Urban encounters. Experience and representation in the early modern city 9788862275972, 9788862275989

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
INTRODUCTION :URBAN ENCOUNTERS
TOWARDS A HISTORYOF THE NEW JERUSALEMPaul Barolsky
JACOBEAN TROYSSonja Fielitz
MARLOWE’S TOUR OF ROME :POLICY, POPERY AND URBAN PLANNINGRoy Eriksen
FROM WITTENBERG TO TUNIS :MARLOWE’S AND SHAKESPEARE’STHEATRICAL CITIESFrançois Laroque
SHAKESPEARE’S « Forfended place (s) » :women and the citySophie Chiari
THE TUDOR INNS OF COURT :A HARBOUR FOR PAPISTS?Dominique Goy-Blanquet
« Here in Olympia » :Affability and Aggressionin The Masque of the Inner Templeand Gray ’s Inne (1613)Christina Sandhaug
PERFORMING POLITICSIN EARLY MODERN DUBLINGarrett Fagan
SAINT GEORGE FOR ENGLAND,AND THE RED HERRING « FOR YARMOUTH » :BRITISH IDENTITIES AND POLITICSIN THOMAS NASHE’S LENTEN STUFFPer Sivefors
IMITATION IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURYPILGRIMAGE ARCHITECTURE :THE CASE OF IMPRUNETAPaul Davies
INDEX OF NAMES

Citation preview

UR BA N EN C O UN TE R S E XPE R I E NC E A N D R E PR E SE N TAT IO N IN the E A R LY mo d e r n c it y edited by

pe r sive f o rs

e arly m ode rn a n d m o dern studies · 8 .

PIS A · R OMA FABRIZ IO SERRA E DIT O RE 2013

EARLY MODERN AND MODERN STUDIES

E

« arly Modern and Modern Studies » publishes monographs, collections of essays, and scholarly editions. It aims to create a forum for international scholars who study the art and intellectual expressions of Early Modern European cities and their role in the creation of a shared European cultural and social space in a period of expansion and increased confrontation. The important themes and cultural expressions discussed, and the wider relevance of Early Modern art forms and cultural statements in contemporary society, make the series into a valuable resource for specialists as well as for the general reader. While the interdisciplinary series studies the cultural expressions of Early Modern cities, the initial focus inevitably falls on the culture of Renaissance Italian city states and their lasting influence on European culture to the present. Today novel and interdisciplinary approaches to Early Modern Europe increase our awareness of how its urban culture was a major vehicle for creating the preconditions for the rise of a critical public sphere and toleration. The negotiations between the forces of dynamic societal change and the forces resisting change, produced the democratic life-world that is the essential mental and material habitat of contemporary Europeans. The programme thus focuses on the interplay between epistemological and artistic processes of formation and new ways of expressing human needs and preoccupations in the evolving public spheres of urbanised society. Contributions in the series are therefore concerned with the changing role of genres, modes and media of communication in these developments, including the novel forms old and new institutions assumed in Early Modern societies.

EA R LY M O D E R N A N D M OD E RN S T UD IE S a se rie s dire cte d b y roy erik sen 8.

UR BA N EN C O UN TE R S E XPE R I E NC E A N D R E PR E SE N TAT IO N IN the E A R LY mo d e r n c it y edited by

pe r sive f o rs

PIS A · R OMA FABRIZ IO SERRA E DIT O RE 2013

Sono rigorosamente vietati la riproduzione, la traduzione, l’adattamento, anche parziale o per estratti, per qualsiasi uso e con qualsiasi mezzo effettuati, compresi la copia fotostatica, il microfilm, la memorizzazione elettronica, ecc., senza la preventiva autorizzazione scritta della Fabrizio Serra editore®, Pisa · Roma. Ogni abuso sarà perseguito a norma di legge. Proprietà riservata · All rights reserved © Copyright 2013 by Fabrizio Serra editore, Pisa · Roma. Fabrizio Serra editore incorporates the Imprints Accademia editoriale, Edizioni dell’Ateneo, Fabrizio Serra editore, Giardini editori e stampatori in Pisa, Gruppo editoriale internazionale and Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali. Uffici di Pisa: Via Santa Bibbiana 28, I 56127 Pisa, tel. +39 050 542332, fax +39 050 574888, [email protected] Uffici di Roma: Via Carlo Emanuele I 48, I 00185 Roma, tel. +39 06 70493456, fax +39 06 70476605, [email protected] www.libraweb.it issn 1828-2164 isbn 978-88-6227-597-2 (brossura) isbn 978-88-6227-598-9 (elettronico)

CONTENTS 9 13

Notes on Contributors Introduction : Urban Encounters  

part i. imagining cities Paul Barolsky, Towards a History of the New Jerusalem 31 Sonja Fielitz, Jacobean Troys 55 Roy Eriksen, Marlowe’s Tour of Rome : Policy, Popery and Urban Planning 71 François Laroque, From Wittenberg to Tunis : Marlowe’s and Shakespeare’s Theatrical Cities 93 Sophie Chiari, Shakespeare’s « Forfended Place(s) » : Women and the City 107  

 

 

 

 

part ii. encountering cities Dominique Goy-Blanquet, The Tudor Inns of Court : a Harbour for Papists? Christina Sandhaug, « Here in Olympia » : Affability and Aggression in The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne (1613) Garrett Fagan, Performing Politics in Early Modern Dublin Per Sivefors, Saint George for England, and the Red Herring « For Yarmouth » : British Identities and Politics in Thomas Nashe’s Lenten Stuff Paul Davies, Imitation in Fifteenth-Century Pilgrimage Architecture : the Case of Impruneta  

 

 

133

 

159 189

 

 

 

221

 

Index of names

241 283

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

P

aul Barolsky is Commonwealth Professor of Art History at the University of Virginia where he teaches Italian Renaissance art history and literature. His books include Infinite Jest : Wit and Humor in Italian Renaissance Art (University of Missouri Press, 1978) and Michelangelo’s Nose : A Myth and its Maker (Penn State University Press, 1990). His most recent book is A Brief History of the Artist from God to Picasso, which appeared with Penn State University Press in 2010.  

 

Sophie Chiari is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Aix-Marseille University, France. She has written several articles on Elizabethan drama, translation and poetry, and has recently published a monograph on The Image of the Labyrinth in the Renaissance (Champion, 2010). She has just completed a translation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice into French (Le livre de poche, 2011) and a revised edition of Renaissance Tales of Desire (csp, 2012). She is currently working on a book devoted to William Shakespeare and Robert Greene (Classiques Garnier), and she is also part of a collaborative project coordinated by Jean-Michel Déprats and focused on the translation of Tennessee Williams’ dramatic works (Editions théâtrales). Paul Davies (ba Reading ; ma London ; PhD London) is Reader in the History of Architecture at the University of Reading, uk. He is author of Michele Sanmicheli (Electa, 2004 ; with D. Hemsoll) and of many articles on Italian Renaissance architecture. His particular interests lie in ecclesiastical architecture and in architectural drawings. He has just completed (with D. Hemsoll) a three-volume catalogue of the Renaissance architectural drawings in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle that once belonged to Cassiano dal Pozzo and is currently working on a book entitled Rotunda : Architecture and the Ideal in Renaissance Italy.  

 

 

 

Roy Eriksen (PhD 1984) is Professor of English Renaissance Studies at the University of Agder, Kristiansand (Norway) and publishes in English and Italian interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies, including architectural history. He is author of The Forme of Faustus Fortunes (Humanities Press, 1987) and The Building in the Text (Penn State University Press, 2001), and has edited e.g. Form and the Arts (Kappa, 2003), Ashes to Ashes : Art in Rome  

10 notes on contributors Between Humanism and Maniera (L’Ateneo, 2006), and Imitation, Representation and Printing in the Italian Renaissance (Serra, 2009). L’Edificio testuale will appear in 2014. Recent articles focus on Vasari, Margery Kempe, Shakespeare, Dante, and Marlowe. Eriksen currently works on monographs on Christopher Marlowe and on Leon Battista Alberti. Garrett Fagan maintains research interests in Law and Literature, Early Modern Ireland and in modern Irish literature. He also researches the reception of Plato and Humanistic networks in Ireland and Europe and early modern printing and book culture. He has taught at the Dublin universities and at Warwick university. Sonja Fielitz is Full Professor of English Literature at the University of Marburg, Germany. She studied English, Latin and German at the University of Munich and received her PhD in 1992 with a study on Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens. Her post-doctoral thesis, published in 2000, examines the status of Ovid’s Metamorphoses within the various theoretical and critical disourses in eighteenth-century England. She is the editor of two (German) series of books and has furthermore edited five collections of essays in English on various topics. Her further publications include two student books on how to analyse a drama, respectively a novel, a study of Shakespeare’s Othello, and numerous articles on the Early Modern Period, the Long Eighteenth Century, children’s literature, school and university novels and (post)modern drama with particular reference to performance criticism. Dominique Goy-Blanquet is Professor Emeritus at the University of Picardie, President of Société Française Shakespeare, a member of the editorial board of La Quinzaine Littéraire, a contributor to Books and to the Times Literary Supplement. Her works include Shakespeare’s Early History Plays : From Chronicle to Stage (Oxford University Press, 2003), Shakespeare et l’invention de l’histoire (Le Cri, 2004), the posthumous edition of Richard Marienstras’s Shakespeare et le désordre du monde (Gallimard, 2012), translations of John D. Wilson, What happens in ‘Hamlet’, Anthony Burgess’s Little Wilson and Big God, W.H. Auden’s Lectures on Shakespeare, and essays for Shakespeare Survey, Cambridge Companion, Literary Encyclopedia, Europe, Moreana, Law and Humanities.  

François Laroque is Professor of English Literature at the University of Paris 3 - Sorbonne Nouvelle. He is the author of Shakespeare’s Festive

notes on contributors 11 World (Cambridge University Press, 1991), of Court, Crowd and Playhouse (Thames and Hudson, 1996) and the editor of several volumes published by Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris. Besides, he has published new editions and translations of Marlowe, Shakespeare and their contemporaries as in his recent two-volume anthology of non-Shakespearean drama (1490-1642), Théâtre Élisabéthain (Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2009), co-edited with Jean-Marie Maguin and Line Cottegnies. Christina Sandhaug is temporary Assistant Professor at the University of Oslo. She is working on a PhD dissertation on verbal representation of spectacle in printed Stuart masques, and her research field is mainly renaissance poetry, poetics and rhetoric, as well as drama and performance. She teaches a broad range of subjects on all university levels, including period courses on modernism, romanticism and the Victorian period, reception studies, film adaptation of literature, and survey courses. She has also published articles on the intertextual reception of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Psalm translation, and the intersection between architecture and rhetoric. Per Sivefors is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Linnaeus University, Sweden. He has published several articles on Thomas Nashe, John Lyly and Christopher Marlowe, the last of whom was also at the focus of his PhD dissertation, The Delegitimised Vernacular : Language Politics, Poetics and the Plays of Christopher Marlowe (2004). His research focuses on, among other things, early modern dream narratives, masculinity and – appropriately for the present volume – urban culture. He has previously edited Urban Preoccupations : Mental and Material Landscapes (2007) for the Early Modern and Modern Studies series at Fabrizio Serra.  

 

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INTRODUCTION : URBAN ENCOUNTERS  

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he present volume is a continuation of, and response to, the collection Urban Preoccupations : Mental and Material Landscapes (2007), which, like it, grows out of the research project Tolerance and the City. However, while the earlier volume explored early modern city culture predominantly in terms of cultural difference and its representations, the present volume emphasizes the ways in which early modern city culture is a locus of encounters. More specifically, it focuses on what recent scholars have described as a « lived cultural experience » : the sense in which urban existence was seen as inherently unstable or threatening, and the extent to which this perception was dealt with in art or literature. What emerges, as the contributions to this volume testify to, is a remarkably multi-faceted picture in which separations and boundaries are continually exposed and, in the words of a recent study, « productively destabilized ». 1 In addition to engaging with the tropes and figures used for the early modern city in works of fiction and art, the present volume examines the social and cultural boundaries established in and between cities, but also the ways in which the city itself could be said to constitute an (unstable) boundary – the marginal city, the ‘port of entry’ being one example. The organization of the volume into two parts, « Imagining cities » and « Encountering cities », accentuates its double theme : investigating the representation and perception of the early modern city together with the crossing and questioning of social and cultural boundaries that emerged in such imagined spaces.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Imagining cities Ever since the publication of a seminal essay by Louis Montrose in 1983, Elizabethan astrologer and physician Simon Forman’s account of his dream of the Queen has been analysed as an example of how power relations in early modern England could be embodied through the « shap 

1   Glenn Clark, Judith Owens,Greg T. Smith, Introduction, in City Limits : Perspectives on the Historical European City, edited by Glenn Clark, Judith Owens, Greg T. Smith, Montreal Kingston, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010, pp. 3-21, p. 5.  

14 introduction: urban encounters ing fantasies » of the monarch. 1 Less common is the recognition that the dream also projects an urban space, embodying both threat, wish-fulfilment and difference in the encounter with Elizabeth. Writing in January 1597, Forman  

dreamt that I was with the Queen, and that she was a little elderly woman in a coarse white petticoat all unready. She and I walked up and down through lanes and closes, talking and reasoning. At last we came over a great close where were many people, and there were two men at hard words. One of them was a weaver, a tall man with a reddish beard, distract of his wits. She talked to him and he spoke very merrily to her, and at last did take her and kiss her. So I took her by the arm and did put her away ; and told her the fellow was frantic. So we went from him and I led her by the arm still, and then we went through a dirty lane. She had a long white smock very clean and fair, and it trailed in the dirt and her coat behind. I took her coat and did carry it up a good way, and then it hung too low before. I told her she should do me a favour to let me wait on her, and she said I should. Then said I, ‘I mean to wait upon you and not under you, that I might make this belly a little bigger to carry up this smock and coat out of the dirt’. And so we talked merrily ; then she began to lean upon me, when we were past the dirt and to be very familiar with me, and methought she began to love me. When we were alone, out of sight, methought she would have kissed me.2  

 

Meandering through urban « lanes and closes », from « a great close » over « a dirty lane » to the final seclusion « past the dirt », Forman’s dream projects an imaginary space in which differences can be both established and overcome : on the one hand, the separation of the Queen’s white smock from the dirt of the urban labyrinth, and on the other hand, the encounters – between subjects, between subject and monarch – that are made possible by this setting. Of course, the dream is a narrative, a representation of a city rather than the thing itself, and as such it constructs – as if foreshadowing postmodern urban theory – city space as a set of signs that can be interpreted.3 But if Forman’s city is a ‘text’ in search  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  I am referring here to Louis Montrose, Shaping Fantasies : Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture, « Representations », 1, 1983, pp. 61-94. 2   A. L. Rowse, Sex and Society in Shakespeare’s Age. Simon Forman the Astrologer, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974, p. 20. 3   For the structural resemblance between dreams and cities, see Steve Pile, Sleepwalking in the Modern City : Walter Benjamin and Sigmund Freud in the World of Dreams, in A Companion to the City, edited by Gary Bridge, Sophie Watson, Oxford, Blackwell, 2000, pp. 75-86. According to Pile, « cities are like dreams, for both are produced according to hidden rules which are only vaguely discernible in the disguised and deceitful forms (of dreams ; of cities) » (p. 84). Pile’s psychoanalytically inspired perspective, like Forman’s urban dream in the  

 

 

 

 

 

 

introduction: urban encounters 15 of a reader, then the whole situation seems to be described in terms of competition for narrative control. The tall, red-bearded man (connected by Rowse to the Earl of Essex and his then-frequent conflicts with the Queen 1) is a weaver, a ‘textor’, and it is only by putting the queen away from the man’s advances that Forman can achieve control over situation and text. Indeed, the Queen’s « very clean and fair » white smock becomes a metaphorical empty sheet on which Forman’s narrative – happily saved from the foulness of the circumscribed urban space – can be embodied. The result is wish-fulfillment, as if anticipating Italo Calvino’s famous words that « cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears ». 2 If Forman’s narrative therefore reflects the presence of hegemonic, organizing power in urban space, it is even more insistent in its projection of multiplicity – of intentions, of purpose, of power relations. As Michel de Certeau reminds us, streetwalking in the city – through « lanes and closes » – is an activity that « manipulates spatial organizations, no matter how panoptic they may be » and articulates « a second poetic geography on top of the geography of the literal, forbidden or permitted meaning ». 3 In Forman’s case, such manipulation in his dreamed city space is also what makes possible the exchange with the monarch. His tickling narrative reverses the implied notion of an ideal organization of urban power relations – a monarch followed at a distance by deferential subjects – and reinvents urban space as a locus of encounters. Thus, Forman’s city walk with the queen invokes permitted meaning only to turn it on its head. City space becomes a dense web of conflicting interpretations, of encounters between different understandings and outlooks ; exclusion is, at least in Forman’s dreamed-up space, rejected in favour of encounter, which is manifested in sexual terms as a union between monarch and subject. It obvious, then, that Forman’s dream can be understood in terms of power relations. But there is also another, equally powerful context for his dream : that of urban change, and the ways in which urban change was perceived – not only in London, but in Europe more broadly. Gener 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

sixteenth century, presumes that there is an interpretation hidden underneath the rubble of the city – the difference between the two supposedly lies in the ease with which it can be found. 1   Rowse, op. cit., p. 21. 2   Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1997, p. 44. 3   Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, translated by Steven Rendall, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1984, pp. 101, 105.

16 introduction: urban encounters ally speaking, there is a great deal of such change in the period : in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries commercial prosperity moved increasingly from the Mediterranean region to northwestern Europe, and urban population levels were affected as a result. In seventeenth-century Italy, the growth of cities was highly variable and only Rome can actually be said to have expanded. 1 Taken as a whole, however, the European trend is that of « considerable urban growth », with northwestern cities such as Paris, and later London overtaking the position of Naples as the largest city of Europe. 2 There is also an increasing percentage of city dwellers among the population at large. In the Dutch Republic – the most extreme example of such development in the period – the proportion increased from one fourth in 1600 to one third in 1670. 3 As for England, London’s approximate share of the population increased from two per cent in the 1520s to five in 1600, eight in 1650 and eleven in 1700. 4 As numerous recent studies such as the multivolume Cambridge Urban History of Britain have shown, the urbanising tendencies during the early modern period created « distinct behavioural and structural changes in society » and hence offer important keys to later social and historical development. 5 It is to such general perspectives that the present volume is indebted,  

 

 

 

 

1

  Alexander Cowan, Urban Europe 1500-1700, London, Arnold, 1998, p. 10.   Christopher R. Friedrichs, The Early Modern City 1450-1750, London, Longman, 1995, p. 20. Tellingly, a volume published in 2001 and entitled Urban Achievement in Early Modern Europe focuses on the northwestern cities of Antwerp, Amsterdam and London, as if ‘achievement’ is primarily to be associated with that region ; see Urban Achievement in Early Modern Europe : Golden Ages in Antwerp, Amsterdamand London, edited by Patrick O’Brien, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001. 3   Or even one half, if we are to include cities with a population smaller than 10,000 ; see Maarten Prak, The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century, translated by Diane Webb, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 251. 4   Penelope Corfield, Urban Development in England and Wales in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, in The Tudor and Stuart Town : A Reader in English Urban History, 1530-1688, edited by Jonathan Barry, London, Longman, 1990, pp. 35-62, pp. 40-41. England is of course a special case because of the predominance of one city. Whether the smaller English cities came to constitute a larger share of the population over the period seems difficult to prove ; see David Michael Palliser, The Age of Elizabeth : England under the Later Tudors, 1547-1603, London, Longman, 1992, ii, p. 264. 5   Peter Clark, Introduction, in The Cambridge Urban History of Britain,ii, 1540-1840, edited by Peter Clark, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 1-24, p. 3.For the extensive research on early modern urban culture carried out in the last two decades, see also for example Cowan, op. cit. ;Friedrichs, op. cit. ; David Nicholas, Urban Europe, 1100-1700, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, as well as collections such as Urban Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age, edited by Albrecht Classen, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 2009 ; Urban Achievement in Early Modern Europe, cit. 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

introduction: urban encounters 17 emphasising as it does the increasing significance of northwestern Europe – specifically England – in the period (although the starting-point, as Paul Barolsky’s and Paul Davies’ chapters show, remains in the Italian Renaissance). However, rather than focusing on the demographics of actual historical cities, its field of investigation is the representations of and attitudes towards the city in the period. As such, it ties in with the tendency of scholars in recent years to engage with the city as a lived, cultural experience. For example, while it has been a bone of contention among historians whether early modern London and other cities were socially ‘stable’ or ‘unstable’ during the Tudor period, an important matter in later discussions is not just facts and figures but, sociologically, the experience of ‘stability’ or ‘instability’ by people at the time. 1 The appearance or rhetoric of instability becomes just as important as the instability – or stability – analysed from a historian’s rear-view perspective. 2 What emerges from such an approach is not just one perspective but a multitude of differing voices, sometimes even within the oeuvre of one single author. Thomas Nashe, for example, could praise London as « the fountaine whose riuers flowe round about England » only to publish a pamphlet, Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem (1593), where the sinfulness of the capital is lamented in high-flown Biblical terms : « London, thy hart is the hart of couetousness, all charitie and compassion is clearly banished out of thee ». 3 Explicitly equated with Jerusalem and Sodom, Nashe’s  

 

 

 

 

1   See Ian W. Archer, The Pursuit of Stability : Social Relations in Elizabethan London, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991 ; Steve Rappaport, Worlds Within Worlds : Structures of Life in Sixteenth-Century London, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, both of which in various ways modify the previous ‘doom and gloom’ view of London as an inherently unstable setting. For more general European perspectives on the early modern urban social history and its (in)stability, see for example Friedrichs, op. cit., esp. pp. 275-325, and, for a carefully balanced discussion, Cowan, op. cit., pp. 170-191. A closer focus on the lived experience can be found in the recent collection City Limits : Perspectives on the Historical European City, edited by Glenn Clark, Judith Owens, Greg T. Smith, Montreal Kingston, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010, and, more eloquently, in Paul Griffiths, Lost Londons : Change, Crime, and Control in the Capital City, 1550-1660, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008. Along similar lines, issues of urban change, how such issues were handled and how change might be surveyed and controlled are at the focus in Imagining Early Modern London : Perceptions and Portrayals of the City from Stow to Strype 1598-1720, edited by J.F. Merritt, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001. 2   For the early modern ‘rhetoric’ of instability, see Griffiths, op. cit., pp. 8-19 ; for the ‘appearance’, see Ian Munro, The Figure of the Crowd in Early Modern London : The City and Its Double, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 9 : « if London was indeed much more stable than it appeared in its official and unofficial literature, that appearance is still vitally important ». 3   Thomas Nashe, The Works of Thomas Nashe, edited by R. B. McKerrow, revised by F. P. Wilson, 5 volumes, Oxford, Blackwell, 1966, pp. i.193 and ii.108.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

18 introduction: urban encounters London has become a imagined space in which desires, wishes and sins are acted out. With such conceptualisations, we have reached the notion of the city as an abstract rather than concrete entity : an experienced space as much as a physical one. This experienced space is precisely what has preoccupied urban theorists of various schools over the last few decades : as Manuel Castells would put it in the 1970s, « when one speaks of ‘urban society’, what is at issue is never the mere observation of a spatial form » but rather « a certain system of values, norms and social relations possessing a historical specificity and its own logic of organization and transformation ». 1 Yet the issue also has deep roots in Renaissance thought and the revered classical sources that it drew on. Crucially, the city was defined as both urbs and civitas – the physical setting and the community inhabiting and experiencing it – and this contrast between the physical components of the city and its human aspect also informs the different modes of city representation – maps, for example – that proliferated in the sixteenth century. 2 The physical environment was considered crucial to the mental state of people living in it – to Robert Burton, for example, the very sight of a city such as London could act as a curative : « a good prospect alone will ease melancholy [...] Barclay the Scot commends that of Greenwich tower for one of the best prospects in Europe, to see London on the one side, the Thames, ships, and pleasant meadows on the other ». 3 And the focus on the material embodiment of the city in the works of for example Alberti could not but direct the attention towards the urbs as a physical entity. At the same time Alberti, ever the good humanist, emphatically states that « the greatest Ornament of a City is the Multitude of her Citizens » and approves of the sacred, spiritual status of ancient cities. 4 This human-centered belief clearly echoes in city descrip 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1   Manuel Castells, The Urban Question : A Marxist Approach, translated by Alan Sheridan, London, Edward Arnold, 1977, p. 75. 2   For the distinction between urbs and civitas and how it is reflected in early modern city views, see Richard L. Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World 1493-1793, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000, pp. 1-18. The specific question of why city maps became popular in this period has received differing answers ; as David Buisseret suggests, the reason can be ascribed to technical factors (the invention and improvement of print technology) as much as historical or social ones. See David Buisseret, The Mapmaker’s Quest : Depicting New Worlds in Renaissance Europe, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 152, 165-175. 3   Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, London, Dent, 1932, ii.68-69. 4   Leon Battista Alberti, The Ten Books of Architecture : The 1755 Leoni Edition, facsimile, New York, Dover, 1986, p. 133. As Alberti approvingly suggests, for example « it is no Wonder [...] that the Walls within which the Citizens were to be associated and defended, were accounted holy ; and that the Ancients, whenever they were about to lay Siege to any Town,  

 

 

 

 

 

introduction: urban encounters 19 tions throughout the period. Even a work as ostensibly concerned with physical description as Stow’s Survey of London (1598) culminates in a celebration of civic pride in enumerating governors, aldermen and sheriffs of the city. 1 And perhaps most famously, Sicinius in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus asserts, « What is the city but the people? » (III.i.199). 2 However, a perceived characteristic of city space also was that of consistent danger or upheaval, which was due in turn to the perceived unreliability of its civic body. Coriolanus sees civic insurgence as an inversion of political order : « That is the way to lay the city flat, / To bring the roof to the foundation » (iii.i.202-204). Alberti’s classical city is hardly more stable : the ancients, he says, « were of [the] Opinion that a City, either through the negligence of its own People, or the Envy of its Neighbours, was continually exposed to Dangers and Accidents ; just as a Ship is which is tossed on the Sea ». 3 Burton devotes lots of space to decayed and ruined ancient cities, and expresses considerable misgivings as to contemporary England : only London, he says, can aspire to the title of city, « and [is] yet, in my slender judgment, deficient in many things ». The other cities of England, he continues, are « (some few excepted) in mean estate, ruinous most part, poor, and full of beggars, by reason of their decayed trade, neglected or bad policy, idleness of their inhabitants, riot, which had rather beg or loiter, and be ready to starve, than work ». 4 And Nashe’s metropolis, as we have seen, is compared to the biblical Sodom, consistently exposed to the sinfulness of its citizens and on its way to utter ruin. Hence, for all its spiritual dimensions – or perhaps because of them – a city was thought to be prey to disorder and instability at any given time. It is arguably from the context of such a wide spectrum of beliefs – both positive and negative ones – that the various ways of imagining the city in the early modern period should be seen. As J. F. Merritt points out, the encomiastic tradition of extolling the glories of cities conflicted (not least in Stow) with their perceived potential for disorder, poverty  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

lest they should seem to offer any Insult to Religion, used to invoke, and with sacred hymns endeavoured to appease the Gods that were Guardians of the Place » (p. 133). 1   As Lawrence Manley points out, a distinctive feature of the Survey is the belief that topography was « ordered and sanctified by civic ritual and ceremonial observance » ; see Lawrence Manley, Literature and Culture in Early Modern London, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 159. 2   Quotations from Coriolanus are to the edition in William Shakespeare, The Oxford Shakespeare : The Complete Works, edited by John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor, Stanley Wells, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, 2. 3 4   Alberti, op. cit., p. 133.   Burton, op. cit., i.92.  

 

 

 

 

20 introduction: urban encounters 1 and sinfulness. Such tensions, and the projections of them onto both lived and allegorical spaces, are at the focus of Part 1 of this volume, which engages with the projected or metaphorical substitutes for the chaotic and threatened city – the ideal city – and in which ways such ideals might be contested and subverted. Dealing in turn with representations of individual cities such as Jerusalem (Barolsky), Troy (Fielitz) and Rome (Eriksen ; Laroque) and with the gendered metaphorical aspects of cities (Chiari), this part investigates the city as an imagined space in which both order and the ‘sense of perceived crisis’ could be enacted. 2 One such imagined space, unsurprising in this period, was the vision of stability and permanence offered by the heavenly city. Jerusalem proved an irresistible point of identification both before and after the Reformation : a civitas that served as an embodiment of harmony and unity, though increasingly distant, it seems, from the actual world with which it was compared or identified, since harmony and unity were never more ardently called for than during and after the violent clashes of the Reformation. 3 In any case, as shown by Paul Barolsky’s chapter in the present volume, Jerusalem, the Heavenly City, had been an insistent motif in pictorial representation since the days of early Christianity. In Renaissance cities such as Florence the interior decorations of sacred spaces point to an assumed interrelationship between celestial powers and their representatives on earth : seated on the benches of for example the Santa Croce chapter, the monks would have experienced a hierarchical movement upwards, towards the representation of the Heavenly City in the dome. But such heavenly harmony, it seems, is only achieved at a cost, for representations of the Renaissance ideal city tend, as Barolsky notes, to feature few if any people. One might say, then, that the removal of the dirty « lanes and closes » of Forman’s dream comes at a price : the concurrent removal of humans. 4  

 

 

 

 

 

1   J. F. Merritt, Introduction : Perceptions and Portrayals of London 1598-1720, in Imagining Early Modern London, cit., pp. 1-24, pp. 14-15. 2   The phrase is borrowed from Archer, op. cit., p. 9. 3   See Patrick Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England : Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, London, Macmillan, 1988, pp. 28-32 ; also, Manley, op. cit., pp. 113-117. 4   It should be added that the perceived relationship between human and city seems to change in the seventeenth century : while Renaissance theorists could ascribe human properties to « planned, non-organic urban form », seventeenth-century visualisations took the metaphor in a more literal direction, affirming « the primacy of urban life » in claiming that squares and parks were the lungs of cities, the streets were the arteries, and so on. See Spiro Kostof, The City Shaped : Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History, London, Thames and Hudson, 1991, p. 52.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

introduction: urban encounters 21 A different though not necessarily incompatible articulation of an ideal city space was to define it in temporal terms, that is, to look for stability and harmony in the anciennity of cities. Of course, as the example of Alberti shows classical culture offered endless opportunities for both lamenting and celebrating one’s own urban society. A poet like Joachim du Bellay could see the « antiquités de Rome » as a reminder for his own time of the transitoriness of human splendour, though at the same time such antiquities were in a sense what shaped the Renaissance throughout Europe. In terms of continuity, therefore, ancient cities could constitute models for the supposed anciennity of one’s own city and culture. One prominent example of such models is Troy, home of Aeneas, the mythological founder of Rome, whose descendant, Brute, in turn was said to have founded Britain and its capital, Troynovant. 1 Appropriately, therefore, Sonja Fielitz’ chapter addresses the popularity of the figure of Troy in the English political and literary discourses of the early seventeenth century. Based on the assumption that Troy had « become a site of ideological contest on stage » by the time of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, Fielitz’ discussion investigates the senses in which the myth of Troy offers an index to perceptions of imperial identity as well as scepticism about such identity. Again, therefore, imagining the city spells simultaneous wish-fulfillment and fear : like the New Jerusalem – and Forman’s cityscape – Troy contained the potential for projecting both a sense of civic pride and a sense of division and contest. Needless to say, there were other variations on such role patterns available, and if Jerusalem could represent the Christian ideal city and Troy could express a variety of notions of ‘empire’, the figure of Rome can be said to embody religious conflict, the idealized classical past as well as the politically charged present. To the rest of Europe such as early modern London Rome is, in the words of Ian Munro, « an over-significant space whose staging was necessarily a very self-conscious act ». 2 Indeed, as shown by Roy Eriksen’s chapter in this volume Rome served both as a symbol of the Catholic Other and as a figure of « awe and admiration » to educated Elizabethans, and the plays of Christopher Marlowe, notably Doctor Faustus, testify to the multi-layered responses that the imperial and papal city could produce. Eriksen argues that Marlowe drew on a wide array of anti-papal sources, especially Dante Alighieri and and the references to his works in anti-Catholic texts such as John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. This tendency is particularly evident in Doctor Faustus,  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Manley, op. cit., pp. 182-183.

2

  Munro, op. cit., p. 145.

 

22 introduction: urban encounters which presents the Pope as the mirror image of Faustus, an usurper and over-reacher, and the city of Rome becomes a « breeding-ground of ambition and treachery » even while its multifarious connotations remain visible throughout. It is worth lingering on the notion of the ‘staged’ city, as theatre offers opportunities like few other media in the period for imagining the city, visually, verbally and ideologically. In his chapter François Laroque offers a parallel reading of Doctor Faustus and The Tempest, two iconic plays that are frequently juxtaposed for their references to magic but rarely excavated for their depiction of urban structures. To Laroque Marlowe’s play, which is after all structured around the poles of Wittenberg and Rome, sets up a dichotomy between « cities of wit » and « cities of sin », with Rome inevitably representing to Faustus the latter, infinitely desirable and lovingly described option. The Tempest, by contrast, establishes the city as a series of so many « cloudy shapes in the background, like the backdrop to some magnificent show », depicting urban space as conditioned by the creative art of its protagonist. In an affirmation of this creative art Prospero,unlike Faustus, finally regains and reconstructs city space and thus, in that sense, also inverts Marlowe’s play with respect to the connotations that the city carries. Thus, in terms of their symbolic value, we have seen that cities tend to be depicted as both weak, tempting and sinful, and if we recall Alberti’s naval metaphor, a ship tossed by storms, this is telling also because ships were (and are) typically gendered as female. Indeed, cities were mostly represented as female in the early modern period, and according to Manley, this gendering is due to the fact that women were considered to occupy a position « midway between nature and culture », providing a model of analogy both for the generation of wealth and the subordination of (female) domestic concerns to (male) public duties.1 The ideal city, consequently, becomes one where sexuality is regulated in detail, as is borne out by the model societies of for example More’s Utopia and Campanella’s City of the Sun. However, as Sophie Chiari points out in her chapter, depictions of city space in Shakespeare and his contemporaries feed on imperfection rather than perfection. If female chastity, figured by the notorious chastity belt, could stand in for the city and the walls girdling it, then such metaphorical connections bespeak the anxieties with which the transgression of sexual and sociogeographical boundaries was suffused. Not only are cities prone to be conquered by  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Manley, op. cit., p. 142.

 

introduction: urban encounters 23 merciless intruders ; they may also be given up through the perversion of their citizens – who, in such a « topsy-turvy » scheme, tend (also) to be gendered as female. Again, therefore, urban representation, as in Forman’s dream, is one of inversions, particularly of gender roles and the wider social and political anxieties with which they were bound up.  

 

 

Encountering cities As already suggested, the city constitutes a space in which encounters – licit or illicit ones – take place. Forman’s lanes and closes may be full of ‘dirt’ but they also represent the space in which the subjects’ encounters even with the monarch are made possible. At the same time, this is a specific experience that projects an individual’s libidinous desires and wishes. Hence, rather than seeing space as one homogenous entity, early modern urban space might be more fruitfully theorized in terms of its diversity ; following Merleau-Ponty, a theorist such as de Certeau has famously suggested that « there are as many spaces as there are distinct spatial experiences ». 1 But urban experience is not merely a question of individual spatial experiences. Unsurprisingly, urban encounters, in early modern society and elsewhere, are embodied on several different levels : within the metropolis, between the metropolis and its surroundings, the smaller towns and the countryside. The second part of this volume maps precisely such a series of encounters in their analyses of early modern city representations : Dominique Goy-Blanquet and Christina Sandhaug in focusing on open and covert clashes among religious factions as well as in allegorical representation in London ; Garrett Fagan and Per Sivefors in examining the outbacks and margins of the English nation (Great Yarmouth, Dublin) as well as the complex relation to the metropolitan center in literary texts and performances ; and finally, Paul Davies’ chapter, which examines a piece of rural church architecture that refers to and quotes from larger structures in Florence and Rome. All these discussions, then, examine the ways in which representations of the city could both express and resist the notion of excluding and locking out (a notion around which early modern constructions of the city very much revolved, as pointed out elsewhere in this series 2). A most powerful aspect of urban encounters at the time is of course  

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  As quoted in de Certeau, op. cit., p. 118.   For the ‘locking out’ aspect, see Per Sivefors, Introduction : Urban Preoccupations, in Urban Preoccupations : Mental and Material Landscapes, edited by Per Sivefors, Pisa, Serra, 2007, pp. 16-22. 2

 

 

24 introduction: urban encounters religion, and encounters – or indeed clashes – were very much what characterised religion in city life, especially so perhaps in the metropolitan centra around and after the Reformation. As Joseph Ward points out, religious practices among particular communities such as livery companies could produce controversy despite having been intended to enhance the members’ sense of shared values. 1 And the issue of how to treat religious minorities in the cities – were they tolerable because they offered economic advantages or intolerable because they threatened the spiritual unity of the city? – was hardly resolved even after the long series of political upheavals in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. 2 The clandestine activities of such minorities therefore become an index to the amount of control that could be imposed upon urban encounters. Frequently enough, the clampdown was harsh : as Dominique Goy-Blanquet’s chapter shows, an institution such as the Inns of Court was considered by the authorities to be a « harbour of papists » in the sixteenth century, and although the religious control over it was not always draconically enforced, there was hardly such a thing as positive tolerance at any point. At the same time, tracing the various stages of law enforcement and prosecution in especially the 1570s and 80s, GoyBlanquet points out that the ideological pursuit of religious conformity was to some extent balanced by political considerations : the realization by the government that the legal body might be antagonized through too much harassment. Thus, ‘encounter’ in this sense develops from open clash to tacit agreement : a pragmatic, though hardly tolerant, way of resolving contradictions and urban disorder. Needless to say, this encounter implies a wider spectrum of power relations than urban ones in a very strict sense. Also encompassing the court, a city such as London included an institution of power that was partly distinct from it. 3 At the same time the urban Inns of Court and the royal court did encounter each other on the level of literary and artistic representation, because people associated with the Inns, such as Francis Beaumont and Francis Bacon, contributed in various ways to that most courtly form of literary production : the masque. In her chapter on  

 

 

 

 

 

1

  See Joseph P. Ward, Metropolitan Communities : Trade Guilds, Identity, and Change in Early Modern London, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997, p. 110. 2   See Christopher R. Friedrich, Urban Politics in Early Modern Europe, London, Routledge, 2000, pp. 29-31. A more general perspective on cities and religious change in the period can be found in Cowan, op. cit., pp. 93-120. 3   It should be added that the urban influence upon court culture seems to have increased in the course of the early seventeenth century ; see Manley, op. cit., p. 171.  

