reached everywhere to places of equal or even greater hybridised economic energy, drawing people from all directions (Hoenselaars 1991). In Bredero, foreigners and natives are guilty of similar crimes, and are inter-​involved in the same networks of exchange, good or bad, for better or worse. Since the play takes place just before the creation of the Dutch Republic, it is also the case that a foreigner, the King of Spain, claims to be in charge of the city, as he most certainly was not in 1617. Robbeknol’s father was convicted of theft and forced to leave Amsterdam, so he joined up with the Spanish forces. Here Bredero adds complication, dissolving the certainties that the English, French and Dutch translations of Lazarillo de Tormes wished to sustain. Robbeknol lies about his origins, claiming to come from Emden, and provoking a piece of prejudice from Jerolimo that people from Emden are naturally lusty:  the moment is a ‘dramatization of the pitfalls of judgment and prejudice about the representatives of nations’ (Hoenselaars 1991: 119). Jerolimo suggests (rather incongruously) that Emden is associated with unbounded sexual energy: he says Robbeknol is ‘een Embder potschyter’ (67; One of Emden’s potshooters), a ‘komische term voor neuken’ (comic term for fucking), akin to saying ‘they’re all sex-​mad there’. The comment is wildly off

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the mark. Emden was thought to be cold, marshy, uncomfortable and marginal (Pettegree 1992: 26–​33). The city-​port was known at the time for its role in the Protestant Reformation, and the presence there of the Polish nobleman and pastor Johannes à Lasco ( Jan Łaski) in the 1540s had a sizeable impact on the Reformation in the Netherlands. By 1617, Emden was a satellite state of the Dutch Republic, and its trade, which had greatly increased during the Dutch Revolt period, declined after the 1609 truce between the Republic and Spain. The city had become an imperial free port after its revolt against its aristocratic rulers in 1595, but eventually, sustaining this independence proved impossible without Dutch help. According to Grootes, Robbeknol names Emden just to say he is from somewhere specific, and indeed he appears to be connecting himself with nothing more than the Amsterdam hostel called ‘The Count of Emden’ from which his mother lets rooms (Bredero 1999: 239 n.  66). We might wonder whether Jerolimo’s statement is in fact meant to be regarded as a Roman Catholic view of Protestant heresy, that it was driven by misplaced sexual energies. Undoubtedly, scepticism of any innate qualities attached to place is at work here, underlined by inappropriate or inaccurate comments that are comically ironic. Jerolimo’s bizarrely inaccurate remark leads us to think sceptically of any such judgement about any place and anyone from any place, a reductio ad absurdum: we are all as likely to be as lusty as the Emdeners are claimed to be, or not. The idea is to realise sympathy in the audience and hence an understanding of the need for charity: a very Erasmian gesture. Calling an inn in Amsterdam the ‘Count of Emden’ is in this context very pointed too. In the 1590s, three Counts of Emden (properly Counts of East Frisia) had ruled; but the popular John had died in 1591, his brother Edzard II was forced out of the city in 1595, and his son Enno III, having failed to win the city in 1602, had to accept and pay for a Dutch garrison there. By a further treaty in 1611, Enno III renounced all claims to the city and agreed to a further Dutch garrison at Leerort. Going further back, his grandfather, Enno II, lost territory by declining arranged marriages or through marriages, confiscated church property to finance wars, and allowed rebelling nobility to devastate East Frisia, before dying in Emden in 1540 (Lamschus 1984). To give an inn such a name is to raise the memory of a shocking legacy of seigneurial violence and incompetence, from which the reformed and migrant-​ packed city-​port strove to free itself –​with Dutch help. Even though the play presents the old Amsterdam of the 1570s at the time of the Dutch revolt (as we have seen Amsterdam did not declare for the new Protestant state until 1580), thirty-​seven years before its date of composition, there are already hints of the movement of population that the coming discord will bring: ‘De een wil ons hier, en d’ander daer op ’t lijf ’ (line 1008; One would have us here, the other wants us there). Jerolimo goes to

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Mass at two different convent churches in the city, the first, which had certainly disappeared by 1617, on the Kloveniersburgwal. Good Brabanters, says Jerolimo, talk about trade, such as that of the ‘Guyneesche kompangie’, the Africa Company. Like the VOC (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or Dutch East India Company), founded in 1602, this is an anachronistic reference to the rise of Dutch prominence in the West African Gold Coast trade from the 1590s, mostly in gold and ivory at this stage, through several Guinea companies formed in these years both in Amsterdam and in Zeeland, essentially serving as consortia of merchants; in 1599 eight of these companies created a short-​lived cartel to try to manage the competition (Israel 1990, 60–​2).7 Anachronism is allowed to feed the interest of the audience, and through this misprision we acknowledge the rise of Amsterdam at the expense of Antwerp. In other words, anachronism is a means of realising in theatre not merely the instance but also the consequences of migration. Meanwhile, all around and onstage disgusting, foul-​smelling liquids, the medium of all transactions, are invoked. The shit is literally flying, with the tale of Jan Velde’s father and the wedding guests falling into tubs of excrement (lines 431–​49), but then the scene changes to reveal, in the character of the prostitute Tryn Jans, an allegory of the investment habits that made Amsterdam so rich. When the city bell-​ringer enters the scene, and suddenly Amsterdam is quite literally and spatially articulated on the stage, then we can be sure that Spanish prose fiction has been exceeded by theatre. Geeraart Pennypinch is the typical resourceful Amsterdammer:  everything he has or makes, including human waste, he sells as a commodity. He is old, and carries memories of a generation of fun-​seeking, mischievous young men having once sowed their wild oats, but now atrophied with old age, unrecognisable to those who have not seen them in the intervening years. This is nostalgia, and very probably misleadingly so.8 Antwerp is the lost city, but Amsterdam has its own slime, and in a migrant context all people come from slime. Slime is mucky but fertile:  it creates the perfect mercantile ur-​substance. At any rate, Jerolimo’s favourite Antwerp street is Lepelstraat, the red light district. Amsterdam also has a poor workhouse, something that Robbeknol is not at all sure about; his mother will go to the ‘armenhuis’ (poorhouse), the Sint-​Pietersgasthuis in the centre of Old Amsterdam, on the Nes, the street where Bredero first lived (where the hospital was one of five former convents in the street). The influx of ‘foreigners’ has undermined the city’s prevailing customs of exchange. As we have seen, the preferential treatment of foreigners in the labour market is noted with some resentment more than once: Hy helpt so mennigen kromtong van luycker-​walen en van goet, ‘t Is beter (alsmen kan) dat ment immers an Hollanders doet. […] De knoeten brengen thuys, om dubbelt loon, op Burgers ceelen. (1896–​7,  2039)

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(But he’s helped so many of these outlanders get work –​ ’Twould be better if Hollanders got hired. … The foreigners get double wage at other folk’s expense.)

The good word of merchants is now worthless, says Jan: you have to have a deal written down. Yet this accusation expressed among three Amsterdam ‘merchants’ leads to further unpleasant critical reflection on what they themselves did: drinking and eating to excess, wife-​beating, pimping (even among the religious orders), laundering bankruptcies. The consequences? Illegitimate children, venereal disease, rape, vandalism, abusive language, a universe of cheating. Too much restriction, we learn later, without immigration, and there will be incest, as the encounter between Lysbert and Jacob Hagel seems to suggest (‘En ’t aar en kan hy niet lochenen, het is zijn vleysselijcke breur’, line 1736; Prol’s his brother in the flesh –​no lies can alter that). The city council’s proclamation on Dam Square brings the governance of the city into the heart of the play: vagrancy and begging by those coming into the city from outside is banned, and the city’s poor are to be gathered up and made productive inside the hospitals. The city might seem surpassingly prosperous, but its clean streets are managed. The foreigners always do the dirty work, like being the common hangman (‘Al staat hy na ’tBeulschop, hy doetet met God en met eeren’, line 1290; What though he wants to be a hangman? He’d serve his God), and they are more than welcome to handle the hard labour of dyke repair. The control of the city is thus uneasy, and apparently dependent upon its recent immigrants. If the city proclamation is not resoundingly sent up, the appearance of the bribable city notary is certainly a mockery: symbolised by his large account book, a pantomime-​prop-​sized ‘hyper-​object’ for the play (lines 1945–​2001; Morton 2013: pt. 1). A bankrupt renter from Antwerp is of far less importance to Bredero’s Sheriff than currency counterfeiters and Protestants. Perfect languages and theatrical revolution Jerolimo’s gestures are Spanish, but his speech evidently has many French elements in it, and the humour turns on that. This reflects hostility to French courtly elements as a Dutch national identity asserted itself, while the princely court in The Hague, the political opposite of Amsterdam, used French. The prominence of Holland in the Republic’s polity did mean that un-​French Dutch was preferred, and this was the direction of language reform at the time. Bredero plays up the bold and earthy speech of the Amsterdammers, even as he ridicules Jerolimo’s French. To this extent the play confirms regional language usage, but Bredero also simultaneously revealed his literary debt to the French Pléiade, in his use of the Alexandrine (some of his earlier plays are also indebted to French plays), so the actuality of the matter on the place of literary

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construction is ambivalent. Jerolimo holds out for the mixed language of the southern Netherlands, fusing Flemish, French, Italian and English, while Robbeknol spurns this in favour of a purified and simple Holland dialect. There is an association with notions of ideal languages, angelic languages even, coming from this mixture. Jerolimo refers to competitions of rederijkers, the associations that sought to complete civic life with excellent poetic and theatrical performances, and the location of theatre in the Low Countries before 1617. Here French was also preferred, especially in the southern Netherlands chambers, some of which had relocated to the north, such as the White Lavender rederijkerskamer that had migrated from Antwerp to Amsterdam. The Spaanse Brabander was the first Bredero play produced at Samuel Coster’s Netherlands Academy, the first modern theatre in the Netherlands (located further out on the Kaizersgracht, in the newly developed grachtengordel, towards the southwestern edge of the city), and a deliberate departure from the rederijkerskamers (see Figure 5). Bredero’s play was a final escape from the rederijkerskamers, a critical rejection of their ways by satirically evoking them, and the first of a new kind of comedy, in which the considerable historical transformation of migration, and commercial displacement and development that had taken place, is dynamically embodied in the language and action of the play: its very artistic vision. To that extent, it was also a fitting theatrical transformation of anti-​romance prose fiction. It is also notable that Jerolimo thinks of Spaniards as godlike creatures: ‘Like lesser kings, gods visible on earth’, where the best environment is with ‘harmonieuse melodive vogle sangh’ (33; melodious, warbling birds). One thinks of the indigenous South American paintings of angels as Spanish noblemen with guns –​and wings (Fane 1996: 39–​40). Not Edenic then or angelic in reality, but an index of the Brabanter’s pride. Jerolimo is unaware of the irony in his description of the canal and river water that surrounds and runs through his beloved Antwerp: ‘In abondancy van sleyck, in schoonheyt van landouwen’ (7; Such abundance of slime, and comely fields). The Edenic theme returns with the suggestion that the Brabant dialect is a master language, compassing French, Spanish, Italian and even English. Is this a parody of Johannes Goropius Becanus’ ( Jan Gerartsen, 1519–​72) claims for the Brabant, Antwerp version of Dutch as the original language spoken in Paradise (Becanus 2014)? As the plot strands inter-​involve, the prostitute Tryn Jans cannot understand the elegant language in which Jerolimo addresses her: it is entirely heroic. Floris Kackedoris, the mad schoolmaster, thinks he is in Paradise in Van Dieman’s garden. By contrast, and rather surprisingly, Robbeknol can read from the Bible –​seen by some as a testimony to Amsterdam literacy levels, and possibly a hint at Protestantism. Bredero’s editor E. K. Grootes suggests that the playwright follows the moralist H. L. Spiegel, who regarded English as a ‘schuimtaal’: a ‘frothy’ language made up of

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even more loan words than Dutch (Bredero 1999: 245). When pronounced, it sounds close to ‘scumtaal’, and so to an English ear the point is made. In fact it is an image precisely reversed in Andrew Marvell’s ‘The Character of Holland’ (1653, rev. 1665), where Dutch territory is described as so much scum washed up from the British seashore, ‘th’off scouring of the British sand’ (line 2). Robbeknol speaks for a kind of Dutch linguistic purity, longing for the loan words to be ‘winnowed’ out. He has more proverbial language than most, and Holland-​proverbs are the foundation language of the new home or mother city; phrases, some idiomatic, at the level of the lowest common denominator of communication. Learn this here, the play suggests, and how to use it, and you can survive. Robbeknol associates florid rhetoric disparagingly, as Jerolimo does not, with the south Netherlands rederijkerskamers (for this tradition see Dixhoorn 2009; Ramakers 2017; and Lust-​hof 1596). Jerolimo refers to the contests of the rhetorical chambers, or ‘Retorijclaijck lantjuweel’ (line 208; Land’s Jewel Rhetorical) boasting the superiority of the Brabanters over the Hollanders; Robbeknol speaks up for the Flemish ones (for printed accounts of rederijkers competitions see Lust-​hof 1596; Const-​thoonende iuweel 1607; Schadt-​kiste 1621). In Jerolimo’s mind seems to be the juweel at Antwerp in 1561, in which no Holland chambers appeared (see Bredero 1999: 246). The impression is of a decidedly elegant, courtly civic ethos and practice, deployed in elite urban merchant circles: Maar sjases par Dio sante, wa plochtender ellegante Poëten te wesen: Item daar haddege Kastileyn, de Roovere, Gistellen, en Kolijn, En Jan Baptisten Houwaart, dat bayloy goeye meesters zijn: Dat waaren liens vol perfeccy, en van devine eloquency, Yghelijck woordeken datse aggeerde, of nomineerde, dat was een sentency. Het minste datse sproocken dat was een reffiereyn, en dat so exstruvagant Van uytspraack, trots een Oostersche Phar-​heer, of Luytersche Predikant. En bay hoor rondeelen en balladen (met licencie magh icket vry seggen) Daar mogen de Hollantse boere lieke-​dichters hoor broeck by leggen. (210–​18) (Jesu, par dio santo, what stately poets were there. Item: Kastileyn, de Roovere, Gistellen, Kolyn, and Jan Baptisten Houwaart –​masters, by the Lord above! Fellows of perféccion, deviné eloquencíe –​ Their every word was full of high senténce; Their every breath a refrain –​more lusciously extravagant Than East Friesian sermons, or even Lutheran. Their rondelets and ballades, may I say, would force Holland’s peasant-​poets to hide their pens for shame.)

This speech reveals Jerolimo to be a fool: East Frisian and Lutheran language was thought to be rough, but highly effective. Elegant it was not. If the Spaanse Brabander was an early comedy performed in the Netherlands Academy, it

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forcefully separates itself from the rederijkers tradition at this point. Jerolimo extensively praises the southern rederijkers for their eloquence, and names their prominent poets at length. In his view, the northerners are not really capable of chamber-​of-​rhetoric stuff. For Bredero and his audience this is a further joke. At the time of the Reformation in Amsterdam, in 1580, the chambers had become subject to the city government, who insisted that there be general admission of the public, and that a good portion of the profit, the takings at the door, went to the city poorhouses. We see in the middle of the play that Jerolimo’s praise for the rederijkers sits on a foundation of a far broader assumption of southern Netherlands linguistic purity and civilised superiority, bigotry even. It is outdated in the new context of the northern Republic, with its more severe and simple language. Bredero defended vernacular linguistic purity:  the pre-​eminence or even sole importance in the Netherlands of the Dutch language. A  painter by training, he was taught only some French, as we have seen, and did not learn Latin in middle age, like some other famous Dutch early modern writers such as Coornhert and Vondel ( Jansen 2017). Both the Waterlander (just north of Amsterdam on the west side of the Markermeer) and Amsterdam accents are strongly reflected in his non-​dramatic as well as dramatic works. He avoided the elevated language of the rederijkers and the Brabant dialect, as we have seen, deploying instead a clear, uncomplicated vernacular very much of the street, and unlike the more elevated vernacular that also appeared at this time, that of the revered and influential Latinist Daniel Heinsius (1616). To what extent did this situation accommodate or reveal an awareness of the migration issue? Linguistic purity and a single vernacular suggest a lack of openness to the different dialects and other languages that migrants bring to the city. In this respect, Bredero’s sensitivity to migrants from many different places implies that, with regard to language, he might be at odds with himself, although it seems too that he privileges a simple ‘authenticity’ of the north over the south. He was recording in drama the evolution of the Dutch Republic since its inception. Hence the sense that the rederijkers were out of date, worthy of ridicule and that some other kind of drama was needed. The year 1617 was during the truce between the United Provinces and Spain, and the rederijkerskamers’ landjuweelen that happened in this period involved a reunited region, but Bredero registered that times had changed. Brabantine eloquence was there to be mocked in the language of the simpler Holland dialects of the north, which provided the central linguistic substance of rederijkers plays. Perhaps, too, this embodied a reaction to the relocation of many south Netherlands rederijkerskamers in the towns of Holland:  that ornate eloquence was too close for comfort, as the Spaanse Brabander reveals. By contrast in his earlier short farce, Klucht van de Koe (1616?), Bredero had

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a simple farmer talk in the language of Cornelis van Ghistele, one of the sixteenth-​century rederijkers from Antwerp. Hollanders, we learn in Bredero’s play, do not know how to recognise social superiority, whereas Brabanters have the grace to be able to talk to royalty: Ons Brabant heeft de prys voorwaer van alle lien; Het volcxken is beleeft, en van een goet ingien. En eloquent van sproock, en gracioos in’t eeren, Manierlijck opghequeeckt als kinderen van Heeren. (848–​51) (Us Brabanters are an outstanding folk, We’re point polite, superior in understanding, Eloquent of speech, gracious in honouring the worthy, We’re all taught manners, quite like the children of a lord.)

Jerolimo appears as the polar opposite of a famous portrait of Willem the Silent, Prince of Orange, leader of the Dutch Revolt, set down by an English visitor, the poet, courtier and politician Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, in his Life of Sir Philip Sidney. Greville had met Willem in 1579 in his headquarters at Delft, and in a passage that remains famous in the Netherlands to this day, emphasises the simple, unassuming dress of the prince, his easy company with beer-​brewing and drinking burghers, and the way his civil hospitality inspired and edified his fellow Dutchmen. He had become the real northerner, whereas the Orange family came from Breda, which was in the south, next to the province of Brabant, right on the border with modern-​day Belgium, and just fifty kilometres from Antwerp. The universal plain dress of the Hollanders, without distinction, seems to make them like the inhabitants of More’s Utopia, which begins with complaint made of the current unequal order in a merchant’s garden in Antwerp. Robbeknol voices frustration at his master’s reliance upon the appearance of fine clothing.9 Some see Jerolimo as satirically representing the figure of the mercantile diplomat and playwright Theodoor Rodenburgh, a native of Antwerp, recently returned to Amsterdam after a stint representing the West Africa Company in Spain, famously arrogant and the successor to Bredero, Coster and Hooft in the Eglantine rederijkerskamer. Bredero sends up Amsterdam street language in the various ways in which it is manifested in the play, but it is also affirmed, a theatrical praise of different kinds of Dutch botheid (bluntness). Migration and miscegeny After migration comes hybridity:  interracial sex and mixed breeding. Robbeknol’s mother meets and makes out with the Moorish groom of the notorious Duke of Alva, the great persecutor of the Protestants, a low level

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mythologising of Hispanic world–​Netherlands interaction. Robbeknol says lusty women will go for anyone. More specifically:

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sy ging by de Moor legghen, En sy beproefden of de Moerjanen so saft zijn als de luy segghen: Maar de schellem die vil heur in as een naghel so hart, So datse van hem ontfing een moye jonghe swart. (97–​100) (She laid the moor, To prove were blackamoors so supple soft as people say, The rogue, he filled her hard as any nail –​ In fact, he filled her with a little black.)

The mixed child of this union sees, like his half-​brother Robbeknol, the devil in his Moorish father, so that Bredero repeats what happens in Lazarillo, and the instance becomes one of the moments when the play claims a moral insight. At the very least, the text confesses Spain’s multiethnic heritage. Is the devil also associated in the language with male sexuality? –​‘hier is heyntje pick’ (122; the Devil’s there). What do we know of Africans present in the Low Countries? The connections of the Low Countries with Spain, and then the rise of the Dutch Republic as a global trading power, meant in fact that Africans began to appear in the northwest corner of Europe faster than elsewhere in the northern part of the continent:  ‘Portuguese and Spanish merchants brought African servants to northern Europe, thereby introducing black Africans to white north-​western European cities in the Netherlands and Germany’ (Hondius 2008: 87–​8; see also Hondius 2011). There were African servants of Portuguese factors in Antwerp in the 1520s, and by the early seventeenth century, a notable group of Africans in Amsterdam, not least as servants in Portuguese Jewish families, especially those who had come from Brazil; in Amsterdam they were often converted to Judaism. Later attempts, thwarted by the authorities, to sell African slaves in Middelburg and Amsterdam, indicate an implicit servitude, if not outright slavery, among those who came to the Dutch ports and stayed, as opposed to being re-​embarked for the slave markets of the Caribbean and South America. By the 1640s there was, remarkably, a small renegade ‘outsider’ community of Africans who, being free by Dutch law, had left their Portuguese Jewish merchant households, and sometimes sought violent revenge on some of the owners. They allegedly lived by theft and prostitution, and at the very least may be said to have been able to form a community among themselves, with their own housing arrangements. Africans, according to Robbeknol, also work in the Amsterdam food markets:  he profits there from a ‘black’ woman selling sausages and bacon (line 1547). We must presume then that the African community has registered with Bredero considerably beyond the template that he took from his Spanish source text.

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The presence of Africans, including sub-​Saharan ones, in represented city life, is part of the cogent force of Bredero’s art. It developed as he found a dramatic language in the citizen conversations of Holland. But that does not prepare us for his last play to be performed in a rederijkerskamer and the previous work to the Spaanse Brabander: his adaptation of Terence’s The Eunuch  –​ Moortje or The Little Moor (1615, first printed 1617), where the Roman eunuch is replaced by an African maid from Angola called Negra. The Roman playwright himself was famously of Berber, North African origins, and a senator’s slave. The Moors in the Spaanse Brabander originate from the Spanish presence, and indeed in the text of Lazarillo de Tormes. But Angola, subject at least along its coast from 1485 onwards to rule by the Portuguese, who were not challenged by the Dutch until 1641, is something else. In 1617, the Dutch were not quite yet involved in the south Atlantic slave trade; by some accounts, slavery was not developed in the more northerly West African colony of Guinea (or Elmina) until the late seventeenth century (Page 1997; Beekman 1997:  99–​100). What is meant here is mercantile activity by the Dutch Republic operating as a state, and seeking to develop colonies around the globe, even if working through the trading companies. But trading by private Dutch merchants in the south Atlantic was already underway. These merchants of North European origin or Sephardic Jews resident in the Republic had interests in such commodities as sugar, dyewood, gold, ivory and leather, but their ships are also known to have transported slaves. Portuguese Sephardim also acted as insurers for Dutch vessels, and there were other merchants from Portugal and the Dutch Republic ‘invested simultaneously in multiple areas of the Atlantic’ (Ribeiro da Silva 2011:  32), disputing an older view that the south Atlantic slave trade was divided into discrete subsystems before the mid-​seventeenth century. The Dutch were in the south Atlantic, nudging the Portuguese and the Spanish in the slave trade: ‘Between 1598 and 1608, several assaults on the Portuguese possessions in western Africa, namely Sao Tomé, Príncipe, and the fortresses of the Gold Coast, were organised by the Dutch merchants and sponsored by the States-​General’ (Ribeiro da Silva 2011: 11). Eventually, Dutch and Portuguese merchants would have contact with those who traded between the coastal ports and the African hinterland, some of whom were mixed-​race Eurafricans. There seems to be no space for an explanation of this particular kind of hybridity in Bredero’s plays, but we cannot be so sure that Robbeknol’s African female butcher was not such a person. It may be that Bredero simply assumed that someone from Angola could be described as a Moor. Yet there is more to Moortje than this. Negra has a story: she is acquired by a Dutch schipper who brings her to the Netherlands. She appears to have been purchased, and during voyages she becomes mother to two of his children. Then he sells her to Ritsart, who gives her as a gift to Moy-​aal, in whose house she is a servant. This replicates the uncertain

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status of Africans in the United Provinces: they could not by law be slaves (no one could), but they were obviously very dependent on the households in which they lived. In the play, Negra might perform the function of an intelligencer since she overhears things and conveys crucial information, but she is also accused of perpetrating a rape in a way a eunuch could not have been. Bredero sees the slave woman as she who is able to satisfy the demand placed on human endurance by the mercantilist system (purchased slave, sexual partner at sea, confidante servant in Amsterdam), and her presence in the play is evidence of the broader consequences of Dutch privateering engagement in southern Africa just before state-​ scale intervention. She has allegedly been purchased by the schipper, but in the context of Dutch aggression against the Portuguese, she also has the aura of being war booty. Bredero has moved one stage further than his French sources, one of which fuses the Eunuch with an Ethiopian (Bredero 1984: 43). Although Bredero did not know Italian, it has been suggested that he was inspired not only by Italian paintings of African women, but also by Italian plays (Bredero 1984: 20–​4).10 Ritsart condemns slave-​owning by Turks and North Africans because it is driven by ‘Onmenschelyck ghebruyck!’ (233; unmanly practices), but as is recently observed, Ritsart is apparently such an owner too, and a double standard is maintained (Stipriaan 2018:  219), over and against the laws of the state. Bredero is surely exposing the expropriations, economic and sexual, and the compromising hypocrisy of emergent colonial mercantilism. Shakespeare’s racial others, principally Shylock and Othello, belong to temporally and geographically specific places that are neither London nor England, whereas Bredero treats immigrants in Amsterdam, with an African community then more numerous and embedded that its English counterpart (Kaufmann 2017). He also goes further in his portrayal of human nature. Any person can become an animal, since we learn in the Spaanse Brabander: ‘En heur mongt die gater aers noch aers, as’en tellenaers zijn aers gat’ (389; Her old gums moving fast as a trotter’s arsehole). An elderly woman’s shrunken jaws suddenly become a horse’s backside as it trots along. This is such a striking verbal image; it suggests a painting. Bredero’s attention to painting, his representation of painterly imagery in words, and the explicit reference to famous painters and paintings in the play, is another way of subsuming identity into an Amsterdam scene, and the city’s economy. Scene painting in the period does not single out strangers in a significant way; so is Bredero invested here in a painting fashion? The reference to the paintings loaned to Jerolimo (2057–​60) in the hope that he would buy them is another reference to foreign presence, since Amsterdam’s own painters were not quite yet eminent: Otie, the loaner, mentions Albrecht Dürer (who famously drew an African servant in Antwerp in 1521), Hans Holbein and Baccio Bandinelli. Of Netherlands

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painters, Maarten van Heemskerk is mentioned, but he is mostly associated with Haarlem; also named is Lucas van Leyden, who was indeed born in Leyden, and worked and died there (lines 2051–​60, 2088–​92, 2098, 2012). That unappetising imagery of elderly physiology, which equates, through its imagery, aging with the animal and with sexual activity, is picked up in the debased language of the play’s prostitutes. When she is defending her honour, such as it is, Tryn Snaps, without ears because they were cut off in punishment for a former crime, is fierce in her violent threats, which are to mutilate the male body and its needs, that have so defined her life: Jy selt niemandt veughel hieten, Jan hanghkloot, verstaje dat, Of blaest hem ierst een pont veren: de rest in ‘t Sout-​vat […] die sal hy my verbeteren, Of ick sel hem, sie daer, met dat mes na zijn gat veteren. (1260–​1, 1278–​9) ( Just try to talk of romping now – you’ve clods for balls I’ll chop you up and put you in a pickling vat … He must make amends Or I’ll take this knife and widen out his arse.)

Even Jerolimo is capable of this language when he forgets he is a ‘Spaniard’: Semers, sonder fout, Een Roggestiaert in ou jaers. (1873–​4) (Certes, you’re right, A rye straw up your arse you’ll get.)

Threatened punitive mutilation functions to universalise the body, making it less distinctive in its features from the next. There are more prostitutes, retired prostitutes and panders in the play than any other kind of character:  they mix what appears to be the official Amsterdam work ethic with a prostitute’s morality. ‘Men moet wat doen om de kost so langh as men leeft’ (1478; You must do something to earn your keep as long as you do live) contrasts with the very bawdy ‘Wat duncktje heb ick dan mijn poosje oock niet wel te roer e staan?’ (1490; What think you? Hasn’t my little space been nicely filled?). In this sexual mixture, no particular identity stands out. An English contrast In English plays by contrast, foreignness becomes a matter of allure, perhaps dangerously so, and the best we can hope for is an equilibrium of national and stranger identities (Oldenburg 2014, 121 see also 121–​ 7). Consider here John Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan (1605), ‘the first English play to use an immigrant character for its title’ (Crane in Marston 1997:  121), where the heavy Dutch accent and wry Anglo-​D utch puns

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might lead us to think this is in some sense a Netherlandish play. It is not: the main plot comes from a French play by Nicolas de Montreux, and the ‘thought’ in the play derives from Montaigne’s searching comments on sexual desire and how we relate it to personal morality (Rubright 2010). It is important that the courtesan with passionate feelings, Franceschina, stands out in every way as Dutch, by appearance, by the matter of staging, and Marston uses accent to similar effect. She’s Dutch by speech accent and, possibly, reported appearance. Reference to the Emden, Cologne and Dutch-​originating religious sect the Family of Love, and their reputation for free love (as also exploited in Middleton’s 1608 play The Family of Love), enforces the sense of otherness, but merely relates to an unfortunate reputation, and not to reality, as much research has shown. Recent Marston commentators who have thought of the Familists as sexually libertine are gravely mistaken.11 This impression is sustained when the key continental archive of the Familists is examined: while the sect began in Emden and flourished in Cologne, its manuscript archive survives in the Netherlands, especially in Amsterdam (Hamilton 2003, 2013). The bawd Mary Faugh’s boasted membership of the Family of Love is part of a general English misapprehension of what the sect was, even as it prospered with its form of Nicodemist lay piety in the later sixteenth century and through into the seventeenth century. Franceschina speaks with a Dutch accent, but her name is typically that of a stock maidservant from the Italian commedia dell’arte and, as often noted, the play’s word usage draws on a profusion of ‘Germanic, French, Italian’ and English words (Crane in Marston, 1997, xxv, n. 12). This hodge-​podge, seen as a threat to something quintessentially ‘English’, but making theatrical capital from cosmopolitan variety, is a feature shared with Ben Jonson’s most famous comedies, such as Volpone and The Alchemist. In English plays, these forces of alluring or threatening difference, embodied in anarchic linguistic variety and a fantasy of sexual and heretical promiscuity, are seen to challenge ordered governance. The city and nation in Marston’s play is saved by an English gentleman (Freevill) making a proper marriage to an Englishwoman from the elite (albeit with the name of Dante’s ideal female, Beatrice), and resisting that which has come from the threatening outside  –​but only just. However, Bredero’s Amsterdam Sheriff of 1580 knows exactly where invading Protestantism comes from: reformed places such as Hoorn and Enkhuizen, to the north of the city (line 1996). The English plays concerned with Dutch heresy and impropriety rely upon inaccurate and misleading cultural fantasy (although the fundraising Dutch Anabaptists Ananias and Tribulation in Jonson’s The Alchemist are perhaps nearer their real-​life counterparts). Bredero’s drama is a spot-​on account of highly accretive and homogenising city and regional life.

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Amsterdam was the foremost staple of the time, the market and holding port through which things passed, a city built on huge warehouses, especially grain stores where huge profits were made when harvests failed or were poor. Bredero banishes the Brabanter: he disappears before the end of the play –​ so it is reported  –​on a barge to a free city of refuge. Will he return with new credit or even wealth? Who knows? But Robbeknol is saved: he is not punished, saved by the intervention of the gossips from the sheriff ’s wrath, and blessed, it would seem, by his ability to read the Bible –​clearly associated in the play with Protestantism. This sounds like a comic affirmation of the city’s ideological transit between 1580 and 1617. Of Robbeknol’s half-​African half-​brother, nothing more is said. During the summer of 2018, the quatercentenary of Bredero’s death was widely celebrated in the Netherlands and particularly in Amsterdam. Several plays and farces were performed, in whole or in part, his songs were revived and adapted in later musical modes, and there were public lectures aimed at showing Bredero’s relevance. His feel for the languages of the Amsterdammers was the seed for a comparison of his works and personality with that other outspoken Amsterdam personality, the soccer genius Johan Cruyff (1947–​ 2016; Gemert 2018). A book launch of a new critical biography on 23 August filled a very large auditorium in a repurposed dock, and there is no doubt that the centre of contemporary Dutch cultural life was then and there.12 But, as with the rest of Europe, the Netherlands has experienced a sharp rise in immigration and an extremely uncomfortable political debate in which policies of racial exclusion and persecution have even been proposed, if also robustly contested. Amsterdam itself remains a pre-​eminent global migration centre, with 176 nationalities represented among the city’s residents. Bredero’s insights into the making of societies from diversity are as relevant as ever, even as he is hailed as a seminal genius of Dutch literature. I have tried to show by focusing mostly on one play how Bredero’s high reputation is justified, and how it is built upon a rare set of observations upon the migrant, transnational and global mercantile forces that made up the extraordinary agglomeration that was seventeenth-​century Amsterdam, producing exceedingly intelligent dramatic analysis of the meaning of mass migrancy and urban renewal. Bredero comes to the very cutting edge of race perceptions in his time, revealing how emergent trading empires were transporting and mixing peoples, as well as subjecting some of them. In respect of these powers, Bredero is to be ranked with the very best of his contemporaries in France, Italy, Spain, England and the German-​speaking world, and at his very best exceeds them. Formerly he might have been praised for his ability to capture Amsterdam, if not also Holland or even Dutch national identity, much as Shakespeare has been venerated for his versions of Englishness. But it becomes especially clear during the time of a Europe-​wide migration crisis

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today that Bredero is the anatomist of the human drama of migration, and the special place it has for urban identity, that the energy of cities comes from migration. Bredero’s plays never become popular outside the Low Countries with the travelling theatre companies (although a few of his songs were translated into German), nor did they, in so far as we can presently ascertain, exert an influence on playwrights in the rest of Europe, unlike some of Vondel’s works. Is this not the time, in our current moment of migration crisis, to embrace Bredero transnationally? Not only should we read and study him more, and see more of his works translated into other languages, but we should also encourage performances outside of the Netherlands, and moreover see Bredero’s plays as the beginning of a recreation of the truly transnational theatre, French, Spanish, English as well as Dutch, even with some performances in these vernaculars, that was at the heart of Amsterdam’s Golden Age dramatic culture. That would be another kind of migration. Notes 1 In preparing this chapter I am grateful for conversations with Lia van Gemert and Jeroen Jansen, and with the participants in the University of Maryland Medieval & Early Modern Studies conference on ‘Migrations’, 10–​11 November 2017. 2 There are many important histories of the United Provinces. In English, see especially Schama (1987) and Israel (1995); and translated from Dutch into English, Nierop (1993) and Prak (2005); see also Helmers and Janssen (2018). 3 I have consulted the annotated editions of C.  F. P.  Stutterheim (1974), E.  K. Grootes (1999), and Jeroen Jansen et al. (2017). My quotations are from H. David Brumble’s valuable English translation, The Spanish Brabanter (1982); Brumble translated from Stutterheim’s edition, and accordingly I quote the Dutch from its text, even though Grootes (Bredero 1999: 411–​16) offers detailed reasons for some revision of specific readings. 4 Bork and Verkruijsse (1985: 104–​7), Grootes (1997), Stipriaan (2018). See also the anniversary celebrations recorded at www.bredero2018.nl, organized by the Stichting Bredero foundation. 5 See Rico’s 2016 edition and Stavens’ 2016 English translation (Lazarillo 2016a, 2016b); for a discussion of the contentious authorship see Val (2017). 6 Brumble’s English translation: ‘Old Grayhairs’ (286), loses Bredero’s reference to the West Frisian port; Frisia was a distinct region in the northwest Netherlands with its own government and language, closer to English than to Dutch. 7 Thanks to Alexander Bick for help with this point. 8 See the discussion in Stipriaan (2018: 203–​7). 9 On clothing and the stage, see Bromley (forthcoming). 10 Two Italian plays with an apparent debt to Terence’s Eunuch feature a female Moor as slave or servant: Giovanni Battista Calderari’s La Mora (Vincenza, 1588), and, apparently now lost, Catarino Dolce’s La Mora, explicitly listed as a version

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of Terence’s play, mentioned in Dolce’s Scuola Italica (Frankfurt, 1614), pt. II, and listed in a Cologne edition of 1643 in Leone Allacci’s Drammaturgia di Leone Allacci Diuisa in Sette Indici (Rome, 1666: 220). 11 For accounts of what the Familists actually did in their meetings, their broader practices, and their assimilation into respectable parts of the English church and society, see Marsh (1994), Lake (2006), Pietsch (2018) and Como (2018). 12 ‘Bredero –​400 jaar ’t Kan verkeeren!’, OBA Theater, Amsterdam, 23 August 2018, the official launch of Stipriaan (2018).

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London and The Hague, 1638: Performing quacks at court M. A. Katritzky

Introduction1 Successful itinerant healers used performative means to sell their medical wares, and were important sponsors and cross-​border circulators of a specific and ubiquitous transnational mode of performance in early modern Europe (Katritzky 1998, 2007, 2010, 2012). Such itinerant healers themselves ‘habitually collaborated’ with the Dutch amateur dramatic societies known as rederijkerskamers, or chambers of rhetoric (Heppner 1939: 46), and the popularity of quacks and other healers as stage roles, with early modern Netherlandish civic audiences, is indicated by their central occurrence in several rederijker playtexts (Lammens-​Pikhaus 1989, esp. nos. 47, 85, 107), and in Klucht Vanden Hoogdvytschen Quacksalver (1622), a carnivalesque farce generally attributed to G. A. Bredero.2 Addressing his Netherlandish audience in a broken mixture of German and Dutch, Bredero’s ‘High-​German Quacksalver’ Rijckhart claims international fame as the Golden Master, through wondrous cures in Franconia, Austria, and as far afield as Spain, Sicily, Jerusalem, Asia, Africa and America. Bredero tracks the ludicrous fall-​out when Rijckhart, having attracted local patients by his patter, incompetently swaps two of their prescriptions, a powerful laxative prepared for the ailing Joost, and an aphrodisiac intended for the wedding night of the elderly Lammert. Rijckhart typifies the medical practitioner whose plying of his trade in unfamiliar regions and languages underpins a persistent pan-European theatergram. For the historiographer, such itinerant healers exemplify the focus of my chapter: a transnational culture of performance significantly fuelled both by the often flashy showmanship sponsored by actual itinerant quacks, and by the absurd and comic medical mishaps, linguistic misunderstandings and clashes of cultural expectation habitually generated by interactions between these outsiders and the locals they profess to cure and entertain. By the decades around 1600, a minor fashion for itinerant quacks, and especially for those associated with Italian-​influenced performing troupes, was establishing itself in northern European court entertainments. Here,

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I reflect on this trend for staging quacks –​whether actual street healers, or represented by professional actors or courtiers –​in German, French, English and Netherlandish court festivals, to contextualise and examine the final tournament entry of a court festival of February 1638 at The Hague: the entry of Les Chevaliers du Dromedaire & Chymiques (Relation 1638: 9; the knights of the dromedary and alchemists). This entry represents a transhistorical nexus of great significance. Closely reflecting mutual transnational influences, it features actual farces and medical marketing staged by a genuine troupe of street healers, commercially active as performing itinerant charlatans and specially hired to perform at this festival, and a mock harangue orated by six noblemen disguised as named itinerant healers. With reference to English and Dutch images, and the Parisian professional stage, Spanish literature, Italian commedia dell’arte and other influences from drama and festival, I here consider the figure of the charlatan, quack or street healer as a theme in early modern European performance culture, and particularly court festival, and specifically as one of the most significant transnational inspirations among the many performance cultures brought together by the 1638 festival. My analysis of the surviving evidence of this festival traces these diverse influences, especially from the English masque, French ballet and German tournament. Although previously disregarded, the transnational names chosen by the noblemen disguised as healers in this festival’s closing entry are particularly significant. They provide a wealth of information for theatre historiography, referencing the comic stage (Matamorbe and Francatable); Scottish (Macollo), German (Faustus) and French (Ferrand) itinerant physicians, and the stage names of two of the most successful performing quacks of their time, the Frenchman Mondor, who has achieved a solid place in modern theatre history, and the Italian Braguetta, who has not. Metatheatrical medical marketing: French court ballets and London masques Itinerant charlatans, known for sponsoring talented performers, are closely associated with the sixteenth-​ century rise of professional mixed-​ gender acting, notably the commedia dell’arte. North of the Alps, early modern patrons who could not afford the expense, religious implications or political complications of hosting a full-​size commedia dell’arte troupe sought affordable and creative ways of benefiting from the prestige and worldly sophistication associated with staging Italian comedy at court festivals. Sometimes, noblemen donned commedia dell’arte costumes themselves, as for example during tournament entries at court weddings in Düsseldorf in 1585 and Hechingen in 1598 (Katritzky 2012:  117–​26; 2018:  24–​7). Elsewhere, as at Christmas 1580, with the Italian mountebank and his ‘Zanni, and other

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Actors of pleasure’ of George Whetstone’s fictionalised account of his visit to the court of ‘Segnior Phyloxenus […] in this most noble Italian Gentlemans Pallace’, little performing troupes were simply invited to set up their trestle tables at court, to perform privately for a day or evening.3 As so often with smaller commedia dell’arte troupes, that described by Whetstone, who toured Italy in 1580, was led by quacks. They disappoint and bore the assembled noblemen, with their emphasis on marketing their medicines rather than acting plays. However, itinerant mountebanks routinely provided a welcome comic focus for court festivals. Medical marketing developed a strong stage presence in medieval mystery plays (Katritzky 2007:  23–​58). Metatheatrical healthcare professionals, often presented as charlatan troupes supported by street theatre, represented a potentially significant stage vehicle for coded satirical and political commentary in early modern court festival. Notable examples of this trend in French court ballet include a Ballet des empiriques venus d’étrange païs, performed at the 5 March 1597 celebrations for the baptism of the son of M. le connétable at the Hôtel de Montmorenci; a Ballet des Souffleurs d’Alchimie at the 1604 wedding of M. de Rohan to the daughter of M. de Sully, in the presence of the French king at the Arsenal; a Ballet du Procureur danced on 28 February 1613, whose second entry presented a ‘Charlatan’, and Les chercheurs de midi à quatorze heures (Godard de Beauchamps 1735: I, part iii, 18, 23, 31, 37). Les chercheurs de midi, danced at the Louvre on 29 January 1620 in the presence of the French king, featured Don Quixote and regulars of travelling fairs, such as a charlatan, jugglers, acrobats and an optician. In a letter of February 1607, François de Malherbe notes of the ballet L’accouchement de la foire Saint-​ Germain, to be danced before Maria de’ Medici at the Louvre, that it personifies the fair as: une grande femme, qui accouchera de seize enfants, qui seront de quatre métiers, astrologues, charlatans, peintres, et coupeurs de bourses; tous les galants de la cour, ou la plupart, seront de la partie. (Malherbe 1822: 21) (a large woman who gives birth to sixteen children of four professions: astrologers, charlatans, painters and cutpurses. It involves all, or at least most, of the gentlemen of the court.)

According to the printed programme, the four charlatans wore small pedlars’ packs, from which they distributed vials of perfume and printed handbills detailing their remedies, to the audience during their dance (Recueil 1612: 55–​ 8; Cixous 2001: 88–​9). The Jesuit historian of theatre and spectacle, Claude-​ François Menestrier (1631–​1705), records a Ballet des Alchimistes danced on 19 February 1640 at the court of Savoy, specifically in mockery of gold-​seeking alchemists. Here, costumed as a philosopher, Hermes Trismegiste introduces ‘fourteen of the most celebrated alchemists of every nation’, naming them

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as: ‘Morieno Italien, Bauzan Grec, Cherner Alleman, Untser Suedois, Calid Turc, Sandivoge Polonois, Raimond Lulle, & Hortulan Espagnols, Dolcon, & Beguin François, Pierre Lorrain, Rasis Juif, & Geber Arabe’. Each nation brings its own contribution to the furnace, where they assemble and perform a thousand galanteries, presenting women in the audience with various essences, liquids, glass gems, mirrors, bracelets, powders and cosmetics (Menestrier 1682: 81–​2; on Menestrier see also Lazardzig et al. 2018). For ballets such as these, the documentary record offers only rare hints that they introduce alchemists and itinerant medical practitioners as mocked and contested figures with the potential for introducing social comment into court festival. For more concrete evidence on this point, we need to return to the Dutch quack entry of 1638 which is this chapter’s main focus, in the context of performances incorporating the spoken word, and specifically charlatan rhetoric. The performative importance of the medical harangue in court festivals is highlighted in Richard Flecknoe’s eyewitness account of entertainments of 1650, at the court of the exiled Beatrix, Duchess of Lorraine, near Brussels. They include a rollicking farce featuring a quack couple and their commedia dell’arte assistants Scarramuchio, Harlequin and Zany, introduced by an extended medical harangue: Of the Mountebank and his Farce. Whilst they prepared for other Divertisements, that of the Mountebank and his Farce, was this Nights sport, performed by Her Highness servants, as followeth. The Mountebank, with all formal gravity, mounting the Scaffold, made a long Oration of the marvellous Cures he had done, and of the rare and admirable Receipts he had; as if Æsculapius were but a Zany to him, whilst his Zany indeed, for greater sport, turned all to ridiculous that he said: As when he said, He had a Receipt to make them see as well by night as by day; the Zany answered, It was but putting out their eyes. And when he said he had another, That they should never die of old age; he answered again, It was but hanging them while they were young; with such like vulgar Buffoonry to make the Audience laugh. All which ended in one of the best of Scarramuchio’s, and Harlequin’s acted by the Doctor and his Wife, the Zany with all his antick tricks, and others of his followers who truckled under them. (Flecknoe 1675: 17)

A similar satirical use of mountebank rhetoric already shaped Ben Jonson’s Volpone, first published in 1607, and became a significant feature in Jacobean masques with Jonson and Inigo Jones’ Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at Court, played at court by the King’s Servants in 1615, and the anonymous The Mask of Mountebanks, staged at Gray’s Inn and at the London court of King James I in 1618. The former features ‘a troupe of threedbare Alchymists’ ( Jonson 1616: 1006), cooking up suspect drugs in their laboratory; the latter, a mountebank costumed ‘like a Swiss’, whose speech revolves around a quack

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harangue concentrating on the names of diseases, musical healing charms and patent remedies (Collier et al. 1848: 129; Estill 2011: 109–​14). Another Germanic charlatan, Wolfgangus Vandergoose, likewise wearing the ‘Swiss’ costume popularised on the early modern comic stage by the commedia dell’arte stock role of the Tedesco, or German mercenary soldier (Katritzky 2006:  217–​18), leads the first antimasque entry of Jones and Davenant’s Salmacida Spolia, performed in 1640. Further commedia-​inspired characters follow in the eighth entry:  ‘Doctor Tartaglia and two pedants of Francolin’ (Davenant 1639: Cv, C3r). Particularly significant for the Dutch quack entry of February 1638 was the annual royal London Twelfth Night Masque of 7 January 1638, staged at Whitehall for King Charles I, his French queen, Henrietta Maria, their court, and visiting foreign diplomats, including the Ambassadors of France, Spain and Morocco (Loomie 1987: 240–​2; McClure 2013: 296). This first of only three masques performed in London’s new Masquing House, before it was torn down by anti-​Royalists, was Jones and Davenant’s Britannia Triumphans. Here, the magician Merlin conjures up a hellmouth from which emerge six antimasques, of which the fourth features six characters: 4. Entrie. A Mountebanke in the habit of a grave Doctor, A Zany, A Harlekin his men. An old lame Charewoman. Two Pale wenches presenting their urinals, and hee distributing his printed receits out ( Jones and Davenant 1638: 10) of a Budget.    

My interpretation of this entry as a mock representation of a small troupe of itinerant healers, travelling and performing in the commedia dell’arte tradition, is supported by Bellerophon’s comment. Entering directly after the conclusion of the antimasques, this character dismisses the activities of their assorted itinerant performers, healers and street traders as the distractions of fools, mere ‘noyse and shews’ ( Jones and Davenant 1638: 13). The mountebank antimasque of Britannia Triumphans shares previously unnoted connections with the 1638 quack tournament entry, and with other festival tailpieces comically representing itinerant performers. These include a tournament entry at the celebrated Hohenzollern wedding of Franziska von Salm (1575–​1619), half-​sister to a leader of the first entry of the 1638 tournament, the Rhinegrave Friedrich Magnus von Salm (1607–​73). Hosted at Hechingen in 1598 by their father Friedrich I  von Salm (1547–​1608), and described both by his court physician, Felix Platter, and in an official printed programme, the wedding featured a comic tournament entry of ten noblemen and courtiers in commedia dell’arte costume (Katritzky 2012:  117–​26).

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Figure 6  Inigo Jones, Antimasques for the King’s Masque 1637, page of costume sketches (including, lower right, members of a quack troupe), for Britannia Triumphans, performed 17 January 1638, pen & brown ink, 30 × 18 cm. © Devonshire Collection (Inigo Jones drawings O&S 343). Reproduced by permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees.

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Comic performative tailpieces in sixteenth-​century court festivals, such as this ridiculous Hohenzollern tournament entry, or mock peasant weddings, may, I believe, to some extent be viewed as foreshadowing developments in court festival such as the London antimasque, or the 1638 Dutch quack entry discussed below.

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The 1638 Hague wedding Recognised as ‘the grandest feast the Dutch Republic would see in the seventeenth century’ (Akkerman 2011:  3), the 1638 wedding festivities have attracted little English scholarship. They are primarily known through the German art-​historian Jochen Becker’s substantial article, which hardly considers their concluding quack tournament entry, or the stage names chosen by its knights (Becker 1998). Becker draws on various printed ephemera, notably the fourteen-​page official French-​language festival account published in 1638, for distribution to royal and noble participants invited to The Hague from all over Protestant northern Europe (Relation 1638). Authorship of this is attributed to François-Nicolas Dubuisson-​Aubenay by Fransen (1925: 69), and to Jacob van der Burch by Becker (1998: 212). In addition to the court-​ sponsored festival account, ephemera printed and distributed for the 1638 wedding announces the challenge, various responses and tournament rules.4 That this was widely circulated and read far beyond the immediate guests, is powerfully suggested by its swift international uptake. Lengthy paraphrased extracts from a representative sample of these French and Flemish documents form the basis of a detailed English account of the wedding’s concluding tournament. It was published in London by Nathanael Butter in the 6 February 1639 volume of one of his short-​lived series of annual international news digests of the 1630s, focusing mainly on journalistic military reports of the Thirty Years’ War. Realising how jarring this chapter might seem to readers, Butter apologises for its inclusion in his preface: ‘To the ingenvovs reader.’5 The 1638 wedding festivities are also noted in diaries and correspondence, not least between members of Germany’s leading learned society, Die Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft (Conermann et al. 2006: 464, 481–​2). Staged in The Hague from 11 to 23 February 1638, the wedding celebrated the second marriage of the Governor of ’s-​Hertogenbosch and Master-​General of the Netherlands Artillery (later Field Marshall) Jan Wolfert van Brederode (1599–​1655). Then active in the Dutch military campaign against the Spanish, in 1641 he was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary for the London marriage of the future parents of King William III of England:  King Charles I’s eleven-​year-​old daughter Mary, and Willem II, son of the Governor of the Dutch Republic, Frederik Hendrik van Nassau, Prince of Orange (Loomie 1987:  310–​11; Groeneweg 1997:  206–​7). Brederode’s bride, Ludovica (or

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Louisa) Christina, Countess of Solms (1606–​69), was the youngest daughter of Johann Albrecht I  von Solms-​Braunfels. An older sister, Ursula, was the widow of the diplomat, poet and member of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, Burggraf Christoph zu Dohna (1583–​1637), and mother of the sharply observant seventeen-​ year-​ old wedding guest Friedrich zu Dohna (1621–​ 88), then already a renowned and committed soldier on the brink of leading his own Dutch battalion. Louisa and Ursula’s sister Amalia was lady-​in-​waiting to Elizabeth of Bohemia, and wife of Brederode’s brother-​in-​law (from his first marriage), Frederik Hendrik, Prince of Orange. The wedding’s guest of honour was Frederik Hendrik’s widowed cousin by marriage, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia (1596–​1661), who attended with her two eldest surviving sons, Charles Louis, Elector Palatine (1617–​80), and Prince Rupert, Duke of Cumberland (1618–​82). The Palatine army led by the two princes, on which Elizabeth was to invest her entire income later that year, was wiped out within the year by several unexpected defeats (Akkerman 2011: 12). The brothers, who had joined the Dutch army in 1633 under the command of their great-​uncle Frederik Hendrik, had been at the London court of their uncle, Charles I, from winter 1635/​36 to June 1637. Here, as reported by Charles Louis in a letter of 12 March 1636 to his mother, they acquainted themselves with English theatrical culture; for example, accompanying Queen Henrietta Maria to William Davenant’s court masque Triumphs of the Prince d’Amour, on 24 February 1636 (Loomie 1987: 194–​6, 219–​20; Keblusek 2007: 174; Akkerman 2011: 390). When Elizabeth Stuart and her husband, the Winter King and Elector Palatine Frederick V, set up their Bohemian court in exile at The Hague in 1621, they inaugurated a new level of extravagance in Dutch court festivals. Elizabeth referenced English court festival, whose masques and pastorals were widely circulated in print and manuscript form, to reinforce her status as daughter and sister of English kings. Elizabeth’s detailed inside knowledge of Caroline court festival was augmented by childhood memories of Jacobean traditions. These included her own 1610 masque debut, in which she danced as a river nymph, and her three sumptuous nuptial masques of 1613, which cemented the parodic London tradition of the professionally danced antimasque (Daye 2013: 293; Keblusek 2007: 178–​9). Elizabeth kept in touch with Caroline court festival through her sons and London relatives, through her official London agent during the period 1626–​40, Sir Abraham Williams (Loomie 1987:  315), and above all through Sir Thomas Roe. Roe reports to her from London on the ‘preparations for a grand masque’ (9 February 1635)  and sends a presentation copy of Inigo Jones’ masque Luminalia (20 February 1638), published at the time of its performance in London on 6 February 1638, for which ‘extream good’ masque Elizabeth thanks him on 12 April 1638 (Akkerman 2011: 313; Davenant 1637). Although Elizabeth may have continued to see such texts regularly, after Frederick V’s death in 1632

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her voluminous correspondence turned sharply from ‘masques and merriment’ to political and state matters (Akkerman 2011: 3–​4). Despite being one of its chief guests, Elizabeth does not comment on The Hague wedding festivities of 1638. Staged drama played an important and ostentatious role in the 1638 festival, and transnational influences and borrowings are evident at many levels. Following the enormous success of two recent Paris premieres, the troupe of Prince de Condé, Henri II de Bourbon, was brought to The Hague to perform them at the wedding: à l’issuë du souper la Comedie du Cid fut joüée par la troupe des Comediens du Prince arrivés à propos de France. Puis la compagnie se retira qu’il estoit une heure après minuit […] le Comte de Cullembourg donna le Dimanche au soir le souper & la Comedie de l’hospital des fous de Valence, qui fut fort bonne à toute la compagnie de la Nopce. (Relation 1638: 5, 11) (When dinner was over, the play of Cid was performed by the troupe of the players of the Prince, brought for that purpose from France. Afterwards, when the company retired, it was an hour past midnight […] on Sunday evening, graaf van Culemborg [Floris II. van Pallandt, Witthem en Weerdt] sponsored dinner and the play of the hospital of the madmen of Valence, which was greatly enjoyed by all the wedding guests.)