 

introduction: urban encounters 25 The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn (1613), Christina Sandhaug points out that the river procession preceding the performance of the masque actually forms a coherent whole with the performance itself, with its consistent aquatic imagery. Forging therefore a narrative link between city and the court, the allegorical context of the masque also points to the much larger significance of European politics : a conciliatory but uncertain vision of a wedding in which the Thames and the Rhine are symbolically united and the former is even merged with the river Alpheus that flowed through the plain of Olympia – home, of course, of the Olympian games and therefore a suitable image for a peace-making union. The encounter between city and court becomes part of a much wider framework of reconciliation on a grand European scale. Thus, the early modern city always contains a great deal of ‘microcosmic potential’ as a representation of larger conflicts, interests and connections. However, the city does not only function as a canvas on which the totality of anxieties in a national or European or wider perspective could be represented. The city – notably the metropolis, as exemplified by London and its growth in the period – was also an entity that defined itself in contrast to its more immediate outside. As a nexus of trade, language and politics, the early modern metropolis inevitably generated tensions between center and margin. It is easily observed that the early modern period is one of increased central control as regards for example the intervention of royal policy in the provinces.1 This process arguably generated counter-tendencies, so that while for example London was frequently described metaphorically as a ‘fountain’ spreading its goods across the nation and beyond, it was also seen – in centripetal rather than centrifugal terms – as an organism that absorbed everything around it. 2 Unsurprisingly, then, the margin comes not only to define but oppose itself to the metropolis in several ways. A particularly relevant example of the ‘margin’ in this context is the port town, located as it is on the edge of the nation while at the same time providing connections to the sea and the countries abroad. Representing the port town also becomes  

1   See Catherine F. Patterson, Urban Patronage in Early Modern England : Corporate Boroughs, the Landed Elite, and the Crown, 1580-1640, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999, p. 42. 2   Nashe thinks of London as « the fountaine whose riuers flowe round about England » ; see Nashe, op. cit., p. i.193. At the same time, antiquarian John Norden could describe the city as an « adamant, [which] draweth unto it all the other parts of the land » ; see Janette Dillon, Theatre, Court and City, 1595-1610 : Drama and Social Space in London, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 23.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

26 introduction: urban encounters a way of examining the limits – metaphorically and literally – of the nation itself. This connection between the port town and early senses of nationhood is at the heart of Per Sivefors’ chapter, which focuses on the description of Yarmouth in Thomas Nashe’s Lenten Stuff and contextualizes it in terms of a ‘British’ identity, marked by conflicting ideas on the integration of Scotland and Ireland. In Sivefors’ reading, national politics is enacted not only on a symbolic level through the central image of the red herring (a potent figure for trade, wealth and economic expansion) ; it also emerges in intertextual terms in Nashe’s extended parody of Marlowe’s Hero and Leander, with its thematization of the coastal towns of Sestos and Abydos, located on the very borderline between Europe and Asia. Nashe’s text embodies ‘encounters’ in its configuration of the port town as a source of pride and unease, as the marginal location of the port town also provides a literal and metaphorical foundation for the sense of national unity. The herring is both a source of income and a legate of peace that confers unity through successful encounters between center and margin, inside and outside, England and abroad. The issue of national unity and control of course becomes exacerbated the farther away from the centre one gets. This is perhaps nowhere more true in early modern Europe than in the case of Ireland and the colonisation of it by the English. As Garrett Fagan observes in his chapter, Dublin in particular becomes at the focus of the tension between center and margin as its culture in many ways defined itself against both Ireland and England. While the many discussions of the Elizabethan colonisation of Ireland have tended to focus on poetry and polemic, they have paid less attention to other local forms of cultural representation such as dramatic performance. Fagan suggests the Lord Deputy Mountjoy’s 1601 staging of Norton and Sackville’s Gorboduc at Dublin Castle to be a significant enactment of English concerns over Ireland. Largely understood as an ‘English’ play by its critics, Gorboduc can be said to take on a new significance when performed in a specifically Irish context : it becomes, in Fagan’s reading, a negative example that confirms Mountjoy’s own loyalties, while hinting to his allies that there were ways of avoiding a real-world version of the civil war represented in the play. Dublin Castle – the site of the performance – becomes a space of encounters in which loyalties to the crown can be not only represented but, literally, created. Thus, city space has a strong representative or symbolic dimension in early modern culture, and this is perhaps especially true of sacred space : for example, what happens when an object of worship, in this  

 

 

introduction: urban encounters 27 case a shrine, is found in similar versions in both distinctly urban and non-urban settings? Focusing on the tabernacle of the S. Maria at Impruneta outside Florence and comparing it to the more famous and distinctly similar one in Florence’s SS. Annunziata, Paul Davies suggests that imitation in this case is not the result of an aesthetic deference to the religious art of Florence but of devotional significance. Davies’ claim is further reinforced by his observation of similarities to the first great shrine of the Virgin Mary in the Early Christian West – S. Maria Maggiore in Rome. Thus, the shrine may become a way of encouraging identification between or unification of the three Marian cults, implying a powerful encounter on the level of Christian worship between city and country but also between city and city. In Davies’ reading, therefore, the configuration of space in and outside the early modern city thus becomes a map of the loyalties, alliances and power relations across the Italian peninsula. If anything, then, the dream vision by Forman with which this introduction began certainly has profound implications for an understanding of what the early modern city meant in terms of diverse experiences and encounters – across boundaries of gender, class and even nations. If boundaries are obviously about locking out people or matter, their very existence also implies transgression of them. Forman’s dream of encountering the Queen amidst the dirty lanes of the early modern city is a wish-fulfillment that reverberates far outside its own private dimension ; its anxieties about the monarch and the space she inhabits reflects broad political concerns in addition to the libidinous desire of ‘waiting on’ the Queen. It is not far-fetched to say that the chapters in this collection raise a similar wealth of issues in addition to their individual case stories ; like the lanes and closes of the early modern city itself, they can be said to contain the seed of the whole, the general, in the single narratives they explore.  

 

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PART I. IMAGINING CITIES

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TOWARDS A HISTORY OF THE NEW JERUSALEM Paul Barolsky 1.

W

hen we consider art that is called naturalistic or realistic, we regard such art as, in some measure, a reflection of reality. But, we might ask ourselves, to what extent does an image reflect the real world and to what degree is an image the imaginative transformation of things, persons or places – places like the city? Texts often offer us clues as to what happened in the real world, which might be reflected in painted images, for example, pictorial images of cities. Notice, I speak in the subjunctive. For texts, like images, are themselves transformations of the things in the ‘real world’ to which they refer. What, then, can we say about the city in reality, the city in fact, as opposed to what is given to us in images or texts that idealize the city and transform it into a kind of utopia? In his frescoes in the room of the council of nine in the Palazzo Communale in Siena, Ambrogio Lorenzetti portrayed personifications of Justice, Peace, and Concord in proximity to his peaceful and harmonious image of a city physically resembling Siena. He was conveying to the beholder through visual allegory the idea that the city we behold in his fresco is the ideal to which Siena aspired ; the fresco, the accompanying allegories, and also the inscriptions on the walls of the council room, do not report to us what in fact happened in Siena. We do not learn from these frescoes about freedom and tolerance in Siena. We do not learn much about political theory, even though the frescoes are in part a response to political theory. The frescoes are not an exact transcription of real life in Siena. They show us an idealized portrait of the city as its governing citizens imagined it. These painted images do not tell us what transpired in the real world of Siena. They were not painted to report on events in the city as they happened. They are imaginative transformations of the city of Siena into an ideal place. Lorenzetti’s frescoes suggest the commune’s aspirations to peace and prosperity. We must go elsewhere for the facts concerning the real city. Lorenzetti pictures the idea to which the government of Siena aspired – not what in fact transpired in reality.  

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paul barolsky 2.

With such preliminary thoughts in mind we approach the idea of the city or the image of the city in Renaissance Italy. But where do we begin? Entrance into the subject seems almost arbitrary, since there is no fixed beginning point in the history of the idea of the Renaissance city. I propose to look at a rich passage in Savonarola’s commentaries on Ezekiel in which he asks his readers to imagine the perfection of Florence. In a decidedly Neo-platonic way, the Dominican preacher, who wished to elect Jesus King of Kings, indeed the King of Florence, asked his readers to imagine Florence in the most idealized terms by contemplating the beautiful in the corporeal world as a means of elevating the imagination to the idea of divine beauty. Savonarola says that the more abstract your idea of the beautiful, the more spiritual it is. He tells his reader first to draw the beauty of Florence in his imagination. He insists that this image of the city is more beautiful than the city itself because it is more abstract when painted with fantasy. 1 The city painted with imagination is elevated by the intellect into a more spiritual realm. The preacher’s advice is not unlike that of his contemporaries, Ficino and Pico, who similarly approach the idea of the beautiful in a Neo-Platonic manner by abstracting it from the beauty in the real world as a means to a higher form of beauty in the realm of ideas. Savonarola’s approach is not dissimilar to that of Baldassare Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier, or, I should say, Castiglione’s representation of Pietro Bembo in book 4 of his work. Here Bembo delivers a rapturous speech on the ascent to the Beautiful, on the apprehension of the Beautiful, which is, as Savonarola would say, more abstract, more spiritual. 2 3. Savonarola deals in Neo-platonic abstractions – ideals, not in particularities. Here we recall that Lorenzetti in his allegory of Good Government similarly pictures an idealized Siena. But how, we might ask, did the Florentines render the picture of an ideal Florence? Botticelli’s Primavera is unarguably the single most famous image of 1   Girolamo Savonarola, Prediche sopra Ezechiele, i, edited by R. Ridolfi, Roma, Belardetti, 1955, pp. 375-376. 2   Baldassar Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, Milano, Garzanti, 1995, book iv.

towards a history of the new jerusalem

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Fig. 1.

the Italian Renaissance that celebrates Florence (Fig. 1). Much can be said about the painting but for our purposes what is significant is that in the garden where Venus appears surrounded by the three Graces and Mercury, on one side, Zephyrus, the nymph Chloris, and Flora on the other, we behold the origins of Flora, the personification or deification of the city of flowers or fiori, Fiorenza. Since Botticelli’s picture renders the myth from Ovid in which the wind god Zephyrus abducts the nymph Chloris who then becomes his bride Flora, and since Flora is the deification of Florence, we are contemplating in the Primavera the image of the origins of Florence. Once again we are contemplating an image of an ideal place, a garden or paradise, a locus amoenus or pleasance – not a prescription for how one achieves civic harmony and beauty. Like the text of Savonarola, the picture functions Neo-platonically. Consider that the beautiful figures, in Botticelli’s image, both male and female, are more beautiful than beings in this world – than beings in reality. They direct us through their beauty to a beauty beyond us, toward the Beautiful itself. Consider Mercury, who gazes heavenward, toward the Sun, as he dispels the cloud. We see the reflection of the sunbeam in his eyes, but not the Sun itself to which he aspires. The picture presents us with the idea of the beautiful to which we aspire ; it elevates us toward the Beautiful, although we do not yet see what Mercury sees. The  

34 paul barolsky Primavera is nonetheless an idea of Florence painted in the imagination, which elevates us, in Savonarola’s terms, toward a more abstract and spiritual realm. It presents to us the idea of what is possible, though not yet achieved. If the Primavera is an image of Florence greatly renowned, there is another picture, a little noted work from the same moment, painted by his disciple Iacopo Sellaio, which also portrays an ideal image of Florence, only in this case, the image is not an abstract spiritual allegory, since the painter renders a portrait of the city. I am speaking of the artist’s little known but charming painting of St. John the Baptist now in the National Gallery of Art (Fig. 2). Here St. John stands in the foreground, as if in the wilderness, for he is in the countryside south of the Arno, which is visible below. The saint’s gesture leads us to a path, which descends through a gentle landscape of lush vegetation, where deer are grazing, as if in a park, to the Arno, where a bridge conducts us in imagination to the center of the city. Here we behold the towers of the Palazzo della Signoria, the Palazzo della Podestà and, above all, the dome of the Cathedral. The great dome built by Brunelleschi appears toward the center of Sellaio’s composition, significantly to the left of the saint’s head, which implicitly focuses our attention on this structure. Domes are conventionally the symbols of heaven. Brunelleschi’s dome is both a heavenly structure and a civic symbol. Standing before the dome as patron saint of Florence, St John the Baptist embodies the idea of Baptism as the means to salvation, eternal life. Vasari says with great civic pride that the ancients never built a structure as high as the Florentine dome. With astonishing rhetoric he adds that the mountains surrounding Florence seem no higher than the dome. In other words, the mountains are compared to the dome—not the dome to the mountains. The dome epitomizes the sublime heights to which Florence ascends both spiritually and as a civic body, heights given form by the dome. 4. The idea of the dome as a symbol of Florence epitomizing a spiritual city was already rendered in the middle of the fourteenth century by Andrea da Firenze in a fresco of the chapter house of Santa Maria Novella (Fig. 3). The fresco, which has various titles, including « The Triumph of the Church », pictures an idealized image of ecclesiastical and civic authorities seated at the side of a church, which is recognizably the  

 

towards a history of the new jerusalem

Fig. 2.

35

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paul barolsky

Fig. 3.

Cathedral of Florence with its heavenly dome already imagined by the painter long before Brunelleschi built it. It is an image of an ideal city less specific than Lorenzetti’s image of Siena ; nevertheless, it recognizably associates the cathedral of Florence with the vision of heaven above. For the dome rises above the gates of paradise where St. Peter presides over the entrance of the blessed souls. The heavenly meaning of the dome is reinforced by the proximity of holy personages, who gaze raptly upward at God upon his throne (Fig. 4). He is God the Judge and we recognize that the painter has adapted the conventional Last Judgment to his allegory, which shows the Dominicans preaching and offering absolution from sins as preparation for entry into the kingdom of heaven. To put it differently, Andrea’s fresco is an ingenious variation on the Last Judgment. As the Judge, God on high is an exemplar of justice, which is central to the governance of any community. His role here is of significance in a chapter house, where the Dominicans would have convened to conduct church business, to govern on the model of their Lord. Scarcely visible on the base of the Lord’s throne is the worn image of the Lamb, which is pictured with the seven seals. The reference here is  

towards a history of the new jerusalem

37

Fig. 4.

unmistakably to the the Book of Revelation where we read of the Lamb as it appears upon the throne of God, the Lamb which is the light of the Heavenly City of God, the New Jerusalem that John witnessed descending out of heaven. In short, the heavenly dome that hovers in the celestial realm of the fresco, betokens the Heavenly City. The Dominicans called upon Andrea da Firenze to portray the Heavenly Jerusalem in the image and likeness of Florence herself, as if Florence were modeled on the celestial city. 5. The idea of the Heavenly Jerusalem was important elsewhere in Florentine ecclesiastical architecture of the Renaissance, but before we pursue examples of such symbolism, I want to sketch out a brief history of the idea of the Celestial Jerusalem, because, although examples are often noted by medievalists, surprisingly there is no broad history of this convention in a wide variety of forms. But first, let us summarize the principal features of the spiritual City of God as described by St. John. It will appear that I am talking not about the city, which is the subject here,

38 paul barolsky but about architecture. But by talking about architecture I will be talking about the city, since buildings and spaces in these buildings stand for the idea of the city – the heavenly City of God. First a few words about how the Heavenly City is presented in the Bible. In the Book of Revelation, chapter 21, the New Jerusalem beheld by Saint John is a great city descending out of Heaven. Radiating the glory of God, it is clear as crystal and like glass. It has twelve gates, which evoke the twelve tribes of Israel. Each gate is a pearl. The gates are divided into four groups of three, each at the cardinal points of the compass. There are also twelve foundations in the holy city and in them the names of the twelve Apostles. These foundations are embellished by various stones, including jasper, topaz, and amethyst. The city’s street is made of gold. The city, carefully measured, is square in shape. The city has no need of sunlight or of light from the moon, because the Holy Lamb is the lamp that illuminates the Heavenly City. In short, the city is geometrically organized, luminous and rich in the splendor of gems and gold. Although individual examples of the Heavenly City in art have often been observed, especially by medievalists, the history of the Heavenly Jerusalem throughout the history of art has never been written, in part, because the city as imagined by artists of various kinds is evoked in so many different forms or genres that transcend artistic styles or historical periods. The Celestial City is evoked by floating domes, soaring vaults, brilliant colors, stained glass, mosaics, and enamel, all of which can suggest the precious gems of heaven, It can also be brought to mind by images of the Lamb, which is the lamp of the New Jerusalem, by the appearance of the twelve Apostles, who are the foundations of the Heavenly City, or by twelve gates that correspond in number to those of the Heavenly City. Early in the history of Christianity the New Jerusalem is evoked in the apse mosaic of Santa Pudenziana in Rome, where the twelve Apostles are portrayed in front of the city’s holy buildings. A large Cross hovering above Jesus is encrusted with gems which evoke those in the New Jerusalem. The twelve Apostles as the foundations of the Heavenly City are portrayed in van Eyck’s painting of Mary and Jesus in Dresden where we see Apostles on every column of the church in which the Virgin sits ; surely they are here the foundations of the Heavenly City. The church stands for the New Jerusalem. The same painter evoked the Heavenly Jerusalem in the Ghent altarpiece in which we see the sacrificial Lamb in the foreground, before the image of the earthly Jerusalem. The rays that emanate from the Lamb evoke its status as lamp of the heavenly city.  

towards a history of the new jerusalem 39 The resplendent, seemingly weightless and light flooded, golden dome that hovers above in the Hagia Sophia also brings the heavenly city to mind, as does the soaring Gothic church of Notre Dame at Chartres, where the gorgeous colors of the stained glass suggest the bright colors of gems in the heavenly city. At an earlier date the royal chapel, Sainte Chapelle, includes the foundational twelve Apostles above the columns of the church, which we see in van Eyck’s church in the painting in Dresden ; the brilliant stained glass, as at Chartres, re-enforces this meaning. We behold glorious images of the Heavenly City on a smaller scale in resplendent golden reliquaries, enriched by precious gems, images of a building where we see the representation of the twelve foundational Apostles and we encounter conspicuous references to the New Jerusalem in candelabra, such as the famous example at Aachen, where the twelve heavenly gates are so prominent. Even as late as the modern church of San Giovanni Laterano the representation in niches of the twelve Apostles, who dominate the nave of the church, evoke their foundational role in the Heavenly City. In the Baroque when Borromini built San Ivo, he portrayed the Apocalyptic Lamb on the façade of the church ; the inner space of the church is crowned by a soaring, rapturous heavenly dome, which, in the context of the Lamb, evokes the new New Jerusalem. In the same period, Bernini evoked the Celestial City in the Cappella del Sacramento of Saint Peter’s where angels support a building that has seemingly descended from heaven. A drawing in St. Petersburg especially brings out this heavenly effect (Fig. 5). The heavenly building that has descended from heaven has twelve columns corresponding to the twelve Apostles and gates of the New Jerusalem.  

 

6. Having sketched out a history of just a few buildings that bring the heavenly city to mind, I want to return to the image of Andrea da Firenze’s triumphant church, a portrait of the Cathedral, with its dome rising heavenward, into the realm of the enthroned God above the sacrificial Lamb with seven seals, because the image of the Lamb with the seven seals is so important in Florentine apocalyptic imagery. It is fundamental to the Medici parish church of San Lorenzo built by Brunelleschi. If we put aside for the moment all the discussion of building history and patronage and just consider the appearance of the quattrocento church as we see it, we find a single decorative detail re-

40

paul barolsky

Fig. 5.

peated over and over in the nave of the church, which is so important to the building’s meaning. I speak of the representation on all four sides of each impost block above the capitals on the columns of the nave (Fig. 6) – images that are seen repeatedly in the nave and in the side aisles as one advances toward the high altar. For here, as at Santa Maria Novella,

towards a history of the new jerusalem 41 we behold the Lamb and the seven seals, the Lamb that gives light to the heavenly city. The beautiful opalescent light of the church softly suffused through the building, the perceptible geometric ratios of the structure, and the soothing serene stone, the pietra serena employed by Brunelleschi, all contribute to its heavenly effect. There is more than one way to evoke heaven, which is not restricted to soaring Gothic vaults, shimmering Byzantine mosaics, or rapturous Baroque ceilings. Fig. 6. Renaissance classicism can also be used to evoke heaven as well. We should note that the meaning of Renaissance buildings such as San Lorenzo has often been ignored by modern scholars who prefer to dwell on the classical revival of the Renaissance at the expense of the building’s original, spiritual meaning. They presumably see the Lambs at San Lorenzo as mere decoration or ignore this meaning utterly, whereas we need to think about decoration or décor in relation to decorum, what is appropriate. The Lambs at San Lorenzo stand appropriately for the heavenly meaning of the church, which is the New Jerusalem in which we behold the Lamb, the lamp of the Heavenly City. This meaning is closely related to that given form by both sculpture and architecture in the sacristy of the church, which was also the burial place of Giovanni de’ Medici. Scholars have come to recognize that Donatello’s reliefs depicting scenes from the life of Saint John in the upper register of the chapel are appropriate images in the burial chapel, since they exemplify the idea of the deceased’s resurrection and ascension like that of his eponymous saint. The dome above the relief sculpture is the dome of heaven to which San Giovanni ascends and to which Giovanni de’ Medici, buried below, also aspires.

42 paul barolsky But again there is a detail of the architecture that, although almost universally ignored, is deeply meaningful. I refer to the fact that the heavenly dome has twelve ribs and twelve oculi, the number of the twelve Apostles and the twelve gates of the heavenly city, described by Saint John in his vision. Significantly, one of the four reliefs, just below the dome and to the side of the altar and thus seen immediately from the entrance, depicts St. John on Patmos, when he saw the Heavenly City. The figure in Donatello’s relief is looking up at the hovering dome. The allusion here to the Heavenly City beheld by St. John is re-enforced by the shape of the chapel, which, like the Heavenly Jerusalem, is square in character. The hovering dome also conveys the heavenly effect of the New Jerusalem and, as in the church proper, the geometry of form and luminosity of the interior have a heavenly effect. I have said that the allusion to the New Jerusalem in the old sacristy is ‘almost’ universally ignored, but there is an exception to the general rule. In the first edition of his textbook, Italian Renaissance Art (1969), Frederick Hartt recognized the significance of the twelve ribs and oculi of the chapel dome ; he saw them as allusions to the twelve gates of the new Jerusalem. 1 But it is symptomatic of the relative indifference to spiritual meaning in Renaissance architecture that this connotation of the chapel has been ignored in the scholarly literature, and in fact the suggestion has disappeared from subsequent revised editions of Hartt’s textbook.  

7. It is well known that the architecture of the old sacristy at San Lorenzo had an influence on the building of the chapter house at Santa Croce : the Pazzi Chapel, which has traditionally been attributed to Brunelleschi. Although the shape of the building is rectangular, the space under the dome is, like that of the old sacristy and the New Jerusalem, a square, and again we behold a celestial dome above with twelve ribs and twelve circular windows (Fig. 7). Moreover, there are roundels with the twelve apostles on the walls of the chapel. They are seated upon heavenly clouds. They bring to mind the twelve Apostles on the foundation of the Heavenly City. These Apostles, which have been attributed to Luca della Robbia, appear at the four corners of the chapel in groups of three, a configuration  

1

  See Frederick Hartt, Italian Renaissance Art, New York, Abrams, 1969.

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43

Fig. 7.

which also recalls the design of the New Jerusalem where there are three portals at each of the four corners of the city. The gate-like niches below the twelve Apostles are similarly divided into four groups of three and thus reinforce the Apocalyptic association (Fig. 8). As in the Heavenly City, the four corners of the chapel face the cardinal points of the compass. The apocalyptic significance is reinforced by the appearance on the frieze of the chapel of images of the Lamb with seven seals, the same

44

paul barolsky

Fig. 8.

repeating motif we see at San Lorenzo above the columns in the nave (Fig. 9). Only here at the Pazzi Chapel the anonymous craftsmen who rendered these Lambs have depicted rays of light radiating from each Lamb, reinforcing the explicit allusion to the idea of the Lamb as the lamp of the Heavenly City, the source of its light. If we imagine the monks of Santa Croce seated upon the benches

towards a history of the new jerusalem

45

Fig. 9.

of the chapter house, we see that they conform to the seated Apostles represented on the walls above, only the Apostles, who are the Apostles of the Lamb, seen in the frieze, are seated on clouds within roundels that seem to float (Fig. 10). As we gaze higher still, we behold in an even more celestial form, in the hovering dome, the twelve lights that correspond to the twelve Apostles below (Fig. 7). Thus, in a kind of

46

paul barolsky

Fig. 10.

hierarchical progression we move heavenward from the seated monks, continuing the work of the Apostles of the Lamb, to the seated Apostles themselves, to their disembodied luminous form in the seemingly immaterial, weightless dome up above where they are seen as twelve lights. The architecture here thus represents, as at San Lorenzo, the ascent to heaven, to the Heavenly City. It should not escape our attention here that the chapel evoking the heavenly city of the new Jerusalem at Santa Croce is a chapter house, like the chapel at Santa Maria Novella where the image of the Heavenly Jerusalem is similarly evoked above the image of a city identified as Florence by its heavenly dome and by the image of the Lamb with the seven seals at the bottom of God’s throne. We have by no means departed from our main theme, which is that of the idea of the Renaissance city, for the architectural spaces we have been discussing were understood to be microcosms of the heavenly city, the Celestial City which is of fundamental importance to the identity of the Renaissance city. By analogy to the church or chapel as a representation of a city, we might recall how a single palace can also evoke an entire city. In The Book of the Courtier, Castiglione says that the ducal palace

towards a history of the new jerusalem 47 1 in Urbino seems to be a city in its entirety. The assertion may appear to be excessively hyperbolic, but it is nevertheless an indication of the way in which single buildings or smaller spaces within buildings can stand for an entire city. 8. Let us return to the Pazzi Chapel. By themselves none of the elements in the Pazzi Chapel are peculiar to the Heavenly Jerusalem with the exception of the Lambs from which rays of light emanate, which suggest the Lamb as the lamp of the Heavenly City. The twelve Apostles, and portal-like niches, ribs, and oculi of the dome, the geometry and luminosity of the chapel all reinforce the associations with the celestial city. What makes the chapel so like the Heavenly City has to do with more than iconographical details. There is a sense of weightlessness that contributes to the heavenly effect. The twelve portals and corresponding twelve roundels with Apostles all seem to float, as does the dome above and the windows within. This resistance to weight is magnified by the sense of weightlessness in the walls of the structure. As at San Lorenzo the white stucco and grey stone contribute a sense of celestial serenity to the space. At the same time, the light that enters the chapel intensifies the effect of a celestial place, and the geometry of square and circle magnifies the idea of the perfection of heaven. Then, too, the bright colors of the Apostles, white on a field of blue, and the various bright and luminous colors of the Evangelists above evoke the colors of the gems in the Heavenly Jerusalem. The Evangelists or their four symbols are conventional images in Renaissance art, but their appearance in the Pazzi Chapel, as in the Old Sacristry of San Lorenzo or the fresco of the Triumph of the Church in the chapter house of Santa Maria Novella, should remind us that the original vision of the four creatures associated with the Evangelists (lion, eagle, ox and angel) is that of Ezekiel, whose vision of the cherubim in the House of the Lord was seen typologically as the antecedent to that of St. John. The winged heads that alternate with Lambs on the frieze of the Pazzi Chapel (Fig. 9), as they do on the impost blocks of the columns in the nave at San Lorenzo and in the frieze of winged heads in the sacristy of the latter church, echo the frieze of the Florentine Baptistry. They 1

  Castiglione, op. cit.

48 paul barolsky bring to mind the cherubim seen by Ezekiel in vision in the house of the Lord. The four beasts associated with the Evangelists, who appear in the Apocalyptic fresco of the Triumph of the Church at Santa Maria Novella are all shown with many eyes, an explicit allusion to Ezekiel’s vision – which, as we said, was understood at the antecedent to John’s. No wonder St. John was represented on the shoulders of Ezekiel at Chartres. 9. I believe that the original effect of the Heavenly City symbolized or evoked by the Pazzi Chapel can be associated with the meaning of the Heavenly Jerusalem for Giannozzo Manetti in his De dignitate et excellentia hominis, which is roughly contemporary with the building of the chapel. 1 Manetti speaks of the grace that comes with the divine vision of blessed light, the splendor, subtlety, beauty and immortality, which are the conditions of the glorified bodies of the resurrected. Dwelling on the splendor or radiance of the New Jerusalem, he quotes the Gospel where it is said, « The just will shine like the sun in the presence of God ». When he says that the souls of the blessed will appear so fine that neither doors, nor walls, nor any other corporeal barrier can offer them resistance, Manetti calls to mind the weightlessness, the lack of a sense of mass and density, the feeling of immateriality in the chapel walls or floating gates. When Manetti speaks of the way in which Jesus passed through closed doors, we again can think of the immaterial character of the Pazzi Chapel. The experience of the heavenly ascent in the Pazzi Chapel, which is no less spiritual than that of the worshipper in a Gothic cathedral looking up into the heavenly vaults of a church such as Chartres, has its analogue in Manetti’s culminating description of the heavenly city :  

 

 

When we see the full glory and splendor of this Heavenly Jerusalem with our own eyes, we shall exult supremely ; for its foundations and walls around the twelve circles are all of different gems, and the twelve doors are equally each made of pearls, and each is a pearl, as John the Evangelist states at the end of Apocalypse.  

Speaking of the twelve circles, Manetti could almost be looking at the twelve roundels and twelve oculi in the Pazzi Chapel or the circular win1   Quotations are from the selection in Renaissance Philosophers : Selected Readings from Petrarch to Bruno, edited and translated by Arturo B. Fallico and Herman Shapiro, New York, Modern Library, 1967, pp. 66-101.  

towards a history of the new jerusalem 49 dows and tondos of the sacristry at San Lorenzo. Who knows, perhaps he brought to his description of the Heavenly City a memory of one of these chapels. Perhaps his description of heavenly circles suggests his understanding of these structures. 10. Having sketched out a history of the New Jerusalem in architecture I have by no means catalogued all of the evocations of the Heavenly City in Renaissance art. Some examples appear in prominent works of Renaissance art that are not otherwise associated with the New Jerusalem. For example, in one of two preserved preparatory drawings Michelangelo made for an initial design of the Sistine Chapel decoration, we see a scheme for the rendering of twelve Apostles in the vault. These seated figures would be transformed later into the seated Prophets and Sibyls of the ceiling. Although the appearance of the Apostles does not necessarily evoke the New Jerusalem, their appearance in the vault of the chapel, a place associated with the heavenly realm, does suggest their identification with the Celestial City. Moreover, it should be recalled that the Rome of Michelangelo’s patron was associated with the New Jerusalem during his lifetime. The Apostles here, as at Sainte Chapelle or in van Eyck’s image of Apostles in his picture in Dresden of the Virgin and Child in a church, or in various reliquaries, are the foundational figures of the New Jerusalem. At the very moment when Michelangelo was designing the vault of the papal chapel, a project he abandoned for a series of historical narratives from Genesis, Raphael pictured an allusion to the heavenly city in the papal library, the Stanza della Segnatura. I speak of the fresco of theology, the Disputa, the idealized vision of the community of the church where clerical figures of all stations, church fathers, prophets, saints, among angels, are all united in the mystery of the Trinity. Like Andrea da Firenze’s apocalyptic Triumph of the Church, which, we saw, was an ingenious variation on the Last Judgment, where Jesus is enthroned on high, Raphael’s image of Jesus on high is similarly based on the traditional image of the Judge. Walter Pater recognized the apocalyptic implications of the fresco in an overlooked observation of his book, The Renaissance. Speaking of the fresco of Parnassus, which is adjacent to the Disputa, he refers to it as the other City of God. 1 He thus implies the association of the Disputa with 1

  Walter Pater, The Renaissance : Studies in Art and Poetry, edited by Donald L. Hill, Berkeley-Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1980, p. 157.  

50 paul barolsky the Heavenly City. In the latter fresco we see near the altar table the four church fathers, among them St. Augustine, who is dictating to a young scribe, his copy of the City of God, prominent among his books. The City of God as defined by Augustine and others in his wake is a type of the New Jerusalem described in the Book of Revelation. The ideal community of holy personages and members of the church united in God in Raphael’s fresco defines this Holy City. The cloud bank above where we see saints and other holy persons from the Hebrew Bible and the heavenly host above is curved away from the picture plane in such a way that one critic has justly seen in this form a kind of apse-like shape, as if the figures, in an architectural metaphor, personify the apse of a church. In other words, this community of holy personages united in the celebration of the Eucharist suggests the shape of a building. We are reminded here of how the New Jerusalem was often suggested by a church or chapel, in short by a single building or space within a building. In the Stanza della Segnatura, the papal library in which the faculties of learning – theology, poetry, philosophy, and law – are all united, three great cities come together : Jerusalem (or its heavenly ideal, as evoked in the Disputa) ; Rome, the seat of the papacy, where the pope resides ; and Athens, the center of philosophical learning, where Plato points heavenward to the realm of pure ideas in a gesture that echoes a similar indication of the heavens by one of the figures near the altar in the Disputa. The painter’s perspective and classical architecture in the School of Athens stands in the line of many such images, for example, the fresco in the Sistine Chapel painted a generation earlier by Raphael’s teacher Perugino of Christ giving the keys to St. Peter. In the distance is a polygonal structure, which is temple like, or like various baptisteries built in Italy ; in other words, it is apparently a sacred building. The view Perugino gives us is in effect a perspective of a piazza without even the flanking buildings of such a space. Perugino’s fresco descends from the kind of perspective views we find in the various panels of the ideal city, which are associated with Piero della Francesca and the court of Urbino. Three prominent examples are located today in Berlin, Baltimore, and Urbino. Here by contrast to Perugino’s Vatican fresco, there are lateral buildings, which frame the perspective space. These panels of the ideal city have haunted the imagination of art historians, but they have remained elusive. Much has been said about their architecture and about their relations to the tradition of stage sets made up of illusionistic architecture, about their attribution. Nonetheless, these images escape our full understanding.  

 

 

 

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11. The name of the panels, « Ideal City », is in brief an interpretation, an implicitly Neoplatonic interpretation, which suggests an idea of the city rather than a real city. To an extent all images of the city are ideas, not reality, as we have said ; certainly this is true of Lorenzetti’s portrayal of Siena, but the panel in Urbino, just to take one example of an ideal city here, is an extreme. In this vision, which is wonderfully serene and harmonious (as in the Berlin panel) there are no people. In the Baltimore picture there are only a few people. One implication of such an image is that concordia or harmony can only be realized where there are no people, who will only create strife or discord. The idea of Utopia was invented satirically a short time later by Thomas More. It is a place called no place or nowhere. Only nowhere can you have a city that is truly harmonious because it has no citizens to be in conflict. The panels of ideal cityscapes are appealing aesthetically because they create a sense of peace and harmony, but they are implicitly dead places, pictorial epitaphs or elegies to places that never were. They are allegories of a civic dream devoid of the city’s citizens, devoid of life. We learn a few things about these cities. For example, in the Baltimore panel we behold the four virtues atop classical columns – Fortitude, Justice, Abundance, and Temperance. And here we are reminded of how such virtues define an ideal culture, as in Raphael’s Stanza della Segnatura where they appear between the School of Athens and the Disputa. But there is no prescription in these ideal city panels, as in the political theory of Plato or Aristotle, for how one is to achieve a strong, prosperous, moderate, and just society. One can only pursue the implications of the empty or almost empty spaces of these panels devoid of citizens. We do, however, learn some things about any city from such panels. For example, in both the Baltimore and Urbino panels there are fountains in the foreground that establish the essential role of water in any civic body. In both panels, sacred buildings are also prominent. In the Baltimore panel to the right side of the triumphal arch in the distance we behold a polygonal building of the kind we saw in Perugino, which is suggestive of the conventional type of Baptistry, rooted in the ancient Roman circular temple. In the Urbino panel, the central building of the civic space is such a circular temple or a reconstruction in the form of a tempietto. In short, in both of these panels sacred buildings play a central  

 

 

52 paul barolsky role. The ideal earthly city is a reflection of sacred space. We might even say with a certain license that it is the Heavenly City of God or New Jerusalem that gives definition to all cities of the Italian Renaissance. And it was for this reason that most, if not all, Italian cities (for example, Pope Julius’s Rome) were in fact identified at various times with the Heavenly Jerusalem. In our current appreciation of these beautiful civic panels, the religious implications of these ideal cities are often overlooked as scholars pursue questions of attribution or explore architectural style, and classical origins. (Here we have a situation similar to the scholarly indifference to the Heavenly Jerusalem in Florentine Renaissance art.) But as a kind of Utopia the ideal city or the visual idea of the city is an abstraction which is not only Neoplatonic but ultimately dogmatically Christian – reminding us that classical Humanism was deeply rooted in religion. Pictures of cities in the art of the Renaissance, spaces that symbolize cities, chapels, churches, or even piazzas where we behold sacred buildings evoking heaven may have their roots in political theory or theology, but they are relatively limited in their implications. Themselves ideas of a harmonious place, rooted in justice, they are never proscriptions for how one achieves civic harmony and piece – unless, as I said, one removes the citizens from the city, who pose the threat of discord. Inspired by Plato and Aristotle, by the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament, these images of cities are more powerful in purely aesthetic terms than as political or theological dogma. Although their design is often very appealing, they are too abstract as to mean very much. Rather, they are dreams of harmony that we can never achieve, except in the harmonies of art, Platonic idealism or the fantasies of heaven. 12. We began our brief, highly selective survey of a few images of the city in the Italian Renaissance with Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s allegory of Good Government. If we look back to some of the textual roots of this fresco we must go back far beyond St. Thomas Aquinas, Saint Augustine, the Bible, Aristotle, or Plato, all the way to the dawn of Western literature, to Homer’s Iliad. When the ancient poet describes the shield of Achilles he tells us that it represented two cities, a city at peace (ruled by law, which brought justice with it) and a city at war, a place of discord. This dualism reminds us that Lorenzetti pictured along with an allegory of Good Government the image of Bad Government, a fresco badly damaged and less engaging.

towards a history of the new jerusalem 53 It is striking therefore to contemplate the fact that there is a work of pictorial art which is an antecedent for Lorenzetti’s representation of cities at peace and at war, that the opposition of cities at peace and at war was first defined before Plato and Aristotle by a poet who imagines the pictorial image of these cities on the shield of Achilles. To put it differently, we might say that the origins of Lorenzetti’s pictorial idea are to be found ultimately in Homer, although no one has yet traced the path from the ancient poet in the 8th century b. c. all the way to Lorenzetti in the 14th century a. d. – which is not to say that such a trajectory might one day be traced. We have undertaken a broad survey of some images that pertain to the city in the Italian Renaissance. I hope to have shown that some key buildings of the Italian Renaissance in Florence evoke the New Jerusalem and that they belong to a long diverse tradition that might still be charted by historians in all its fullness and variety. I also hope to have successfully suggested that our traditional interpretation of the ideal city paintings of the Renaissance is inadequate, since insufficient attention is paid to the prominent role of sacred structures in these images of cities. I hope to have made clear that Lorenzetti, picturing his city at peace by contrast to a city in strife, returned (by a path yet to be discerned) to an artistic idea given form at the dawn of civilization by Homer in his great epic – or rather by the primordial artist, Hephaistos, who, in the poet’s epic, gives us in the first place the idea or vision of a city at peace.

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JACOBEAN TROYS Sonja Fielitz

T

his essay is designed to investigate the construction of the ‘old city’ of classical Troy as the ‘new city’ of Troynovant, that is, London, in Jacobean England. Its underlying theoretical assumption is that society shapes and is shaped by its linguistic and discursive practices, and it claims that language, in the sense of ‘writing’, ‘discourse’, ‘literature’ and ‘representation’ on the one hand, and politics, in the sense of the special processes in which relationships of power are conveyed, on the other hand, are mutually constitutive. 1 It thus wishes to contribute to the critical discourse on the interplay of political and literary discourses in 16th-century England with particular focus on its cultural negotiation of classical antiquity. Historical Background « The story of Troy, first set forth in Homer’s Iliad and subsequently the subject of innumer­able reworkings, is perhaps the greatest secular story of the Western world ». 2 The claim to a Trojan ancestry on behalf of the Romans was first coined in Ennius’ Annales (3rd century bc) and later established and sanctified by Virgil in his Aeneid. It was more than a millennium later that this myth took root and flourished in Great Britain, propagating that the Britons were descendants of the Trojans. In the Middle Ages, « the Troy story was unquestionably the most popular secular narrative of the era ». 3 In his 12th-century chronicle History of the Kings of England, Geoffrey of Monmouth claimed to translate from a vetustissimus liber and constructed the royal lineage as Adam, Noah, Priam, Aeneas, Ascanius, Silvius and Brutus. Based on Aeneas’s adventurous  

 

 

 

1

  See, for instance, Jonathan Goldberg, James I and the Politics of Literature : Jonson, Shakespeare, Donne and Their Contemporaries, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1989, p. xi ; Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning : From More to Shakespeare, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980 ; Michael J. Shapiro, Language and Political Understanding : The Politics of Discursive Practices, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1981. 2   Charles Martindale,Michelle Martindale, Shakespeare and the Uses of Antiquity : An Introductory Essay, London, New York, Routledge, 1990, p. 93. 3   See the seminal study by Wolfram R. Keller, Selves and Nations : The Troy Story from Sicily to England in the Middle Ages, Heidelberg, Winter, 2008, p. 1.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

56 sonja fielitz journey from Troy to Rome in Virgil’s epic, Brut is said to have travelled from Rome to England in order to establish Troynovant, later named London. 1 The construct of Brut and his descendants, 2 as represented by Geoffrey, was accepted not only by historians but also poets, since the Troy legend was not only associated with a new political but also cultural authority rising in the West. In the early modern period, plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries (see below) abound in allusions to the Trojan myth even in the speeches of less educated characters such as Falstaff or Pistol (Henry IV, Henry V) and thus testify to its popularity. 3 As I will point out in more detail in the first part of my essay, it was especially the political authority of the Trojan myth as inscribed in Virgil’s epic which offered transcription into British culture by authorities that were in need of a legitimate history. Cities Old and New : the Ideological Legacy of Epic Troy  

As scholarship since about the 1980s has revealed, the early modern period was by no means a homogenous ‘golden’ age but rather characterised by vast transformations and conflicting discourses in various fields. Robert Weimann, for instance, sees the Elizabethan period as marked by clashes between diverse authorities engaging in rivalry for the more persuasive image, logic, truth and form or saying things, since the claims on God-given legitimacy of secular and ecclesiastical institutions […] were irretrievably undermined. […] Because authority, including the authorization of discourse itself, was no longer given, as it were, before the writing and reading began, the act of representation was turned into a site on which authority could be negotiated, disputed, or reconstituted. 4 1   See Heather James, Shakespeare’s Troy : Drama, Politics, and the Translation of Empire, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 15. 2   Geoffrey of Monmouth, while professing to treat Arthur as an historical character, makes him a descendant of Trojan kings, the ruler of a European empire, and the founder of an order of chivalry. The Arthur of Geoffrey’s Historia is the greatest monarch of the Trojan line who ever ruled in Brut’s kingdom of Britain ; he is a warrior and the builder of an empire, but he has no love-story and the knightly romances of the Arthuriad proper, together with the Gral cycle, are of a later and a foreign growth. See A. E. Parsons, The Trojan Legend in England, « The Modern Language Review »,iii, 24, 1929, pp. 253-264. 3   See John S. P. Tatlock, The Siege of Troy in Elizabethan Literature, especially in Shakespeare and Heywood, « Publications of the Modern Language Association of America », iv, 30, 1915, pp. 673-770, pp. 674f. 4   Robert Weimann, Authority and Representation in Early Modern Discourse, edited by David Hillman, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, p. 5.  

 

 

 

 

 

jacobean troys

57

As we will see in the following, classical epic became such a site of contest, because in the case of the Trojan myth « [i]ts transmission through varied eras, nations, and vested interests over the time radically affects the precious univocality of its authority and its singularly affirmative character ». 1 In Virgil’s Aeneid, Jove prophesies, « dominion without end have I bestowed » 2 (Aeneid, i.279), so that later generations might have felt a certain attraction if not need to transfer the legend to their own culture. And indeed, in early modern Europe, the myth of Troy became a privileged topos for nationalistic endeavours. In Britain, it had a special appeal to Tudor and Stuart London, since the Brut chronicles had fused the myth inseparably with English history. In the time of Queen Elizabeth I, authors almost lavishly employed the Troy story to praise the virtues of the Queen : 3 since Frances Yates’ essay Queen Elizabeth I as Astraea, critics have examined the ways in which Elizabeth and her courtiers exploited the semiotics of the legend in her royal iconography. Pre-eminent among her guises was the virgin Astraea, the classical goddess of justice whose departure from earth in Ovid’s Metamorphoses marks the fall from the Golden to the Bronze Age and whose return, inaugurated in Virgil’s prophetic Fourth Eclogue, would proclaim a new Saturnian age of gold : « The great line of the centuries begins anew. Now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns ». 4 As we will see below, these lines re-appeared in Dekker’s and Jonson’s Magnificent Entertainment for James I, in this case applied to the King in conjunction with the prominent figure of Astraea in order to integrate him into the established Elizabethan state mythology. Especially Elizabeth’s successor, James I, employed the story of Troy in order to justify and celebrate the translatio imperii through Brut and further strengthen the distinguished ancestry of the House of Stuart. The Welsh Tudors had already seized upon the myth as a means of claiming their shaky dynastic claims : a commemoration of Henry VII’s victory at Bosworth, for in­stance, praising the king as « the tall pillar  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  James, op. cit., p. 22.   « imperium sine fine dedi », Virgil, Aeneid, translated by H.R. Fairclough, Cambridge, ma, Harvard University Press, 1986 (« Loeb Classical Library »). 3   See James, op. cit., pp. 15-17. 4   « Magnus ab integro saeculorum nascitur ordo. / Iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna », Virgil Eclogues, translated by H.R. Fairclough, Cambridge, ma., Harvard University Press, 1986 (« Loeb Classical Library »), l. 5. 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

58 sonja fielitz from Brutus » descended from « the line of Dardan, the line of Troy ». A commission appointed to report upon the Tudor genealogy confirmed that « King Henry the Seventh is lineally descended by issue-male […] in five score degrees from Brutus which first inherited this world ». 1 No doubt, the myth of the Trojan foundation of Britain was newly invigorated when James VI of Scotland ascended the English throne as James I of England and thus restored the sovereign unity that the British Isle was said to have enjoyed in classical antiquity. The Tudors had claimed their Trojan ancestry to emphasise their British origins, and the new Stuart King was particularly interested in re-appropriating this myth. In the light of the severe religious controversies of the time, it also was much easier for the poets to celebrate James as the descendant of the Trojan Brutus than the son of the catholic Mary Queen of Scots. From a nationalistic point of view, the Trojan myth was employed for the claims of Britain’s nascent imperialism, since Virgil had stated that the Trojans were the source of empire in the West, and Britain (like Rome) was settled from Troy. 2  

 

 

 

 

Royal Troys As new historicists and cultural materialist have made us aware, politics in the early modern period was also a matter of theatrical public display, and this refers to Elizabeth I as well as to her successor. James I believed in the power of literary and political representation and indeed derived a certain degree of power and authority from his own mode of representation. In the opening sonnet of James’ most important statement on kingship, i.e., his Basilikon Doron, he had proclaimed himself a King by Divine Right, and it was his imperial style both in language and politics which opened up various opportunities of representations. 3 What is more, James’ own writing was closely associated with the discourse of the theatre, since he frequently employed and also publicly displayed the metaphor of the king as actor. From his accession on, the ties between the state and the theatre became particularly strong, because he brought the theatres (as well as Shakespeare’s acting troupe) under his direct royal patronage and also made it a major public forum for royal 1   London in the Age of Shakespeare : An Anthology, edited by Lawrence Manley, London Syd2 ney, Croom Helm, 1986, p. 212.   See Parry, op. cit., p. 9. 3   For instance, James attempted to suppress Edmund Spenser for – as he claimed – misrepresenting his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, an episode which clearly shows the king’s belief in the power of representation but also his desire to control writing.  

jacobean troys 59 display. From the side of the arts, especially the poets in charge of royal entertainments and triumphs were eager to promote the link of English royal authority with the classical models of imperial Rome. The Magnificent Entertainment King James’ triumphal entry into London in March 1604 was one of those moments of composite pageantry that exhibit the complexities of a culture in an intensive and compressed form upon an occasion of particular significance. It was the City’s official greeting to the new monarch, a pledging of allegiance, and an elaborate and imagina­tive statement of the hopes and expectations of the new reign. Combining architecture with emblem, tableau, drama and music, the event demonstrates compactly how the arts served the monarchy by projecting a state mythology, and also offers a view of the iconography prevailing at the beginning of James’ reign. […] There had not been a royal entry into London since Queen Elizabeth’s coronation procession in 1559 – and hers had been a modest affair by comparison with James’s. 1

In the context of a close interdependency of monarchy and theatre it is significant that James’ spectacular coronation ceremony, being known as The Magnificent Entertainment of 1604, was assigned to the established dramatists Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson, while the design of the triumphal arches was entrusted to the architect and joiner Stephen Harrison. 2 Seven vast arches were erected along the processional route, the largest of which was ninety feet high and fifty feet wide, composed with all the soaring extravagant freedom that wood and plaster permitted. […] Fantastical decoration is so thickly applied that the basic forms are overwhelmed by the profusion of ornament. […] The unrestrained exoticism of detail and the vigorous and exciting silhouettes gave the arches a theatrical power that was entirely appropriate to this occasion[.] 3

Since the Roman Emperors, the main intention of a triumphal arch had been to celebrate their heroic deeds. This Entertainment, however, did not only celebrate the historical achievements of a victorious ruler (as their Roman archetypes had done), but also his imagined virtues and ideals. After the uncertainty deeply felt at the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, James I was seen as the one who established England’s prosperous future :  

1

  Parry, op. cit., p. 1.   His illustrated book Arches of Triumph provides a full record of the ephemeral architec3 ture of this event. See Parry, op. cit., p. 2.   Parry, op. cit., pp. 2-3. 2

60

sonja fielitz And then so rich an Empyre, whose fayre brest, Contaynes foure Kingdomes by your entrance blest, By Brute divided, but by you alone, All are againe united and made One[.] 1

James’ act of uniting England and Scotland under one rule could be interpreted as a first step in the process of the nation’s imperial expansion which had been fed by the Troy story promising a renewed Roman Empire rising in the West (see above), and it is significant that Virgilian and Trojan themes respectively also dominated James’ triumph. 2 In the Magnificent Entertainment Dekker’s adaptation of Anchises’ prescription of imperial acts to Aeneas in order to establish peace, spare the conquered, and battle down the proud, adorned the arch through which James passed on his way to London. It reads as follows : « Tu Regere Imperio Populos, Iacobe, memento, / Hae tibi erunt Artes, Pacique imponere morem, / Parcere Subiectis, et debellare superbos ». In these verses, Virgil’s « Romane » in his « tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento, / (hae tibi erunt artes) pacique imponere morem, / parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos » (Aeneid, vi, 851-853) was substituted by « Jacobe », thus signifying that James needed only accept Virgil’s authority in order to meet Aeneas’ assumption of imperial Roman identity. 3 James could thus identify with Aeneas and – taking this a few steps further – cast himself as the new Augustus who would bring a time of justice and freedom. The first triumphal arch, for which Ben Jonson was responsible, 4 depicted the ideal relationship between the King and the City. The central figure on the façade represented the British Monarchy, placed beneath the two crowns of England and Scotland, and bearing in her lap a globe inscribed « Orbis Britannicus. Divisus ab Orbe » in order to show, as Jonson put it, « that this empire is a world divided from the world ». Numerous prophetic motives derived from Virgil indicated in which tradition James was seen. The special destiny for Britain was now in the process of realisation. When James approached the first arch, a (theatrical) curtain opened and then the action began with the Genius of the City who engaged in  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

2   Quoted in James, op. cit., p. 19.   See James, op. cit., p. 20.   In English, Virgil’s lines read « Remember thou, o Roman, to rule the nations with thy sway – these shall be thine arts – to crown Peace with Law, to spare the humbled, and to tame in war the proud » ; see Virgil, op. cit. 4   See, for the following, Parry, op. cit., pp. 4-9. 3

 

 

 

jacobean troys 61 a dialogue with the God of the Thames, who was modelled on Roman personifications of the Tiber. The ancient Genius then reminded the audience of the earliest days of Britain, when it was first settled by Trojans, and informed the River that :  

When BRUTUS’ plough first gave thee infant bounds, And I, thy GENIUS walk’t auspicious rounds In every furrow : then did I forelooke, And saw this day mark’d white in CLOTHO’s booke. The severall circles, both of change and sway, Within this Isle, there also figur’d lay : Of which the greatest, perfectest, and last Was this, whose present happinesse we tast. 1  

 

Genius then saluted King James and welcomed the Stuarts as the true inheritors of Brutus’ line. Ben Jonson furthermore designed a telling Virgilian iconography for the king’s exit, and for the final arch at Temple Bar he created an arch representing the King as scholar. 2 The Genius of the City welcomes James once more with the words : « The long laments I spent for ruin’d Troy / Are dried », goes on to promise England « a lasting glory to Augustus’ state » and a renewal for the Augustan world by James : « One pure consent of mind / Shall flow in every brest, and not the ayre ». 3 James is praised as the one who closed up Ianus’ gates and thus gave peace to all nations. Obviously, this is an imperial and also clearly Virgilian note repeat­ing themes that had been stated several times during the procession. 4 Within the Augustan system of political authority the sovereign is the undisputed centre of England’s power. What is more, the emblematic pageantry and the celebration of the achievements of James’s reign even lived on in a commemorative series of paintings by Peter Paul Rubens on the ceiling of the Banqueting House at Whitehall. 5 This sequence, including the depiction of Britan 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Quoted in Parry, op. cit., p. 8.   What is striking about this Entertainment, however, is that Biblical material was scarcely employed at all. This stands in sharp contrast to Elizabeth’s entry when the purity of reformed religion was a dominant theme. In addition, folk motives were notably absent, and instead, classical poetry was used almost throughout to illuminate the action. See Parry, op. 3 cit., p. 20.   Quoted in James, op. cit., p. 20. 4   Jonson habitually affirmed James’ Virgilian heritage. « Aeneas, the sonne of Venus, Vergil makes through-out the most exquisite patterne of Piety, Justice, Prudence, and all other Princely virtues wich whome (in way of that excellence) I conferry my Souvereigne ». 5 Quoted in ibid.   See, for this paragraph, Parry, op. cit., pp. 32-36. 2

 

 

62 sonja fielitz nia’s union of England and Scotland, was presumably commissioned by Charles I in 1629-1630, when Rubens was in London on a diplomatic mission respecting peace between England and Spain. The decoration of the Banqueting Hall was still unfinished at this time, and Charles had it completed by the master painter of the age. Rubens opened up the ceiling of the hall into a baroque heaven, where James resides in the realm of light, exchanging his earthly crown for the triumphal wreath of everlasting fame. The centre of the ceiling shows the apotheosis of King James, and the familiar elements of Jacobean iconography, that is, Unity, Peace, Religion, Justice, Wisdom and Empire who help restore the Golden Age. They are presented as the achievements of the Stuart succession and the absolute authority of the King. Rubens’ paintings also bear a clearly Roman note within a palatial structure where Tuscan columns uphold a coffered dome. All in all it becomes clear that in choosing to glorify the reign of James in this way, Charles kept seeking to justify the divine right of the Stuart kings to rule and the policy of absolute government which he was to take up. Theatricality As indicated above, theatre in the early 16th century can be seen as a public forum in which royal power could be displayed and represented, and under James I, the links between the state and the theatre were particularly strong. In the Magnificent Entertainment the play­wrights Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson did not only design triumphal arches in order to associate James with the story of Troy but also paid tribute to the other side, that is, the side of the theatrical performance of Jacobean culture by devising a dramatic encounter to honour the king as he approached the City. The patrons of England and Scotland, that is, St George and St Andrew, ride together, and the Genius of the City rushes forth from the gate in amazement to enquire about this new-found amity. Genius then sounds two of the day’s persistent themes of praise : London, or Troynovant, now receives the descendant of Trojan Brutus, and Peace has spread her blessings over the land. 1  

Interestingly, the Troy myth was not only employed for the entry of the King but also in other pageants of the Jacobean age, such as the inauguration of Sir John Swinnerton, Merchant Taylor, in Dekker’s TroiaNova Triumphans (1612) and John Webster’s Monuments of Honour (1624), 1

  Parry, op. cit., p. 4.

jacobean troys 63 1 written for the inauguration of Sir John Gore, Merchant Taylor. In the latter’s show, a spectacle called The Temple of Honour, a person representing Troynovant is sitting in the highest position. Below her are situated five famous British scholars and poets, i.e, Sir Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, John Lydgate, Sir Thomas More, and Sir Philip Sidney – who had all been involved in the process of translation of the Troy story, thus testifying to its authority but also vehicle of varied interests (see above). Literary Troys The story of Troy appears to have not only been particularly popular in the political discourse of the early modern period, but also numerous Elizabethan and Jacobean poets and play­wrights, editors and translators were fascinated by it. Besides dramatic representations (see below), poetic depictions of the fall of Troy are, for instance, to be found in the third book of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590) in which the heroine Britomart explains that just as Rome was reared out of Troy’s ashes by the heroism of Aeneas, so a third Trojan kingdom was founded by Aeneas’s kinsman Brutus : « It Troynovant is hight, that with the waves / of Wealthy Thamis washed is long […] The Troian Brute did first that citie fownd ». 2 By calling London « Troynovant », Spenser clearly stands in the tradition that associates England with the translatio imperii studiique and propagates the myth which transfers cultural authority from Troy to imperial Rome to England. About twenty years later, Heywood’s (rather lengthy) poem Troia Britannica (1609) contained a « history of the kingdom from Brutus to the renewal of ‘Great Brittaines Empyre’ under James, where he stopped. ‘With ages past I have been too little acquainted, and with this age present, I dare not be too bold’ ». 3 As the number of books printed and plays produced testifies, public interest in the Trojans appears to have become most pronounced on the public stage in the last years of Elizabeth’s reign, i.e., particularly from 1596 to 1602. 4 Booksellers and theatre managers offered numer­ous versions of the Trojan myth to their readers and spectators. Tatlock lists 22 dramatic and 4 non-dramatic works on the subject for the period from  

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

2   See London in the Age of Shakespeare, cit., pp. 344-349.   Ibid., p. 62.   D. R. Woolf, The Idea of History in Early Stuart England : Erudition, Ideology and ‘the Light of Truth’ from the Accession of James I to the Civil War, Toronto-London, University of Toronto Press, 1990, p. 245. 4   See for this paragraph Robert K. Presson, Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida and the Legends of Troy, Madison, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1953, pp. 3-4. 3

 

64 sonja fielitz 1 1596 to 1602. For instance, « In 1596, Thomas Creede republished Caxton’s Recuyell of the Histories of Troye under the title The Auncient Historie, of the Destruction of Troy, Newly corrected, and the English much amended, by William Fiston ». 2 In the same year, Philip Henslowe, then manager and owner of the Rose Theatre, entered in his Diary the receipts for a new (and now lost) play called ‘troje’. 3 Three years later, Henslowe records payment to Dekker and Chettle for a play called troylless & creseda, 4 which is also lost. Since an outline of its principal scenes exists, it is evident that the authors had recourse to Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and to Robert Henryson’s 15th-century Testament of Cresseid (which engages only to a limited extent with the Troy story as such and rather focuses on Cresseid’s life after the exchange). About 30 years later, in 1632, Thomas Heywood revisited the popular Troy story in his The Iron Age. He may have done so because it was an established and thus rather safe subject with which he aimed to win his first laurels as a dramatist. The subject might also still have been en vogue, and might have appealed to the less educated masses. Another decade later, Heywood’s Life of Merlin (1641) 5 figures as another epitome of ancient British history. Here, Heywood once again (see above) celebrates Elizabeth as Astraea within a narrative that ends in Charles’ ascension of the throne and begins with the legend of Brute, who descends from « Aeneas and Creusa, daughter of Priam », settles in Britain and founds a city near the river Thames, « which in remembrance of the late subverted Troy, he called Troynovant, or New Troy, now London ». 6  

 

 

 

 

 

1

2   See Tatlock, op. cit., pp. 676-678.   Presson, op. cit., p. 3. 4   Ibid.   Presson, op. cit., p. 4. 5   In the Interregnum, Sir John Denham published a translation The Destruction of Troy. An Essay upon the Second Book of Virgils Aeneis. Written in the year 1636 (1656). The title page omits any sign of authorship in favour of a bold reference to the gap between the dates of composition and publication. « Denham’s omission of his name may be taken as the self-effacing gesture of a courtly amateur, presenting himself as not seriously pursuing a literary career. For Denham, the Brute legend constituted a strategic move in an ideological cultural practice, poetry in the service of a specific social agenda ». See, for Denham’s translation, Lawrence Venuti, The Destruction of Troy : Translation and Royalist Cultural Politics in the Interregnum, « The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies », 23, 1993, pp. 197-219. As Venuti shows in his essay, for a royalist writer like Denham, the monarchy survived its destruction : « Denham’s domesticating translation casts the destruction of Troy in a form that resonates with certain moments in English history when aristocratic rule was dominant (the medieval past) or was allied, however tenuously, with the monarchy (the absolutist experiment of the 1630s), or when it was decisively defeated and displaced (the civil wars 6 and Interregnum) » (p. 211).   Quoted in James, op. cit., p. 18. 3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sceptical Views Despite all these positive cultural constructs, the process of calling the Trojan myth’s cultural authority into question began as early as in Roman antiquity, when Ovid in his Metamor­phoses made Fama the (rather gossipy) patroness of the translatio imperii. 1 Tellingly, in Ovid’s epic Fama, whose house is continuously open, is surrounded by the allegories of Credulity, Error, Empty Pleasure, Anxieties and Sedition and quotes from a dubious source :  

Fama tenet summaque domum sibi legit in arce, Innumerosque aditus ac mille foramina tectis Addidit, et nullis inclusit limina portis. Nocte dieque patet, tota est ed aere sonanti. Illic Credulitas, illic temerarius Error Vanaque Laetitia est consternatique Timores Seditioque recens dubioque auctore Susurri. Ipsa, qui in caelo rerum pelagoque geratur Et tellure, videt totumque inquirit in orbem.

(xii, 43-46)

(xii.59-63) 2

Here Rumour dwells, Her chosen home set on the highest peak, Construced with a thousand apertures And countless entrances and never a door. It’s open night and day and built throughout Of echoing bronze[.] Here is Credulity, here reckless Error, Groundless Delight, Whispers of unknown source, Sudden Sedition, overwhelming Fears. All that goes on in heaven or sea or land Rumour observes and scours the whole wide world. 3

By modelling literary as well as political history on the language of unreliable Fama Ovid launches critique of Aeneas’ mission to found the Augustan Empire. He thus stands in sharp contrast to Virgil who had taken 1

  See here also Geoffrey Chaucer’s House of Fame.   Ovid, Publius Ovidius Naso : Metamorphosen. Lateinisch - deutsch, edited by Niklas Holzberg, Zürich, Artemis & Winkler, 1992. 3   The English version is from Ovid, Metamorphoses, translated by A. J. Melville, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986, ll. xii.47-52 and xii.59-63. 2

 

66 sonja fielitz recourse to Homer’s heroic context and prestigious origin for Rome’s emergent imperial character which allowed him to ease Rome’s rather painful transi­tions from republican to triumviral and finally imperial government under Augustus Caesar. On the early modern stage, Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage (publ. 1594) 1 appears to pick up on Ovid and thus enters a new stage in the representation of the Troy myth on the early modern stage. By considerably diminishing Aeneas’ stature and making him a puppet of divine will rather than a hero with a strong identity of his own, Marlowe casts a sceptical light on Virgil’s translatio imperii and renders it a rather unattractive idea. A few years later, Shakespeare’s theatrical adaptation of the Trojan myth in the play within the play in Hamlet explicitly emphasises the discourse of performance and also de-authorises its epic authority in favour of a theatrical audience. Instead of conveying (epic) royal praise to the representation of the fall of Troy, Hamlet applies it to his personal dilemma, that is, to confront his father’s murderer with its fictional representation. In his Troilus and Cressida (first registered in 1603), which – for matters of space – cannot be traced in more detail here, 2 Shakespeare once again does not employ the myth for any royal praise but rather challenges royal politics by employing the cultural legacy of the Troy story for Pandarus’ ending the play with a reference to syphilis :  

but that my fear is this : Some gallèd goose of Winchester would hiss. Till then I’ll sweat and seek about for eases, And at that time bequeath you my diseases.  

(V.x.54-57)

By the time of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida at the latest, the matter of Troy appears to have become a site for ideological contest on stage. It seems that 1

  For further reading, see, for instance, Patrick Cheney, Marlowe’s Counterfeit Profession : Ovid, Spenser, Counter-Nationhood, Toronto, Toronto University Press, 1997. 2   Shakespeare must have read much on the subject of Troy before 1602 (when Troilus was probably completed) – he surely knew Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, an edition of which appeared in 1598, and the only source we can prove is Caxton’s Recueil of the Histories of Troy, reprinted in 1596 (probably supplemented by Lydgate). Chapman’s translation of the seven books from the Iliad (i-ii, vii-xi) appeared in 1598. In 1608 Chapman added the remainder of the first twelve books, and in 1611 the complete translation appeared with revision in the 1598 version. In addition, Thersites is mentioned in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, xiii.232-233. See Martindale, op. cit., p. 94.  

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the path that the translatio imperii and its attendant cultural prestige took to reach Tudor and Stuart England […] was more arduous and devious than the easy step from Anchises’ speech in Virgil’s Underworld to Dekker’s triumphal arch. The Troy legend was subjected to striking scepticism. 1

It may be more than a footnote here that the story of Troy as the founding myth of Britain was also increasingly critically negotiated in the field of historiography. Edward Ayscu or Ayscough who lived between 1550 and 1616 in Cotham, Lincolnshire, « did not accept Brutus as the first king of all Britain, and he followed William Camden (1551-1623) in deriving the name ‘Britain’ from the barbarous way in which the ancient people, the Britons, had painted themselves ». 2 Similarly, John Speed in his History of Great Britaine (1611) the longest continuous narrative of English history published in Stuart England, 3 rejected Brutus and accepted a pruned version of the Arthurian legend. 4 Another historian who doubted the myth of the Trojan origin was John Selden. 5 On the other hand, however, John Taylor defiantly proclaimed the allegiance to the Trojan myth, answering scepticism with a kind of shoulder-shrugging historical fideism : « Amongst all which variations or times and writers », he declared with confidence, « I must conclude there was a Brute ». 6  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cymbeline A last play that might be worth being investigated in this context (and has only found little critical interest in the context of Troy yet) is Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (1609-1610). Set simultaneously in the times of Augustus Caesar and early modern Europe, Cymbeline’s rather disparate sources and generic conventions include epic, history, pastoral, romance, dream visions and fairy tale. Among other themes, the play is concerned with the status of Britain’s emerging nationhood. 7 What is striking in this respect, however, is that due to its many inconsistencies (e.g., Cymbeline’s submission to Caesar and the former’s promise to pay the Briton’s « wonted tribute », V.vi.463), Cymbeline rather depicts Jacobean Britain as a nation born of historical accidents than shaped by a clear identity of its own deriving from the classical ancestry of Troy. We might thus ask whether the play thus questions royal endeavours and even contradicts  

 

1

2   James, op. cit., p. 21.   Woolf, op. cit., p. 59.   For an excerpt from Speed’s text, see Manley, op. cit., p. 42. 4 5   See Woolf, op. cit., pp. 69-72.   See Woolf, op. cit., p. 208. 6 7   Quoted in Woolf, op. cit., p. 245.   See James, op. cit., p, 151. 3

68 sonja fielitz the glorious peace which is promised by Jupiter as follows : « This tablet lay upon his breast, wherein / Our pleasure his full fortune doth confine » (V.v.203-204). The Soothsayer who at the end of the play interprets « this label on my [Posthumus’] bosom » does not clearly say that Jupiter may extend his favour to Cymbeline’s nation. His prophecy remains rather vague :  

 

 

 

 

 

The lofty cedar, royal Cymbeline, Personates thee, and thy lopped branches point Thy two sons forth, who, by Belarius stol’n, For many years thought dead, are now revived, To the majestic cedar joined, whose issue Promises Britain peace and plenty.

(V.vi.454-459)

In short, the representatives of power in the play appear not to be stable. Cymbeline exerts his power mainly by tyranny over his daughter and by gullibly relying on the counsel of his evil Queen. By marrying Imogen, Posthumus does not follow and fulfil the imperial promise of Jupiter’s prophesy and remains only marginally linked to the prospering of Britain. At the end of the play, resolution is not achieved by marriage in order to secure the dynastic line. All in all, it might be safe to say that Cymbeline at least threads a fine line between affirmation and the calling into question of a monarch’s claims of to power. Conclusion The critical assumption on which this essay is based was that language and politics – broadly construed – are mutually constitutive, which implies that all forms of political representation realise power. As I have tried to line out, Jacobean culture was extremely theatrical in the sense of public display of political power. The Magnificent Entertainment, designed by the playwrights (my emphasis) Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson, clearly mingled (in the wake of Horace) delight with instruction and was essentially courtly, learned and allusive in its overall mood. The monumental representation of the theatrical spectacle was directed to one obser­ver, i.e., the King, who had expounded the theory of the divine right of kings in his political writings, most prominently in his Basilikon Doron. In the field of literature, the myth of Troy has turned out to be an extremely appropriate ‘test-text’ for tracing discourses of imperial identity and praise but also moments of scepticism and crisis in the Jacobean era. The latter particularly applies to the cultural discourse of

jacobean troys 69 the theatre and to plays that seek to shape English national and cultural identity in relation to imperial Rome (Dido, Queen of Carthage, Troilus and Cressida, Cymbeline). As we have seen, over the centuries, the myth of Troy became a most popular transhistorical as well as transcultural model onto which numerous writers inscribed various myths of origin and genealogical authority. The literary and political tradition dedicated to the transfer of cul­tural authority from Troy to imperial Rome to London, respectively Troynovant, was nego­tiated in most diverse ways, so that this topic appears to justify a context of « cities old and new » almost ideally.  

 

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MARLOWE’S TOUR OF ROME : POLICY, POPERY AND URBAN PLANNING  

Roy Eriksen I am the way to the doleful city Dante, Inferno, iii.11

H

ow does Marlowe relate to and use Rome in his oeuvre? The question deserves careful attention, because the city itself, as a setting for drama and multiple references to Rome in terms of political power, policy and religion, occur in several of his plays. In the present article, I argue that the poet’s various uses of Rome reflect tellingly on his independent and daring reach of mind when engaging with the symbolically fraught capital of emperors and popes, as well as on his dramatic technique. 2 Not only do the frequently discredited scenes at the papal court in Doctor Faustus(B) constitute a significant part of the play’s discourse on empire, the ambitious Pope also presents an important parallel to the overreaching protagonist in the main plot. Thus, Marlowe skilfully combines and intergrates different plots and dramatic modes in a mix that fired the imagination of his fellow Elizabethans. That the setting is Rome, the very lair of the feared Catholic Other, must have raised expectations and stirred enormous interest. Works as different as Edmund Spenser’s The Ruines of Rome and Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller testify to the range of reactions involved whenever Rome was involved. Commenting on how Italy and Rome figure early and frequently in Shakespeare’s works, Jonathan Hart states that this is not surprising considering that Rome and Italy were the centres of the Roman empire, of which Britain was a part, of the western Christian and Catholic 1   « Per me si va per la città dolente ». I cite Dante in Italian from La Divina Commedia, edited by Alberto Chiari, Sesto S. Giovanni, Bietti, 1974. The translation into English is from The Portable Dante, edited and translated by Mark Musa, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 2003, p. 14. 2   Patrick Cheney discusses many aspects of Marlowe’s attempt at fashioning a literary career in imitation of Roman authors, but is less interested in Rome except as an abstraction of Elizabethan empire against which Marlowe pits his quest for intellectual libertas. Cf. Marlowe’s Counterfeit Profession : Ovid, Spenser, Counter-Nationhood, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1997, p. 23.  

 

 

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Church, which the Church of England had broken with in the 1530s ; of the Renaissance and of the commercial revolution, especially in accounting and banking. Italy had been, and was again, the centre of Europe, which England was decidedly not. 1  

To a university wit like Marlowe, Rome triggered no lesser breadth of responses, as he is far more ‘urban’ in his attitudes than his exact contemporary. 2 The complexity of the city’s impact is indicated by some lines his scholar-protagonist utters when finding himself within the walls of Rome in the first papal scene in Doctor Faustus. To the surprise of many editors and readers, Faustus in his excitement swears by the legendary rivers of Hell, thus inviting us to associate Rome and its river with Hell :  

Now, by the kingdoms of infernal rule, Of Styx, of Acheron, and the fiery lake Of ever-burning Phlegethon, I swear That I do long to see the monuments And situation of bright splendent Rome.