In 1637, Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid, set in Seville, had premiered in Paris and then in London, where it was staged in Joseph Rutter’s English translation, by the King’s Servants at the court of Charles I, and at London’s Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane (Corneille 1637; Montgrédien 1972:  62, 17, 83, 78; Fransen 1925: 70; Becker 1998: 213; Conermann et al. 2006: 476–​7). Charles de Beys’ L’hospital des fovs (1636), loosely based on Lope de Vega’s play Los locos de Valencia (El hospital de los locos) and Tomaso Garzoni’s widely translated prose publication L’ospidale dei pazzi incurabili (1586), premiered in Paris in 1635 (Garzoni 1600; Fransen 1925: 70). Act 3 features lengthy exchanges between two madmen, the former healers the Alchemist and the Astrologer (Beys 1636: III, 49–​58). L’hospital des fous and Le Cid were performed within the elite court circle of noble guests at the 1638 wedding. As so often for major court weddings, its closing event was a public tournament, in this case a spectacular and lavishly expensive three-​day event, on Friday 19, Saturday 20 and Tuesday 23 February, performed by around 300 noblemen and courtiers. They were watched by their fellow courtiers and womenfolk, and by the paying public, although the official festival account’s predicted sale of 1,200 tickets, to spectators of all ages and every gender, condition and nationality, proved over-​optimistic (Relation 1638:  6; Becker 1998:  214, 217; Groeneweg 1997:  202). Theatricality was crucial to the type of tournament chosen, the running at the ring. At the 1638 tournament, the challengers, costumed as Batavian knights, paraded in front of the spectators in five entries, each involving different defendants. The

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first entry, costumed as Moorish knights and led by Friedrich Magnus, with Elizabeth of Bohemia’s sons Charles Louis and Prince Rupert, is yet further evidence of the significant black and Muslim impact on early modern performance culture.6 The second and third entries featured Teuton knights led by Willem Frederik van Nassau (1592–​1642), and Roman knights led by his brother Hendrik (1611–​52). Fourth to enter was the Knight of the Tears, Monsieur de Maurier. This unaccompanied courtier of the Prince of Orange introduced himself as a lovesick knight, determined to ‘perish gloriously or triumph bravely’ in combat at the list (Diatelesma 1639: 24). The court quacks of 1638 The fifth and last entry of the 1638 tournament parade was that of ‘The Knights of the Dromedary and Alchemists’. As in Flecknoe’s account of 1650 and the London antimasque of 1638, the instrument of satire in this entry was medicine-​peddling street performers. But unlike their quacks, the Dutch knights were named not after stock commedia dell’arte roles, but real healers. These unusual stage names suggest a knowingly insolent nod towards charivari: the mocking of unequal marriages by specially organised rowdy masquerades. The widowed groom was much older than his bride; his first wife Anna (1594–​1637) having been a sister of Willem and Hendrik van Nassau. The young soldier Dohna describes the six named characters of this entry as ‘fameux charlatans du temps passé de toutes nations’ (Dohna 1898:  43; famous charlatans of the past, of all nations); another seventeenth-​century commentator saw them as ‘vreemd Chemique […] Doctoren, die van verre gekomen waren’ (Collot d’Escury 1830: 472; foreign alchemists… doctors travelling from afar). While modern scholarship has so far dismissed them as ‘merkwürdige (literarische) Figuren’ (Becker 1998: 221; curious literary characters) or ‘einige komische Figuren’ (Groenveld 2003: 178; several comical figures), my analysis of medical, literary and theatrical references contextualises them within a transnational perspective, to uncover a satirical agenda with customised ties to contemporary social and political issues. The final tournament entry was led by the illegitimate son of the Governor’s late older half-​brother and predecessor, Maurice van Nassau. This was Lodewijk van Nassau Beverweerd (1602–​65), who was, according to the French festival account: vestu d’un buste à manches d’argent un haut de chauces fort ample aussi de toile d’argent, un masque sur le visage, & monté sur un veritable Dromedaire. (Relation 1638: 9) (costumed in a jacket with silver sleeves, very wide breeches also of cloth of silver, a mask over his face, and mounted on a live dromedary.)

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An eyewitness describes his costume and hairstyle as parodying those of Holland’s bourgeois fashionable young women and confirms that he rode a live dromedary (Dohna 1898: 43). This has been linked to the camel depicted five years earlier in Amsterdam by Rembrandt, as one of several Rembrandt sketches directly associated with the 1638 wedding festivities (Becker 1998:  248–​9 n.  24). Although to these may be added Rembrandt’s quack sketches of the 1630s, previously unnoted in this context, all these links remain tentative, given that Rembrandt is not known to have left Amsterdam during or around the time of the 1638 wedding (Royalton-​Kisch 2010:  No. 17). Lodewijk van Nassau’s chosen persona was the universally recognised name of a genuine sixteenth-​century German healer with strong diabolical associations, Faustus. Famous for elaborate theatrical magic routines presented as genuine necromancy, Dr Johann Faust was said to have toured with an assistant variously described as ‘some Mephistophiles or familiar spirit’ or ‘an evill spirit in the likenesse of a dog’ (Hibernicus 1648: 34; Beard and Taylor 1642: 418). He inspired early modern dramatists and street puppeteers (Butler 1663: 96), and his posthumous alchemical reputation remained so strong that his stage appearance was habitually heralded by fire squibs, crackers and other chemical explosions (Dekker 1609: F4r). During an early performance of Marlowe’s Dr Faustus at London’s Bell Savage playhouse, several audience members even claimed to have been ‘distracted with th[e]‌Visible Apparition of the Devil on the Stage’ (Durham 1675: D4r). Lodewijk van Nassau was accompanied by the French nobleman Henri d’Authon, Baron de Pontesière, a renowned military captain who had entered the Dutch army in 1629 (Germain 2010: 6381, 6391). Motivated by the desire to humiliate the Spanish military opposition, by belittling them as cowardly, cheating quacks, he took the tournament name ‘Dom Ferrand de Matamorbe of Seville’. This references the historically documented French court physician Jacques Ferrand, and Don Matamoros (literally: killer of Moors), the influential stock comic Spanish captain of the commedia dell’arte. Compendia of Matamoros’ grandiose set speeches, recording verbose claims to courageous military and amorous feats constantly undermined by cowardly onstage behaviour, were published in many languages (Gaultier 1610; Bovtades 1647), influencing the comic Spanish captains of several Parisian theatrical successes of the time. The braggart soldier Matamore is the memorable anti-​hero of L’illusion comique, first published in 1635 and extensively revised by Pierre Corneille in 1660 (Harris 2015: 292). André Mareschal’s Le veritable Capitan Matamore, first published in Paris in 1640, was premiered by the royal French troupe in Paris, at the Théâtre Royal du Marais in 1637. Based on Plautus’s Miles gloriosus, and drawing heavily on the commedia dell’arte, it features comic stage routines involving the heroine Phylazie and her fictional twin, in which the eponymous military anti-​hero is tricked into thinking that he has a

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high-​born admirer, and mocked for exposing himself as a ridiculous Spanish coward (Mareschal 1640). The medical allusion in Pontesière’s chosen name is to Jacques Ferrand, French court physician to Claude de Lorrain. His widely read medical treatise was published in the vernacular in 1610, banned by the Inquisition in 1620, revised in 1623 and translated into English in 1640 (Ferrand 1640; Beecher 1989). Its subject, erotic melancholy, references the chivalric leitmotif of the 1638 court tournament as a whole, unrequited love, and resonates at many levels in its quack entry. The names Francatable and Macollo were chosen by the Sieur de Fosse and the young Dutch-​born soldier Adriaen van Manmaker (Conermann et al. 2006: 480 n. 41). As early as 1637, Sir Thomas Roe had suggested in a letter to Elizabeth Stuart that Charles Louis could raise money for his military campaign by piracy in the West Indies, and around 1651 to 1653, Adriaen van Manmaker, together with at least two fellow participants of the 1638 tournament, Pontesière and Prince Rupert, was involved in various naval campaigns targeting the Spanish Americas.7 ‘Francatable’, last in the list of quack names in the French festival account (Relation 1638: 9), was chosen by a latecomer to the group, a previously unknown Sieur de Fosse, whom I tentatively identify as the surgeon of this name attached to the Prince de Condé’s acting troupe, then in The Hague to perform Corneille’s Le Cid (Fransen 1925: 72). Francatable is absent from the English version (Diatelesma 1639: 25) and from the earliest document relating to this entry, a single-​leaf broadsheet response to the defendants’ challenge, of which the Leiden copy bears the name Francatable as a manuscript addition.8 It may, perhaps, be a garbled reference to a comic stage Captain such as Fricasse or Francasse, or to a commedia dell’arte servant familiarised by northern publications, of the type of Francolin or Francatrippa (Davenant 1639:  C3r; Nash 1589:  A3v; Misodiaboles 1596:  F2v). ‘Macollo’ refers to one or both of the Scots brothers James and John Macollo. Born in Edinburgh around the year 1576, they were, like Faustus and Ferrand, widely travelled, university trained physicians (Eloy 1764: 138–​9; Munk 1861: I, 168; Pelling and White 2004). John Macollo was court physician to several rulers, including a Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II and King James I  of England. Both brothers were employed at court in Pisa for some years, where James directed the botanical gardens from 1609 to 1616, and John, as Professor of Medical Chemistry, ran a pharmaceutical laboratory, and they were ‘Medicinae Magistri’ at the University of Pisa from 1613 to 1617 ( James) and 1614 to 1618 ( John) (Douglas 1737:  44; Fabronio 1792: 468–​9; Villani 2010: 174). John, who was elected to London’s Royal College of Physicians in 1621, the year before his death, wrote treatises on venereal disease, outlining treatments using mercury-​based plasters and ointments (Macollo 1622, 1658). These drew on his thorough grounding in Paracelsian medicine, gained while qualifying as a physician at the recently

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founded University of Franeker in West Friesland in the late 1590s, a Netherlandish connection that perhaps made him the butt of jokes from the 1638 Dutch tournament entry participants. The ‘comte de Horne’, who took the name Mondor, may have been the Swedish military commander Gustav Horn (1592–​1657), who had delivered correspondence from Elizabeth of Bohemia to her husband, and was at The Hague in 1638 (Akkerman 2011: 88, 95, 134–​5). Mondor and his comic stage servant Tabarin are the stage names of the brothers Philippe and Antoine Girard, documented in Paris between 1602 and 1627 (Howe 2000: 212, 261, 266–​7, 276 [documents 22, 185, 200–​1, 204, 235]). Antoine was the second husband of the celebrated actress Vittoria Bianca, who initially played her signature role, the commedia dell’arte maid Francisquine, in the troupe of her first husband, the charlatan Pompée Salomon. With his brother and sister-​in-​law, Mondor sold patent medicines from their open-​air stage on the Pont Neuf in early seventeenth-​century Paris, and during several extensive tours around central Europe. The brothers’ popular farcical double act quickly became legendary. Paul Scarron’s fictional itinerant charlatan, for example, mocks a would-​be playwright touting for his business by assuring him: if I made Verses half so good as these you have been reading to me, I should not be so hard put to it to keep Life and Soul together, but would live upon my Income as well as Mondor. (Scarron 1700: 37)

During the winter of 1618/​19, Maria de’ Medici, mother of Louis XIII and future mother-​in-​law of Charles I, lavishly rewarded Mondor’s Franco-​Italian troupe for a winter season of farces and comedies performed at her French court with the payment of 600 livres (Katritzky 2012: 229). Three French actors who also performed several comedies at court during this period received only eighty livres (Beam 2007: 156). During the 1620s, Mondor and Tabarin’s act was a regular fixture among the open-​air quack stages by the Pont Neuf on the Place Dauphine; attracting large audiences and inspiring Parisian print culture. At least one pamphlet, La descente de Tabarin avx Enfers (The Descent of Tabarin into Hell), situates the brothers on Charon’s boat (Tabarin 1621: 9). This popular stage prop also featured on the first of two pageant chariots in the final 1638 tournament entry, as: la barque de Charon faite en gueule d’Enfer portée sur quatre roües fort basses & cachées, remplie d’Esprits Infernaux parmy lesquels estoient deux Docteurs avec leur robe & bonnet quarie & un escriteau sur la poitrine Hippocrates, Galenus. (Relation 1638: 9) (Charon’s boat, in a hellmouth supported on four wheels that were very low and hidden, filled with infernal spirits, amongst whom there were two doctors in their robes and special caps, and labelled on their chests: Hippocrates, Galenus.)

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Braguette –​literally codpiece (Le Petit 1608: 345; Miege 1679: E3r) –​has the added comic advantage of also signifying its female equivalent, the placket, and of wide multilingual intelligibility, as indicated by a bawdy transnational proverb: Usurers purses and womens plackets are never satisfied. Les bourses des Avaricieux, & les brayettes de Femmes sont insatiables. Le borse del avaro, & le braghette de donne son, insatiabli. Las bolsas del avariento, y las braguetas de mugeres son insaciables. (Howell 1659: 7)

Moire, who took the name Braguette at the 1638 tournament, is possibly Theodore (Dirk) Maire, local publisher of several court publications, including the official 1638 festival account (Relation 1638). While Mondor and Tabarin only occasionally left their permanent base in the French capital to tour outside France, Braguette’s strongly contrasting pattern of itinerancy involved touring continually from one provincial French city to another. A document of 1639 (Figure 7), in which an itinerant charlatan whose stage name is given as ‘Alfier dit Braguette’ signs his real name as ‘Gio. Paulo Alfieri’, enables me to bring together four phases of this significant performer’s career (Katritzky 1998, 2010, 2012:  215–​31). His early appearances, recorded under his Italian stage name, Bragato, were as a street actor who made a considerable mark on Italian cheap print, and is illustrated by Jacopo Franco in a costume book published in 1591 (Bertelli 1591; Bragatto 1590; Mariazzo 1595; Martini 1607). Second, I identify him with Zan Bragetta, who, as described by Thomas Platter the Younger and recorded in Mediterranean oral culture, left Italy in the late 1590s to tour southern France with his mixed-​gender commedia dell’arte quack troupe. Platter’s account of Zan Bragetta’s Avignon season of 1598 details the medical sales strategies of his mixed-​gender troupe, and their indoor and outdoor repertoire. Third, under his real name, the Italian commedia dell’arte troupe leader Giovanni Paulo Alfieri is previously known only through one shared season, in 1612 on the stage of the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris, with the troupe of the great French actor Valleran-​le-​Conte (Howe 2000: 243–​ 4, documents 129–​31). Finally, as evidenced by numerous literary allusions and by Dijon archival documents first uncovered by my research (Figure 7), during the 1630s the now elderly Alfieri toured France as the itinerant quack Braguette, selling medicines with his stage clown Prosper (Katritzky 2012: 222–​5; Andrews  1887). A widely repeated apocryphal anecdote, relating Braguette’s duping of  –​ and by –​the people of Lyon in 1621, while apparently sharing a stage with the commedia dell’arte troupe led by Giambattista Andreini (1576–​1654), son of the late Isabella Andreini (1562–​1604), who had died in childbirth in Lyon, suggests his continuing involvement with street performing:

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Figure 7  Supplication for a temporary licence to practise medicine in Dijon, signed by Giovanni Paulo Alfieri (also giving his stage name: ‘Alfier dit Braguette’), dated 6 July 1639. Reproduced by permission of the Archives de la Ville de Dijon (I.134). En l’année 1621, que Braguette estoit à Lyon avec Isabelle Anderyni, & toute sa trouppe Italienne, quoy qu’il attrapast beaucoup d’argent, tant en montant sur le Theatre au change pour y vendre ses drogues auec ses bouffonneries, qu’en ses Comedies, fut nea[n]‌tmoins attrappé par vn affronteur. (Garon 1600 [1630?]: I,  431–​4) (In the year 1621, when Braguette was in Lyon with Isabella Andreini and the whole of her Italian troupe, as well as cheating his way to a great deal of money,

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by mounting his stage at the marketplace to sell his drugs with his farces and plays, he himself was cheated by a conman.)

This conman, the local craftsman Pancerotte, assured Braguette that he was a painter, and took advance payment from him for a commission to paint and deliver some stage scenery within the next week. Several weeks later, when Braguette bumped into Pancerotte and asked for a refund, as he hadn’t delivered the scenery, he reacted with astonishment, assuring him that it must be a case of mistaken identity, as he was not a painter but a shoemaker. This story of the trickster tricked appeared in the first volume of the first French edition of Louis Garon’s anthology (published not in 1600, as announced on the title page, but more likely around 1630), and in the German edition of 1643, and other popular anthologies. Like Mondor, Braguette was an outstandingly successful street charlatan in the French-​speaking regions, whose close professional integration of theatre and healing supported an excellent acting troupe in the commedia dell’arte tradition. By providing further evidence that during his lifetime Braguette was as renowned as Mondor, the 1638 quack entry brings two significant early modern performers more sharply into focus. The final 1638 tournament entry As well as the six courtiers costumed as named healers, the tournament’s fifth and final entry, ‘The Knights of the Dromedary and Alchemists’, featured charlatans performing on a temporary stage: The conclusion was more comicall. Those pretended victorious enemies of Death and his Harbingers, sicknesse and sorrow, entred the List in this ranke. Their Avantguard consisted of six Lacquies clothed in carnation and silver, and two Pageants, one presenting Charons boat filled with passengers, among which were Hippocrates and Galen, the two great Physicians, and the other like a Stage with a Mountebank, and his man acting and selling drugs, and two Buffones representing Don Quixote, and his Quire Sancho Pancha: the Reare consisting of the Pages, Squires, Footmen, led horses, & six Knights, whose leader Beavervard rode upon a Dromedary, all being clothed fantastically like Mountebanks. (Diatelesma 1639: 33–​4)

The festival account suggests a complete professional charlatan troupe, specially hired to entertain spectators of this entry with their marketing and acting routines: un Theatre tendu & rempli de veritables Charlatans vendans leur theriaque & faisant la farce de Dom Quixote de la Manche & autres telles plaisanteries pour attraire le peuple. (Relation 1638: 9) (a stage packed and filled with genuine charlatans, selling their theriac, and performing the farce of Dom Quixote de la Manche and other such diversions to attract the people.)

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Spanish military leaders were well established as a favoured target of the Italian commedia dell’arte and of northern court festivals. Specifically as a pathetically unchivalric knight, Don Quixote was the anti-​hero of the burlesque tournament which had concluded Elizabeth of Bohemia’s Palatine wedding festivities at the Heidelberg court of her father-​in-​law on 13 June 1613 (‘Don Quixote de la Mancha, Ritter von der trawrigen gestalt’), and a challenger in a tournament at a court christening of October 1613 in Dessau (‘Don Quixote de la Mancha Cavallero, de la triste figura’) (Beschreibung 1613:  Appendix 51–​5; Hübner 1614: 25–​40; Becker 1998: 224; Boutcher 2016: 111–​13). The French ambassador carefully noted the mocking use of Spanish costume in one of the Heidelberg festival’s nuptial masques, and by 1638 Don Quixote was a longstanding figure of fun in court festivals and on the public stage, in Paris and elsewhere in Protestant Europe (Hartau 1985; Randall and Boswell 2009:  90; Canova-​Green 2013:  357). Elizabeth of Bohemia’s correspondence of the 1630s with her agent Sir Thomas Roe (who had escorted the young princess to Heidelberg in 1613), repeatedly references Don Quixote in connection with Prince Rupert’s colonial ambitions (Akkerman 2011: 583, 589, 596, 799; Becker 1998: 249; Randall and Boswell 2009: 20, 69, 84–​5, 92). According to Dohna, the professional quacks at the 1638 tournament performed on a portable stage, and their choice of Don Quixote was intended to ridicule the chivalry of the Dutch court and army.9 By the time the court at The Hague revisited charlatans as a festival theme thirty years later, the status of chivalry as a powerful transnational arbiter of court festival style had faded. Now the court celebrated peace. Looking to French ballet rather than German tournaments, it rejected the controversial 1638 decisions to directly involve outsiders or professionals, let alone genuine charlatans, as performers. The fifteenth and sixteenth of the twenty-​two entries of the 1668 Ballet de la Paix feature a small commedia dell’arte quack troupe. Here, two Harlequins, danced by Monsieur d’Obdam and le Sieur Hoctin, courtiers of Willem III, Prince of Orange and future King of England, introduce their master. In stark contrast to the 1638 set-​up, in 1668 the young ruler Willem III himself danced the role of Charlatan (Ballet 1668: Cv–​C2v; Paquot 1936: 39–​41). This noble ‘Charlatan’ dismisses chemical pharmaceuticals in favour of comical assistants, whose diverting buffooneries and dancing he praises as a powerful, cure-​all, universal panacea. The temporary stage used by the 1638 professional charlatans was mounted on the second of the final entry’s two triumphal chariots, which were followed by the six challengers themselves, brandishing comic impresa satirising the chivalric fashion for heraldry and emblems: Their devises were thus. For Monsieur de Beaverwert a Death with this in French. Ie la donne aux autres. For the Count of Horn. All instruments of incision in his Shield. The word in Latine, Seco meliùs, quam sano [‘I cut better than I cure’].

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For the Baron de Pontasier, (who was dressed like a Don of Spain) an Alembick with this word in Spanish, Alli da me el fuego d’Amor. For Monsieur Major, a hand catching of Flyes. The word in French, Bienheureux qui en echappe. For Monsieur Monomaker. A Fortune presenting a cup. The word in Spanish, Non ti fidur. For Monsieur de Fosse, A hand holding out a bowle of wine. The word in Latine, Bacchica pocula præstant [‘drinkers are revealed by their cups’]. (Diatelesma 1639: 34)10

Proclaiming themselves cavaliers as well as alchemists, the six noblemen addressed their spectators directly: The last party was made up by Monsieur Reverwerd, the Count de Horne, the Baron de Pontasier, Monomaker de Fosse, and Moir who presented themselves in the habit of Chimicks or Mountebanks under the names of Faustus, Mondor, Don Ferrand de Matamorbe a Gentleman of Sivill, Macollo, and Braguets, who to conceale themselves first put out this Bill. There are arrived in the City five Doctours, the most experimented in the World, who thorough all the Country where they passed formerly have chased Death before them, and fortified the seate of health. The diseases they will cure are done ordinarily by them, though they be extraordinary in their own natures. You shall see here a little Catalogue, and as it were a scrowle of all the miracles they can do: Their medicines are beyond price, and this City is not able to pay for the effects of their knowledge; neverthelesse not regarding their worth for your love they have set such a price upon them as you may reach unto, and will aske no mony of the sick till they be perfectly recovered. Come Lords and Ladies to our houses, and lose no occasion. Knowing that health cannot be recovered without pain. 1 The dropsie of the spirit otherwise called vanity, we will easily cure with the powder of knowledge, of which wee have brought good store, knowing that this Countrey is subject to that malady. 2 We cure the Melancholy with a yellow oyntment, which is neither of our composition nor invention, and which is worst, we have but little of it left. 3 Wee cannot radically cure the malady of love, but wee have excellent Anodynes to asswage the pain therof. 4 Lunaticks, Mad men, and Hypocondriakes we cure by putting their braines in our Alembikes, and reposing them afterwards in their proper place, with a little of our Balme, and so they sodainly recover their sences. 5 For the Vertigo or swimming of the head we have no other ceremony than to open the Cranium, that so those evill vapors may breath out; and after by sprinkling it with the water of Patience, the malady is easily cured. 6 The women which complaine of their husbands disability, must attend us at home, for though our common remedies should not profit them they not returne from us unsatisfied. 7 Such as desire to have children may easily obtaine them, if they will use our Balme, which is excellent and easie.

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8 Against the failing of the heart our water of *Casse [*marginalium: The word is an æquivocum, and signifies Cash, Mony, or cassis] doth miraculously. 9 If the diseases of the eyes proceed from envy (as according to Avicen an infinite number of them doe) we can make an excellent Collyrie of Crocus martis, which will worke readily and rarely. 10 We have an excellent Balme against that pinching evill, which the antient Masters of our Art, Theophrastus Paracelsus, Rabbi Elemi, and others call want of money; but it is very dangerous to practise it, and more dangerous to produce it, and therefore we conceale it, and that the rather, because we judge by all appearances, that because this secret or a better is not knowne in this Countrey, the Natives are more hardy and industrious. 11 We have also brought with us a Balme, with which the physitians of Rome long since would have cured Lucrece, if she would have permitted them: but wee thinke wee shall make little use of it in this countrey, because it is sayd that the Damosels here are so loving and willing, that they have long since banished all force and violence. Thus these Gallants alluding to the windy promises of Mountebanks, first discouered themselves, and afterwards sent out this answer to the challenge of the Batavian Knights. [marginalium:  The Chymists reply to the Batavians challenge.] We are they which cal blacke life, and who by the knowledge of the best secrets of nature, renew youth, and restore that strength which age might or hath abated. As to such, the list which in this publike festivity is open to all the Knights in the world, might have beene justly kept shut: and truly if wee had no other quality than that of Chymists, the Heraulds ought not to admit us in till the end of the combat, to cure their wounded men. But wee are men of a more glorious condition, the fire of Love, more forcible than that of the Chymicall furnace, hath transformed us into other men, and by the view of the greatest goddesse on the earth wee are become Cavalliers. This Metamorphosis hath caused us not to endure that challenge which was penned by vanity, and published by temerity; the contents whereof are, That there are Suns in the world more illustrious than that which shines upon us. We therefore demaund to have the list opened, that we may make these Batavians know, that our practise of keeping others in life, hath not deprived us of that skill that may acquire us the honour and glory of this Tournament. And as the world doth already judge of our rare skill by the events, so our will is also that you Knights may deem of our valour by our victory intending nothing else then a confession from your own mouthes, that the Ladies whom you reverence equall not her whom we adore: or if perhaps shee be set in that circle of beauties you shall avow that she alone is worthy of adoration, that your selves are unworthy to love her, and unfit to serve her both those Offices properly appertayning to us. (Diatelesma 1639: 25–​8)

That this ‘Catalogue’ or ‘scrowle’ parodied genuine medical handbills becomes even more apparent from a French single-​sheet broadsheet (Figure 8), among the ephemera published in connection with the 1638 wedding festivities (Verscheyden 1638: A4v).

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Figure 8  Responce des Chimiqves Au Cartel des Chevaliers Bataves, French single-​sheet broadsheet bound into a collection of ephemera published in connection with the 1638 wedding festivities at The Hague (Verscheyden, 1638, sig. A4v). Reproduced by permission of Ghent University Library (BIB.TIEL.002640).

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Parodying a genuine quack handbill both in presentation and wording, its harangue, praising the six tournament quacks’ patent cures for eleven mock maladies, closely matches the English version (in Diatelesma). Both start with the proclamation: ‘MESSIEVRS & DAMES, Il est arrivé en ceste ville, cinq Docteurs les plus experimentez du monde’ (There are arrived in the City five Doctours, the most experimented in the World). Unlike the English version, the French broadsheet is typeset in the manner of genuine quack bills, which it further mimics by naming the six tournament quacks and providing parodic local contact details: ‘Nous sommes logez à la ruë des maladies, à l’enseig. de la Santé’ (We are lodged in the street of sickness, at the sign of Health). While Britannia Triumphans is silent on the wording of its mountebank’s handbills or ‘printed receits’ ( Jones and Davenant 1638: 10), barely two years after the 1638 tournament quack entry, Salmacida Spolia’s itinerant charlatan, Vandergoose, delivers a medical harangue whose similarly parodic style is richly suggestive of close cultural exchanges between court festival at London and The Hague: 1. Entry. Wolfgangus Vandergoose Spagricke, Operator to the invisible Lady stiled the Magicall sister of the Rosicrosse, with these receits following, and many other rare secrets, undertakes in short time to cure the defects of nature, and diseases of the mind: 1 Confection of Hope and feare to entertayne Lovers. 2 Essence of dissimulation to enforce Love. 3 Iulope of fruition to recreate the hot feavers of Love. 4 Water of dalliance to warme an old courage. 5 A subtle quintessence drawne from mathematicall points and lines, filtred through a melancholy brayne to make Eunuchs engender. 6 Pomado of the Barke of Comelinesse, the sweetnesse of wormewood, with the fat of gravity to anoynt those that have an ill mine. 7 Spirit of Saturus high capers, and Bacchus whirling virtigoes to make one dance well. 8 One dramme of the first matter, as much of the rust of times Sythe mixt with the juice of Medeas hearbs, this in an electuary makes all sorts of old people yong. 9 An Opiade of the spirit of Muskadine taken in good quantity to bedward, to make one forget his Creditors. 10 Powder of Menippus tree, & the Rine of Hemp to consolate those who have lost their money. 11 Treakle of the gale of Serpents, and the liver of Doves to initiate a Neophite Courtier. 12 An easie vomit of the fawning of a Spaniel, Gallobelgicus, and the last Coranto, hot from the Presse, with the powder of some leane jests, to prepare a disprovues welcome to rich mens Tables.

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13 A Gargarisme of Florioes first fruits, Diana de monte Major, and the scraping of Spanish Romanc’as distilled in balneo, to make a sufficient Linguist without travelling, or scarse knowing himselfe what hee sayes. 14 A Bath made of a Catalogue from the Mart, and Common places, taken in a Frankford drifat, in his diet he must refraine all reall knowledge, and only sucke in vulgar opinions, using the Fricase of confederacy, will make Ignorants in all professions to seeme and not to be. (Davenant 1639: C1v–​C2r)

Inherently performative, genuine charlatan harangues often amounted to little more than reading out the contents of the printed handbills typically distributed to potential customers during street performances. Some trod a fine line in self-​parody, and medical harangues became a favoured vehicle for literary satire. The 1638 knights’ harangue subverts the medical rhetoric of handbills of the type quacks distributed as broadsheets and orated in public squares. It is the central element of an entry that repeatedly draws on quack rhetoric to undermine generic international chivalric court ideals with specific local concerns. Conclusion At the height of the Thirty Years’ War, the 1638 Dutch wedding attracted visitors from many Protestant northern regions, providing a platform for transnational dynastic and political negotiations. As this chapter shows, it drew on an exceptionally wide range of European performance culture, resulting in several remarkable transnational performative connections. The Hague saw the private staging of two recent hits of the Parisian stage: Charles de Beys’ L’hospital des fovs (1636), adapted from Lope de Vega’s Los locos de Valencia, and Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid, based on Guillén de Castro’s Las mocedades del Cid. Furthermore, as first demonstrated here, conspicuous similarities between the final entry of the tournament parade presented at The Hague and specific London court masques, notably Jones and Davenant’s Britannia Triumphans (1638), performed only a few weeks earlier in January 1638, indicate tangible cultural contact between the two courts. This showcasing of old and new performative trends from all over Europe gives the 1638 wedding considerable historiographical significance as a crossroads of transnational connections in early modern theatre. Referencing these connections  –​with English and Netherlandish visual culture, German tournament, French ballet and the London masque, literature, the commedia dell’arte and other drama –​ many previously unnoted in this context, this chapter focuses on the itinerant healer as a significant theme in early modern court festival. In particular, it considers medical, literary and theatrical influences on the stage names of the six courtiers of the final tournament entry of 1638. Itinerant healers, with or without a performing troupe, were a popular feature of the medieval religious

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stage in French and German-​speaking Europe. The medieval religious stage’s use of pseudo-​medical actions and rhetoric referencing quack sales routines and patter, as a dramatic vehicle for ridiculing individuals and groups afflicted with negatively perceived ailments and conditions, was widely adopted across early modern Europe by secular theatre and court festivals. As with the little commedia dell’arte troupe here identified in Britannia Triumphans, the 1638 entry’s vehicle of mockery is street performers who also peddle medicines. But unlike the quacks of the English antimasque, those of the Dutch entry are mostly identified not as generic commedia dell’arte stage roles, but by specific names. This 1638 entry contributes towards an understanding of the early modern fashion for the metatheatrical use of healthcare itinerants, and their routines and rhetoric, in court festivals. Some insights into the connotations it conveys, in the context of Netherlandish international relations at The Hague in 1638, are indicated by eyewitness accounts of these wedding festivities that specifically single out for criticism this entry and its participants. They comment unfavourably on the quack entry’s snobbish satirising of middle-​ class hairstyles and fashions, cynical mocking of noble chivalric traditions, not least by the Don Quixote performances of its professional quack troupe, and the extreme bad luck they attribute to the winning of tournament prizes by the member of this entry costumed as a cowardly Spanish stage captain. Friedrich zu Dohna dismisses Lodewijk van Nassau, disguised as the diabolical Faustus, as a gentleman of high spirits who always sought to mix buffoonery in with everything, and his quack tournament entry’s mockery of bourgeois pretentions and chivalry as a dreadfully ill-​judged bringer of bad luck, auguring defeat in several key battles against the Spanish (Dohna 1898:  43). Established compatriots such as Willem Boreel, Constantijn Huygens or Nicolaas van Reigersberch were no less critical of this tournament (Becker 1998: 234–​6). In a letter of 15 February 1638, Grotius tellingly juxtaposes its lavish overspending with the terrible suffering of local farmers, struggling with the widespread floods then covering Netherlands farmland (Groot 1973: No. 3457). Although the wedding at The Hague provided many of its noble participants with a brief respite from bitter ongoing warfare with Spain, the mocking choice of the name Dom Ferrand de Matamorbe of Seville proved disastrously unpopular. From the start, idealistic young Dutch soldiers, no less than poets and historians, routinely linked the award of two valuable tournament prizes to Pontesière, the competitor costumed as the hated Spanish knight Dom Ferrand, to major Dutch military defeats of 1638, and especially to the battle of Kallo, whose military leader, Willem Frederik van Nassau (leader of the 1638 tournament’s second entry), lost both this battle and his seventeen-​year-​old only son Maurice Frederik (Becker 1998:  234–​ 7; Akkerman 2011: 683; Aitzema 1669: II, 535; Collot d’Escury 1830: 472; Dohna 1898: 43–​4).

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Featuring actual farces and plays performed by a genuine troupe of street charlatans, and noblemen disguised as Mondor, Braguette and other healers of the time, the 1638 entry, like the wedding festival that it concluded, was deeply rooted in medieval chivalry, while also exhibiting many troubling disjunctions with this shared European court tradition. In ostentatious contravention of longstanding traditions based on religious guidelines, the 1638 festival was scheduled beyond the official end of carnival feasting, and well into the traditional Lenten period reserved for sober fasting. Its planners, hosts and noble guests badly misjudged public response to its blatant disrespect for state enemies, modern warfare skills, popular superstitions, prudent frugality or religious calendar boundaries. Nowhere were these perceived shortcomings resented more than in connection with the final entry. Close attention to transnational medical, literary and theatrical connections here confirms that the noblemen who starred as charlatans in this entry of ‘The Knights of the Dromedary and Alchemists’ aligned their satirical agenda with contemporary social and political issues. In less hard times, their cuttingly acidic mockery might have been tolerated as misconceived entertainment. In the harsh context of the Thirty Years’ War, it was universally condemned as a frivolous, anti-​chivalric and insolent assault on the values of church, military and general public. Consummate playwrights such as Bredero or Jonson quarried medical, linguistic and cultural clashes of expectation between itinerant quacks and their patients for hugely effective comic stage business. This strategy crumbled in the clumsy hands of Lodewijk van Nassau and his associates. However, the political and social resentments they awakened in their audience do not detract from the theatrical interest of their quack entry, whose records offer vivid insights into itinerant charlatans’ impact on the international healing and performance economies. Within the rich context of a wealth of historiographic evidence generated by the 1638 festival at The Hague as a whole, this final tournament entry also provides valuable new perspectives on the exceptional contribution of itinerant charlatans, to the forging and transporting of transnational connections in early modern theatre. Notes 1 For inviting and responding to spoken versions of this work, my thanks to my co-​editor, Pavel Drábek, and to the organizers and delegates of the TWB 2015 conference (Rob Henke, Susanne Wofford, Eric Nicholson:  NYU in Paris, 30 June–​3 July 2015); Lose Leute, Figuren, Künste und Schauplätze des Vaganten in der Frühen Neuzeit ( Joerg Wesche, Franz Fromholzer, Julia Wagner: KWI, Essen, 3–​5 September 2015); ‘Trust Me’: The Language of Medical Expertise and Imposture in Britain, 1400–​1900 ( Joe Stadolnik, Elma Brenner: UCL Institute of Advanced Studies and Wellcome Trust, London, 25 May 2018). My thanks also, for sharing

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their expertise in Latin, to Jonathan Gibson (Diatelesma), and Cora Dietl and Outi Merisalo (Grotius), and for research support, to Annika Mombauer, Caitlin Adams and the Open University FASS Research Committee; also to the Herzog August Bibliothek and its staff (most especially Jill Bepler, Ulrike Gleixner and Volker Bauer) and Fellows, and to all the other libraries and archives that facilitated this work, especially Universitätsbibliothek Basel (Renate Würsch; introduction image), Chatsworth (Diane Naylor; Figure 6: © Devonshire Collection. Reproduced by permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees); Archives de la Ville de Dijon (Clothilde Trehorel, Cécile Lelong; Figure 7), Ghent University Library (Femke van der Fraenen; Figure 8), Stiftung Historische Museen Hamburg, Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte (Bettina Gierke, Ralf Wiechmann; cover and title-​ page image). Otherwise unattributed translations are mine. 2 On Bredero, see Nigel Smith, Chapter 5 in this volume. 3 Whetstone (1582: ‘Vnto the friendly Reader’ [Liiiv, Miv]); Katritzky (2007: 229). 4 See Relation (1638), Verscheyden (1638), Ordonnantien (1638) and Responce (1638). 5 Diatelesma (1639: A3r–​v); on Butter, see Raymond (1996: 12–​13, 95). 6 On this, see Noémie Ndiaye (Chapter  4), Nigel Smith (Chapter  5) and Erith Jaffe-​Berg (Chapter 11) in this volume. 7 Akkerman (2011: 600); Germain (2010: 6383, 6390, 6395); see also Conermann et al. (2006: 480). On early modern piracy, see Jacques Lezra, Chapter 12 in this volume. 8 Responce (1638, University Library, Leiden:  1372 C 5); Conermann et  al. (2006: 470). 9 Dohna (1898: 43): ‘un théâtre portatif, sur lequel on représentait des aventures de Quixote, pour tourner en ridicule toute cette chevalerie’. 10 See also Relation (1638: 13–​14); Becker (1998: 243).

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7 ‘Why, sir, are there other heauens in other countries?’: The English Comedy as a transnational style Pavel Drábek

Director Norman Marshall, in his book The Producer and the Play (1957), comments on the specifics of theatrical taste, comparing Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera (1928) with its main source, Nigel Playfair’s 1920 revival of The Beggar’s Opera.1 He points out: The German production of The Beggar’s Opera (entitled Die Dreigroschenoper), although inspired by the success of Playfair’s revival, had nothing in common with it except that it was equally well suited to the taste of the audience. The Playfair version would inevitably have failed in Berlin. It was far too dainty –​ which was one of the reasons for its success in England […]. There was nothing dainty about the taste of Berlin in the ’twenties. Brecht re-​wrote the text and the lyrics, the original score was scrapped and replaced by music which had much in common with the lewd husky ditties of the Berlin nightclubs. The predominant flavour of the production was that peculiarly German mixture of sadism and sickly sentiment. (Marshall 1957: 250)

Brecht, working on a version of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728) with Elisabeth Hauptmann, offered it to the actor-​manager Ernst Josef Aufricht, who recognised this proposition as a great entrepreneurial opportunity. The fact that Playfair’s London production had enjoyed a staggering run of 1,463 performances was a significant criterion in Aufricht’s decision (McNeff 2006: 81–​2). And yet, despite its affinities in plot and many points of contact with the London production –​including ‘vestigial remnants of original tunes in the final score’ of Kurt Weill (McNeff 2006: 82) –​the Berlin production ‘had nothing in common with it except that it was equally well suited to the taste of the audience’, as Marshall observes. Although there is material, historical and textual evidence of transnational exchange in Die Dreigroschenoper, from a theatrical point of view there is perhaps more separating than uniting the two productions, since both were written within a local theatre culture with specific tastes and aesthetic expectations. This is a paradoxical situation and moreover

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one that poses a significant methodological problem. On the one hand, the available evidence (mostly of a textual nature) testifies to a rich circulation of material and personnel (stories and plots, words and tunes, routines, structural patterns or theatergrams, actors and managers); on the other, the resulting theatre performance adopts a local taste and, as it were, reflects the local cultural identity. This paradox, which is inherent in all theatre adaptation and translation, has important consequences for transnational exchanges as such. In our own century, a similar process can be identified –​for instance, when Katie Mitchell invited dramatist Martin Crimp to adapt Euripides’ Phoinissai (The Phoenician Women) for her production at the Schauspielhaus in Hamburg (2013). Crimp’s adaptation in English was then translated into and performed in German, under the title Alles Weitere Kennen Sie aus dem Kino (The Rest Will Be Familiar to You from the Cinema). It is also significant that the guest director and dramatist drew on a classical Greek play (Phoinissai)  –​a transnational myth that places the production within a transculturally resonant framework. Reflecting on the cultural specifics of the play, Crimp makes an interesting observation: Part of the particularity of the play that premiered in Hamburg is about the training of German actors; it’s about the structures within which they operate, because there is a company. […] But then, say, we bring along a director from the UK, Katie Mitchell: she will then create an artefact which is part of her own personal vision of what theatre might be, just as the text, which comes from me, is part of mine. So it’s quite hard to say where the actual cultural identity of that theatre artefact lies. (Crimp and Sierz 2016: 109)

Going some four centuries further back into theatre history, perhaps a similar observation can be made about the cultural particularity and the mixture of imported, transnational influences relating to the English Comedy (Englische Comedie), a theatrical style practised by the popular travelling English troupes and their inheritors between the 1580s and 1680s. Most scholarship on this phenomenon assumes that, dramaturgically, English travelling actors exported English plays, and performed them on the Continent with necessary adjustments. This chapter elaborates a different perspective:  the methodological discussion of historical theatre aesthetics presented here analyses the English Comedy in its specificity, born on the Continent from predominantly indigenous material (stories, motifs, symbols), and presented in the innovative theatrical style imported from England. As such, it existed in-​ between –​as a paradoxically local, idiosyncratic amalgam of numerous cultural identities. The English Comedy was born abroad, on the road, just like the Italian commedia dell’arte and perhaps even consciously emulated the success of the Italian troupes. More specifically, I  analyse the characteristics of the English Comedy, and argue that it is a unique, recognisable, dramaturgical

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style that was itself a nexus of transnational influences. On a thematic level, the English Comedy appealed to a shared sense of transnational culture by means of different transcendental motifs –​the Classical Greek and Roman heritage, and the pan-​European folk tales and themes, such as Heaven and Hell and their conventional dramatic agents: angels and devils.

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A transnational dramaturgy The first English performance recorded abroad was given by Lord Leicester’s Men in Utrecht on 23 April 1586 (Bald 1943: 395). One of the troupe was probably the famous Will Kempe, the clown for whom Shakespeare wrote numerous comedic roles. The company performed the Forces (or Labours) of Hercules –​a typical acrobatic routine of the Italian comedians.2 Apart from the connection to Italian performance practices that draws on the Classical heritage through the myth of Hercules, there is another line of interpretation stemming from pan-​ European folklore. Hoenselaars and Helmers characterise the 1586 Labours of Hercules as ‘a classical display of force and strength and a welcome alternative to a dramatisation of the (banned) life of St George on what used to be his name day’ (2016: 145). Hercules is a suggestive, if not a conclusive symbolic substitute for St George; the classical hero perhaps seen as an inoffensive replacement for the local saint St George, given the negative connotations of hagiography in a Protestant country. There may have been other reasons for the dramaturgical shift from the saint to the mythological hero –​and, as an attempt at cultural complicity by the Earl of Leicester’s Men with their (probably international) Utrecht audience: as a classical myth, Hercules would have been a convenient medium –​perhaps not unlike Mitchell and Crimp’s Hamburg version of Euripides. This figurative dramaturgy would also be in keeping with the cultural variants of Herakles (Hercules), as the ‘type of strong boy’ in popular imagination documented by Karl Galinsky (1972: 2). Galinsky even suggests that the pagan god was, at times, put to a range of uses: ‘Once the religious threat he posed had vanished, Herakles, along with other pagan deities, conveniently entered into the realm of allegory and under the aspect of the supreme exemplar of virtue and justice was eventually even identified with Christ’ (1972:  188). This identification goes at least as far back as Dante, and is made explicit by the English writer William Fulbecke in his A Booke on Christian Ethics (1587), and propagated by Edmund Spenser in his Faerie Queene (1590) and later iterated in Milton’s Paradise Regained (4.562–​71; Galinsky 1972:  202, 205–​6). Spenser draws a comparison between St George and the Arthurian Red Cross Knight, who fights with a dragon (Faerie Queene I, Canto 2), and with Hercules (Cantos 7 and 11). An allegorical conflation of all the metamorphoses of Hercules seems to have been a cultural commonplace of the contemporaneous English

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imagination –​and also the continental one, as will be shown below. Besides, Hercules carrying out the twelve labores set him by his elder half-​brother Eurystheus, or portrayed as the effeminate hero killed by Deianira, was also a popular theme in early modern theatre throughout Europe.3 With this in view, the classical framing provided by the Earl of Leicester’s Men’s Labours of Hercules, in Utrecht in 1586, could well have been an appropriate and fashionable way of marking St George’s Day. Will Kempe, one of the Earl of Leicester’s Men, is also noteworthy for another reason. Not only was he an actor participating in some of the earliest recorded performances of English actors in Continental Europe, but his presence on that side of the Channel became notorious. In The Return from Parnassus (Return 1600), Philomusus greets Kempe when he appears: ‘What M.  Kempe | how doth the Emperour of Germany?’ (4.3); in John Day, William Rowley and George Wilkins’ The Travels of the Three English Brothers (1607), Kempe meets ‘an Italian Harlaken’ and they prepare to jointly ‘inuent any extemporall meriment’ (9.78; Day et al. 1607) –​as if Kempe’s travels on the Continent were a well-​known fact. However, even more than as a performer, he made a lasting impact through the comical routines and jigs that became a popular genre of the English Comedy throughout northern Europe, where they were known as Singspiele (see Drábek 2020). The most popular jig attributed to Will Kempe, known as The Singing Simpkin or Pickelhering in the Box, is based on a Boccaccio novel –​by then a notorious transnational plot, that –​like the Labours of Hercules or Euripides’ Phoinissai –​did not need much cultural localisation, and was conducive to transnational theatre touring. In the true spirit of the English Comedy, Kempe’s jig was a transnational creation, combining pan-​European classics (Boccaccio), the popular Italian genre of the witty farce, and the flair of a local trickster folk tale. Although routines and even plots were associated with individual performers (or stage personas), this does not warrant an authorial approach, let  alone indicate any claim to the performer’s invention of their material. In her discussion of the comedian-​playwright Robert Armin in The Actor as Playwright in Early Modern Drama, Nora Johnson brilliantly articulates the early modern practices of authorial property: [Authorship] does not matter until notions of private property and subjectivity have made the connection between ‘the author and the work’ appear inevitable. […] Armin thus makes himself up as a writer out of the voices of others, positioning himself not as the origin of the text –​the questions come from other people –​but as its last word, the one who delivers the witty quip as the closing line of the exchange. ( Johnson 2003: 1–​2)

The same holds true for Kempe and the jig attributed to him. In this sense, he was more Barthesian scribe than author-​originator, and in his case, the

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episteme he drew on was a transnational one. Not only does Johnson’s articulation have bearing on questions of authorship, but it can also help identify the type of creative novelty  –​the ‘added value’4  –​that English comedians brought to well-​known plays and plots. There are numerous instances of plays performed by the English actors based on continental stories, and ‘returned back’ with them from England to mainland Europe, or maybe even taken up only while on tour, having no known variant performed in England. Doctor Faustus, The Shoemaker’s Holiday (both: Drábek 2014) and Saint Dorothea (The Virgin Martyr) (Mikyšková 2018) are the most prominent examples. The fluid textuality of Kempe’s jig is characteristic both of the early modern residually oral culture (see Ong 2012:  115–​35), and of comedy as a theatrical mode fundamentally rooted in oral delivery and in the spontaneity of performance in the here and now. A modern example that may serve as an illustration is ‘The Bricklayer’s Lament’, originally performed at the Oxford Union on 4 December 1958 by Gerard Hoffnung, a German musician and cartoonist based in Britain (Russell 2015). Although this now classic comedy routine apparently has its creator-​performer, it has become a stock story that exists in innumerable variants, and each performance (rather than textual version) varies in form and formulation, since every performer invests their own individual comical talents into the concrete performance event. So the resulting performance –​often partly improvised –​is adjusted to the audience, and primarily designed to raise laughter, rather than to retain the integrity of the original story. Such fluid textuality is also evident in the surviving early modern scripts of the English Comedy on the Continent, and it is in the nature of theatre that it adjusts its delivery to ‘[s]‌uit the action to the word, the word to the action’ (Hamlet, 3.2.17–​18), as Hamlet instructs the travelling actors arriving at Elsinore. (Significantly, this is an in-​joke: from Utrecht, the Earl of Leicester’s Men, including Shakespeare’s later co-actors Will Kempe, Thomas Pope and George Bryan, toured on to Denmark, performing at Elsinore later in 1586; Limon 1985: 3). June Schlueter, in her analysis of the surviving scripts, hypothesises that the plays published in the 1620 anthology Engelische Comedien und Tragedien could have been written by the actors themselves, who ‘would have known what pleased their German audiences’ (2016: 237). However, the surviving texts should not be read as performance scripts, but rather as documents of performances (as would probably be the case for the 1608 Graz manuscript of Niemand und Jemand), or at best as ‘pre-​texts’ for them (Drábek and Katritzky 2016: 1527–​8). As David Mann observes in his study on the Elizabethan player: ‘Too much attention to the text […] can distort our view of its place in the performance’ (1991: 1). With regard to differences between individual versions of plays  –​such as Nobody and Somebody or Fortunatus –​a conventional, textualist stemma of transmission of the texts necessarily fails to do justice to the issue; the authority of

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performance and the homeostatic nature of theatre (Ong 2012: 46–​9) play too fundamental a role in the resulting shape of the show. Also, it is known from Fynes Moryson’s much-​cited testimony from the Frankfurt Fair in 1592, that the English actors were ‘pronowncing peeces and Patches of English playes’ (MS CCC94: 470) –​an apt description for the formulaic nature of the oral medium. It would be inadvisable to infer that the clearly substandard show that Moryson witnessed (‘having neither a complete number of actors nor any good apparel, nor any ornament of the stage’) was typical. Yet the apparent effectiveness of the performance (‘yet the Germans, not understanding a word they said […] flocked wonderfully to see their gesture and action’), testifies to the English actors’ ability to adapt to the exigencies of the performance. ‘What monstrous vgly hagge is this?’: The importance of framing Everyone who acts on the stage knows how important a successful first scene is for the entire performance and for all its participants. (Bogatyrev 2016 [1937]: 169)

Given the textual fluidity of the surviving scripts, what can be said about the English Comedy as a style? An English provenance was not the necessary criterion for its plays, and they bear ‘a surprising degree of un-​Englishness’ (Drábek and Katritzky 2016: 1531). Nor were the actors themselves limited to British nationality: from very early on, the English Comedy was also practised by comedians born in Germany, the Low Countries, the Czech lands or Austria. It was a distinctive theatrical style –​just like the Italian comedy or the Italian motions (or puppet plays) that were practised by performers of any nationality (see Drábek 2015: 15–​16). What then were the distinctive features of the style? A recurrent pattern (or theatergram) in itinerant scripts of the English Comedy is dialogic inductions, introducing the main plot and any concluding dialogic epilogues rounding it off. An example can be found in A Most Pleasant Comedy of Mucedorus, a remarkable play for a travelling company, which enjoyed extraordinary popularity in print, with its staggering nineteen editions, and a live performance history extending to as recently as the 1830s (Proudfoot 2002: 18; Kirwan 2015: 99–​106; Chambers 1933: 190–​ 1). Mucedorus is framed by a dialogue between the figures of Comedy and Envy, whose quarrel over the genre and outcome of the play establish its ‘mixed’ nature as a tragicomedy. While this is seemingly nothing more than an aesthetic disputation, such devices also fulfil other significant functions. By bringing on stage two allegorical figures, the play sets up the modality of Mucedorus and its world (for narrative modalities see Doležel 1998: 113–​32; Richardson 2002). It is introduced by the overruling presence of Comedy, who opens the play and sets the tone:

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Enter Comedie ioyfull with a garland of baies on her head. Why so? thus doe I hope to please: Musicke reuiues, and mirth is tollerable. Comedie play thy part, and please, Mak merry them that coms to ioy with thee. (Mucedorus 1598, A2r)

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Interestingly, Comedy’s opponent is not the intuitive match, Tragedy, but rather Envy: Enter Enuie, his armes naked besmearde with bloud En. Nay staie minion, there lies a block. What al on mirth; Ile interrupt your tale, And mixe your musicke with a tragick end. Co. What monstrous vgly hagge is this, That dares comtrowle the pleasures of our will? (A2r)

Envy is an allegory of the reversal principle, subverting Comedy’s intent and playing off Comedy’s positivism. These two antithetical figures, framing the plot, not only set the extreme limits within which the tragicomic story will unravel, but also launch the fictional modality of sudden and extreme switches between the two. So the two principles set up here are not only generic, but dramatic and relational (dialectical).5 Also of importance is who plays the parts of Comedy and Envy. The doubling chart in the 1598 quarto’s list of characters, which encouragingly advertises that ‘Eight persons may easily play it’, provides important evidence: Enuie: Tremelio a Captaine,      for one. Bremo a wilde man. Comedy, a boy, an ould woman,     for one. Ariena Amadines maide.