(III.i.46-50) 3

In almost medieval fashion, Faustus unexpectedly couples the idea of Rome, the once glorious capital of the Roman Empire, with the type of Hell we find so graphically described in the first part of Dante’s La Divina Commedia. The obvious explanation for the paradoxical conflation 1   Jonathan Hart, Shakespeare’s Italy and England : The Translation of Culture and Empire, in Shakespeare and Italy, edited by Holger Klein and Michele Marrapodi, Lewiston-QueenstonLampeter, The Edwin Mellen Press,1999(« Shakespeare Yearbook », 10), pp. 460-480, p. 460. 2   Roy Eriksen, Embedded Urbanism : Shakespeare in the City, in Shakespeare et la Cité, edited by Pierre Kapitaniak, Dominique Goy-Blanquet, Paris, Publications de la Société Française Shakespeare, 2010, http ://www.societefrancaiseshakespeare.org/docannexe/fichier/1638/ eriksen2010.pdf. Here I argue that for Shakespeare the city – often an Italian one – frequently appears either to be maze-like and confusing, a place for entrapment and violence. In Marlowe a strong impulse to politicize comedy and satirise human weakness is developed in the direction of political and cultural critique in the innovative The Jew of Malta, a play that springs from and elaborates on the matrix of Italianate city comedy while being deeply embedded in Elizabethan mercantile culture and politico-religious conflicts. Shakespeare’s plays are surprisingly little, or only vaguely, embedded in the bustling life of the city where he worked and lived. Whether early or late in his career as dramatist, the Warwickshire man never quite became part of the metropolis that made it all possible. Marlowe on the other hand takes a more active interest in actual cities, whether they be Rome or Naples (see my discussion below). 3   I cite Doctor Faustus from Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus : A- and B texts (1604, 1616), edited by David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1993 (« The Revels Plays »), and on occasion the classic Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, 16041616 : Parallel Texts, edited by Walter Wilson Greg, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1950.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

marlowe ’ s tour of rome 73 of the Rome of Emperors and Popes with « the City of Dole » is that the city, according to Protestant propagandists like John Bale and John Foxe, equalled Hell on earth. « Marlowe is drawn to spatial paradoxes of various kinds », argues Garrett A. Sullivan Jr, « paradoxes that are not resolved but put on display ». 1 In Doctor Faustus, Hell is both a place circumscribed « [w]ithin the bowels of these elements » (II.i.122) and a state of mind. Similarly, Rome is both the papal and imperial capital while being an image of Hell on earth, prompting Faustus to swear by the legendary rivers of Hell. To Calvinist writers like Bale and Foxe, as to Dante before them, Rome belonged to ‘old geography’ and constituted another Babylon and the seat of an usurper of ancient imperial authority, whereas Faustus is essentially a traveller in « new geography ». 2 Nevertheless, to many well-educated Englishmen, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, Italy and Rome continued to be a place of awe and admiration, and a visit to the urbe aeterna was desirable to young aristocrats and the sons of wealthy citizens who wanted to make a public career. As recently shown by D. K. Smith, the new cartography was at the forefront of Early Modern expansionism and redescription of the world and Marlowe’s use of Ortelius and other geographers documents this crucial innovatory force in a nation on the move and the make. 3 In his pervasive and advanced use of and reference to new cartography, Marlowe is in the forefront of the modern movement. 4 Similarly, we know that Venice held a special role in the Elizabethan imagination as an economically dynamic and wealthy  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1   Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr, Geography and Identity in Marlowe, in The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe, edited by Patrick Cheney, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 231-244, p. 241. Among these paradoxes are the old and new world pictures and the notions of Hell as a physical space and a mental condition. 2   Ethel Seaton first discovered the dramatist’s use of Ortelius in Marlowe’s Map, « Essays and Studies by the members of the English Association », 10, 1924. For an emphasis on the new geography and its philosophical underpinnings, see Crystal Bartolovich, Putting Tamburlaine on a (Cognitive) Map, « Renaissance Drama », 28, 1997, pp. 29- 72. 3   D. K. Smith writes that Marlowe and Raleigh utilized the « new paradigms of spatial manipulation » and « were writing within a culture newly aware not just of geography, but of the increasingly complex and detailed techniques of its representation ». See The Cartographic Imagination in Early Modern England : Re-Writing the World of Marlowe, Spenser, Raleigh and Marvell, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2008, p. 127. 4   In relation to Tamburlaine, Bernhard Klein suggests that Ortelius’s world map is « a defining structural principle of the entire play – more than merely its referential paradigm, it acts almost literally as the dramatic scene of action ». See Bernhard Klein, Maps and the Writing of Space in Early Modern England and Ireland, New York, Palgrave, 2001, p. 16. See also David Buisseret, The Mapmakers Quest : Depicting New Worlds in Renaissance Europe, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

74 roy eriksen merchant republic, a place to study and from which to learn. 1 Since the late sixteenth century, England kept an ambassador in the republic on a fairly regular basis, but only Rome was Rome. 2 A speech by the character Dalavil in Thomas Heywood’s tragi-comedy The English Traveller (c.1624) illustrates quite well both the need for first-hand information about the world across the Channel and the continued position of Rome :  

I haue read Ierusalem, and studied Rome, Can tell in what degree each City stands, Describe the distance of this place from that, All this the Scale in euery Map can teach, Nay, for a neede could punctually recite The Monuments in either ; but what I Haue by relation onely, knowledge by trauell Which still makes vp a compleat Gentleman, Prooues eminent in you. 3  

Dalavil had obviously thumbed every travel-book available, but deplores not having the detailed and direct personal experience of Rome that his young cosmopolitan friend Geraldine has. As the capital of Western Christianity, Rome had coloured English national and international affairs for centuries and would continue to influence and condition life in a religiously divided England, a country « at war with Catholic nations abroad, most notably Spain [...] and also Catholic principalities in France ». 4 Catholic plots and the persecutions of Catholics that followed in their wake were the order of the day, causing conflicts of conscience and loyalty. 5 When composing plays like Doc 

 

1

  See David C. Mcpherson, Shakespeare, Jonson and the Myth of Venice, Newark, University of Delaware Press, 1990 ; Lorna Hutson, Thomas Nashe in Context, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989, pp. 3-54. Hutson discusses e.g. Sir Thomas Smith, A Discourse of the CommonwealofThis Realm of England [1560], edited by Mary Dewar, Charlottesville, The University Press of Virginia, 1969. 2   Henry Wotton was ambassdor in the republic for in all 18 years nurturing the good liasons between James and the Venetian Senate. As a model for English manufacture and trade the city and its policies were closely studied and copied. See Logan P. Smith, The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1907. 3   John Heywood, The English Traveller. A tragi-comedy in five acts, chiefly in verse [London, 1633], London, British Library Historical Print Editions, 2011, sig. A4r. 4   Paul Whitfield White, Marlowe and the Politics of Religion, in The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe, cit., pp. 70-89, p.77. 5   The literature on Catholicism and Catholic martyrs is vast, and especially extensive is the literature on Shakespeare and Catholicism. I limit myself to citing Ernst Anselm Joachim Honigmann, Shakespeare : The“Lost Years”, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1985 ; 1998, 2 ; Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel, Die verborgene Existenz des Wil 

 

 

 

marlowe ’ s tour of rome 75 tor Faustus and The Jew of Malta, Marlowe openly engaged with these conflicts and their international ramifications. An agent provocateur in the network of spies and informers organised by Francis Walsingham and Lord Burghley, 1 Marlowe put himself at risk and fully deserved the epithet « vnsatiable Speculator » given to Doctor Faustus in The English Faust Book. 2 His « monstrous opinions » did not prevent him, however, from willingly playing into the hands of the authorities and serving up pieces of government propaganda in a play like The Massacre at Paris. 3 It is obvious that he could never have operated so freely and defiantly as he did, however, had he not enjoyed a substantial degree of protection or goodwill from men close to and within the power elite. The controversy concerning his degree at Cambridge bears evidence to that. 4 He moved in powerful circles, and his style of life seems to have been realised with the sprezzatura of constant provocation and an apparent inability to hold back. With the intellectual rigor and method of his Cambridge humanist training and up-to-date readings fresh out of Europe, he invites us e.g. in The Jew of Malta to look in other and unexpected directions, 5 and thus he also allows us, as it were, to identify the various groups with which he communicated in the theatre. He frequently addressed a special audience above the heads of the common theatre-goers, while he at the same time enthralls the latter with spectacle, outrageous farce and shows of violence in nearly all of his plays. 6 Most spectators at the time would identify Rome with the Pope and  

 

 

 

liam Shakespeare : Dichter und Rebell im katholischen Untergrund,Freiburg, Herder, 2001 ; and Richard Wilson, Secret Shakespeare : Studies in Theatre, Religion and Resistance, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2004. 1   Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning : The Murder of Christopher Marlowe, London, Vintage, 2002, pp. 109-198 (« The Intelligence Connection »), and David Riggs, The World of Christopher Marlowe, London, Faber and Faber, 2004, pp. 139-144 and 334-335. 2   P. F., English Faust Book : A Critical Edition Based on the Text of 1592, edited by John Henry Jones, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994. 3   Christopher Marlowe, The Massacre at Paris, edited by Edward J. Esche, in The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe, v, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998. 4   Nicholl, op. cit., p. 110. 5   Park Honan, Christopher Marlowe : Poet and Spy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 259 : « it nearly is an essay-play, with wider intellectual and geographical range of reference than is customary even for Marlowe ». 6   See the perceptive analysis in Sara Munson Deats, Marlowe’s Interrogative Drama. Dido, Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus, and Edward II, in Marlowe’s Empery : Expanding His Critical Contexts, edited by Sara Munson Deats and Robert A. Logan, Newark London, Delaware University Press Associated University Presses, 2002, pp. 107-132. Munson Deats does not specifically treat The Jew, but states that « a strong case could also be made » for that play (p. 108).  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

76 roy eriksen Catholicism with fiendish Machiavellian policy, but for a university wit and Italianate poet like Marlowe it would also have provided other and subtler associations for the better educated in the audience. The populist view of the Pope and Catholics in general as murderous opportunists is well represented in The Massacre at Paris, where Navarre explains that the Guise aime at the crowne, And takes his vantage on Religion, To plant the Pope and popelings in the Realme, And binde it wholy to the Sea of Rome.

(xxiv.24-27)

Similar violent attacks on the Pope are found throughout the play, e.g. in its final scene which dramatises the murder of the French king by a Jesuit friar. The fatal attack on his life causes the dying Henry to utter a warning to Elizabeth of the potentially lethal consequences of Catholic policy. His propagandistic words to the mourning Epernoun spell out the message clearly to the London audiences :  

Ah Epernoune, is this thy love to me? Henry thy King, wipes off these childish teares, And bids thee whet thy sword on Sextus bones, That it may keenly slice the Catholicks. He loves me not that sheds most teares, But he that makes most lavish of his bloud.

(xxiv.97-102)

This is pure anti-Catholic propaganda, as seen also in the Prologue in The Jew of Malta, where Marlowe makes a caricature Machiavelli enter as the bogey-man of cinquecento politics in the traditional role of a grotesque and comic Vice-figure. Machiavelli lectures on how hypocrisy and self-interest operate in Rome and within the Catholic Church in a system where men prey on men and pursue their own ‘policy’ :1  

Admired I am of those that hate me most. Though some speak openly against my books, Yet will they read me, and thereby attain To Peter’s Chair : and when they cast me off,  

1   Howard S. Babb, Policy in Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, « English Literary History », ii, 24, 1957, pp. 85-94, explores the two basic and different meanings of ‘policy’, on the one hand selfish pursuit of personal gain, on the other « prudent, expedient and advantageous procedure » in relation to the conduct of public affairs. Babb lists 13 occurrences of the term in the play (p. 86).  

 

 

 

marlowe ’ s tour of rome Are poysoned by my climbing followers. I count Religion but a childish toy[.]

77 (Prologue, 10-14) 1

Similar charges are launched against Saxon Bruno in the first papal scene in Doctor Faustus (B), too, where after a short exchange of between Pope Adrian and Saxon Bruno, who is the Emperor’s candidate for the See of Rome, Bruno is sent off to be tried by an ecclesiastical court and condemned according to « the Statutes Decretall » (III.i.104). We later learn that he is to be burned at the stake because he « did seek to wear the triple diadem / And by your death to climb Saint Peter’s Chaire » (III.ii.180-181). At the heart of the conflict and beneath the propaganda, there is a serious argument about the relationship between State and Church. This is the old struggle between Emperor and Pope over the right to appoint bishops and the Pope’s claim to secular sovreignty. Thus, the Emperor Charles V in the play is in the same position as the Tudor monarch in her conflict with the Pope about who is the Head of the Church. Just like the Emperor  

 

 

 

shalt stand excommunicate And interdict from Church privilege And all society of holy men[,]

(III.i.129-31)

Elizabeth I had been excommunicated by papal bull in 1570, a fact present to all Elizabethans. On this point Marlowe therefore is squarely on the side of « Martin Luther and John Foxe, to whom the Pope is a usurper claiming illegitimate power ». 2 The frontispiece of the second volume of Foxe’s Actes and Monuments shows Henry VIII using the Pope as his footstool, an arrangement Marlowe uses both in 1 Tamburlaine IV.i.1-14 3 and in the B-Text. This is orthodoxy as is, indeed, the ending of the whole play, and no other option was possible, a fact frequently sidestepped by critics like Richard Dutton and Cathrine Minshull, 4 who  

 

1

  The Jew of Malta, edited by Roma Gill, The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe, iv, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995. 2   Clifford Davidson, Doctor Faustus at Rome, « Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 », ii, 9, 1969, pp. 231–239, p. 231. 3   William J. Brown, Marlowe’s Debasement of Bajazet.Foxe’s Actes and Monuments and Tamburlaine, Part i , « Renaissance Quarterly », i, 24, 1971, pp. 38-48. Brown also points out that Marlowe uses Foxe in Tamburlaine, Part ii (p. 40, note 5). 4   Cathrine Minshull, The Dissident Sub-Text of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, « English », 39, 1990, pp. 193-207 ; and Richard Dutton, Licensing, Censorship, and Authorship in Early Modern England, New York, Palgrave, 2000, pp. 62-69.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

78 roy eriksen would like Marlowe’s play to be more daring, subversive and openended. 1 Critics who find it hard to accept the papal scenes as part of Marlowe’s design for the play underrate, I suggest, their basic seriousness and integration with the theme of the main plot. The politico-religious dimensions of the scenes tie in with and reinforce the opening scene of the play with Faustus’s full frontal attack on the doctrine of predestination :  

The reward of sin is death? That’s hard. Si peccasse negamus, fallimur Et nulla est in nobis veritas. If we say we have no sin, We deceive ourselves, and there is no truth in us. When then belike we must sin, And so consequently die. Ay, we must die an everlasting death. What doctrine call you this? Che serà, serà : What will be, shall be. Divinitie adieu!  

(I.i.39-48)

After such a daring illustration of the dangers of intellectual pride and of the doctrine of election predestination, Marlowe probably felt the need to add a more palatable episode to the action that squared with the current orthodoxy. He certainly is on much safer ground as a dramatist in the public domain when he ridicules the Pope and draws on a number of well-established anti-papal sources ranging to from Dante Alighieri to John Foxe. In point of fact, the Pope’s boast in the first papal scene of his infallibility, as it were, by predestination – « tho we would we cannot erre » (III.ii.152) – connects to Faustus’s misreading of 1 Romans 1.18, that all men must sin and « so conquently die ». 2 The Pope haughtily believes himself to be  

 

 

 

1   Critics who think the B-Text is more orthodox than the A-Text, and use this to claim that the A-Text is closer to the original play, seem to overlook or downplay this obvious fact. See David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen, Introduction, in Doctor Faustus : A- and B-Texts, cit., pp. 62-77, or David Wootton, Introduction, in Doctor Faustus with The English Faust Book, edited by Idem, Indianapolis Cambridge, Hacknett, 2005, pp. viii-xxxvi. Cf. for the ‘orthodox’ view William Empson, Faustus and the Censor : The English Faust-Book and Marlowe’s ‘Doctor Faustus’, Oxford, Blackwell, 1987, passim, and Roy Eriksen, The Forme of Faustus Fortunes : A Study of The Tragedie of Doctor Faustus (1616), Oslo Atlantic Highlands, Solum Humanities Press, 1987, passim. 2   Interestingly Dante, too, combines and draws on John, predestination and grace in preparation of his argument that the Emperor is above the Pope (especially Pope Boniface) in the De Monarchia, ii : 60. See Dante Alighieri, Monarchy, edited by Prue Shaw, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996 (« Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought »), pp. ix-xlviii. Dante alludes to phrases used in the Unam Sanctam at various points in his treatise (cf I.xvi. 28).  

 

 

 

 

 

marlowe ’ s tour of rome 79 without sin, whereas Faustus, who knows he is a sinner, thinks he is necessarily doomed to an « everlasting death » (I.i.46). Marlowe thus projects the tragedy’s struggle betwen good and evil onto the screen of history, revealing « the Pontiff as a servant of Satan who wishes to bind all men in sin ». 1 As I will explain below, the theme of the scenes set in Rome engages with two levels of Tudor religious politics, a prejudiced and propagandist antiCatholicism which is found in The Jew of Malta and The Massacre at Paris, and a more serious ideological discourse on the power relations between Church and State, i.e. the Sovereign. We see these levels mirrored in Marlowe’s choice of sources, for in addition to the two major ones, The English Faust Book and John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, imagery from a spectacular point in the action of Dante’s Inferno interestingly appears at this point in the play. I refer to Dante’s flight into Hell on a dragon to discover that the place where he lands is quite similar to Rome during the Jubilee, an event which closely parallels Faustus’s journey to Rome on a dragon’s back to see St.Peter’s feast and confront the Pope in defence of imperial authority. Whereas Dante was cherished in England for his poetry among a few Italianate connoisseurs, 2 his political thought was far more important for Protestant England and her notion of ‘empire’ because of his « potential for recruitment as a ‘proto-Protestant writer’ ». 3 In fact, Nick Havely in a ground-breaking article documents how Protestant theologians enlisted Dante as an important precursor of reform in his sustained critique of papal political power and immorality. Havely cites Bale’s rather ironical account of Dante’s view of the Church in his treatise on world goverment :  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dante Aligerus, [...] poeta Florentinus, opusculum scripsit de Monarchia.In quo fuit eius opinio, quod Imperium ab ecclesia minime dependeret. 4 Dante Alighieri, [...] a Florentine poet, wrote a small work entitled On Monarchy. In this, he was of the opinion that Empire to a very small degree depended on the church. 5 1

  Davidson, art. cit., p. 238.   See the account in Werner P. Friederich, Dante’s Fame Abroad, 1350-1850. Rome, Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1950, pp. 153-154 ; and RobinKirkpatrick, English and Italian Literature from Dante to Shakespeare : A Study of Sources, Analogy and Influence, London, Longman, 1995 (« Longman Medieval and Renaissance Library »). 3   Nick Havely, From ‘Goodly Maker’ to Witness Against the Pope : Conscripting Dante in Henrician England, « Textual Cultures. Texts, Contexts, Interpretation », i, 5, 2010, pp. 76-98, p. 76. 4   John Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium maioris Brytannie quam nunc Angliam & Scotiam vocant. Catalogus, Basel, Oporinus, 1557-1559, 2, p. 377, quoted in Havely, art. cit., p. 93. 5   My translation. Note Bale’s prejudiced use of capitalisations : « Imperium » and « Monarchia » versus « ecclesia ». 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Regardless of this understudied fact, Marlowe takes a calculated risk when he brings the papal court and Rome itself onto the stage in a play that dramatises the dangers incurred by those who had « continually before their eyes the sentence of God’s Predestination ». 1 The play ran the risk of outraging both Calvinists and Anglicans, so Marlowe must have had very good reasons for including the scenes in Rome in his play. The prominent use of farce in the papal scenes has often been deemed to be evidence of divided authorship and has been treated as an argument in favour of a late date of composition, 2 the main reason being that the fullest version of the play survives in the 1616 edition, the socalled B-Text. 3 Most critics have therefore traditionally attributed the papal scenes to Samuel Rowley and William Birde, 4 because they in 1602 were paid for additions to Doctor Faustus, but also because they find its mixture of anti-Catholic propaganda unworthy of Marlowe and more in keeping with Rowley’s style and use of Foxe elsewhere. 5 However, as e.g. Clifford Davidson has pointed out, « we have no evidence that these additions were ever incorporated into either printed version of the play ». 6 We should at least not see in them evidence of the primacy of the A-Text, because part of that text, as Thomas Pettit has firmly established, « reflects the impact of oral transmission on a play whose original text, where they have material in common is better represented by the B-version ». 7 Besides Rowley’s candidacy further fades when we remember that Marlowe had already drawn on Foxe’s Barbarossa-episode used in the papal scenes and other passages from Actes and Monuments in  

 

 

 

 

 

1   The Book of Common Prayer, Article xvii : of Predestination and Election, cited in H. C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1958, p. 336. 2   Leo Kirschbaum in 1946 reminded critics who opposed the idea that Marlowe did not write comedy that he both « could and did write slapstick comic scenes and uninspired serious scenes » and « in this respect he was no different than Shakespeare » ; see The Good and Bad Quartos of Doctor Faustus, « The Library », 26, 1946, pp. 272-294, p. 274. 3   For the two main versions and their differences, see Walter Wilson Greg, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, 1604-1616 : Parallel Texts, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1950, pp. 1-157. 4   Bevington and Rasmussen, op. cit., pp. 62-72. 5   FrederickS. Boas, Introduction, in The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, London, 1949, 2, pp. 29-30 ; Leslie M. Oliver, Rowley, Foxe, and the Faustus Additions, « mln », 40, l945, pp. 391-394 ; Bevington and Rasmussen, op. cit., p. 15 ; and recently the view as repeated by Brian 6 Gibbons.   Davidson, art. cit., p. 232. 7   Thomas Pettitt, Marlowe’s Texts and Oral Transmission : Towards the Zielform, « Comparative Drama », ii, 39, 2005, pp. 213-242.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

marlowe ’ s tour of rome 81 1 Tamburlaine the Great. When we moreover take into consideration that a stylistic trait frequently claimed to point to Rowley is typical of Marlowe and also is present elsewhere in Doctor Faustus, Rowley disappears rapidly from the scene. 2 When we furthermore look more closely at the two scenes at the papal court, we note that the slapstick humour is confined to the latter half of the second scene, and that the first scene for all its mixed materials is firmly focused on the conflict between Pope and Emperor, emphasising the inappropriate and haughty behaviour of Pope Adrian. 3 Davidson underlines the topical seriousness involved, arguing that these scenes are « more closely related to the dominant themes of the drama than [...] recognized previously ». 4 Thomas Healy argues to the same effect that  

 

Faustus’s desire to see the great sights of Rome is not immediately abandoned for farce ; instead the main preoccupation is with a serious Faustus being antipapal, pro-German, and favouring Protestantism. 5  

Ideologically, this part of the play is in keeping with « the Protestant theology which permeates the play as a whole » 6 and the episode repeated from Foxe is yet another case of Marlowe’s characteristic habit of repeating or reformulating himself. « Despite some inferior verse which is present », Davidson argues, « the episode surely was part of Marlowe’s design for the play ». 7 I propose that in terms of dramaturgy that design is created in response to the challenge of compressing the twenty-four years of Faustus’s eventful life into a dramatically effective and thematically unified plot. Of course, Doctor Faustus is a notoriously episodic and seemingly disorganised play, covering 24 years and being set in many locations, but as Hardin Craig observes, Marlowe inherited from The English Faust Book a story « whose significance lies in its unity ». 8 From that multifarious and often confusing unity, Marlowe created a play whose structure therefore shows a clear preference for episodic intensification within an overall  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Brown, art. cit.   Eriksen, The Forme of Faustus Fortunes, cit., pp. 94-95. 3   It is certainly no coincidence that the only Englishman ever to be elected pope was also 4 named Hadrian.   Davidson, art. cit., p. 231. 5   Thomas Healy, Doctor Faustus, in The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe, cit., pp. 174-192, pp. 184-185. 6 7   Davidson, art. cit., p. 239.   Davidson, art. cit., pp. 231-232. 8   Hardin Craig, Motivation in Shakespeare’s Choice of Materials, « Shakespeare Studies », 4, 1951, pp. 26-34, p. 27. 2

 

 

82 roy eriksen design marked by careful integration and subordination of the various plots. One particular challenge in terms of continuity of action is the passage from the initial seven scenes set at Wittenberg to the scenes that are emblematic of the activities of Faustus during the twenty-four years of the compact. This is where, as I suggest above, he turns to a crucial point of transition in the action of Dante’s Inferno to make the transfer from Wittenberg to Rome more logical and thematically convincing. The two passages describe the descent of Dante and Virgil into Malebolge at the end of Canto 17 and their arrival there in the first part of Canto 18, events that bear on the flight of Faustus and Mephostophilis to Rome. The passages in Doctor Faustus are Chorus ii.73-801 and two speeches in the first papal scene (III.i.24-51). The solution chosen by Marlowe, I propose, underpins the integration of these scenes into the comprehensive and symbolic design of the play’s Italianate multi-plot structure. As I have shown elsewhere, that structure combines the main tragic plot with a contrastive low-life subplot and a political socio-political superplot that ‘peaks’ in the imperial sequence. 1 Each of the three central sequences – the papal, imperial and ducal sequences – is a play-within-the-play that presents a parallel to the main plot. The anonymous translator of The English Faust Book narrates how Faustus travels extensively in the heavens and around the world before he comes to Italy and Rome on the back of « the Spirit » that has « changed himselfe into the likeness of a flying horse » (ch. 22). 2 Marlowe inventively alters this account by turning the flying horse into a winged dragon, known from Henslowe’s famous entry as « j dragon in fostes ». 3 In Chorus 2 Faustus is said to ride  

 

 

 

 

 

1   See Roy Eriksen, ‘What Place is This’ : Time and Place in Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus (B), « Renaissance Drama », 16, 1985, pp. 49-74. The article shows that the play has a double time frame and a symmetrical distribution of its settings around the scenes at the imperial court. As Healy observes, « The play within a play is a standard device of Renaissance drama, but there can be few instances of dramas so obsessed with constructing plays within plays as Doctor Faustus » ; Healy, op. cit., p. 187. I would suggest The Taming of a Shrew to present a similar example of this type of ‘obsession’ ; cf. Roy Eriksen, The Taming of a Shrew : Composition as Induction to Authorship, « Nordic Journal of English Studies », ii, 4, 2005, pp. 41-61. 2   It should be noted that in his first travels (recorded in the first part of Chorus 2), « to find the secrets of Astronomy » (2) Faustus rides in « a Chariot [...] Drawne by the strength of yoked Dragons’ necks » (6-7), whereas The English Faust Book has « a Waggon, with two Dragons before it » (Ch. 21). 3   Henslowe Papers, Being Documents Supplementary to Henslowe’s Diary, edited by Walter Wilson Greg, London, A. H. Bullen, 1907, p. 113. Other props used in the scenes at the papal court are « j poopes miter » and a prospect of « the sittie of Rome » (p. 118).  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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upon a dragon’s back, That with his wings did part the subtle aire : He is now gone to proue Cosmography, That measures costs, and kingdomes of the earth. And as I guesse will first arriue at Rome, To see the Pope and manner of his Court, And take some part of holy Peter’s feast, The which this day is highly solemnized (2 Chorus, 18-25)  

The description a few lines earlier of Faustus « whirling round [...] [w]ithin the concave compass of the pole » (13-14) before he and Mephostophilis arrive in Rome suggests how Dante and Virgil descend in circles into hell on the back of the winged dragon Gerion. 1 Being compared to a falcon, Dante’s dragon, too, whirls around with « a hundred wheelings » (‘per cento rote’) before he unloads his twin burden at Malebolge. 2 Could it be that Gerion is the source of the swift dragon that brings Faustus and Mephostophilis to Rome? The parallel is intriguingly close and Marlowe’s dragon differs greatly from P. F.’s flying horse, even though Rome is not Malebolge, or seems at first not to be. For the dragon shakes Dante and Virgil off in a walled-in space similar to a castle with bridges of entry (xviii.10-15), over which crowds of sinners are whipped by devils. Dante is struck by the remarkably vivid scene that immediately and irreverently makes him think of how the Romans controlled the crowds of pilgrims who flocked to Rome in the year of the Jubilee (1300) and crossed Ponte Sant’ Angelo to get to St. Peter’s :  

 

 

 

 

1

  The flight and the arrival of the two poets occupy the final section of Inferno xvii and the opening section of Inferno xviii, that is in contingent passages that report on one line of action. 2   Come ’l falcon che è stato assai su l’ali, [...] discende lasso onde si move snello per cento rote, e da lunge si pone al suo maestro, disdegnoso e fello[.] (xvii.126 ; 129-132) Mark Musa translates the passage as follows (The Portable Dante, cit.) : As the falcon on the wing for many hours, [...] descends, worn out, circling a hundred times (instead of swooping down), settling at some distance from his master, perched in anger and disdain[.]  

 

84

roy eriksen Come i Roman per l’essercito molto, l’anno del Giubileo, su per lo ponte hanno a passar la gente modo colto, che da un lato tutti hanno la fronte verso ’l castello e vanno a Santo Pietro, da l’altra sponda vanno verso ’l monte.

(xvii.28-33) 1

The Romans, too, in the year of the Jubilee took measures to accommodate the throngs that had to come and go across their bridge : they fixed it so on one side all were looking at the castle, and were walking to St. Peter’s ; on the other, they were moving toward the mount. (xvii.28-33) 2  

 

The passage conflates Malebolge and Rome (and the bridge at Castel Sant’Angelo) and it serves as an introduction to Dante’s extended attack in this and the subsequent canto on the Pope and the Church for simony and abuse of power. For in 1302 Pope Boniface VIII in the bull Unam Sanctam had proclaimed the authority of the Church over the Emperor in secular matters, which earned the Pope a place in Hell (xix.54). Dante supported the Emperor and in the treatise De Monarchia (c. 1314), 3 he sees the Pope as an usurper of imperial authority, so the attack on the Church in Inferno is a poetic treatment of Dante’s argument in De Monarchia. This is also the reason why Dante was enlisted by Tudor Protestant theologians as an early opponent of the Pope. 4 In fact, Dante seems principally to have been studied in Protestant England more for his politics and his pro-imperial stance than for his poetry. 5 Consequently, Marlowe’s solution to the problem of finding a functional transition from the Wittenberg scenes to those set in Rome is both elegant and thematically relevant, because it focuses precisely on Dante’s critique of the papacy. As a student of theology at Cambridge at a time of violent theo1

  The Mount (il monte) here refers to Monte Giordano, a hill at Campo Marzo on the city or Campo Marzo side, which was the stronghold of the Orsini family. 2   See also Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy : Translated, with a Commentary, i, Inferno : Italian Text and Translation, edited and translated by Charles S. Singleton, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971, pp. 184, 285. 3   Boniface VIII declared the authority of the Church in secular matters in the bull Unam Sanctam (1302) ; see Prue Shaw, Introduction, in Alighieri, Monarchy, cit., pp. ix-xlviii. Dante alludes to phrases used in the bull at various points in his treatise (cf. I.xvi.28). 4 5   See Havely, art. cit., p. 76.   Idem, p. 76.  

 

 

marlowe ’ s tour of rome 85 logical debate, Marlowe would have been familiar with such arguments against the Catholic Church, but the idea to use a striking image from the Inferno in Doctor Faustus was probably based on his own reading or suggested by one of his Italianate companions, like Thomas Watson and John Florio. 2 I suggest that Marlowe, who was more than moderately interested and involved in religion and politics, very probably would have been familiar with Dante’s role in the writings of Protestant polemicists like John Foxe, who writes that « Certayne of his [Dante’s] writings be extant abroade wherein he proveth the pope not to be above the Emperour, nor to have any right or jurisdiction in the Empyre ». 3 This politicised use of Dante therefore provides a relevant context for the fast-moving dragon that flies Faustus and Mephostophilis to Rome. For Marlowe’s dragon « [t]hat with his wings did part the subtle aire » (2 Chorus, 19) 4 certainly resembles Geryon far more than « [the] flying horse » found in the efb. Moreover, the scene Dante encounters at Malebolge and that reminds him of Rome during the Year of the Jubilee, matches a similar scene in Marlowe’s play : whereas Dante associates Hell with Rome, Faustus associates Rome with Hell, but rather than the Jubilee, Faustus wishes to « take some part of holy Peters feast » (III.i.38). The Jubilee and holy Peter’s feast are sufficiently comparable events to invite closer scrutiny, because Mephostophilis’s account of the sites of Rome and its bridges also comes closer to Dante than Marlowe’s source in The English Faust Book. Faustus’s guide singles out « the bridge, called Ponte Angelo » (III.i.10) and its particular logistical function, that is, it connects the two banks of the river, allowing « safe passage, to each part of Rome » (III.i.9). This is close to Dante’s verses on the same bridge, when he foregrounds how the pilgrims walk across the bridge in both directions : 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

su per lo ponte hanno a passar la gente modo colto, che da un lato tutti hanno la fronte 1

  See Porter, op. cit. ; Wilbur Sanders, The Dramatist and the Received Idea : Studies in the Plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1968, pp. 242-253 ; and Eriksen, The Forme of Faustus Fortunes, cit., pp. 26-58. 2   See Nicholas Ransom, A Marlowe Sonnet?, « Publications of the Arkansas Philological Association », 5, 1979, pp.1-8 ; and Roy Eriksen, Entering the Garden : Phaeton to his friend Florio, « Les Cahiers Shakespeare en devenir », edited by Pascale Drout and Muriel Cunin, 4, 3 2010, pp.1-9.   Cited from Friederich, op. cit., p. 198. 4   The verse on the careful movements of Gerione in Dante, « E con le branche l’aere a sé raccolse » (xvii.105) produces the same feeling of tactility as Marlowe’s « that with his wings did part the subtle aire » (2 Chorus, 14).  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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roy eriksen verso ’l castello e vanno a Santo Pietro, da l’altra sponda vanno verso ’l monte. took measures to accommodate the throngs that had to come and go across their bridge : they fixed it so on one side all were looking at the castle, and were walking to St. Peter’s ; on the other, they were moving toward the mount. (29-33 ; italics mine)  

 

 

Thus, the idea of describing an orderly and safe transit (« passar [...] modo colto ») to either shore of the river (« da un lato [...] da l’altra sponda », « on one side [...] on the other ») on Ponte Sant’ Angelo is present only in Dante and Marlowe, not in The English Faust Book. 1 In fact, at this point the version in the B-Text appears to be the result of a deliberate rewriting and reshaping of P.F.’s description (ch. 25) in the vein of Dante. Marlowe appears to have fused the accounts to underscore his main thematic points, that Rome has been converted into Hell on earth and that the Pope is an usurper of imperial power. Moreover, in the finished description we also notice an entirely new aspect of the dramatist’s engagement with Rome, his interest in it as a city planned in accordance with the principles of Renaissance urbanism. For there is in the description a tangible and intriguing focus on axiality or division of the city into two parts, an unexpected trait to which I will shortly turn. When Mephostophilis and Faustus have arrived inside the walls of Rome, the former gives a detailed description of the Roman urban landscape to his master.  

 

 

 

 

 

All’s one, for wee’l be bold with his Venson. But now my Faustus, that thou maist perceiue, What Rome containes for to delight thine eyes. Know that this City stands vpon seuen hils, That vnderprop the ground-work of the same : Iust through the midst runnes flowing Tybers streame, With winding bankes that cut it in two parts ; ouer the which twostately Bridges leane, That make safe passage, to each part of Rome. Vpon the Bridge, call’d Ponto Angelo, Erected is a Castle passing strong, Where thou shalt see such store of Ordinance,  

 

1   The speech in the A-Text is incorrectly rendered and cut by some lines and lacks some of the repetitions, so typical of Marlowe’s speech construction ; cf. Eriksen, op. cit., pp. 194196. See my discussion below.  

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As that the double Cannons forg’d of brasse, Do watch the number of the daies contain’d, Within the compass of one compleat yeare : beside the gates, of high Pyramides, That Iulius Caesar brought from Affrica. (III.i.1-17 ; emphases mine)  

 

This prospect of Rome is far more detailed than the one by John Heywood cited at the outset, and immediately suggests that we here see another instance of Marlowe the avid reader of maps and engravings of the world. For Tamburlaine and The Jew, he mined atlases like Abraham Ortelius’s state of the art world atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570), and in Doctor Faustus, then, he expertly reproduces the topography of « bright splendent Rome » (III.i.50). Not only does he detail the city’s main topographical features, but he also uses the appropriate architectural terms (site, situation, ground-work, underprop, and erect). This remarkably accurate speech even appears to reflect the actual structure of the urbs aeterna, in its symmetrical lay-out. In actual fact, the speech seems to be patterned on vistas of Rome as reproduced by some late cinquecento engravers. Some of these engravers deliberately transform and regularise the view to produce a more balanced, though manipulated, representation of the city. This practice, I would argue, is inherent in Mephostophilis’s survey of Rome which therefore reveals to us another side to the dramatist, his interest in urbanism, 1 that extended further than his well-known fascination for maps and geography. We detect an instance of this interest also in Faustus’s speech a few verses earlier in the same scene, 2 but more significantly is his knowledge and use of state-of-theart principles of fortification, a highly prestigious part of Renaissance urban planning. In 2 Tamburlaine (III.ii.73ff ) he elaborates on a technical description of how to fortify a garrison, taken from a passage in Paul Ive’s then unpublished treatise, The Practice of Fortification (1589) :  

 

 

1

  In the case of the Borgo Leonino, or the Vicus Curialis, as it was planned during the papacy of Nicholas V (1447-1455), the situation is not dissimilar. A number of later topographical maps of the area in question are extant (Ill. 1-5) ; I refer to the crude beginnings in e.g. Schleyel (1493), Leonardo Bufalini (1551), Ugo Pinard (1555), Étiénne du Pérac (1577), and Antonio Tempesta (1593). 2   I refer to III.i.9-11(B), to which verse III.i.12 (A) should be added to read : Then vp to Naples, [in] rich Campania, Whose buildings faire, and gorgeous to the eye, [Whose] streetes straight forth, and paued with finest bricke, Quarter the towne in four equivalents. See also Parallel Texts, cit., p. 347.  

 

88

roy eriksen It must have privy ditches, countermines And secret issuings to defend the ditch. It must have high argines and covered ways To keep the bulwark fronts from battery. 1

In this case, too, Marlowe fills in details and expands on his source when creating his text, and the same is true of the urbanist details in Mephostophilis’s description of Rome. This is evident when we compare it to the account in The English Faust Book :  

[Rome] which lay, & doth lie, on the riuer Tybris, the which deuideth the Citie in two parts : ouer the riuer was foure great stone bridges, and vpon the one bridge called Ponte S. Angelo is the castle of S. Angelo, wherein are so many great cast peeces as there are dayes in a yeare, and such Pieces that will shoot seuen bullets off with one fire, to this commeth a priuie vault from the Church and Pallace of Saint Peter ; [...] the Citie hath eleuen gates, and a hill called Vaticinium. (ch. 25)  

 

The latter description provides only some of the details found in Mephostophilis’s description of Rome. It is considerably less technical in containing few technical architectural terms, and there is a conspicuous use of numbers : two parts, four great stone bridges, the number of days in a year, seven bullets, and eleven gates. These are details that better belong in a purely fictional context, or in fairy tales, for that matter. Notable in Doctor Faustus is the way in which Marlowe disciplines and reshapes his source text and introduces a number of new terms not present in The English Faust Book, including significant details that reveal special interest in or knowledge of the topograhy of the city. To take the most obvious ones first : the 17-verse speech describes how the Tiber cuts Rome into two parts, there is a cluster of words underpinning the fact (iust through the midst ; two parts, two bridges, double Cannons), so that the actual divided topography of the urbe becomes a template for the speech itself. Its distribution of repeated semiotic markers (one / Rome containes Bridges / passage // Rome // Bridge / passing /contain’d / one) marks axiality and division into two. This type of repetitional pattern is also typical of Marlovian speeches, as I have documented on various occasions. 2 Moreover, the fact that Marlowe mentions not four bridges  

 

 

1

  Nicholl, op. cit., p. 144.   See e.g. Eriksen, The Forme of Faustus Fortunes, cit., and Ars Combinatoria. Marlowe’s Humanist Poetics, in Shakespeare : Variations sur la lettre, le mètre et la mesure, edited by Dominique Goy-Blanquet, Paris, Société Shakespeare Francais, 1996, pp. 111-126. 2

 

marlowe ’ s tour of rome 89 as in the A-Text, but « two stately bridges [that] lean » over the Tiber, is historically and factually correct. 1 The four bridges mentioned in English Faust Book and the A-Text are Ponte Elio (or Ponte Castel Sant’ Angelo), Ponte Sisto, Ponte Santa Maria plus the two Roman bridges that each only go half way, connecting the Tiber Island to Trastevere and the Ghetto. 2 If we compare Mephostophilis speech with the corresponding speech found in the A-Text, we note that it has shrunk to twelve lines and that it has lost some of the rhetorical underpinnings and global design that is found in the B-Text :  

 

 

Tut, ’tis no matter man, we’ll be bold with his good cheer, And now my Faustus, that thou mayst perceive, What Rome contains to delight thee with. Know that this city stands upon seven hills, That underprops the groundwork of the same. Over the which four stately bridges leane, That makes safe passage to each part of Rome Upon the bridge called Ponte Angelo, Erected is a castle passing strong, Within whose walls such store of ordinance are, And double canons, framed of carved brass, As match the days within one complete year. Besides the gates and high pyramids, That Julius Cæsar brought from Africa. (iii. Chorus, 1-11 ; emphases mine)  

The will to give shape and meaning to the description, so evident in the version in Doctor Faustus (B), was partially lost to the person who reproduced it memorially. 3 Returning to the version in the B-Text, we may well ask what prompted Marlowe to be so accurate in his description of Rome. Mephostophilis would have delivered his speech before Hens1   For a while a third bridge, Ponte Sta Maria, also had crossed the entire river, it no longer did so after 1557. It was built downstream from the Isola tiberina but collapsed in the floods of 1557, gaining the name of « ponte rotto » (‘the broken bridge’), as recorded in 1568 by Vasari. The architect, Nanni di Baccio Bigio, who was given the commission deviated from the designs proposed by Michelangelo in order to reduce the cost of the bridge. Cf. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, ii, edited by Kenneth Clark, translated by Gaston de Vere, New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1987, p. 710. 2   This of course totals five bridges, of which three ‘leane over’the river. After 1557 only two ‘leaning’ bridges remain. 3   The opening of the speech, « Tut, tis no matter, man » would be a tag typical of memorially reconstructed speeches. See Pettitt, art. cit.  

 

 

 

90 roy eriksen lowe’s « Sittie of Rome », but that was hardly as accurate as the available state-of-the-art engravings of the city. Still, it is not unreasonable to assume that the rack that held the painting of the « Sittie » may have been based on a print. Marlowe’s source, though, is likely to have been the real thing, either the city or a description of it. What we very probably see in the speech is evidence that the dramatist to some extent was led away in his description by his own special acquired knowledge or a print of Rome he had access to either through his work as an agent, or in the house of a patron. One possible candidate is Ugo Pinard’s engraving of Rome, reproduced in Antoine Lafréry, Speculum Romanae magnificentiae (1555), in which the engraver looks at Rome from a view-point somewhere above the Giannicolo hill (Fig. 1). Pinard regularises the city, making the walls enclosing the city more regular than they actually are, and he deliberately balances the huge mass of St. Peter’s in the left bottom corner against a considerably smaller church, San Pietro in Montorio, in the bottom right corner. Thus, he frames the city and divides it by means of an rhythmically modulated river, Marlowe’s « flowing Tybers streame, / With winding bankes » that cuts the cityscape, or rather the built-up part of the city (the abitato), in two parts. The resulting speech is an surprisingly accurate description of Rome that by far exceeds expectation. It bears witness to Marlowe’s well-known use and fascination with maps and geography, which is particularly prominent in the Tamburlaine plays, The Jew of Malta, and Doctor Faustus, and also his taste for urbanism and architecture. He frequented, as is evident in the case of his citations for Ive’s The Practice of Fortification in manuscript, a milieu in which there was access to maps and treatises of architecture, for instance, in the chambers of Sir Frances Walsingham, 1 or when moving in the circles of Sir Walter Raleigh or that of the Earl of Northumberland.  

 

 

 

 

 

Notwithstanding the unsuspected ‘urbanist turn’ witnessed in the first scene of the papal sequence, Marlowe’s interest in Rome as a place of particular symbolic import is more significant for the play as a whole. His sources, which in addition to The English Faust Book include Dante’s Inferno and an episode of Foxe’s Actes and Monuments, conjure up several aspects of Rome that allow him to cater to various groups in the audience. Primarily, however, he presents the city as the breeding-ground of ambition and treachery and its lord, the Pope, as an usurper, who rebels 1

  Nicholl, op. cit., pp. 143-144.

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Fig. 1.

against the Emperor and believes himself infallible. The conflict between Pope Adrian and Saxon Bruno is therefore « closely related to the dominant themes of the drama », 1 tying in with the fundamental questions raised about the limits to human power and freedom of will in the opening scenes of the play. On a politico-religious level, Marlowe casts the Pope as the double of Faustus, an overreacher who dreams of omnipotence, while Faustus’s « dragonflight of discovery » 2 becomes a visit to Hell on earth, when he imports a particularly memorable passage of Dante’s poem into his play. Marlowe’s choice of template and his skill in deploying « new paradigms of spatial manipulation » 3 add both dramatic cohesion and an epic dimension to the quest of Faustus. The scholar’s tour of Rome is a tour of the ground zero of the Christian Western civilisation, a place where empires are born, expire, and are reborn.  

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Davidson, art. cit., p. 231.   D. K. Smith, op. cit., p. 127.

2

3

  Ibid., p. 127.

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FROM WITTENBERG TO TUNIS : MARLOWE’S AND SHAKESPEARE’S THEATRICAL CITIES  

François Laroque

M

arlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Shakespeare’s The Tempest are rarely compared in terms of the respective representations which they offer of the city, as they are more generally opposed for their contrasted visions and revisions of art, an ‘art’ which is synonymous with magic. Indeed, in both cases, art is far from being detached from life, regarded as a simple occupation or trade, as the two, Latin and Italian synonymous names of Faustus and Prospero suggest. That it is essentially connected with their deepest desires and a strong personal, existential commitment. For Faustus, whom magic has simply ‘ravished’, it becomes a substitute religion, a means to reach secret knowledge as well as power with the attached ability to travel through time and space at the price of his own soul. As for Prospero, magic represents a Monte Cristo-like device meant to allow him to right past wrongs and to re-arrange the crooked, devious ways past and present into a more rightful, if not rectilinear future. The warped, perverted past must be put straight and it is indeed recovered and vindicated in the course of the play. Prospero plans his revenge like an urban designer, transforming a medieval labyrinth of narrow winding streets into a geometrical grid, into spacious avenues where no room will be left for any « duke of dark corners ». He wants the « brave new world » of the ville radieuse to replace the casbah-like entanglements of the past. So, paradoxically, even though the angle of the ‘theatrical city’ is rarely chosen to look at the two plays, it proves in my view a fairly rewarding perspective as I am hoping to show. For Faustus, ‘art’ is indeed the way to freedom away from papal and clerical dogmatism and constrictions as the reference to Wittenberg and thus to Luther’s theses and to the Reformation movement indirectly suggests, while Prospero, this anti-Timon, only dreams of leaving his nearby desert island in order to return to freedom, i.e. to the civilized world of Milan and of the city in general :  

 

 

 

 

94

françois laroque Now ’tis true I must be confined by you, Or sent to Naples. Let me not, Since I have my dukedom got, And pardoned the deceiver, dwell In this bare island by your spell, But release me from my bands With the help of your good hands.

(V.i.321-328) 1

Interestingly enough, if Faustus, like Icarus, is eager to open up new spaces in unchartered ways, he is also literally obsessed with the question of destruction, be it the sack of ancient Troy or of Wittenberg in some sort of nihilistic drive and apocalyptic fascination ;  

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships? And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? […] I will be Paris and for love of thee [Helen] Instead of Troy shall Wittenberg be sacked.

(V.i.91-99) 2

Prospero, on the contrary, is interested in recreation and reconstruction. He has carefully thought out things long ahead of time and before he ultimately reaches his goal, he stages the opening tempest, i.e. the atmosphere of initial violence and chaos, and the dissolution which Faustus imagines for himself at the end here corresponds to what the king’s party on board the ship imagine when they think they will drown :  

Ariel. Not a soul But felt a fever of the mad, and played Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners Plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel, Then all afire with me : the King’s son Ferdinand, With hair up-staring – then like reeds, not hair – Was the first man that leapt, cried ‘Hell is empty, And all the devils are here’.  

1

(I.ii.208-215)

  William Shakespeare, The Tempest, edited by Stephen Orgel, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1987. 2   Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, edited by David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen, The Revels Plays, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1993.

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So, if The Tempest is a translation, a relocation as well as an inversion of Doctor Faustus, it is interesting to try and understand the respective place and function which may be allotted to the theatrical city in both plays since it is a topic that is indicative of the two playwrights’ intentions but also of the different ideological, political and aesthetic issues at stake, all of which depended on different historical backgrounds. Hence maps and myths, narrative and typography, moment as well as monument must be taken into account in this comparative study that aims at understanding the respective parts played by the city in two plays that stand like brothers and others, simultaneously poles apart and next door to each other. 1.The City on the Map and Unchartered Routes To « resolve [himself] of all ambiguities » (I.i.82), Faustus is anxious to name, to specify, to record toponyms as exactly as he can, so that his list of cities becomes like some early European grand tour :  

 

 

Faustus. Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,Resolve me of all ambiguities, Perform what desperate enterprise I will? […] I’ll have them read me strange philosophy And tell the secrets of all foreign kings. I’ll have them wall all Germany with brass And make swift Rhine circle fair Wittenberg. 1 (I.i.81-91)

Germany, the Rhine, Wittenberg, are here successively evoked while later on the allusion to Antwerp and the Prince of Parma refers to a specific episode of the war of the Netherlands against the Spanish armies :  

I’ll levy soldiers with the coin they bring And chase the Prince of Parma from our land, And reign sole king of all our provinces ; Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war  

1

  Wittenberg (spelled Wertenberg in A1, the 1604 text) is south-west of Berlin, on the Elbe, perhaps 200 miles from the Rhine at its closest. The Duchy of Würtemberg, on the other hand, borders the Southern Rhine. Heidelberg with which the historical John Faustus is associated, is on the Neckar near its juncture with the Rhine.

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françois laroque Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp’s bridge I’ll make my spirits to invent.

(I.i.94-99)

So, such fine sense of detail and taste for geographical accuracy is later reflected in the contract or deed which Faustus will sign with Mephistopheles. The pact is added to the map or rather it is superimposed upon it, so that his travels to Rome on the back of a dragon – thus providing him with an Icarus-like view of Europe – are to be read both as topographic exploration and as a descent into hell that presents us with a perverted or inverted perspective, i.e. with a world upside down :  

Faustus [to Mephistopheles]. First will I question with thee about hell. Tell me, where is the place that men call hell? Mephistopheles. Under the heavens. Faustus. Ay, but whereabout? Mephistopheles. Within the bowels of these elements, Where we are tortured and remain for ever. Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place, for where we are is hell, And where hell is must we ever be. And, to conclude, when all the world dissolves, And every creature shall be purified, All places shall be hell that is not heaven. (II.i.119-129)

Now, when it comes to describing the travel by air from Wittenberg to Rome and the various cities on the way of which he gets a bird’s eye view, the spectator or reader are simply provided with a succession of names :  

Wagner. He now is gone to prove cosmography, And, as I guess, will first arrive at Rome To see the Pope and manner of his court. Faustus. Having now, my good Mephistopheles, Passed with delight the stately town of Trier, Environed round with airy mountain-tops […] From Paris next, coasting the realm of France, […] Then up to Naples, rich Campania, Whose buildings, fair and gorgeous to the eye, The streets straight forth and paved with finest brick,

(iii. Chorus, 7-9)

marlowe ’ s and shakespeare ’ s theatrical cities Quarters the town in four equivalents. […] From thence to Venice, Padua, and the rest, In midst of which a sumptuous temple stands […] Hast thou, as erst I did command, Conducted me within the walls of Rome?

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(III.i.1-22)

Trier, Paris, Naples, Venice, Padua, Rome. This does not really correspond to a straight route or to the shortest way but rather to a tortuous, roundabout itinerary which goes round and up and down until it finally reaches the centre, the dark, inner room, Rome. Mephistopheles describes the immortal city in some detail, referring to some well-known parts of the town and to some of its monuments :  

Mephistopheles. And now, my Faustus, that thou mayst perceive What Rome containeth to delight thee with, Know that this city stands upon seven hills That underprops the groundwork of the same. Just through the midst runs flowing Tiber’s stream, With winding banks that cut it in two parts, Over the which four stately bridges lean, That makes safe passage to each part of Rome. Upon the bridge called Ponte Angelo Erected is a castle passing strong, Within whose walls such store of ordnance are, And double cannons, framed of carvèd brass, As match the days within one complete year – Besides the gates and high pyramides Which Julius Caesar brought from Africa. (III.i.29-43)

We hear of the seven hills of Rome, of the river Tiber, of Ponte Angelo, of gates and pyramides. But, just as was the case with the Papistic mappa mundi, a series of Protestant prints that presented the papal seat of the Vatican as an infernal labyrinth, Rome soon becomes a byword for Hell :  

Faustus. Now by the kingdom of infernal rule, Of Styx, Acheron, and the fiery lake Of ever-burning Phlegeton, I swear That I do long to see the monuments And situation of bright splendent Rome.

(III.i.44-48)

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So, the idea of walling « all Germany with brass » and making « swift Rhine circle faire Wittenberg » may be thought of as the invention of topographical antidotes, where a Protestant country with a learned city with only one hill (as suggested by the suffix -berg in Faustus’s home university) in its centre and the river Rhine flowing around it. As such, it is clearly opposed to the Popish hydra with seven hills or heads and its treacherous ‘winding banks’ of the river Tiber along it. Here geography is polarized and moralized and serves to introduce a black and white opposition between good and evil. The Northern city stands for virtue while the Southern one represents vice. Urbanitas is not a category of the universal, it divides into city of wit and city of sin. But Faustus’s exploration is not simply spatial and does not only consist in a creation or in a survey of theatrical cities mentioned or used as painted verbal décor just like city walls and steeples would then be painted on stage to serve as supporting backcloth against which the various scenes of a play would be acted. It is also a journey through time and across cultures in an impossible, desperate attempt to bridge the gap between past and present, between pagan antiquity and current Christian revision of cultural inheritance that was so much idealized by the Renaissance élites. So, the Wittenberg scholar does not only present us with a list, or nest of cities, but with a palimpsest of cities, with cities within or behind cities. He reads Wittenberg against Troy and predicates Rome with Sodom :  

 

 

 

 

Was this the face that […] burnt the topless towers of Ilium? […] Instead of Troy shall Wittenberg be sacked[.]

(V.i.91-99)

Like Troy and Carthage, Wittenberg will be burnt down to ashes while Rome, like Sodom, may well end up being hit by the celestial fire. This apocalyptic vision is a sort of subliminal warning and a reminder of Faustus’s self-destructive course about to end in the all-consuming, eternal fire of hell. As to Helen (or Hell-en as in the B-text), she is less an angel of beauty than an angel of light, like Lucifer (etymologically the bringer of light), a harbinger of damnation. Troy is not true but hollow, Ponte Angelo less a bridge across Tiber into the Vatican than a bridge across the river Styx into hell and should probably be renamed « Ponte  

marlowe ’ s and shakespeare ’ s theatrical cities 99 diabolico ». So, the signs are progressively inverted as the surface meanings progressively sink into the recesses of time and further sink into the vortex of evil.  

2. Ideal Cities in The Tempest As opposed to Marlowe, Shakespeare always keeps a margin of uncertainty, of indeterminacy in his plays. While in Doctor Faustus, the prologue sketches out the brief history of Faustus’s tragic life, the prologue in The Tempest is given after the event since the play opens in medias res, once the shipwreck has already taken place. The way Shakespeare begins is at once much more spectacular and ambiguous since one is at a loss as to the real consequences of the initial disaster. So the stultifera navis, the ship of Fools, which is also to be taken as a little floating city of its own, with its inverted hierarchy where the king and his men must keep ‘below’ while the boatswain tries to manoeuvre the ship against the hostile elements, is ruthlessly destroyed in front of our eyes with some obscene jesting in the teeth of death :  

Gonzalo. I warrant him for drowning, though the ship were no stronger that a nutshell and as leaky as an unstanched wench. (I.i.46-48)

The ‘amazement’ ‘flared’ by Ariel (I.ii.198) is just a mock Mouth of Hell, a grotesque trompe-l’oeil which also serves as an antimasque to Prospero’s future ‘insubstantial pageant’ (IV.i.155), when he presents the classical deities Iris, Ceres and Juno with the cold river nymphs and the « sunburned sickle-men, of August weary » (IV.i.134). The happy pastoral scene with the « windring brooks » (IV.i.128) and lush green world from which « Mars’s hot minion » (IV.i.98), i.e. Venus is excluded, will thus strongly contrast with the initial violent and obscene turmoil that is synonymous with the chaos of the world upside down of which the capsizing ship gives a particularly powerful image. Contrary to Marlowe, who carefully delineates maps and routes in a fairly precise European topography, Shakespeare remains ambiguous and seems happy to maintain a double space as in the passage where Antonio and Sebastian mock the old Gonzalo :  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gonzalo. Methinks our garments are now as fresh as when we put them on first in Afric, at the marriage of the king’s fair daughter Claribel to the King of Tunis. Sebastian. ’Twas a sweet marriage, and we prosper well in our return. Adrian. Tunis was never graced before with such a paragon to their queen.

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Gonzalo. Not since widow Dido’s time. Antonio. Widow?A pox o’ that. How came that widow in? Widow Dido! Sebastian. What if he had said ‘widower Aeneas’ too? Good lord, how you take it! Adrian. ‘Widow Dido’ said you? You make me study of that. She was of Carthage, not of Tunis. Gonzalo. This Tunis, sir, was Carthage. Adrian. Carthage? Gonzalo. I assure you, Carthage. Antonio. His word is more than the miraculous harp. Sebastian. He hath raised the wall, and houses too. Antonio. What impossible matter will he make easy next? Sebastian. I think he will carry this island home in his pocket and give it his son for an apple. Antonio. And sowing the kernels of it in the sea, bring forth more islands. (II.i.68-91)

These jokes about Tunis and Carthage and « widow Dido » – a line apparently from an old song or ballad – have spawned a lot of commentary since they reveal the importance of the Virgilian intertext in the play in Shakespeare’s serious allusions to the early episode of the Aeneas-Dido love affair at the beginning of The Aeneid. 1 So the link between the two cities of Carthage and Tunis which stand back to back, on the one hand, and poles apart from Naples on both sides of the Mediterranean, on the other, is clearly established via some sort of etymological bridge. Indeed, the name Carthage is a corruption of the phoenician Quarthadasht, meaning new town, whose Greek equivalent is Neapolis, later becoming Napoli and then Naples. 2 Shakespeare enjoys this apparent fusion of contraries binding together spatial opposition and semantic parallelism in some sort of topographic oxymoron. And, as in Gonzalo’s ‘commonwealth’, everything in the play seems to be governed by ‘contraries’ or contrariety, so that one has to go against  

1

 

  The Tempest has been and still is at the centre of a heated debate between « Old World » and « New World » readings. On this, see jerry brotton, ‘This Tunis, sir, was Carthage’ : Contesting Colonialism in The Tempest, in Post-Colonial Shakespeares, edited by Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin, London, Routledge, 1998, pp. 23-42. Repeated allusions to Algiers, the home town of Caliban’s mother Sycorax, and to the cities of Tunis and Carthage, make the North African shore quite prominent in the play in keeping with indirect references to the transatlantic slave trade which England has been associated with as early as the mid-fifteen hundreds.The play also revisits the Dido and Aeneas myth in the often-quoted passage where Claribel’s marriage to the King of Tunis is evoked by Antonio, Sebastian and Gonzalo. 2   Leslie Fiedler, The Stranger in Shakespeare, Frogmore St Albans, Paladin, 1974, p. 168.  

 

 

 

 

marlowe ’ s and shakespeare ’ s theatrical cities 101 the grain or the other way round in order to find one’s way out, an experience which after all also corresponds to that of being trapped in a maze or labyrinth. This is further illustrated by the fact that the entrance gate into the play, i.e. into the city of Milan, Prospero’s lost dukedom, happens to be the way out. The entrance turns out to be an exit and the introït an immediate exile, as Prospero painstakingly explains to his daughter Miranda :  

This King of Naples, being an enemy To me inveterate, hearkens my brothers suit, Which was that he, in lieu o’th’premises Of homage and I know not how much tribute, Should presently extirpate me and mine Out of the dukedom, and confer fair Milan, With the honours, on my brother ; whereon, A treacherous army levied, one midnight Fated to th’purpose did Antonio open The gates of Milan, and i’th’dead of darkness The ministers for th’ purpose hurried hence Me and my crying self.  

(I.ii.121-132)

Such banishment was the dire consequence of Antonio’s treachery since he had always wanted to be identified with the duchy of Milan :  

To have no screen between his part he played And him he played it for, he needs will be Absolute Milan.

(I.ii.107-109)

Here we have a simple rhetorical trope (synecdoche) but the expression « absolute Milan » seems to turn the man into the city and identify one with the other as in the exchange between King Henry and King Charles at the end of Henry V :  

 

 

King Henry. [Y]ou may, some of you, think love for my blindness, who cannot see many a fair French city for one fair French maid that stands in my way. King Charles. Yes, my lord, you see them perspectively, the cities turned into a maid – for they are all girded with maiden walls that war hath never entered. (V.ii.334-341) 1 1

  William Shakespeare, Henry V, edited by J. H. Walter, London and New York, Methuen, 1954 1984 (« The Arden Shakespeare »).  

 

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The image of an expulsion through the gates of the town sounds like an inversion of the usual images of rape and penetration of the sacked city as in The Rape of Lucrece for example. This movement outward corresponds to Shakespearean anxieties with urban space, with the world of the city and its perverted anatomy as in the petty literal-mindedness of Shylock’s bond that turns Venice into a bank with its safes and locks or as in the court world of As You Like It when Adam warns Orlando « This is no place ; this house is but a butchery » (II.iii.28). 1 One can also think of Coriolanus’s way of inverting the bitter sentence of exile from Rome into the proud ejaculation « there is a world elsewhere » (III.iii.135). 2 More often than not, the city is viewed by Shakespeare as a ‘fratricidal trap’ overshadowed by conflict and violence rather than as the visionary embodiment of an ideal community. He who never used London as the décor for his comedies and who, contrary to Heywood or Middleton, never wrote city pageants or triumphs, seems to have more or less deliberately shunned the lurid realism of city comedy for the sake of an escape into a green world ‘elsewhere’, a world that was less the symbol of primitive savagery or regression than one of ‘liberty’. Incidentally, it is worth remembering that the ‘liberties’ in London were the enclaves where the various playhouses had been built outside the city walls in order to keep them free from the possible censorship or prohibition on the part of the City Fathers. To the Stratford man, the town, be it Athens or Rome, was both a predatory womb and a monumental tomb. It was no City of God, no Campanella-like City of the Sun. But, in spite of it all, a play like The Tempest, is a plunge into antiquity that seems compatible with the neo-classical Palladian ideal of urban harmony. Such backward glance is no pastoral one with its Golden Age nostalgias, in spite of the cool rivers and green pastures referred to in the masque, but one which sketches out the possibility for new urban delights. This is mainly due to the importance given to the mythological perspectives which one finds both in Doctor Faustus and in The Tempest.  

 

 

 

 

3. Mythological Perspectives In The Tempest, glimpses of an ideal city are provided through Prospero’s references to the magic of the masque and to the beautiful illusions provided by a painted décor on stage :  

1

  William Shakespeare, As You Like It, edited by Alan Brissenden, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994. 2   William Shakespeare, Coriolanus, edited by R. B. Parker, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994 1998.

marlowe ’ s and shakespeare ’ s theatrical cities Prospero. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air, And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like the insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind.

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(IV.i.148-156)

This seems to hark back at Antony and Cleopatra, mainly at the passage when Antony describes the images sometimes formed in the clouds :  

Antony. Sometimes we see a cloud that’s dragonish, A vapour sometime like a bear or lion, A towered citadel, a pendent rock, A forkèd mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon’t that nod unto the world And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs ; They are black vesper’s pageants. Eros. Ay my lord. Antony. That which is now a horse, even with a thought The rack dislimns and makes it indistinct As water is in water[.] (IV.14.2-11)  

These castles in the air correspond to the illusions created by the perspectives of the private indoor theatres and of the court masque, but they also echo Faustus’s evocation of the « topless towers of Ilium » when he conjures up the demonic Helen that sucks his soul. Such vague, elusive visions soon dissolve and « leave[s] not a rack behind ». These villes merveilles or ideal cities of delight that were part of a dream world of architectural elegance and proportion were in fact nothing but painted décor, now revealed, now obfuscated by the agency of the ‘rack’, the cloud machine used in the masque. They remain mere sketches, a simple plan, a beautiful theatrical cityscape. At the end of the passage on Tunis and Carthage when Antonio and Sebastian mock Old Gonzalo’s idealism, we find an allusion to the myth of Orpheus and Amphion :  

 

 

 

 

Antonio. His word is more than the miraculous harp. Sebastian. He hath raised the wall, and houses too.

(II.i.87-88)

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This may be reminiscent of George Puttenham, who regarded the civilizing power of Poesie as the direct consequence of city life :  

For it is written that Poesie was th’original cause and occasion of [men’s] fair assemblies, when before the people remained in woods and mountains […] whereupon it is fayned that Amphion and Orpheus, two Poets of the first ages, one of them, to wit Amphion, builded up cities and reared walls with the stones that came in heapes to the sound of his harpe, figuring thereby the mollifying of hard and stone hearts by his secrete and eloquent persuasion. 1

Gonzalo, who dreams of a cockayne-like sort of commonwealth, i.e. of some impossible and vain utopia, is a mock-enchanter while Prospero, in the masque, is able to erect those imaginary walls and houses thanks to his art as a powerful magician. In Doctor Faustus, Amphion seems to be one in the devil’s band as he is said to play music with Mephistopheles – a feat which sounds like « sympathy for the devil » with a vengeance! At the end, Mephistopheles is proud to say that he has turned the pages of the book that Faustus was reading :  

 

 

’Twas I, that when thou were i’the way to heaven, Dammed up thy passage. When thou took’st the book To view the Scriptures, then I turned the leaves And led thine eye. (V.ii.97-101) 2

The damned/dammed quibble works as an eye-opener. Indeed, contrary to Prospero, who accepts to give up the comfortable confinement of his library in order to open up to rich vistas of villes radieuses with ‘gorgeous palaces’ in soul-lifting views, Faustus has allowed Mephistopheles to lock him up inside the walled city of hell and damnation when his European journeys are replaced by travels in time and in classical antiquity. As for the Orpheus/Amphion myth, one might say that it is indeed a metaphor of art and liberty, a way of bringing the city within the city without becoming a prisoner of its Babylonian manacles, a means of allowing thought to be free without being vacant. Indeed, liberty is as much Prospero’s obsession as it is Ariel’s. 1   George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, London, Richard Field, 1589. Facsimile reproduction of the 1906 reprint, edited by Edward Arber, A Constable & Co, 1970, p. 22 2 (Book i, chapter 3).   These lines are found in the B-text of the play.

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So, if the theatrical city may be presented as a dream in The Tempest, with Milan, Naples, Tunis, Carthage, or Algiers remaining like so many distant cloudy shapes in the background, like the backdrop to some magnificent show, it mainly appears as Faustus’s nightmare as his travels from city to city are in fact a long, roundabout descent into hell. The European tour of Marlowe’s grand magus figure is less a pilgrimage than a hopeless, disenchanted wandering and meandering down a series of infernal circles. In a way, Prospero says farewell to Medea and her black arts in order to turn himself into an Orphic or Amphion-like figure in the end, while Faustus allows the horses of the night to turn into the ominous figures of his own doom and apocalypse. Prospero dissolves the « gorgeous palaces and cloud-capped towers » while Faustus falls victim to the « topless towers of Ilium » as he is destroyed by a fire that foreshadows the eternal blazes of hell. Sinon, the archetypal liar and betrayer, who allowed the Trojan horse to trap the inhabitants of Ilium, is indeed the classical counterpart of the devilish Mephistopheles, while the Ovidian delights of the night (« O, lente, lente currite noctis equi », V.ii.74) served to evoke the bitterly ironical image of an infernal jouissance that led the Wittenberg scholar to sign his own doom and damnation.  

 

 

 

 

 

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SHAKESPEARE’S « Forfended place(s) » : women and the city  

 

 

Sophie Chiari

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n the early 17th century, Tommaso Campanella imagined a utopian city, The City of the Sun (1602), in which Love rules over a compulsory system of training and education, and attends to the implementation of political eugenics. 1 Daughters under the age of 19 and sons under 21 must be sexually restrained and amorous feelings prohibited. However, a few brothels remain accessible to those individuals incapable of controlling their sexual drives. Generally speaking, sexual relationships are just tolerated in the city as far as the imperatives of reproduction are concerned. In order to beget perfectly sane and vigorous children, partners will mate only after digestion and prayers. Sexuality in the city had already been banned by his predecessor Thomas More, for the expression of an individual passion was regarded as an act of transgression : either a girl or a boy guilty of clandestine love affairs was severely punished and she or he was forbidden to marry afterwards, « unless the prince, by his pardon, alleviates the sentence ». 2 The parents were also harshly condemned for neglecting their duties. Eventually, all subsequent misdemeanors led to a condemnation to death. 3 Desire in general – and feminine desire in particular – is considered as a threat by most Renaissance writers, who tend to identify women with ill-defended cities through a series of misogynistic metaphors. In a patriarchal society, the feminine body is often regarded as an unwatched cita 

 

 

The expression « forfended place(s) » is quoted from William Shakespeare, King Lear, edited by R. A. Foakes, London, Thomas Nelson, 1997 (« The Arden Shakespeare »), V.i.11. When not stated otherwise, references to Shakespeare will be taken from William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, edited by Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988. This article was first presented in French, in a slightly different, shorter version at the conference on Shakespeare and the City (11-13 March 2010) organized in Paris by Dominique GoyBlanquet, President of the French Shakespeare Society (sfs). See the internet site: http:// www.societefrancaiseshakespeare.org/sommaire.php?id=1588. 1   Tomasso Campanella, The City of the Sun, in New Atlantis and The City of the Sun : Two Classic Utopias, Mineola, Dover, 2003. 2   Thomas More, Utopia :A Revised Translation, Backgrounds, Criticism, translated and edited by Robert M. Adams, New York, Norton, 1992 [1975], p. 60. 3   More, op. cit., p. 62 : « But a second conviction of adultery is punished by death ».  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

108 sophie chiari del, and the violence of rape downplayed, mocked, or transfigured into some sort of aesthetic posture. Contrary to most of his contemporaries, Shakespeare adopts a much more nuanced or careful point of view on female « forfended places ». If he relies on the same clichés, he abstains from passing judgment on women’s reluctance against or silent acceptance of male sexual assaults. He simply turns bodies into metaphorical cities and cities into ladies. The male lover’s physical build is compared to a building threatening to collapse as soon as his love becomes uncertain. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona for instance, Valentine wishes the absent Silvia to come back to him, « lest, growing ruinous, the building fall » (V.iv.7-10). A similar image can be found in The Comedy of Errors. 1 As to the woman’s body, it is either assimilated to an entire city or to whole countries. Everyone keeps in mind Dromio of Syracuse’s description which parodies the genre of the blazon and metamorphoses Nell, the plump cook, into an erotic map of the world. 2 This paper addresses the issue of the Shakespearian city through his feminine characters, first exploring the town and its temptations before examining the ambiguous nature of the relationships between city and chastity. I will finally analyze the role played by the city for those women who, far from being victims, take pleasure in arousing men’s lust.  

 

 

 

1. The City and Its Temptations In the 16th and the 17th centuries, the city acquires a new importance. In London, the population increases tenfold as the town becomes one of the great occidental metropolises. In 1599, Thomas Dekker goes as far as to give his native town pride of place in The Shoemaker’s Holiday, a play staging the rise of Simon Eyre, an honest shoemaker whose personal success is epitomized by his election as Lord Mayor of London, and which also proves to be « one of the first English comedies to set up its scenery in the very heart of the City ». 3 Curiously enough, the city is de 

 

1

  « Shall love in building grow so ruinous? » (III.ii.4) Luciana exclaims about Antipholus of Syracuse. 2   The Comedy of Errors, III.ii.111-152. For another, quite different erotic map of the word, see for instance John Donne, Elegy 19, To his Mistress Going to Bed in The Complete English Poems of John Donne, edited by C. A. Patrides, London, J. M. Dent, 1985, pp. 183-185 : « O my America! my new-found-land, / My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned, / My mine of precious stones, my empery, / How blest am I in this discovering thee! ». 3   François Laroque, Le Londres en fête de Thomas Dekker dans The Shoemaker’s Holiday, in Les représentations de Londres (2), edited by Michel Jouve and Marie-Claire Rouyer, Pro 

 

 

 

 

shakespeare ’ s «forfended place(s)»: women and the city 109 picted as a sexualized body, and « the evocation of a phallic church making pregnant a feminized fountain » makes the city space both grotesque and worrying. 1 As a result, Elizabethan spectators must have been eager to contemplate Dekker’s half realistic, half imaginary London, in order to rediscover the true opportunities offered by the real town. The attractive power of the city was therefore at its height and, according to Francis Bacon, it was part and parcel of what travelers had to know :  

 

 

The things to be seen and observed are : the courts of princes, especially when they give audience to ambassadors ; the courts of justice, while they sit and hear causes ; and so of consistories ecclesiastic ; the churches and monasteries, with the monuments which are therein extant ; the walls and fortifications of cities, and towns, and so the heavens and harbors ; […] houses and gardens of state and pleasure, near great cities ; […] and, to conclude, whatsoever is memorable, in the places where they go. 2  

 

 

 

 

 

 

However, if one has to be acquainted with great European towns, one should not linger in such places :  

Let him not stay long, in one city or town ; more or less as the place deserveth, but not long ; nay, when he stayeth in one city or town, let him change his lodging from one end and part of the town, to another ; which is a great adamant of acquaintance.  