} }

Comedy, played by the second boy, is a feminine factor associated with the romantic heroine (the ‘boy’ in the list also appears in the play as Amadine’s attendant). Envy is played by the captain of the troupe –​who also doubles as the braggardly Captain Tremelio, who teams with the play’s villain Segasto to try to murder Mucedorus, and, as the wild man Bremo, represents the play’s darkest force, as a cannibal, abductor and potential rapist. So in his entry, Envy metatheatrically frames, and simultaneously announces, the dramatic function this stage persona would be, within all its roles as the hero’s archetypal antagonist and adversary. In so doing, the framing induction of Comedy and Envy both sets the play’s modality, and allegorises the key agents appearing in Mucedorus’ story. This device is also significant in structuring the interaction with the audience, and priming their judgements within the axiological frame.6 The same framing device appears in Johann Georg Gettner’s Die Heÿlige Martÿrin Dorothea (c. 1690), a version of Thomas Dekker and Philip

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Massinger’s The Virgin Martyr (1620) adapted by Gettner in the style of the English Comedy, and surviving in a recently discovered manuscript (for Christian Neuhuber’s critical edition see Havlíčková and Neuhuber 2014: 83–​ 182). Unlike The Virgin Martyr, the German play opens with a quarrel between two allegorical figures representing evil and good –​the demon Harpax and the Engel (Angel): Harpax der teüfl in Mensch‹licher› gestaldt. harpax Auß Plutonis grossen befehl habe ich eine Zeit lang das vnterirtische trawergezeld verlassen, menschliche gestald an mich genohmen, vnd den Erdboden betretten, vnter den nahmen Harpax, in willens dem groß=Cantzler Theophilo aufzuwarten, Ihn in seinem eyfer gegen die Christen zustärken, vnd entlich mit seiner Persohn vnser höllisches reich zuuermehren. Engel in mensch‹licher› gestaldt. engel diese gestaldt habe ich auf des allerhöchsten befehl an mich genohmen, vnd werde gesendet, denen nothleüdenden vnd beträngten Christen beyzuspringen, absonderlich der Freyle Dorothea aufzuwarthen, Sie in glaubens sachen zu vnterrichten, vnd in ihren guten vorhaben zu stärken. harpax o wehe! was ist dieses? mein Erbfeind! engel welcher kommen ist… harpax mich zu quälen? Engel deinen anschlag zuuernichten (1.1; Havlíčková and Neuhuber 2014: 96–​7) (Harpax the devil in human shape. harpax Through Pluto’s mighty behest I have long departed the underworld’s tearful abode, taken on human shape and stepped onto the face of the earth under the name Harpax, to serve the High Chancellor Theophilus, to give him strength in his zeal against the Christians, and finally to use this person to increase our hellish empire. Angel in human shape. angel This shape have I taken on at the behest of the Almighty, and am being sent to hasten to needy and oppressed Christians, and especially to serve the maid Dorothea, teach her in matters of faith, and support her good intentions. harpax Alas! What is this? My archenemy! angel …who has come… harpax …to torment me? angel …to destroy your attack.)7

This opening dialogue has a parallel in the quarrel between the Good and Bad Angels in the most popular English Comedy on the Continent, Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (the 1616 version). It launches the allegorical mode of Gettner’s entire play (importantly both spirits enter ‘in human shape’), and frames the story as a psychomachia. In contrast to Comedy and its subversive variant Envy, it is appropriate for the genre of tragedy, in which Die

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Heÿlige Martÿrin Dorothea is written, that the opposing forces are axiological absolutes, and significant for setting the tragic genre that, unlike Comedy in Mucedorus, the evil force, Harpax, enters first.8 Another remarkable instance of an English play with a similar axiological induction, that ‘hath bene sundrie times publikely plaide’, is Robert Greene’s The Scottish Historie of Iames the fourth, slaine at Flodden. Entermixed with a pleasant Comedie, presented by Oboram King of Fayeries (c. 1590; Greene 1598: title page).9 It opens with a dance, followed by a dialogue between Aster Oberon, King of Fairies, and the Scots misanthrope Bohan: Musicke playing within. Enter Aster Oberõ, King of Fayries, an Antique, who dance aboue a Tombe, plac’st conueniently on the Stage, out of the which, suddainly starts vp as they daunce, Bohan a Scot, attyred like a ridstall man, from whom the Antique flyes. (Greene 1598: A3r)

Oberon opens the play with his attendants in an Antique dance, setting the comedic mode. In contrast, grumpy Bohan then enters, now necessarily perceived as comically grumpy, his comicality further enhanced by his theatrical Scots accent. The conventional ‘Who’s there?’ appears in the dialogue too, including a punning allusion to Oberon as the devil: [bohan]  whay art thou a King? ober.  I am. bohan The deele thou art, whay thou look’st not so big as the king of Clubs […] (A3v)

Oberon has called on Bohan since, as he says: OBER. Oberon King of Fayries, that loues thee because thou hatest the world, and to gratulate thee, I brought those Antiques to shew thee some sport in daunsing, which thou haste loued well. (A4r)

Bohan quarrels with Oberon over their reasons for hating the world, and as a graphic example introduces the comical history of James IV (actually based on a novella by Cinthio, Hecatommithi III.I; Sanders 1970: xxix): bohan  Now King, if thou bee a King, I  will shew thee whay I  hate the world by demonstration, in the yeare 1520. was in Scotland, a king ouerruled with parasites, misled by lust, & many circumstances, too long to trattle on now, much like our court of Scotland this day, that story haue I set down, gang with me to the gallery, & Ile shew thee the same in Action, by guid fellowes of our country men, and then when thou seest that, iudge if any wise man would not leaue the world if he could. oberon  That will I see, lead and ile follow thee. Exeunt. (A4v)

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Further dialogues between Bohan and Oberon are sandwiched between the acts, along with dances and capers; maintaining consistent framing throughout the play  –​with the exception of its very end, probably because that would have been provided for by the obligatory concluding jig. The induction in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (which survives only in the 1623 Folio) follows the same pattern, except that here it is the Lord who brings on the play for the entertainment of the beggar Sly (see Stern 2009:  107). To my knowledge, it has not previously been pointed out that Shakespeare’s induction is composed of pieces and patches of plays:  the clownery between Sly and the Hostess (a Tapster in the anonymous The Taming of a Shrew) has a parallel in Scene 9 of Mucedorus (see Bate and Rasmussen 2013:  531–​2).10 A parallel instance can also be found in an untitled English Comedy in the German manuscript from Gdańsk edited by Bolte (1895), which he gave the title Tiberius von Ferrara und Anabella von Mömpelgard.11 These English comedic routines between clown and tavern host are well worth further exploration –​from the tavern origins of the English professional theatre at the Red Lion in 1567, through the birth of Pickelhering in Southwark (Katritzky 2014) to Kempe’s (!) clowneries as Falstaff in Shakespeare’s King Henry IV. In this context, Wiles is indirectly indicating the English Comedy on the London stage: ‘When Kemp and Shakespeare became fellows, equal sharers in the new company, one of Shakespeare’s first acts was to take an old play and to construct a part in it for Kemp based on Kemp’s routines or “merriments” ’ (1987: 73). The framing of Dekker’s comedy If It Be Not Good, The Diuel is in it is methodical, and features Pluto with his many furies and followers (Dekker 1612). The play opens with Charon calling on Pluto; he asks for a pay rise, or he will stop ferrying souls to the underworld. While Dekker’s induction plot is consistent, and carefully elaborated throughout the comedy, it is known to have been used to frame other plays. It survives in a startlingly close variant, in the German marionette play Doktor Johann Faust from Ulm (first printed by Scheible in 1847; Günzel 1970: 447; see also Drábek 2014: 181). Significantly, the printed version of Dekker’s play lacks Charon’s opening line to which Pluto replies: Enter (at the sound of hellish musick,) Pluto, and Charon. pluto Ha! charon So. pluto  What so. charon  Ile be thy slaue no longer. pluto  What slaue? charon  Hels drudge, her Gally-​slaue. (Dekker 1612: B1r) charon Pluto! pluto Ho!

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charon So! pluto  Was so? charon  Ich begehre, nicht länger dein Sklave zu sein. pluto  Was für ein Sklav’? charon  Dein höllischer Galeerensklav’. (Doktor Johann Faust; in Günzel 1970: 7)

Evidently, this particular theatrical script was one of the pieces and patches of English plays deployed by travelling comedians in their performances, alongside other routines and scenarios (see Drábek 2014: 181–​94).12 ‘Peeces and patches of English plays’ The German script of Fortunatus published in the 1620 collection has no prologue, although Dekker’s Old Fortunatus (1600) includes one, composed for the performance before Queen Elizabeth:  ‘a version of the play specifically rewritten and elongated with music for court performance’ (Stern 2009: 153). The 1620 German script lacks any introduction whatsoever, and starts with Fortunatus entering ‘in ragged clothes’ (in zerrissenen Kleidern), bemoaning his fate. The ‘interim’ or ‘intermean’ entertainments are also missing; the text only indicates where they should be, with the stage direction:  ‘Allhier agiret Pickelhering’ (Brauneck 1970:  137, 146, 154, 159; Here acts Pickelhering), probably played by Andalosia’s Servant (Diener), the analogue of Dekker’s trickster Shadow.13 These interludes were probably routines –​either solo or group –​as they appear in other scripts. The opening play of the 1620 collection, Comœdia von der Königin Esther und Hoffertigen Haman (Comedy of Queen Esther and the Haughty Haman), is interlaced with bawdy jests of Hans Knapkäse and his Wife (and occasionally other one-​off characters). These scenes have no relation to Esther’s plot and comprise recognisable stock material (such as chauvinistic shrew-​ taming, food comedy or jealousy routines).14 Hans Leberwurst, the clown of the Gdańsk Tiberius and Anabella play, provides the interludes with stock routines: (i) Act 2 Scene 3: Hans (solo) is desperately in love with Anabella, as a foil to his master Tiberius. (ii) Act 3 Scene 3: Hans (solo) rehearses what he will say to Anabella. (iii) Act 4 Scene 2: Hans wrangles with the Innkeeper over the comical list of food Hans has eaten. (iv) Act 5 Scene 3: Hans returns home to his old Father, in a parody of the Prodigal Son.15 Possible London stage parallels are (i):  William Rowley’s scenes as the clown Cuddy Banks, in Thomas Dekker, John Ford and Rowley’s The Witch

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of Edmonton (1621); (ii):  Orlando and Rosalind’s rehearsal in As You Like It; (iii):  Falstaff ’s list, discovered in his pocket in King Henry IV Part  1; (iv): Lancelot Gobbo and Old Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice (2.2).16 These routines belonged to Moryson’s ‘peeces and Patches of English playes’ (MS CCC94:  470) that circulated from performance to performance, and could be notionally attached to any play, as their comic interludes. They provided not only comic relief but, even more significantly, framed the play within an axiological and ethical discourse based on allegories, dialectical contrasts and subversion. The axiological spaces created through framing  –​worlds of enchantment, fiction, mythology, folk or classical culture  –​are in a metaphorical, and occasionally allegorical, relationship to the lived reality. I  would argue that while there clearly are literal links with historical realities in the surviving playscripts –​as cultural materialists have amply confirmed over recent decades –​the figurative, or (broadly speaking) suggestive, import of the plays has an equal if not greater role in the theatrical aesthetics of the style. ‘Why, sir, are there other heauens in other countries?’: Tricksters, transgressors, borders-​crossers and harrowers of Hell In his influential book Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater (1978), Robert Weimann has discussed the clown and the devil as interconnected representatives of the popular, folk tradition in the late Middle Ages and early modern times, in relation to their mimetic and non-​mimetic qualities in the performance space. While his interpretations are inspirational, and have reconsidered Shakespearean theatre from the perspectives of Marxist philosophy of class and the popular element, Weimann narrows down the discussion to an ideological dialectics of early capitalism vs. the folk (proletarian) element. In doing so, he forecloses the transcendental or metaphysical (or spiritual) aspect of early modern theatre, which still operates –​as Weimann meticulously documents  –​within the frameworks of folk ritual. Richard Hillman departs from Weimann, proffering a poststructuralist approach to the Shakespearean text as trickster-​like in nature, a ‘slippery discourse’, in his detailed analysis of the ‘subversive dynamic through formal embodiments of disruption’ as present in Shakespeare’s plays (1992: 221). I would argue that the ‘slippery’ nature of the plays and their characters is a mode that reaches beyond meaning, and even primes it. From this perspective, the subversion is an ex post rationalisation of the structure of meaning; the characteristic nature of English Comedy, as evidenced by the travelling actors’ scripts, is not simply a pervasive logic in the plays, but rather a special modality of their worlds –​ one that creates the axiological space, and defines the mode of existence of the personas within it.

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A conceptual framework corresponding more appropriately with my argument is based on Max Weber’s sociological notions of enchantment (Verzauberung) and disenchantment (Entzauberung). Weber, in one of the founding books of sociology, Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism (1958 [1904]), observes the process of the disenchantment of the world (Entzauberung der Welt), in which society breaks away from its traditional inclinations towards the spiritual or magical world of myth and religion. Rather than viewing this essential dichotomy of enchantment and disenchantment as diachronic, I  view enchantment and disenchantment as concurrent, collateral modes of presence –​the one representing the everyday world (the subject of history), the other present in the ‘enchanted’ habitat of the creative and playful mind. This latter has been institutionalised in the theatre. Recent performance theory, such as Marvin Carlson’s theatre ‘metaphysics’ (2003), acknowledges the enchanted nature of performance; theatre is a ‘haunted’ activity, with everyday audiences ‘visited’ by inhabitants of the other, mythological world –​in the likeness of humans, but representing always more and always less than individuals. Early modern theatre played with a type of illusion, an enchanted world with its own rules –​pastoral, mythical, utopian, fairy-​tale-​like but also as-​if real (Fortunatus’ Famagusta, Shylock’s Venice, Romeo and Juliet’s Verona). With a view to the ‘actual performance conditions’, David Mann outlines their nature:  ‘Illusion, certainly of the sort available in the Elizabethan theatre, operated not through tricking the audience but through their active willingness to enter into the deception’, resulting in a ‘sort of clown–​ audience rapprochement’ (1991: 3, 78–​9). The illusion offered by performers of the English Comedy, especially their clown, was of a specific kind  –​in connection with the London stage, Mann talks of ‘the independent reality of the clown […that comprises] himself and the audience’ (1991: 78). The nature of enchantment in the English Comedy was similar, and even more literally Weberian, in its connections with magic, religion and mythological trickster figures. Arguably, it was this feature that became dominant in the ‘English’ style; its stories were framed to exist within ‘enchanted’ axiological spaces, induced through framing devices created by the clown. The earliest surviving image of the English/​D utch/​German clown figure Pickelhering (on the 1621 pamphlet ‘Englischer Bickelhering’) portrays the character as a countryman with sloppy trousers, a bi-​coloured coat, basket with goods on his back, and –​somewhat surprisingly –​a ragged aristocratic-​like ruff (see Figure 9). In other words, his costume is a mixture of social classes. It is well known that later Pickelherings, as well as Hanswursts, share this eclectic combination of iconographic attributes. What is worth considering is the basket, and the character’s ambulant or itinerant nature. Clearly, Pickelhering is a mobile character, portrayed as delivering commodities from

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Figure 9  Englischer Bickelhering /​jetzo ein vornehmer Eysenhändeler /​mit Axt /​ Beyl /​Barten auff Praag Jubilierende (1621), broadsheet. © Trustees of the British Museum (1948,0623.10).

one world to another. This was, I argue, a conventional, generic iconographic attribute of the clown –​seen from the disenchanted world as coming from the other-​worldly countryside. Shakespeare’s clowns share this too: the Clown of Titus Andronicus enters ‘with a basket and two Pigeons in it’ (4.3.76.1); the Clown of Antony and Cleopatra brings ‘the pretty worme of Nylus […] That killes and paines not’ (5.2.238–​9). An untitled Elizabethan broadside ballad, of the Dance of Death

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tradition (‘Mark well the effect, purtreyed here in all’, 1580; see Figure 10), portrays Death and five human characters. The engraving at the beginning of the print shows them pursued by Death with a dart. The emblems underneath are these: The Priest.  ‘I praye for yov fower.’ The King.  ‘I defende yov fower.’ The Harlot.  ‘I vanquesh yov fower.’ The Lawyer.  ‘I helpe yov iiij to yovr right.’ The Clown.  ‘I feede yov fower.’ Death.  ‘I kill yov all.’

The identification of the Clown, as the caterer and as itinerant, is further stressed by his stanzas in the ballad: The contry clowne, full loth to lose his right, Puts in his foot, and pleads to be the chiefe; What can they do (saith he) by power or might, If that by me they haue not their reliefe? For want of food they should all perish than; What say you now to me, the countrey man? For want of me they should both liue and lacke, For want of me they could not till the earth, And thats the cause I cary on my backe This table here of plenty not of dearth; I feast them all, their hunger I appease, For by my toyle they feede euen at their ease.

The two cited Shakespearean clowns are also mediators in another sense. Cleopatra’s Clown uses culinary and demonic imagery, with the poisonous worm. The Clown in Titus Andronicus acquires an equally demonic or other-​ worldly errand, as Titus ushers him with the words: Enter the Clowne with a basket and two Pigeons in it. titus Newes, newes, from heauen, Marcus the poast is come. Sirrah, what tydings? haue you any letters? Shall I haue Iustice, what sayes Iupiter? (Titus Andronicus, 4.3.76–​9)

These Shakespeare clowns and clown-​like figures, whose border-​crossing nature can also be identified elsewhere in Shakespeare’s plays,17 are trickster figures of the kind described by psychological and anthropological studies, from those of Carl Gustav Jung or Paul Radin, to Lewis Hyde (1998), or William J.  Hynes and William G.  Doty. Hynes and Steele describe the ­figure as:

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Figure 10  ‘Begin. Marke well the effect, purtreyed here in all’, [London, 1580], woodcut (representing Death with Bishop, King, Harlot, Lawyer and Clown). © The British Library Board (Huth.50.(63)).

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A border-​breaker extraordinaire, the trickster is constantly shuttling back and forth between such counterposed sectors as sacred and profane, culture and nature, life and death, and so on. Anomalous, a-​nomos, without normativity, the trickster typically exists outside or across all borders, classifications, and categories. He neither norms nor is normed. (1993: 160–​1)

This suggests a cultural image of the clown as trickster figure, traversing worlds and mediating them as a go-​between and, theatrically, introducing a space of enchantment (or enchanted clown–​audience rapport). In this sense, the English clown resembles in-​between beings and other transversal entities that have always held an exceptional and valued, occult position in culture: the mythical frogs, salamanders and other amphibians, dragons, worms or werewolves of traditional fairy tales; to a lesser extent perhaps even genetic prodigies (Katritzky 2012:  193–​211), or magical objects such as dew, holly or the mysterious mandragora, transformed in folk etymology into a man-​ drake, a linguistic cross between the human and non-​human realm. Their magical attributes are connected with their existence in the border zone –​as co-​habitants in worlds-​in-​between. While early modern tragedians, comici, inamorati or divas are less easily categorised as magically allotopic, the role they play as mediators of the enchanted world arguably provides them with the aura of a prodigious nature. It is in this sense that Carlson speaks of the haunted stage (2003). In his particular role as a ‘messenger’ of enchantment, the English clown combines classical tradition with medieval and folk traditions. A Senecan tragedy opens with a materialised representation of vengeance, as in Thyestes –​ by turning an abstract concept into a personified embodiment. Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy adopts this in the framing induction of Andrea’s Ghost and Revenge, allegorising the ensuing play within the revenge axiology. Henry IV Part II opens with an original creation, the personification of Rumour –​a peculiar enchanted figure setting the play within a framework of surmise and tentativeness, a strange kind of ontological limbo. In Pericles  –​perhaps the first play to make use of the historicising style, Gower (‘From ashes, auntient Gower is come’), haunts the stage, ‘To sing a Song that old was sung’ (Pericles, 1.1–​2). The previously discussed inductions share an element of enchantment  –​ very explicitly with Oberon, the King of Fairies in Greene’s The Scottish History of James IV; the Scots idiom of the man-​hater Bohan certainly adds to the strangeness of the play’s world. Similarly, the induction of Dekker’s If It Be Not Good, and its puppet play variant in the Ulm Doktor Johann Faust, take place on the limen of the underworld, with a dialogue between Pluto and Charon the ferryman –​the emblematic border-​crosser. Gettner’s version of St Dorothea in the English Comedy style induces an enchanted world too,

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in the exchange between the devil Harpax and the Angel. The induction of Mucedorus may seem to be an exception in this list  –​unless we take into account its metatheatrical aspect, namely that Comedy doubles as a good character, while Envy transforms into the murderous Captain Tremelio and the animalistic, evil Wild Man Bremo. Also, in the Induction itself, Envy conjures up an offstage Wild Hunt, introducing a note of violence and threat, as he announces: Sound drumes within and crie stab stab [envy] Hearken, thou shalt hear a noise Shall fill the aire with a shrilling sound, And thunder musicke to the gods aboue. (Mucedorus 1598, A2v)

Envy’s spectacular threat is of a metaphysical (or transcendental) nature, as he offers to accost ‘the gods above’ and ‘thunder musicke [that] shall appale the nimphes’ (A2v). With the enchanting framing convention in mind, it is also illuminating to revisit the two Shrew plays. While the beggar is found by ‘a Noble man and his men from hunting’ (a Shrew), or ‘a Lord from hunting, with his traine’ (the Shrew), the conventional appearance of otherworldly personas in inductions might suggest that the sound of ‘Winde Hornes’ (the Shrew) followed by a train of hunters represents the Wild Hunt –​the eerie turmoil of the elements caused by the lord of the underworld (be it the French Arlequin, the German Erlkönig, the Viking Wotan or the Celtic Oberon). The trickster-​like pranks played on the beggar by the Lord in the two Shrew plays support this reading. The emblem of the opening of Hell was a traditional cultural commonplace –​whether portrayed on paintings or stage scenery as a Hell Mouth (often with animalistic, dragon-​like features), or through the narrative trope of Christ’s Harrowing of Hell. Descent into the underworld was associated with clown figures in France too, as Robert Henke documents, in particular in his discussion of the pamphlets ‘from the camp of the French farceurs’ (2015: 115), attacking Tristano Martinelli, creator of the Harlequin figure, such as the 1585 print entitled Histoire plaisante des faicts et gestes de Harlequin commedien italien (The Pleasant History of the Deeds and Gestes of Harlequin, Italian Actor): recount[ing] the voyage of Harlequin to the underworld, in a parodic version of the descent of Orpheus, in order to win back the poet’s ‘Euridice’: a famous Parisian bawd named Mère Cardine. (Henke 2015: 115)

Early modern English clowns retained this symbolism, and bore christological features. A stock clown scene was the beating of a devil or the vanquishing of evil –​as in Thomas Lodge and Robert Greene’s A Looking-​Glass for London and England (1589/​90). Roma Gill has analysed the moment in the play when

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the Clown (Adam) –​perhaps ‘the first man’, or named thus simply because he was played by John Adams, a member of the Queen’s Men –​fights the Devil, in what she refers to as the ‘kill deuil’ lazzo (1979: 62): The devil appears, and offers to carry Adam –​who has in him some traces of the Morality Vice –​away to hell. His confidence strengthened by alcohol and incantation, the Clown stands his ground:  ‘Nominus patrus, I  blesse me from thee, and I coniure thee to tell me who thou art’ (G3r). Reaching for his ‘cudgell’, he attacks until the devil pleads that he is mortally wounded, and then triumphs with the boast Then may I count my selfe I thinke a tall man, that am able to kill a diuell. Now who dare deale with me in the parish, or what wench in Niniuie will not loue me, when they say, there goes he that beate the diuell. (G3r; Gill 1979: 60–​1)

The trickster Clown has ‘some traces of the Morality Vice’, but also a Herculean club –​and, like Hercules, combats the forces of the underworld. In a mock Harrowing of Hell, Cuddy Banks, the clown of The Witch of Edmonton, played by Rowley himself, confronts the Dog (the devil in disguise), and drives him out in the traditional kill devil lazzo: ‘Come out, come out, you Cur; I will beat thee out of the bounds of Edmonton’ (The Witch of Edmonton, 5.1.211–​2; Dekker et al. 1621). In German-​speaking Europe, the story of Alcestis, featuring Hercules’ descent into Pluto’s realm to retrieve the deceased queen for his friend, King Admetus, was widespread and popular throughout the early modern period. This selective list of school plays performed in Bohemian, Moravian and Silesian cities provides variant titles suggestive of the metaphorical significance of the story and its religious allegories: 1573 Olomouc (Olmütz): Hercules (performed in the Jesuit college) 1604 Olomouc: Hercules at the Crossroads 1657 Brno: Heraclius triumphant with the Holy Cross 1658 Brno: St Heraclius 1682 Hradec Králové (Königgraz): Hercules of the Indian world, or the holy apostle Francis Xaverius 1690 Uherské Hradiště (Ungarisch Hradisch): Christ in the Likeness of the furious Hercules 1699 Wrocław (Breslau): Capture of the Holy Cross by Emperor Heraclius over the Persians

These apparently religious adaptations of the Hercules myth may well have been fulfilling a homeostatic agenda, under cover of the classical myth –​and perhaps with some influence from Seneca’s Hercules Furens. The central scene of the myth –​as in Franck and Förtsch’s Hamburg Singspiel Alceste (1680) –​ is the arrival of Hercules from the underworld, with Cerberus overcome and bound in chains.

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Cerberus –​in popular imagery –​was replaced by the Dragon, merging the classical myth with the hagiographic story of St George, as documented by several surviving German and Czech puppet plays that combine the two iconographies –​including a Czech one entitled:

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Herkules, or Ritter Herkules, or The Dragon-​ Killer, or The Strong Man Herkules, also known as The Fight with the Devils, or Capture of the Home of Prince Pluto, or The Harrowing of Hell. Also known as: Theatre of King Atmedus and Queen Alceska, or How Herkules captured the Gate of Hell.

This provides a different context for the historical record of the Earl of Leicester’s Men performing their Hercules show in Utrecht, on St George’s Day in 1586. The central part –​in keeping with the theatrical convention of the clown with his cudgel and his Harrowing of Hell (or kill devil) lazzo –​ would probably be played by the company’s comedian; that is, Will Kempe. The frequently staged Herculean story is that of retrieving Alcestis from the underworld –​a variant of the Orpheus and Euridice myth. Alcestis plays the significant role of the innocent sacrifice with holy attributes. Like Saint Dorothea, this character type survives in the English play and its German variant. That character type was probably also what the popular play shared with another English Comedy that became a staple in the German-​speaking Europe of the seventeenth century:  Crispinus und Crispianus, based on William Rowley’s A Shoemaker a Gentleman (first performed around 1618; Rudin 1980:  96). The central female character of Rowley’s play is ‘Winifred, a Virgin of Wales’, as the 1638 quarto identifies her. St Winifred’s martyrdom may have played a similarly crucial function to that of St Dorothea, opposite Crispin and Crispianus’ heroic and romantic feats. Although no German text survives (apart from short printed theatre programmes and synopses), it was probably this Christian hagiographic dimension that appealed to audiences –​in the guise of a semi-​pagan martyr. ‘Yet the Pickelhering is pretty good and funny’: The centrality of the clown in the play’s margins Given what can be gathered about the allegorical theatre aesthetics of early modern English Comedy, it is probable that the Utrecht show of 1586 featuring Will Kempe worked with Christian imagery, and that the classical story of Hercules provided allegorical resonances with the religious culture. The original creation of the English players –​the clown Pickelhering –​merged a cult born in the taverns of Southwark (see Katritzky 2014), the traditional trickster clown mediating the enchanted world, and the christological tradition of the fool Nobody, a ‘linguistic’ saint whose fictional hagiography, continuing the medieval tradition of St Nemo, was the subject of the sixteenth century Dutch

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play Van Sinte Niemand, ende van sijn wonderlick Leven, groote Macht, ende Heerlichkheyt (Of St Nobody and of His Miraculous Life, Great Power and Glory), as well as the English comedy that inspired Isaac de Vos’ 1645 Iemant en Niemant (Somebody and Nobody) play (Calmann 1960; Fricke 1998: 70, 141–​81). It is probably not accidental that the name selected –​a herring, the food of the poor (Alexander 2003) –​combines cheap tavern food (Katritzky 2014: 160–​1) and the tradition symbol of Christ as a fish. This peculiar combination, of secular mythology, popular tradition, religious doctrine and a certain degree of heresy and ‘enchanted’ obscurantism, was specific to the English Comedy as a mode. It certainly provoked some, and added fuel to the period’s anti-​theatrical prejudices (protesting against blasphemous shows), that saw the English plays as no more than ‘schmutzige[] Possen und prächtige[] Lappen’ (Goedeke cited in Bischoff 1899:  131; scurrilous farces and exquisite rags). However, there was something in the clown Pickelhering, who stood at the heart of the English Comedy, that appealed even to church figures. Cardinal Ernst Adalbert von Harrach saw Johann Fasshauer and Carl Andreas Paulsen’s company performing Romeo and Juliet in the Prague residence of Alexander Ferdinand Wratislaw von Mitrowitz on 25 June 1658 (Schindler and Rudin 2013: 180). The plot summary he noted in his diary (Harrach 2010: 6: 480) is recognisably a variant of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (rather than Lope de Vega’s version, Castelvines y Monteses, or Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla’s Los bandos de Verona). And while he did not think much of the delivery of the ‘comedi […] von denen engellendern die jezt hie sein, […] nicht absonderlich khünstliche recitanten’ (the play by the Englishmen who are here now; they are not particularly talented performers), what stood out for him was their clown: ‘doch ist der Pickhelhäring gar guet unndt lächerlich’ (Harrach 2010: 6: 479; and yet their Pickelhering is pretty good and funny). What the contribution of Pickelhering was, is unclear:  apparently a marginal character in the plot, but a central figure in the English comedians’ performance. In a later version of Romio und Julieta, associated with Johann Georg Gettner, who in the 1680s directed the Eggenbergs’ court theatre in Český Krumlov, Pickelhering plays the role of ironic commentator and universal servant, who appears at any random point, to spice up the play with his frequently scurrilous rejoinders.18 The English comedians’ clown is ‘the one who delivers the witty quip as the closing line of the exchange’ ( Johnson 2003: 2), and while located in the play’s margin, takes a central role in its hallmark performance style. By the mid-​ seventeenth century, the name Pickelhering became a generic name for the clown in German and Czech (see Katritzky’s discussion of Comenius’ Orbis pictus, 2011), and effectively managed to span the many divergent cultures in a Europe shattered by the prolonged Thirty Years’ War (1618–​1648), and conjure up an enchanted world that audiences can enter wherever they are. Thomas Dekker’s Old Fortunatus is a play about travelling that travelled a great deal and was itself born out of a transnational mixture of influences

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from the classical Greek novel, the Mediterranean romance, the German folk tale and the English comedic tradition. Its clown, symbolically called Shadow (as the hero’s alter-​ego), responds at one point to his master, worried about setting out on a journey, in words that can serve as an emblem for a dramaturgy created with a view of different worlds –​the secular, physical as well as the metaphysical and enchanted ones: shadow Why, sir, are there other heauens in other countries? (Old Fortunatus, 2.2.170)

Notes 1 This chapter develops the brief discussion in Drábek and Katritzky (2016), and has its origins in three talks:  two conference papers presented at TWB conferences, ‘Worlds-​in-​Between and their Inhabitants: A Semiotic Study of Theatre as a Border Zone’ at the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, Germany (2012; organised by M.  A. Katritzky) and ‘Tricksters, Enchantment and Trance-​mission in Early Modern Theatre in Europe’ at the Gallatin School, New  York University, USA (2013; organised by Susanne Wofford); and a keynote lecture ‘Shakespeare and his Theatre of Holiness’ given at the Concepts of Holiness Summer School, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany (2013; organised by Friedemann Kreuder). I would like to thank John Astington, Daniela Čadková, Nicoleta Cinpoeş, Alena Jakubcová, Peter Kirwan, Tomáš Kubart, Peter W.  Marx, Josh Overton, Pavla Pinkasová, Bärbel Rudin, June Schlueter, Matthew Steggle and Eva Stehlíková for their help and advice. Very special thanks go to my co-editor M. A. Katritzky for invaluable insights, corrections and outstandingly generous editorial care. All unattributed translations are mine. 2 Katritzky (2006: 37–​8, 221); Semler (2018: 56–​9). I am grateful to M. A. Katritzky for drawing my attention to this tradition and the relevant literature. 3 Hercules on the early modern English stage, especially in Thomas Heywood’s The Brazen Age (1613), is discussed by Rowland (2016: esp. 133–​52). 4 A metaphor used by Jacques Lezra in the discussion at the TWB conference in Madrid in 2011. 5 For an alternative reading of this induction see Hillman’s fine analysis, rooted in the generic debate and perceiving Envy as a ‘displacement of the classically impeccable concept of tragedy’ (1992: 3). Hillman sums it up as ‘clear […] redundancy of Comedy and Tragedy in Mucedorus’ (1992: 4–​5), failing to see the allegorical dimension of the actors’ agencies. 6 For the theatrical frame see Goffman (1974: 124–​55); for priming and influencing judgments see Kahneman (2011: 50–​8). 7 This translation is mine. Mikyšková’s dissertation translates the whole Gettner manuscript (2018: 98–​128). 8 This was tested in the practice-​ as-​ research student production of Mucedorus I directed at the University of Hull (2016). Our version started with Envy (played by Emma Bishop) entering first, followed by Comedy (Molly Robinson); this order had to be changed as it primed the audience negatively. When Comedy entered first, as stipulated in the original script, it secured the comedic framing of the entire play.

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9 As is sometimes the case, the framing device is not symmetrical:  it merely opens Greene’s play, without concluding it. Notoriously, this is also the case for Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1591), which does not conclude with Sly’s moralistic awakening. Of course, the performance would have concluded with a jig, providing the necessary phatic farewell envoy. 10 The relationship between Shakespeare’s early comedy The Taming of the Shrew and the anonymous A Pleasant Conceited Historie, called the taming of a Shrew are a point of continuing debate. Both plays date to the years 1590–92. The issue is complicated by the fact that the text of Shakespeare’s play survives only in the Folio version of 1623. The fact that its framing device, the Lord’s prank played on the drunkard Christopher Sly, has no conclusion in Shakespeare’s play and is left open-ended, has been seen by editors as a flaw even to the point of offering to substitute it with the corresponding passage from the anonymous A Shrew. I would argue that this drive for editorial symmetry is misguided. 11 For a possible relation to the lost 1598 Comedy of a Duke of Ferrara, see Steggle (2016). Henke identifies another transnational motif in the induction of The Taming of the Shrew, namely the poor people’s dreamlike kingdom of Cuccagna (2015: 140). 12 That this might have been the case in London theatres has been indirectly suggested by John Jowett (Cohen and Jowett 2007:  575–​6), and elaborated in respect of prologues and choruses by Stern (2009: 107–​8). 13 The servant is called Hans Wurst in a German puppet play which follows the 1620 script surprisingly closely (Glückssäckel und Wünschhut, first published by Engel in 1874, newly edited in Günzel 1970: 185–​226). On the German comic stage figure Hanswurst, see also Friedemann Kreuder (Chapter 8) in this volume. 14 For a discussion of the comical interlude in early modern biblical plays see Drábek (2019). important introduction with several jigs 15 Bolte compares the routine of self-​ (1895: 208). 16 David Wiles identifies Lancelot’s scene (The Merchant of Venice, 2.2) as Kempe’s characteristic routine (1987: 111, 122). 17 Hillman observes that: ‘the Fishermen in Pericles and the rustics who inhabit the sea-​coast of Bohemia (that frankly impossible place produced by inverting the locales in Greene’s Pandosto) mediate between the spheres of human vulnerability and human possibility, as well as between life and death: ‘Die, keth ’a? Now gods forbid’t, and I have a gown here!’ (Per., II.i.78–​9); ‘Now bless thyself: thou met’st with things dying, I with things new-​born’ (WT [The Winter’s Tale], III.iii.113–​4)’ (1992:  Chapter  8  ‘The Trickster Made Spirit and the “Tricksy Spirit” ’, 220–​50, 221–​2). 18 Kareen Seidler’s English translation of Gettner’s Romio and Julieta is forthcoming in Lukas Erne and Kareen Seidler, eds. Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet: Der Bestrafte Brudermord and Romio und Julieta in Translation. The Arden Shakespeare. London: Bloomsbury, 2020.

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8 The Re-​Inspired and Revived Bernardon: Metamorphoses of early modern comedy in eighteenth-​century bourgeois theatre Friedemann Kreuder

At the end of the Viennese premiere of Emilia Galotti on 4 July 1772, at the Kärntnertortheater, Christian Gottlob Stephanie’s representation of the character of Hettore Gonzaga, prince of Guastalla, took a sudden shocking turn.1 In her letter of 15 July 1772, Eva König voiced her indignation to the play’s author, her future husband, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Was thut er zuletzt in ihrem Stücke? Er reißt sein ohnedem großes Maul bis an die Ohren auf, streckt die Zunge lang mächtig aus dem Halse, und leckt das Blut von dem Dolche, womit Emilia erstochen ist. Was mag er damit wollen? Ekel erregen? wenn das so ist, so hat er seinen Endzweck erreicht. (Lessing 1979: 188) (What was his final action in your play? He forces his huge gob open, right to his ears, sticks his long tongue completely out of his throat, and licks the blood off the dagger that stabbed Emilia to death. What is he playing at? Does he want to provoke disgust? If so, he has achieved his purpose.)

This begs the question of what Christian Stephanie (1733–​98, known as Stephanie the Elder, Stephanie der Ältere to distinguish him from his younger brother), meant to achieve with his startling portrayal of Hettore Gonzaga’s vicious emotional frenzy. From the point of view of both roles and plot, Emilia Galotti is recognised as a leading example of bourgeois tragedy (Bürgerliches Trauerspiel), an eighteenth-​century genre that contrasts middle-​c lass virtues and morals, here embodied by Emilia, with the excessive, corrupt world of the aristocracy, here represented by Prince Gonzaga. Lessing created his characters to correspond with the self-​ fashioning, language and emotional expression of contemporary middle-​c lass values, and they were expected –​indeed had –​to be played as such. The dramaturgical purpose of bourgeois tragedy was that its middle-​c lass spectators should identify with its bourgeois characters, feel for them, fear for their lives and lament their fates with them –​in line with the convention of its

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genre: Trauerspiel, or tragedy, more literally translates as ‘play of mourning’. Stephanie’s bloodthirsty gesture, performed at the culmination of Lessing’s play, shocked Eva König as being entirely inappropriate and incongruent. And yet, Stephanie’s acting was not unwarranted; it derived from surviving theatrical traditions stemming from the older comedy of travelling companies and their composite, transnational performance genre of Haupt-​ und Staatsaktionen (literally ‘grand historical state events’). These were tragic plays, involving elevated plots of heroic pomp and circumstance performed in bombastic high baroque style, liberally larded and interspersed with comic business and farcical interludes, typically starring a stage clown motivated largely by sexual greed, gluttony and adventure.2 Stephanie’s Prince, licking the blood off the blade of Emilia’s suicidal dagger, drew on this older comedy’s aesthetics of horror, a repertoire of gestures that did indeed aim to provoke disgust. Perhaps Stephanie, trained in the older tradition, and still familiarising himself with the realism of the newly emerging bourgeois genre, committed a blunder by resorting involuntarily to this shocking routine. However, if his final gesture was premeditated –​as might be expected from a theatre practitioner and dramatist of the experience and status of Stephanie –​it effectively cancelled out Lessing’s lyrical denouement through an act of artistic sabotage. At the end of the tragedy, her emotional desires awakened by the Prince, Emilia can only with the greatest difficulty maintain her socially expected role as virtuous daughter who will, according to the command of her father, be chastely handed over to the authority of her prospective husband, Duke Appiani: Gewalt! Gewalt! Wer kann der Gewalt nicht trotzen? Was Gewalt heißt, ist nichts:  Verführung ist die wahre Gewalt.  –​Ich habe Blut, mein Vater, so jugendliches, so warmes Blut als eine. Auch meine Sinne sind Sinne. Ich stehe für nichts. Ich bin für nichts gut. Ich kenne das Haus der Grimaldi. Es ist das Haus der Freude. Eine Stunde da, unter den Augen meiner Mutter –​und es erhob sich so mancher Tumult in meiner Seele, den die strengsten Übungen der Religion kaum in Wochen besänftigen konnten! –​Der Religion! Und welcher Religion? –​Nichts Schlimmers zu vermeiden, sprangen Tausende in die Fluten und sind Heilige! (Emilia Galotti, 5.7) Force! Force! What is that? Who may not defy force? What you call force is nothing. Seduction is the only real force. I have blood, my father, as youthful and as warm as that of others. I have senses too. I cannot pledge myself: I guarantee nothing. I know the house of Grimaldi. It is a house of revelry –​a single hour spent in that society, under the protection of my mother, created such a tumult in my soul, that all the rigid exercises of religion could scarcely quell it in whole weeks. Religion! And what religion? To avoid no worse snares thousands have leapt into the waves, and now are saints. (Translated by Ernest Bell)

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At this point, Emilia openly acknowledges her physical desires, which have previously been expressed only latently throughout the play, and her great efforts to restrain herself from giving in to her own inner turmoil. In doing so, she opens an emancipatory perspective onto the fault-​lines of the then rapidly developing bourgeois identity itself, based on the methodical outward suppression of the libidinal, and the systematic self-​control of inner feelings. Possibly, Stephanie may have intended his gesture as a logical elaboration on the consequences of Lessing’s agenda. In which case, Stephanie forestalled Emilia’s self-​fashioning as a martyr, a victim of a virtuous strife –​a stereotype that would certainly gain approving acceptance by the bourgeois spectators –​ and subverted Lessing’s precarious dramaturgical combination of the Roman Lucretia plotline with bourgeois notions of virtue. In the same letter to Lessing, Eva König quotes the Emperor as saying: ‘Das muß ich aber gestehen, […] dass ich in meinem Leben in keiner Tragödie so viel gelacht habe’ (Lessing 1979: 188; I must admit, […] that I have never laughed as much during a tragedy in my whole life). Stephanie’s subversion can also be interpreted from the perspective of its continuation of an older, non-​literary, comic theatrical tradition, concerned to promote not Protestant ideals of spiritual asceticism focused on the afterlife, but the fulfilment of earthly and carnal pleasures. This transnational phenomenon of early modern comedy styles, which drew on centuries of tradition, endured well into the late eighteenth century, coexisting as a popular and often dismissed theatrical tradition alongside the emerging bourgeois drama. Rudolf Münz’s term das andere Theater (Münz 1979; the other theatre) refers to surviving practices that are seen as unprogressive, and therefore often fail to register in historiographical accounts. Stephanie the Elder’s shocking rendering of Prince Gonzaga could thus be interpreted as the popular form’s appropriation of Lessing’s dramaturgy, negotiating an effective metamorphosis of high bourgeois theatre culture within the comic tradition in which Stephanie operated. This perspective poses a historiographical problem, necessitating a radical revision of previous differentiations between high and popular culture in the eighteenth century. The standard historiographical narrative of succession, epitomised by the legendary (and in fact mythical) banishment of Harlequin from the German stage in 1737, and the symbolic launching of the Enlightenment era, is obsolete and no longer tenable. This chapter’s focus on this other theatre, with particular reference to the spectacle of 1754 by Joseph Felix von Kurz discussed below, offers an alternative interpretation of mid-​to late eighteenth-​ century Viennese theatre, not solely as a stage for the ideologically progressive genre of bourgeois drama, but also for a prosperous and surviving tradition of early modern comedy that amalgamated transnational influences from the Italian commedia dell’arte and French comédie italienne, the English travelling actors’ comedy (Englische Comedie), Spanish drama and the high baroque,

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Central European mélange genre of Haupt-​und Staatsaktionen. While traditional historiographies of German literary and theatre studies submerge this thriving theatrical mode, in favour of the discourse of the Enlightenment project, it continued to contribute prominently to the routine theatre practice of Central European stages well beyond 1700. Günther Heeg’s poststructural readings expose the bourgeois theatre model, during the Enlightenment period, as a ‘Privattheater der Scham, in dem sich der (männliche) Zuschauer heimlich im Zuschauerraum an der verlorenen Unschuld im Licht delektiert’ (Heeg 2000:  31; private theatre of shame, where (male) spectators in the auditorium secretly took delight in the lost innocence in the limelight). Heeg’s interpretation spells out a latent Protestant hostility to the body, which culminated in theoretical discourses on acting, especially with respect to the body of the female actor, published from the 1970s by Rudolf Münz, Joachim Fiebach and other theatre scholars of the East Berlin school. These viewed the ‘birth’ of the emerging bourgeois theatre as a ‘death blow’ to the centuries-​old traditional acting styles of the early modern travelling companies. In keeping with Marxist dialectics, they argued that this new bourgeois theatre was inspired by the physical acting of the English comedians (Englische Comedie) and the virtuosity of the commedia dell’arte; not as a direct development, but rather as a style that negatively defined itself in opposition to the earlier modes. Bourgeois artist-​intellectuals of the Enlightenment therefore did not invent it as a new theatre, but actually moulded it out of these abominated predecessors (Fiebach and Münz 1974). However, this process of forcibly shaping a new theatre style for the middle classes, with respect to both drama theory and the theory of acting, on the negative basis of an existing tradition of the other theatre, did not occur without considerable discord, as witnessed by documents such as Eva König’s shocked report of Stephanie the Elder’s utilisation of the outdated physical style of the Haupt-​und Staatsaktion. Münz’s and Fiebach’s dialectical historiography requires reassessment; the documentary evidence suggests a more complicated reality of early modern theatrical practice with respect to the simultaneity of new genres and surviving practices. More recently, scholars have repeatedly drawn attention to the persistence of the old comic performing traditions within the new Enlightenment theatre culture (e.g. Baumbach 2002). Kurz’s spectacle of 1754, my chosen example from mid-​eighteenth-​century Vienna, testifies to the flourishing poetics and aesthetics of the other theatre, in the German-​speaking regions. Its tensions with the bourgeois style of theatre, I argue, establish artistically productive interdependencies and connections, in acting styles as well as dramaturgy. The traditional theatre mode, inspired by the commedia dell’arte and the itinerant English Comedy, underwent a shift of significance in the context of the new bourgeois era, acquiring a new potential to construct and embody alternative models of bourgeois identity through

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theatrical means. In this respect, identity is here viewed as a social concept, according to which individuals negotiate their idea of the self in confrontation with the cultural memory of their time, their leading philosophical concepts, their mentality, and particularly with the existing contemporary ideals of behaviour in view. Given the central position of the theatre in the public sphere in the eighteenth century –​a phenomenon whose prominence can be traced back to at least the late sixteenth century –​it played a crucial role in reformulating the ideal of the modern self, namely in constructing the cultural images of the autonomous ‘bourgeois individual’. The economically ambitious bourgeoisie of the eighteenth century tried to secure its identity by presenting itself in the image of emotionally stable, and economically influential, citizens. These self-​enforcing concepts aimed to fashion this social construct as a ‘natural’ condition, with the help of massive ideological discourse. A major tool for proliferating this ideological construct was the new, recognisably bourgeois, style of acting known as the ‘natural’ art of acting, which habituated the bourgeois citizen’s self-​fashioning and self-​assurance as a standard cultural practice, based on subdued, moderate expressivity and reciprocal mimicry. Despite habitual clerical opposition to the theatre, and the ubiquitous anti-​theatrical discourses, the behavioural models presented in bourgeois theatre, especially with regard to expression of emotions, became symptomatic in the formation of bourgeois identity. In this way, theatre became a central metaphor for the shaping of bourgeois society in the Age of Enlightenment. Arguably, many actors and actresses knew how to make good use of these same bourgeois behavioural modes in their everyday lives that they also put to good use with a twist in the theatre –​an ‘idle’ and, in bourgeois eyes, unproductive, pursuit that took place as a leisure activity outside the everyday sphere, often in market booths outside the city walls. By pushing the limits of theatre’s special status as play to the full, and by openly displaying, rather than in any way trying to hide, its playful character through their acting techniques, they crossed the narrow borders of bourgeois identity concepts and gender roles. This self-​aware, comical and contradictory specificity of theatrical practice, and its contrast to the spiritual, discursive and ideological ambitions of bourgeois tragedy, is at the heart of my analysis of Joseph Felix von Kurz’s unscripted medley performance of 1754, Der aufs neue begeisterte und belebte Bernardon (The Re-​Inspired and Revived Bernardon). The Re-​Inspired and Revived Bernardon The prominent Viennese-​born comic actor and playwright Johann Joseph Felix von Kurz (1717–​84) became known as Bernardon, the name of the popular stage role he created for himself, loosely inspired by Hanswurst, a male stage clown popularised in seventeenth-​century German farces, and

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Figure  11  Playbill for a guest performance of Joseph Felix von Kurz (Bernardon), Le Mercuere Gallante Oder der in die Feder verwandelte Degen, Nürnberg, 1766. Reproduced by permission of Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg (Nor. 1305.2°(1766)).

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itself a descendant of the early modern Pickelhering clown figure, of English travelling comedians in the seventeenth-​century German-​speaking world.3 Active throughout Austria, Germany and the Czech lands, Kurz trained in the itinerant troupe led by his parents (Brandner-​Kapfer 2010; Scherl and Rudin 2013:  373–​7). He is the author of many ‘Bernardoniads’ starring Bernardon, and often also Rosalba, the stage role Kurz created for his second wife, the actor, singer and director Teresina Morelli. These comedic medley inheritors of the transnational dramaturgies of early modern comedy rely heavily on improvisation, and emphasise spectacle over plot by combining spoken comedy, singing, dancing, shadow plays, puppetry, pantomime and magical scenic transformations achieved through spectacular stage machinery. From the 1750s onwards, this reliance on improvisation increasingly brought Kurz into conflict with the Viennese censors, adversely affecting his later stage career (Linhardt 2012). His comedy, Der aufs neue begeisterte und belebte Bernardon, published in 1754 in the form of a fragmentary aria book, recycles numerous comic routines of varying provenance, often stretching the borders of credibility, all –​I here argue –​as a satirical confrontation of the nascent bourgeois identity and its suppressed desires. This play features not only many metamorphoses of the Bernardon and Rosalba stage personas created by Kurz, but also metamorphoses of the bourgeois self and its often submerged constituent parts, stemming from a transnational comedic stage tradition. At the start of Kurz’s Der aufs neue begeisterte und belebte Bernardon, Bernardon, shot by Odoardo, lies ‘tod auf dem Theatro’ (Kurz 1935: 72; dead on the stage).4 His betrothed lover Rosalba weeps over her deceased fiancé. Overcome with sorrow, she begins a mourning song:  ‘Könnt ich mich, Geliebter Schatten! | Auch in Grab mit dir vergatten’ (72; Would that I could, beloved shade, | In the grave with you be wed), but soon, to her joy and surprise, her lament is interrupted. Amid thunder and lightning, Bernardon rises from the trapdoor as a spirit, and responds in turn at the joy of seeing her again, by singing another aria: ‘Sieh die nie erhörten Sachen, | Und was wahre Lieb kan machen, | Ich komm auch als Geist zu dir’ (72; Behold the unheard-​ of wonders, | And see what true love here can do; | Even as a spirit I return to you). Sadly, their joy is short-​lived. As a spirit, Bernardon is forbidden to stay with Rosalba any longer, and must descend once more to the kingdom of the dead, where imprisonment and beatings await shades who overstay their time. The dejected Rosalba is left alone on the stage –​a situation that is replicated at the close of the play, when she ends up in the same situation. In between, however, Rosalba finds consolation for her lover’s death with a new partner, Leander. Her confession to Bernardon is again presented in an aria: ‘Zweymal hab ich dich verloren, | Allerliebster Bernardon!’ (83; Twice have I lost you, | Most beloved Bernardon), to which Bernardon’s reaction is not long in coming. Totally enraged, he appears again. Revealing that both his

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death and his earlier appearance as a spirit were tricks, he jealously demands an explanation from Rosalba, who has shown herself willing to take another lover after what to him seems a disappointingly short period of mourning: ‘Halt, Madame! ich bin nicht tode, | O wie standhaft bist du doch! | Das ist wol die schönste Mode’ (83; Stop, Madam! I am not dead. | O, how constant you are, indeed! | This must be the finest fashion). Eventually, they agree to a ménage à trois –​or to be more precise à quatre, since Bernardon, too, has not lived up to the standards set by his love test for Rosalba; Dorinte appears, emphatically staking her claim to him as her husband. The whole charade comes to a mock conciliatory close with a ‘Vivat!’ sung in quartet. However, what happens between Rosalba and Bernardon’s duet in the opening scene, and the concluding quartet in the tenth scene, exposes this apparently happy ending as deeply ambivalent. The theme of inconstancy in love is played out in different variations, and quite literally: the characters Bernardon and Rosalba step out of the fictive framing context established at the start of the play by the spirit’s appearance, and into other theatrical contexts. In their fixed stage personas of ‘Bernardon’ and ‘Rosalba’, they repeatedly represent other characters, involved in various love intrigues, all thematically linked by the issue of inconstancy. Bernardon, in a spectacular pantomime involving his dismemberment in a huge magical mortar, and his return to the status vivendi as he is reborn out of a gigantic egg (first pantomime, numbers 2 and 3; 73–​6), then reappears as the elderly mother of a young woman of Strasbourg, who advises her grown-​up daughter against a love match, in favour of a profitable marriage with a ‘well-​born Saxon’ (77). Bernardon then instantly transforms, in the fifth number, into a ‘brother of Democritus’, who declaims an arioso on world-​weariness in reaction to the materialism and money-​grubbing of the old Strasbourg woman, the very character he has just impersonated (77). Thereupon, he plays a director ‘costumed in black’, in the second pantomime (77–​80), a typical commedia dell’arte scenario, featuring Odoardo’s daughter Charlotte unable to choose between two suitors, Silvio and Mario. In front of the old man, enraged over his daughter’s hesitation, and his preferred candidate, the equally aged and infuriated Anselmo, Bernardon, after a wild chase involving bears and monsters, comes to the young men’s defence and leads Charlotte to her ‘true destiny’, Mario. Finally, Bernardon appears in the form of ‘tummer Jackerl’, a simple Simon who, in the seventh and eighth numbers, has to undergo the same fate as Silvio: his lover, Isabella, has turned to another, Hanns-​Wurst. During Bernardon’s medley of metamorphoses, Rosalba sometimes appears as his counterpart:  she plays the young Strasbourg daughter to whom Bernardon gives advice in the guise of her mother. In the eighth number, it is she who, transformed by a theatrical gender-​role switch into the intoxicated Hanns-​Wurst, brags in a drinking song about her successful seduction of Isabella. In her short aria, ‘Isabella, she has gone, | Monsieur

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Octavio’, the wordplay on Octavio/​Odoardo alludes to the rival lovers in the preceding scene; while to a certain extent, the role of Hanns-​Wurst recalls the part of Mario, who is chosen by his beloved, Charlotte. Rather than being finally reunited, the conclusion leaves Bernardon partnered by Dorinte, and Rosalba by Leander. It may seem that the various characters of Kurz’s medley are playing through their own problems of inconstancy, in a kind of biographical and self-​ analytical fashion: the personas ‘Bernardon’ and ‘Rosalba’, always disguised as other people, act out the problems of their own infidelity and, in so doing, dramatically ‘objectify’ them –​that is, reflect on possible causes and circumstances. However, this interpretation disregards the loose form of the dramatic text –​ the incompleteness, structural disparity, fluidity and polysemy of the surviving documentary material –​and imposes an interpretive coherence conspicuously forestalled in this and Kurz’s other Bernardoniads. The need to avoid interpretive streamlining renders any reconstruction of the comedy debatable, since any number of possible and varying interpretations could potentially be developed in performance, depending on the actors’ gestures and attitudes in delivering the arias, and the possible styles used in the production; on a scale ranging from realistic, through ironic and detached, to grotesque and parodic. Even the usual relative certainties, in the sense of traditional descriptive categories for drama, do not apply here, since the scenario of Der aufs neue begeisterte und belebte Bernardon represents a ‘pre-​textual’ form of theatre, which neither recognises the concepts of genre and form, as used in literary and aesthetic discourses, nor acknowledges ‘closed’ forms: discrete concepts such as drama, opera, tragedy or comedy. Fixed dramatic categories, such as a framework story, a certain plot progression, a meaningful and logical pattern of characters relative to the action presented, or a consistent conception of character, apply to this material at best only in a limited way. Very importantly, as with all of Kurz’s Bernardoniads, it can be assumed for Der aufs neue begeisterte und belebte Bernardon that a principal plot was presented between the individual arias. This loose and ambivalent form was a direct continuation of standard commedia dell’arte practice, and because eighteenth-​century actors were still closely familiar with its typical plots, this type of improvised playing required no fixed text in the form of a full playscript. Kurz’s surviving aria book of 1754 is thus an extremely fragmentary record of the theatrical performances that actually took place. One structural principle that can be asserted with certainty, supported by a knowledge of other Bernardoniads, is that the axis of the play lay in the frequently interrupted duets between Bernardon and Rosalba (Birbaumer 1971, Münz 1998). Another, equally significant structural principle is the pantomimes –​ clearly important enough to be recorded in the printed aria book in the greatest detail. The play’s structural logic  –​the contradictory, contrasting, polarised,

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but also intermingling interplay between the two levels of duet and pantomime –​was apparently the major attraction of the whole affair; providing a dialectical form that imbued the play with its specific meaning. However, any type of interpretation of the play’s basic structure along these lines is immediately complicated by the loosely interchangeable nature of the play’s segments, which were, in principle, interlude elements. These generic routines –​comparable to the practice of inserted arias (Einlagearien) in eighteenth-​century baroque operas and operatic pastiches  –​drew directly on earlier performance practices, based on the traditions of improvised, semi-​improvised and even scripted plays in the repertoires of the Italian commedia dell’arte, French comédie italienne and English comedians.5 Another indisputable characteristic of Kurz’s Bernardoniads indicated by the available documentary material is the metamorphoses of the figures of Bernardon and Rosalba. Rather than ‘disguisings’ of one and the same character, in the sense of ‘dressing up’ as someone else or costume tricks, these metamorphoses involve apparent human transformations. These took place before the audiences’ eyes, and are made credible by the ability of these stage personas to transcend the communication levels of the principal plot, pantomimes and interludes, and, having taken on the masks of new characters, act out conflicting situations that metaphorically externalise their own predicaments. From the perspective of the external communication system (to use Manfred Pfister’s concept; Pfister 1988: 65–​8) –​that is, outside the fictional frame –​the characters ‘Bernardon’ and ‘Rosalba’ can also be viewed as stage personas (or stage figures) with their own performance history, and as such, intended to provide the audience with a certain sense of order, in the tangle of characters and chaos of different dramatic levels created by Kurz’s Bernardoniads. Kurz’s theatrical use of established stage personas inherits the principles of the comici dell’arte of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, namely the practice of introducing a link between the performer and the mask (figure and role) they were playing, by taking a fixed stage name, that in turn gave a name to all of the performer’s fictional characters. Thus, Alberto Naselli, as a prominent principal comedian or first zanni, was habitually known not by his civic name, Alberto Naselli, but rather by his stage name, Zan Ganassa. While it was customary for commedia dell’arte actors to keep the same stage persona for many decades, sometimes for life, it should be noted that this stage persona was only one of the many possible roles played by any one particular mask. Thus, the famous inamorata actress Isabella Andreini, in her own play La pazzia di Isabella performed by the Gelosi troupe on the occasion of the Florentine court festivities in 1589, played other characters (masks), such as Pantalone, Graziano, Zanni, Pedrolino, Burattino, Capitano Cardone and Franceschina  –​her own stage persona, Isabella, delivering a virtuoso imitation of these masks’ dialects and voices.

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In La pazzia, this provided a way to express the madness of the lovesick stage role Isabella; whose persona guided the audience through the tangle of characters in all Andreini’s madness scenes.6 In Der aufs neue begeisterte und belebte Bernardon, Kurz replicates and heightens Andreini’s trick. Kurz’s stage persona Bernardon exists in a triad, as it were: first as the Bernardon who appears in the form of a spirit in the opening scene, he is entirely different from, second, the character of the same name in the jolly dismemberment and resurrection scene; who again differs from, third, the director character of the second pantomime, who looks on as his own double engages in a courtship scene. The resurrected Bernardon and the director character Bernardon operate more strongly on the external communicative level, as actual structural characters  –​this is probably why, in the scenario for the second pantomime, the director character Bernardon is introduced as ‘der rechte Bernardon’ (the true Bernardon, 79). How had this early modern structural principle developed into the complexity of Kurz’s production in mid-​eighteenth-​century Vienna? At heart it remained the same, rooted in the stage persona’s constant changes, in terms of characters embodied, and in the dazzling switching of identities. The routine earned Kurz the reputation of being a ‘chameleon’ among his contemporaries, as documented by the playbill for his troupe’s comedy, Le Mercuere Gallante Oder der in die Feder verwandelte Degen, printed for a guest performance in Nuremberg in 1766 (Figure  11). Kurz puts this shape-​shifting principle to novel use, in the context of the nascent bourgeois culture, using his alternating identities as negative reflections (or counter-​images) of the bourgeois ideal of the constant, stable individual. His mutable and non-​mimetic personas (see also Münz 2000: 108–​10) dialectically relate not only to the social role of the modern individual but also, of course, to the mimetic ideal of the bourgeois style of illusive theatre, which propagates and helps shape this ideal and progressive social role. In this respect, Kurz’s theatrical activities should perhaps be taken not simply as a revolt or satirical subversion, but rather as a continuation of a long and surviving theatre tradition that found itself in intractable opposition to the emerging bourgeois theatre model. The intensity and productivity of Kurz’s practice, which wholeheartedly appropriates early modern Italian, English and French traditions of comedic routines, is a corrective to the authoritative historiographical narrative, asserting Johann Christoph Gottsched and Friederike Caroline Neuber’s banishment of Harlequin from the German stage in Leipzig in 1737. The surviving prominence of early modern practices stemming from the performative core of the commedia dell’arte relegates this weather-​beaten Enlightenment tale to the realm of ideologically motivated myths. With respect to the progressively consolidating bourgeois concept of identity, Kurz’s Bernardoniads can be interpreted as a rejection of the concept of the ‘individual’, and a promotion

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of the notion of the ‘dividual’. By inserting the stage persona of Bernardon between himself as actor, and the characters he portrays, Kurz specifically highlights the issue of ‘not-​being-​identical-​with-​oneself ’, and their remoteness from the presumptuous bourgeois self, which needs to remain arduously poised and integral in the face of constant adversities and challenges. While the roles that Bernardon acts out are predetermined by social class and gender, by means of the stage persona of Bernardon, Kurz can reveal the unstable and fluctuating nature of identity (dividuality). This becomes particularly pronounced and topical with reference to the everyday presentation of the bourgeois self through assumed ‘theatrical roles’ (to use Helmuth Plessner’s anthropological term; Plessner 2003: 199). The construction of the bourgeois self was predicated on the regulation and moderation of feelings and desires, as formulated in all prominent guides to etiquette of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (see Elias 1995). The so-​ called ‘inner world’ of each bourgeois individual consisted of restrained urges, of desires and feelings whose immediate physical implementation or abreaction was suppressed. When experiencing oneself, these urges often appeared as the true self, hidden from others; their only allowed space, if any, was exclusively restricted to the non-​public and private spheres. The preferred bourgeois ideal was to altogether avoid the display and expression of emotions, whether private, or above all in public. In this respect, this ideal was in keeping with practising the art of acting as a secular activity, in the sense formulated by Diderot in his treatise on the theory of acting, Paradoxe sur le comédien (1773–​ 78), whose central theme of continuous and replicable emotional expressions can also be taken as the basic concept for social forms of expression of the time (Diderot 1883; Sennett 1977). Replicable social actions are marked by the distance that the individual performing them puts between their own personality, and the language, clothing and outward show they display to others. The eighteenth century marks a significant watershed in the exercise of self-​control and calculation in social and artistic forms of self-​presentation, as expressed in outward behaviour, appearance and individuals’ understanding and regulation of the desirable distance from their inner self. In keeping with the trends of public behaviour of the time, spectators who frequented the Viennese Burgtheater exercised tight control over their natural and spontaneous expressions. They did this by controlling their bodies regarding facial expressions, gestures and movements and through specific masquerades, which manifested themselves prominently, for instance, in the short-​lived fashion of the eye mask. Such cultural practices, designed to completely withhold the ‘inner world’ from public view, helped foster a psychological disposition that ethically sanctioned the self-​restraint of methodically ignoring one’s own desires and emotions. However, what had to remain hidden in everyday life was made apparent in the theatre: the unstable construction of the bourgeois individual, as well as

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the power strategies motivating these social constructions. In Kurz’s Ambigu Comique –​another medley of burlesque, farce, mythological caricatures, comical opera and pantomime, which Kurz himself described as ‘lustige Mischmasch’ (a jolly mishmash) –​the metamorphoses are usually performed openly, as if to intentionally unmask the economically driven social role-​play. When, in Der aufs neue begeisterte und belebte Bernardon, Bernardon and Rosalba investigate the reasons why their love must fail, they briefly perform, in the fourth duet, the roles of a young Strasbourg woman and her old mother. They do this as a way of using theatrical means to highlight the social reality of bourgeois expediency, and the practice of marriages of convenience, and, by association and in a metaphorical sense, the social and behavioural patterns underlying their social acceptance, as one reason for the failure of their relationship. Bernardon and Rosalba cannot be together because of people who think and act like the Strasbourg mother and daughter: whose enactment exemplifies for spectators this prominent disposition and social role. This is exactly what Bernardon’s following melancholy aria –​delivered in the guise and identity (mask) of a ‘brother of Democritus’ –​ is presenting by way of commentary. Bernardon briefly assumes the role of a philosophical raisonneur, in order to represent and emphasise his own negative assertions about the state of the world by means of this strange figure: O du arme Welt! | Du nimmst ja nicht in acht | Daß jeder Augenblick das Leben kürzer macht. | O du arme Welt! | So bist du jetzt bestellt, | Auf Vortl, und auf Lügen, | Den Nächsten zu betrügen, | Sein Glücke zu beneiden, | Die Ehre abzuschneiden, | Bald singen, | Bald springen, | Bald sauffen, bald ranzen, | Bald spielen, bald tanzen, | Bald Steyrisch, | Bald Schwäbisch, | Hanackisch, | Slavakisch, | Bald walzen umatum, | He sa rum rum, | O du arme Welt! | Wie bist du jetzt bestellt. (Kurz 1935: 77) (Oh, wretched world! | You don’t take heed | That every moment shortens life. | Oh, wretched world! | You only work now | To your own advantage and with lies, | Cheating on the one next to you, | Envying his fortune, | Defaming him, | Now you sing, | Now you spring, | Now you drink, now you rut, | Now you play, now you dance, | Now Styrian, | Now Swabian, | Now Hanackian | Slovakian, | Now waltzing around, | He sa rum rum, | Oh, wretched world! | What a state you are in.)

In Kurz’s scenario, however, there are also exceptions to the rule of exposing social patterns of behaviour through masks and role-​play. For example, when Rosalba, in the eighth aria, uses theatrical means to overstep the boundaries of her own body and enter a new one, her metamorphosis into Hanns-​Wurst is of a very different kind. Here the actress imagines the blissful physical state of an intoxicated lower-​class lover, who triumphs over his aristocratic rival. Through the mediality of theatre, her imagined state is made comprehensible to the audience, by being physically presented on stage:

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Die Isabella, die ist weck, Monsieur Octavio, | Jetzt heißt es schleck Bartel schleck, | Herr Ochs in Folio. | Denn das so liebe Mädl, | Die ist jetzt meine Braut, | Der Diener frist das Brätl, | Dem Herrn bleibt das Kraut. (Kurz 1935: 81)

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(Isabella, she is gone, Monsieur Octavio, | Now, it is lick, Bartel, lick it, | Mister Oxen in folio. | For the sweet maiden, | She is now my bride. | The servant gobbles the roast, | The master gets left with the cabbage.)

With this switch of Rosalba’s female stage persona to another, male, body –​a surprising move entirely unmotivated by any plot or character –​Kurz finds a way of theatrically displaying the imagination of fulfilled desires, which could not otherwise be realised within the boundaries of her own body. The stage persona Rosalba, by means of cross-​gender acting, puts the imagined fulfilment of male desires on display. Her metamorphosis serves a similar purpose to that of Bernardon’s doubling of figures in the second pantomime. In that scene he takes on the form of the director figure, to witness a dreamlike sequence featuring exceptionally spectacular and fantastical strategies, including a fight between two monsters and two bears, and culminating in Bernardon’s and Colombine’s love triumph, and its celebration in a sumptuous white wedding (80). As an effective foil to this image of deprivation, this dreamlike and festive final image of the second act, which closes with a pantomime, also functions as an anticipation of the end of the third act: despite its cheerful and conciliatory mood, the impossibility of Bernardon’s love is confirmed. Beatrix Müller-​ Kampel explores a socio-​ political reading of the Bernardoniads, in her evaluation of the historic-​ cultural significance of Kurz’s acting methods (2003). Interestingly, she views the character of Bernardon as developing exclusively from Joseph Anton Stranitzky’s and Gottfried Prehauser’s early eighteenth-​century revival of the stage clown of the early modern itinerant English actors, Hanswurst. Insisting on this narrow genealogy, Müller-​Kampel underestimates the decisive influence of traditional acting methods of the commedia dell’arte, such as the comedic routines Bernardon shares with Isabella Andreini and other Italian comici. Importantly, in line with the commedia dell’arte routines of stage persona metamorphoses, Bernardon’s body in performance plays a crucial role. It is not merely ‘a baroque body without a self ’ and ‘carnivalesque’, in the sense of Hanswurst’s carnal revolt against the civilising project, as Müller-​Kampel claims (2003: 177, 182, 184; but see also Münz 1979: 119–​21), but a complex nexus of early modern practices and contemporary social agendas. Through what is, in effect, a poetics of negative dialectics, the imaginary scenes of Kurz’s Bernardoniads have the power to reveal and reflect on reality. As hyperbolic counter-​images of deprivation, portrayed by means of theatrical metamorphoses, they have a bearing on the reality of gender relations, and

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aim to refract economically determined social roles and behavioural patterns. From this perspective, two different spheres for playing with identity can be established in the theatrical strategies of Kurz’s Bernardoniads. First, their acting style adapts the early modern practices of playing with masks and roles by stage personas, to thematise and expose as ideological constructs social relations and behavioural patterns based on economic circumstances, that are put forward, on the grounds of economic purposes and interests, as being ‘natural’ or ‘given’ necessities. This model of acting identifies, contextualises and interrogates bourgeois concepts of identity. Second, theatrical practices of unexpected metamorphoses and shape-​shifting deploy multiple alternate bodies to portray the imaginary fulfilment of forbidden, or socially inappropriate, human desires inaccessible to individuals confined to a single body. Such imaginary scenes –​that is, moments of emergence of an imaginative consciousness, to use Andreas Bahr’s anthropological concept (Bahr 1990: 8–​10) –​ reflect on the social measures taken to regulate affects and to shape desires. Bernardon’s theatrical counter-​image refracts the social practices of surveying one’s own body, and controlling the boundaries of shame and embarrassment, as measures for sealing them off from other individuals and the world. Both modes of acting identity as a reflexive theatrical means of metamorphosis –​ on the one hand, through experimentation with multiple roles and, on the other, by transgressing one’s own physical limits –​are critically opposed to the idea of the bourgeois individual that emerges in the eighteenth century. This public ideal was ideologically characterised as naturally given, unchanging and closed off from other bodies and the world; a social construction predicated on growing capitalistic interests, which effectively immobilised the bourgeois individual and the concept of the inner self. Here, I  argue that, decades before the French Revolution, Kurz’s Der aufs neue begeisterte und belebte Bernardon, a popular entertainment of mid-​ eighteenth-​century Viennese theatre (Volkstheater), already takes issue with the daily masquerade of urban economic societies. If public expressions, worn like a ‘social mask’, hide their ‘true’ face, the cultural and ethical endeavours of theatre aim to unmask the disguise and to expose the social background and economic interests on which it is based. With respect to the historical and cultural analysis of the (so far mostly unwritten) poetics and aesthetics of the Viennese performer Joseph Felix von Kurz (‘Bernardon’), it is crucial to view the innovative alternative ways of acting bourgeois identity that he explored by theatrical means, from the perspective of the Enlightenment utopia of a more aware, civilised society. In this regard, the Bernardoniad analysed in this chapter can be viewed as an expression of realistic scepticism towards the Leibnitzian notion of ‘the best of all possible worlds’, and its alleged progressiveness. Unstable figures, ‘objectifying’ the impossibility of love and marriage (in the sense of the Enlightenment ideal) in their performance, are dismissed

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in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics. Because of their incoherence, Hegel considers them unsuitable, or at best an embarrassment, in the dramatic genre of tragedy;7 and yet they are typical for the Viennese model of popular theatre, as exemplified by Kurz. Although mostly outside the focus of current theatre historiography, this theatre  –​a thriving descendant of early modern transnational comedy –​is a realm of cultural practice and an important field for the negotiation of identities, especially those for which there is no place and justification outside theatre, as defined by Novalis, who viewed it as ‘the active reflection of people upon themselves’ (‘Das Theater ist die thätige Reflexion der Menschen über sich selbst’; cited in Kotte 2005: 223). Notes 1 This chapter draws on my presentation (‘Meaning Culture and Presence Culture in Repertoires and Genres of Early Modern Theater’) to TWB’s 2016 Paris conference, which summarises and progresses material in two of my publications (Kreuder 2010, 2014). I wish to acknowledge the editorial help of Caroline Fries. All translations are by Caroline Fries unless specified otherwise. 2 On the English Comedy as a transnational genre, see Pavel Drábek in this volume (Chapter 7). 3 On Hanswurst, see also Drábek, Chapter 7, above. On the history of Pickelhering, see Katritzky (2005, 2014, 2018). 4 All citations from Der aufs neue begeisterte und belebte Bernardon are taken from Rommel’s edition of the scenario and arias (Kurz 1935). 5 On the Italian practice and theatergrams, see Andrews (2014) and Walter (2014). On the English practice of songs and prologues as movable documents, see Stern (2009); on patches of plays as structural logic of English comedy, see Chapter 7 by Drábek, above. On the operatic practice of pastiches and inserted arias, see Spáčilová (forthcoming: ch. 3.3), Strohm (1985: 165; 1997: 13), Freeman (1992: 265–​7); and see Strohm (2008: 749–​54) on the terminology of vocal numbers. 6 Münz (1998: 141–​53), Henke (2002: 100–​5), Andrews (2008a: ix–​lvi), Nicholson (2008). 7 ‘Im modernen Trauerspiel nun kommen dergleichen schwankende Gestalten häufig besonders in der Weise vor, dass sie in sich selber einer gedoppelten Leidenschaft angehören, welche sie von dem einen Entschluß, der einen Tat zur anderen herüberschickt. […] [D]‌ie Zerrissenheit in entgegengesetzte Interessen hat zum Teil in einer Unklarheit und Dumpfheit des Geistes ihren Grund, zum Teil in Schwäche und Unreifheit. Von dieser Art finden sich noch in Goethes Jugendprodukten einige Figuren:  Weislingen z.B., Fernando in Stella, vor allem aber Clavigo. Es sind gedoppelte Menschen, die nicht zu fertiger und dadurch fester Individualität gelangen können. […] [D]iese subjektive Tragik innerer Zwiespältigkeit [hat], wenn sie zum tragischen Hebel gemacht wird, überhaupt teils etwas bloß Trauriges und Peinliches, teils etwas Ärgerliches, und der Dichter

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tut besser, sie zu vermeiden, als sie aufzusuchen und vorzugsweise auszubilden’ (Hegel 1986: 15, 562–​3; In modern tragedy such dithering figures generally appear by being themselves in the grip of a twofold passion which drives them from one decision or one deed to another simultaneously. […] [M]ental distraction into opposed interests has its source partly in a vagueness and stupidity of mind, partly in weakness and immaturity. We have some figures of this sort even in Goethe’s youthful productions:  Weislingen, for example, Fernando in Stella, and Clavigo above all. These are men in two minds who cannot acquire a finished and therefore firm individuality. […] [I]f the lever of the tragedy is this personal tragedy of inner discord, there is about it something now sad and painful, now aggravating, and the poet does better to avoid it instead of looking for it and pre-​eminently developing it. [Trans. T. M. Knox])

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9 Northern lights and shadows: Transcultural encounters in early modern Italian theatre Eric Nicholson

Introduction: Portia’s Venice Heard characters are important, but those unheard and even unseen can be equally vital for a play’s ideas and energies.1 In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, an entire group of suitors never appears on stage, but Portia’s scathing descriptions of these men serve to establish her wit, refinement, desirability –​and apparent xenophobia. They also evoke two historical phenomena, which are points of focus in this chapter:  first, the status of early modern Venice as a cosmopolitan city, whose ‘trade and profit’, as the merchant Antonio puts it, ‘consisteth of all nations’ (3.3.30–​1);2 and second, the theatrical use of blason populaire –​the popular, humorous and often pejorative stereotyping of ethnicity or ‘national character’  –​for various comical and/​ or serious effects. Applying insights from the comparative literary and cultural studies field of imagology, I  emphasise the constructedness as well as persistence of such stereotypes, but also the counter-​tendency of how real-​ life trends and circumstances could qualify or even undermine these same generalisations, especially through complex, multivocal representations for the stage.3 The imagological approach invites seeing Portia’s series of satirical and ‘improvised’ verbal portraits –​contrasting with her own painted one locked in the leaden casket –​not as unequivocal endorsements of ethnic prejudice, but as a modulated dramatisation of how a young and sophisticated late sixteenth-​ century ‘Venetian’ aristocrat might perceive visitors from countries foreign to her own. Itself transnational, her routine can be identified as a verbal lazzo used by witty prima donna innamorata characters in early modern Italian and European drama, among them Célimène in Molière’s Misanthrope.4 Having ridiculed the defects of an overly equine Neapolitan, a lugubrious ‘County Palatine’ (presumably hailing from the German province of the Kurpfalz, on the Rhine), and the ‘every man in no man’ Monsieur Le Bon from France (1.2.57), Portia then delineates Falconbridge (‘the young baron of England’,

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1.2.62–​3) as the absolute opposite of a polyglot.5 A stereotype of the tongue-​ tied, insular Englishman already emerges, and of an extreme as well as theatrical kind, since the young baron is likened to ‘a dumb show’ (1.2.68–​9). At the same time, Falconbridge is a comical border-​crossing fashion plate, for according to Portia ‘he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere’ (1.2.69–​71). Appropriately for this truly mercantile play, the key verb is to buy: the young English baron and early Grand Tourist seems to be an enthusiastic travelling consumer, his randomly purchased mix of styles making him a concoction of the kinds of nationally identified figures seen in contemporary Venetian costume manuals. A  notable example of this genre, Cesare Vecellio’s De gli habiti antichi et moderni di diverse parti del mondo,6 published in Venice in 1590, includes 420 woodcuts by Cristoforo Guerra (the Italian name of Christoph Krieger, born in Nuremberg and active in Venice until his death in 1624), of which two show a German carriage driver and an English merchant. Falconbridge also could be understood as a stage version of the ‘Inglese’ who appears at the lower right of the much-​reproduced print of 1610 by Giacomo Franco, depicting mountebanks and commedia dell’arte performers in Piazza San Marco.7 Not for the only time in Shakespeare, then, English national character gets lampooned, and from a ‘foreigner’s perspective’: another Venetian (possibly with Spanish origins) named Iago affirms that the English ‘are most potent in potting’ (Othello, 2.3.63), a Danish gravedigger-​sexton-​clown declares that all Englishmen are mad (Hamlet, 5.1.117), and the Neapolitan jester Trinculo affirms that in England, ‘any strange beast there makes a man’ (The Tempest, 2.2.26–​7). Finally, after briefly alluding to border skirmishes between the English and the French-​allied Scots, Portia proceeds to her climactic portrait, that of ‘the young German, the Duke of Saxony’s nephew’, characterising him as a boorish drunkard, who at his best ‘is a little worse than a man, and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast’ (1.2.83–​4). She crowns her satiric review of her undesirable, unsuitable suitors by proposing the gag of setting ‘a deep glass of Rhenish wine on the contrary casket, for if the devil be within, and that temptation without, I know he will choose it’, and thus she will avoid marriage ‘to a sponge’ (1.2.90–​4). I begin with Shakespeare’s portrayal of a determinedly endogamous Venetian heiress –​the opposite of her compatriot Desdemona, who ‘forsook so many noble matches’ (Othello, 4.2.139) to elope with a North African. This​puts into wider European theatrical context my survey of how Italian theatre artists, especially in and around Venice, interacted with and portrayed the inhabitants of countries to their north, including the British Isles. My examples cover the longue durée, from the early sixteenth to mid-​eighteenth centuries, encompassing texts by authors as various as Angelo Beolco (‘il Ruzante’), Torquato Tasso and Carlo Goldoni. This arc of time, although

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considerable, is justified both by the tendency towards continuity in the Italian literary tradition (see Brand and Pertile 1996: xix), and by the cultural historical status of early modern Italy, which gradually changed from the avant-​garde trendsetter for the rest of Europe to a contested site of military invasion and occupation, and then of international tourism and consumption. To a certain degree, the battles almost continually fought on Italian soil between 1494 and 1530, between France, the Habsburg Empire, the Papal States, the Republic of Venice, various Italian Duchies and city states, gave way to the more peaceful and profitable ‘Grand Tour’. With variations and changing inflections, the pattern of theatrical representation across these centuries is marked by a persistent mixture of curiosity, resentment, admiration, ridicule, rejection and assimilation: northern lights and shadows, therefore. As Harald Hendrix observes, while ‘stereotypical labelling’ was part of ‘a much more comprehensive movement to dominate and control reality, an endeavour that permeated many sectors of early modern society’, xenophobic texts and images could be superseded by xenophilic ones, and indeed negative and positive representations of ‘foreigners’ could simultaneously exist and be set against each other (2013: 13). Notably, my study thus confirms that while pejorative ethnic stereotyping occurs in the Italian tradition, so too do favourable, nuanced and/​or complex depictions of Germanic individuals and customs. Given this variety of tone and purpose in the figuration of the Other, there is a need to apply case-​by-​case analysis and interpretation, and thus to correct lingering assumptions –​found especially in commentaries on Elizabethan and Jacobean drama –​that negative, xenophobic attitudes almost inevitably prevailed.8 Christian Billing rightly argues that ‘representing alterity on the early modern English stage [frequently] drew attention to intellectual, emotional, economic, cultural, and sartorial difference, and posited the parity of such habits and foreign peoples as alternative exemplars of the human genus’ (2014: 154). Susanne Wofford proposes that the theatrical representation of how foreigners behave and feel transmits ‘the status of emotion as cultural translation’ (2008: 146). These recognitions of early modern Europeans’ capacity for unbiased anthropological and psychological engagement with the Other, seen in texts such as Montaigne’s ‘Of Cannibals’, gain support from the critical emphasis, in imagology studies, on the innovative sixteenth-​and seventeenth-​century trend to document human diversity without a narrow moral agenda (Hendrix 2013:  9). While these scholars focus on plays produced for, and attended by, early modern London audiences, I suggest that a similar pattern applied to the experience of Italian theatre-​makers and theatregoers of this time. Furthermore, in the theatrical milieu, I view subsidiary ‘foreign’, ‘exotic’ and ‘local colour’ characters  –​in short, figures of cultural Otherness  –​as inhabiting an especially liminal zone, on

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the border between allusion to topical, changing realities and adherence or non-​adherence to conventional and traditional images.9 As such, they can illuminate the multivalent complexities of more prominent characters, especially those who cross back and forth from the world of history to that of theatrical performance.

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The cosmopolitan Veneto During the early modern era, Germanic visitors significantly contributed not only to intellectual and theological developments in the Veneto, but also to economic and artistic activity in the same region. The dynamic centre of this centuries-​long phenomenon was the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, situated near the Rialto and now serving, in its transformed state, as the city’s main post office. Originally founded in the early thirteenth century, the Fondaco  –​whose name derives from the Arabic funduq, itself a corruption of the classical Greek pandokéion (πανδοκεῖον) meaning inn or hotel  –​burned down in 1505, to be quickly replaced by a splendid Renaissance edifice where more than 120 merchants would reside at any given time, along with dozens of servants, porters and other assistants. Most ‘German’ tradespeople –​and in Venice, the term teutonicus was applied to natives of almost any province from Cracow (Kraków) to Bruges (Brugge) –​were expected to live and engage in commerce at the Fondaco, where they were permitted certain liberties, if under surveillance. Nonetheless, there existed enclaves and rendezvous sites elsewhere in the city, for example at the significantly named Aquila Nigra (Black Eagle) and other hotels run by and for Germans.10 The stable Germanic population in sixteenth-​century Venice ran into the thousands, and comprised not only merchants and hoteliers but also cobblers, bakers, cooks, weavers, goldsmiths and other metalworkers. Although already in slight decline during the early 1500s, Venice remained the dynamic commercial gateway to the Eastern Mediterranean, and Germans vitally sustained the city’s trading enterprises. They imported English wools, German and Scandinavian furs, horns and metals, as well as linens and textiles from the Low Countries, while they exported cotton, raw silk, pepper, ginger, saffron and specifically Venetian products such as glass, mirrors, printed books and musical instruments (Rosch 1986). The cultural and artistic importance of the Fondaco itself was affirmed by the commission given to Giorgione and the young Titian, to adorn it with lifelike monumental frescoes, painted on the exterior façades in keeping with a procedure more often practised in the German-​speaking lands. The Fondaco was also a venue for theatrical productions, as attested by a valuable entry in Marin Sanudo’s diary, dated to the carnival season of 1517, which records the performance of:

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una dimostration di la fabula de… [title not given] intervenendo Idio d’amor, nymphae, inamorati, far sacrifici, parturir et sepulture sempre balando. (Sanudo, in Padoan 1982: 47)

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(a demonstration, or debate, of the fable of… with the actions of the God of Love, nymphs, lovers, makings of sacrifices, births and burials, with dancing throughout.)

As a dimostration or debate-​dialogue, this semi-​pastoral mythological piece could have recapitulated the kind of show given four years earlier, which featured a Spaniard, a Greek, a Bergamask person, a German, a Neapolitan, a Venetian and a Florentine, who respond in turn to questions put to them by the nymph Sofia (Padoan 1982: 47; Guarino 1995: 171–​5). Unfortunately, these responses have not survived, and thus the German’s exact words are left to the imagination. It is certain, however, that this command production honoured the peace treaty recently made with the Habsburg Empire, and featured the versatile performer Zuan Polo Liompardi, the city’s most prominent and admired buffone-​author of the time, a transcultural phenomenon also known as Ivan Paulovicchio (or Paulovich) da Ragusi (Dubrovnik), whose probable Croatian origins were indicated by his use of the schiavonesco dialect of Dalmatia.11 The new Fondaco dei Tedeschi was nearing completion precisely when the era’s leading German painter, Albrecht Dürer, visited Venice and met the septuagenarian Giovanni Bellini, of whom he wrote:  ‘he is the most excellent painter in Italy… a great man, very old, but he is undoubtedly the supreme painter’ (Chastel 1986:  93). The distinguished visitor from Nuremberg was well received by compatriots from his home city, who with merchants and bankers from Augsburg –​the famous Fugger family were themselves closely linked with the Fondaco  –​provided the greatest number of Germans in Venice, and helped to commission the artist’s spectacular Festival of the Rosary for the high altar of the German church of San Bartolomeo. This painting was later acquired by Emperor Rudolf II, and is now in Prague’s National Gallery. With its innovative success in arranging and integrating human figures into a naturalistic landscape, Dürer’s work has been interpreted as an attempt to outdo Venetians at their own specialty (Chastel 1986:  96; Aikema et  al. 1999: 306–​9). For if Bellini welcomed Dürer graciously, other native painters, who already found themselves competing with the immensely popular Northern or ‘ponentini’ artists –​Van Eyck, Van der Weyden, Memling, and Bosch are named in several Venetian household inventories –​tended to snub him, prompting him to write that here ‘the gentlemen hold me in high esteem, but the painters in low’ (Chastel 1986: 93). He did nevertheless received praise from all quarters for the Rosary altarpiece, and lingered long enough to paint several other major works (Aikema et al. 1999: 330–​1). Dürer almost inevitably

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met some resistance, since a main reason for his coming to La Serenissima was to vindicate his rights as a producer of engravings, many of which were being plagiarised by Venetian printmakers. In this context, he encountered members of the thriving German publishing trade, who, after Johannes von Speyer had introduced the printing press in the 1460s, eventually promulgated the Protestant texts of Luther and others among Italian readers (Zannini 2009: 45–​8). Even after the rupture caused by the Reformation, however, the pragmatically minded Venetian government sustained its Germanic population –​it was largely Catholic –​and thus in reality, as on the stage, the local relationship with Northern Europeans was distinguished by ambivalence, and the coexistence of xenophobia and xenophilia. Early modern Germans in Italy I focus first on the depiction of Germans and Scandinavians, before assessing examples of the Italian staging of England and its inhabitants. This latter phenomenon, most fully developed in several plays by Goldoni, bespeaks a positive ‘anglomania’ that marked Venetian culture in the mid-​eighteenth century. Over a century earlier, however, notwithstanding the presence of an English suitor in Shakespeare’s fictional Belmont, and the considerable documentary evidence of English travellers in early modern Italy, there are no Englishmen on the boats that are ready to take festive passengers from Venice to Padua in the brief madrigal comedies entitled Barca da Venetia per Padova (1605; reprinted 1623)  by Adriano Banchieri, and Barchetta passeggiera (1627) by Giovanni Battista Fasolo. Both texts feature Germans, as well as Frenchmen, Spaniards and visitors from other Italian regions, each of whom offers some food and drink for the party. For example, Fasolo’s typically parsimonious Tuscan traveller brings ‘two omelettes made with one good fresh egg’, but the far more generous ‘Todesco’ boisterously sings: Mi star bon compagnon’ portar gnocch’ e maccaron’ la boracchia de vin bon per far vele a Mont Fiascon. (Fasolo, Barchetta passeggiera, op. 3.) I’m a good companion, I bring gnocchi and macaroni, the flask of good wine, to fill our sails to Monte Fiascone. (Beretta 1994: 7)

This last reference is a carnivalesque pun on the land-​locked site north of Rome whose name also means Big Flask-​Shaped Mountain. In this lively canzonetta alla bergamasca, the patrone della barca turns out to be a swindler, as he sings to his sailors to ‘pilfer well’, filching the ‘big ham’ from the

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Frenchman and the ‘wine flask’ from the too-​trusting German. Extending a tradition that goes back at least to Dante –​who had already used the epithet lurchi, meaning gluttonous and guzzling, for the tedeschi (Inferno XVII, 21; Dante 1996: 260) –​the German is associated with drinking, but here not so much with drunkenness as with conviviality and naiveté. His swaggering, even flamboyant, but not necessarily dissolute behaviour maintains the prominent features of the familiar commedia dell’arte Germanic character type (Katritzky 2006:  211–​12). Fasolo’s depiction of his compatriot as a deceptive swindler also corroborates diffuse northern European judgements about untrustworthy, conniving Italians. Moreover, like Shakespeare’s ironic jibes at mad and drunken Englishmen, this characterisation adheres to another distinguishing pattern of stereotyping ethnic jokes, namely the joke-​maker’s jesting disparagement of his or her own group (Dundes 1971:  189). Once again, the structural traits of ethnic categorisation cross regional and national borders, demonstrating that such clichés as the drunkenness of Germans (or of the Dutch, or the English) become modulated according to the local context of a particular text. Going back one more century, similarly jovial traits mark the Germanic character Messer Jannes, scolare todesco in Alessandro Piccolomini’s comedy Amor costante, composed in collaboration with the Sienese Accademia degli Intronati in 1536, and designed to please the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. If the same Intronati, in their earlier play Ingannati (1532), had employed the rather gratuitous joke uttered by the innkeeper Agiato that ‘i todeschi vanno al “Porco” ’ (Borsellino 1962:  249; the Germans go to the inn of the Pig), their leading playwright Piccolomini gives Messer Jannes more balanced nuance. He is not so much a glutton as a blusterer, and while not perfect, his Italian is certainly superior to the heavily Hispanic patois spoken by the play’s Spanish characters. He does come off as consistently brave and coherent in his vaunts, even when he garbles his Italian: ‘Tutte star parole. Io mazzarme de mano mia, se non fo star stil com’olio, se aver tutti en torn’ (Borsellino 1962: 402; Those are all just words. I’ll kill ’em with my own hand, if not, I’ll make ’em stand still like oil, even if they’re all around me). Once peace has been made between the various rivals in the drama, Jannes is the one to lead the convivial dancing and drinking, with the amusing bilingual exhortation, ‘Far danze; far far danz, messer Giannino; ballar, ballar per miglior trinch’ (Borsellino 1962:  425; Get up and dance, get up, get up and danz, Messer Giannino; dance, dance, to better trink). The play’s conclusion indeed aims to evoke a pacification among contentious Italians, Spanish, Germans, and Austrians, under the wise aegis of the Emperor himself. With its relatively light-​hearted depiction of Italy’s militarised transalpine visitors, l’Amor costante diverges from the Intronati’s earlier I prigioni (1530). As often occurs in the Intronati’s plays, this loose translation of Plautus’s

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Captivi exalts a young female protagonist, and in this case; it also unflinchingly incorporates contextual reference to the real-​life wars and conflicts being fought on the Italian peninsula (Pieri 2013:  168–​9). Its topical episode is the 1530 siege of Florence that eventually brought down the city’s last Republic and paved the way for the two succeeding centuries of Medici ducal dominion; not surprisingly, the play’s German characters are sober and menacing, rather than bibulous and clownish. By the 1580s, however, Imperial power in the Italian peninsula had been consolidated, perhaps encouraging romantic sentimentality to supersede historical and satirical concerns, especially when the German male in question is promoted to the rank of at least would-​be innamorato. This choice of characterisation marks La pellegrina, usually attributed to Girolamo Bargagli, a Sienese play famed not for its script but for the lavish, spectacular and musically innovative intermezzi that were staged at its first performances, for the Florentine wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinando I  of Tuscany to Christine de Lorraine in 1589. While his servant Cavicchio is allowed to tease him for his courtship and love-​making ‘all’usanza della vostra terra tedesca’ (Borsellino 1962: 451; in the style of your German country), the German Messer Federigo of this play, set in Pisa, is a well-​spoken, indeed fluent young scholar, who makes the happy dénouement possible once it is discovered that he and Messer Terenzio/​Lucrezio, the true, leading innamorato, are long-​ separated brothers. This thoroughly Tuscan comedy, performed with great success in its own time and destined to influence the Italian commedia grave and French larmoyante traditions, thus puts its Northern European character in a highly positive light, making him a truly studious, earnest and respectable individual. Taken together, these Sienese plays offer a balanced depiction of German visitors, and in doing so, move away from traditional stereotypes and predictable tropes towards historical reality. For example, German students did indeed frequent the University of Pisa. Yet their presence and influence were much stronger at the University of Padua, the most progressive and intellectually tolerant institution of its kind in early modern Italy. Until the papal bull of 1564 constraining students to make a profession of Catholic faith at any papal-​authorised university  –​a requirement frequently bypassed  –​ Northern reformers and even Protestants communicated their ideas and positions through seminars at Padua. The Flemish anatomist Andreas Wessels (Vesalius), the Polish astronomer and polymath Nicolaus Copernicus and the English physician William Harvey were among the university’s numerous transnational and transcultural scholars in the early modern period (see Woolfson 1998; Muir 2009). Padua also provided a site for the dissemination of texts and viewpoints by Thomas More and Desiderius Erasmus, whose impact was strong at the nearby Este court of Ferrara during the 1520s and 1530s, and evident in coeval scripts by the Paduan actor and dramatist Angelo

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Beolco (‘il Ruzante’, c. 1496–​1542). While Beolco’s serio-​comic, often economically and politically oppressed peasants do not hesitate to decry the infiltration of German soldiers and the German language into their fields and villages, they are also encouraged to apply open-​minded insights, especially regarding free will and economic justice, derived in part from Erasmus. These ideas figure prominently, for example, in the extended monologue ‘la Prima Oratione’, written and performed by Beolco himself for the newly installed Paduan Cardinal Marco Cornaro in August 1521, which also humorously advocates allowing clerics to marry, in order to increase the local Veneto population for self-​defence purposes. Later that decade, a Venetian press published the Erasmian Beneficio di Cristo, a tract advocating simple, direct dialogue with the Creator that came close to being a bestseller in northern Italy (Zannini 2009:  92). Meanwhile, Erasmus’ own Militis confessio provided a source for Beolco’s ferocious, grotesque, but also documentary realist dramatisation of war’s disastrous effects on a group of peasant refugees, his short play of 1529 Parlamento di Ruzante che l’era vegnù de campo (or Il reduce).12 Here the title character returns from the battlefield, but not to his peasant homeland. Instead, in his utterly displaced and post-​traumatic, disoriented state, he seeks his wife Gnua in Venice, the city to which she has fled, turning to prostitution as a means of survival. The play ends with Ruzante being battered and humiliated by Gnua’s protector, whose silence might indicate that he is also an outsider, perhaps a German-​speaking mercenary. Exporting Italy to the north As well as material goods, early modern exports from northern Italy to the German lands included theatre itself. To cite but one notable and well-​ documented case, in March 1568 Munich courtiers delighted the guests at the wedding of Wilhelm of Bavaria and Renée of Lorraine with a commedia dell’arte performance (Katritzky 1992, 2007; Vianello 2005). Ten years later, this court performance inspired the frescoes attributed to Alessandro Scalzi ‘il Paduano’ at Schloss Trausnitz, at Landshut. These almost life-​size images line the staircase, providing a kind of trompe l’oeil permanent ‘performance’ by Zanni, Pantalone, Franceschina and others. Finally, seventeen years later, in Düsseldorf, two commedia dell’arte players caused a sensation with their various freshly entertaining lazzi during the elaborate wedding festivities held at the court of Duke Wilhelm von Julich, Cleve and Bergen, for the marriage of the Duke’s heir, Prince Johann Wilhelm, and Princess Jakobine von Baden (Katritzky 2018: 25). These episodes revealingly demonstrate the versatile ways in which innovative theatre practices of professional actors from Venice, Lombardy, and other Italian centres were exported across Europe, and as far as Scandinavia and the British Isles, during the late sixteenth and early

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seventeenth centuries. Indeed, as Katritzky convincingly observes, the ‘rise of the professional commedia dell’arte is closely tied to the increasing commercialisation of the Venetian carnival’ during this same period, a commercialisation especially dependent on affluent Austrian and German tourists and visitors, who purchased Murano glassware, ‘gondola jewels’, custom-​made automata, and other luxury items showing maschere and comical performances of a type often evoked by painted depictions in morally tinged ‘friendship albums’ (2016: 131–​7). This sort of cultural as well as commercial import-​export story is well known to Anglophone art and theatre historians, but less familiar are specific portrayals of Northern European history in works by Italian dramatists, even famous and influential ones. Unlike his contemporary Giordano Bruno, Torquato Tasso did not visit Elizabethan England, but his fame in that country was so high that a lost play entitled Tasso’s Melancholy was staged in London during his own lifetime (in August 1594), apparently with such success that it was revived in 1602, with revisions by Thomas Dekker.13 Tasso’s one major tragedy, Il re Torrismondo (1587), provides further insights into the Italian theatrical representation of Northern Europe. In several ways, its setting among the Goths and Swedes is fundamental to Tasso’s project of reviving Sophoclean tragedy according to a late sixteenth-​century aesthetic and cultural ideology. The Act 1 Chorus of Goth soldiers appeals to the goddess Sapienza (Wisdom). Well aware of their need to become civilised, and to let peace take the place of war at the time of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and the impending arrival of Christianity, they recall their recent sacking of Rome, thus urgently pleading for their own political and cultural transformation: O diva, i rami sacri tranquilla oliva a te non erge e spande, né si tesson di lei varie ghirlande; ma pur altra in sua vece il re consacri alma e felice pianta; tu sgombra i nostri errori, o saggia e santa. (Il re Torrismondo, I, 907–​12; Tasso 1983) (O Goddess, [here] the peaceful olive does not extend to you its sacred branches, nor are divers garlands woven from it; but in its place may the King consecrate an esteemed and blessèd plant; may you undo our errors, O wise and holy one.)