 

 

Ben Jonson’s Shalton and Heyden, in a poem entitled On the Famous Voyage (1612), do nothing but follow the advice poured out in the Essays. 3 In this satirical text, the heroes intend to visit all of the big European cities and, of course, London is one of them. They set forth in worthy scorne Of those, that put out moneyes, on returne From Venice, Paris, or some in-land passage Of sixe times to, and fro, without embassage, Or him that backward went to Berwicke, or which Did dance the famous Morrisse, unto Norwich. (ll. 31-36) ceedings of the two-day conference held at the Université de Bordeaux III on the 9th and 10th of March 1984, Bordeaux, 1984, « Annals of the gerb », p. 1. My translation. 1   Laroque, art. cit., p. 21. 2   Francis Bacon, Of Travel, Essays, 1601. The text is available online. See the Internet site, http ://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/bacon/bacon_essays.html 3   Ben Jonson, On the Famous Voyage, in Works,viii, edited by C. H. Herford, Percy Simpson, Evelyn Simpson, Oxford, Clarendon, 1954-1970. On the Famous Voyage is the final poem in Jonson’s book of Epigrammes.  

 

 

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Such pilgrimages were famous at the time. In 1589, Sir Robert Carey won no less than £ 2,000 by walking from London to Berwick in 12 days. Ten years later, William Kempe, one of Shakespeare’s most famous clowns, danced the morris all the way from London to Norwich, publishing an account of his feat in Nine Daies Wonder (1600). 1 By threading their way through London’s darkest places, Jonson’s protagonists actually uncover the most repugnant aspects of the female body, and this allows the poet to condemn both the vices of the city as well as those of women. In the words of Andrew McRae, [i]n the ‘wombe’ of the city-whore, conventional images of generation and familial identity undergo a sea-change. The ‘mother’ of ‘stench’ and ‘diseases’ is merely ‘old filth’ ; ‘famine, wants, and sorrowes’ are ‘cosen(s)’ to the plague. At the end of the section, Jonson exploits a pun on ‘sink’, which is a receptacle for waste or sewage, and in the body an organ of digestion and excretion. In the female body, the signification of ‘a place where things are swallowed up or lost’ extends to the vagina (a sense exploited in The Faerie Queene) ; and this usage aligns with instances of ‘sink’ denoting a whore or brothel. An implicit threat throughout the journey is the pox, which was itself perceived as ‘flowing matter’ which could move around the body. 2  

 

As a consequence, the city can sometimes be nothing but a gigantic trap where idle young men fall all too easily. This theme is endlessly exploited in Robert Greene’s cony-catching pamphlets published in the early 1590s, and in which devious citizens mock gullible peasants and try to con vulnerable new-comers. In Twelfth Night, as Antonio wants to meet Sebastian « [i]n the south suburbs at the Elephant » (III.iii.39), Shakespeare had a real inn sign in mind and Londoners undoubtedly recognized the Bankside. There, debauchery was favoured by the presence of brothels or so-called « nunneries » close to the theatres. 3 In such a place, the ambiguous, homoerotic relationships existing between the two friends might well have prospered. Incidentally, Antonio paints the gift he would like to give Sebastian in glowing colors : « Haply your eye shall light upon some toy / You have desire to purchase » (Twelfth Night,  

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  William Kemp, Kemps Nine Daies Wonder : Performed in a Daunce, edited by Alexander Dyce, London, 1839. 2   Andrew McRae, ‘On the Famous Voyage’. Ben Jonson and Civic Space, « Early Modern Literary Studies », 3, 1998, par. 19.Available at http ://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/04-2/mcraonth. htm. 3   See Hamlet, III.i.123 : « Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? »  

 

 

 

 

 

 

shakespeare ’ s «forfended place(s)»: women and the city 111 III.iii.44-45). Shakespeare merely suggests this possibility, which is never actualized on stage, since Sebastian eventually hesitates to give up his masculine love to be wooed and seduced by Olivia, far away from the temptations of the city. Indeed, the city generally proves more a centripetal place than a centrifugal one. In other terms, people are anxious to know what it is like before they leave it, in the same way as Timon of Athens who, in encouraging Alcibiades to wipe out Athens, does not only condemn the blatant corruption of sex and the city (IV.iii), but the universe as a whole, which he regards as doomed to destruction. 1 A lighter example can be found in Thomas Nashe’s Choise of Valentines, where the protagonist, Tomalin, comes to town to visit the brothel where his girlfriend, Frances, has found employment. Having paid ten gold pieces for her favors, the young man is embarrassed to find that the mere lifting of her skirts causes his premature ejaculation. He soon realizes how insatiable feminine pleasure can be, and is then forced to acknowledge his own limits when faced with the inventiveness of his partner. 2 No wonder then, that the various misfortunes of those credulous young men fostered the inspiration of Elizabethan poets and playwrights. When the London barrister Thomas Peend published an epyllion entitled The Pleasant Fable of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis (1565), he was quite aware of the recurring vices of Londoners, be they male or female. 3 Consequently, his rewriting of a famous mythological episode from Ovid’s Metamorphoses is much more than a simple translation. It is also a didactic presentation of a gullible, though handsome, boy, Hermaphroditus, who decides to leave his native country to discover the city. A city where the lecherous Salmacis will promptly commit the sin of flesh with her new prey, who is rather inexperimented with women :  

1   On Timon’s misanthropy, see Pierre Brunel, Claudel et Shakespeare, Librairie Armand Colin, Paris, 1971, p. 69. See, too, François Laroque, Entropie et misanthropie dans Timon d’Athènes, « Méthode! », 13, 2007, pp. 353-363. 2   See also Katherine Duncan-Jones, City Limits : Nashe’s ‘Choise of Valentines’ and Jonson’s ‘Famous Voyage’, « The Review of English Studies », 56, 2005, pp. 247-262. Interestingly enough, the rural world where Tomalin comes from is not really presented as an alternative to the corruption of the city since it also seems to be parodic. On this particular point, see the discussion of Nashe’s poem in Ian Frederick Moulton, Before Pornography. Erotic Writing in Early Modern England, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 171. 3   Thomas Peend, The Pleasant Fable of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis (1565), in Renaissance Tales of Desire. Hermaphroditus and Salmacis, Theseus and Ariadne, Ceyx and Alcione, edited by Sophie Chiari, csp, 2009, pp. 34-69. On the links between Peend’s text and Arthur Golding’s translation of the same tale, see Anthony Brian Taylor, Thomas Peend and Arthur Golding, « Notes and Queries », 214, 1969, pp. 16-20.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

112

sophie chiari [T]hear, full fyftene yeres hys lyfe also hee led. And then desyrous for to know the state of countreys straunge, All Licia land, by trauayle great to Caria he dyd range. 1

Caria is in fact a transparent substitute for the city of London. 2 There, Hermaphroditus meets the Ovidian nymph now turned into a prostitute. The moralizing aspect of Peend’s fable that is clearly meant to warn young men against the dangers of the city is underlined by James Richard Ellis :  

Bearing in mind the Inns of Court milieu, the poem’s moral becomes only too obvious and appropriate : Hermaphroditus is the naïve youth from the country, newly arrived at the Inns, to become a lawyer or a courtier, and in danger of being overwhelmed by the alluring vices of the great city, “the world where all temptations be”. 3  

In the second part of his text, Peend provides the key of his rewriting, and explains what he means by Caria, without naming London explicitly :  

By Caria, sygnyfye the worlde where all temptations be. Wheras the good and il, alwayes together we may see. 4

Hermaphroditus can also be regarded as the author’s alter ego, as Peend seems to have drawn on his own background to represent himself in a fable already translated by Arthur Golding a few months before : « [l]ike the young Inns of Court gallant, Hermaphroditus is insufficiently guarded against his own desires, and his masculinity becomes hopelessly compromised or metamorphosed ».5 The city appears to be the place of all seductions, easy pleasures and long-lasting troubles, where debauched women lead innocent boys to their doom. In 16th-century London, women are rarely portrayed in a favourable light and they remain subject to the prejudices of their time. Either seen  

 

 

1

  Peend, op. cit., ll. 77-82, pp. 39-40.   On Caria, see Renaissance Tales of Desire, op. cit., p. 40, note 16. 3   James Richard Ellis, Sexuality and Citizenship : Metamorphosis in Elizabethan Erotic Verse,Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2003, p. 50. 4 5   Peend, op. cit., p. 50, ll. 361-364.   Ellis, op. cit., p. 50. 2

 

shakespeare ’ s «forfended place(s)»: women and the city 113 as predators (turning the city paradise into a hell) or reduced to the role of simple foils for men, their place within the limits of she city was as uncertain as precarious. However, early modern literature also depicts ladies defending their freedom in an active way. To face men’s animosity, they sometimes gather their strengths. This is made clear in A Letter sent by the Maydens of London, a pamphlet published in 1567 which allows six (fictitious) young and rather poor girls to express themselves. 1 While advocating their rights, Rose, Jane, Rachell, Sara, Philumias, and Dorothy are eager to make fun of the conservative strictures of a certain Edward Hake, a translator of Erasmus and author of a diatribe against female Londoners. Their letter must be read as a humorous reply to Hake’s unfortunately lost Mery Meeting of Maydens in London (1567) published just a few months before. Apparently, this earlier work strongly criticized the lasciviousness and the idleness of city housewives. On the face of it, the maids’ letter, produced in reaction against Hake’s misogynous attack, seems to be written by a woman possessing a detailed knowledge of early modern domesticity. However, the text is fraught with precise allusions to legal customs which, in all likelihood, were the province of men working at the Inns of Court. The author of A Letter, then, is probably a man who was able to deal both with the public sphere of law and the private sphere of maid-servants and matrimony. He can sometimes be deeply ironical when seeing right through the true goals of the rightthinking Hake who apparently spends his time leering at female Londoners, even in the church, while pretending to uncover women’s loose morality :  

And where he alleageth that we doe mispend our time in the Church in gazing and looking about us, and that our comming thither is not to pray : surely he himself was not very well occupied in the Church, and prayed but little (as it seemeth) when he stood gazing and looking about him at us, to marke what we didde. (sig. A6)  

The author, who writes in the defense of the maids, goes as far as asserting that parents should not force their daughters to marry against their will and that love should rule over Hymen (sig. B2). But, in those days, no one really seemed to care about such feminine desiderata, except Shakespeare, maybe, for he reflects such carelessness in Romeo and Juliet, where the heroine is abused by her father precisely 1   Women in the Renaissance : Selections from English Literary Renaissance, edited by Kirby Farrell, Elizabeth H. Hageman, Arthur F. Kinney, Amherst, The University of Massachusetts Press, 1971, 1988, pp. 36-47 (the letter is commented upon by R. J. Fehrenbach).  

114 sophie chiari because she dares to choose the man who will share her life.1« [H]ang, beg, starve, die in the streets! » (III.v.192), the old Capulet tells his daughter after she has refused to comply with his orders. The paternal injunction is rendered in crude terms by Pauline Kiernan in Filthy Shakespeare : « Whore, starve, have sexual orgasms like a whore in the street! ». 2 This gloss gives us an idea of the extent of the unbearable violence Juliet has to go through as her father actually reduces her to wandering and begging in the slummiest parts of Verona. For women, the streets all too easily become synonymous with decay and prostitution. If Shakespeare occasionally points out the cruelty of a father using sexual puns which, because they concern his own daughter, are particularly inappropriate, he also hunts out those women guilty of coquetry. More often than not, the weaker sex in the city is characterized by its frivolity, as shown by Jaques who, in As You Like It, muses upon the gorgeous dresses worn by city-women :  

 

 

 

 

 

What woman in the city do I name When that I say the city-woman bears The cost of princes on unworthy shoulders?

(II.vii.74-76)

Jaques’ observation, somewhat reminiscent of Philip Stubbes’ virulent attack on women in his Anatomie of Abuses (1583), actually echoes Thomas Platter’s amazement. The German traveler, who visited London in 1599, noticed the extravagance of feminine clothes while sumptuary laws were meant to restrict men’s and women’s apparel. 3 All women did not wish to emulate the chaste Penelope who remained 1

  This, of course, is also true for other Shakespearean heroines such as Hermia, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or Desdemona, in Othello. 2   Pauline Kiernan, Filthy Shakespeare : Shakespeare’s Most Outrageous Sexual Puns, New York, Gotham Books, 2008, p. 216. 3   See Michael Hattaway’s observations in William Shakespeare, As You Like It, edited by Michael Hattaway, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 120. See also Thomas Platter, Thomas Platter’s Travels in England (1599), edited by Clare Williams, 1937, p. 183. For a study on Renaissance sumptuary laws, see Wilfrid Hooper, The Tudor Sumptuary Laws, « The English Historical Review », cxix, 30, 1915, pp. 433-449, p. 444 :« Fashion […] was stronger than law, and apparel continued to overstep its appointed bounds in a manner that alarmed the government into further action. In 1574 another proclamation appeared which was repeated with some variations in 1577, 1580, 1588, and 1597. Two schedules are appended, the first of which […] gives the gist of the statutory restrictions on men’s apparel ; while the second imposes analogous restrictions on the apparel of their wives. This extension to women indicates the growing license of feminine attire ». See, too, Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2000.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

shakespeare ’ s «forfended place(s)»: women and the city 115 at home, weaving a shroud all day long and tearing it up at night. By doing so, they exposed themselves to open criticism while claiming an identity of their own, without necessarily having loose manners or being dishonest. Because their city was « girded round with innumerable towers » and surrounded by thick walls omnipresent in Elizabethan representations, they felt safe and allowed themselves a certain degree of freedom. 1  

 

2. City and Chastity In Shakespeare’s plays, quite a few scenes take place at the gates of the city. 2 Onstage, these gates were not just painted curtains but were part and parcel of the scenery, thus immediately allowing the spectator to distinguish the sometimes tenuous borderline between inside and outside. Here is how Irwin Smith analyzes Henry V :  

Henry V is yet another battle play which calls for city gates. In Act 3, scene 3, Henry and his army stand before the Gates of Harfleur. The Governor of the town appears, presumably upon the walls. […] The entry of the victorious English troops through the opened gates demands the emphasis and pageantry which only centrally-placed gates could give. 3

The walls girdle the town as a belt girdles a woman’s waist. 4 They were meant as a protection against attacks but let the victorious army in, like the famous chastity belt thought to have been designed to reinforce women’s chastity, and which gradually became an enticing tool to excite male desire. The chastity belt as such is absent from the Shakespearian canon even though a metaphorical one can be detected in Hamlet. 5 As Laertes 1

  Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, London, Penguin, 1966, p. 106, iii.20 : « [Lud] rebuilt the walls of the town of Trinovantum (or Troynovant) and girded it round with innumerable towers. He ordered the citizens to construct their homes and buildings here in such a style that no other city in the most far-flung of kingdoms could boast of palaces more fair ».The chronicler(1100-1154) had become extremely popular in the Elizabethan period, in spite of Polydore Vergil’s skepticism. 2   Irwin Smith, ‘Gates’ on Shakespeare’s Stage, «Shakespeare Quarterly», ii, 7, 1956, pp. 1593 176, p. 161.   Smith, art. cit., p. 166. 4   Throughout the Renaissance, the word belt applied to bodies as well as to buildings. See for instance Jean Nicot’s definition of the French word chasteau (‘castle’) in 1606 : « Castrum. Et est proprement ainsi appelé celuy qui a fermeture de tours et donjon au milieu, et ceinture de fossez, autrement est appelé maison plate. Mais quant aux maisons de Roy, le François courtisan les appelle toutes Chasteaux, ores que la suite des tours, donjon et fossez ne y soit ». See Claude Blum’s electronic edition of Jean Nicot, Le Trésor de la langue française, 1606, http ://portail.atilf.fr/cgi-bin/dico1look.pl?strippedhw=chasteau. 5   See Gordon Williams, A Glossary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Language, London, Athlone, 2009, p. 192.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

116 sophie chiari thinks that his sister’s honor might be threatened and confesses his worries, she replies that she intends to remain chaste : « ‘Tis in my memory locked, / And you yourself shall keep the key of it » (I.iii.85). The brother will thus be the only one to keep the key of Ophelia’s « treasure ». 1 Such a key has not much power, however, for eager assailants easily do without to get access to their jewel, as can be seen in The Rape of Lucrece : « The locks between her chamber and his will, / Each one by him enforced retires his ward » (ll. 302-303). 2 The notion of closing or bolting a lock as in a safe which is present both in Hamlet and in The Rape of Lucrece also permeates The Merchant of Venice. Indeed, in spite of the opposition of Portia’s father, Bassanio wins the heart of his beloved by putting the key in the right lock, that of the lead casket containing her portrait ‒ a casket which is but the symbolical double of Portia’s chastity belt. 3 This is also echoed in the subplot where Shylock reveals an obsession with closed doors and bolted locks :  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hear you me, Jessica, Lock up my doors ; […] Do as I bid you. Shut doors after you. Fast bind, fast find– A proverb never stale in thrifty mind.  

(II.v.29-54)

Once again, the allusion remains implicit and, generally speaking, while Shakespeare uses the terms « belt » and « chastity » separately, it seems that they do not match. 4 The story of this intriguing object, often found at the core of an amorous triangle, starts with courtly literature, more precisely with Marie de France’s Lais,5 written in the 12th century, at the time of the crusades. The  

 

 

 

1   See Valerie Traub, Desire and Anxiety : Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespearean Drama, London, Routledge, 1992, p. 31 : « Ophelia’s reply […] suggests not only that Laertes’ advice is ‘locke’d’ in her memory, but also that Laërtes alone possesses the key to her properly immured ‘chaste treasure’ ». See also The Rape of Lucrece, l. 16, for another similar allusion to women’s treasure. 2   For a detailed commentary see Georgianna Ziegler, My lady’s chamber. Female Space, Female Chastity in Shakespeare,« Textual Practice », i, 4, 1990, pp. 73-90. 3   See the Introduction to William Shakespeare, Le Marchand de Venise, translated and edited by François Laroque, Paris, Le Livre de Poche, Hachette Classique, 2008, p. 24. 4   In Measure for Measure the phrase « a strange picklock » (III.i.285) was seen by Joseph Ritson as a reference to the chastity belt as early as 1793, but such a reading has been refuted by recent critics since the « picklock » actually refers to a dildo. See Williams, op. cit., p. 234. 5   Marie de France, The Lais of Marie de France, translated by Glyn S. Burgess and Keith Busby, London, Penguin, 1986.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

shakespeare ’ s «forfended place(s)»: women and the city 117 poem deals with a lady unhappily married to an old husband and in love with the young knight Guigemar. As she ties a knot in his shirt as a sign of her devotion, the young man ties a knot in return in her belt that only himself will be able to undo. The myth of the medieval chastity belt was born, even though the belt evoked in the Lais did not protect the lady’s genitalia and had nothing to do with a chastity belt. If one believes Rabelais, who alludes to such a girdle in Pantagruel, or Brantôme in Les Vies des Dames galantes, the chastity belt might well be a Renaissance invention. 1 According to Brantôme, under the reign of King Henry II, a jeweler imported and sold belts to jealous husbands in Saint Germain. A wife soon got the idea to duplicate her key, to the great delight of the local locksmith. Of course, Brantôme’s story is not to be taken for granted. One could also add that in his writings, the chastity belt is far from being an instrument of torture since it is more mocked at than really feared. Renaissance girdles, it seems, were part of public mentalities but were generally discarded. Sometimes known as Venus or Florentine belts, they probably originated in Italian cities, but there is no evidence whatsoever to affirm that they were really used by husbands who were afraid of being cuckolded. An engraving by Heinrich Vogtherr the younger (ca 1540) and based on the standard device of ungleiche Liebe (or the union of old age and youth), shows that a chastity belt did not impose any kind of restriction on the weaker sex. The woodcut represents a woman facing the spectator. She stands side by side with a young and an older man. 2 Some have seen here a young wife dipping into the bag of money which her old husband is offering to give in order to encourage her to remain in her chastity belt so that she may not enjoy her handsome lover. However, it seems that what the woodcut actually depicts is a street prostitute who, having just received a sum of money from the young man, gives it to her pimp so that her client may be allowed to sleep with her. In a 16th-century Welsh poem written by Sir Hywel of Builth, Alice, a young lady, is wooed both by the singer and a hermit named Morgan. The jealous narrator then describes a frightening apparatus to a blacksmith. The singer’s amorous, misogynous and parodic discourse altogether has recently been translated by Albrecht Classen :  

1   In Pantagruel, Panurge, as he is afraid of being cuckolded, simply swears that he will buckle up his would-be wife. 2   Christa Grossinger, Picturing Women in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1997, p. 96. The engraving is available online : http :// fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier :16thc-German-woodcut-Chastity-belt.jpg.  

 

 

118

sophie chiari Fix against violence under a girl’s smock A case about the fettered chamber ; Firm and low where it’s not to be seen, Strong craft of long iron ; A new curtain over her pubic hair, There will be a big strip over her bush. Fix right over the lap And make on the spot a fine shield. […] Make skillfully, with understanding yonder, Where the pommel is, a channel to piss, Long does all envy last, Like pin-prick holes, So narrow, an intruder is big, That no more will go in there Either a furtive one’s little finger To probe the lovely girl, or a man’s cock. 1  

 

In this erotic satire, it is difficult to imagine Vulcan’s avatar creating such an iron net to catch Venus lying with Mars. The feminine sex is here depicted as a room for intimate exchanges – a room where thick curtains (i.e a chastity belt) hang. Once again, the lady is presented as a forbidden city which ought to repel its undesirable intruders. In literature, erotic desires are not fulfilled that easily. The absence of any obstacle to the pleasures of the flesh thus generates a palpable anguish amongst husbands, particularly those who married handsome women. In Othello, Cyprus, a citadel which even the Ottoman fleet fails to reach, is penetrated without apparent efforts by Desdemona’s lover, the Moor, who is indirectly presented as Vulcan’s double. 2 In The Winter’s Tale, Leontes complains about his wife, for he thinks Hermione’s doors open much too easily and against his will 1   Quoted in Albrecht Classen, The Medieval Chastity Belt : A Myth-Making Process, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 129-130. 2   The word occurs five times throughout the play. See the definition of the term given by the lexicographer Randle Cotgrave in 1611 : « A Citadell ; a strong Fort, or Castle, that serues both to defend, and to curbe, a citie ». See the facsimile edition of Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, edited by William S. Woods, Columbia, The University of South Carolina Press, 1950 [1611]. A similar definition of « citadel » is in John Florio, A New World of Words, London, 1611, p. 104 : « a Citadell or spacious fort built not onely to defend a citie, but also to keepe the same in awe and subiection ».  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

shakespeare ’ s «forfended place(s)»: women and the city 119 (« Whiles other men have gates, those gates opened, / As mine, against their will »). 1 He proceeds in a bitter way :  

 

 

Think it : From east, west, north, and south, be it concluded, No barricado for a belly. Know’t ; It will let in and out the enemy With bag and baggage[...] (I.ii.200-204)  

 

The absence of the chastity belt is noticeable in these lines. In his edition of the play, Stephen Orgel explains that historically, the first barricades were made of barrels (called barricades in French) and were erected in Paris in 1588 during the day of the barrels (or « journée des barricades») which led to the flight of Henry III, threatened by the Duke of Guise and his numerous allies. 2 So, Leontes uses the image of a city-womb protected from the enemy by barricades. In other words, Hermione’s body should be girdled in order to protect her chastity from potential assailants. Nevertheless, because the wife does not wear such a girdle, she is likely to give in to anyone – worst, to his closest friend. This reading is corroborated by the use of an expression such as « bag and baggage » obviously referring to male attributes. 3 Furthermore, in All’s Well That Ends Well, the verb ‘barricado’ appears to be used in an explicit sexual sense. Here is what Helen asks : « Man is enemy to virginity : how may we barricado it against him? » (I.i.114-115). As Gordon Williams puts it, ‘barricado’ signifies in such a context « throw up defence against (sexual) entry ». 4 When Shakespeare uses it again in its nominal form in The Winter’s Tale, he may have in mind the erotic connotations of a word which he had used a few years before. Significantly, Hermione and her host Polixenes decide to go to the garden, which probably raises the suspicion of a husband connecting the green world with a depraved sexuality : his enclosed and highly civilized garden suddenly becomes a perverted hortus conclusus. 5  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Citations to this play are to William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, edited by Stephen Orgel, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996, I.ii.195-196. 2   See the editorial matter in Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, cit., p. 106. 3   See Eric Partridge, Shakespeare’s Bawdy, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1947 1968, p. 134. 4   Williams, op. cit., p. 36. In her edition of the play, Susan Snyder glosses Parolles’ answer, « Keep him out » (I.i.116), as « fortify yourself in a stronghold ». See William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well, edited by Susan Snyder, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 85. 5   Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, cit., I.ii.176 : « We are yours i’th’ garden ».  

 

 

 

 

 

 

120 sophie chiari Indeed, since the Middle Ages, the heroic tradition has been turning rape scenes into aesthetic representations sweetened by the presence of a generous and fruitful Nature. 1 In some cases however, when the rape is not depicted in some lush green world, it is linked to the foundation of a city, as in Livy’s History of Rome, one of Shakespeare’s most important sources for The Rape of Lucrece. The poem, closely following its source, opens on Tarquin stealing away to Collatine’s home, where Lucrece manages the household in the absence of her husband, and ends on Lucrece’s bloody corpse and the banishment of Tarquin and his family. In 509 b.c., Rome establishes a republic ruled by representatives of the people. From then on, there will be no more kings. Between those two framing events, the heroine is seen spinning like another Penelope hoping for the return of her husband. This traditional feminine activity may be interpreted as the weaving of a metaphoric veil – a counterpart of her protective hymen. Unfortunately, nothing works the way she would. Tarquin proceeds to break her veil and penetrate into the city for some voluptuous and desperate descent into the feminine ‘hell’. As to his victim, she remains curiously ethereal and immaterial, contrary to the Shakespearian Venus whose body perspired, panted, and blushed. Katherine Duncan-Jones even notes that « [f]or a poem whose defining event is the violation of a body, Lucrece is astonishingly unflashy ». 2 It is as though her body were not made of flesh. It keeps on being metaphorized and seems to refer to an external reality upon which Lucrece muses and ponders. Lucrece herself is but a shadow, « a picture of pure piety » (The Rape of Lucrece, l. 542). One cannot forget the striking ekphrasis of the poem which superimposes Troy (a mythic avatar of London) and the body of Lucrece as she ‘feelingly’ weeps over the city’s woes while in Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare matched the features of the goddess with the circumvolutions of a pleasure garden (« Wishing her cheeks were garden full of flowers », l. 65). 3 Even when Collatine’s wife commits suicide, her body is turned into some insular city both ransacked by the enemy and surrounded by a bloody sea :  

 

 

 

 

 

 

And bubbling from her breast, it doth divide In two slow rivers, that the crimson blood Circles her body in on every side, 1

  Diane Wolfthal, ‘A hue and a cry’. Medieval Rape Imagery and its Transformation, « The Art Bulletin », i, 65, 1993, pp. 39-64, p. 39. 2   Katherine Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare : Scenes from His Life, London, The Ar3 den Shakespeare, 2001, p. 76.   Cf. also ll. 232-234.  

 

 

shakespeare ’ s «forfended place(s)»: women and the city 121 Who like a late-sack’d island vastly stood Bare and unpeopled in this fearful flood. (The Rape of Lucrece, ll. 1737-1741)

Linda Woodbridge interprets these lines, probably written around 1594, as the depiction of a desolated England conquered by the Spanish enemy just a few years after the Spanish Armada had threatened Elizabeth to invade the island. 1 In fact, Shakespeare’s description might also be read as the negative side of two mythic representations. The first one concerns the celestial Aphroditus rising from the sea. According to Hesiod, as Cronos, castrating Uranus had cut off the members with flint and cast them from the land into the surging sea, they were swept away over the main a long time : and a white foam spread around them from the immortal flesh, and in it there grew a maiden [...] and came forth an awful and lovely goddess, and grass grew up about her beneath her shapely feet. Her gods and men call Aphrodite [...] because she grew amid the foam. 2  

In Shakespeare’s poem, Lucrece’s bloody death parallels the bloody birth of the goddess of love, while Tarquin’s semen is curiously reminiscent of Cronos’ generating the foam (aphros) around Venus. This also recalls the blurred image of the insular city which permeated several early modern allegorical tales inspired by Plato’s Atlantis, like those of Thomas More and Francis Bacon. Utopian Renaissance projections associated the island and the city which seem to coalesce in the strange erotic geography of Lucrece’s body. 3 The married woman is in fact a city within the city, a social body where human beings meet and separate. In the 16th century, as Claude-Gilbert Dubois puts it, « urban space results from a desire for separation and closure which makes citadels and imaginary islands a world of their own ».4  

 

1   Linda Woodbridge, Palisading the Elizabethan Body Politic,« Texas Studies in Literature and Language », 33, 1991, p. 1 : « The goriness of those blood rivers, the creepiness of their ‘slow’ movement, even the chilling vision of blood turned black through pollution, might have paled, in those immediately post-Armada days, beside the specter of a sacked island. That the woman is the island provides a clue to the impact of the Lucrece story on Elizabethans. The Rape of Lucrece, Titus Andronicus, and Cymbeline offer vivid testimony to the truth of anthropological theories that treat the human body as an image of society ». 2   Hesiod, Theogony, ll. 185-200. For a detailed analysis of the myth, see Georges DidiHuberman, Ouvrir Vénus, Paris, Gallimard, 1999, p. 45. 3   On the subject, see Gilles Lapouge, Utopie et civilisations, Geneva, Librairie Weber, 1973. 4   Claude-Gilbert Dubois, L’imaginaire de la Renaissance, Paris, puf, 1985, p. 168. My translation.  

 

 

 

 

122 sophie chiari No wonder then that, in literature, the mere presence of walls in the city often paves the way for the greatest love tragedies. When Tarquin trespasses on Lucrece’s private sphere in order to be alone with her, the rape does happen, and the deflowered wife soon wishes to remain in a perpetual darkness allowed by the absence of any ‘eye’, or opening, letting the sunrays in :  

Revealing day through every cranny spies, And seems to point her out where she sits weeping ; To whom she sobbing speaks : ‘O eye of eyes, Why pry’st thou through my window? leave thy peeping : Mock with thy tickling beams eyes that are sleeping : Brand not my forehead with thy piercing light, For day hath nought to do what’s done by night.’ (The Rape of Lucrece, ll. 1086-1092)  

 

 

 

The hole through which the light floods the room is this peeping eye (« O eye of eyes »), this « O » of desire which in most of Shakespeare’s works is metonymically associated with the vagina. 1 When, earlier in the poem, Lucrece « much amazed breaks ope her locked-up eyes » (l. 446), they already symbolically refer to her sexual organs, locked-up in an imaginary chastity belt which, of course, fails to protect the woman’s intimate treasure, for the good reason that chastity belts were more of a myth than a really effective protective devices. In Lucrece’s universe, it is too late to close the breaches, those of the city, those of women, and that foreshadows imminent disasters. « Long upon these terms I held my city, / Till thus he gan besiege me » (ll. 176-177), the woman sighs in A Lover’s Complaint. Her own protections are fallen apart, her honor is lost. 2 City walls are not always metaphorical, though. Or, at least, not only. The story of Pyramus and Thisbe, narrated in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and translated by Arthur Golding in 1567, is a case in point. It is indeed through a crack in one of the walls that they whisper their love for each other and arrange to meet at Ninus’ tomb under a mulberry tree. 3 In  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  In the Bible, the eye fulfils the same function. « Lascivious eyes were traditionally described as doing what is normally done by sexual organs » : see Linda Phyllis Austern,‘For, Love’s a Good Musician’ : Performance, Audition, and Erotic Disorders in Early Modern Europe, « The Musical Quarterly », iii/iv, 82, 1998, pp. 614-653, p. 622. On the « O » as a mark of desire, see Williams, op. cit., p. 3. The author quotes Romeo and Juliet, of course, but also Dekker’s Satiromastix (1601) : « ‘tis a O more more more sweet to lye with a woman » (I.i.17). See François Laroque, Antoine et Cléopatre ou l’esthétique du vide, « Études Anglaises », 4, 2 pp. 400-412.   See Partridge, op. cit., p. 66. 3   Ovid, Metamorphoses, IV.55-166.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

shakespeare ’ s «forfended place(s)»: women and the city 123 Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the role of the wall is played by Snout, one of the ‘mechanicals’, and its crack is referred to as a « cranny » (III.i.62), a term possibly borrowed from Golding. The playwright also uses the word « chink », already present in one of his probable sources, Thomas Moffet. 1 Of course, the wall stands for the strict parental law which prevents the children from meeting in the street. But the law actually creates the drive for and the possibility of transgression. Therefore, the wall can both be viewed as an obstacle forbidding the consummation of love, and as the object that allows it to take place precisely because of its hole allowing the unfortunate young lovers to communicate. In other terms, such a hole enables a metaphorical consummation to take place, replacing the missing sexual union of the two lovers. Incidentally, in the Ovidian story, Pyramus and Thisbe acknowledge their debt and express their gratitude to the hole in the wall. Golding has them say : « we think ourselves in debt ». 2 If, by definition, genuine love is necessarily transgressive, the wall is then a necessary condition for passion to be born. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it begins inside the city of Athens, ruled by Theseus, a notorious rapist, and flourishes in the green world where neither forbidden nor deviant love is hindered or condemned by the law. In his Petite Pallace of Pettie his Pleasure, George Pettie was the first Renaissance writer to compare the fate of the lovers of Babylon with that of the star-crossed lovers of Verona, since all of them must remain clandestine and even so are doomed to die tragic deaths. 3 When Shakespeare worked on Romeo and Juliet he was already acquainted with Pettie’s story and he naturally made the link between the story he was writing and the fable of Pyramus and Thisbe, as has been demonstrated by Kenneth Muir. 4 Even though the wall is not materialized in Romeo and Juliet, it is present, and its hole, or « O », permeates Romeo’s language : « O sweet Juliet, / Thy beauty has made me effeminate / And in my temper soften’d valour’s steel! » (III.i.118-120). The lover imagines Juliet’s cracked « bond of chastity », to paraphrase Giacomo’s words in Cymbeline. She is the su 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Cf. the use of the term « crack » in Cymbeline, V.vi.206-207 : « he could not / But think her bond of chastity quite cracked ». As to the influence of Thomas Moffet, it has been rejected by Katherine Duncan-Jones in Pyramus and Thisbe. Shakespeare’s debt to Moffet cancelled, « Review of English Studies », 32, 1981, pp. 296-301. 2   Ovid’s Metamorphoses, translated by Arthur Golding, edited by Madeleine Forey, London, Penguin, 2002, l. 95, p. 123. 3   As Pettie noticed, « such presiness of parents brought Pyramus and Thisbe to a woful end, Romeo and Julietta to untimely death » (i.168). 4   Kenneth Muir, A Study in Shakespeare’s Method, « Shakespeare Quarterly », ii, 5, 1954, pp. 141-153.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

124 sophie chiari preme female « O » that completely submerges Romeo’s will, so that he becomes another Hermaphroditus figure, almost smothered by Juliet’s love. In Arthur Brooke’s version, Romeo « cast[s] his greedy eyes » on Juliet’s balcony, and makes out all its details, including its cracks : « In often passing so, his busy eyes he threw, / That every pane and tooting hole the wily lover knew ». 1 Verona is the city where love takes place but which does not allow the lovers to live and lie together. Romeo, like Pyramus, is bound to experience a verbal jouissance, not a physical one. This is why he displaces his phallic violence to invest it fully in the fight which opposes him to Tybalt. The sword gives him back his virility. 2 As Robert N. Watson and Stephen Dickey put it, « Shakespeare’s contemporaries did not need Freud to help them recognize stabbing as a version of rape ». 3 In 1614 for instance, Arthur Gorges wrote in his translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia : « If they by fight away would scape, / With your sharp blades their bosomes rape ». 4 Conquering a city with a sword often amounts to raping its women, even though a town such as Verona keeps defending itself, like a woman denying entrance into her secret parts. Significantly, when Romeo alludes to his first beloved, Rosaline, he implicitly compares her to a besieged city spared by the darts of love, for the girl « will not stay the siege of loving terms » (I.i.209). He is but an awkward Cupid unable to reach the chaste Diana-Rosaline.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Perverse Cities Shakespeare’s heroines are not systematically chaste and virtuous, though. One cannot ignore Cressida, who plays a double game right from the beginning of Troilus and Cressida, thus appearing as the very embodiment of what I would call a perverse city. Indeed, she compares herself to a castle which needs to be guarded, seemingly eager to maintain her reputation, 5 while asking her uncle to « unbolt the gates » (IV.ii.3). When  

 

1   Arthur Brooke, The Tragicall Historie of Romeus and Juliet, i, in Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, edited by Geoffrey Bullough, London, 1957, ll. 440-441. 2   Cf. George Gascoigne,The Adventures of Master F. J., in which the ‘naked sword’ both symbolizes virility and the loss of it. See the edition in Elizabethan Prose Narratives, edited by Paul Salzman, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 30-31. 3   Robert N. Watson, Stephen Dickey, Wherefore Art Thou Tereu? Juliet and the Legacy of Rape, « Renaissance Quarterly », i, 58, 2005, pp. 127-156, p. 132. 4   Arthur Gorges, Lucan’s Pharsalia, London, 1614, iv.359-360. 5   Troilus and Cressida, I.ii.254-260 : Pandarus : One knows not at what ward you lie. Cressida : Upon my back to defend my belly, upon my wit to defend my wiles, upon my  

 

 

 

 

shakespeare ’ s «forfended place(s)»: women and the city 125 Diomedes eventually demands her « to be secretly open » (V.ii.25), she unlocks the gates of her chastity without thinking too much about it. So, one of the problems of the play comes from the fact that the boundary between the assailants and the besieged is all too easily bypassed. More generally speaking, the city allows two opposite scenarios to take place. The first consists in turning men into the citadel’s assailants, excited both by the challenge and the reward. The second consists in turning women into active and willing creatures who use the possibilities offered by the town to satisfy their own needs and fulfill their desires. The first scenario has been abundantly exploited by Shakespeare and his contemporaries and, even though it is merely suggested in a play such as Henry V, it functions perfectly since spectators cannot miss the city/maid imagery pervading the dialogue between the title part and the King of France :  

 

 

King Henry. You may thank love for my blindness, who cannot see many a fair French city for one fair French maid that stands in my way. King Charles. Yes, my lord, you see them perspectively, the cities turned into a maid – for they are all girded with maiden walls that war hath never entered. (V.ii.305-310)

Charles and Henry open a negotiation about the towns left unconquered by Henry-towns which, like Katherine, are still virgin places, but will probably not remain so. For even though cities, like maids, are eager to protect their treasure by defending themselves as much as they can, they can be easily weakened. Women, like citadels, are likely to be conquered at any time, and the intruder always proves merciless. The second scenario, staging active, sometimes perverted women, is at work in a tragedy like King Lear, which depicts a « topsy turvy » universe where women take the place of men. The cruel and newly-widowed Regan, in love with Edmund, is prompt to define Goneril’s intimacy as « the forfended place », an expression designating not only women’s womb (i.e the relevant place for an « act of darkness ») but also the bed of adultery and the crumbling citadel giving in to its conqueror. 1 Indeed, the doors of Goneril’s castle are easily opened by the bastard, which may have provided further opportunity for what Harvey L. Klevar calls  

 

 

 

 

 

secrecy to defend mine honesty, my mask to defend my beauty, and you to defend all these – and at all these wards I lie at a thousand watches. 1   Shakespeare, King Lear, cit., V.i.11. Foakes explains « forfended place » as follows: « forbidden bed or body (of Goneril) » (p. 358, note 11).  

 

 

 

126 sophie chiari 1 « Goneril’s nuptial breach ». Further in the play, Regan compares herself to a besieged fortress as her immediate future is compromised. Ironically, whereas the simile usually applies to the victim of a rape, here, it accounts for Regan’s defeat, i.e., the defeat of a torturer : « Take thou my soldiers, prisoners, patrimony ; / Dispose of them, of me, the walls is thine ». 2 One finds the same scenario in Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling, albeit staged quite differently. Throughout what Donald Beecher has called « one of the most mannerist plays of the period », feminine creatures prove much more venturesome than men. 3 The very willing Isabella thus tells Antonio to enter and tread her private labyrinth : « Stand up, thou son of Cretan Dedalus, / And let us tread the lower labyrinth ; / I’ll bring thee to the clue ». 4 Isabella is the entire city of Cnossos, and in her labyrinthine womb, she aims at confusing her masculine prey. 5 In John Marston’s Insatiable Countess, the heroine is similarly willing to make her wooers err and fall into her net. But she is not the only one and even more benevolent feminine characters show an exacerbated sexuality in the city. For the play’s main character is probably Venice, a labyrinthine town already depicted as such by Shakespeare in the Merchant of Venice. Indeed, as Gobbo asks his way to « Master Jew’s », Lancelot gives his father rather cryptic indications :  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Turn up on your right hand at the next turning, but at the next turning of all on your left, marry at the very next turning, turn of no hand but turn down indirectly to the Jew’s house. (II.ii.37-40)

Verbal confusion is at its height, and recreates the complex topography of a city which was increasingly associated with Venus through the paronomasia Venice/Venus, common at the time. Marston toys with the same ideas, and the town, closely related to contemporary London, allows the playwright to stage either domestic or public scenes, and the audience discovers the city’s private areas as 1   Harvey L. Klevar, King Lear. The Unnatural Nuptial Breach, « Shakespeare Quarterly », i, 2 23, 1972, pp. 117-121, p. 118.   Shakespeare, King Lear, cit., V.iii.76-77. 3   Donald Beecher, Mannerist Explorations in the English Theatre : A Case Study of The Changeling, in Spectacle and Image in Renaissance Europe, edited by André Lascombes, Leiden, Brill, 1993, pp. 177-192, p. 191. 4   Thomas Middleton, The Changeling,in The Collected Works, edited by Gary Taylor, John Lavagnino, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2007, IV.iii.113-115. 5   Middleton, op. cit., p. 1668.  

 

 

shakespeare ’ s «forfended place(s)»: women and the city 127 well as its narrow alleys. 1 Thais and Abigail, two childhood friends married to Rogero and Claridiana, live there. In a proleptic scene staging a masque and foreshadowing men’s inconstancy, they are first implicitly compared to the city’s haven, as their husbands are turned into two ships leaving port.2 The young wives are not mere victims, however. They love their city and know how to use it in order to play a bed-trick on their jealous husbands :  

Thais. But you mean they shall come in at the back-doors. Abigail. Who, our husbands? Nay, and they come not in at the fore-doors, there will be no pleasure in’t. But we two will climb over our garden-pales, and come in that way (the chastest that are in Venice will stray for a good turn) and thus wittily will we be bestowed, you into my house to your husband, and I into your house to my husband and I warrant thee, before a month come to an end, they’ll crack louder of this night’s lodging than the bedsteads. 3

The free-speaking Abigail intends to forge an obscene labyrinth in which the husbands will err, both mentally and physically, for each of them will be persuaded to lie with the other’s wife. Because Thais does not seem to understand the full implications of her friend’s plot, sexual allusions are made clear by Abigail. While Thais alludes to what Foucault calls the « utterly confused category » 4 of sodomy (« back door »), Abigail wants to have pleasure first and advocates vaginal penetration (« at the fore-doors »). 5 As a consequence, the mazy city of Venice, full of rear and front doors, paves the way for a delightful and obscene confusion leading to various sexual experiments, be they legal or not.  

 

 

 

 

 

4. Conclusion : The Power of Metaphor  

Throughout the 16th and the 17th centuries, the body is the mansion of the soul, the fortress of women’s chastity, or the city of sexual pleas1

  See Giorgio Melchiori, Introduction, in John Marston, The Insatiate Countess (1613), edited by Giorgio Melchiori, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1984 (« The Revels Plays »), p. 28. 2 3   Marston, op. cit., II.i.67-69.   Marston, op. cit., II.ii.68-76. 4   Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, i, An Introduction, translated by Robert Hurley, New York, Vintage, 1980, p. 75. 5   See Celia R. Daileader, Back Door Sex : Renaissance Gynosodomy, Aretino, and the Exotic, « English Literary History », ii, 69, 2002, pp. 303-334. Marston’s quote is commented upon on p. 312.  

 

 

 

 

128 sophie chiari 1 ure. Shakespeare, by giving pride of place to the motif of the sleeping beauty subject to dishonest wooers (The Rape of Lucrece, Romeo and Juliet, Cymbeline, Othello, Macbeth), already uses one of the future topoi of the Gothic genre valued by Radcliffe (The Romance of the Forest, The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Italian) or Lewis (The Monk), and permeated by images of female bodies compared to citadels in ruins. While the Renaissance imagination mapped the body, it allowed the city to expand in a number of different ways, playing with the contrast between an idyllic green world connected with the past, represented in pastorals, and an urban architecture connected with the future, represented in ‘city comedies’. Shakespeare did not write city comedies, and preferred the exoticism of remote places, which does not mean that he neglected the cityscape. His numerous metaphors implying the city prove quite the contrary. I would therefore tend to think that for Shakespeare, real cities are, just like pyramids, « dressings of a former sight » (Sonnet 123). 2 Paradoxically, they become unreal or ethereal, as is made clear in Antony’s speech :  

 

 

Sometimes we see a cloud that’s dragonish, A vapour sometime like a bear or lion, A towered citadel, a pendent rock, A forkèd mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon’t that nod unto the world And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs ; They are black vesper’s pageants. (Antony and Cleopatra, IV.xiv.3-9)  

As to metaphoric towns, describing bodies, they make cities become real and palpable. As such, they can be conquered, just like maids : « Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed », the poet writes in Sonnet 41. The city is a place of war and love, and this is echoed in Twelfth Night, when Sir Toby explains Sir Andrew how he should welcome Maria : « ‘Accost’ is front her, board her, woo her, assail her » (I.iii.53-54).3 The woman is this city which, if not taken by force, may agree to be conquered by pleas 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Dubois, op. cit., p. 158.   On these pyramids, see Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, cit., p. 177. See, too, William Shakespeare, The Sonnets, edited by G. Blakemore Evans, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996 (« The New Cambridge Shakespeare »), p. 236. 3   See also Oed, Assail, 10 : « To address with offers of love, to woo. Obs. c1600 Shakes.Sonn. xli, Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail’d. 1601. Twel. N. I. iii. 60 Accost, is, front her, boord her, woe her, assayle her. 1611Cymb. II. iii. 44, I haue assayl’d her with Musickes ». 2

 

 

 

 

 

shakespeare ’ s «forfended place(s)»: women and the city 129 ure. Almost two centuries later, Pierre Cholderlos de Laclos, the French author of the epistolary novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1762), will write exactly the same thing. Incidentally, the novelist was a military officer, too, and specialized in poliorcetics, i.e. the art of siege warfare, that of conducting or resisting a siege thanks... to fortifications.

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PART II. ENCOUNTERING CITIES

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THE TUDOR INNS OF COURT : A HARBOUR FOR PAPISTS?  

Dominique Goy-Blanquet

T

he road to Kristiansand on 7 June 2007 via Oslo airport, among queues of shoeless, beltless immigrants waiting to be allowed in under the new security regulations, provided an apt introduction to a seminar dedicated to Tolerance, a tame reminder of what it must feel like to be treated as a potential suspect, when every traveller could hide a terrorist. The Inns of Court seemed to fit well the seminar’s definition of portus : an enclosed and protected place used as a depository or stopover for loading or unloading goods, a final destination, refuge or shelter. The development of the royal law courts, and their settlement at Westminster in mid-fourteenth century had seen the parallel emergence of the Inns in the vicitiny of the palace, on the slopes of Holborn, originally intended as hostels for professional counsels who came to attend court sessions. The Inns had no foundation comparable to that of the university colleges. They were formed as a society of lawyers, possibly modelled on chivalric fraternities like the Order of the Garter in 1348, academic associations, or craft guilds like the Fraternity of St Nicolas formed about then by the Parisian advocates. Holborn was still a quiet suburban village, but its proximity to Westminster enabled the Inns to play up the ambivalence of their name, advertising their close relationship with the royal Court and the courts. The public image of the Inns was more ambiguous : former alumni from Fortescue to Elyot advertised them as the perfect place of education for young gentlemen of the nobility, but others complained of their lack of guidance or supervision, and proximity to disreputable places of entertainment like the theatres. 1 The term ‘liberties’ was applied to places, customs and practises where excessive freedom was enjoyed. The students were notorious for violent behaviour and excessive spending, encouraged by London’s endless temptations. In the 1580s, the ‘liberties’ of the Inns covered other patterns of behaviour : the goods delivered there from the Continent were priests, books and ideas. Their situation outside the city, the nearby fields and woods, furnished convenient  

 

 

1

  See Paul Raffield, Images and Cultures of Law in Early Modern England : Justice and Political Power, 1558-1660, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004.  

134 dominique goy-blanquet meeting places. The privileges granted them made the enforcement of conformity difficult, and led the clerk of the Council, William Waad, to send ‘articles’ to Chief Justice Popham in June 1592, betraying his anxiety about the Inns « wher now by the exemption they have more recusantes and badd persons are harbored there then heretofore have been ». 1 Historians of the Inns generally agree on three points : that they were a nest of papists, a chief target of the Jesuit missionaries, and a community so tightly knit that all government attempts to enforce conformity were deflected. This view was largely shared by the Privy councillors of Elizabeth, and by various Protestants in and outside the Inns, who kept demanding that they be purged of popery. Thomas Norton, of Inner Temple, was constantly pressing for stricter measures, asking for a new oath, not just of allegiance but of religious conformity, to be sworn by all officials serving the City « in function of law ». In 1591, the commissions against seminary priests and Jesuits were warned that « of these many do attempt to resort into the universities and houses of law from whence in former times they departed ». 2 Actually, very few were former Inns members, but perhaps the Council remembered that the leader of the Pilgrimage of Grace, Robert Aske, came from Gray’s Inn, as did his accomplice Lord Hussey, son of Chief Justice Hussey. On the eve of the Civil war, Milton would accuse lawyers of having hindered the establishment of the Elizabethan church, through « the great Places and Offices executed by Papists, the Judges, the Lawyers, the Justices of the Peace for the most part Popish ». 3 The Puritan authorities no doubt agreed with him. One of their first steps was to stop readings at the Inns in 1642, the same year they closed all the theatres. The fact that so many proclamations, laws, rules and regulations were made or recalled at regular intervals, points to weaknesses in the system. 4 To Wallace MacCaffrey, the government focused on a handful of scapegoats, who were fined heavily and repeatedly, to project an impression of competent authority. 5 Numerous letters from the Privy Council show they did try to enforce the laws but were ill-equipped to do so, as  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1   Lansd.ms 72, xli, fol. 118v, quoted in Geoffrey C. de Parmiter, Elizabethan Popish Recusancy in the Inns of Court, London, 1976 (« Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research », Special Supplement, 11), p. 30. 2   Tudor Royal Proclamations, iii, edited by Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1964-1969, p. 86. 3   John Milton, Of Reformation Touching Church Discipline in England, and the Causes that hitherto have hindred it, London, 1641, p. 15. 4   Acts of the Privy Council of England, vii-xxxii[1558-1604], edited by John Roche Dasent, London, 1894. 5   Wallace MacCaffrey, Queen Elizabeth and the Making of Policy, 1572-1588, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1981, pp. 141-144.  

 

the tudor inns of court: a harbour for papists? 135 1 Sarah K. Douglas observes : the Court of the High Commission, a hybrid of lay and church officials created to enforce the Act of Supremacy, had inquisitorial powers but was impotent for large-scale problems. The only real safety was through Walsingham’s and Cecil’s spy networks. 2 It was thanks to them that the system, broken or not, still proved spectacularly ruthless, and victorious in the long run. Geoffrey de Parmiter’s close study of recusancy shows unequivocally that the government’s suspicions concerning the Inns were justified, but that they were treated with extraordinary leniency, compared with the harsh measures taken elsewhere. 3 Why such impunity? The usual answer is that the Privy Council were baffled by the lack of cooperation from the Inns governors, the professional solidarity, the old tradition of liberties. Wilfrid Prest thinks professional ties were often stronger than religious feelings. 4 To Richard O’Sullivan, « the coercion of conscience was repugnant to the genius of the Common Law ». 5 An attractive idea, not quite supported by the evidence. It is hard to believe that Cecil or Walsingham who were themselves Inns members, well acquainted with house rules and ceremonies, would be so easily defeated by a bunch of old lawyers. 6 The cause of their delicacy must be sought elsewhere. As for the threat the Inns represented, Prest notes a huge gap between their public image and reality : after the 1570s papists among Inns members were never more than a small impotent minority, usually of junior rank, with little influence on the government of the societies. 7 The missionaries’ main impact was psychological, he writes. But then psychology is a decisive factor in propaganda and public opinion, one to which Elizabethan politicians were fully awake.  

 

 

 

From Leniency to Legislation The religious policy of the Elizabethan government has been summed up as « a progress from inertia to inertia », with a phase of action in between,  

1

 

  Sarah K. Douglas, ‘Jesuites ghostly wayes’ : Catholic Political Policy and the Control of Catholic Recusancy during the Reign of Elizabeth I, PhD thesis, Ohio State University, 2007, p. 41. 2 3   Douglas, op. cit., p. 61.   Parmiter, op. cit., p. 54. 4   Wilfrid R. Prest, The Inns of Court under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts, 1590-1640, London, Longman, 1972, pp. 183-185. 5   Richard O’Sullivan, Edmund Plowden 1518-1585. Autumn reading given in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother at the Middle Temple Hall on 12 November 1952, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1952, p. 11 ; Geoffrey C. de Parmiter, Edmund Plowden. An Elizabethan Recusant Lawyer, London, Catholic Record Society, 1987, pp. 42-43. 6   Cecil took an active interest in the administration of Gray’s Inn, attended various events there, and kept a list of its members. His sons Robert and Thomas were also students of this society. 7  Prest, op. cit., pp. 182-186.  

 

136 dominique goy-blanquet caused by anxiety over the Popish league. 1 In the first ten years of the reign, « inertia 1 », the Inns were mostly left to their own devices. The laws on religious conformity were enforced haphazard, till the mounting fear of foreign threats created a phase of action, culminating in the Armada years. Laxity there may have been, but never positive tolerance. Within a year of good Queen Bess’s accession, all but one of her nine Catholic bishops were under house arrest. In 1563, the duty to take the oath of supremacy was extended to every ordained minister, university graduate, and lawyer. A first refusal to take the oath was a praemunire offence, a second constituted high treason. The bill, labelled « Assurance of the Queen’s Power », raised protests from more than a third of the Commons, led by an Inner Temple barrister, Robert Atkinson, who spoke strongly against it, all in vain. 2 Now Catholics were prevented from sitting in Commons, allowing it to develop as a predominantly Protestant body, a momentous effect that seldom raises more than a passing remark from scholars. Still, the legal profession remained largely immune. Recusants threatened with prosecution could be sure of obtaining a papist lawyer to defend them. 3 The second phase, « action », was initiated by the Northern rebellion. The revolted Earls had asked for support from Pope Pius V, but they had already fled the country when the answer came, in March 1570 : the Bull Regnans in Excelsis deposed Queen Elizabeth as a heretic, and threatened excommunication for English subjects who continued to attend church services. A man from Norfolk, John Felton, collected copies of the Bull in Calais, fixed one to the gates of the Bishop of London’s palace and gave one to his friend William Mellowes, of Lincoln’s Inn, where the incriminating paper was discovered. Mellowes having confessed on the rack, Felton was arrested on 26 May 1570, tortured, and executed for treason in August. 4 Though often used in dark places when occasion required, torture was forbidden by common law, as Fortescue had proudly stressed in his De Laudibus Legum Angliae. 5 Elizabeth openly claimed  

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Prest, op. cit., p. 185.   See the surviving speech, misdated, by Robert Atkinson, mp for Appleby, in Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, i, 1558-1581,edited by T. E. Hartley, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1981, p. 96. 3   Parmiter, Elizabethan Popish Recusancy, cit., pp. 49-50 ; Prest, op. cit., p. 174. 4   Cobbett’s Complete Collection of State Trials, edited by William Cobbett and Thomas Howell, London, Hansard, 1809-1826, pp. 1085-1088 ; David Jardine, A Reading on the Use of Torture in the Criminal Law of England, London, Baldwin and Craddock, 1837, p. 78. 5   Sir John Fortescue, In Praise of the Laws of England, ch. 21, in On the laws and governance of England, edited by Shelley Lockwood, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, ac2

 

 

the tudor inns of court: a harbour for papists? 137 her royal prerogative to use it in treasonous cases, for the safety of her realm, upon warrant from the Privy Council. 1 The Ridolfi plot to invade England, spurred by the Pope’s Bull, seemed justification enough for extreme measures. Its collapse the following year led to a severe military repression in the North. On a list of 700 conspirators, only those prisoners who took the oath of Supremacy saved their lives. Yet Cecil complained that the Catholic sympathies of judges and lawyers both in civil and common law were matters of « evident knolledg ». 2 An inquiry of 1564 into the religious opinions of JPs throughout the realm had revealed more Catholic feelings than the Privy Council expected. Yet no move was made in the Inns to mend matters until the major attack of 1569, when a more thorough inquiry into their conformity involved Privy Council, Star Chamber, and Ecclesiastical Commission. In conclusion, twenty-two recusants were summoned before the commissioners. Among them were Atkinson and Thomas Egerton, of whom more later. Cecil personally directed that all the members named were to be put out of commons and lodgings, forbidden to plead or practise at any court until they could show a certificate of conformity delivered by the bishop of London. This, Parmiter writes, was the only serious purge in the Inns. 3 The suspects were given a year to conform, or be finally expelled. Some found evasions, overwork or some other cause, to excuse their absence from church. Some were soon re-admitted with their ‘former ancienty’. The benchers chose to ignore the government’s wishes, moved less by religious fervour than by the Council’s disregard for their time-honoured system of seniority. 4 Except in cases of provocative defiance, there were but few and mild penalties. The next inquiry, in 1577, required the Inns authorities to check on the recusants listed in 1569. 5 Some had conformed, like Egerton, but after the  

 

cuses John Tiptoft, then constable of the Tower, of having introduced « the law of Padua », meaning illegal torture, in the realm. 1   John Guy, Tudor England, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 318, records 53 documented cases of legal torture under Elizabeth. 2   bl Lansd. ms 102, fol. 145, in a 1569 memorandum headed « Perills » by Cecil. Quoted in Parmiter, Elizabethan Popish Recusansy, cit., p. 3. 3   Parmiter, Elizabethan Popish Recusancy, cit., pp. 9-13. 4   At Inner Temple those by-passed in November 1573 were called to the bench two months later in flagrant disregard of the Privy Council’s instructions, those first chosen were respited for a time, « for that the place is presently so full ». See F. A. Inderwick, A Calendar of the Inner Temple Records, i, London, Chiswick Press, 1896-1998, p. 273 ; Parmiter, Elizabethan Popish Recusancy, cit., p. 15. 5   The reports on the religious habits of suspects by benchers George Bromley and Edward Flowerdewe do specify those who have conformed. Inderwick, op. cit., p. xlix.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

138 dominique goy-blanquet return of the certificate, a group of Middle Temple Protestant members complained to the Privy Council that the papist Edmund Plowden had « opposed him self openly against such benchers as furthered that certificate », and done it so efficiently that compared with « the severitie and sinceritie of other houses, the Middle Temple is pestred with papistes and not to be amended without your honours especiall ayd ». 1 Again, their protest proved uneffective. It is another unique feature of the Inns that at the height of the persecutions, notorious recusants like Plowden cohabited with priest hunters like Thomas Norton. Norton, former co-author of Gorboduc, did not believe the « sweet violence » of tragedy so praised by Sidney would suffice to clean ulcers in the body politic. He was especially anxious to purge the educational system, the universities and the inns, from « lurking » papists. In his view, recusants were not made abroad but here at home. His genuine fear that Catholic infiltration would in time corrupt the judiciary drew him to recommend all the weapons of dictatorial regimes, « surveiller et punir », keep watch and punish. 2 He prescribed an elaborate system of vigil for both students and teachers : butlers of respective Inns were to take the names of all the absentees at church, while benchers must advance none to the bar, bench or other place of preferment but those known to be sound in religion. 3 Even when jailed in the Tower for his excess of zeal, in the winter of 1581-1582, Norton kept suggesting measures to improve universities, public schools, inns of court and chancery. The government was just beginning to clean them of Jesuits. Until then, ‘action’ had been mainly in Parliament, with mediocre results. The proportion of Inns members in Commons had steadily increased through Elizabeth’s reign, from just over a quarter of all MPs in 1563 to more than a third in 1584, most of them Protestants. A succession of anti-Catholic laws devised increasingly harsh penalties and fines for recusants, but in the Inns themselves they were applied with only tepid energy. In the aftermath of the Bull, Parliament’s first concern was not the general purge Norton would later require, but the pretenders to the crown who were openly encouraged by the Pope’s invitation. In the 1571 debates over the new Treasons act, Norton came with a prepared draft proposing major additions, in which he urged the right of Parliament to  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Parmiter, Elizabethan Popish Recusancy, cit., pp. 27-28.   Michel Foucault’s original title has been Englished with a slight twist as ‘Discipline and Punish’, i.e. punish and punish, instead of its original meaning, ‘invigilate’. 3   Lansd. ms 155, fols. 105-106v, quoted in Parmiter, Elizabethan Popish Recusancy, cit., p. 32. 2

the tudor inns of court: a harbour for papists? 139 settle the succession, and bar any claim from Mary Stuart – precisely the messages Gorboduc had spelt out ten years earlier, John Neale observes. 1 The draft aimed to brand as traitors anyone or their heirs laying claim to the crown in the Queen’s life. The following year, here comes Norton again, with a great speech, recorded in the diaries of both Houses, arguing that Norfolk must be executed, and pronouncing the execution of Mary Stuart to be « of necessity : it lawfully may be done ». A committee of the two Houses, with Norton, then proceeded to set down reasons moving the conscience to act thus, while « the civilians drewe reasons pro et contra ». 2 The committee failed to convince Queen Elizabeth : all they got for their labour was her usual evasion, la roigne se avisera, she would think about it. But she agreed to sacrifice Norfolk, after the full discovery of his part in the Ridolfi plot. The Duke being very popular, his trial was carefully organized, and public opinion well ploughed. The whole sequence reads like a blueprint for the dispatch of Hastings in Richard III : the Lord Mayor with a select number of aldermen were summoned to the Star Chamber, where the councillors advised them of great treasons against the queen and government, and went on to the Guildhall, along with a great multitude of citizens, where they were treated to an oration by the recorder Fleetwood. At Norfolk’s trial, in January 1572, Norton was entrusted with the task of keeping a written record. The Duke was executed in June. In the same session, Parliament attempted to reduce religious laxity in all sensitive areas, including the Inns, which were repeatedly denounced as papist nests. The bishops had proposed a bill on the authority to compel attendance at church. 3 Robert Snagge, a good Protestant, stressed the need to fight non-observance by private schoolmasters in gentlemen’s houses, at the Universities, and at the Inns of Court, all suspected shelters for Catholic recusancy. The bill was vetoed by the Queen, but the bishops kept a suspicious eye on the Inns : a few weeks later, the Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker complained to Cecil that although two years earlier the Inns had been brought to better order by the Council’s action, they « do now of late grow again very disordered in over bold speeches and doings touching religion ». 4  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1   John Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 1559-1581, i, London, Jonathan Cape, 1953, p. 2 225.   Proceedings in the Parliaments, cit., pp. 331-332. 3   Geoffrey R. Elton, The Parliament of England 1559-1581, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 200-206. 4   In a letter of June 1571, quoted in Parmiter, Elizabethan Popish Recusancy, cit., p. 17.

140

dominique goy-blanquet Allen’s Double Plot

The missionary priests began to arrive from Douai in 1574. We have it on Prest’s authority that the Inns were one of their key targets, but little actual evidence from the records. The well-informed Privy Council may have believed so too, for in May, after a report of commissioners which seems lost, they issued orders to the Inns in the Queen’s name. Gray’s Inn, whose authorities had done nothing so far to enforce conformity, made their first orders then, requiring attendance at church and general communion on pain of being put out of commons. In November, a religious test was imposed before calls to the Bar. Six months later, Burghley recommended Walsingham to include the ever helpful Norton among those appointed to examine prisoners. Concerning the Inns, no further official action was taken for a while. Then in 1577, the newly appointed bishop of London John Aylmer urged Walsingham to impose stronger measures, and heavier fines. The government did not adopt his suggestions at that point – they would in 1581 – but launched a national census, ordering the bishops to make lists of recusants in dioceses, with the names and value of their lands and goods. Similar instructions were given to the vice-chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge. A month later, the Council realized they had omitted the Inns – obviously not their main preoccupation – and required the Lord Keeper Sir Nicholas Bacon for the Inns of Court, and the Lord Chief Justice Wray for the Inns of Chancery, to appoint persons well affected in religion to inquire of religious conformity in every Inn, for they were thought « greatlie infected with poperie ». The inquiry cannot have been very thorough : the time allowed for the return of certificates was too short for any rigorous investigation, and through either that or deliberate negligence, notorious recusants were omitted. The highest proportion was found in Gray’s Inn, Cecil’s own house, perhaps the reason why Gray’s Inn was treated to special measures, though at a much later date. It was the only one singled out in 1585 by the Privy Council for further inquiry. In November of that year a large search was ordered there, since « some seminarie popish priests have bene heretofore harboured in Graies Inn », to say mass, and pervert young gentlemen. The Council must have acted on sound information. When John Hambly was captured near Salisbury the following August, he confessed he had said mass in a chamber of Gray’s Inn, in the presence of nine or ten Inns gentlemen who provided vestments and the necessary  

 

 

 

 

the tudor inns of court: a harbour for papists? 141 objects of cult, proof enough that this was not an unusual event. He further admitted that Gray’s Inn Fields were a regular place of conference for seminaries and Catholics. 1 Apart from this pointed search, the government had no direct hand in the affairs of the Inns after 1577, and the benchers were again left largely to ensure conformity as they saw fit. From the surviving records, they did little. The year of the national census, 1577, marks another turning point, with the trial of Cuthbert Mayne, recently ordained at Douai, who had come over to catechise Cornwall. He was tried under the new Treason Act of 1571, on five counts : first, that he had brought in a ‘faculty’ or bulla from the Roman See containing the absolution of the Queen’s subjects ; second, that he had published it at Golden, Cornwall ; third, that he had preached the Pope’s authority in Launceston jail ; fourth, that he had brought into the realm an Agnus Dei ; fifth, that he had said mass. Though « plain proofs were wanting », on Justice Manwood’s own admission, there were « strong presumptions » enough against him. The jury, thus firmly directed, pronounced Mayne guilty of high treason on all five counts, according to statutes of the first and thirteenth years of Elizabeth’s reign, and sentenced him accordingly. The other judge, Sir John Jeffries, was not satisfied with the proceedings and referred the matter to the Privy Council. They submitted the case to the whole Bench of Judges, who inclined to Jeffries’s view. Nevertheless, the Council ordered the execution to be carried out in November « as a terror to the Papists ». 2 Mayne was the first seminary priest convicted for bringing in a ‘faculty’, the first of 123 priests executed under Elizabeth’s reign, over half of whom were sentenced before 1590. 3 However lax the government may have been during the phase ‘inertia 1’, the Catholics had not been idle. The English Colleges abroad were only the visible part of their enterprises on the continent. The founder of the Douai seminary, William Allen, was doubly active on behalf of England. He devised the Colleges as « plentiful Nurseries for the Church of our country », where the largest possible numbers shall be brought up « during the schism ». 4 There was never any doubt in his mind that  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

 

  Pro, sp 12/192/46, Catholic Record Society (r) 9, pp. 166-173 ; quoted in Parmiter, Elizabethan Popish Recusancy, cit., p. 43. 2   Butler’s Lives of the Saints, edited by Sarah Fawcett Thomas, Tunbridge Wells, Burns and Oates, 1997, p. 228. 3   William Allen, A briefe Historie of the Martyrdom of xii reverend priests, London, 1908 [1582], pp. 104-110. 4   William Allen, An apologie and true declaration of the institution and endevours of the  

142 dominique goy-blanquet England would eventually be reconciled with Rome. Protestantism was but a temporary illness, one more peripety in the long history of the Church’s fights against heresy. This belief guided his double role to the end of his life. One was the survival of colleges, vital in the design to keep faith alive till recovery. The other involved a landing of alien forces in Scotland and in England, supported by revolted Catholics. Allen very soon realized, as did the Papacy, that success depended on changing the religion of the Prince, and local aristocratic resistance would indeed prove totally inadequate in front of State power. His two correspondences were kept rigorously apart : the letters dealing with College matters are filled with practical problems, the settlement of quarrels between students, the need to find money, supporters and patrons. They betray no awareness of his other occupation, the « enterprise of England ». As more documents emerge from the archives, it is clear that Allen was involved in the scheme at an early stage. He was one of thirteen Englishmen who signed a letter to the new pope Gregory XIII on 10 August 1572 to interest him in the pitiful state of England : according to this petition, many there execrate the heresy imposed upon them; even those who have deserted are ready for another kind of government and if the occasion arose, would easily be moved to the other side. 1 Concerning the method, the petitioners leave it to his Holiness’s prudence. In August 1575, Allen received a Brief granting him wide faculties for dealing with all English penitents in and outside the realm, which put him in a position of leadership. Soon he was summoned to Rome with Francis Englefield, Plowden’s client, to give their advice on the practicability of the invasion plan. Their report supplied answers as to how many soldiers and of what kind were necessary, where they should be mustered, which ports to use, from Italy to Liverpool, what leaders, payment, preparation of supporters were to be organized. 2 Among Allen’s correspondents of  

 

 

 

two English colleges, the one in Rome, the other now resident in Rhemes, against certaine sinister information given up against the same, Mons, 1581, p. 25. 1   Letters of William Allen and Richard Barret, 1572-1598, edited by P. Renold, Catholic Record Society, 1967, p. 275. Giovanni Morone, Protector of England, who sent this letter from Louvain, commissioned a research by Nicholas Sander, resulting in the publication of the Report on the State of England in 1560. 2   Renold thinks, their joint memorial, sent by Cardinal Como for the Nuncio in Madrid to show Philip II, must be the one found in the archives of Bishop Diego de Simancas for February 1576. It coincides with the report of their talk in Rome with the Spanish ambassador Zuniga that month : « Pretextus vivus debet esse executio excommunicationis latae contra Dominam Elisabetham pro reformanda religion ». Letters of William Allen and Richard Barret, cit., pp. 280-284.  

 

 

the tudor inns of court: a harbour for papists? 143 1577 was Dr Nicholas Sander, who was about to launch his Irish expedition. 1 Several other reports on the state of England followed, one jointly made by Allen and Robert Parsons to Pope Gregory and to Philip II, dated 16 January 1584. 2 In a memorandum of April 1584, Allen advises to invade England before Scotland, and pleads urgency : it must be this year or lose hope. A further memorandum in March 1587 by Allen and Parsons elects the Spanish line to the succession of the English crown, and again urges the expedition against England. 3 The Inns were not particularly on Allen’s agenda, nor on his fellow conspirators’. International plotting ran at a much higher level. The vast correspondence in cipher carried by Jesuit messengers dealt with numbers, armed men and sums of money. If the Inns were a special target, it must have been for a lower rank of executants. Those who aimed to convert intellectuals, like Edmund Campion, made the universities their first object, Oxford, from whence came many exiles, and Cambridge, held to be deeply tainted with Puritanism. Jasper Heywood’s mission, in the same period, was to find recruits at the English universities for the Catholic seminaries abroad. 4 When Allen mentions the Inns, in a letter of 1576, it is more as a welcome bonus than a calculated move : besides Oxford and Cambridge,  

 

there exists in London a famous curriculum of English civil law, with various colleges frequented by all the gentry of almost the whole nation, and that these men be rightly instructed is of primary importance. Among these, through divine assistance, ours have in recent years made wonderful headway by personal intercourse, for nowhere do men lie hid more safely than in London. 5

Teaching correct doctrine to future governors never appears a primary object. Campion’s Challenge to the Privy Council offers to debate with his 1   Letter from Dr Nicholas Sander, Madrid, November 1577, suggesting he apply for alms to A [the pope], not the X [the king of Spain], « for the X is as fearfull of warre as a child of fyre », Letters and Memorials of Cardinal Allen, ed. Thomas Francis Knox, London, 1882, p. 38. 2   Letters and Memorials, cit., doc. cxxi, pp. 222-224, in Italian, transcript in pro. 3   Letters and Memorials, cit., pp. 281-286, Italian, archives of Simancas, with a genealogical summary. 4   Dennis Flynn, ‘Out of step’ : Six Supplementary Notes on Jasper Heywood, in The Reckoned Expense : Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits, edited by T. M. McCoog, Woodbridge, Boydell, 1997, pp. 179-192. 5   « Londini existit celebre admodum iuris muinicipalis Britannici studium, ac varia collegia omnium pene totius gentis nobilium, qui ut recte instituantur plurimi interest. Apud quos per divinum auxilium mirum in modum his annis profecerunt nostri, tum praesenti colloquio, quia nusquam tutius delitescunt quam Londini », Miscellanea vii, Catholic Record Society, csr(r) 9, pp. 64-65. My translation.  