With this crucial detail of the Mediterranean olive and its civilising, peace-​ bringing connotations, Tasso’s script grafts an archetypal symbol of classical culture onto the northern world, defined by one of the Italian playwright’s main sources, Olaus Magnus’ (Olaf Mansson’s) Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (Rome, 1554)  as the ‘House of Mars’. Tasso ransacks Magnus again for

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King Torrismondo’s enthusiastic speech, describing the lavish and intricate Scandinavian-​style entertainments that he proclaims will accompany an impending double wedding. The king orders the building of ‘un castel di fredda neve e salda’ (III, 1400; a castle of cold and solid snow), and in pointed contrast to the usual celebrations held for the death of Greek heroes like Patroclus, details the very different kind of games to be played on the occasion of his matrimony. These include throwing not snowballs but balls of hard and heavy marble, balancing on the high wire, and taming wild animals before pushing them about on the ‘snowy ice’ (II, 1398–​1429). Thus, at the verbal level, Tasso provides a distinctly northern, almost mystical ambience. The play’s actions, however, carry out the irreconcilable conflict between the demands of love and friendship, precipitating its heroes into a Sophoclean tragedy of brother-​sister incest, shocked anagnorisis and the rulers’ eventual suicides. The early medieval Scandinavian setting allows Tasso to put on stage a warlike, ‘primitive’ group of people marked by somewhat noble savagery, and, in anachronistic Counter-​Reformation terms, ready to be assimilated into the European cultural scene.14 At the same time, readers and audience members are led to experience the play’s extraordinary poetry and ‘exotic’ atmosphere according to the formal criteria of neoclassical tragedy. Arguably, there is even a kind of translatio imperii detectable here, transmuted and articulated by Tasso with his self-​aware, intertextual poetic and aesthetic agenda. Or put another way, the meraviglia or wonder and magic typically associated with the ‘exotic’ (for an Italian) world of Scandinavia, undergoes literary hybridisation with late Renaissance conventions of rational post-​Aristotelian decorum. In the process, Tasso’s play also averts direct confrontation, or, at most, imaginatively resolves contemporary real-​life tensions, between the Counter-​Reformation Papacy and the predominantly Protestant regions of northern Germany, Denmark and Sweden. During the next century, such tensions emerged in the wars fought by the Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus, and the celebrated conversion and abdication of his daughter Queen Christina, as well as her non-​conformist activities and prominent, idiosyncratic cultural patronage of theatre and music in Rome itself during the 1660s and 1670s. The late seicento witnessed the continuation of the generally ambivalent encounter between Italian and northern culture in the performing arts. Just as carnival-​related depictions of commedia dell’arte actors could carry ‘intensely negative religious and political undertones of decadent excess, deception and wanton folly’ (Katritzky 2016:  135), so too could Italian commedianti of the late seventeenth century guarantee laughter by impersonating Germans, and absurdly garbling their ‘guten morgen mein herr’ greeting into ‘Goth Morghen Mainer’, as advised in Andrea Perrucci’s Dell’arte rappresentativa, premediata ed all’Improvviso, published in Naples in 1699 (Perrucci 2008:  164, 182). In providing catchphrases for imitating

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Germans, Turks, French people, Spaniards, Florentines and Genoese, Perrucci’s manual for actors is comparable to contemporary visual-​textual works cataloguing various European national and ethnic groups by stereotypical traits. At the same time, Italian theatrical and musical practices were uncontested leaders in almost all transalpine countries:  for example, by the 1660s the imperial court of Vienna was already giving pride of place to the Venetian operatic style of composition, and through the next decades, under the direction of Antonio Draghi, Vienna experienced what has been called a ‘golden age of Italian opera’ (Holmes 1976: 201). The Viennese enthusiasm for Italian music and opera persisted into the eighteenth century, with Pietro Metastasio as court theatre-​poet and librettist, Antonio Salieri as court composer and Lorenzo Da Ponte as Mozart’s librettist.15 Goldoni: The eighteenth-​century ambassador of early modern Italy The transnational connections between Italy and the increasingly influential and globally imperialistic Northern European zone of the British Isles intensified and proliferated with the progress of modernity. In the mid-​eighteenth century, Carlo Goldoni wrote an entire series of plays featuring English visitors to Venice, as well as ‘British’ people engaged in intrigue, both serious and comic, in London and other English locations. These include an adaptation of Richardson’s novel Pamela (1760), a musical entitled La ritornata di Londra (The Woman Returned from London, 1757), in which the title character has adopted English reserve and taciturnity to the point where all she says is ‘anzi’, and the comedy La scozzese (The Scottish Lady, 1761), a fascinating rewriting of Voltaire’s L’écossaise, whose aristocratic heroine resides incognito at a Venetian-​style London inn, run by an all too Venetian-​style transplant named Fabrizio (Pieri 2013: 170–​9). In 1754, Goldoni managed to spark lively public debate with his remarkable verse drama Il filosofo inglese (The English Philosopher), written in rime baciate, or rhyming couplets, whose protagonist Jacobbe Monduill  –​a possible allusion to Bernard Mandeville, author of the scandalous Fable of the Bees (1714) –​successfully defends himself against an imminent sword-​thrust with rational argumentation as his only weapon. He also prefers the celibate intellectual life over offered courtship and potential marriage, explaining his choice in lines that anticipate those of Professor Henry Higgins of Shaw’s Pygmalion: Perder la libertade? No, non sarà giammai. In lei virtude apprezzo, in lei beltà mi piace, ma quel che più mi preme è del mio cuor la pace. E per quanto di donna discrete sian’ le voglie, Sempre ad uomo che studia incomoda è la moglie. (Il filosofo inglese, 1.14.50–​4; Goldoni 2000: 109)

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(Lose my freedom? No, that shall never be. I esteem her virtue, I like her being fair, But for peace in my heart I have more care. Howe’er strong desire for a woman may be, To the studious man a wife’s a liability.)

In their dramatic context, these lines do not express misogyny, but rather their speaker’s chaste moral probity and steadfast devotion to intellectual pursuits. This exemplary English philosopher may thus evoke Goldoni himself, and his own sincere admiration for ‘il paese delle Arti, delle Scienze e della buona Filosofia’, as he puts it (Goldoni 2000: 82: the country of the Arts, Sciences, and fine Philosophy), as well as his friend and supporter Joseph Smith, the British consul to Venice, to whom he dedicated Il filosofo inglese. The playwright was graciously received at Smith’s palazzo on the Grand Canal, and having admired its impressive collection of rare books, drawings and paintings, enthused that this ‘Biblioteca Smittiana’ offers ‘l’unione più perfetta di tutte le scienze e di tutte le arti’ (Goldoni 2000: 82; the most perfect union of all the Sciences and of all the Arts).16 His Anglophilic admiration thus focuses on what he calls the ‘civil, discreet, and sociable philosophy’ of the English, and his title character incarnates ‘una nazione che pensa e che ragiona forse più delle altre’ (Goldoni 2000: 79; a nation that thinks and uses reason, perhaps more than other ones). Along with the other English residente in Venice, John Murray, Smith helped Goldoni read and appreciate Shakespeare’s plays, inspiring him to imitate and employ the play-​within-​ the-​play device for his Malcontenti and its scene of ‘Cromuel protettore dell’Inghilterra’ (Cope 1995). The real life Smith, however, was no celibate filosofo, as he married Murray’s sister Elisabeth, forty years his junior:  in this regard, he had more in common with Milord Runebif –​i.e., ‘Ruin-​beef ’ –​from Goldoni’s earlier play La vedova scaltra (The Clever Widow, 1748), whose main activity in Venice consists of wooing the title character, in competition with a ‘faithful but overly jealous’ Italian, a ‘gallant but overly affected’ Frenchman and a ‘loving but overly somber’ Spaniard. Milord’s primary technique of courtship is to offer lavish gifts, for as the widow’s French maid Marionette observes, ‘gl’Inglesi hanno poche parole, e molti fatti’ (Goldoni 2004: 159; Englishmen speak few words, but do many deeds). Her lady, Rosaura, retorts that she does not like their ‘excessive seriousness’, and in a later, revealing speech, defends herself against foreign invasion, while praising the country then reaching its apex as the necessary, leading attraction of the continental Grand Tour: Italia in oggi dà regola nella maniera di vivere. Unisce tutto il buono delle nazione straniere, e lascia lor tutto il cattivo. Questo è che la rende ammirabile, e che fa innamorare del suo soggiorno tutte le nazione del mondo. (1.18.3–8).17

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(Today Italy gives the world lessons on how to live. She unites all the good qualities of foreign nations, and leaves to them the bad ones. This is what makes her admirable, and what makes, by visiting her, all nations fall in love with her.)

Goldoni’s patriotic manifesto, written in 1748, pre-​ dates the Italian ‘Risorgimento’ by almost exactly a century: there was no Italian nation-​state at the time, only Italia as a place of common birth (natio in the root Latin sense), or as a geographical and cultural entity. Indeed, Goldoni’s comedy may seek to promote a sense of Italian national integrity, given that Rosaura finally consents to marry her local wooer, il Conte di Bosco Nero. Her sister Eleonora, meanwhile, does marry the visiting Frenchman Monsieur Le Blau, while the taciturn Milord Runebif and his even more reserved servant Birif –​ and brief he is in every way –​congenially exit the scene, but not before Milord commends an unusually wise Pantalone for giving up his own pursuit of Eleonora, with this reason-​affirming as well as culturally self-​congratulatory statement: ‘Egli pensa con ragione, veramente da inglese’ (Goldoni 2004: 235; You think in a reasonable way, just as a true Englishman would). What happens, however, when Goldoni introduces an especially dynamic as well as ambiguous commedia dell’arte maschera, the servant Arlecchino, into that quintessential eighteenth-​century social and cultural contact zone, and mini-​theatre of the world, the fashionable London coffeehouse? This scenario occurs in Act 3 of the ethnically accented Il genio buono e il genio cattivo (The Good Spirit and the Evil Spirit, 1767), where, through a series of comically magic transformations, Arlecchino finds himself in London, disguised as a French gentleman. In a hilarious sequence involving improvisation and physical beating routines,18 the voluble and extravagant Arlecchino provokes first the ‘amazement and impatience’ of an ‘English Merchant’, an ‘English Sea Captain’, an ‘English Craftsman’ and an ‘English Pilot’, each more tight-​ lipped than the last. He then brings them to fisticuffs, but thanks to his ring of invisibility he avoids the blows, and instead hits them and makes them fight each other. The comedic energy and effects here exploit the vivid contrast between the conventionally quiet, impassive English types, and the wildly histrionic Italian servant maschera: ironically, the former become more violent and ludicrous than the latter. Goldoni, however, does not take simplistic, ethnically biased sides, as Arlecchino, for all his spontaneous Italianate charm, is shown to be a philandering, immoral impostor, while the people whom he decries for their ‘disdain’ of foreign visitors are defended by the attractive, graceful and intelligent coffeehouse manager Betzi. She explains to Arlecchino that ‘the English are exceptionally good-​hearted’, and advises him to ‘Uniformatevi un poco al gusto della nazione, e vedrete col tempo, che il soggiorno a Londra è il miglior soggiorno del mondo’ (3.4.23; Goldoni 2006: 127–​8; conform a bit to the tastes of the nation, and you shall see that a stay in London is the very best stay in the world). Arlecchino declares that he will follow this advice, but when he tries to ‘inglesar’ with ‘naturalezza’ (act English in a natural way),

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he does so ‘clumsily, and as rigidly as a post’. His inept would-​be imitation prompts Betzi to exclaim ‘Via, via, signore, non affettate di caricare i ridicoli di questa nazione’ (Enough, enough, sir, don’t strain to make caricatures of the ridiculous side of this nation) and to remark, in a line which encapsulates a key idea as well as problem related to my topic:

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Ecco il solito inganno dei viaggiatori:  Osservano i costumi delle nazioni, ma trascurano il buono, e portano via le caricature. (Goldoni, Il genio buono, 3.4.23) (There you have it, the common delusion of travellers: they observe the customs of nations, but overlook the good traits, and take away nothing but caricatures.)

Almost 250 years later, such importation and exportation of caricatures continues all too often, and therefore the intricately varied representations of Northern Europeans and their cultures in early modern Italian drama also may have yet to fulfil their objective of teaching as well as delighting. Betzi’s instructive words, spoken by a pragmatic working-​woman in an urban setting, can be usefully contrasted with the witty ‘portraits’ of the heiress Portia in her Belmont villa, for they suggest a balanced way not merely to react to, but to reflect on –​and potentially enhance the value of –​international travel, tourism and direct interaction with individuals of multiple backgrounds and localities. Such was the transnational culture of early modern Italian theatre, from the comedies written and performed in the accademie of the early 1500s, through the enduring popularity of the commedia dell’arte within and outside Italy, to Goldoni’s influential plays. This performative heritage was firmly rooted in encounters and connections with foreigners, immigrants, tourists, merchants and other travellers. In this context, image is not everything, it is only a starting point. Reliance on superficial rhetoric and distorting stereotypes exacerbates fears and prejudices. Instead, audiences can learn from observing and understanding not the negative caricatures that they might expect, but rather the complex characters that they encounter, amid ambiguous scenarios of shadow and light. Notes 1 I would like to thank M. A. Katritzky, Volker Bauer and the staff of the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, for their organisation and hosting of the TWB conference in May 2012, at which the first version of this paper was presented; my TWB colleagues for their helpful responses and suggestions, and my editors M. A. Katritzky and Pavel Drábek, for providing valuable references, constructive comments and congenial encouragement. All translations, unless indicated otherwise, are mine. 2 Quotations of The Merchant of Venice are from Drakakis’ edition (Shakespeare 2010). 3 On imagology, as well as the complex representation of ethnic groups and ‘national character’ in early modern drama, see O’Sullivan (2011), Hendrix (2013) and Hoenselaars (1992).

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4 On the Italian theatrical lazzo and its use in Molière’s theatre, see Bourqui and Vinti (2003: esp. 17–​26, 102–​12). 5 Lawrence (2006: 124) demonstrates Shakespeare’s probable use, in Portia’s lines, of the Italian teacher and translator Florio’s complaint against monolingual English people (1578). On Shakespeare’s representations of Venice, and the ‘myth’ of Venice, see Tosi and Bassi (2011: 1–​15). 6 Modern critical edition: Jones and Rosenthal (2008). 7 For reproductions and analyses see Henke (2002: 80 and ­figure 15) and Katritzky (2007: 104 and plate 31). 8 On ‘prejudice-​ affirming’ vs. ‘prejudice-​ challenging’ images of foreigners and Others in Shakespearean drama, see Novy (2013: 1–​16) and Dickson (2016). 9 Hoenselaars (1992) similarly argues for the influence of such historical factors as James I’s peace-​ making policy on changing, ambivalent representations of Europeans in English drama of the early 1600s; O’Sullivan explains that ‘Contemporary imagology emphasises that national stereotypes are discursive conventions and not representative of social realities, and that the imagologist’s frame of reference is a textual and intertextual one’ (2011: 461). 10 On the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, see Rosch (1986), Aikema et al. (1999: 76–​81) and Wirtz (2005). On Venice’s relations with German-​speaking regions, see Cozzi (1986). 11 On Zuan Polo and plurilinguistic, transcultural comedy in early sixteenth-​ century Venice, see Padoan (1982:  56–​9), Guarino (1995:  193–​237 and Henke (2015: 82–​3). 12 On Il reduce, the Prima Oratione and its sequel the Seconda Oratione (1528), and the influence of More and Erasmus on Beolco’s work, see Carroll (1989) and Olivieri (1998). 13 Philip Henslowe records among his theatre’s properties a ‘Tasso’s robe’ and ‘Tasso’s Picture’ (see Brand 1965: 206; Lawrence 2017: 7–​8). 14 Similarly, in Giambattista Andreini’s tragedy Florinda (1606), set in ‘the forests of Scotland’, the noble princess is beset by often uncouth, brutal and violently hostile inhabitants of her cold and tempestuous northern land. 15 Italian operatic activities in eighteenth-​ century Vienna extended a tradition of almost two centuries of Italian performers in the Habsburg-​governed areas, including Moravia and Bohemia. See Artioli and Grazioli (2005) and Spáčilová (2017). 16 On Goldoni’s vision of transalpine countries and his progressive mercantilism, see Fido (1977: 24–​5) and Ferrone (2011: 98–​9). 17 On the mid-​1700s as the ‘climax of the Grand Tour’, attracting visitors like David Garrick and Laurence Sterne, see Chaney (1998: 114). On Venice as a primary, indeed essential but also ambiguously alluring part of the Tour, see Redford (1996). La vedova scaltra offers an alternative view of British Grand Tourism, making it a secondary rather than primary concern. On British perceptions of Venetians and Italians, see Brilli (2003). 18 Editors’ note: see Introduction (19 n. 5).

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10 Representations of female power: Musical spectacle at the Paris court of Maria de’ Medici, the Italian Minerva of France Janie Cole

On 5 October 1600, Giambattista Guarini’s dialogue Giunone e Minerva, with music by Emilio de’ Cavalieri, was performed in Florence, on the evening of the wedding of Maria de’ Medici (1573–​1642) and Henry IV of France (1553–​1610).1 This short theatrical dialogue sung by the goddesses Juno and Minerva, with spectacular changes of scenery designed by Bernardo Buontalenti, was all in praise of the new queen, who was represented as incarnating virginal, matronly and marital attributes.2 In particular, the image of Maria bringing peace, invoked in Guarini’s dialogue in the guise of Minerva, would become one of the driving images of the queen’s regency (Mamone 1987: 64).3 This Florentine-​designed iconography would later be adopted by the queen in her patronage of French court spectacle from 1600 (when Maria arrived in Paris) to 1631 (after which the queen was exiled from France definitively), and especially during her regency from 1610 (when Henry IV was assassinated) to 1617 (when Louis proclaimed his kingship), as part of a series of transnational exchanges and appropriations between Florence and Paris. The common perception in the historiography of Maria de’ Medici is one of a weak and incompetent ruler who seriously jeopardised the work of Henry IV, and whose activities were controlled by her unscrupulous advisers. Moreover, her patronage of music and theatrical spectacle is barely considered as an appendage to the king’s patronage and later to her son’s, Louis XIII. Sara Mamone’s (1987) overview of Maria’s court spectacles from 1600 to 1617 focuses on major state occasions (her 1600 wedding, the coronation of the queen, funeral rites for Henry IV, the ascension of Louis XIII and his wedding), discussing their theatrical entertainments, iconography and commedia dell’arte performances, but not their music. Ballet de cour scholars largely ignore Maria’s contribution to the genre. Margaret McGowan’s (1963: 63–​7, 85–​99) groundbreaking study lists at least 404 French court ballets performed between 1600 and 1631. Whether as dancer, patron or spectator, Maria is

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definitely associated with twenty-​eight (mostly in 1600–​17), and current researches do not rule out the possibility of her involvement in some of the remaining 376 or more (McGowan 1963: 258–​93). McGowan makes no distinction between the allegorical, political or iconographic characteristics of ballets sponsored by Maria or Henry before 1610, rather discussing Maria’s personal impact on the genre only with reference to the 1615 Ballet de Madame, and interpreting the allegorical and mythological representations of post-​ 1617 ballets as symbolising the new king’s establishment of his authority.4 Recent revisionist studies confirm that they were also intended to purge the overwhelming female imagery that had taken precedence over the figure of the king since at least 1610. Discussions of this distinct shift in French court production imagery reassess the importance of the queen’s patronage as a separate entity, and of the development of her personal iconography, notably in the context of the French tradition of the heroic image and the theme of Astraea (Rubin 1977; Britland 2006). Karen Britland discusses the influence of Maria’s personal iconography and cultural patronage on her daughter, Queen Henrietta Maria, and on England’s court masques. Yet more recent research has attributed to Maria three major ballets in 1602, 1605 and 1609 as patron and highest-​ranking dancer (Gough 2012a, 2012b, 2018) and shown that the 1609 Ballet de la Royne, in particular, provides an example of Maria’s important contributions to foreign diplomacy and relations during Henry IV’s lifetime (Welch 2017). By contrast, this chapter presents and draws on my new archival finds to argue that Maria was highly active as a patron of court theatrical productions and already developing a personal iconography of female imagery not just during her regency from 1610 to 1617, but increasingly from her ascent in 1600. This figurative language drew on the French cult of Astraea (often as Minerva), to form the core of Maria’s performance agenda. My discovery of previously unknown eyewitness accounts of the performance of the 1609 court ballet,5 the Ballet de la Royne, sponsored and performed by Maria, not only provides the first comprehensive description of the entertainment, but also gives specific evidence of Maria’s adoption of the Astraean theme before the regency, and the inclusion of the avant-​garde Florentine accompanied monody. This took late sixteenth-​century Florentine audiences of early opera by storm and soon spread to Paris, showing that despite the French court’s continued preference for ballet de cour, Maria embraced musical fashions imported from her native Italian court (see Documents 1–​5 below). This chapter further suggests that Maria’s court productions should also be read in the light of her Italian cultural heritage and appropriations, and Medici familial influences and diplomatic concerns. A neglected letter of 1603 to Maria from her uncle and surrogate father, Grand Duke Ferdinando I  de’ Medici, giving lengthy advice on how to act as a queen –​specifically as a French queen

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of Florentine descent –​not only provides invaluable insight into diplomacy, court politics and contemporary notions of women’s power and authority in the early seventeenth century, but also indicates what expectations were being made of Maria during this period and what socio-​political baggage she carried with her to France.6 More specifically, Maria’s patronage of musical spectacle and performance culture reflected these Medici socio-​political preoccupations, which included the significance of her Medici cultural heritage and the importance of women in power being active in the political system with a distinct role as peace-​weavers. These elements were translated into continued transnational exchanges and transcultural appropriations, including the import of accompanied monody and other new musical forms, theatrical models (Mantuan commedia dell’arte), and numerous prestigious Italian musicians, poets and actors (see Baschet 1882; Dubost 1997). They can further be traced in the development of Maria’s personal iconography and use of female imagery: her self-​fashioning as the Italian Minerva of France, and wider political and allegorical strategies for legitimising her contradictory position as a ruling regent under Salic law by promoting women’s power and authority. In his letter of 19 August 1603, Grand Duke Ferdinando I  de’ Medici outlined the principles, attitudes and actions that Maria should adopt as an Italian Medici princess on the French royal throne. Ferdinando’s letter was almost certainly triggered by Henry IV’s near-​death illness in the spring of 1603, which precipitated Maria’s entry into the Council in preparation for a regency which everyone thought was imminent (Dubost 2009: part II). First and foremost, Ferdinando emphasised the significance of Maria’s Medici heritage, both to boost her confidence in her ability to reign successfully, but also as a reminder of her responsibility to them and the repercussions of her actions on her family image and position in the power stakes of Europe: Vostra Maestà non si perda di animo perché l’ha ingegno et è nata d’una casa che hanno prudenza et sono capaci d’ogni gran governo purché si applichino l’animo. Et pensi Vostra Maestà di havere a morire in Francia et che la maggior vergogna che potesse haver lei et la casa sua sarebbe l’haver a tornare in Italia. (ASF:MdP 4732, f.92r) (Your Highness should not lose heart because you have intelligence and you have been born of a family which has prudence and is capable of any great government if only it puts its mind to it. And Your Highness should bear in mind that you will have to die in France and the worst shame that you and your family could have would be for you to have to return to Italy.)

Specifically noting intertextual connections with Maria’s first Ballet of the Sixteen Virtues (Ballet des Seize Dames, 1602), Gough suggests that the queen’s own performance history as a dancer, and her participation in Florentine productions prior to her move to France (such as in Ottavio Rinuccini’s 1596

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Mascherata di stelle), provided iconographies that she re-​adapted in her pre-​ 1610 French court ballets, within a new socio-​political context of rivalry among elite women (Gough 2018, ch. 1).7 Apart from Guarini’s suggested image of Minerva framing Maria as a peace-​weaver, other significant components of the 1600 wedding anticipate Maria’s cultural and performance transfers:  Maria witnessed Ottavio Rinuccini’s Euridice (with music by Jacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini), the first opera to have survived complete, which introduced a new style of musical entertainment to Florence, the through-​composed music-​drama, and the new monodic style of accompanied solo singing.8 Maria had also been taught singing by Jacopo Peri from the early 1580s on, and her Florentine training in music and dancing had a significant impact on performance culture in France (Bartoli Bacherini 2005). Giulio Caccini’s Il rapimento di Cefalo was also performed at the 1600 Florentine wedding; it was subsequently translated into French and perhaps influenced Cephalus and Aurora (Carter 2003), painted by Poussin, whose landscapes sometimes served as stage sets for mythological or biblical scenes. Thereafter, Maria sponsored those Italian musicians and poets closely involved in the development of early opera, including Giovanni de’ Bardi, founder of the Florentine camerata, the renowned singer and composer Giulio Caccini, his second wife Margherita and daughters Settimia and Francesca, whom the French court offered employment after her (Francesca’s) stunning performances in the 1605 Ballet de la reine (Gough 2012b),9 and the famous Medici librettist Ottavio Rinuccini. The influence of these musical imports on the French style is apparent in the accompanied solo singing arias in Maria’s 1609 court ballet.10 Following the French royal tradition, Maria regularly sponsored Italian commedia dell’arte troupes from Mantua. Anne MacNeil (2003), Siro Ferrone (1993a, 1993b), and Paola Besutti (1995, 2003) have traced the lengthy visits to Paris from the Fedeli company (headed by Tristano Martinelli [Harlequin] and Giambattista Andreini [Lelio]) in 1613–​14 and 1621–​25; the Accesi in 1601, 1606, 1607 and 1608; and the Gelosi company in 1603, with Isabella and Francesco Andreini. The Fedeli’s musical productions featured scenes in sung recitative, thus apprising the French court of the latest developments in Florentine-style opera (Powell 2000: 167). Their son, the poet Giambattista Andreini also regularly provided Italian texts performed at the French court –​ such as a sacra rappresentazione, Maddalena in 1617 by request of Maria  –​ and dedicated a number of his works to the queen, Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu (Powell 2000: 168; Snyder 2010; Zampelli 1998). Don Giovanni de’ Medici, the illegitimate son of Grand Duke Cosimo I and resident in Paris from 1605 to 1608, acted as a broker on behalf of his niece Maria, in arranging for these Italian troupes to visit the French court from Mantua, notably the Accesi company in 1608, headed by Pier Maria Cecchini and Flaminio Scala

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(Dooley 2006). Maria was also an enthusiastic patron of less grand Italian and Franco-​Italian acting troupes, evidently enjoying quack farces (Katritzky 2012: 229 and Chapter 6 in this volume). Her cultural patronage enabled her to maintain close ties with her family (both in Florence and Mantua), who in turn regularly supplied her with commodities from plants and foodstuffs to distilled medicines and scientific treatises. In his 1603 letter, Grand Duke Ferdinando further urged Maria to aid the King in governing, and to take an active role in the political system by colluding with his ministers: Il Re più volte ha desiderato che la lo aiuti a reggere questo peso, et a lei è molto facile il farlo se vorrà applicarsi l’animo… ci è il consiglio regio che le insegnerà come l’ha da fare per dar gusto al Re… Et fidesi pure de’ ministri del Re che sono suoi domestici ne’ negotii, che questi la consiglieranno et reggeranno bene per esser loro nella medesima barca che lei perché quando le cose di V. M.tà et de’ suoi figli andassino male le loro non andrebbono bene, perché i Principi grandi di Francia non possono patire questi ministri atteso che vogliono governar loro, et questa è cosa antiquata in cotesto Regno. (ASF:MdP 4732, ff. 92r–​95r) (Many times the King has desired that you help him to carry this weight, and for you it is an easy task if you only put your mind to it… there is the royal council who can teach you how to do it to please the King… And you should trust the King’s ministers who are your housekeepers in such business affairs, for they can advise you and it will be good for them to be in the same boat as you because if things should go badly for your Highness and your children their things will not go well either, because the princes of France cannot bear these ministers who want to govern themselves, and this is an old problem in that kingdom.)

Warning Maria of the problems faced by her predecessor, Catherine de’ Medici, also a French queen of Florentine descent, with the French nobles and Huguenots who tried to oust her during the regency, the Grand Duke underlined the importance of keeping the King alive and healthy: La procuri con tutte le vie possibili la conservatione della vita del Re… [che] è la conservatione del Regno. (92r–​95r) (You must safeguard in all possible ways the preservation of the King’s life… which means the preservation of the kingdom.)

This analogy provided an immediate role model of an active, effective, pious woman, thus situating expectations about Maria’s own activities within a framework of historical Medici female action. Ferdinando remarked on how the queens of France governed and were politically powerful if they so chose (unlike those of Spain who were simply reproductive machines): Io dalla mia banda ho fatto la mia parte, havendola fatta Regina di Francia che è la maggior di christianità poiché le Regine di Francia governano quando

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vogliono et non sono come quelle di Spagna che se ne stanno in una camera senza pensare ad altro che ‘n far figliuoli. (92r–​95r)

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(For my part, I have done my bit by making you queen of France which is the most of Christianity because the queens of France rule when they so chose and are not like the queens of Spain who stay cooped up in a room without thinking about anything else except having children.)

And Ferdinando emphasised the importance of Maria using political astuteness, fortitude, intelligence and keeping the peace: Bisogno che V. M.tà non si mostri crudele et vendicativa contro nessuno ma che dissimulando dica poi a quattro occhi al Re quello che ella giudichi importar al servitio del Re per suo senza respetto di nessuno, et mostri di voler bene a franzesi et di confidare in loro et non dica che siano traditori, ne dica mal di loro, et cognosca ogn’uno et tenga in se perché per tutto sono de’ buoni et de’ cattivi. (92r–​95r) (It is necessary that your Highness should not be seen as cruel and revengeful against anybody but that afterwards you speak personally with the King about what you deem to be important to his service without respecting anybody else, and show that you love the French and share confidences with them and never say that they are traitors, and do not speak badly of them, and know each one of them and keep this all to yourself because in everything there are good people and bad people.)

Maria actively translated this advice to be a politically active peace-​weaver into her patronage of musical spectacle. Rubin has deftly demonstrated how Maria was already preparing for a regency, by drawing on the history of past queens and staying in touch with political developments and government operations (Rubin 1977: 59–​61). In his correspondence, the Count de Sully suggests that Maria frequently discussed politics with her confidante and counsellor, the Comtesse de Sault, with whom she often spoke ‘de la régence des reines, des moyens par lesquels elles se servaient pour l’atteindre’ (BNF, MS Bethune 8944, fol.15; of the regency of queens, of the means by which they served themselves in order to attain it), indicating that such discussions occurred long before the regency came into place. Maria sent for the Maître des Requêtes, du Tillet, in order to examine the government registers from the time of Catherine de’ Medici and other preceding queens (fol. 15). She consulted about the regency several times, more than two years before the death of Henry IV, who, always anxious about his possible early demise, encouraged Maria to attend council meetings to induct her into the management of affairs, and addressed her as Madame la Régente from as early as 1605 (Eudes de Mézeray 1730: I, 17, 19). Richelieu affirmed that Henry repeatedly spoke to Maria about a possible regency and even gave her certain precepts to guide her in the governing of the state (Richelieu 2005: I, 29). The court

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ballets sponsored by Maria thus aimed to glorify her rule as regent, echoing the cult of Astraea and emphasising her celestial beauty and magnificence (Bassompierre 1856: I, 300–​1). Despite the importance of Maria’s Catholicism, she did not follow the Medici female regency strategy of 1621–​28. While Christine of Lorraine and Archduchess Maria Magdalena drew on religious iconography, hagiography and biblical themes in their sponsorship of musical spectacle (Harness 2006), Maria adopted primarily secular imagery and mythological motifs in her personal iconography. She drew on the heroic image of Astraea (Yates 1993: 76–​7, 82), who, as goddess of justice, returned to earth to herald a golden age of good government, as the symbol of imperial justice, innocence and deliverance. The juxtaposition of Salic law and the Astraean theme, which combined traditionally active male virtues such as courage, wisdom, prudence, justice and force, with passive female attributes such as chastity, obedience and domesticity (Rubin 1977: 4–​ 5), represented a contradictory and unsuitable combination for a ruler. Yates has noted that in at least one case Astraea is connected to a male ruler, in fact Maria’s husband, Henry IV (1993: 86–​7). The combination of female and male symbols aimed to fuse both sexes, rather than have one dominate the other, as implied by Salic law.11 Thus Maria adopted androgynous imagery to counteract the contradictory views of women posed by the juxtaposition of Salic law and the heroic female image with passive attributes. This strategy can again be traced back to the 1600 Florentine wedding. In Guarini’s dialogue, Minerva appeared with Juno, the goddess of fidelity and marriage, often represented as a war-​ like figure wearing a goatskin cloak (the garment favoured by Roman soldiers on campaign). Thus, through an androgynous figure, no delineation was made between the female and male domains. Maria’s entry ceremony at Avignon further invoked dominant female imagery, again blurring the lines between male and female, by drawing on the myth of Hebe, daughter of Jupiter and Juno, who resigned her divine office as cupbearer to the gods to become wife to Hercules, a mortal. Maria’s personal symbolism glorified women, situating her as central to a peaceful Europe and stressing her importance as political mediator, and celebrating her success as a monarch by legitimising her regency. The queen’s enthusiasm for court productions was such that she encouraged all her children to take part in ballets de cour and in 1612 ordered court ballets to be performed every Sunday (Bassompierre 1856:  I:  266–​7; McGowan 1963:  85; Gibson 1989:  172–​ 3). In 1611 Princess Elisabeth, who later married the future Philip IV of Spain, was encouraged to stage a production of Robert Garnier’s play, Bradamante. This interest in theatre was not deemed inimical to devout feminine behaviour (Britland 2006:  3). Maria drew on networks of agents and brokers to organise her spectacles, including Claude Maugis, Claude Bouthillier, André and Nicolas Potier, Octavien Doni, Jehan Phélypeaux, Florent d’Argouges, Concino Concini, Eleonora Galigai and,

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during the 1620s, Cardinal Richelieu, Claude Fabri de Peiresc and Peter Paul Rubens (McGowan 1963: 50). In Maria de’ Medici’s first court ballet, Récit pour le Ballet des Seize Dames représentans les vertus dont la Royne éstoit l’une (1602), performed in celebration of the birth of the dauphin future Louis XIII and its implications for the Bourbon regime, the return of the golden age and Astraea are directly invoked in the libretto by Jean Bertaut: Voyant la douce Paix et la divine Astrée Habiter maintenant ceste belle contrée, Et sembler y promettre un second àge d’or, La Foi, la Pieté, la Bonté, la Clemence, L’Equité, la Raison, la Douceur, l’Innocence, Bref, toutes les Vertuz y retournent encor. (Lacroix 1868: I, 149) (Seeing sweet peace and the divine Astraea Inhabiting now this beautiful country And seeming to promise there a second Golden Age, Faith, piety, goodness, clemency, Equality, reason, sweetness, innocence In short, all the virtues return there once again.)

Two newly discovered, lengthy eyewitness accounts of the performance of the 1609 court ballet sponsored by the queen provide further evidence of her drawing on the Astraean theme, of her self-​portrayal of celestial magnificence and of the inclusion of Italian-​style accompanied monody. In January and February 1609, Traiano Guiscardi, secretary to the Mantuan ambassador to Paris, and his wife Vittoria dalla Valle Guiscardi both wrote several letters back to the Gonzaga rulers of Mantua, Vincenzo I Gonzaga and Eleonora de’ Gonzaga (née Medici) respectively, with details of the preparations and final performance of a ballet by the queen and other elite noble women at the Palais de l’Arsenal and then at the hôtel of Queen Marguerite de Valois, the first wife of Henry IV (see Documents 1–​5 below). The detailed descriptions of the performance of the 1609 ballet in their letters of February 1609 (Documents 4 and 5) are virtually identical, except for their accounts of Fame singing in praise of His/​Her Majesty, i.e., Henry IV (Traiano, Document 5) or Maria (Vittoria, Document 4). The queen had personally sought out the Guiscardi couple (‘the queen commanded me to share news of her ballet with Your Highness’; Document 5) to provide minutiae of the performance to her sister Eleonora and brother-​in-​law Vincenzo, thus showing her personal investment in the project as its chief patron. Rehearsals were well underway by 8 January 1609 for an all-​female cast of twelve dancers, as Traiano Guiscardi informed Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga that ‘the queen is preparing a gracious ballet with twelve ladies and no men’ (Document 1).12 This was the Ballet de la Royne (also referred to by scholars

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as Le ballet de Diane et ses nymphes) performed on the evening of 31 January 1609, with verses provided by the well-​known poets François de Malherbe and Jean de Lingendes praising Henry IV, Maria and the dauphin, songs by Gabriel Bataille (at least one of which was performed by the French virtuoso singer Angélique Paulet) and dance music by Pierre Guédron and Charles Chevalier.13 Although musical and poetic fragments survive from this work, the Guiscardi letters for the first time name female performers, and provide significant details about the ballet’s plot, action, subject-​ matter, stage scenery and costumes. Margaret McGowan and other scholars have stated that the ballet was alternatively entirely organised by Queen Marguerite, and do not connect Maria de’ Medici to the work at all: thus the ‘Royne’ in its title referred to Marguerite not Maria (McGowan 1963: 66–​7; 2015: 203–​4; Ratel 1924: 1–​2; Hoogleviet 2007: 71–​2, 85, 89–​90). However, Traiano Guiscardi opens his letter to Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga of 11 February 1609 (written after the performance) by saying: ‘The queen has commanded me to tell Your Highness about her ballet, saying that since she is not pregnant she wanted to take part in some pastime this carnival’ (Document 5). This clearly refers to Maria de’ Medici as the queen, who in 1609 was indeed not expecting, but between the births of her fifth child, Gaston Duke of Orléans, in April 1608, and her sixth, Henrietta Maria, in November 1609; and not to Marguerite, who in 1609 was already fifty-​six years old and would therefore not have been expected to be pregnant at all.14 By 28 January, delays in the performance were being caused by the Duke of Sully, Henry IV’s minister and Superintendent of Finances, who was in charge of the ballet and suffering from acute nephritis (Document 2). Traiano Guiscardi confirms that the queen ‘has not yet performed her ballet which she is preparing at the Arsenal because Monsignor Sully has suffered from certain pains caused by nephritis, and it is being said that it will be performed tomorrow if he doesn’t suffer any more’ (Document 3). It was Sully who, by his own account only months before this ballet, had the Arsenal fitted out for court performances, with special rooms for female performers. In late 1608, he recalls how ‘L’Hiver se passa tout entier dans de plus grands divertissemens encore que les années précédentes, et dans des fêtes préparées avec beaucoup de magnificence’ (Sully 1752:  VII, 1; the winter passed entirely with even bigger entertainments than in previous years and with magnificent spectacles) and at the Arsenal he had: fait construire et accommoder pour ce sujet [spectacles de théâtre], une salle très spacieuse; avec un parterre en Amphithéâtre, et une grande quantité de Loges dans plusieurs galeries, séparées les unes des autres, et ayant chacune leurs dégrés et leurs portes particulières. Deux de ces galeries étoient destinées pour les femmes; aucun homme n’y entroit avec elles (Sully 1752: VII: 2).15 (Built to accommodate theatrical spectacles a very spacious room, with an amphitheatre, and a large number of loggias with several galleries separated

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each from the other, and with their own entrances and special doors. Two of the galleries was for the ladies and no man was allowed to enter with them.)

Finally, Sully’s health improved and three days later the ballet was performed. In her letter of 10 February 1609 to Eleonora de’ Medici (Gonzaga), Duchess of Mantua, Vittoria dalla Valle Guiscardi describes the queen’s ballet, which comprised multiple changes of scenery and opulent costumes. The ballet opened with a mountain scene and the appearance of ‘two paths from which twelve pages appeared, followed by a great number of viol players who made a very sweet harmony all in consort and magnificently dressed’ (Document 4). They accompanied Fame, ‘who sang some verses in praise of Her Majesty [as noted above, Document 5 here names ‘His Majesty’], then from the same paths came eight shades dancing two by two, and finally they all danced together a graceful ballet’ (Document 4). Stage machinery made the mountain open up, to reveal a sea scene where a sea nymph sat upon a dolphin appeared ‘accompanied by a great multitude of musicians with lutes who made a very sweet melody and the nymph proceeded to sing solo accompanied by the chitarrone most divinely’ (Document 4). This groundbreaking machinery is highly reminiscent of the 1589 Florentine intermedi performed to celebrate the wedding of Christine of Lorraine’s wedding to Ferdinando I de’ Medici, at which Maria (then aged sixteen) had been a spectator. Then the scene transformed into a garden, where the queen sat surrounded by other noble women ‘all dressed in nymph’s costumes in the colours of carnation and sky blue with silver, with arrows in hand and with such a huge quantity of diamonds that they [the dancers] dazzled your [the audience’s] sight’ (Document 4). Maria stood first and came forward to begin the dancing; her iconography particularly signalling her beauty and conspicuous opulence: It was said that she had on up to a value of half a million and made of herself a wonderful spectacle… dancing with stupendous grace she was then followed by other nymphs two by two until they were all together and at last danced their ballet which was new, beautiful and well-​danced, and especially by her Majesty who appeared amongst the others like the sun amid the stars. (Document 4)

The formal dancing then ended and ‘many pieces of artillery were discharged’, presumably the sounds of loud guns such as muskets (Document 4). After the first performance, Vittoria confirmed that the party then transferred to the hôtel of Queen Marguerite, who certainly helped with the organisation and covered costs, for a repeat performance (during which, as briefly described in Document 5, a political quarrel erupted involving the Spanish ambassador, Don Pedro di Toledo, and the Venetian ambassador).16 This transfer was unsurprising, since Queen Marguerite had settled in Paris in 1605 and commissioned the building of a private residence, rue de Seine, where she lived from 1608 and in which she had a room especially built for ballet

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performances. Maria de’ Medici often consulted Marguerite on the nature of ceremonial at the ancient régime court and Marguerite regularly helped to organise court spectacles and to look after the royal children (McGowan 2015). Another spectator at the repeat performance of the 1609 ballet provides an amusing eyewitness anecdote of audience behaviour and reception.17 Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury (1583–​1648), a British ambassador to Paris from 1619, visited the French court in 1608–​09 where he met Henry IV and lodged with the Duke of Montmorency and the classical scholar Isaac Casaubon (1559–​1614). Lord Herbert, a close friend of Guiscardi, describes how he ‘saw many balls or masks, in all which it pleased that Queen [Marguerite] publicly to place me next to her chair’, to the wonder and envy of those in attendance (Herbert 1886:  56). While they were waiting for the 1609 ballet to begin, ‘there was a sudden whisper among the ladies’ when Damien de Montluc Balagny walked in, and they all clambered to invite him to sit next to them, so that ‘when one lady had his company a while, another would say, You have enjoyed him long enough, I must have him now’ (1886: 57). Unimpressed by Balagny’s appearance, Lord Herbert was informed that he was one of the gallantest men in the world, as having killed eight or nine men in single fight, and that for this reason the ladies made so much of him, it being the manner of all Frenchwomen to cherish gallant men, as thinking they could not make so much of any else with the safety of their honour. (1886: 57)

This spectator behaviour takes central place in Lord Herbert’s account, who makes no commentary about the ballet performance itself, perhaps indicating its lesser importance in his mind vis-​à-​vis the social entourage. Many of the female representations in the 1609 ballet described by the Mantuan ambassador to Paris, although designated by different names (Fortune, Virtue, Fame, Diana, etc.) still belonged to the Astraean cult. The verses of the ballet’s three printed songs and their performative order confirmed by the Guiscardi accounts place their thematic centrality on Maria, its chief patron and performer, and assert that once her merit is recognised she will be an asset to the court and her husband.18 While Fame’s opening aria (with verses by Malherbe) starts by praising Henry’s –​‘le miracle des Roys’ (the miracle of Kings) –​unsurpassed greatness in peace and war (‘Que pour la paix n’y pour la guerre, | Il n’est rien de pareil à vous’), her focus quickly shifts to the troupe of eleven beautiful nymphs led by the queen (twelve in total) who are of rare beauty and have qualities of rare worth that attract hearts to their service (‘Ce sont douze rares beautez, Qui se si dignes qualitez, Tirent un cueur à leur service’) (Recueil 1609: 8–​9). The Guiscardi letters name the eleven female performers, who included four princesses and seven dancers of noble lineage. Fame notes that their virtuous conduct and social status is applauded as Virtue has taught them to live ‘Loin des vaines impressions | De

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toutes folles passions’ (far from the vain impressions, | Of all mad passions), a reference to the false affectations and erotic allures at court, where Virtue makes laws for them that even Diana, the goddess of chastity, ‘would have trouble following in the deepest silence of the woods’: ‘Et dans la Cour leur fait des lois, | Que Diane auroit peine à suivre | Au plus grand silence des bois’ (10). Most importantly, they are led by the queen (‘Une Reyne qui les conduit’) who ‘De tant de merveilles reluit, | Que le soleil qui tout surmonte… | S’il estoit sensible à la honte | Se cacheroit en la voyant’ (10; glitters with so many marvels, | That the sun who overcomes everything, | If he were sensitive to shame | would hide when seeing her). Fame promises to immortalise Maria with universal adoration, telling Henry that he should welcome and exalt these beauties, and they will return their favourable judgement (11; ‘Grand Roy, faites leur bon accueil: | Loüez leur magnanime orgueil … | Et vous acquerez sagement, | Afin de me render croyable, | La faveur de leur iugement’). Fame’s opening aria sets the tone for the rest of the ballet, as the following récit, a sung text by a naiad (this order according to Guiscardi), expands on the themes of beauty, virtue, chastity and noble status, as embodied by the dancing nymphs and their ability to benefit Henry IV and the French court, i.e., Maria and noble women’s beneficial influence on the king and governance in achieving orderly virtue and lasting glory (3–​5). Lastly, the ballet’s third song, ‘Vers masculins pour la chaisne du mesme balet’ (6–​7; Masculine Verses for the Chain of the Same Ballet), which accompanied the chaîne (or hay), a dance comprising serpentine patterns and interlacing lines, emphasises that courtly dance and a virtuous state of mind, achieved by the ordered beauty of figured choreographies and rigorous bodily control, are the means by which the nymphs will attain such virtue and chastity of heart and mind, a thematics of virtue with strong ties to Neostoic thought and Neoplatonism (Gough 2018, ch. 4). Following the assassination of Henry IV in May 1610, Maria carefully sponsored a series of major state occasions to strengthen and legitimise the regency through symbol and ritual. These included the king’s funeral ceremony with the body being carried far ahead of the effigy in the procession, thus symbolising the triumphal theme of monarchy over the mournful aspect of the funeral (Giesey 1960:  121); the coronation of her son Louis XIII in October 1610, where Maria displayed her role as heroic woman who maintains the nation ultimately to present it with its hero saviour; and in 1612 the announcement of the marriage of Louis XIII to Anne of Austria, Infanta of Spain, where Maria projected herself with images of heroic Astraea. The 1612 carousel, held in the Place Royale, combined chivalric narrative with classicism to glorify the Roman Republic, with music by Robert Ballard (Bassompierre 1856: I, 301–​8; Van Orden 2005: 266–​80; McGowan 2013:  chs. 5, 6, 9; 2015:  192–​3). It depicted Morpheus, son of the god of sleep and dreams, appearing to Maria as Henry, who proclaimed that due

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to the marriage alliances, due to the prudence, fidelity and sacrifice on her part, ‘l’heur qui procedera de ces alliances r’amenera au monde la siècle di Saturne’ (Rosset 1612: part I, sig. 14r; the good luck which will proceed from these alliances will bring again to the world the age of Saturn). This was reminiscent of Astraea being sent from heaven to bring back the golden age to France. Other female representations were present at the spectacles, mostly belonging to the Astraean cult: Fortune wore wings and placed her foot on a ball representing the world (II, 26r); Victory and Glory also wore wings and were crowned by rays and supported trophies of arms; Felicity was seated with the caduceus (a baton covered with fleur de lys carried by the kings) in her right hand and a cornucopia in her left (II, 26r–​v). Again, androgynous imagery was employed:  the caduceus was the emblem of Hermes, the hermaphroditic god. Women were not depicted as temptresses and traitors, but rather as saviours, for it was women who gave birth to the son of God and delivered France from her enemies ( Joan of Arc).19 In the Grand Bal de la Reine Marguerite (1612), Maria was dressed in black with a string of pearls over her dress, another around her neck and two great pearl earrings (Lacroix 1868: I, 308). The pearl was associated with purity and, again, with Astraea. In the Ballet de Madame (1613), the text reads: C’est toy, sage et belle Junon, Qui seule merites la gloire … C’est toy, Royne, aussi bien des coeurs Que de ce florissant empire, Qui fais qu’en repos je respire Esloignée de toutes ranqueurs. (I, 319) (It is you, wise and beautiful Juno, Who alone merits the glory… It is you, Queen, as well as our hearts That from this flourishing empire Who makes that I breathe in rest Far from all rancour)

And in Vers divers sur le Ballet des dix Verds (1614), Maria was addressed as: Belle Regente de nos terres, Dont les regards riches d’appas … Donnent la vie ou le trespas; Belle Aurore, dont le resveil Nous fait naistre un si beau Soleil. (II, 16) (Beautiful Regent of our lands Whose rich looks of charms… Give life or death; Beautiful Aurora, whose awakening Causes to be born to us such a beautiful Sun.)

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In the Ballet de Madame, soeur aisnée du roi (1615), performed in the Grande Salle de Bourbon at the Louvre, the female figure dominated as the deliverer of France, re-​enacting the triumph of Minerva, the victory of the monarchy and a return of the golden age (McGowan 1963: 86–​99; Rubin assigns the text to Étienne Durand, McGowan to de Malherbe and Maynard). Maria was described as: Grand chef-​d’oeuvre des cieux, merveille d’Hetrurie, Cher Astre des François, ô divine Marie … Tu ioins si bien le Louvre avec l’Escurial Qu’après tant de hauts faicts et de paix et de guerre, Qui font voir à tes pieds tous les Roys de la terre, C’est peu de t’élever un trone Imperial. (Description 1615: 11–​12) (Great masterpiece of the Heavens, marvel of Etruria Sweet star of the French, o divine Marie… You join so well the Louvre with the Escorial That after so many great deeds in peace and war Which have brought to your feet all the Kings of the earth. It is a little thing to raise for you an Imperial throne.)

The text, by Étienne Durand and René Bordier, referred to the double marriages between France and Spain, and the imperial design envisioned by Maria. The composers were Guédron, Antoine Boësset and Le Bailly. The dancers addressed themselves thus, again evoking the theme of Astraea: Vous placer dans les cieux en la mesme contrée Des balances d’Astrée … L’an n’aura plus d’hyver, le jour n’aura plus d’ombre: Et les perles sans nombre Germeront dans la Seine au milieu des graviers. (Description 1615: 16,  18–​19) (You place in the Heavens in the same country Some scales of Astraea… The year will have no more winter The day will have no more darkness: And pearls without number Will germinate in the Seine in the midst of gravel.)

The queen and her entourage entered dressed as amazons and displayed the shields and swords of antiquity, with spectacular machines by Alessandro Francini. The happy destinies of France were attributed to the queen and her divine force, as the figure of Night addressed the queen: Sa main ne produit rien qui ne soit tout parfait: Son regard favorable est de toute puissance, Qu’il verse dessus nous une sainte influence, Comme celeste cause il a pareil effet. (Lacroix 1868: II, 69)

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(Her hand produces nothing which is not totally perfect: Her favourable gaze is so all powerful, That it pours over us a saintly influence, As heavenly cause it has an identical effect.)

The allegorical and political references in the ballet were noted by contemporary audiences, not all of whom reacted favourably. A scurrilous pamphlet against the queen, entitled Cassandre françoise, was printed shortly after, by an anonymous author who opposed the foreign marriages and abused Maria: Il est mort, vos meschancetez en sons cause… vous sentirez bient tost l’effet qu’a apporté en cest estat la mort d’Henry le Grand. Mais… au contraire, vous faites des feux de joye, vous passez les nuicts en ballets et en dances, en esperance de ces pretendus mariages. (Cassandre 1615: 4–​5) (He [Henry] is dead, your [Maria] wickedness the cause of it… you will feel soon the defeat that the death of Henry the Great brought this state. But… on the contrary, you make celebratory fires, you pass the nights in ballets and dances in hope of these so-​called marriages.)

The fear of woman and the consequences of her power was a predominant theme. But the author also manipulated the Astraean theme, the queen’s vehicle of power, to describe the present abuses of Maria: Tout est plain d’injustices, brigues, monopoles et corruptions. C’este belle Astrée Françoise est toute changée:  Elle a quitté son bandeau, elle voit clair; elle a retenu l’espee pour punir les pauvres qui n’ont peu par leur argent, s’exempter de peines devues à leurs crimes; elle retient la balance, non pour peser les raisons de l’une et l’autre partie, mais pour savoir par le poix qui plus luy donne; elle n’est plus vestue de rouge, sa robbe est bigarrée et de cameléon pour pouvoir recevoir les couleurs que sa passion luy demande; ce n’est plus elle qui préside, l’avarice s’est emparée de son siège, l’ambition et la luxure domine. (Cassandre 1615: 14–​5) (All is full of injustice, intrigue, monopolies and corruption. This beautiful French Astraea has entirely changed:  she has laid aside her diadem, she sees clearly; she has retained the sword to punish the poor… she retains the scales, not to weigh the reasons of one or the other party, but to know by the weight to whom to give more. She is no more dressed in red, her robe is mottled and of chameleon in order to receive the colours that her passion demands of her; it is no longer she who presides, avarice seizes her seat, ambition and luxury dominate.)

Indeed, towards the end of the regency, negative, erotic and lewd allusions to the feminine sex also appeared, particularly during 1616–​17. In 1617, Jacques Olivier’s Alphabet de l’imperfection et malice des femmes was reissued and dedicated to ‘la plus mauvaise du monde’ (the most evil of the world). The title-​page engraving of a buxom woman, entangled by hideous animals

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and with bestial talons indicating demonic associations, uncannily resembles Maria. Olivier defined woman as ‘la créature du monde, la plus subjette a ceste imperfection, c’est sans doubte la femme: elle a le caquet mieux emmanché que toute autre personne, elle est des plus injurieuse du monde’ (Olivier 1630: 128; the most imperfect creature of the universe, the scum of nature, the seminary of misfortunes, the source of quarrels). After the 1617 crowning of Louis XIII and a period of exile at Blois from 1618 to 1621, Maria’s presence continued to be felt in the court spectacles performed, even though the 1620s saw a preponderance of comic satirical ballets (McGowan 1963:  134–​53). After 1617, a distinct shift in emphasis in the imagery used in court productions was evident as the allegorical and mythological representations of the state now symbolised the King acting to establish his authority, thus cleansing the monarchy of the previous years of dominant female imagery. While the earlier court spectacles had specific heroic themes addressed to the Queen, the focus of attention now shifted away from her and a more generalised view of women was given with regard to love, beauty and other feminine attributes. The active heroic woman would only later appear again with the regency of Anne of Austria (1601–​66) at the French royal court. The Queen Mother continued to patronise musicians and composers who are named in her accounts during the 1620s, but mainly for private consumption at her residence. However, although her direct sponsorship waned, Maria’s influence was nonetheless evident in the court spectacles performed: in Anne of Austria’s 1623 Ballet de la Reine représentant les Festes de Junon la nopcière, the Queen forsakes her role as Juno to the Queen Mother, saying:  ‘Vous m’ostez ma gloire et mon nom, Grande et favorable Junon, Qui presidez au mariage’ (Lacroix 1868: II, 354; Great and kindly Juno who presides over marriage, you take from me my glory and my name). The following major state occasion of 1625 celebrated the wedding of Henrietta Maria and Charles I  of England, which included the performance of the Ballet des Fées des Forêts de Saint-​Germain (in which Louis XIII danced), the Ballet de la Reyne d’Angleterre (danced by Henrietta Maria as Juno before Louis and Maria) and Les Dieux descendus en France (Britland 2006: 19–​27, 53 passim.; Canova-​Green 1993: 27). These entertainments and a spectacular firework display were provided for the arrival of the Duke of Buckingham in May 1625 at the Palais de Luxembourg, Maria’s private residence. Karen Britland has remarked that although Cardinal Richelieu linked his name to the event, Maria certainly played a role in hosting it, for she was eager for Rubens’ cycle of paintings depicting her life to be installed in the palace before the wedding (Richelieu 2005: I, 328; Britland 2006: 20; Marrow 1982: 20). Given the acknowledgement of Maria’s influence at length in the texts of the entertainments, it is likely that she was also their main sponsor and patron. In François le Metel, sieur de Boisrobert’s verses (which survive only in fragments)

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for the Ballet de la Reyne d’Angleterre, Galatea describes Henrietta Maria as the living image of Maria’s virtues, who commands Charles in spreading the fame and empire of her royal brother:

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ô celeste beauté, Qui nous auez donné ceste diuinité Qu’on void de vos vertus estre la vive image. (Recueil 1627: 578) (O celestial beauty, who has given us this divinity, that we see your virtues are the living image.)

It is Maria’s beauty that emerges as the all-​commanding and all-​triumphant force that governs the world, even though the spectacle ostensibly elevated Henrietta Maria to such a position. Also Juno/​Henrietta Maria acknowledges her mother’s influence, saying: tout l’empire de Iunon Auiourd’huy n’est plein que du nom Et des loüanges de Marie. (Recueil 1627: 576) [Today all of Juno’s empire is only full of the name and commendations of Maria]

In Les Dieux descendus, Juno again gives her titles to the Queen Regent (see also Marescal’s Juno in Recueil 1627: 794). The wedding ballets praised Maria by adopting the imagery that she promoted:  the mother of kings, a peace-​ weaver between nations and the chaste widow of a great monarch (Britland 2006:  26; Marrow 1982). In Claude Malleville’s verses for the Ballet de la Reyne d’Angleterre, Diana promises that she will repopulate Louis’ caves and woods with beasts and that her stags will willingly jump into his snares, thus depicting Maria’s peaceful influence (Malleville 1659: 115). Diana becomes an incarnation of effective female rule thus serving to compliment the Queen Regent. And again Diana encodes an ambivalence about gender in her reputation for chastity, an androgynous figure who tempers a monarch’s warlike tendencies with feminine softness and peacetime pursuits such as hunting (Britland 2006: 26). The use of powerful imagery representing female figures made by Maria de’ Medici in her French court productions suggests an astuteness that is a far cry from the common perceptions of her in the historiography. Faced with the threat of challenges to the legitimacy of her reign, Maria took a personal interest in the production of musical spectacle and its subject-​matter as political and allegorical strategies to promote women’s power and authority. While the combination of Salic law and the heroic image deeply imbedded in French tradition presented very contradictory views of women, Maria resolved this paradox in her iconography and self-​representation by adopting the cult of Astraea and androgynous figures who combined both female and male attributes. In Maria’s world, ostentatious display was intricately bound up with political expression.

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This was no less apparent in her 1609 Ballet de la Royne, which from this first significant reconstruction of its subject-​matter and plot, made possible from new archival documentation, provides evidence of Maria developing a personal iconography of female imagery before her regency began in 1610. Maria was highly active in the processes of cultural transfers between Florence and Paris, thus conspicuously linking herself to her own Medici lineage and a tradition of active, powerful women. The figures of Diana, Fortune, Joan of Arc, Juno and Minerva (among others) were adopted to allegorise her rule, combining feminine softness and chastity with the strength of a virgin Amazon. Maria chose predominantly secular imagery, drawing on the Astraean cult and portraying herself as the Italian Minerva of France, thus embracing the dynastic ambitions of her Medici family abroad and navigating the shifting power dynamics of her adopted court through symbolic acts of patronage and appropriation. Notes 1 This chapter presents and discusses previously unknown archival documents uncovered in 2008 by my intensive archival researches in Florence, Mantua and Paris, generously supported by a Collaborative Research Grant from the Getty Foundation administered by the Harvard University Centre for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti, Florence (where I was resident 2007–​09). All translations are mine. For inviting, and closely engaging with, three unpublished papers in which I discussed in detail theatrical and political aspects of these newly discovered documents, my thanks to the organisers and delegates of the Renaissance Society of America annual conferences 2009 (Los Angeles: ‘Notions of Power and Women’s Authority:  Music and Theatrical Spectacle at the Court of Maria de’ Medici’) and 2012 (Washington, DC:  ‘Transnational Exchanges and Representations of Female Power: Musical Spectacle at Maria de’ Medici’s Court’). Also of the TWB conference, May 2011 (NYU-​Madrid:  ‘Maria de’ Medici, the Italian Minerva of France: Music and Theatrical Spectacle between Florence and Paris during the Early Seventeenth Century’), during and after which I engaged in continuing intensive discussions on the newly discovered documents with interested TWB members, which extensively impacted on their subsequent research and publications, and those of colleagues who learned of my discovery through them (Welch 2017: 229, who mistakenly attributes my discovery to Gough; Gough 2018, ch. 4). For their generous help and insightful comments, I would like to thank my editors M. A. Katritzky and Pavel Drábek. Many thanks also to Richard Andrews, Tim Carter and Eric Nicholson. 2 An official description of the 1600 Florentine wedding (including the spectacles), commissioned by Grand Duke Ferdinando I  de’ Medici, was provided by the Medici  court poet Michelangelo Buonarroti il Giovane (1600, in Fanfani 1863: 403–​54; see also Cole 2011: I, 183–​92; Rubin 1977: 54). 3 Mamone (1987:  53–​4) speculates that the entertainment greatly influenced the symbolism of Peter Paul Rubens’ portrait cycle that Maria later commissioned for the Palais de Luxembourg. See also Britland (2006: 172), Marrow (1982: 58).

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4 On the 1615 Ballet de Madame and other court entertainments organised by Maria during her regency, see also Barker and Gurney (2015), Mamone (1987) and McGowan (2015). 5 On the impact of my 2008 Florentine and Mantuan archival discoveries on publications by scholars made aware of them by my three unpublished presentations to RSA (2009, 2012) and TWB (2011), see footnote 1. 6 Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici to Maria de’ Medici, Pratolino, 19 August 1603, ASF:MdP 4732 ff.92r–95r. 7 On the political significance of dancing at early modern courts, see Britland (2006: 17–​19). 8 On Euridice, see Solerti (1905:  25), Fanfani (1863:  426–​8), Carter (1979:  43 n. 114, extracts: 302–​6), Kirkendale (1993: 205) and Cole (2011: I, 183–​97). 9 On Caccini’s Paris visit, see also Kirkendale (1993:  148–​ 50) and Cusick (2009: 20–​3). 10 The impact of Maria de’ Medici’s patronage on sung music in court ballets is speculated upon by Prunières (1914:  105–​9), who emphasises the influence of Caccini and Rinuccini’s presence in Paris on the import of Italian-​style accompanied monody. Gough (2012a) shows how Maria integrated the new Italian vocal style into French court ballets as early as 1605. 11 On the exchange of symbols and role reversals see Davis (1975:  124–​51) and Rubin (1977: 46–​7). 12 Document 4 lists the names of all the noble female dancers performing in the ballet. 13 The ballet’s text is in Recueil (1609; reprinted in Lacroix 1868: I, 171–​9). Three songs from the ballet are in Bataille (1609: 5v–7v). See also Tallement des Réaux (1834: III, 9) and McGowan (1963: 66–​7). The 1609 ballet is also discussed in Prunières (1914: 108–​9), Gough (2018: ch. 4, with full transcriptions and English translations of the ballet text in appendix) and Hoogleviet (2007). 14 Contemporary documents of this kind referring simply to la reine can be misleading: both Maria and Henry’s divorced first wife, Queen Marguerite (who retained her royal title), were active in organising court spectacles during this period. 15 I warmly thank M. A. Katritzky for pointing out this source to me. 16 On which, see McGowan (1963:  67 n.  90), and Traiano Guiscardi’s letter to Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga, 11 February 1609 (ASMn:AG 38.Mm46). McGowan (1963: 67 n. 92) gives details on costs incurred by Marguerite for the performance. 17 I warmly thank M. A. Katritzky for drawing my attention to this source. 18 This contradicts McGowan’s (1963: 66–​67) assertion that this ballet’s overarching theme was the glorification of Henry IV. I cite from Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze 1067 23, probably the actual copy of the Recueil (1609) dispatched from Paris to the Medici court in 1609 by Guiscardi. The order of the three songs printed in the Recueil differs from the song order in the original performance as described in the Guiscardi letters (as discussed above). In the Recueil, the Récit de la naiade is placed first, followed by the Vers Masculins pour la Chaisne, and finally Fame’s aria addressed to Henry IV, suggesting that the Recueil was printed after the performance rather than for distribution to its audience. Gough (2018, ch. 4)

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suggests that, by leading with the ballet’s most famous sung entry, the Recueil’s new ordering capitalised on the Parisian notoriety of Angélique Paulet’s performance as the naiad. 19 See also Rubin (1977: 66–​74).

Appendix

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Document 1 Traiano Guiscardi to Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Paris, 8 January 1609 ASMn:AG 667 (unpaginated) Non havendo per mia sventura miglior occasione di mostrare quanta sia la devotione mia verso di V.A. ho preso ardire d’annunziarle in questo nuovo anno tutte quelle maggiori felicità che possa ella desiderare, supplicandola a gradire colla sua benignità questa minima dimostrazione, et di farmi grazia de’ suoi comandamenti, accioch’io possa rendere a V.A. la servitù che debbo. Queste M.tà porgend’io loro l’altro giorno lettere di S.A. mi dimandarono dello stato di lei et della signora Principessa, et sentendolo buono ne mostrarono gran piacere. Si tiene che finite la triegua in Fiandra a mezzo febraio, s’habbia più tosto da menar le mani, che di prolungarla… Anco fra svizzeri v’è gran romore tenendosi i Protestanti offesi da Cattolici fanno le lor consultando se debbono vendicarsi con l’armi. Han fatta la casa al sig.re Delfino, si dice che verrà al fin della settimana ad entrarne in possesso. La Reina si prepara di fare un grazioso balletto con 12 dame et senz’huomini. Mons.r di Rolan mantiene una giostra, et fra gl’altri suoi avversari havrà qualche cav.re spagnuolo venuto col sig.r Don Pedro. Questo è quanto di nuovo habbiamo in queste bande. Resti V.A. servita di conservarmi la sua buona grazia, et ch’io con ogni reverenza me l’inchino. Di Parigi questo dì 8 del 1609. Not having by my misfortune a better occasion to demonstrate how much my devotion is towards Your Highness, I have taken it upon myself to wish you in this new year all those best joys that you may desire, begging you to enjoy with your benignity this small demonstration and to be so gracious as to give me your orders so that I may give Your Highness the servitude that I must. These Majesties, whilst giving them the other day letters from Your Highness, asked me how you and the Princess are, and showed great pleasure on hearing that you are in good health. It is said that when the truce finishes in Flanders in mid February, it would be favourable to fight instead of prolonging it. … Also amongst the Swiss there are big rumours that the Protestants are offended by the Catholics and they are thinking of taking their revenge with arms. They have built a house for the Dauphin, it is said that he will take possession of it at the end of the week. The Queen is preparing a gracious ballet with twelve ladies and no men. Monsignor di Roland is preparing a joust, and amongst his adversaries will be one Spanish cavalier who came with Signor Don Pedro. This is all the news that we have in these

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parts. Rest assured Your Highness to keep me in your good graces, and I with every reverence bow to you. From Paris this day 8 [ January] 1609.

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Document 2 Traiano Guiscardi to Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Paris, 28 January 1609 ASMn:AG 667 (unpaginated) Il Re dev’a Duarte da quaranta mila scudi, ond’egli va con tal pretesto dilungando ‘l pagamento dovut’a V.A. che come già le scrisse sarà da 8 milla scudi ancora n’ho parlat’alla Reina che mi disse che gli farebbe comandare che pagasse. Et poiché non l’ha sin’hora fatto gliele ricorderò fornito che sia il balletto di S. M.tà il quale vien portat’in lungo dall’indisposizione di Mons.r di Sugli mal trattato da dolori nefritici, dovendosi far all’Arsenale, s’egli non peggiora si farà dimani… La giostra s’è diferita al fine di Carnevale, et si dice che vogliono far anco un balletto a cavallo. The King owes Duarte 40 thousand scudi, where on some pretext he is putting off paying Your Highness which as I  already wrote to you will be 8  thousand scudi. I  have spoken to the Queen again who told me that she would command him to pay. And since she has not yet done it, I will remind her to do it assuming that Her Majesty’s ballet will be postponed by the indisposition of Monsignor Sully who is suffering from pains caused by nephritis; it was meant to be performed at the Arsenal, if he does not get worse then it will be performed tomorrow… The joust has been postponed until the end of carnival, and it is being said that they also want to do a horse ballet. Document 3 Traiano Guiscardi to Duchess Eleonora de’ Medici, Paris, 28 January 1609: ASMn:AG 667 (unpaginated) Mi trovo due di V.A. l’una de’ 12 et l’altra de’ 26 del passato, et in essecuzione de’ suoi comandamenti ho fatto l’uffizio di congratulazione colla M.tà della Reina, la quale si trova hora in ottimo stato di salute, et va ricurando la sua buona ciera, essendo per la scritta indisposizione al quanto i giorni addietro smagrata. Ella ne ringrazia V.A. et parimente si rallegra del suo buon’essere. Ancora non ha fatto ‘l suo balletto per certi dolori nefritici venuti a Mons.re di Sugli che n’ha la cura facendosi all’Arsenale, se non gli vien altro si dice che si farà dimani…. La giostra s’è diferita al fine di carnevale, et si dice che vogliono anco far un balletto a cavallo. I have received two letters from Your Highness, one from the 12th and another from the 26th of last month, and in carrying out your orders, I congratulated Her Majesty the Queen, who is now in excellent health, and she is getting back

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her healthy appearance, having lost weight since being sick the last few days. She thanks Your Highness and likewise she is happy that you are well. She still has not performed her ballet due to certain pains caused by nephritis that have afflicted Monsignor de Sully who is curating it at the Arsenal; if he doesn’t get further pains then it will be performed tomorrow… The joust has been postponed to the end of carnival, and it is being said that they also want to do a horse ballet. Document 4 Vittoria dalla Valle Guiscardi to Duchess Eleonora de’ Medici-​Gonzaga, Paris, 10 February 1609 ASMn:AG 667 (unpaginated) Essendomi trovata al balletto della Reina per gratia di S.  M.tà vengo a darne parte a V.A. il meglio che io so sperando ch’ella ne debba ricevere molto gusto, la notte del Sabato ultimo del passato nella sala dell’Arsenale fu fatto ‘l detto balletto. Primieramente calate le cortine comparve un gran monte al pie del quale si vedeano due strade dove vennero 12 paggi seguitati da una gran quantità di sonatori di viole che facevano una dolcissima armonia tutti di concerto pomposamente vestiti, restate di sonare cantò la Fama alcuni versi in lode di S. M.tà vennero poi per le medesime strade otto ombre danzando a due a due et finalmente tutte insieme fecero un leggiadro balletto, et quello fornito esse sparirono et ciascun’altro si ritirò facendo piazza al monte che partendosi dal suo luogo venne quasi a meza la sala et quivi apertosi comparve ‘l mare, et in esso una ninfa sopra un delfino accompagnata da gran moltitudine di musici con i liuti che fecero una soavissima melodia et apresso cantò la ninfa sola sul chitarrone divinissimamente venut’al fine si ritirò con la sua machina in capo alla sala, et subito si rappresentò un bel giardino in mezzo al quale sedeva la Reina con l’altre Dame del balletto che furono la Principessa di Contii, Madamoiselle du Mayenne, Madamoiselle di Mercurio, Madamoiselle di Memorancii, la Duchessa di Sugly, Madamoiselle di Monpesar, Madamoiselle la Vidame du Mans, Madamoiselle la Contessa di Villion, Madamoiselle di Pralin, Madamoiselle di Verderona, Madamoiselle di Blerancourt, tutte in habito di ninfe di colore incarnato et celeste con argento con dardi in mano et con tanta quantità di diamanti che abbagliavano la vista, et massime S. M.tà che si diceva haveva addosso per un mezo millione di valuta tanto e fecero di se una mirabile mostra, et come si vedero scoperte fu la p.a S. M.tà a levarsi et venir avanti danzando con gratia stupenda fu seguita poi dall’altre ninfe a due, a due sin che furono tutte insieme che alhora danzarono ‘l lor balletto che fu nuovo, bello et ben danzato, et massime da S. M.tà che ben pareva fra l’altre il sole fra le stelle. Appresso si spararono molti pezzi d’artiglieria et in tanto fu S. M.tà condotta al brando dal Principe di Conde et l’altre da altri cavaglieri, et quello fornito sen’ andarono a far il medesimo dalla Reina Margherita, dove durò la festa sino a di chiaro. Ma non fu minore il piacere ch’io gustai poichi dì sono in corte vedendo

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il sig.re Delfino far con tanta gratia la rassegna de’ suoi soldati et con tanto garbo portare ‘l suo archibugio maneggiarlo et passeggiare il campo arditamente havea seco un gran numero di putti. Era sergente maggiore Monsu di Vandom, Capitano il cavagliero suo fratello, luogotenente il figliolo del contestabile, Alfiero il sig.re Duca di Longavilla. Il Re et la Reina stettero vedendo come si portavano, et ne hebbero grandissimo gusto. Mi perdoni V.A. se con questa occasione piglio ardimento di farle humilissima riverenza et di supplicarla di suoi comandamenti accioché io habbia l’honore d’essere conosciuta da S.  M. tà per sua humilissima serva che le augura tutte quelle felicità che possa ella maggiormente desiderare. Di Parigi questo dì 10 di febraro 1609. Having found myself at the Queen’s ballet through the graciousness of Her Majesty, I find myself reporting on it to Your Highness in the best way I can in the hope that you will derive much pleasure, the night of Saturday before last the ballet was performed in the hall of the Arsenal. Firstly, when the curtains dropped there appeared a big mountain at the foot of which one could see two paths from which twelve pages appeared followed by a great number of viol players who made a very sweet harmony all in consort and magnificently dressed; while they played Fame sang some verses in praise of Her Majesty, then from the same paths came eight shades dancing two by two, and finally they all danced together a graceful ballet, and once it was finished then they all disappeared and left space for the mountain which occupied nearly half the room and opened up to reveal the sea where a sea nymph sat upon a dolphin appeared accompanied by a great multitude of musicians with lutes who made a very sweet melody and the nymph proceeded to sing solo accompanied by the chitarrone most divinely. When she had finished, she retreated on her machine to the end of the room, and immediately a garden appeared at the centre of which sat the Queen with the other ladies from the ballet who were Princess de Conti, Mademoiselle du Mayenne, Mademoiselle de Mercure, Mademoiselle de Montmorency, the Duchess of Sully, Mademoiselle di Montpesar, Mademoiselle la Vidame du Mans, Mademoiselle the Countess of Villion, Mademoiselle de Pralin, Mademoiselle di Verderon, Mademoiselle di Blerancourt, all dressed in nymph’s costumes in the colours of carnation and sky blue with silver, with arrows in hand and with such a huge quantity of diamonds that they dazzled your sight, and never more than Her Majesty who it is said had on up to a value of half a million and made of herself a wonderful spectacle, and as soon as they appeared Her Majesty stood up first and came forwards dancing with stupendous grace and she was then followed by the other nymphs two by two until they were all together and at last danced their ballet which was new, beautiful and well-​danced, and especially by Her Majesty who appeared amongst the others like the sun amid the stars. Nearby many pieces of artillery were discharged, and in the meantime Her Majesty was accompanied by the Prince of Condé and the others by other cavaliers,

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and once finished they went to do the same again at Queen Marguerite’s residence, where the spectacle lasted until dawn. But I did not have any less pleasure a few days before at court seeing the Dauphin with great graciousness command his troups and carry his arquebus with great skill, manipulating it and boldy walking around the field with a great number of small boys. The Sergeant Major was Signor Vendôme, the Captain was his brother, the lieutenant was the son of the constable, Alfiero the Duke of Longueville. The King and Queen were watching how they carried themselves, and had great pleasure in doing so. Please forgive me Your Highness if on this occasion I take the opportunity to pay my most humble reverence to you and to beg for your orders so that I may have the honour of being recognised by Her Majesty as being her very humble servant who wishes her all the many joys that she most desires. From Paris this day 10 February 1609. Document 5 Traiano Guiscardi to Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Paris, 11 February 1609 ASMn:AG 667 (unpaginated) La Reina m’ha comandato di dar parte a V.A. del suo balletto, dicendole che non trovandosi gravida ha voluto in questo carnevale prendersi qualche trastullo. Sabato dunque che fu l’ultimo del passato verso la meza notte nella gran sala dell’Arsenale rappresentarono un monte appiè del quale erano due strade per le quali vennero 12 paggi sei per banda et un’infinità de’ sonatori colle viuole dolcissimamente sonando con habiti pomposi, et tutti di concerto cantò poi la Fama alcuni versi in lode di S. M.tà et delle ninfe del balletto. Indi per le medesime strade vennero danzando a due a due et poi tutte insieme otto ombre, le quali disparvero al fine, e ‘l monte s’avvanzò circa a meza la sala, et apertosi mostrò un mare, et in esso una ninfa sopra un delfino accompagnata da gran numero di voci et di liuti che fecero una rarissima musica. Appresso cantò leggiadramente la ninfa sola, et poi ritirata la sua machina in capo alla sala si scoperse un vago giardino, dove erano a sedere S. M.tà, la Principessa di Conti, Madamoiselle du Mayenne, Madamoiselle di Mercurio, Madamoiselle di Memorancy, la Duchessa di Sugly, Madamoiselle di Montpesar, Madamoiselle la Vidame du Mans, Madamoiselle la Contessa di Tillier sorella di Mons.r di Bassompierre, Madamoiselle di Pralin, Madamoiselle di Verderone, Madamoiselle di Blerancourt in habito di ninfe di color celeste incarnate et argento con tanti diamante addosso ch’era una maraviglia, et fu la più bella vista del mondo, come si vedero scoperte p.a si levò S. M.tà venendo avanti danzando con leggiadra incredibile, fu seguita dall’altre a due a due, et giunte tutte insieme danzarono il lor balletto che riuscì vago et bello et fu terminato con al quanti tiri d’artigliera. Appresso fecero un brando al quale fu S. M.tà condotta dal Principe di Condé et le altre da altri cavalieri fra quali

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v’era ‘l Duca di Guisa, il Principe di Gianville, Mons.r di Bassompierre, ma sentendosi S. M.tà un poco stracca lasciò ‘l luogo alla Contessa di Moretta, che fece allegramente la sua partita. Si trovò a veder il balletto l’Amb.re d’Inghilterra con sua moglie l’uno et l’altra favorite oltr’all’usato al Re, il quale havea la detta sera l’ordine della Ghartiera, et nel partire lo mostrò all’Amb.re dicendogli vado addesso dalla Reina Margherita dov’è Don Pedro. The queen has commanded me to share news of her ballet with Your Highness, telling you that since she was not pregnant she wanted to enjoy a bit of entertainment during this carnival. So on Saturday, the one before last, at about midnight in the big hall of the Arsenal, there was represented a big mountain at the foot of which were two paths from which twelve pages appeared, six per group, and a great number of viol players who made a very sweet harmony all in consort and magnificently dressed; and while they played together, Fame sang some verses in praise of His Majesty and of the nymphs in the dance. Then from the same paths came eight shades dancing two by two, and finally they all danced together, and then they all disappeared at the end, and the mountain moved forwards to about the middle of the room, and opened up to reveal a sea where a sea nymph sat upon a dolphin appeared acompanied by a great multitude of voices and musicians with lutes who made a very rare music. Nearby the nymph proceeded to sing solo most divinely. When she had finished, she retreated on her machine to the end of the room, and immediately a vague garden appeared where her Majesty was sitting with the Princess de Conti, Mademoiselle du Mayenne, Mademoiselle de Mercure, Mademoiselle de Montmorency, the Duchess of Sully, Mademoiselle di Montpesar, Mademoiselle Vidame du Mans, Mademoiselle the Countess of Tillier the sister of Monsignor Bassompierre, Mademoiselle de Pralin, Mademoiselle di Verderon, Mademoiselle Blerancourt, all dressed in nymph’s costumes in the colours of carnation and sky blue with silver, wearing such a huge quantity of diamonds that it was a wondrous sight, and it was the most beautiful sight in the world, and as soon as they appeared Her Majesty stood up first and came forwards dancing with stupendous grace and she was then followed by the other nymphs two by two until they were all together and at last danced their ballet which was dreamy and beautiful and was finished with the discharge of many artilleries. Nearby Her Majesty was accompanied by the Prince of Condé and the others by other cavaliers, among whom was the Duke of Guise, the Prince of Gianville, Monsignor Bassompierre, and since Her Majesty was feeling a bit tired she left her place to the Countess Moretta who played her part beautifully. The Ambassador of England was present at the ballet with his wife, both favourites of the King, who that evening was carrying the Order of the Garter, and on leaving he showed it to the Ambassador telling him that he was now going to Queen Marguerite where Don Pedro was.

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Ebrei and Turchi performing in early modern Venice and Mantua Erith Jaffe-​Berg

In the northern Italian peninsula in the early modern period, performance was one of the means by which cultural communication and exchange took place among Christians, Muslims and Jews.1 Performance was one of the central ways through which cultural minorities negotiated and helped to shape their terms of existence and it became a mutually beneficial cultural currency useful for calibrating relations with the other. This was especially palpable in Northern Italian cities, notably Mantua and Venice, where significant populations of ‘foreigners’ became established from as early as the twelfth century. Embraced for their economic and commercial contribution, the religiously and culturally distinctive populations were at the same time segregated, taxed as foreigners and visually branded in order to clearly demarcate their difference. Nevertheless, they were also included in public ceremonies, and often protected by the ruling government, be it the ducal principality of Mantua or the Senate and Doge of the Venetian Republic. Indoor and outdoor performances, which were public displays of power and largesse, often included Jews and Turks as participants as a way to visually underscore both their alterity and inclusion within the fabric of the Venetian and Mantuan economy and culture. In this chapter, I first present the policies towards foreigners, concentrating on Venice and Mantua, where key performances took place. I  compare the regulation of Jews and Turks and then show how both minority groups offered performance as a tribute to their rulers. I analyse these performances existing on a continuum between inclusion and exclusion, and I demonstrate how Jews in Venice used performance as a ‘cultural currency’ and how Venetian authorities used performance to signal Turkish exclusion from civic culture at large. I  then reflect on how the Jewish community of Venice expressed ambivalence towards performance as a form of cultural exchange, when leading rabbis critiqued the benefits of theatrical activity. Next, I direct my attention to Mantua, where the Jewish community embraced theatre as a form of cultural currency that could be used to calibrate its relations with the Gonzaga

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dukes. I  offer a detailed look at how one Jewish theatre-​maker, Leone de’ Sommi, cultivated a connection with Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga precisely through their mutual interest in performance. I detail the sharing of costumes and props among Jewish and Christian players and relay how these exchanges endured, even after ghettoisation.

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Jewish and other minority communities performing in Venice In order to better understand the context for performance making, a consideration of the northern Italian states’ policy regarding ‘foreigners’ is relevant. In most states and cities, a form of tolerance through separation enabled the city and state leadership to benefit economically and politically from the presence of minorities, while also surveilling, distancing and containing these communities. Venice created specific residences for Germans, Jews and Turks, and by so doing, provided a model for how to accommodate foreigners. As Dana Katz puts it in her book on the Jewish Ghetto in the early modern period, ‘Venice was a city that segmented the spaces of ethnic residence’ (Katz 2017: 53). Not unlike the Greeks, Turks, Germans, Albanians, Dalmatians and Armenians, the Jews were placed in such a ‘segmented’ area, known as the Ghetto. In other cases, the city erected inns or warehouses known as fondacos to house foreigners; such was the case for the Fondaco dei Tedeschi created in the thirteenth century for Germans, or the Fondaco dei Turchi built in the seventeenth century for Ottoman Turks (Horodowich 2009: 58–​9; Katz 2017: 53; Wilson 2005: 120–​1).2 In Chapter 9 in this volume, Eric Nicholson reflects on the derivation of the term Fondaco dei Tedeschi:  ‘from the Arabic funduq, itself a corruption of the classical Greek pandokéion (πανδοκεῖον) meaning inn or hotel’. In many ways the Fondacos were forerunners to the other solution Venetians found to housing ‘foreigners’, such as the creation of the first Jewish Ghetto in 1516. The case of the Jews in Venice is complex. They were at first able to settle in Mestre, the mainland city, as early as 1298, and by 1366–​95 they were permitted to live in Venice itself. However, after that point, they could no longer reside in Venice and were, instead, confined to Mestre, with permission to stay in Venice for short periods of fifteen days or fewer. The establishment of the Ghetto in Venice changed that, making it possible for Jews to reside permanently in the city, although they were forced to live within the enclosed area (Pullan 1971: 444; Horodowich 2009: 137–​8).3 Just as the Fondaco dei Tedeschi influenced the way in which the Jews were treated, Katz has shown that the Fondaco dei Turchi, established in 1621, was modelled after the Jewish Ghetto. The Fondaco dei Turchi required Turks to reside in a more remote area along  the Grand Canal, with rules and surveillance similar to those established for the Jews. However, that did not mean that there was

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no contact among the different groups, nor did it mean that the groups were hermetically sealed from the Venetian Christian public. Quite the reverse was true, because segmentation both facilitated commerce and business activities, and greatly complicated visibility. These spaces marginalized Jews to the periphery and restricted their bodily movement. Yet the ghetto never blinded the Jews’ peripheral vision. Instead, enclosure elevated the ghetto to a prominent position in the urban form, yielding new vistas. In fact, the ghetto put Venice on display for Christian and Jewish eyes, which ultimately prompted officials to restrict the sights of enclosure. (Katz 2017: 52, see also 54, 76–​7)

This interplay of sequestering a community, while at the same time making them visible, heightened the sense of display and was inherently performative. Indeed, as Nicholson reminds us, the Fondaco, which was used as a storage facility or warehouse by the Venetians, could also at times serve as a versatile space for the staging of theatrical performances (Chapter 9, this volume). Siro Ferrone and Robert Henke have commented on dual use of buildings in Italy which could serve for trade and commerce but also for performances (Ferrone 1993a: 18; Henke 2008: 21). In similar ways, the Jewish Ghetto was itself both a place of display, where Christians could see exotic Jews and also buy their goods, as well as a source of musicians and performers for display, as I shall discuss below. At other periods, it was the staging ground for theatre and music created by the Jews. Thereby, the very acts of segmenting and segregating appear to have been paradoxically related to the action of displaying, and lent themselves to a theatricality that was in many ways commensurable with a city in which carnival, self-​fashioning and display were always so salient. While heavily regulated and segregated in their housing, where they were guarded and enclosed at night, the religious and cultural foreigners nonetheless found ample occasion to commingle with Christian residents. In fact, as Donatella Calabi shows, the spatial segregation of religious and cultural communities in actuality made it possible for the Venetian state to allow foreigners to reside in the state. In the case of early modern Venice, segregation and cosmopolitanism went hand in hand:  ‘Questo significa però comprendere anche il cosmopolitismo che a questo vicenda [segregazione] è strettamente legato’ (Calabi 2016; This means also understanding that cosmopolitanism is closely linked to segregation). Even the most overt sign of this separation, the imposition of the Jewish Ghetto, decreed by the Senate on 29 March 1516, did not mean the communities were hermetically cut off from one another. In fact, the decree stipulated that the Jewish minority (‘minoranza ebraica’) would be apportioned an enclosed place, gated, with two doors that would remain open from the ringing of the ‘Marangona’ –​the morning bell rung from San Marco

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that regulated Venetian life –​to the evening at the fourteenth hour (sunset), with four Christian custodians (‘quattro custodi cristiani’) paid for by the Jews and residing there, without family (Calabi 2016). In the time between the ringing of the two bells, Jews and Christians could enter and leave the Ghetto, and Jews could walk around the rest of the city of Venice relatively unregulated. Therefore, as cultural historians remind us: In contrast to the image of civic consensus that was orchestrated by the institutions of the late medieval state and sustained by the repetition of symbolic narratives in rituals and artworks for a local audience, identities in early modern Venice were increasingly shaped through exchanges with outsiders. (Wilson 2005: 4)

The distinct clothing, language and rituals customary for Jews, Muslims and Christians were to some degree visible to the other groups; imitation and costuming became one way in which a group’s knowledge of the other groups found expression. Jewish and Turkish exchanges through performance took place in a variety of ways. Views of competitiveness and coexistence vied for each other, as demonstrated by the Venetian tolerance of Ottoman Turks as trading partners at the same time as military victories over the Turks were celebrated in periodically published Songs (ASVe Canzone c. 1571). While Turks resided in Venice, they were also denigrated with effigies or unfavourable costumes worn at carnival, when Venetians costumed themselves ‘as wild men, giants, kings, peasants, Turks, or peacocks, in short, something other than what they were in daily life’ (Muir 1997: 92). In less innocuous ways, popular demonstrations often resulted in the hanging or burning of an effigy of a marginal figure such as the Turk (Muir 1997: 103). Jews and Turks figuratively ‘spoke back’ with their own theatrical or performative activities, in which they made themselves visible in ways that they could, to some degree, control. By participating in civic celebrations, Jews and Turks provided performance as a tribute to the ruling powers. This same tributary function also took place outside of the Italian peninsula, when Jewish and Turkish performers were drafted to serve as cultural ambassadors to other states. Such was the case when the Jews and Turks performed for the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II in Prague as part of a visiting delegation of Mantuan dignitaries (a letter from Gianfrancesco Anguissola to the Duke of Mantua dated 7 March 1567: ASMn:AG 40 c.22). Interestingly, among the other companies that were mentioned as travelling with this large delegation, archival evidence also reflects that during the visit there were feats of danger presented by the Turks (‘pericolo rappresentato dai Turchi’). Here, we see the association of performances of dangerous feats with the Turkish performers, as in the case of the flying Turk in Venice. In these cases, the symbolism of

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inclusion and the undercurrent of Christian civic largesse were emphasised through the inclusion of Turks and Jews within the delegation. In addition to this tributary function, based on their professional skills as performers, Jews and Turks were often invited to work alongside Christian musicians, dancers and even actors. Here, the performers were often also permitted not to identify themselves as ‘Others’, and the sumptuary laws regulating dress were relaxed as an exception. It is hard to say where the tribute ended and whether the contribution asked of these minority performers was (ever?) purely aesthetic. The minority dancers, actors, playwrights and musicians were always aware of their distinctive status as Jewish or Turkish performers, and never simply performers. In fact, their alterity was their appeal, and they appear to have used this complicated aesthetic and cultural value as a type of currency, knowing they were sought in part because they were different. For the Turks and Jews, performance became a kind of currency of exchange where the value changing hands was economic, in that performances involved a degree of expenditure; aesthetic, since the performers were professional or semi-​professional; and cultural –​these actors were always known as Turchi or Ebrei ( Jaffe-​Berg 2016a: 125–​9; 2013: 401–​5). One notable type of performance was the ritual of Il Turco Volante (the flying Turk; Figure 12) which marked the opening of the carnival. During this ritual, the Turks provided an acrobat who walked on a tightrope strung between the waters in the lagoon and St Mark’s Square (Muir 1981: 171; see also my discussion in Guynn et al. 2017: 28–​30). The daredevil act was used to open the carnival season, which, while it was a quintessentially Catholic celebration, thus made central use of a performance tradition deeply rooted within Ottoman heritage. Acrobatic acts were often the specialty of Ottoman Turkish performers, and featured in wedding celebrations as well as Ramadan festivities in Ottoman Turkey (Sevinçli 2014:  198–​9; Yilmaz 2014:  148). Hence, the importing of acrobatic acts within the Venetian carnival celebration was a cultural amalgamation of different traditions within an otherwise Catholic event. In a letter of 3 June 1564 reporting from Venice to the Duke of Mantua, Giovanni Battista Gambara remarks on a performance by a Turkish acrobat on a rope cord that was strung in Saint Mark’s Square (ASMn:AG 1497:1 cc.188–​9). In marked contrast to the many instances in which Turks are represented by Italian performers, Gambara’s description indicates that this was not a stage Turk or one costumed as such, but an acrobat of Turkish origin.4 Turks occupied the Venetian imagination in other early modern performances as well. M. A. Katritzky and I provide iconographic and other evidence from performances and festivities, while in this collection and elsewhere, Jacques Lezra reflects on the presence of Mediterranean characters in English drama (Katritzky 2006: 218–​9; Jaffe-​Berg 2016a: 97–​120; Lezra 2008, Chapter 12 in this volume).

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Figure 12  Il Volo del Turco (The Flight of the Turk), 1816, after the original of c. 1548. Museo Civico Correr, Venice, Gabinetto dei disegni e delle stampe, inv. St. PD 8114. 2016  © Photo Archive  –​Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia. Reproduced by permission.

Performance as cultural currency worked especially well in the inherently performative city of Venice, as remarked by famous visitors such as the Englishman Thomas Coryat, and exploited by the early modern guidebooks produced for the benefit of tourists. Cesare Vecellio’s De gli habiti antichi, et moderni, a book of dress and costumes printed in Venice in 1590, stands witness to the tremendous stock placed on self-​fashioning through dress, particularly by Venetians (Billing 2014). Venetian self-​consciousness about ways in which clothing projected social and political affiliation could make them flexible in taking on costume, as when ‘Venetians en route to Constantinople dressed as Turks for protection’ (Wilson 2005: 123). At the same time, Venice, Mantua and other Italian cities demanded that individuals be clearly identified religiously and ethnically by their clothing, as was the case in the requirement that Jews wear a badge or a coloured hat. Hence, the outward ‘performance’ of identity, however fluid overseas, was restricted within the confines of the Catholic city, no matter how pragmatic its politics were. Jews often tried to evade the strict regulations regarding the Jewish badge, which they were required to wear, in order to escape the violence that would otherwise be directed to them.

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Rather than be branded, Jews sought ways of being recognised for their talents, and there is ample evidence that Venetian Jews, for example, were active in music, theatre and dance from as early as the mid-​fifteenth century; Don Harrán dates their first known musical performance to 1443 (2001: 212). The first theatrical performance for which we have surviving evidence took place in 1531 and is mentioned by Marino Sanudo in his diaries: In questa sera in Geto fu fato tra zudei una bellissima comedia, nè vi potè intrar alcun Cristian di ordine di Cai di X, et la compiteno a hore 8 di note. (Sanuto 1899: column 326) (During this evening in the Ghetto the Jews put on a beautiful comedy, no Christians were allowed by order of the Council of Ten, and the performance was completed by 8 at night.)

This performance took place during the Jewish holiday of Purim, a holiday both uproarious and carnival-​like in its celebration of the narrow escape of the Jews of Persia from massacre (Roth 1928: 248; Schirmann 1979: 54–​5 n. 20; Jaffe-​Berg 2016b; Horowitz 2006). Many other instances of Jews performing are attested by the ample record left in the Venetian State Archives. For example, a certain Don Livio of Ferrara, who was a dance master and a Jew residing in the Ghetto of Venice, was allowed to exit the Ghetto with his students to perform dances in Christian homes during the carnivals of 1594 and 1595; likewise, a lute player named Iseppo was allowed out ‘to visit the houses of noblemen during carnival until “the sixth hour of the night” ’ (Pullan 1971: 553).5 By the late sixteenth century, Jewish performers obtained a licence enabling them to leave the Jewish Ghetto in order to perform a play during carnival (Pullan 1971: 553; see also Jaffe-​Berg 2016b; ASVe (Ufficiali al Cattaver) 243, reg.3 f.191). Interestingly, in these examples, Venetian Jews were performing entertainments at the Catholic celebrations of carnival, and sometimes at the private homes of Catholic noblemen. While these performances were heavily regulated, they nevertheless indicate several occasions on which a cultural exchange was taking place at private residences and away from the watchful eye of civic authorities. After all, once permission was granted, it would have been difficult to monitor what actually took place during the performances, who danced with whom, what conversations were had and what ideas –​aesthetic and otherwise –​were shared. On another occasion, in November 1590, fourteen Jewish players received a licence permitting them to leave the Ghetto during carnival ‘to try out and perform una opera premeditada’ (a memorised play; cited from Pullan 1971: 553; ASVe 243 reg.3 f.191). This wording is interesting as it suggests that the professional terminology was applied to the work the Jews were doing ( Jaffe-​Berg 2016b). From the Responsa literature of Rabbi Samuel (Shmuel)

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Aboab, we also know of theatrical performances that took place within the Jewish Ghetto, when a wealthy Jewish community member in Venice created a theatre for dramatic presentations. Aboab’s Responsa of 1702 includes questions and responses to issues faced by congregants. In his response to a query by a congregant about a newly created theatre in the Venetian Ghetto, Aboab claims that the theatre was like a contaminant within the Ghetto. Thus, Aboab suggests that theatre was then becoming increasingly influential within the Jewish community. Unintentionally, Aboab’s opposition to theatre echoed Christian opposition to performers, such as the vehemence expressed by Scipione Mercurio, who, in his anti-​theatrical treatise De gli errori popolari d’Italia, considers street performers (ciarlatani) and Jews equally repugnant in an ideal Republic (Barish 1985: 464): Et io per me hò sempre giudicato perniciosissime queste due sorti, di huomini nelle Ripubliche, I giudei, e i ciarlatani: quelli, perche essendo nostri schiavi si arricchiscono del sangue de’ poveri… (Mercurio 1603: 188) (And I  have always regarded as most pernicious these two sorts of men in Republics, the Jews, and the Charlatans: these ones, because being our slaves, they enrich themselves from the blood of the poor…)

In his published Responsa, titled De’var Shemuel or the word or saying of Samuel (‫דבר שמואל‬, Venice) Aboab offered an equally angry retort against the creation of a theatre which, in his terms, sullied an otherwise sanctified Jewish space. ‫והאחרון הכפיר הקל ארצה עטרת תפארת היהדות בעיר ההיא לבנות ולהקים‬ ‫להם בקרב מחנם הקדום בתי טרט׳אות ובתי קרקס׳אות הקבועות ונאספו שמה‬ 6 ...‫אנשים ונשים וטף בנות ישראל הצנועות עם הפרוצות עוברות על דת משה‬ (Aboab 1702: She’elah daled, 4th question) (He [the wealthy funder of the theatre[ has degraded the pride and glory of Judaism. Within the ancient camp [i.e., the Ghetto] he has built permanent theatres and circuses, where men and women and children gather. Modest and chaste Jewish young women sit alongside prostitutes and violate the law of Moses.)

The literary scholar J.  Schirmann speculates that it may not have been an actual, permanently-​built space but rather ‘some provisional space’ (ulam era’i) that could be ‘a synagogue, a Yeshiva or a private space’ (be-​beit kneset, be-​ beit midrash o be-​bayit prati) that Aboab railed against (Schirmann 1979: 50). However, the literal translation of Aboab’s text does suggest that there was an actual building created to function for staging plays, since he uses the word permanent (‫ הקבועות‬hakvu’ot). While we do not currently know many details about the building, what we do know is that the creation of this permanent

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theatre to serve the Venetian Jewish community spurred a great debate within the community itself. Aboab portrayed the Ghetto as a ‘holy camp’ that would be defiled by the erection of a theatre, which would compromise the integrity of women and children, and encourage the worshipping of idols (Aboab 1702: 4th question; see also Zinberg 1974: 177–​8). Aboab writes about ‘the glory of Judaism’ in Venice (tif ’eret hayahadut ba’ir) that is corrupted by a single wealthy man (hagvir) who decided to build within ‘this ancient camp’ (machnam hakadum) ‘permanent theatres and circuses’ (batei teatraot ve batei kirkasot hakvu’ot), ‘where people, women and children are gathered’ (ve’ ne’esfu shama anashim ve nashim ve taf) (Aboab 1702:  32). Reference to circuses in the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud document historic Jewish interdictions on theatres and circuses as idol worshipping (Abrahams 1919:  251–​2). Biblically, the commandment is:  ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, or any manner of likeness’ (Exodus 20:4). The Talmud prohibits ‘theatre and circuses of idolatry’ in the section Avodah Zarah 18b: ‫אשרי האיש אשר לא הלך לטרטיאות ולקרקסיאות של עובדי כוכבים‬ (The Sages taught: One may not go to theatres (letarteiot) or circuses (ulkirkaseiot) because they sacrifice offerings there to objects of idol worship; this is the statement of Rabbi Meir.)

Another reason to prohibit theatre in the Jewish community was that when Jews were incorporated into non-​Jewish performances, it was often for a negative reason, as was the case in carnival denigrations of Jews. Worse, at times, they would be literally tortured in a public performance: In parts of Persia, whenever a provincial governor holds high festival, the pièces de resistance are ‘fireworks and Jews.’ The latter are cast into muddy tanks, and their efforts to extricate themselves are the chief element of the fun. This may be compared with the medieval pleasantries indulged in at Rome during the Carnival. From the fourteenth century the Jews had to contribute heavily towards the cost of the public festivities. (Abrahams 1919: 256–​7; see also Jaffe-​ Berg, 2013: 391)

In Italy, such torture included the Roman carnival tradition of opening with ‘the foot-​race of the Jews’ (palio degli ebrei) or the annual papal tradition of the ‘Holy Shower of Stones’ (Sassaiola Santa) in which Jews were stoned on Good Friday by a group sanctioned by the church (Freedberg, 1992: 41–​56; Newbigin and Wisch, 2013: 371). For Aboab, the motivation to prohibit theatre within the Jewish community was the moral degradation that theatre signified for him, and especially the fact that women and men would be mixing together (see Andreatta 2016: 87–​8 n. 30). Aboab’s indictment of the theatre provides a good historic account of a space in which various classes of men, women and children were

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able to sit together and partake in a theatrical performance. His response also clearly suggests that women were welcomed as audience members in Jewish theatre-​making in Venice, a question that is often raised in discussions about who performed and who was in the audience. Within the Jewish community, where space was often clearly divided between female and male space (and the genders were separated in their seating in the synagogue), one can imagine that mixed-gender theatrical seating challenged conservative views. In Aboab’s eyes, the licentiousness of the secular theatre and the ribald spirit of theatrical performances threatened to contaminate the Jewish Ghetto. Aboab’s anti-​theatricalism is expressed with wide brush-​strokes. It is unclear whether he himself was exposed to much theatre, nor are his comments specific to carnival or to commedia dell’arte. Aboab’s ideas echo Jewish anti-​ theatrical sentiment from the late classical period on. Interestingly, Aboab was neither from an Italian nor Ashkenazi Jewish family, but from a converso background, originally from the Iberian Peninsula (Calimani 1995: 240). Possibly, this lent a more cautious attitude reflected in his unwillingness to embrace theatre, which he may have associated with Christian rather than Jewish traditions. His own resistance to theatre is in keeping with traditional Jewish rejection of ‘circuses’ (bread and circuses) and classical critiques of theatre, as well as the historical Jewish and Roman prohibition on theatre-​making. He seems not to have attended or been exposed to ‘secular’ or Christian theatre himself, although his description of the mixed setting of the Jewish theatre suggests possible limited experience of Jewish performances. Jewish theatre performance in Mantua While Venice was indisputably important in housing foreigners, Mantua is arguably more central for early modern theatre production by Jews. Indeed, the fates of the two Jewish communities  –​in Mantua and Venice  –​were intertwined in more ways than one.7 Known as the smaller Venice in Lombardy Mantua does in many ways resemble Venice. Both were known for their traditions of music and performance-​making, and shared the fact that their Jewish communities created theatrical performances. When ghettoisation was imposed on the communities, in 1516 in Venice and in 1612 in Mantua, the spatial separation of the Jewish and non-​Jewish residents in the cities affected the kinds of performances produced, and the ways in which these productions were created. One of the ways ghettoisation affected Jewish life was in imposing separation after dark. Theatrical performances, which typically took place in the late afternoon or evening, were heavily affected by this. Furthermore, performances, which did not necessarily easily separate Jew from Christian, woman from man, were a particularly fraught space for imposing clear-​cut spatial separation. The Mantuan tradition of performance

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predates the Venetian. Under the Gonzaga, Mantua had grown into a destination city for performers of commedia dell’arte and a prime location for the staging of opera at court. Jews participated in performative activities in a positive, autonomous way that preserved dignity and even a semblance of equal footing for them among their non-​Jewish counterparts ( Jaffe-​Berg 2016a: ch. 5). The earliest evidence of Jewish theatrical activity in Italy dates to Pesaro in 1489 ( Jaffe-​Berg 2016a: 125). Jewish participation in theatre-​making in Mantua dates back to 1520, when two Jewish actors (‘Salamone e Jacopo ebrei’) were requested from Ferrara to participate in the celebrations honouring the accession of Federico Gonzaga in Mantua (Roth 1964: 248). By 1525, it is clear that Jews from Mantua were performing on a regular basis, and that the Gonzaga considerably valued the participation of Jews in their events and celebrations. In fact, by 1525, their performances were based on plays written by the Jews themselves, and had become established as a contribution to state performances. This would become a signature aspect of the Jewish Mantuan performances:  original works by Jewish writers, performed by Jewish actors. Nearly six years before the Venetian example of Jewish participation in theatre-​making during carnival, on 24 February 1525 in Mantua, the court secretary to Isabella d’Este, Vincenzo de Preti, informed her that there would be an original comedy written and performed by the Jews: Domani si farà una altra comedia pur a casa delli figlioli del q.m s.r Zoanne, quale recitaràno li Judei, per esser anche per loro composta: et cosi spassaremo questo poco Carnevale. (Ducal Secretary Vincenzo de Preti to Isabella d’Este, 24 February 1525; ASMn:AG 2506 c. 267) (Tomorrow there will be another comedy presented in the house of the children of the late Signor Zoanne, to be recited by the Jews, based on their own composition: and thus we will while away this small carnival.)

Interestingly, de Preti added that it would be performed in the home of the children of Signor Zoanne, a name that does not appear to be Jewish and that suggests that the Jews were performing in Christian homes. In contrast, in the Venetian example discussed above, Sanudo remarks that Christian noblemen were not allowed to attend the Jewish enactment in 1531. Therefore, it appears that the Mantuan community was more inclusive in their engagement of actors and audiences and the two communities at an earlier stage. The frequency of performances in Mantua, and the fact that the Jews performed in a variety of venues, including private homes where non-​Jewish troupes also performed, suggest an ongoing exchange between Jews and Christians.

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Theatre-​making in Mantua often involved Leone de’ Sommi (1527–​92), who was by far the most famous Renaissance Jewish playwright, having authored what is recognised as the first Hebrew play, Tsahouth Be’dihutha de’ Kiddushin (A Comedy of Betrothal) in 1550 (Golding 1988: 20). De’ Sommi worked as a playwright, director, producer (or impresario), and theatrical innovator in productions within the Jewish community, but also in those staged by the literary Academy of the Invaghiti (the Lovesick), where he was known as a court scribe (scrittore) and court performer, and worked with Christian professional musicians, dancers and actors. His literary output, in Italian and Hebrew, included poems, comedies and pastoral dramas in both verse and prose, and he authored the first discourse on directing, Quattro dialoghi in materia di rappresentazioni sceniche (Four Dialogues on Theatrical Performance, 1556). Lamentably, much of his literary output, which included several volumes of plays, intermezzi and other works, was destroyed in a great fire at the National Library in Turin in 1904. De’ Sommi’s prolific productivity for a Jewish theatre-​maker displays many of the elements of cultural currency: he used his considerable organisational and artistic skills to appeal to patrons as varied as Cesare Gonzaga, Guglielmo Gonzaga and Vincenzo Gonzaga. De’ Sommi displayed remarkable agility in each of these relationships, cultivating patron relations to the best of his ability. He also served as a representative of the Jewish community by taking on the role of massaro (or community leader), frequently negotiating on the Jews’ behalf in person and in writing. His epistolary exchanges were beautifully executed, with a clarity in writing that revealed de’ Sommi’s skills as a scribe and displayed considerable literary skills. In a letter addressed to Guglielmo Gonzaga, de’ Sommi reveals a degree of intimacy with his patron, sharing that he has been ill (così indisposto come mi trovo) and that the creative muse has visited him (mi è venuto un capriccio). His language is full of passion, and he refers to the fire (lo foco) of his creative output, and conspiratorially discloses that his new work is a poetic prologue for a production which he has shared with none other than the Duke himself (Figure 13).8 Signore mio osservatissimo Cosi indisposto come mi trovo, mi è venuto un capriccio di ampliare in certo loco quel mio poema, et farli un prologo stravagante da accrescere vaghezza allo spettaccolo. Et pero’ prego V.S. a voler mandarmi il libro per il presente. mentre io resto desideroso di farle honore in ogni occasione ove da lei sarò proposto. Ho poi caro non haver parlato ad altri che a V.S.  del travaglio che me occorse quella notte, risoluto di non ne parlar’ in conto alcuno se non quanto mi consiglierà V.S. chi’io ne favelli. che sarà il fine con che me la raccomando in gratia, Di casa il penultimo Novembre 1579

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Di V.S. devoto et obligatissimo servitore Leone Hebreo de’ Sommi. (de’ Sommi on 30 October 1579, ASMn:AG 2409 c.757) (My very magnificent Signore, Indisposed as I find myself, there came to me a caprice that will surely enhance my poem, and will make an extravagant prologue [Intermedi] to increase the beauty and effects for the spectacle, and therefore, I beg of Your Highness to send me the book for the present. While I remain desirous of giving you honour in every occasion which you propose. I have therefore not spoken to others other than Your Highness of the labour which I undertook this night, resolving not to speak to anyone on any account about these until I have consulted with Your Highness about what it favours you that I should do. What should be the decision that you recommend to me?

Figure 13  Leone de’ Sommi to Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga, 30 October 1579, B 2409, C757r. Courtesy of the State Archives of Mantua (Archivio di Stato di Mantova).

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In gratitude, from my house, on this ultimate day of November in 1579 Your Highness’s devoted and truly obliged servant, Leone Hebreo de’ Sommi.)

In this letter, de’ Sommi’s emphasis on vaghezze or effects is very interesting. It accords with the fact that the Jews were probably noted for their ability to create great scenic elements, along with costuming, making their work especially appealing. Vaghézza is an interesting term as it can be translated as l’essere vago (to be vague) but also:  bellezza, leggiadria, grazia (beauty, loveliness, grace) or as an ornamento, abbellimento, cosa bella (ornament, something beautiful), or as a desiderio, voglia (a desire or wish) or diletto, piacere: prendeva v. di quello spettacolo (a delight or pleasure, giving pleasure to the spectacle/​performance).9 In the 1563 Jewish production of Ariosto’s I Suppositi (The Pretenders) in Mantua, in honour of a visit by Archdukes Rudolf and Ernst of Austria, the intermedi created by the Jews were especially noted, as was the set: ‘e sopra tutto si vide una molto bella scena con prospettive mirabili, e carica di lumi’ (D’Ancona 1891; and above all they viewed a very beautiful set with admirable perspective and lighting. See also Jaffe-​Berg 2016a: 126). Similarly, Katritzky foregrounds Jewish stage scenery in an account from Prince Ferdinand of Bavaria’s diary of his travels with his uncle Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol and a group of noblemen (during which they saw many performances in Venice and in Mantua), of a Mantuan play on 5 February 1579. After the meal we went to the chamber. There a play was performed by Jews, it lasted for almost five hours. It was no different from other Italian plays, except that it included no Magnifico or Zanni. The stage was most attractively provided with doorways and houses. (cited from Katritzky 2006: 95, in translation from the original German; see also 93–​5)

It is not clear whether this was a performance staged by de’ Sommi himself, but the attractiveness of the staging and construction of doorways and houses is notable. The recurrent mention of Jewish settings may be one reason why the Jews were asked to participate in theatre-​making. It appears they were able technically to construct visual schemes that were appealing to the audience. Since they produced the plays at their own expense, their constructions were also conveniently cost-​free for the Gonzaga. While de’ Sommi was the community’s most famous massaro, he was by no means the only one, and a long line of massari preceded and followed him, including the famous Isach Dansera Ebreo (the Jewish dancer), Abraham Sarfati (also known as Francese because Sarfati means French in Hebrew) as well as Simon Shlumiel ben Solomon Basilea, a leading director and performer active after de’ Sommi died.10

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Another very revealing collaboration between the Jews and a Christian is that between the Jewish performers of Mantua and Federico Follino, who distinguished himself as a court scribe and later as ducal secretary. Follino appears to have gained fame in 1587, upon the death of Guglielmo Gonzaga, when Follino’s description of both Guglielmo’s funeral and Vincenzo’s coronation were published (Follino 1587). The cultural collaboration between Follino and the Jews of Mantua appears to have begun in 1601, when Duke Vincenzo put him in charge of a play with intermedi for the carnival season (ASMn:AG 2254 c.n.n.). Shortly thereafter, a document dated 1 November 1601 indicates that the Duke left Follino at liberty to decide whether the play should be a comedy or a pastoral, but expressed a desire that it be recited by the Jews (vuole che la recitino gli ebrei; ASMn:AG 2254 c.n.n.). Follino did write a play for them called la Modesta that was performed in February 1602. Following Leone de’ Sommi’s death in 1592, the role of massaro passed to others. In February 1602, it may have been held by Shmuel Basilea, then becoming increasingly important in staging productions, who was called on to organise this production. A letter dated 8 February 1602, from Hercole Achilli to ducal secretary and ambassador Aderbale Manerbio, states that la modesta was to be performed in the only court theatre (nel solito teatro di corte) with very beautiful machinery (un bellissimo apparato; ASMn:AG 2688:1 d.6). The indication is that the Jews were performing in the court theatre, with a Christian audience. We also learn from this that the machinery was good. Once again, here is more evidence that along with scenic designs, the Jews may have excelled in creating theatrical machinery effectively, presumably at their own cost. A letter of 15 February 1602 from court chronicler Fortunato Cardi to Annibale Pomponazzi indicates that the play recited by the Jews, in the only theatre in the court, was a pastoral by Follino (ASMn:AG 2688:1 d.6). Within a few years, documents reveal that Follino’s relations with the Jews had become much more personal. For example, on 15 July 1606 we find him relaying that he is hosting a Jewish ragazzo (boy) named Melet Ebreo, who had performed very well in a play. Follino indicates he is taking Melet in his home to protect him after a brawl Melet had with another Jew, Daniel Ricchi (ASMn:AG 2705:viii c.4). It is surprising to have Follino take such an interest in a Jewish performer, and shocking that he should host a Jew in his home, as this was forbidden by ducal orders. The following year Follino mentions Francesco Renato, Ebreo who was a converted Jew. He, too, was an actor who needed to be ready for a performance, and in a letter dated 8 December 1607, Follino asks the Duke for money for clothing for Renato (ASMn:AG 2709:II d.8). Again, this personal interest in a Jew, albeit a converted Jew, is notable. It may also suggest that performance was the pretext for peoples of different ethnic and religious backgrounds to meet and commingle and that conversion could be seen as one desirable (for Christian

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rulers) end of performance. This also helps to explain why rabbis such as Aboab would have opposed the theatre. In addition to carnival enactments, the Jews of Mantua also performed during the marriage celebrations of members of the Gonzaga family, and during the visits of foreign dignitaries. In this sense, their performances were tributary. Just as Jewish moneylending provided small loans to farmers and artisans in the Mantuan community, and as Jewish bankers, merchants and new immigrants coming in from Spain brought their own liquid assets and capital, reinforcing networks of trade, Jewish theatrical performances contributed to the Gonzaga self-​fashioning as a cultural centre within the peninsula, attracting the best musicians, dancers and acting troupes to Mantua. Indeed, like the Turkish flying acrobat in Venice, the Jewish performances in Mantua reflected the cosmopolitan attitude of tolerance associated with the Gonzaga. And while this projected a largesse, it was also self-​serving, as it promoted the image of an international and interconnected principality that was open to trade, business and ideas. In this way, the Jews took their place alongside the commedia dell’arte troupes that frequently visited and were housed in Mantua, and reinforced an image of Gonzaga cultural capability and bolstered Mantua in its intense rivalry with Florence, at a time when both the Gonzagas and the Medici were marrying Habsburg princesses. In Mantua as in Venice, the ample evidence of shared performance did not mean that there was harmony among Jews and Christians. In fact, as in Venice, in Mantua strict separation with few exceptions was instituted and carefully enforced from as early as the Middle Ages. Jews were required to be visually demarked as different by wearing the ‘Jewish Badge’, and it was considered a special privilege to receive permission to remove the badge from one’s garments. Even the terms of performance reflected the politics of separation. For example, on 1 March 1576 Duke Guglielmo issued an edict prohibiting Jews from living with Christians and consorting with them, including during celebrations and plays. Guglielmo per la gratia di Dio Duca di Mantova, & di Monferato &c. Volendo Noi Provedere […] Che non sia lecito alli Christiani andar sulle feste delli hebrei ne alli hebrei andar sulle feste de Christiani, sotto pena de venticinque scudi per ciascuno che contrafarà questo nostro [words blotted out] […] Che li hebrei no prattichino in Casa de Christiani, massimamẽte di dõne cantare, sonar, ò ballare, overo per insegnare à cantare, sonare, ò ballare, se non hauranno licenza in scritto da noi, sotto pena di dieci scudi per ogni volta che contrafaranno. (Guglielmo, by the Grace of God, Duke of Mantua and the Monferato etc.… We would like to decree […] [T]‌hat it will not be permitted for Christians to go to the celebrations of Jews nor for Jews to go to the celebrations of Christians, on pain of twenty-​five scudi for each who will not obey […] That the Jews do not practice [and take equal part] in the house of Christians by singing, playing

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instruments or dancing, or even by teaching to sing, play instruments, or dance, unless they have written licence from us, on pain of ten scudi for each time that they violate this.)11

This document suggests that in prior periods there was mixing among the communities, but as of the later sixteenth century, that was shifting. Indeed, due to the increasingly strict rules governing Jewish and Christian interaction during Guglielmo’s reign, Jewish actors stopped performing at civic events or in Christian households after 1584, as noted by Claudia Buratelli (1999: 167). These marked separations, resulting in part from the Counter-​Reformation climate, pronounced by the papal bull cum nimis absurdum of 1555, which generally restricted toleration of Jews, and exacerbated in part by Guglielmo’s partial capitulation to the papal emissary of 1576 and the arrival of the Jesuits in Mantua in 1584, led to mounting difficulties for the Jews. The result was that the Gonzaga dukes, beginning with Guglielmo and continuing with Vincenzo, increasingly sought to separate the communities from each other except in sanctioned and highly controlled settings. This is how public performances of Jewish theatre in Mantua came to be restricted to carnival performances, as a mark of the increased regulation and separation among communities. However, the fact that performances continued even after the institution of the Ghetto in Mantua in 1612, suggests that performance had become an important marker of the collaboration between the communities, even in the wake of tremendous pressures to sever ties between them. Performances enabled both the Jews and the Gonzaga to transgress the rules that were otherwise enforced about the visual demarcation, separation and boundaries between Jews and Christians. In effect, performances were a continuing exception to the rules; that both drew attention to the rules, and suggested that rules are meant to be broken. We see this in the permission granted to several theatre professionals, including Leone de’ Sommi and Shmuel Basilea, not to wear the Jewish badge. And we also see this in the frequent use of Jewish dancers, musicians and actors in otherwise Christian performances. Indeed, it was common for Jewish performers, playwrights and even directors (as with the famous Leone de’ Sommi) to be asked to take part in performances staged by Christians. The Gonzaga had an ulterior motive in allowing Jews to take part in performances, as it enabled the Gonzaga dukes to maintain a degree of autonomy from the church, especially during the Counter-​ Reformation period (Buratelli 1999: 167; see also Jaffe-​Berg 2013). Thereby, performance was a mutually beneficial currency that both the dukes and Jews could use to calibrate their relations with one another. When living conditions were made more difficult for the minority group, that difficulty was reflected in their performance. And, in fact, the years leading up to ghettoisation in 1612 were

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marked by increasingly lavish and expensive performances. The more costly nature of the performance in effect reflected a punitive measure imposed on the Jews by the Gonzaga. The more lavish the performance, the more the Jews were made to pay, and the public would be appeased. If performances were a type of taxation, then the costly spectacles corresponded to an increasingly onerous task that was imposed on the Jewish community, and also reflects the desperate means by which Jews sought to rehabilitate their relations with the Gonzaga ( Jaffe-​Berg 2016b). Still, the number of performances in the decade leading to ghettoisation was not small, and at least ten performances were recorded between 1603 and 1612 (Simonsohn 1977: 15). During these years, the Jews staged another drama as part of their collaboration with Federico Follino. In a letter of 17 November 1610 to the Duke, Follino explains that he is still working on his play Le Quattro età del mondo (The Four Ages of the World) that the Jews will stage (ASMn:AG 2718:xl c.321). Even more unexpectedly, another archival document suggests a very intimate connection between the Jewish and Christian performers, in that costumes could be borrowed between troupes. In a letter to the Marchese Fabio Gonzaga, Lorenzo Campagna writes that he will send the vestiti di balletti requested by the Marchese, and the six hats and two women’s shawls or jackets (cacciate da donna). The clothing, states Campagna, is being employed by the Jews who are working on a play (ASMn:AG 2721:III d.2 cc.45–​6). This letter, dated 28 January 1611, the year before ghettoisation was instituted, suggests that performers who were Christians and Jews were borrowing each other’s costumes; or that, possibly, Jews were using the discarded costumes previously worn by Christian performers. These clothing exchanges were taking place even while preparations were underway to separate the communities. Alessandra Veronese publishes many findings from the Jewish archives that disclose the tremendous amount of work done by the Jewish community to support productions, and amply record the borrowing, trading and renting of costumes and other items, including shoes, candles and wax bags, as well as payment for musicians, all in support of the performances (Veronese 2016: 57–​9). Veronese points out that in the archive expenses are recorded bilingually, and that there is a difference in the ways in which information is communicated in the Hebrew and Italian texts. She notes that the Italian is informal, whereas the Hebrew is more formal. In addition, she shows that in one case in which the Italian is descriptive and informal, the Hebrew confirming a receipt of payment uses a more formal language, with legal value. Veronese’s point about the archives communicating by means of the bilingual encoding of information reveals much about the nature of the exchanges taking place. As she puts it: Il fondo appare ricco di informazioni di interesse per uno storico dell’economia: fornisce infatti molti dati sull’impatto che l’organizzazione di rappresentazioni

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teatrali ha avuto sulla salute generale della communità ebraica. (Veronese 2016: 64)

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(The archive is rich in information about the economic history of the community and it supplies much information about the impact that organising and presenting theatrical productions had on the general health and well-​being of the Jewish community.)

Another revelation from the archives is that there was clearly a tremendous degree of interaction between the communities of Jews and Italian Christians with regard to borrowing and buying materials and talent for theatrical productions from one another. Performances and the types of contacts, connections, contracts and exchanges that they occasioned were an arena where the prevailing political and social rules of separation appear to have been suspended. Even ghettoisation did not appear to diminish the need for Jewish performances. As long as the Gonzaga remained in power, the security of the Jews was assured in Mantua. However, when the War of Mantuan Succession broke out in 1628, that security was forever compromised. In 1630, the Jews were forcibly exiled from the city in which they had lived for centuries. Jewish performance in Mantua, for the first time in over a century, came to a halt. Paradoxically, devastation of the Mantuan Jewish community meant that there was a significant shift in the creative populations of Mantua and Venice. It appears that many of the talented Mantuan Jewish performers migrated to the Venetian Republic and greatly contributed to the active theatre and performance scene there. In fact, the establishment of the permanent theatre to which Aboab objected so forcefully may have been occasioned by the excess of available talent resulting from the expulsion from Mantua. In conclusion, I  have considered some ways in which Jews and Turks participated in performance-​making in Mantua and Venice. In this volume, Eric Nicholson relays how the British Grand Tour left its mark not only on the British but also on Italians (Chapter 9). Carlo Goldoni and other Italian playwrights reflected on the various British people they encountered, and depicted them in plays. In Nicholson’s analysis, we are reminded that cultural exchange is always a two-​way street. As in the case of the Italians observing the incoming British tourists, the Jews and Turks were observing and observed at the same time. As my chapter has shown, Jews and other cultural minorities had a very deliberate and strong place in representing themselves on stage. At times, these performances engaged Christian rituals, such as the celebration of carnival; at other times, performances were created for the non-​Christian communities’ own observations of holidays and rituals. Productions were elastic, in that they spanned a spectrum of taxation as well as self-​expression and exchange. Performance was thus a cultural barometer for the well-​being

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of non-​Christian, minority communities living in the Italian Peninsula, and their performances reflected on the changing circumstances, be they social or political, as they were experienced. Performance was also a genuine means of exchange that often challenged prevailing political and social norms that dictated separation and denigration, and presented an alternative, pragmatic model for how cultural communities could coexist and become dependent on each other in practical and mutually beneficial ways. Notes 1 See Jaffe-​Berg (2013, 2016a: 121–​44, 2016b). This chapter builds on my previous work on Jewish theatre-​making in Mantua and Venice, including a consideration of additional archival materials. Furthermore, in this chapter, I suggest ways in which the Jews made their productions distinctive. Unless otherwise acknowledged, all translations are my own. My thanks to Elisa Bastianello and Edward Goldberg with whom I consulted about some of the translations and to M. A. Katritzky and Pavel Drábek for their many important suggestions. My research was supported by a Gladys Krieble Delmas Venetian grant. 2 In an appropriate historic twist, today, the Fondaco dei Tedeschi has returned to its mercantile roots. Refurbished by the leading architectural firm of Rem Koolhaas, the Fondaco now houses high end, duty-​free retail shops. 3 On the Venetian Ghetto, also see Calimani (1995). 4 See archival mention of Turkish clothes (vesti turchesche), ASMn:AG 40 c.22, b.1065:V c.58. There are also instances in which during a masquerade (mascherata) people dressed as Turks or in the Turkish style (vestiti alla ‘turchescha’), ASMn:AG 1077 cc.526–​527. 5 Referring to ASVe 244 reg.5 ff.101, 137v, 192v (4 January 1596). 6 The spelling of “‫ ”בתי טרט׳אות ובתי קרקס׳אות‬alters the normal way the words theatre and circuses should be spelled (‫)בתי תיאטראות וקירקסות‬. 7 Simonsohn (1977) provides the most complete account of the Jews in Mantua and the Mantovano region. 8 In contrast to the date I found on the archive copy, Archivio HERLA dates this to 29 November 1579. For a transcription of the letter see Pegna (1933: 556). 9 Treccani: La cultura italiana. An online encyclopedia, available at www.treccani.it/​. 10 On Isach Dansera Ebreo, see a letter of 7 February 1577 indicating that he was a massaro for the Jewish community (ADCEM Filza 1 Cartella 43). For Basilea, see Simonsohn (1977: 534) and Jaffe-​Berg 2016a: 132–​42. For Sarfati, see Simonsohn (1977: 661 n. 295, 663 n. 303). 11 Decree against Contact and Fine If Such Contact Occurs, 1 March 1576. ASMn:AG 3389 c.189.

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Ragozine’s beheading: Dramatic and civil logics of the European state-​form Jacques Lezra

Aequivocationes latent in generibus.

(Aristotle, Physica 249a, 22–​5)

And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power. (Colossians 2:10, King James Version) provost

Here in the prison, father, There died this morning of a cruel fever One Ragozine, a most notorious pirate, A man of Claudio’s years; his beard and head Just of his colour. What if we do omit This reprobate till he were well inclined; And satisfy the deputy with the visage Of Ragozine, more like to Claudio? duke vincentio O, ’tis an accident that heaven provides! (Measure for Measure, 4.3.69–​77)

These strange and witty lines from Shakespeare’s 1604 Measure for Measure have been with me for a very long time.1 What brings me back to them is only in part the pleasure of returning to ground already turned over. My main purpose here is to address a challenge posed by this much-​discussed passage. The play’s brief exchange knots together four sorts of lexicons: those of the law, the theatre, logic and theology. Their relation –​its accidental, piratical shape here, but also the more general system of relays or mechanisms of translation, determination and overdetermination at work between these lexicons, and condensed within the familiar deforming figure of the pirate –​is determining for how the so-​called Mediterranean is imagined in British early modernity. Here, I  stenographically trace out the translation system among these four lexicons, suggest that the relays between the notions of sovereignty, the ‘nation’

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(in the sense of ‘national law’), and what then becomes the ‘international’, or the ‘law of nations’, pass through the logically defective concept of recognition, and beyond that, define this concept as fundamentally theatrical.

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Heaven provides (a sovereign) To focus once more on Barnardine’s cell in Escalus’ prison, and specifically on the status of the ‘accident’, Aristotelian or Lucretian. Considerable critical discussion has already been attracted by this passage in the context of the notion of piracy in Shakespeare (Lezra 1989, 1997; Fuchs 2000), Ragozine’s function as ‘pirate money’ (Crunelle-​Vanrigh 2016) and the genealogies of piracy (Policante 2015). A  central impasse for our understanding of the Duke’s exclamation is the mysterious notion that ‘heaven’ should ‘provide’ this ‘accident’. Why and how would a providential scheme provide what is accidental? Doesn’t the fact that ‘heaven’ provides Ragozine’s head make that circumstance, ipso facto, not an ‘accident’? Here, recent work on accidents is illuminating (Hamilton 2007; Malabou 2012). Malabou’s observations on the ontology of accidents are particularly pertinent: By installing the relation of being and the accident outside any concept of psychic predestination, by marking the importance of the brutal and unexpected arrival of catastrophe, I do not seek to ward over a thought of the pure event or an idolatry of surprise. Quite the opposite: I refuse to believe that the accident responds to the call of an identity which, in a sense, is only waiting for it to unfurl. I  know definitively, resolutely, that ‘it is dangerous to essenciate.’ Not only because essentializing is a steamroller that levels accidents only imperfectly –​so that accidents always threaten to damage essence itself a posteriori. But even more, and especially because, contrary to what Heidegger claims, the history of being itself consists perhaps of nothing but a series of accidents which, in every era and without hope of return, dangerously disfigure the meaning of essence. (Malabou 2012: 90–​1)

The disguised Duke disguises behind facetiousness –​behind the mask or the dead head of the decapitated pirate –​a peculiar paradox. We can partly sidestep it by appealing to the traditional distinction between the vantage of eternity and that of human history. From the perspective of the human sovereign, the pirate’s head is provided as an accident or a prop at hand circumstantially –​a merely contingent fact in and of human history and human theatre. But this is a useful misprision, soon cleared up to the disguised sovereign’s benefit. When ‘heaven provides’ the accident, human sovereignty ceases being an accident of human history, and becomes the expression of providence, its immanent manifestation; accidental history, the accidents of human history,

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become the instruments of state, the means for the consolidation of sovereignty. From the vantage of the accident, the provision of the accidental thus turns out to be providential: it is providential that there be human history, that there is human history. The disguised Duke  –​or perhaps Shakespeare  –​is being deeply ironic, or perhaps displaying an extraordinary grasp of the logic of redemption, of sacrifice:  the decapitated, ‘notorious’ ‘pirate’ is the hinge on which politics meets theology, where the secularised concept displays the persistent and inerasable trace of its theological origin, where human history displays itself as the necessary expression of an imminent or providential order, to which it relates as the ‘accident’ relates to the substance. ‘O, ’tis an accident that heaven provides!’ At the same time, the scene tends away from this sort of sacrificial or providentialising logic, as does the play more broadly  –​characterologically, as in the various questions raised about the Duke’s motives, background, sexual proclivities and power to persuade; but also structurally, since it seems entirely unclear whether Lucio’s fate at the close of the play, or the sacrifice of Isabella on the altar of marriage, will provide anything but the most specious sorts of resolution. The patent artifice of the moment lends to incredulity, to the surplus-​enjoyment afforded by a disruptive metatheatrical awareness, rather than the serious matter of pharmaceutical sacrifice. ‘O, ’tis an accident that heaven provides!’, and Shakespeare’s audience understands ‘heaven’ to stand in for the range of theatrical providers, from the play’s author to the company’s prop-​master, or even the cultural context on which the pirate’s ‘notoriety’ and cultural use-​value are indexed. It is rather as if the domain of theology –​its practices, its mysteries, its rhetorical pitch and lexicon –​lay at hand throughout the play to ‘provide’ words, props, disguises, appearances and all the paraphernalia of social relations. These ‘accidents’ constitute the social bond the play takes as its subject, for those who can put them on:  Lucio, who pirates Erasmus’ phrase to apply it to the disguised Duke, as usual does not quite realise that he speaks the truth at cross purposes: Cucullus non facit monachum (the cowl does not make the monk), he says, getting it precisely wrong. Although the cowl makes the Duke into Lodowick, and thus unmakes him for a time as sovereign, it was a tainted and feeble, vestigial monarchy that the Duke vacated for the friar’s cowl. And that cowl, that heavenly disguise, darkly answers the necessary deed, the establishment of the genuine sovereignty, the recapturing of the law, the reassertion of the Duke’s heterosexual inclination, the return of the King. Cucullus facit monachum, or rather, cucullus facit monarcham. Shakespeare is typically tricky: at the very moment when providentialism seems to be asserted, some of this uneasy critique of the immanence of the theological realm is disclosed, as if many more than two heads were held up in one, Ragozine’s condensing Barnardine’s, Claudio’s, Angelo’s, the various maidenheads traded throughout. ‘O, ’tis an accident that

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Figure 14  Frontispiece, Hugo Grotius, De mari libero: et P. Merula de maribus. Lugd. Batavorum:  Ex officina Elzeviriana, 1633. Reproduced by permission of Czech National Library (Národní knihovna), Prague (A X 000012).

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heaven provides!’ says the disguised Duke. Yes, that ‘heaven’ should ‘provide’ is an accident, we hear: providence is an accident of human history, an effect of the theatre. What follows is disconcerting in the extreme:  the spectacle of human sovereignty is ‘accident’ become trade; the domain of theology is given by the play, in the play. It is the play’s trade, as is the trade in bodies that Measure for Measure associates, explicitly, with Mistress Overdone, and also constantly, though in different ways, with the disguised Duke, with Angelo, and with its own metatheatrical register: with the general substitution paradigm on which the play turns. Generically human: Sea thieves What is to be done about this truly extraordinary impasse that Shakespeare sets on stage, for his audience and his readers? Is it accidental that it is a pirate, a Mediterranean pirate, an eponymous Mediterranean pirate, who condenses these two entirely divergent ways of understanding the early modern consolidation of sovereignty? The story this little moment in Measure for Measure tells runs against the rough plot of what has come to be called, in the idiom of Carl Schmitt, the ‘secularisation thesis’: the thesis that all modern political concepts are nothing more than secularised theological ones, and that a certain number of the upheavals in the period of early modernity are the signs and first consequences of this shift, experienced at the institutional, political and ideological level. The divine right of kings, already a contested matter when Bodin is writing his Six Livres de la République (Paris, 1576), becomes by Renan’s time the secular concept of national sovereignty. The genealogy of the correlative concepts of international, transnational or supranational sovereignty is its own, related story, and Schmitt and his recent readers attempt to tell it as well. This story, the story of the emergence, in the plane of political philosophy and jurisprudence, of the inter-​, supra-​ or transnational nomos of the earth, as Schmitt calls it, has a different protagonist. It is not the sovereign, divinely appointed and sanctioned, but his relation to twin antagonists, the tyrant and, on the sea rather than on land, the pirate or corsair; ‘Ces ennemis communs, ces Tirans de la mer’, as Scarron’s play Le Prince Corsaire nicely calls them (1668, 3.8.114). It is the relation between constituted sovereign power, and the tyrant and the pirate, that sets under way the emergence of internationalism in early modernity. The enemy is the conceptual core of the nation; the common enemy, the rover, the pirate of the open sea, is the conceptual core of relations between nations; and the tyrant, the sovereign whose self-​interest supersedes the ‘national’ and the ‘international’ interest, whose self-​interest is inimical to both, is the conceptual core and limit case for the emerging theory of sovereignty. Although my argument broadly resembles Daniel Heller-​Roazen’s

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compelling and important discussion in The Enemy of All: Piracy and the Law of Nations (2009), my focus on the points of contact between piracy and the theatre, the register of theology, and the law, is more centred on the logic of law. More importantly, in my interpretation: the figure of the pirate serves to suture –​ephemerally and with grave consequences for conventional thought regarding the advent of ‘modernity’  –​the independent, even antagonistic, languages of law, logic, theology and the stage: the pirate provides the figure for the relation among these discursive domains. For Heller-​Roazen, [P]‌iracy brings about the confusion and, in the most extreme cases, the collapse of the distinction between criminal and political categories. Acting outside regions of ordinary jurisdiction and conceived as not opponents of one but as ‘enemies of all’, pirates cannot be considered common criminals, whose place may be defined in terms of a single civil code. But they also cannot be represented as lawful enemies, for by virtue of their enmity with respect to a general collectivity they fail to constitute an association with which there might be peace as well as war… piracy entails a transformation of the concept of war. (2009: 11)

Heller-​Roazen’s reading and mine are not exclusive of one another, since the figure of the pirate always works in diverse, disaggregated ways at different moments and in different cultural circumstances: it is a deeply, almost paradigmatically, overdetermined figure. (It might be argued, most forcefully, that the sense of overdetermination we now associate with the languages of psychoanalysis and political economy might with profit be traced to a genealogical precursor, this very same pirate. Sailing under many and varying colours, answering to many masters at once, threatening all values with interruption, capture and redirection, the pirate may be viewed as the historical precursor of the figure of overdetermination.) The form in which the first European, Mediterranean internationalism is built in the early modern period is a pirate tale, the story of how ‘common enmity’ is staged, and being staged, how it is shaped into a sovereign ‘common’ interest in regulating ‘common enmity’ (Carl Schmitt’s famous argument; Schmitt 2003). The scene in Barnardine’s cell involves the four lexicons noted above in building, staging, and shaping European internationalism. I discuss a fifth, the economic lexicon, elsewhere (Lezra 1989). On that point Crunelle-​ Vanrigh convincingly argues that Ragozine’s head becomes, like the money form in Marx, a sort of general equivalent: It is no accident that a pirate is instrumental in the play’s symbolic turn to money economy. Ragozine’s absence from the stage in all but name ensures that, like money, he represents all things, and not, as a character would, only himself. The appearance of the head, presumably in a bag (‘Here is the head’ [4.3.101]), confirms the monetary form of the exchange, fully justifying the coining imagery discussed above. It enables the shift from head as commodity to head as money form, the ‘measure’ programmatically inscribed in the play’s title. (2016: 87)

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This leaves four lexicons pertinent to my argument: Lexicon 1: The language of providential and human theology, as condensed into the paradoxical notion that ‘heaven provides’ accidents. Lexicon 2: The languages of the law and of the state –​the occasions for the play, for Barnardine’s prolonged incarceration, for the designation of Ragozine as a ‘notorious pirate’. The suspicion that Ragozine is something more than an inert instrument of state policy proves in some respects well-​founded. His name, like his head’s stage use, calls up the long history of the state’s uses of piracy, corsairs and so on: but it also calls up a line of reflection on the state-​form itself. Here our evidence is a curious publication from 1659, John Streater’s Government Described. Streater looks for models of the commonwealth, not to the more obvious, larger and more prosperous Venice, but to neighbouring Ragusa (now Dubrovnik, Croatia), ‘situated in Dalmatia, near the Bottom of the Addriatick or Gulph of Venice’. Streater exhorts the ‘Reader’ to: here take notice, That a Common-​wealth thus Constituted, though small, is able to preserve it self against the most powerful Princes; The Councels proportionably of such a Common-​wealth, are more strong and their Swords more sharp, then a Prince’s. This Common-​wealth or Free State maintaineth its self by its Just, Impartial Policy, in perfect Freedom and Strength, notwithstanding they border on the Tyrannicall Turk’s Dominions. (Streater 1659: 5)

What the ‘Just Impartial Policy’ is, that sustains the Ragusan state, becomes clear at the close of the little treatise: this often changing of Officers […] is the true Embleme of a Free-​State. The continuation of any persons, or Councels, or Senates, are but Defects; unless that the Senate were also to be elected, as well as the Great Councel, or Parliament; it is hard if the People cannot be trusted with Election. (1659: 8)

England’s ‘People’, Streater concludes, cannot yet be so trusted, and have not been –​ thus ‘England yet was never a Free-​State’. Ragusa must be England’s model; her legislators must ‘hit upon the Mark’ offered by the Ragusan state: ‘the Mark of denying themselves, in perpetuating their Power’ (1659: 8). A wholly different sense of the substitution plot in Shakespeare’s Ragusan play is quietly, covertly, on offer:  a ‘Free-​State’ is only truly free, in the Ragusan sense, when the head of one officer will do for another; that is, when the substitution of one office-​holder by another remits to the principle of popular election. Streater is writing in the shadow of the Civil War, when the call for substitution of office holders on this Ragusan principle would inevitably have reminded his readers of the fate of Charles I and the prerogatives sought by Parliament. Not yet explicit possibilities under the reign of James I, they are hazily adumbrated in Escalus’ prison. Lexicon 3: Here too the long lexicon of logic is evoked, but more properly surrounding the universality that appears solicited by the notion of the

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‘notorious’ pirate, as if the definition were common, universally recognised, and put the mere body of Ragozine, or some such accidental pirate, beyond the bounds of the human genus, outside the gates of the city. The modern concept of the universal  –​ a logical and ethical term as well as a political device –​is built around the notorious pirate’s instrumentalised head. Hostis humani generis or gentis, the pirate was called, the universal understood not only as that which a class of terms share (the immanent notion that binds them, human in this case, together in a sovereign cluster; their informing idea; the repraesentatio communis), but as what they exclude. These exclusions threaten to undefine or un-​civilise, to un-​norm, all classes. They show that what is inimical to classification broadly is the philo-​logical equivalent of the pirate: the term ‘genus’ itself. Lexicon 4: And finally, the jargon of the theatre, where trade in accidents is common trade, where anything becomes what can-​be-​provided. What is the piratical translation system on which these four lexicons are organised, in the period of early modernity? This relates to what it meant to be the eponymous Ragusan pirate  –​Ragozine  –​in Shakespeare’s time. The Dalmatian coast, including the Illyrian coast, home also to ‘Bargulus the strong Illyrian pirate’, as Suffolk puts it in Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI, is thus described in the 1582 English translation of Anglicus Bartholomaeus’ De proprietatibus rerum:2 Dalmacia a Prouince of Greece by olde departing of land, and hath that name of Delim, the greatest citie of that prouince. This prouince hath Macedonia in the East side, & Messia in the North, & Hystria in the West, & endeth at the Sea Adriaticum in the South, as Isi. saith li. 15. & Orosius saith the same: Men of that land be mightie & strong, & giue them to prayes, to robbing and stealing, & manye of them be Sea théeues. (Bartholomaeus 1582: 222v)

This is vivid, but it is not clear from these lines just what it means to be a sea thief, or to characterise someone in those terms, in 1582; or slightly later, when Shakespeare is composing his ‘pirate’ plays Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night and 2 Henry VI; or a generation later, when Sir Edward Coke codifies the British understanding of the pirate’s status, in his 1628 The Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England (Coke 1644); or in the crucial debates between Hugo Grotius’ 1633 Mare liberum and John Selden’s 1635 Mare clausum;3 or at the time that John Streater’s Government Described (1659) offers the principle of radical ‘election’ in the Ragusan free-​state as a model for England; or in Charles Molloy’s even later De jure maritimo et navali (1676). Surely it means different things. The importance of the Ragusan pirate to the imaginary Mediterranean of the sixteenth century as well as to the actual is quite clear, but what that figure may have meant at different times, and for different classes at a time,

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Figure 15  Frontispiece and title page, Charles Molloy, De jure maritimo et navali: or, A treatise of affaires maritime and of commerce (London, 1677). © The British Library Board (502.e.9).

is much harder to establish, given how complexly overdetermined this notion is. Instruments of national policy (to the extent to which it can be called ‘national’ at this time), pirates and privateers, whether along the Barbary coast, in the Atlantic and Caribbean, or in the Northern Adriatic (where the shipping routes linking Venice to the Mediterranean were subject to constant interruption), are liable to switch allegiances, fly mixed colours or none at all, turn against the power that employs them. Christopher Harding’s discussion of the legal status of pirates or ‘sea thieves’ in the early modern period, rightly stresses the flexibility of the ‘piratical identity’: It was in that earlier period possible for the pirate, as a particular individual, to shift in identity, both quickly and frequently:  from privateer to pirate (Drake); from merchant-​ adventurer to enemy of the State (Ralegh); from failed adventurers to national heroes (both Drake and Ralegh); from delinquent pirate to government official (Mainwaring); from pirate to celebrated explorer (Frobisher). (2007: 38)

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This ‘less stable and neatly defined’ identity (Harding 2007: 38), is differently ‘unstable’ when Cicero first refers to pirates as hostis humani gentis, ‘enemies of humanity’ or ‘of all nations’, than it is in Coke, in Grotius and Selden, in Shakespeare and Scarron. Charles Molloy defines the pirate thus in 1676: A Pyrat is a Sea Thief, or Hostis humani generis, who for to enrich himself, either by surprise or open force, sets upon Merchants and others trading by Sea, ever spoiling their lading, if by any possibility they can get the mastery, sometimes bereaving them of their lives, and sinking of their Ships; the actors wherein Tully calls Enemies to all, with whom neither Faith nor Oath is to be kept. (1676: 34)4

It seems superfluous to add that these piratical ‘actors’ suffer new determinations, and ‘shift in identity’ correspondingly, as various supranational doctrines and institutions emerge after 1800, including the Law of Nations, different codifications of international law or the Hague tribunal.5 Coke’s Institutes are no stranger to the problems that jurisprudence faces when the definition of parties, interests and causes is ‘unstable’. This is Coke on pirates: Where divers did in the reign of the late Queen Elizabeth commit Piracy and Robbery upon the high sea, of divers Merchants of Venice in amity with the said Queen, and after the Pirats, being not known, obtained a pardon, granted at the Coronation of King James, whereby the King pardoned them all felonies (inter alia)[:]‌First, that before this Statute Piracy or Robbery on the high sea was no felony, whereof the Common law took any knowledge, for that it could not be tried, being out of all towns and Counties, but was only punishable by the Civill Law […] Before the Statute of 25 E. 3. if a subject had committed Piracie upon another […] this was holden to be petit treason, for which he was to be drawne and hanged; because Pirata est hostis humani generis, and it was contra ligeanciæ suæ debitum:  but if an Alien, as one of the Normans who had revolted in the reigne of King John, had committed piracy upon a subject, this offence could be no treason, for though he were hostis humani generis, yet the crime was not contra ligeanciæ suæ debitum, because the offender was no subject, but since the Statute of 25 E. 3. this is no treason in the case of a subject. (Coke 1644: 112–​13)6

Coke’s intention is to explain the jurisprudential shift from considering the crime of piracy, as committed between British subjects, as being an instance of treason (an act against the allegiance due by a subject, not to the human race, but to the nation), to considering it a felony. One can understand the practical goal here, which was that an alien, such as a Norman, would have been subject to a less onerous prosecution than the subject of the same country. So on one hand, Coke’s explanation of the Statute of 25 Edward 3 serves to show how the universality of the crime makes it possible to view the pirate under a transnational lens, rather than as a matter of allegiances; but on the other hand, it establishes the functional independence of the laws regulating actions contra

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ligeanciæ suae debitum from those regulating actions contra humani generis. Coke draws the distinction without furnishing a full analysis of the difference between the modes of allegiance owed by, or proper to, the class of humans, the humani generis, and those owed by, or proper to, the human who is subject to socially agreed laws and allegiances, bios politike. The result –​as noted by Hobbes’ Philosopher, in A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England (of 1664, posthumously published in 1681) –​is a crime or a status liable to two different punishments, one under Common Law and one under civil law. It is a shocking example, the Philosopher says, of the ‘weakness’ of Coke’s argument throughout the Institutions: ‘not an argument worthy of the meanest lawyer’ (Hobbes 2005:  101). And indeed, the difference between these two forms of belonging to a class –​the genus of the human, the class of members of a civil society –​seems self-​evident, but it is crucially and notoriously elided in contemporaneous political philosophy and jurisprudence: arguably, the doctrine of natural law depends wholly upon this elision. One has no choice, it would seem, on the question of one’s belonging or not to the genus of humans, whereas one can at a minimum choose to serve one’s liege, or not; choose to obey the laws of the state, or not; commit an act of treason, or not: non serviam! To reason otherwise is to entertain the almost equally disturbing prospects of an elective humanity, and a generically necessary civil, political, and jurisprudential identity –​precisely the prospect offered by the strange figure of the pirate. Where Coke observes a prudential silence –​whether out of argumentative weakness, as Hobbes’ Philosopher claims, or out of anxiety at the costs of voicing the alternative he has found –​Molloy is clamorous. More attentive than Coke to the particulars of pirate history, Molloy grants that pirates may at the same time choose to disobey and remain, not just members of the human genus, but members of human ‘society’, ‘accounted lawful’, legally and diplomatically recognised by the ‘Laws of Nations’. Pyrats and Robbers that make not a Society, i.e. such a Society as the Laws of Nations accounts lawful, are not to have any succour by the Law of Nations. Tiberius, when Tacfarinas had sent Legates to him, he was displeased that both a Traytor and a Pyrat should use the manner of an Enemy, as Tacitus hath it; yet sometimes such Men (Faith being given them,) obtain the right of Legation as the Fugitives in the Pyrenean Forrest, and the Banditi at Naples, and Solyman the Magnificent, having entertained Barbarossa the famous Pyrat, sent word to the Venetians, that they should use him and esteem him no more as a Pyrat, but one of their own Port. (Molloy 1676: 36)

In Molloy’s account, ‘society’ steps in where Coke is silent, on the question of the asymmetric difference between ‘belonging’ to the class of humans, and ‘belonging’ to or being recognised as a member of a civil society. ‘Society’ for

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Molloy is a bridge term, that allows the question of allegiance to float between the generic (allegiance to the human), and the national, political or civil (societies understood here both in the corporative sense and in the anthropological sense: making societies is possible in this sense). An uncertain status of the ‘making of societies’, and the ‘right of legation’ seems to attend the exceptional ‘giving of faith’ to certain pirates. And clearly, Molloy does not speak of all pirates; and ‘making a society’ does not, on its face, seem to guarantee the ‘right of legation’. That right has to be sanctioned or ‘given’ by the monarch, hence the examples of the ‘magnificence’ of Suleiman, who is able to change Barbarossa’s status, and make him an intimate member of the class of Venetians –​no small matter for a republic that was nominally independent. Molloy’s text makes clear what is covert in Coke:  the pirate stands before two competing recognition systems still, the mechanical, inhuman ‘recognition’ function of the abstract ‘law of Nations’, and the exceptional power of the sovereign to recognise him, to ‘give him Faith’. Such is the case of the Ragusan state form, in the imaginary domain that Streater opened for his readers:  an ‘election’ that permits, indeed requires, the substitution and substitutability of all ‘officers’ in the commonwealth, as the condition for ‘liberty’; and the sovereignty of a ‘Just, Impartial Policy’ that regulates the principles of election and substitution (Streater 1659:  5). Moreover, the recognition that Molloy’s work uncomfortably discloses runs threateningly in both directions –​the ‘recognition’ of the ‘law of nations’ and of the sovereign, by the figure of the pirate, is necessary for there to be ‘nations’ and ‘sovereignty’. On this description, contractarianism is the form, the compensatory form, assumed by the ‘law of nations’, in the face of the twin threats of elective humanity and the generically necessary allegiance to civil ‘law’ or ‘policy’. Dramatic and juridical recognition Reconciling dramatic and juridical recognition is patently problematical. One solution presented itself in 1694 to the deist Matthew Tindal; almost a century after Coke, he reformulated, in the language of the law, the argument first sketched outside Barnardine’s ward. In An essay concerning the laws of nations, and the rights of soveraigns (1694), Tindal argues, as part of an attack on Jacobitism, that the notions of enmity and allegiance should be understood metaphorically rather than literally. Tindal takes as his example the ‘false Accounts’ of certain civilians (by which he means ‘interpreters of civil law’), who judge that subjects acting under a sovereign’s commission might, under the law of nations, be considered pirates. This passage in Tindal’s rather minor work is notable not only for the compression and symptomatic complication of its arguments, but also for its odd, minimal theatricality, which

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valuably illustrates my last claim, that the relays between the notions of sovereignty, the ‘national’ –​say, a ‘national law’ –​and the ‘international’ or the ‘law of nations’ –​pass through the concept of recognition, and that this concept is fundamentally theatrical. Or, as formulated by Tindal: The Occasion of sending for the Civilians, after some of them that were consulted had given their Opinions in Writing, was, as the Lords told Sir T. P. and Dr. Ol. (who had declared that they were not Pirates, without offering to shew the least Reason why they were of that Mind) to hear what Reason they had to offer for their Opinion. Then Sir T.P. said, It was impossible they should be Pirates, for a Pirate was hostis humani generis, but they were not Enemies to all Mankind, therefore they could not be Pirates: Upon which all smiled, and one of the Lords asked him, Whether there ever was any such thing as a Pirate, if none could be a Pirate but he that was actually in War with all Mankind: To which he did not reply, but only repeated what he had said before. Hostis humani generis, is neither a Definition, or as much as a Description of a Pirat, but a Rhetorical Invective to shew the Odiousness of that Crime. As a Man, who, tho he receives Protection from a Government, and has sworn to be true to it, yet acts against it as much as he dares, may be said to be an Enemy to all Governments, because he destroyeth, as far as in him lieth, all Government and all Order, by breaking all those Ties and Bonds that unite People in a Civil Society under any Government: So a Man that breaks the common Rules of Honesty and Justice, which are essential to the well-​being of Mankind, by robbing but one Nation, may justly be termed hostis humani generis; and that Nation has the same right to punish him, as if he had actually robbed all Nations. (Tindal 1694: 25–​6)7

Tindal’s controversial finding in this case may be seen as the outcome of the complex position outlined in Coke, picking up on the divided authority to recognise the ‘society’ of the pirate, but also translating that argument and the uncertainties it entails into a different register. Coke’s exposition served to subordinate the commission of the king, or the notion of allegiance, to a tacit understanding that laws apply to subjects much as humans are members of the class of humans –​with the attendant uncertainties that Molloy rashly, but more precisely, opens, concerning the ‘social’ status of humans. Tindal, however, outlines how a single nation may appeal to the more general case, to the notion of the human –​which is to say that the relation between national allegiance and human genus is now established in law. This relation is presented obliquely, as a description, even as a stage direction. Forensic logic was not held to standards quite so high as those of the School, but the sort of argument the ‘civilians’ make is classic:  ‘It was impossible they should be Pirates, for a Pirate was hostis humani generis, but they were not Enemies to all Mankind, therefore they could not be Pirates’ (Tindal 1694:  25). Here ‘all Mankind’  –​understood extensively, enumeratively –​carries the weight of the argument: a single exception will do as a counterargument. For instance, if a defendant maintained that by

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defending himself he demonstrated that he was not his own enemy, hence that he was not enemies with at least one member of the class of humans. Or a fortiori, if a defendant maintained that ‘enmity’, like ‘friendship’, follows upon acquaintance, and that, being unacquainted with some of ‘all Mankind’, there were members humani generis to whom he was not an enemy. Or if he maintained, with Molloy, that: Though Pyrats are called enemies, yet are they not properly so termed: For he is an enemy, saies Cicero, who hath a Common-​wealth, a Court, a Treasury, consent and concord of Citizens, and some way, if occasion be of Peace and League; and therefore a Company of Pyrats or Freebooters are not a Common-​wealth. (1676: 35)

The rejoinder to this sort of extensive understanding of the genus of ‘all Mankind’, of the relation between individuals and the genus, and of whether ‘enmity’ can be said to characterise that relation, is presented behind the ‘smiling’ term ‘actual’ –​for Tindal’s ‘lords’ have detected an error of argument in the ‘civilians’’ reasoning, as easily dismissed therefore as that of their proximate ancestor (at least as far as the putative ‘weakness’ of their arguments), Hobbes’ Student of the Common Laws. (There is a not inconsiderable class drama played out on this stage, the ‘civilians’ arguing before the Lords, civil law closer, evidently, to the informal and faulty logical practices of the classroom than to the rigors of the appellate court.) For it is not necessary that any given pirate ‘actually’ be enemies with every human individual, with every member of the gens of humans, since all pirates, qua pirates, are enemies of the genus itself –​they hold views or exercise actions that are inimical to the genus, not the individual, except inasmuch as the individual is a member of the class. Cats hate dogs: this does not mean that every cat actually hates every dog. Any pirate may be friends with any, or some, or indeed with all, members of the human genus –​this does not detract from the definitional condition: a pirate, inasmuch as he is a pirate, is an enemy of the human gens, whether each and every member of that gens knows it, or recognises it, or not. Indeed, the logical condition requires that the pirate is hostis humani generis even when no humans recognise that ‘enmity’; when the ‘recognition’ of the inimical relation between pirate and humans is as inhuman as the ‘accounting lawful’ of ‘piratical society’ by the ‘Laws of Nations’ found in Molloy. This last, most forceful formulation suggests that a further register makes its presence felt here, as it does pressingly in Barnardine’s ward. Hostis humani generis or gentis is not only the name of the universal enemy of the modern sovereign, or of the modern subject, the modern human-​as-​ subject. It is also, as John Speed remarked in connection with the notorious emperor Commodus, ‘The very name of the diuell’ (Speed 1611: 225) –​ the concept organising the terms, descriptions, designations, nomen diaboli and diabolorum nomina: ‘Satanas, diabolus, serpens antiquus, draco magnus, draco rufus habens capita septem, et cornua decem’, as Johann Driedo puts it in De

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captiuitate & redemptione humani generis (Driedonis 1534: 20). The smilingly dismissed mistake, then, is hardly trivial. Parsed, the rejoinder suggests that the predicate of hostis humani generis is not, as the ‘civilians’ claim, restrictive. Every individual pirate is hostis humani generis, not because of any individual enmity he might feel or display, but inasmuch as he belongs to the genus of pirates –​hence the argument that an individual might not feel himself to be an enemy of all humanity, or indeed know all of humanity, and still by his actions be determined to be hostis humani generis. The matter of the distribution of a predicate from the genus to its members –​ from the human to individuals, for instance pirates; or from the class of pirates to individuals within that class  –​was most often, in Renaissance logic, still founded in a late-​medieval rereading of Aristotle’s dictum de omni et nullo, which achieved currency in particular through Boethius’ interpretation of Porphyry’s Isagoge (Patterson 1995).8 The problem lies in how the status of the genus is understood –​whether as an attribute of existing individuals (the existence of the genus is secondary to the existence of the individuals in the class), or as a prior concept (an explicitly Platonic logic follows, locating the existence of prior concepts or prior universals in a super-​sensible domain). The solution that Boethius offers works by introducing a distinction between the actual mode of subsistence or existence of genera, and their mode of existence in our understanding: genera and species subsist in one way, but are understood in another. They are incorporeal, but subsist in sensibles, joined to sensibles. They are understood, however, as subsisting by themselves, and as not having their being in others. (Boethius 1994: 25)9

The murkiness of this solution (an incorporeal form of subsistence within sensible bodies, understood, however, as a subsistence independent of those same bodies) is the source of its great influence in early modern logic and its companion disciplines of theology, natural philosophy, and as here, jurisprudence. It is also plainly unsatisfactory to the principals in Tindal’s account, who, confused, are caught between merely repeating their assertion of the restrictive interpretation of the logic of genus –​this is what Sir T.P. and Dr Ol., the ‘civilians’, do  –​and merely obliquely asserting the non-​restrictive understanding of that logic. The little drama that Tindal stages for his readers can in fact go nowhere without a second sort of argument  –​the argument that the overdetermined modifier, name or predicate hostis humani generis is not a ‘Definition, or as much as a Description of a Pirat, but a Rhetorical Invective’ (1694: 26). Tindal’s ‘rhetorical’ argument now takes the form of an extended analogy –​the expression hostis humani generis is now part of the reservoir of rhetorical invective, used to characterise, but not define, a crime and a criminal. An argument that purported to classify individuals in relation to

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a subsisting class, whether pre-​existing or attributive, becomes like the substitution of a figurative term (enmity) in the place of a literal one (the special enmity that requires intention, and a view of the totality of mankind). No conclusions follow concerning the ‘subsistence’ of individuals or genera, or their relation. Furthermore, the legal argument for the universality of the crime of piracy has been wrested from the domain of ‘Definition’ –​not only because the purported ‘enmity’ of the pirate for humanity has a weak, or rather an intolerably strong, logical status, but also, and more importantly, because the genus of the human reveals itself, under the pirate’s touch, equally weak. A number of fi ­ gures –​influential, garish, outlandish –​occupy a similarly paradoxical position, and serve the same function of derogating the law and logic of the human. The travelling theatre, the animal, the Native American ‘Indian’, the exile: all these Mandevillian characters are dramatically at odds with the classificatory schemes on which the genus of the human turned. They are and are not human; a statement about such figures both may and may not be taken to characterise the genus; such statements will be both true and false, or true about a manifest fiction, but false about what that fiction claims to represent. But of the ephemeral early modern figures that serve to derogate the logic and law of the human, only the early modern, Mediterranean, specifically Ragusan pirate’s conceptual and juridical instability is of a piece with the de-​generacy of his imaginary, economic, theological, and political functions. That this ‘being of a piece’ can be attributed neither to accident nor to providence alone, but always and undecidably to both, incompatible though they are, is what makes the pirate’s accidental appearance in Barnardine’s ward ‘not accident, but trade’, the trade of the theatre, where all appearing suspends the audience’s ability to decide on its status –​accident? provision? This suspension is what makes the play the thing. It is also what makes the audience at any play recognisable and unrecognisable to itself as audience; what makes each spectator recognisable and unrecognisable to him or herself as a member of the class ‘audience’; what might make each inhabitant of one or another land recognise him or herself as an ‘English’, or a ‘Spanish’, or a ‘French’ subject –​ and fail to do so; and extensively what makes any human animal recognisable and unrecognisable to itself as humani generis. Theatre’s piracy steps on stage in Measure for Measure as the general equivalent, the token of exchange, the defective logical form, in short as the untranslating-​ machine about which the discursive register of the early modern state form momentarily takes shape.10 Notes 1 Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at ‘Reasons of State:  Security, Civility, Immunity, Life’, a conference at the Institute for International Law and

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the Humanities, University of Melbourne Law School (Melbourne, 2009); and at TWB. All translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated. Measure for Measure is cited from David Bevington’s edition (Shakespeare 2013). I would like to acknowledge the labour and patience the volume editors invested in bringing the rather piratical chapter I offered into conformity with the editorial requirements of the Press. 2 William Shakespeare, The Second Part of Henry the Sixth, 4.1.106–​8. This probably recalls Cicero, De Officiis, ii. 40:  ‘Bargulus, Illyrius latro, de quo est apud Theopompum magnas opes habuit.’ Cicero himself here recalls Theopompus, whose story concerning Bargulus exists only in such fragments, smuggled into the canon on Latin shoulders. Cicero, De Officiis:  ‘Why, they say that robbers even have a code of laws to observe and obey. And so, because of his impartial division of booty, Bardulis, the Illyrian bandit, of whom we read in Theopompus, acquired great power, Viriathus, of Lusitania, much greater. He actually defied even our armies and generals. But Gaius Laelius –​the one surnamed ‘the Wise’ –​in his praetorship crushed his power, reduced him to terms, and so checked his intrepid daring, that he left to his successors an easy conquest. Since, therefore, the efficacy of justice is so great that it strengthens and augments the power even of robbers, how great do we think its power will be in a constitutional government with its laws and courts?’ (Cicero 1913: 209). On Shakespeare’s sources, see Puljcan Juric (2011: 233); and on Bargulus, Matei-​Chesnoiu (2009: 116–​17). 3 ‘[A]‌lthough the Roman people were able to maintain fleets for the protection of navigation and to punish pirates captured on the sea, it was not done by private right, but by the common right which other free peoples also enjoy on the sea. We recognize, however, that certain peoples have agreed that pirates captured in this or that part of the sea should come under the jurisdiction of this state or of that, and further that certain convenient limits of distinct jurisdiction have been apportioned on the sea. Now, this agreement does bind those who are parties to it, but it has no binding force on other nations, nor does it make the delimited area of the sea a private property of any one. It merely constitutes a personal right between contracting parties’ (Hugo Grotius, Mare liberum, cited in Scott 1939:  II, 274)  On Grotius’ point, see Kempe (2009: esp. 387–​8). 4 Compare the less dispassionate phrasing in the contemporaneous pamphlet News from sea: ‘Amongst all the rapacious violencies practised by wicked Men, there is scarce any more destructive to Society and Commerce then that of Piracy, or Robers of the Sea, whence in all Ages they have been esteemed, Humani Generis hostes, Publique Enemies to Mankind whom every one was obliged to oppose and destroy, as we do Common vermine that Infest and trouble us’ (News from Sea 1674: 2). 5 The matter of the pirate’s legal standing, long a semi-​dormant part of the arcana of legal studies, acquired new currency during the Eichmann trials, and again after 11 September 2001, when the so-​called War on Terror took as one of its legal bases the classification of terrorists as pirates, on the grounds that both are hostis humani gentis (Burgess 2005a). A less technical, more polemical version of Burgess’ essay calls for: ‘a framework for an international crime of terrorism. … a tool to cut the Gordian knot of definition that has hampered antiterrorist legislation for 40 years. In the long term, and far more important, it provides the parameters by which to

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understand this current and intense conflict and the means within which it may one day be resolved. That resolution will begin with the recognition among nations that terrorism is a threat to all states and to all persons, the same recognition given to piracy in 1856. Terrorists, like pirates, must be given their proper status in law: hostis humani generis, enemies of the human race’ (Burgess 2005b). Recently, the classification of hostis humani generis has also been applied to torturers –​hence too, certain of the US’s preferred devices for prosecuting the war on one class of hostes humani generis tends to render legitimate another. The case is Filártiga vs. Peña-​Irala. 6 Cited from the first edition. Coke’s gloss on 25 E 3 becomes especially important in the context of the ‘Petition of Right’ he helped draft. Signed in June of 1628 by Charles I, this reasserted the Chartist principles and later gloss on treason provided by 25 E 3 (Petition, vii). In the United States, the classic legal statement on the status of pirates is US vs. SMITH, 18 U.S. 153 (1820): ‘[T]‌here is no defect in the definition of piracy by the authorities to which we are referred by this act. The definition given by them is certain, consistent, and unanimous; and pirates being hostes humani generis, are punishable in the tribunals of all nations. All nations are engaged in a league against them for the mutual defence and safety of all. This renders it the more fit and proper that there should be a uniform rule as to the definition of the crime, which can only be drawn from the law of nations, as the only code universally known and recognised by the people of all countries.’ 7 Tindal’s essay was published twice in 1694. (The quotations are cited from the first edition.) The matter of competing sovereignties is firmly established in this Essay: ‘THE Malice of the Jacobites is so restless, that it omits no Opportunity to raise Stories, though never so false and improbable; scruples at no Means, tho never so Base and Dishonourable, to reflect upon and expose the Government. What have they not said against it, for designing to try as Pirates those who accepted Commissions from the late King, to take the Ships and Goods of Their Majesties Liege Subjects? So strangely afraid are they, that People should be discouraged from disturbing the Trade and Commerce of the Nation. And to make what they report the more colourable, and the injustice of trying them (contrary, as they say, to the known Laws of Nations) apparent, they have every where dispersed false Accounts of what was said by those Civilians, who, when consulted by the Privy Council upon this Question, Whether Their Majesties Subjects taken at Sea, acting by the late King’s Commission, might not be looked on as Pirates? were of Opinion, that by the Laws of Nations they ought to be so’ (Tindal 1694: 2). 8 Dictum de omni et nullo is routinely ascribed to Aristotle at Prior Analytics I.1.8 and 24.b, although the passages are obscure. On the medieval treatment of the problem of universals, see Spade (1985, 1994), De Libéra (1996, 2009) and Shank (1988). 9 Compare Boethius, De Divisione liber 880a:  ‘genus est quod de pluribus specie differentibus in eo quod quid sit praedicatur’, in Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii (Boethius 1998: 14–​17; A genus is that which is predicated of a number of specifically different things in respect of what it is). 10 For a fuller account of what ‘untranslation’ means in and for the period, see Untranslating Machines: A Genealogy for the Ends of Global Thought (Lezra 2017).

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These chapters, which explore early modern theatre and performance transnationally, emerge from the research collective Theater Without Borders (TWB). The group formally established itself in 2005 and 2006 conferences at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, but had had its origins in a series of seminars at American Comparative Literature Association annual meetings from 1999 to 2004, beginning with a group run by Susanne Wofford and Jane Tylus at the 1999 ACLA meeting in Montreal. By this time, Comparative Literature had embraced both the necessity and importance of translation; in keeping with the fundamental multilinguality of the field, TWB has always been committed to studying Italian, French, Spanish, Dutch, Czech and German early modern theatrical texts in the original. Indeed, we pride ourselves on melding complex literary analysis and the carriage of the original language (almost jettisoned now in the field of Theatre Studies) with theatre history, performance studies, cultural studies and critical theory. To the ‘traditional’ practice of original language study we also embrace translation from its strictest to its widest senses, and the theoretical reflections on translation and cultural transformation that have marked Comparative Literature as a field since the early 1990s. TWB work on translation figures in the chapters by Barbara Fuchs, Nigel Smith and Jacques Lezra in this volume, and chapters by Lezra, Alessandro Serpieri, and David Schalkwyk in our second volume, Transnational Mobilities in Early Modern Theater (Henke and Nicholson 2014). But if, as Emily Apter (2006) argues, something happened in Istanbul during the 1930s to forge the modern Comparative Literature of diaspora, exile and translatio, something also happened to our group as we met, two years consecutively, at that international crossroads. Fruitful exchanges with Turkish scholars and poets, facilitated by TWB co-​chair Pamela Allen Brown and graciously made possible by our hosts Cliff and Selhan Endres at Kadir Has University, as well as a wonderful production of Karagöz (Turkish shadow puppet theatre), gave us a greater sense of how our group could be international not only in what we studied, but in how we functioned. Our first volume, Transnational Exchange in Early Modern Theater (Henke and Nicholson 2008), drew from many of the presentations at the Istanbul conferences. Consecutive

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conferences in the Czech Republic, in which one of the present editors, Pavel Drábek, played a central role, followed in 2007 (Prague) and 2008 (Telč). These meetings, as well as a 2009 conference at the New  York University campus in Florence, Italy, provided the impetus for many of the chapters in our second volume, Transnational Mobilities in Early Modern Theater (Henke and Nicholson 2014). Since then we have met in Venice (2010), Madrid (2011), Wolfenbüttel (2012: this workshop, organised by one of the present editors, M. A. Katritzky, is foundational to the present volume), New York City (2013), New Delhi (2014), Oxford (2014), Paris (2015 and 2016), Cologne (2017), Hull (2018) and Middletown, Connecticut (2019). In each of our venues, we have invited local scholars working on early modern theatre comparatively and, in doing so, acquired ongoing members. We have consolidated substantial interactions with three European groups also studying early modern theatre transnationally: the EuroDrama group of Czech scholars led by Pavel Drábek, the DramaNet group headed by Joachim Küpper at the Freie Universität in Berlin, and the international Haine du Théâtre (Hatred of the Theatre) collective led by François Lecercle and Clotilde Thouret of the University of the Sorbonne, which examines attacks on, and defences of, theatre across England, Spain, Italy and France. Since nine of the eleven chapters in A Cultural History of Theatre in the Early Modern Age (Henke 2017) are written by TWB authors and since the book, one of a six-​volume set, is committed to the transnational approach, we consider this one of the group’s contributions as well. The guiding idea of Theater Without Borders is that early modern theatre was a fluid and dynamic international system, characterised by the historically increasing circulation of theatrical items and ideas across geo-​linguistic boundaries, and as such cannot be fully understood from national confines alone. This is an idea that few disagree with and that, by dint of institutional inertia and entrenched research habits of mind, few practise. We convene scholars from different places and specialties in order to make, and research, transnational connections that are bigger than the sum of their parts. Whether we are looking at a playwright, a play, a theatrical tradition, a genre or a performance fragment, we distrust claims for national purity, and incline to explore mixed and ‘impure’ plays and traditions. As the chapters of Noémie Ndiaye, Susanne Wofford, and Barbara Fuchs in this volume show, the mixing of national strains or traditions often also reflects a mixing or questioning of social and political hierarchy, in the character structures of the plays themselves. In this volume, M.  A. Katritzky reveals a dazzling mélange of English, Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian elements in a court festival at The Hague in 1638 and focuses closely on its final tournament entry; Katritzky’s chapter for Transnational Exchange explores the nationally mixed marriages (usually English actors and German wives) of the travelling English troupes (Katritzky 2008). Here, further developing ideas explored in

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his contribution to A Cultural History of Theatre (Drábek 2017), Pavel Drábek studies the ‘peeces and patches’ of plays performed on the continent, and the thoroughly composite nature of what is called ‘English Comedy’ (which often involved German actors performing German plays in the ‘English’ style). Early modern theatre was a quintessentially combinatory art:  Renaissance playwrights, actors, designers and technicians were keen to mix, combine and reshuffle the various mobile parts of theatre if it could sell a script or a show. We favour Louise George Clubb’s notion (1989), suggested by structuralism, of the ‘theatergram’: a transferable and combinable piece of theatre-​making such as a stage role, character structure, action, plot piece, topos, place, place–​ character relation (scene–​agent ratio in Kenneth Burke’s terms; Burke 1945), gag, joke and so forth. Melissa Walter, in each of our previous volumes, deftly expanded the theatergram to the idea of the ‘novellagrams’ that circulated among the Italian, French, Spanish and English short story collections that were so often ransacked by Renaissance playwrights (Walter 2008, 2014). Actors, we believe, could be as important as playwrights in transferring and reshaping theatergrams across rivers, seas and states, and we pay considerable attention to travelling troupes from different traditions: the ‘Italian’ (always already hybrid) commedia dell’arte; the Englische Comedie; and Spanish, French, German and Dutch travelling players. If actors absorbed and recombined theatre, but on a much smaller modular level than the presumably ‘integral’ playtext, the entire notion of ‘source’ becomes open to question, as explored by Richard Andrews in his study of Shakespeare and the commedia dell’arte in Transnational Mobilities (Andrews 2014). Examining, in Chapter 7 of the present volume, the impure mixtures of secular mythology, popular tradition, religious doctrine and heretical ‘enchantment’ performed by English players travelling on the continent, Pavel Drábek considers a figure such as Will Kempe (who travelled to Northern Europe, Germany and Italy), not as an ‘author’ but as the collector of the ‘voices of others’. Stage improvisers like Kempe and the actor-​ authors of the commedia dell’arte put humanism on its feet, so to speak. The pan-​European network of humanism itself, with its Erasmian system of commonplaces and its penchant for creating the ‘oral effect’ in writing by such techniques as copiousness, was blithely and opportunistically exploited by the travelling actors. If humanism is a deep source, then Italy and Italian drama play a particularly important role in our inquiries, but as the West/​ North/​South sectioning of this collection implies, we do not work in strictly binary patterns (e.g. Italy and England): we are interested in the dissemination of theatergrams throughout all points of the compass (on the travels of the commedia dell’arte in all directions, see Henke 2008). The nationally impure mixtures of Renaissance theatre can be extended to the material level, as Natasha Korda does in Chapter 1 of this volume when she explores

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German and French shoemaking practices and styles that invade, willy nilly, Simon Eyre’s olde English shoppe. As well as complicating the notion of the source, the theatergram also complicates authorial intention, as the chapters of Susanne Wofford and Noémie Ndiaye in this volume demonstrate. For Wofford, the theatergram, employed by Shakespeare and Lope de Vega, of the high-​status female who gets her male servant to write a love letter to none other than himself, vexes social hierarchy whatever the professed social ideology of the playwright himself: the impersonal (structural) theatergram does the work. In Ndiaye’s chapter, the theatergram of the disguised African ambassador, carried between Spain and France, can subvert the racial ideology of the playwright and the theatrical context in which he works, by simply staging racial hybridity. Generally, with several theatre practitioners in our group, we pay keen attention to theatrical performance, both in the early modern period and, as with Barbara Fuchs’ Chapter 3, in the contemporary context. Our first book countered the old postcolonial model of one-​sided cultural hegemony by taking trade and commerce (not always reciprocal and equal, to be sure) as constituent models for transnational theatrical exchange (Henke and Nicholson 2008). Christian Billing’s chapter in that volume argued that Dutch immigrants played a crucially productive role in the London economy, and that this activity was reflected by complex representations  –​symbolic exchanges, if you will  –​of the Dutch in English comedy, rather than simplistic castings of them as bibulous fools (Billing 2008). In the present volume, Nigel Smith (Chapter 5) similarly argues that religious exiles resettled in the Low Countries vitally participated in Dutch economic life –​a fact that also generated representational complexity. As Erith Jaffe-​Berg here demonstrates, in her consideration of exchanges between ghettoised Jews and both Mantuan and Venetian citizens (Chapter  11), performance itself was usually an economic exchange that in turn effected considerable cultural exchange as well. We explored, in our first volume (Henke and Nicholson 2008), how theatrical exchange could follow closely upon expanding, circum-​Mediterranean trade:  as London expanded its reach in Ottoman Turkey and the Levant, London itself became home to more and more Arabs, Ragusans (see Lezra’s Chapter 12 in the present volume) and Turks, which in turn became reflected in its theatre. Venice was the crucible of the commedia dell’arte –​that purveyor of theatergrams par excellence, largely because it was an international entrepôt. The famous polydialectal theatre of Venice and the early, pan-​Italian commedia dell’arte that originated in the Veneto in the mid-​sixteenth century, matched the economic and cultural exchanges of La Serenissima with linguistic exchanges characteristic of Mikhail Bakhtin’s ‘heteroglossia’. The model of trade, rather than conquest per se, tilted us towards examining reciprocal, dialogic, and elastic exchanges and representations of the foreign other

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in that first collection. In ‘Foreign Emotions on the Stage of Twelfth Night’, Susanne Wofford in our first volume argues that the staged foreign other can allow the theatregoer access to ‘foreign’ emotions that can be claimed as one’s own, much like Stanislavskian actors access emotions in the fictional other of the characters they play (Wofford 2008). In the present collection as well, we stress the complex rendering of the other versus simple stereotyping, as Eric Nicholson does in his chapter on Italian theatrical representations of Germans and the English. Of course, it will not do to dismiss the idea of cultural hegemony and domination when looking at transnational exchange. So Barbara Fuchs examines the global dominance of the English theatrical tradition in the contemporary world, and mistranslations of Spanish classics based on English stereotypes of the Spanish. Even more pervasively than Transnational Exchange, the present volume explores the paradoxes of cultural exchange. If it is a truism that border-​ crossing cannot exist without borders, it is also true that cultural exchange usually arises from forms of segregation and separation. In Chapter 11, Erith Jaffe-​Berg shows how the ghettoisation of the Jews in Mantua and Venice was itself the very condition for exchange, as Jews emerge from their inter-​ urban borders to perform in Mantuan and Venetian courts and houses. For Friedemann Kreuder, the very consolidation of the new bourgeois acting aesthetic in eighteenth-​century Germany, with its emerging sense of the integral, distinct, auto-​fashioned self, seemed reactively to resurrect a non-​mimetic, virtuosic, protean sense of the self that was still available from the transnational acting traditions of the commedia dell’arte and the Englische Comedie. In fact, as Eric Nicholson here argues, the Italians were certainly capable of stereotyping as well as nuancing the Germans and the English. Migration, hybridity, and cosmopolitanism are the overwhelming facts of the early modern Amsterdam explored by Nigel Smith in this volume, but we shouldn’t romanticise this. Gerbrand Adriaenszoon Bredero (1585–​1618), the Dutch playwright explored by Smith in Chapter 5, paradoxically defends vernacular linguistic purity. Border-​erection and border-​crossing occur at the same time. This was a paradox that we also explored in our second volume (Henke and Nicholson 2014). Mobility studies, suggests Stephen Greenblatt (Greenblatt et al. 2010), cannot blithely celebrate ‘border-​crossing’ in an era of entrenched nationalism and regionalism: our understanding of mobility is italicised by an historical and contemporary understanding of the resistance to international mobility, which is being manifested all too clearly in the Brexit and Trump era. The very mobility of performing Jews in Venice and Mantua, as Erith Jaffe-​Berg shows in the present volume, emerged from their separation and confinement in the Ghetto. Studies of mobility can do well to examine different kinds of transnational connections, characterised by the relative ease and speed with which they

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enable border crossing. The ‘supranational’ connections formed by transnational marriage alliances, explored in this volume in M. A. Katritzky’s chapter on court festival at The Hague, and above all in Janie Cole’s chapter on Maria de’ Medici, seem to enable theatrical mobility with the greatest efficiency –​except when these dynastic relationships break down. Maria de’ Medici, demonstrates Cole in Chapter 10, carried an entire consort of Italian performers to Paris in her wake: she represents a powerful ‘contact zone’ of cultural exchange between Florence and Paris. Royal patrons brought commedia dell’arte actors across the Alps from Italy to France, and Englische Comedie across the Channel. Specially favoured performers, such as the Caccini family beloved by Maria de’ Medici, probably travelled better than the commedia dell’arte actors, whose letters reveal the resistance to mobility that could be posed by muddy roads and surly customs officials. And so the physical networks of travel in the Mediterranean world, whether traversing sea or land, present themselves as objects of study. The chapters of Korda, Smith and Jaffe-​Berg in this volume concentrate on emerging bourgeois connections of commerce and economic activity that can both free mobility and hold it back. The shoemaker’s shop explored by Natasha Korda alternatively represents English protectionism and despite itself, international commerce. Nigel Smith’s Amsterdam, a hotbed of early capitalist activity, can function as an international entrepôt and a signpost of what is ‘Dutch’. One of the most important new early modern industries was, of course, the printing business, and humanist print networks (think Erasmus) in addition to manuscript networks (most importantly, letters) increasingly disseminated non-​material as well as material ideas about theatre across boundaries. The explosion of dramatic theory in 1540s Italy is unthinkable without print: the eighteenth-​century German dramatic culture explored by Friedemann Kreuder, against which the old tradition of non-​mimetic acting asserts itself as its dialogic antagonist, can be seen as the terminus ad quem of early modern dramatic theory. Nor does this volume ignore shadier kinds of connections and mobility: the human trafficking of slaves begun by Portugal that provides the underside of Noémie Ndiaye’s chapter; the figure of the pirate (to whom the commedia dell’arte actor has been compared) who is the merchant become ‘hostis humani gentis’, as Jacques Lezra’s chapter explores. All in all, this wide-​ranging selection of the latest work by the Theater Without Borders group significantly advances our ongoing discussion of early modern theatre and performance as a rich transnational phenomenon.

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OED: Oxford English Dictionary EEBO: Early English Books Online

Archives CHATSWORTH, Devonshire Collection Inigo Jones drawings O&S DIJON, Archives de la Ville de Dijon I.134 FLORENCE, Archivio di Stato, Mediceo del Principato, Florence (ASF:MdP) ASF:MdP 4732 HAMBURG, Stiftung Historische Museen Hamburg, Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte Inv.-​Nr. 1928,509 LEIDEN, University Library 1372 C 5 MANTUA, Archivio della communità Ebraica a Mantova (ADCEM). Jewish Community Archives. (Online at:  digiebraico.bibliotecateresiana.it and the original documents re-​housed in the Jewish community above the community synagogue). ADCEM Filza 1 Cartella 43 MANTUA, Archivio di Stato di Mantova, Archivio Gonzaga (ASMn:AG). Some documents are available in abbreviated form in the online collection of Archivio HERLA, on the website of Mantova Capitale Europea dello Spettacolo: www.capitalespettacolo.it) ASMn:AG 38 ASMn:AG 40 c.22 (HERLA C-​3201) ASMn:AG 667 ASMn:AG 1065 fasc.V c.58 (HERLA C-​6797) ASMn:AG 1077 cc.526–​527 (HERLA C-​6786) ASMn:AG 1497 fasc.I cc. 188–​9 (HERLA C-​4976) ASMn:AG 2254 (HERLA C-​551, C-​552, C-​554, C-​555) ASMn:AG 2409 c.757 (HERLA C-​1) ASMn:AG 2506 ASMn:AG 2688 fasc.I doc.6, fasc.II doc.6 (HERLA C-​2306, C-​2307)

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Index

Note: page numbers in italic refer to illustrations Aboab, Rabbi Samuel (Shmuel) 228–​31, 236, 240

Accesi (company) 200–​1

acrobats 116, 141, 226, 237

adaptation of plays 11–​12, 16, 39, 43–​4, 59, 71,

Andreini, Giambattista (‘Lelio’) 127–​9, 196, 200 Florinda 196

Maddalena 200

Andreini, Isabella 127–​9, 175, 200 La pazzia d’Isabella 171–​2

73, 80–​1, 93, 107, 111, 122, 135, 140,

Andrews, Richard 214, 262

199, 202, 260

Antwerp 2, 89, 93, 96, 100–​8 passim

144–​6, 157, 176, 183, 187–​8, 191–​2,

Alcestis 157–​8

Armida 16

antimasque see masque

appropriation see adaptation of plays Ariosto, Ludovico 235

Cardenio 9–​10, 58–​61, 65–​70, 71

Aristotle 2, 5–​6, 191, 242, 243, 256, 259

Nobody and Somebody (Iemant en Niemant,

Astraea 14, 198, 203–​4, 207–​14 passim

Faustus 143, 146, 148–​9, 155

Niemand und Jemand, Van Sinte Niemand) 143, 159

Romeo and Juliet (Castelvines y Monteses, Los bandos de Verona, Romio und Julieta) 159, 161

Spaanschen Brabander (Spanish Brabanter) 91–​101 passim

St Dorothea (The Virgin Martyr) 143, 145–​7, 155, 158

Álamo, Antonio 9, 59, 70

Alfieri, Giovanni Paolo (stage names: Bragato, Braguette; Zan Bragetta) 12, 115, 127–​9, 128, 131, 137

Amsterdam 10–​11, 17–​18, 89–​113, 124, 264, 265

Andreini, Francesco 200

Armstrong Roche, Michael 54, 56

audience 2–​3, 5, 14, 23, 26, 28–​9, 32–​3, 37–​8,

40–​53 passim, 57, 69, 77–​8, 82–​5, 94,

99, 104, 114, 116–​17, 122, 124, 126, 129, 131, 139–​55 passim, 151, 155,

160–​5 passim, 171–​4 passim, 183, 195,

206–​7, 211, 215, 225, 231–​6 passim, 244, 257, 264

autos sacramentales 73, 82 ballet 6, 14, 18, 74, 77, 82–​3, 85, 115–​20 passim, 130, 135, 197–​221, 239

L’accouchement de la foire Saint-​Germain 116

Ballet de la marine (Colletet) 85 Ballet de la Paix 130

Ballet de la Reyne d’Angleterre 212–​13

 299

Index

299

Ballet de la Royne (Le ballet de Diane et ses

Branagh, Kenneth 70

Ballet de Madame, soeur aisnée du roi 198,

Bredero, G. A. (Gerbrand Adriaenszoon) 8, 11,

nymphes) 14, 198, 204–​5, 214

209–​10, 215

Ballet des Alchimistes 116–​17

Ballet des empiriques venus d’étrange païs 116

Ballet des Seize Dames représentans les vertus

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dont la Royne éstoit l’une 204

Ballet des Souffleurs d’Alchimie 116

Ballet du naufrage heureux (Claude de l’Estoile) 85

Ballet du Procureur 116

Brecht, Bertolt 139

91–​4, 108, 114, 137, 264

Klucht van de Koe 104–​5

Klucht van den Hoogduytschen Quacksalver 114

Moortje (The Little Moor) 107–​8

Spaanschen (Spaanse) Brabander (The Spanish Brabanter) 11, 17–​18, 89–​113

Brederode, Jan Wolfert van 120–​1, 123 Brotton, Jeremy 1–​2

Les chercheurs de midi à quatorze heures 116

Butter, Nathanael 120, 138

Grand bal de la douairière de Billebahaut

Caccini, Giulio 200, 215, 265

Les Dieux descendus en France 212–​13 (René Bordier) 85

Grand Bal de la Reine Marguerite 209

Vers divers sur le Ballet des dix Verds 209

Caccini, Margherita, Settimia, Francesca 200, 265

Calabi, Donatella 224

Banchieri, Adriano 186

Carlson, Marvin 151, 155

Bargagli, Girolamo 188

Carroll, William C. 43, 45–​7, 57

Bandello, Matteo 40

Basilea, Simon Shlumiel ben Solomon 235–​6, 238, 241

Bel-​Isle 73, 84–​5

Bellini, Giovanni 185

Beolco, Angelo (stage name: il Ruzante) 182, 188–​9, 196

Carrión, Maria Mercedes 49–​50

Castro, Guillén de (Las mocedades del Cid) 11–​12, 135

Cavalieri, Emilio de’ 197

Cervantes, Miguel de 10, 58–​9, 70

Don Quixote 9–​10, 58–​61, 68–​70, 116, 129–​30, 136, 138

Bernardon see Kurz, Johann Joseph Felix von

Charles I, King of England 81–​2, 118, 120–​2,

Bianca, Vittoria (stage name: Francisquine) 126

Charon 126, 129, 148–​9, 155

Beys, Charles de 11–​12, 122, 135

Billing, Christian 183, 263

blackface (barbouillage) 10, 73–​85 Black Madonna 79

Boccaccio, Giovanni 40, 53, 142

bofeton (stage trick) 50, 57

126, 212–​13, 248, 259

Chartier, Roger 9–​10, 58

Chevaliers du Dromedaire & Chymiques, Les (Relation 1638) 115, 123, 130–​3, 133, 134

Cicero, Marcus Tullius 251, 255, 258

Bohr, Niels 3, 19

Claramonte, Andrés de (El valiente negro en

bourgeois tragedy (Bürgerliches

clown figure 12, 49, 55–​6, 115, 118–​19, 123–​30

Boswell, Laurence 65, 67–​8

Trauerspiel) 162–​78

Boursault, Edmé (Le Mort vivant) 73–​85

Bragato, Braguette see Alfieri, Giovanni Paolo

Flandes) 81–​2

passim, 137, 139–​61, 152, 154, 163–​8 passim, 171, 174–​5, 182, 190, 194

Clubb, Louise George 41, 85, 262

 300

Index

300 Code Noir (1685) 76

Coke, Sir Edward 249, 251–​4, 259 colonisation 75–​6

comedia (Spanish), comédie à l’espagnole 59, 64, 68–​70, 72, 80–​2

comedian 12–​13, 141–​4, 149, 159, 165, 168, 171 see also clown figure; commedia dell’arte

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comédiens du roi, les (company) 74

comical routines see clown figure

commedia dell’arte (Italian comedy) 12, 13, 43, 74, 110, 114–​38, 140, 155, 164–​5,

169–​72, 175, 182, 187–​200 passim,

231–​2, 237, 262–​5

commerce see trade

Comoedia von der Königin Esther und Hoffertigen Haman (anonymous German play) 149

converso 56, 231

Corneille, Pierre 8, 124

Le Cid 11–​12, 122, 125, 135 L’illusion comique 124

costume 23–​8 passim, 33, 57, 62, 66, 73–​4, 77, 81, 84–​5, 105, 112, 115–​19, 119,

122–​4, 127, 129–​31, 136, 149, 151,

169, 171, 173, 182, 195, 205, 206,

209–​11, 219–​21, 222–​7 passim, 235, 239, 241

see also blackface (barbouillage)

court ballet see ballet

court festival see festivals, festivities court masque see masque Crimp, Martin 140–​1 crossdressing 57, 81 see also costume

cross-​rank desire; cross-​class; cross-​caste see mimetic desire

cultural transformation see adaptation of plays dance 26, 34, 83, 116, 121, 130, 134, 147–​8,

Dance of Death 152–​4, 154

Davenant, William

Britannia Triumphans (with Inigo Jones) 118, 119, 123, 134–​6

Salmacida Spolia (with Inigo Jones) 118, 134–​5

Triumphs of the Prince d’Amour 121

Day, John (The Travels of the Three English Brothers, with Rowley and Wilkins) 142

Dekker, Thomas 190

If It Be Not Good, the Devil is in It 148–​9, 155

Old Fortunatus 143, 149, 151, 160

Shoemaker’s Holiday, The, or The Gentle Craft 8, 23, 29–​37, 143

Virgin Martyr, The (with Massinger) 143, 145–​6

Witch of Edmonton, The (with Ford and Rowley) 149–​50, 157

Work for Armorours, or The Peace is Broken 124

Derrida, Jacques 8, 35–​6

devil figure 73, 77–​8, 82–​3, 106, 124, 136, 141, 146–​8, 150, 155–​8

Diderot, Denis 173

disability 34, 57, 109, 131

disguise see costume; crossdressing

Dohna, Friedrich zu 121, 123–​4, 130, 136, 138

Doktor Johann Faust (anonymous puppet play) 148–​9, 155

Doran, Greg 9, 59–​61, 66, 70

Du Perche, Nicolas (L’Ambassadeur d’Affrique) 73, 82, 85

Dürer, Albrecht 108, 185–​6

Dutch Republic 89–​113

early modernity 13–​14, 17–​18, 261–​2

Ebrei see Jews

Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia 121–​3, 125–​6, 130

168, 174, 185, 187, 197–​200,

English Comedy, the (Englische Comedie) 12, 13,

228, 233–​8 passim

Este, Isabella d’, Marchioness of Mantua 232

204–​12 passim, 215, 219–​21, 226,

see also ballet; morris dance

17, 139–​61, 164–​5, 177, 262–​5

ethnicity see race

 301

Index

301

Euripides (Phoinissai, The Phoenician Women) 140–​2

exile 89–​90, 117, 121, 197, 212, 240, 257, 260, 263 Family of Love (religious sect) 110

Fasolo, Giovanni Battista (Barchetta passeggiera) 186–​7

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Faust, Dr Johann 115, 124–​5, 131, 136 see also adaptation of plays

Fedeli (company) 200

Ferdinand of Bavaria, Prince 235

Ferrand, Jacques 115, 124–​5, 131, 136

festivals, festivities 6–​7, 11–​12, 15, 18, 70–​1, 114–​38, 133, 171, 189, 226, 230, 261, 265

Flecknoe, Richard 117, 123

Fletcher, John 9, 58, 68

Cardenio (with Shakespeare) 9, 58

Gelosi (company) 171, 200

gender 10, 11, 47, 55, 57, 60–​1, 66–​7, 93, 94,

100, 102, 106, 109, 115, 127, 145, 166, 169–​70, 173–​6, 189, 203, 211–​14, 229, 231

Gettner, Johann Georg

Die Heÿlige Martÿrin Dorothea 145–​6, 155–​6, 160

Romio und Julieta 159, 161

Ghetto see Mantua; Venice Girard, René 9, 58, 70

Gogh, Vincent van 35–​7, 35

Goldoni, Carlo 13, 182, 186, 192–​5, 196, 240 Il filosofo inglese 192–​3

Il genio buono e il genio cattivo 19, 194–​5

La ritornata di Londra 192 La scozzese 192

La vedova scaltra 193, 196

King Henry VIII (All is True, with

Gonzaga, Eleonora (de’ Medici), Duchess of

see also adaptation of plays

Gonzaga, Federico, Duke of Mantua 232

Shakespeare) 71

Mantua 204, 206, 217–​20

Florence 171, 185, 188, 192, 197–​203 passim,

Gonzaga, Guglielmo, Duke of Mantua 222–​3,

Florio, John 135, 196

Gonzaga, Vincenzo I, Duke of Mantua

206, 214, 237, 265

Follino, Federico 235–​6, 239

Fondaco dei Tedeschi 184–​5, 196, 223, 224, 241 Fondaco dei Turchi 223

foot skills, footwork 7, 23–​38, 209

Fortunatus (anonymous German play) 143, 149, 151

Fosse, Sieur de 125, 131

framing 55–​6, 140, 142, 144–​51, 155–​6, 160, 161, 169–​71, 200

231, 233, 234, 235–​40

204–​5, 215, 216–​17, 220–​1, 233, 235–​40

Gottsched, Johann Christoph 172–​3

Grand Tour 116, 126, 127, 182–​3, 190, 193, 195–​6, 227, 240

Greenblatt, Stephen 9, 59, 264

Greene, Robert

James IV (The Scottish Historie of Iames the fourth) 147, 155, 161

Francatable 115, 125

Looking-​Glass for London and England, A

Franco, Giacomo 127, 182

Pandosto 161

Francisquine see Bianca, Vittoria

(with Thomas Lodge) 156–​7

Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft 120–​1

Grotius, Hugo (de Groot) 92, 136, 245, 249,

García-​Reidy, Alejandro  59, 71

Guadalupe (city in Spain) 79

Garzoni, Tomaso (L’ospidale dei pazzi incurabili) 122

Gascoigne, George 44

Gay, John (The Beggar’s Opera) 139

251, 258

Guadeloupe (island) 75–​6, 79

Guarini, Giambattista (Giunone e Minerva) 14, 197, 200, 203

Guerra, Cristoforo (Christoph Krieger) 182

 302

Index

302 Guiscardi, Traiano 14, 204–​8 passim, 215,

I prigioni (Intronati’s play) 187

passim, 218–​20

Jews 15, 90, 106, 107, 222–​41, 263–​4

Guiscardi, Vittoria dalla Valle 14, 204, 206–​8

see also costume

Hague, The 11–​12, 18, 96, 101, 114–​38, 133,

jig 26, 38, 142–​3, 148, 161

Hanswurst (Hanns-​Wurst) 151, 161, 166–​7,

Johnson, Nora 142–​3

251, 261, 265

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Invaghiti, Accademia degli 233

216–​18, 220–​1

175, 177

see also clown figure

Harlequin (Arlequin, Arlecchino) 74, 117, 130, 156, 164, 172, 194, 200

see also clown figure

Haupt-​und Staatsaktionen 163, 165

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (Lectures on Aesthetics) 177–​8

Heidegger, Martin 34–​6, 243

Heinsius, Daniel 89, 104

Heller-​Roazen, Daniel  246–​7

Henke, Robert 156, 161, 224

Henrietta Maria, Queen Consort of England 118, 121, 198, 205, 212–​13

Henry IV, King of France 197–​9, 202–​5, 207–​8, 215

Herbert of Cherbury, Lord Edward 207

Hercules 141–​2, 157–​8, 160, 203

see also clown figure; dance

Jones, Inigo 117–​21, 119, 135 Luminalia 121

see also Davenant, William; Jonson, Ben

Jonson, Ben 28, 38, 98, 117, 137 Alchemist, The 110

Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at Court (with Inigo Jones) 117

Volpone 110, 117

Kempe, Will 141–​3, 148, 158, 161, 262

King’s Servants (company) 117, 122 klucht (Netherlandish farce) 94

see also Bredero, G. A. (Gerbrand Adriaenszoon)

König, Eva 162–​5

Kurz, Johann Joseph Felix von (stage name: Bernardon) 12–​13, 162–​78

Ambigu Comique 174

Hillman, Richard 150, 160, 161

Der aufs neue begeisterte und belebte

Hoenselaars, Ton 98, 141, 196

Le Mercuere Gallante Oder Der in die Feder

Hobbes, Thomas 252, 255

hybridity 39–​40, 55, 56, 74–​6, 79–​84, 95–​6,

98, 102, 105–​9, 114, 136, 139–​40, 144–​5, 147, 151, 160, 171, 182,

191, 261–​4

il Ruzante see Beolco, Angelo

imagology 18, 181, 183, 195, 196

Index Librorum Prohibitorum 92

Ingannati (play) 187

Ingold, Tim 25–​6, 29, 37

Bernardon 166–​76

verwandelte Degen 167

El labrador gentilhombre (anonymous) 81

language 41, 48–​51, 53, 71, 74, 92, 95, 98, 101–​14 passim, 124, 135, 137, 155, 159, 162, 173, 189, 191–​2, 196, 198, 225, 233, 239, 246–​8, 253, 260, 263–​4

Lazarillo de Tormes (anonymous) 11, 91–​5, 98, 106, 107

see also adaptation of plays

interdisciplinarity 18

lazzo 13, 39, 41, 55, 157–​8, 181, 189, 196

Intronati, Accademia degli 187

Leicester’s Men (company) 141–​3, 158

intermedi 206, 234–​6

see also clown figure

 303

Index

303

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (Emilia

Marlowe, Christopher (Dr Faustus) 8, 124

licensing 92, 128, 184, 223, 228, 237–​8

Marston, John (The Dutch Courtesan) 109–​10

Galotti) 162–​4

Liompardi, Zuan Polo (Ivan Paulovicchio da

Martinelli, Tristano (stage name: Harlequin)

London 8–​9, 12, 13, 16, 23–​38, 98, 108, 114–​38,

Marx, Karl 13, 150, 165, 247

Ragusi) 185

139, 148, 149, 151, 161, 183, 190, 192, 194, 263

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Marshall, Norman 139

Lope de Vega, Felix Carpio 8–​9, 40–​1, 51, 54, 57, 68, 70, 80, 263

Castelvines y Monteses 159

El castigo sin venganza 72

La dama boba 57

156, 200

mask 74, 123, 171, 173–​4, 176, 243

masque 12, 115–​23, 119, 130, 135–​6, 198, 207 Mask of Mountebanks (court masque) 117

see also Davenant, William; Jones, Inigo

Massinger, Philip

City Madam, The 27

Virgin Martyr, The (with Dekker) 145–​6

Los locos de Valencia (El Hospital de los locos)

Matamoros (Matamorbe) 115, 124, 131, 136

Los muertos vivos 80

McGowan, Margaret 197–​8, 205

11, 122, 135

Mujeres y criados 10, 58–​72

El perro del hortelano 8, 39–​57, 68–​70, 71 El santo negro Rosambuco de la ciudad de Palermo 81

El secretario de si mismo 41

Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor 225 Medici 237

see also Gonzaga, Eleonora (de’ Medici), Duchess of

Medici, Catherine de’ 201–​2

Medici, Don Giovanni de’ 200

Lorrain, Beatrice, Duchess of 117

Medici, Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ 198–​201,

Lorraine, Renée of 189

Medici, Maria de’ 14, 18, 116, 126, 197–​221, 265

Lorraine, Christine de 188, 203, 206 Lottman, Maryrica 61, 71

206, 214

Ballet de la Reyne d’Angleterre 212–​13

Louis XIII, King of France 81, 84, 126, 197,

Ballet de la Royne (Le ballet de Diane et ses

Louis XIV, King of France 74, 76, 80–​1

Ballet de Madame, soeur aisnée du roi 209–​10

200, 208, 212–​13

Ludovica (Louisa) Christina, Countess of Solms 120–​1, 123

Macollo, James and John, 115, 125, 131

Madrid 9, 39–​57, 58–​72 magician figure 118

see also Faust, Dr Johann

Mann, David 143, 151

Mantua 14–​15, 197–​221, 222–​41, 263–​4

nymphes) 14, 198, 204–​5, 214

Ballet des Seize Dames représentans les vertus dont la Royne éstoit l’une 204

Les Dieux descendus 210

Grand Bal de la Reine Marguerite 209

Vers divers sur le Ballet des dix Verds 209

medicine 3, 116, 123, 125–​8, 128, 131, 136, 201 medieval theatre 10, 73, 82, 116, 135–​6, 155, 159, 230

Menestrier, Claude-​François  116–​17

Mareschal, André (Le veritable Capitan

merchant see trade

Marguerite de Valois, Queen 204–​7, 209, 215,

Middleton, Thomas (The Family of Love) 110

Matamore) 124–​5

220, 221

Marie Louise d’Orléans 81

Mercure Galant (theatre journal) 81

migration 18, 89–​113, 240, 257, 260, 263–​4 see also exile

 304

Index

304 Mikyšková, Anna 160

mimetic desire 9, 10, 13, 14, 39–​57, 58–​72, 75 Mitchell, Katie 140–​1

MoLA see Museum of London Archaeology Molière ( Jean-​Baptiste Poquelin) 196

Le Bourgeois gentilhomme 73, 81, 84–​5 Le Misanthrope 181

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Tartuffe 84

novella 9, 39–​40, 43, 53–​6, 147

novellagram 57, 262

Oddi, Sforza d’ (I Morti Vivi) 80

opera 13, 14, 18, 170–​2, 174, 177, 192, 196, 198, 200, 232

Ortelius, Abraham 2

Molloy, Charles 249–​55, 250

Paris 11, 12, 14, 73–​85, 115, 122, 124, 126–​7,

Monomotapa 73, 85

performance (as a term and theoretical problem)

Mondor (Philippe Girard) 12, 115, 126–​31, 137 Montemayor, Jorge de (Diana enamorada) 39–​40, 43, 54, 56

Morelli, Teresina (stage name: Rosalba) 168

Mores galants (stock characters) 77, 83

130, 135, 156, 197–​221, 265

2, 5–​6, 18–​19, 25, 30, 114, 140, 143–​4, 150–​1, 170, 175, 184, 222–​3, 226–​7, 233, 235, 240, 263

performance spaces see playhouses

Moreto y Cavana, Agustín (La negra por el

Peri, Jacopo 200

morris dance 26, 34

Piccolomini, Alessandro (Amor costante) 187

Moryson, Fynes 12, 144, 150

Pickelhering (stage name) 12, 142, 148–​51

honor) 82

see also dance; jig

mountebank 115–​18, 129, 131–​2, 134, 182 see also clown figure

Mucedorus (A Most Pleasant Comedy of

Mucedorus, anonymous) 144–​8, 156,

160, 161

Müller-​Kampel, Beatrix  175–​6 Munich 189

Münster, Sebastian 1, 4 Münz, Rudolf 164–​5

Museum of London Archaeology (MoLA) 23, 37

music, musicians 18, 111, 118, 139, 143, 145,

147–​9, 156, 184, 188, 191–​2, 197–​221, 224, 226, 228, 231, 233, 237–​9

see also opera

Naselli, Alberto (stage name: Zan Ganassa) 171

Pettit, Philip 50, 57

Piccolomini, Enea Silvio (Pope Pius II) 43–​4 Figure 9 (151), 158–​60, 168, 177

see also clown figure

pirates 15, 40, 242–​59, 265 Platter, Felix 118

Platter, Thomas the Younger 127 Playfair, Nigel 139

playhouses 8, 18, 23–​4, 26, 33, 35, 37–​38, 53,

71–​72, 73–​4, 77, 80, 83, 124, 127, 159, 161, 162–​5, 173, 176, 184, 205–​6, 229–​30, 232, 236

Plautus, Titus Maccius Captivi 187–​8

Miles gloriosus 124

Pléiade, La 101

Pontesière, Henri d’Authon, Baron de 124–​5, 131, 136

poorhouses 96, 100, 104

Nassau Beverweerd, Lodewijk van 123–​4,

Prague 159, 185, 225

Neuber, Friederike Caroline (die

props (stage properties) 9, 25, 30, 101, 126, 196,

129–​31, 136–​7

Neuberin) 172–​3

Nobody (play and character) see adaptation of plays

Preti, Vincenzo de 232

223, 243, 244

letter 39–​57 shoe 23–​38

 305

Index

305

puppetry 46, 124, 144, 155, 158, 161, 168, 260

Puttenham, George (The Arte of English Poesie) 24, 28

race 10, 14, 17, 18, 69, 74–​85, 95, 105–​8, 111,

112, 123, 181, 183, 186–​7, 192, 194, 195, 223, 227, 229, 236, 263, 265

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see also blackface (barbouillage)

Hamlet 1, 2, 16, 27–​30, 143, 182 King Henry IV Part 1 148, 150

King Henry IV Part 2 148, 155

King Henry VI Part 2 15, 249, 258 King Henry VIII (All is True, with Fletcher) 71

Love’s Labour’s Lost 72

Measure for Measure 15, 29, 242–​59

Ragusa (Dubrovnik) 15, 248–​9, 253, 257, 263

Merchant of Venice, The 108, 150–​1, 181–​4,

Reformation, Counter-​Reformation 90, 93–​5, 99,

Othello 108, 182

rederijkers 90–​1, 102–​5, 107, 114

101–​5 passim, 110–​11, 120, 130, 135, 141, 164–​5, 186, 188, 191, 216, 238

Rembrandt van Rijn 124

195–​6, 249, 251

Pericles 15, 155, 161

Romeo and Juliet 151, 159

Taming of the Shrew, The 148, 156, 161

Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis, cardinal de

Tempest, The 23, 70–​1, 182

Rinuccini, Ottavio 200, 215

Twelfth Night 249, 264

Rosalba see Morelli, Teresina

see also adaptation of plays

200, 202, 204, 212

Roe, Sir Thomas 121, 125, 130 Rouen 74, 82, 83

Rowley, William 149, 157

Shoemaker a Gentleman, A 158

Travels of the Three English Brothers, The (with Day and Wilkins) 142

Witch of Edmonton, The (with Dekker and Ford) 149–​50, 157

Rubens, Peter Paul 204, 212, 214 Sachs, Hans 8

Sanudo, Marin 184–​5, 225, 232 Scala, Flaminio 43, 200 Scarron, Paul 251

Don Japhet d’Arménie 81

Le Prince Corsaire 15, 246

Whole Comical Works, The 126

Schalkwyk, David 19, 50, 260 Schmitt, Carl 246–​7 Seidler, Kareen 161

Seville 74, 79, 80, 83, 122, 124, 136 Shakespeare, William

Antony and Cleopatra 152

As You Like It 50, 150

Cardenio (with Fletcher) 9–​10, 58–​60, 67, 70

Titus Andronicus 152–​3

Two Gentlemen of Verona, The 8, 39–​57

Sidney, Sir Philip 5–​6, 105 Smith, Joseph 193

Sommi, Leone de’ 223, 232–​6, 234, 238

Quattro dialoghi in materia di rappresentazioni sceniche (Four Dialogues on Theatrical Performance) 233

Tsahouth Be’dihutha de’ Kiddushin (A Comedy of Betrothal) 232–​3

Speed, John 255

stage name 12–​13, 115, 120, 123, 126–​8, 135, 142, 145, 168–​76

see also clown figure

Stephanie, Christian Gottlob (Stephanie the Elder) 162–​5

Stewart, Alan 43–​4

Streater, John 248–​9, 253

Sully, Maximilien de Béthune, duc de 116, 202, 205–​6, 217–​21

Tabarin (Antoine Girard) 126–​7

Taming of a Shrew, The (anonymous) 148, 156

Tasso, Torquato 182, 190–​1, 196 Gerusalemme liberata 16

Il re Torrismondo 190–​1

 306

Index

306 Taylor, Gary 9, 58–​9

Terence (Publius Terentius Afer) (Eunuchus) 107, 112–​13

Theater Without Borders (TWB) 1, 7–​15, 19,

37, 56, 85, 137, 160, 177, 195, 214–​15, 258, 260–​1

theatergram 7–​10, 39–​44, 50, 51–​6, 73, 74–​83

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passim, 140, 144, 173, 262–​3

see also Clubb, Louise George

theatre 3–​7, 18, 23, 30, 49–​50, 85, 115–​20, 124, 136, 145, 155–​9, 166, 171, 174–​6,

181–​2, 196, 224, 229, 231, 236, 243–​4, 246, 253–​4, 263–​5

see also performance; playhouses

Theobald, Lewis (Double Falsehood, or The

transnational 7–​17, 25, 39, 41, 58–​9, 68, 70, 74, 79, 81, 111–​12, 114–​15, 122, 127,

139–​43, 161, 163–​4, 181, 188, 192, 199, 251, 260–​5

see also adaptation of plays; exile; migration; translation

travelling, touring players or companies 12, 28, 67, 112, 118, 139–​61, 163–​5, 168, 257, 261–​2

Turks 10, 15, 53, 56, 65, 73, 84, 108, 192, 222–​41, 227, 248, 260, 263

see also costume

TWB see Theater Without Borders Valcárcel, Carmen Hernández 53

Distrest Lovers) 9, 58, 60–​1

Vecellio, Cesare (De gli habiti antichi et moderni

William

Venice 1, 13, 15, 27, 65, 151, 181–​96, 206,

see also adaptation of plays; Shakespeare, Thompson, Leslie 37, 38

di diverse parti del mondo) 182, 227 222–​41, 248, 250–​3, 263–​4

Tiberius von Ferrara und Anabella von

Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC,

Tindal, Matthew 253–​6, 259

Vienna 13, 162–​78, 192, 196

Mömpelgard (anonymous) 148–​9

topos, topoi 45, 50–​1, 53, 262

touring see travelling, touring players or companies

tournament 12, 115, 118–​37 passim, 261

trade 1, 8, 11, 17–​18, 23, 25, 28–​31, 37, 73, 83,

89–​113, 114–​15, 118, 181–​2, 184–​6, 190, 194–​6, 222, 224, 237, 241, 246,

249–​51, 257–​9, 263–​5

Tragædia Von Julio und Hyppolita (anonymous) 41, 44

translation 9–​10, 18, 25, 26, 36, 39, 43, 52, 71,

92, 98, 112, 122, 125, 140, 162, 183,

187, 196, 199, 200, 202, 229, 242, 249, 254, 257, 259, 260, 264

see also adaptation of plays

Dutch East India Company) 100

Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) (Aeneid) 62 Walter, Melissa 262 Weber, Max 151

Whetstone, George 116 Wild Hunt 156

Willem the Silent, Prince of Orange 105

Willem III, Prince of Orange (William III, King of England) 120, 130

Zan Bragetta (Braguetta) see Alfieri, Giovanni Paolo

Zan Ganassa see Naselli, Alberto zanni 115, 171, 189, 235 see also clown figure