 

 

 

 

 

144 dominique goy-blanquet University colleagues and with lawyers, but makes no provision for the Inns in his programme. What mattered most was the practical value of the Inns, their secluded location, the support available among members, their nearness to recusant centres. George Gilbert had created a Catholic association with a group of ardent well-born youths, more generous than cautious, all so eager to serve that they caused some anxiety in Rome. 1 They received the blessing of the Pope in April 1580, sailed to England, and found lodgings in Chancery Lane. When Parsons landed, a few months later, reaching Gravesend at midnight, he got into a tiltboat going to London. To his horror, he found himself among a quantity of gentlemen from the Inns of Court and the Queen’s household who had feasted in Kent. 2 Far from seeking support in that quarter, he promptly jumped into a wherry, reached Southwark before dawn, and went straight to the prison where he was sure to find plenty of Catholics, he writes, for he knew not where they lived. Thus he was guided to the City, where George Gilbert’s club lodged, in the chief pursuivant’s house on Chancery Lane. The houses of civil officers, when they could be bought, were felt to be particularly safe places. Campion arrived in June, and was likewise taken to Gilbert’s lodgings. Parsons still did not show any particular interest for the Inns of Court as such, he usually preferred to stay in ordinary inns. The Jesuits were to visit the whole country. London was not their final port, only a base for a larger mission, a convenient place for meetings and support in the vicinity of the Inns where Gilbert kept his network of « subseminaries », lay brothers, conductors, companions and comforters of priests. Only eleven priests reached England in the two years of their mission, and the available documents show no trace that they had any grand design to convert law students. Still, the Government must have shared Allen’s view that they were making excellent headway there, for mentions of Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s, secret meetings etc. are scattered throughout the papers of Burghley and the councillors. Gray’s, in particular, with its strong representation of Ireland, Lancashire and the North, was thought by the government most « infected and corrupted ». But Cecil was worried for practical rather than ideological reasons. What he feared was less the corruption of young men who might be lured away from pure religion by eloquent Jesuits than their fifth column activities. He had good reason for anxiety. Gregory XIII was funding two expeditions to  

 

 

 

1

  Richard Simpson, Edmund Campion, Jesuit Protomartyr, London, Burns and Oates, 1907, 2 pp. 221-222, who gives a list of these « subseminaries ».   Simpson, op. cit., p. 172.  

 

the tudor inns of court: a harbour for papists? 145 support Irish rebels in 1578-1580. One was diverted to North Africa. The second, monitored by Nicholas Sander, reached Ireland 1 just as Campion and Parsons were leaving for England. Bloody Questions With due respect to Wilfrid Prest, the ‘psychological impact’ of the Jesuits’ mission was tremendous. As early as 15 July, two weeks after Campion’s arrival, a Royal Proclamation was issued against Traitors, and the hunt began. A letter of 1 December from the Council gave instructions to make a public example of missionaries, « to the terrour of others », and Norton’s services were enlisted to examine several seminary priests. 2 Some of those examinations ended on the rack. On 10 January 1581, another Royal Proclamation required all subjects to hand over seminary priests and Jesuits to the authorities, or any information on their whereabouts. Those months marked the peak of anti-Catholic legislation, Parliament having been recalled for the purpose. In a well-prepared governmental manœuvre, Sir Walter Mildmay, of Gray’s Inn, moved for consideration of laws against papists, supported by Norton. A succession of bills and committees eventually produced the « Act to retain the Queen’s Majesty’s subjects in their due obedience », the notorious law which, says Neale, « ushered in the period of severest persecution of the Catholics ». 3 The Act was primarily concerned with the missionaries’ work, the withdrawal of allegiance, and conversion « for that intent » of the Queen’s subjects, who became guilty of high treason. Fines against recusants, for attending or celebrating mass, were heavily upgraded and assorted with jail sentences. Harbouring priests was also made illegal. Harsh as it was, the text passed was much gentler than the original bill agreed upon by Lords and Commons. 4 In the revisions, schoolmasters remained subject to strict control, but the attempt to extend the same supervision to the Catholics among lawyers was abandoned. The « Act against seditious words and rumours uttered against the Queen’s most excellent Majesty » repealed and replaced the Marian statute of 1554-1555, now found insufficiently severe. It included « any prophesying, calculation or other unlaw 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Where he was defeated by the English deputy, Lord Grey de Wilton.   As attorney-general, solicitor-general and lieutenant of the Tower. See Michael A. R. Graves, Thomas Norton,The Parliament Man, Oxford, Blackwell, 1994, p. 249. 3   Neale, op. cit., p. 386. 4   Elton detects here evidence of a divided Council, and a victory of the moderates. See Elton, op. cit., pp. 185-188. 2

146 dominique goy-blanquet ful act » like seeking to know how many more years Her Majesty might live. A second offence became felony, punishable by death. Norton proposed an addition, making it a seditious rumour to say that the Anglican doctrine was heretical, but his suggestion was rejected. In those crucial years, « gathering storm-clouds reawaken the siege mentality ». 1 The « Act Against Fugitives Over The Sea » in 1571 forbade Catholics to leave the country or to be trained overseas for ordination. Those already gone were given six months to return repentant, or forfeit their goods and estate incomes. Obviously to little effect. In December 1580 the Privy Council issued a new order to stop the education of gentlemen abroad, giving those departed three months to return. No one after that was to be allowed in or out :  

 

 

 

 

 

With such diligence, or rather tyranny, do they keep watch on all leaving or returning to England, that scarce anyone can escape their clutches. In almost every port watchers are stationed, with authority to examine everyone, offer him the oath of the Queen’s supremacy, and imprison him should he refuse. 2

This report to the Rector of the College in Rome is confirmed by Allen : « The court of the Queen is full of fear and suspicion. In all ports and places by the sea soldiers are stationed, ready to be called to face an external enemy they fear ». Yet he never found it so hard to prevent his men at Reims from hastening to the death of martyrs. 3 Allen’s double correspondence records, on the one hand, the persecutions, valiance, fervour, and capture of Catholics ; 4 on the other, shady hand, the state of England, and the urgent need to start the enterprise. Indeed two sides of one militant medal. Souls must be saved, and friends secured to help the invaders. If Campion was unaware of it when he returned to England, Parsons his supervisor was not. A letter of May 1582 describes him as « a Jesuit, who has arrived from England, where he has had this affair [the enterprise] in hand for the last two years, and has in his mind all that should be done ». 5 There may have been a division of labours between them, as there would be between  

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Graves, op. cit., p. 233.   Letter of Barrett to Alfonso Agazzari, Reims, 21 February 1584, Letters of William Allen and Richard Barret, cit., p. 68. 3   Allen’s letter of 6 March 1584 on « de rebus Anglicanis », Letters of William Allen and Richard Barret, cit., p. 71. 4   Letters to Agazzari, June to August 1581, Letters and Memorials, cit., pp. 95, 99, 101. His Briefe Historie of the Martyrdom of xii reverend priests was finished by September 1582. 5   Letter from Giovan Battista Castelli, Papal Nuncio in France, to Tolomeo Galli, Cardinal of Como, 8 May 1582, Letters and Memorials, cit., p. 405. 2

 

 

the tudor inns of court: a harbour for papists? 147 1 the next pair of missionaries, Jasper Heywood and William Holt. Campion’s aims were purely spiritual, while Parsons was busy taking names and places. Officially, they were instructed not to discuss politics. A paper of detailed instructions, recently found in the Royal Archives of Brussels, directs missionaries to behave so that all may see the only gain they covet is that of souls : « They must not mix themselves up with affairs of state, nor write to Rome about political matters, nor speak, nor allow others to speak in their presence, against the queen » except when in sure company, and not without strong reason. 2 Allen’s Apologie insists that the ends and actions of Seminaries are openly set down, more following equity and sincerity than policy, and quotes an express clause of their mission into England, « that they deale not in matters of state ». 3 Campion in his Brag makes the same assertion : « I never had mind, and am strictly forbidden by our Father that sent me, to deal in any respect with matter of state or policy of this realm, as things which appertain not to my vocation ». 4 Even limited thus, the Jesuits’ mission was inevitably ambiguous, for they were to explain Pius V’s Bull against Elizabeth, and its mitigation allowing Catholics to acknowledge her without censure, « that the same bull shall always bind her and the heretics, but the Catholics it shall by no means bind, as matters or things do now stand or be, but hereafter, when the public execution of that bull may be had or made ». 5 In clearer parlance, it meant that Catholics were allowed for a while to acknowledge the Queen’s authority without excommunication. This held only a temporary relief, and an underlying threat, at least it was read as such by the government : « for a while » must mean « till this situation was amended ». All efforts to remedy it were welcome, including the murder of Elizabeth, which the pope could not condone, but would appreciate nonetheless. On being warned of a Guise plot to dispatch her, the Nuncio writes, « I believe our Lord the Pope would be glad that God should punish in any way whatever that enemy of his, still it would be unfitting  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

2   Simpson, op. cit., p. 273.   N° 1085, in Simpson, op. cit., p. 140.   Allen, An Apologie, cit., pp. 28, 71. 4   Campion’s Brag or Challenge, in Simpson, op. cit., pp. 225-228. See also A. C. Southern, Elizabethan Recusant Prose 1559-1582, London, Sands, 1950, pp. 149-150. 5   In The Execution of Justice in England Allen mentions the « Faculties granted to the two Fathers Robert Parsons and Edmund Campion, for England, the fourteenth day of April, 1580 » to explain the bull made by Pius V against Elizabeth, found on accomplices of Campion. 3

 

 

148 dominique goy-blanquet that His Vicar should procure it by these means ». 1 A few months later, in May 1583, he informs the Cardinal of Como that the murder plan has been abandoned, the money to be sent from Spain for the murderer is no longer needed. 2 Before they could hope for deliverance by some foreign enterprise, English recusants under arrest had to struggle as best they could with the ‘bloody question’ : whether the Pope had authority to depose the sovereign, and who would they obey in case of an invasion. Many prisoners declined to answer on the grounds that it was a matter of divinity, and beyond their competence. One of those arrested and tried with Campion took a different line : Colleton or Collington was the only one to save his life, thanks to the evidence of a barrister, John Lancaster, that they were together in Gray’s Inn on the day when Collington was accused of plotting treason in Reims. 3 The same John Lancaster was allowed to carry on a busy practice undisturbed, although he figures as a recusant on the 1577 list. He was a friend of Christopher Hatton, which no doubt helped his case. Thanks to Hatton, Lancaster was elected at last a bencher of Gray’s Inn in 1587, quite some time after several of his juniors had been called. 4 If Catholicism was not a complete bar to the profession, it could definitely hinder a career. After his tussle with Protestant colleagues, Edmund Plowden had to give up all ambition to become a serjeant-at-law. Egerton, of Lincoln’s Inn, listed as a recusant in 1569, made poor progress until he conformed, probably by 1572, when he was called to the Bar. Thereafter his advancement was steady, and he showed prominent in enforcing anti-Catholic penal laws. 5 John Gerard, whom he cross-examined in 1594, writes that Egerton « had been a Catholic once, but he was a worldly person and had gone over to the other side ». 6 Egerton was one  

 

 

 

 

1   The plot was for Guise and Mayenne to kill Elizabeth : « se bene io credo che a N. Sig re fusse di contento anche Dio per qual si voglia modo castigasse quella sua nemica, tuttavia non converebbe farsi che il suo Vicario lo procurasse per questi mezzi », Letters and Memo2 rials, cit., pp. 412-413.   Letters and Memorials, cit., p. xlvii. 3   Henry Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, iv, London, 1875-1883, p. 360. Simpson, op. cit., p. 309. 4   The Pension Book of Gray’s Inn, i, edited by R. J. Fletcher, London, Chiswick Press, 19011910, pp. 76, 83, 107. 5   He was called to the Bar in 1572 ; see Black Books of Lincoln’s Inn, i, 1422-1586, London, 1897, pp. 372, 381. His services were used by the Council as early as December 1573 ; see Acts of the Privy Council, viii, London, 1890, p. 160. In 1577 he was returned as a recusant of Lincoln’s Inn who had conformed. 6   John Gerard, The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, translated by Philip Caraman, London, Longmans, Green and Co, 1951, p. 66.  

 

 

 

 

the tudor inns of court: a harbour for papists? 149 of those who assisted the prosecution at Campion’s trial. The presiding judge was Chief Justice Wray, considered in his day a Catholic at heart, performing a hateful task. 1 When Wray noticed Plowden standing in the crowd, he asked him to leave, which Plowden did. « Corrupt and Wicked Books »  

 

The design to reconquer England was prepared long ahead by a large circulation of books and letters. As early as 1566, the Commons produced a motion « against corrupt and wicked books that came from beyond the sea ». Two proclamations of March 1568, followed by two more in July and November 1570, prohibited the introduction of seditious books and libels, allowing the owners twenty-eight days to turn in all illegal material. Sander’s De visibili Monarchia Ecclesiae, the first narrative of the sufferings of the English Roman Catholics, and a defense of Pius V’s Bull, appeared in 1571. The Parliament’s response was the « Act against the bringing in and putting in execution of Bulls and of other instruments from the See of Rome », which was passed the same year, and served to convict Cuthbert Mayne in 1577. 2 Various works of propaganda denouncing the Pope were printed, while two more proclamations, in 1583 and 1584, banned all publishing, spreading, or writing of seditious schismatic books. Meanwhile the exiles were keeping up a huge correspondence with their friends at home, so much so that in 1581 Allen required students at the College of Rome to send and receive less letters, which represented a great cost to the College, at least a hundred crowns or golden scudi each year. 3 The Jesuits’ arrival in England launched what a fellow priest called a « battle of books » : in a letter to Alfonso Agazzari, the Rector of the English College at Rome, he explains how books were brought to London and despatched quickly everywhere before the next day, when pursuivants would begin to search Catholics’ houses. On 15 March 1581, Allen informs Agazzari that « The Fathers and Priests are doing admirable work, and write the necessary books with incredible grace and speed, and print them in London itself ». 4 They send books to the Queen, challenging their enemies to a disputation and appealing to her equity.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Simpson, op. cit., p. 398.   Select Statutes and Other Constitutional Documents Illustrating the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I, edited by G. W. Prothero, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1906, pp. 60-65. 3   20 April 1581, Letters of Allen and Barret, cit., p. 24. 4   Letters of Allen and Barret, cit., p. 60. 2

150 dominique goy-blanquet In his Apology of the two Colleges Allen observes that prisons have yielded many goodly prayers, letters, treatises, and the famous books of Comfort written by Sir Thomas More. He has sent 900 copies of the Apologie to England. In 1582, the year following Edmund Campion’s execution, Allen’s seminary at Douai published the first official Catholic English translation of the complete New Testament. Much of the initial print run of 5,000 copies was smuggled into England. Some books, actually printed at one Mr Brookes’ house near London, had « Doway » on their title-page, but an expert like Norton was able to detect that « The print is done in England ». He wanted to know where Parsons’ books were printed, and aimed to it rack out of Father Alexander Briant, for Parsons had set up his own clandestine press in Essex, which he moved around as occasion ruled. 1 Campion’s Decem Rationes, ten reasons not to adhere to the Anglican Church, were printed in June 1581 at Lady Stonor’s lodge, near Henley, and within days 400 copies found their way to every seat in Saint Mary’s church, Oxford, before a graduation ceremony. With this feat, Campion’s capture became a priority. He was caught on 15 July. A month later, 14 August, the Council wrote to the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, directing him to weed out popery from colleges. 2 Campion’s Challenge to the Privy Council, soon renamed Campion’s Brag by his enemies, was also creating a stir. It was a triple challenge, adressed first to the Lords of the Council, « wherein I will discourse of religion so far as it toucheth the common weal », the second « whereof I make most account », to the doctors and masters of the Universities, « wherein I undertake to avow the faith of our Catholic Church by proofs invincible », and thirdly to the lawyers spiritual and temporal, « wherein I will justify the said faith by the common wisdom of the laws standing yet in force and practice ». 3 The « yet » must have sounded ominous. Bishop Aylmer was charged by the government with the task of replying to Campion’s book, and find another set of divines to answer his challenge. As in the good old days of More and Saint Germain, a series of duelling pamphlets followed. Two confutations of Campion’s Brag appeared, 4 and caused Parsons to retort with a Censure of Charke and Hanmer, published at great risk and loss of men, which called in turn for a reply to this cen 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

 

 

2   Simpson, op. cit., pp. 285-287.   Ibid., pp. 345-347.   Campion’s Brag, point 5, in Simpson, op. cit., p. 226. 4   An Answere to a seditious Pamphlet lately cast abroade by a Iesuite with a discouerie of that blasphemous sect by William Charke, preacher to Lincoln’s Inn, and The great Bragge and Challenge by Meredith Hanmer. 3

the tudor inns of court: a harbour for papists? 151 sure in the form of a Royal Proclamation on 10 January 1581, or at least that is how Parsons reported it in his biography of Campion. In answer to Campion’s challenge, Aylmer ordered a public conference on 31 August in the chapel of the Tower. The place was full, its two sides fitted up as for a tournament. With piles of books at hand, the first team of disputants, Alexander Nowell, dean of Saint Paul’s, and William Day, dean of Windsor, faced a lonely Campion. To Campion’s complaint that he was unprepared, Nowel retorted that the matter of the disputation would be taken from the first page of his bragging book. At the second conference, Campion protested again it was not this kind of disputation he requested, but one under equal conditions before the Universities. Two more were held in September, Norton acting as notary at the last. 1 Other divines had been summoned for further sessions, but at that stage, their appointment was cancelled and the disputation stopped. Campion was morally victor, but did not mend his case. As Simpson aptly puts it, « It was then, perhaps, smelt out that a different course was to be taken with the Jesuits, and that they would have to plead not for religion but for life, and be accused not of heresy, but of treason ». 2 Campion was indicted at Westminster on a charge of having conspired, along with others, to raise a sedition in the realm and dethrone the Queen. A verdict of guilt was returned before Lord Chief Justice Wray, and on 1 December he was executed at Tyburn with two fellow priests, Raphe Sherwin and Alexander Briant. 3 With Campion’s death, a fresh batch of books appeared denouncing this act of tyranny. Only one of those, Allen’s A briefe Historie of the Martyrdom of xii reverend priests (1582), dealt with the trials from the legal point of view, probably because very few exiles came from the Inns of Court. Most of them were Oxford men. 4 Cecil was alerted by William Parry, writing from Venice in March 1583, to the fact that persecutions of Catholics caused much talk on the continent and did great damage to England’s reputation. 5 Norton’s boast that he had stretched Briant a foot longer than God had made him was also a by-word, of which he  

 

1

  A true report of the disputation or rather private conference had in the Tower of London with Ed. Campion Jesuite, the last of August 1581. Set downe by the Reverend Learned men them selves [A. Nowell and W. Day] that dealt therein [...] published [...] by authoritie, London, 1583. The four public conferences were held on 1, 18, 23 and 27 September, 1581. 2 3   Simpson, op. cit., p. 360.   Ibid., pp. 360-373. 4   Thomas H. Clancy, Papist Pamphleteers. The Allen – Persons Party and the Political Thought of the Counter-Reformation in England, 1572-1615, Chicago, Loyola University Press, 1964, p. 119. 5   Lansdowne ms, xxxvii, n° 32, in Clancy, op. cit., p. 130.

152 dominique goy-blanquet 1 complained bitterly. Such was the weight of public opinion that master and servant felt compelled to react. Cecil’s uncouth Execution of Justice in England appeared in December 1583, and Norton’s A Declaration of the fauourable dealing of her Maiesties Commissioners appointed for the Examination of certaine Traitours and of tortures unjustly reported to be done upon them for matters of religion was appended to its second edition the following January. Translations of both works in Latin, French, Italian and Dutch appeared that year, some of them printed in London. 2 Allen answered Cecil’s arguments point by point six months later in a Defense of English Catholics. 3 Like his History of Martyrdom, it argues that, having abolished the medieval law against heresy, the government was deprived of any legal instrument, and had to invent new laws to convict them. It was this charge of unlawful manipulations that rankled most. The Execution of Justice Officially, the Catholics were punished not for religion but political disloyalty. In Elton’s benign view, the persecution cannot be described as religious in a real sense. The Queen always maintained she was hunting out priests because they represented a political danger, even if many subjects put religious passion in the chase : all she wanted was to protect the safety of her realm, he explains. 4 Cecil’s Execution of Justice claims that the proceedings were perfectly lawful, for the missionaries were advance agents in a military errand, traitors in adhering to Her Majesty’s capital enemy :  

 

1

  Pro, sp 12/152/72. The story of his boast, told by Parsons in the Defence of his Censure, Rouen, 1582, is acknowledged by Norton in a letter to Walsingham who had sent him the book ; see Simpson, op. cit., p. 286. 2   Iustitia Britannica : per quam liquet perspicue, aliquot in eo regno perditos ciues [...] Prescriptum primum in nostrate lingua, deinde versum in Latinam, followed by De summa eorum clementia..., London, 1584 ; L’Execution de Justice faicte en Angleterre [...] traduite en langue Françoise, etc. etDeclaration du traictement favorable, des Commissaires de sa Majesté, etc., 1584 ; Atto della Giustitia d’Inghilterrai [...] Traslatato d’Inglese in vulgare [...], London, 1584 ; D’executie van Iustitie totñ christelicke vrede in Engelandt ghedaen, teghen seker oproermakers [...] Overgheset vuyt het Engelsche, Middelburgh, 1584. 3   A True sincere and modest defence of English catholiques that suffer for their faith both at home and abrode : against a false, seditious and slaunderous libel intituled The Execution of justice in England [...], Rouen, 1584. For a modern edition of these pamphlets, see The Execution of justice in England by William Cecil and A True, sincere, and modest defense of English Catholics by William Allen, edited by Robert M. Kingdon, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1965. 4   Geoffrey R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution : Documents and Commentary, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982, 2, p. 324.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

the tudor inns of court: a harbour for papists?

153

these, I say, have justly suffered death, not by force or form of any new laws established, either for religion or against the Pope’s supremacy, as the slanderous libelers would have it seem to be, but by the ancient temporal laws of the realm, and namely by the laws of Parliament made in King Edward the Third’s time, about the year of Our Lord 1330. 1

Besides, they enjoyed the greatest possible leniency, not above three score were executed in the past twenty-five years, nothing compared with the horrors of Mary Tudor’s reign, which saw some 400 Protestants killed. The Pope’s Irish raid gave the Queen full right, « either by her sword or by her laws, or to put his soldiers, invaders of her realm, to the sword martially, or to execute her laws upon her own rebellious subjects civilly ». Her conduct was perfectly legal, Cecil hammers on. Since the Pope « let verbum and took ferrum » by stirring her subjects to open rebellion, « Her Majesty used her royal lawful authority and by her forces lawful subdued rebels’ forces unlawful, and punished the authors thereof », as any prince would. 2 Those who used mere words, « which you call your unarmed scholars and priests » are as guilty as any other malefactors :  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

let the persons be termed as they list : scholars, schoolmasters, bookmen, seminaries, priests, Jesuits, friars, beadmen, romanists, pardoners, or what else you will, their titles nor their apparel hath made them traitors, but their traitorous secret motions and practices ; their persons have not made the war, but their directions and counsels have set up the rebellions.  

 

Their fault, bluntly, was thought-crime. Six questions had been put to them, very apt to try the truth or falsehood of seditious persons, that « these lewd unarmed traitors, I say, would nowhise answer directly hereto ». 3 Their mission was to pour poison, and bring into a muster roll names, powers and dwellings to aid a foreign invasion. « Those actions, not their cakes of wax or relics have made them traitors ». 4 Norton’s Declaration completes this fine piece of eloquence by stating that torture was applied very gently, and only to those who would not give plain answers : « that very Campion, I say, before the conference had with him by learned men in the Tower, wherein he was charitably used, was never so racked but that he was presently able to walk and to write ». As for Alexander Briant, he was not starved, as slanderous reports  

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  25 Edw. iii, st. 5, c. 2, 1351.   Cecil, Execution of Justice, cit., pp. 30, 33. 3   Cecil, Execution of Justice, cit., pp. 36-37, 38. 4   Cecil, Execution of Justice, cit., p. 39. 2

154 dominique goy-blanquet claimed, but refused to ask for food in writing as he was told. Indeed, no prisoner was put to the rack « but where it was first known and evidently probable by former detections, confessions and otherwise that the party so racked or tortured was guilty and did know and could deliver truth of the things wherewith he was charged ». 1 When Francis Throckmorton, of Inner Temple, was executed after confessing and retracting himself, his fellow Templar Norton wrote a Discoverie of Treason to justify the proceedings. Admittedly, Throckmorton was laid upon the rack, « and somewhat pinched, although not much : for at the end of three daies following, he had recovered himselfe ». It was Norton’s last flourish, as a priest would joyfully report to the English Rector : « Finally Norton himself, who in the Tower had afflicted so many with the tortures of the rack, came to die and endure the tortures of hell ». 2 The ultimate dismembering of the martyrs made grisly communion, and continued post mortem to make adepts. Henry Walpole, of Gray’s Inn, who watched the execution, was splashed with Campion’s blood, and converted by this gruesome baptism. His Epitaph, secretly printed and widely circulated, described the execution as a call. Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, was likewise converted. Allen concludes a letter of May 1582 to George Gilbert with this gift : « I send you here inclosed a little peece of father Campians holy ribbe. Take halfe to your selfe and give thother halfe to father Rector ». 3 So far, the Privy Council had acted mostly on reliable information but little or no evidence, which made their plea of legality dubious, especially in the case of Campion, who had committed no treasonable offence. According to modern critics, a charge as potential traitor had little standing in any Anglo-Saxon court. The statute under which he and his fellow priests were charged was not clearly applicable. No impartial judge would have found them guilty. 4 The Government’s difficulty, which Allen seizes upon, was to find a link between faith and political treason. Cuthbert Mayne’s case, back in 1577, or even earlier, Thomas More’s, were two instances of illegal proceedings. In both cases, the authorities wanted a death sentence, but had trouble framing the indictment, and used false witnesses. An excellent lawyer, More of Lincoln’s  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Norton, A Declaration, cit., pp. 46, 48.   Barret to Agazzari, 16 April 1584, Letters of Allen and Barret, cit., p. 93 : a priest just back from England, where he had spent and suffered sixteen years, told him among examples of God’s avenging justice « that of Norton, the rackmaster and torturer in chief ». 3   Allen to George Gilbert, Reims, 12 May 1582, Letters and Memorials, cit., p. 135. 4   Robert M. Kingdon, Introduction, in The Execution of Justice, cit., p. xxxi. 2

 

 

 

the tudor inns of court: a harbour for papists? 155 Inn was convicted in spite of his sound defence, by a law passed but months before his execution, the Treason Act of 1535. 1 Mayne was convicted by a recent statute (13 Eliz. i, c. 2) which made it high treason to bring from Rome beads, pictures, writings of any kind, even a traveller’s letter of credit. How could bringing in a bull of excommunication from Rome be treason in the days and by a statute of Edward III, Allen asks. In answer to Cecil’s charge against the Marian executions, he argues that those were perfectly legal, applying only old laws of the realm and of all Christendom, devised centuries ago to fight heresy. And Allen reiterates his accusation :  

You have no laws to put any man to death for his faith. You have purposely repealed by a special statute made in the first year and Parliament of this Queen’s reign all former laws of the realm for burning heretics [I Eliz. i, c.1, section 6] [...] You have provided at the same time that nothing shall be deemed or adjudged heresy but by your Parliament and Convocation. You have not yet set down by any new law what is heresy or who is an heretic. Therefore you can neither adjudge of our doctrine as of heresy nor of us as of heretics. Nor have you any law left whereby to execute us. 2

There was no denying the strength of Allen’s point. Cecil, thanks to Walsingham’s excellent spies, knew that some papist plot was underfoot, but had no evidence that could be produced in court till after Campion’s death, nor valid argument to put forth in his Execution of Justice. In September 1584, two months after the execution of Throckmorton, a Scottish Jesuit, William Creighton, was captured, vainly tried to swallow the plan of the English enterprise he was carrying, and confessed. 3 At long last the Council now possessed some hard proof of treasonous plots, enough to consider moving on to the next step, the trial of Mary Stuart that ‘the rackmaster’ had so persistently urged, though he did not live to see his methods vindicated. After the failure of the Armada, Allen continued till death his tireless campaign and demand for action, but Elizabeth outlived him by ten years, thus ruining all his efforts. 1

  More resigned in May 1532 after the submission of the clergy. Cromwell began an investigation on his activities during the summer of 1533. Parliament reconvened on 15 January 1534. More was summoned before the king’s commissioners in March, refused to take the Oath of Supremacy and was imprisoned in the Tower, where he wrote A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation. The Treason Act was passed on 1 February 1535. More’s trial began on 1 2 July.   The Execution of Justice, cit., p. 94. 3   On this ‘ridiculous story’, as historians termed it, see T. G. Law, Father William Crichton, S. J., English Historical Review, viii, 32, 1893, pp. 697-703. On the plan found upon Creighton when captured, see Letters and Memorials, cit., p. 425, and his confessions in the Tower, p. 432.

156

dominique goy-blanquet « It lawfully may be done »  

 

Tudor England prided itself on being a law-abiding country. Even Henry VIII, the radix peccati as Allen calls him, had always claimed to act lawfully, and recognized the authority of common law. At every move away from Rome, or in breaking opposition, he had taken care to provide a legal basis for his actions, no matter how illegal or tyrannical. This obsession with legality required years of research and successive strategies, leading up to the theory of a unitary sovereign state, in which the monarch had the cure of souls. The English Reformation was declared and enforced by parliamentary statutes and by common-law procedures. Thomas More of Lincoln’s Inn is fondly remembered by the profession as the first mp who made a modest request for freedom of speech in the House of Commons in 1523, with poor results. In 1576, Peter Wentworth, also of Lincoln’s Inn, made the same plea at much greater length, complaining that « sometimes a Message is brought into the House either of Commanding or Inhibiting, very injurious to the freedom of Speech and Consultation, I would to God, Mr Speaker, that these two were Buried in Hell, I mean rumours and Messages » allegedly from the Queen. This could not be right, he argued,  

 

for the Queens Majesty is the Head of the Law, and must of necessity maintain the Law, for by the Law her Majesty is made justly our Queen, and by it she is most chiefly maintained : hereunto agreeth the most Excellent words of Bracton, who saith, the King hath no Peer nor Equal in his Kingdom ; 1 he hath no Equal, for otherwise he might lose his Authority of Commanding, sithence that an Equal hath no Rule of Commandment over his Equal. The King ought not to be under man, but under God and under the Law, because the Law maketh him a King. 2  

 

This forthright speech in praise of law and liberty earned Wentworth a month in the Tower. But it was reported in diplomatic dispatches, along with the scandal it had caused, and made a strong impression abroad. His suit was eventually granted, for the Queen returned him to the House, two days before the end of the session, « accompanying her action with a gracious and magnanimous message ». 3  

 

1

  In De Legibus Angliæ, i, Cap. 7.   8 Feb 1576, Journal of the House of Commons : February 1576, in Sir Simonds d’Ewes, The Journals of all the Parliaments during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 1682, pp. 236-240, digitized at British History Online,http ://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=43692. 3   According to the biographical dictionary of Members of the House of Commons at The History of Parliament, http ://www.histparl.ac.uk, entry Sir Peter Wentworth, Knight. 2

 

 

 

the tudor inns of court: a harbour for papists? 157 The scandal denounced by Allen did not greatly affect England nor mend its judicial ways. What happened in the 1580s between the Court and the Inns of Court looks like a gentlemen’s tacit agreement. The Elizabethan Government could not afford to antagonize the legal body by harassing Inns members, but made it clear to them where their best interests lay. Lawyers were needed to conduct trials, legislate, draw reasons pro et contra, issue counter-pamphlets, condemn libellous books, and fulfill Norton’s ominous promise concerning the execution of Mary Queen of Scots – « it lawfully may be done ». The legal profession did not have other martyrs of More’s eminence. Recusant Inns members were left to work on, taking regular if somewhat slower steps up the ladder of honours. Cuthbert Mayne’s honest judge Jeffries made the first and last attempt of the reign to ensure execution of proper justice. Thomas More of Lincoln’s Inn may have been an admired icon, his colleagues under Elizabeth may have had a tolerant eye for their fellow members’ waywardness, but they did not rise as a body to denounce injustice, illegal procedures, or the process of treason by words. Being but men before the almighty machine of State security, not cut for martyrdom, they thought it wiser to keep silent.  

 

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« Here in Olympia » : Affability and Aggression in The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne (1613)  

 

 

Christina Sandhaug

I

n the evening of 16 February 1613, a procession of sumptuously clad representatives from the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn could be glimpsed coming triumphantly up the Thames in the King’s royal barge, drawing attention to themselves by « a great number of lights », accompanied by « a multitude of barges and gallies [...] lowde musicke, and severall peales of Ordnance », and « led by two Admiralls ». 1 In full view to all and sundry, these men were the performers in a court masque, believed to be one of the most elitist, exclusive forms of early modern theatrical production. On their way to celebrate the wedding of Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I, to Frederick of Palatine, Calvinist champion of the Protestant Union, they were frustrated, however, on their arrival at the privy stairs, by the cancellation of the planned performance. The always entertaining John Chamberlain relates the cancellation thus :  

 

 

 

 

 

 

but by what yll planet yt fell out I know not : they came home as they went without dooing any thing, the reason whereof I cannot yet learn thoroughly, but only that the hall was so full that yt was not possible to avoid yt or make roome for them, besides that most of the Ladies were in the galleries to see them land, and could not get in : but the worst of all was that the King was so wearied and sleepie with sitting up almost two whole nights before, that he had no edge to yt. 2  

 

1   Francis Beaumont, The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne, London, 1613, sig. A3r-v. The full title of the printed masque is The Masque of the Inner Temple and Grayes Inne : Grayes Inne and the Inner Temple, Presented before his Maiestie, the Queenes Maiestie, the Prince, Count Palatine and the Lady Elizabeth their Highnesses, in the Banquetting house at White-hall on Saturday the twentieth day of Februarie, 1612. I quote the 1613 quarto, stc#1663, Early English Books Online. Certain orthographical emendations have been made, but only in references to this text : u, v and s have been modernised. I also supply signatures for unpaginated pages. All future references to this text will be placed in parentheses and abbreviated The Masque. 2   John Chamberlain, The Letters of John Chamberlain, ii, edited by Norman Egbert McClure, Lancaster, Pa., The Lancaster Press, 1939, p. 426. The letter is written 18 February 1613, i.e. between the procession and the masque.  

 

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In spite of the King’s ‘good words’ and renewed invitation – they were to return with their performance on the following Saturday – the masquers were utterly disappointed by the ‘disgrace’. Claims Chamberlain :  

but the grace of theyre maske is quite gon when theyre apparell hath ben alredy shewed and theyre devises vented so that how yt will fall out God knowes, for they are much discouraged, and out of countenance, and the world sayes yt comes to passe after the old proverb the properer the men the worse lucke. 1

The text of the published account of this masque paints a different picture. Giving only the potential crowding as reason for postponement, the writer of this text completely evades the disenchantment of this encounter between Inns of Court and the royal Court :  

And there upon his Maiesty was most gratiously pleased with the consent of the gentlemen Maskers, to put off the night until Saturday following, with this special favour and priviledge, that there should bee no let, as to the outward ceremony of magnificence untill that time. (The Masque, sig. A3v)

Not only is the performance cancelled with the assumed consent of the masquers, but their apparel and devices seem to remain secret. There is, in other words, no discontent and no harm done to the masque’s ‘grace’. What I suggest in this paper is that these variant representations of this encounter between the monarch and the representatives of the Inns of Court, interpreted as one of animosity on the one hand, and friendliness on the other, signal an underlying ambivalence in the urban encounter itself, and that this duality is embodied in the very allegory of The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn : the Olympic image on which the device hinges suggests encounters of aggressive as well as affable natures, of war as well as peace. To honour the marriage, Jupiter has decided to awaken the dormant Olympic Games, and the central revels dance is indeed performed by Olympian Knights on their way to the Games. 2 The arrival of the Knights by river was as integral to the masque’s device as the Olympic processions in honour of Zeus were to the Olympic festival. It was also an urban encounter between the Inns of Court, whose representatives these Knights were, the City, in whose  

1

  Chamberlain, op. cit., p. 426.   The expression ‘Olympic’ is used when the general idea as well as the actual Games are meant. When the particular features of this specific masque are referred to, ‘Olympian’ is used (e.g. ‘Olympian Knights’). 2

« here in olympia » 161 space – streets, river – they travelled, and the Crown, whose royal Court the festival was designed to honour. In vocabulary indebted to Peter Ackroyd, the members are travelling up the aorta towards the heart and the head. 1 The diverging accounts of the episode constitute a microcosmic image of the endemic struggle between Court and people, accentuated in the city by the presence, in close proximity, of both. 2 The relationship between Crown and City was one of alliance as well as opposition, the former ensured by charter and the latter erupting in contention : « The Crown was the main political opponent of the City’s traditional governance, but celebration of royalty was also an element in the traditional glorification of the city ». 3 When masques take to the streets and waterways, the reverse happens : the glory of the city, or, as in our case, the majesty of the river, adds force to the glorification of the monarch. In the following, I will suggest that the way in which the Olympic image is used in The Masque if the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne makes it an apt figure for this relationship, and that it holds within itself the dual potential of any encounter (aggression and affability), as well as the two focal points of Prince and Monarch with respect to European religious politics, war and peace respectively. A closer examination of diverging accounts of the mock sea-fight on the Thames prior to the masque in question will corroborate my suggestion : The ‘water poet’ John Taylor’s account in « Heaven’s Blessing and Earth’s Joy » insists on the friendliness of this battle, as opposed to the animosity that fired the battle of Lepanto (1571) or the victory of the Spanish Armada (1588), with which the poet associates this fight – blatantly juxtaposing ‘Mahometans’ and Catholics as infidels. This friendly (the word is repeated thrice) fight apparently ended in a draw as retreat was sounded on both sides :  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

after this delightfull battaile had doubtfully lasted three hours, to the great contentment of all the beholders, the victorie inclyning to the nether side, all being opposed friends and combined friends ; all victors, all triumphers, none to be vanquished, and therefore no conquerors. 4  

1

  Peter Ackroyd, London : The Biography, London, Chatto and Windus, 2000, pp. 1-2.   See Laurence Stone, The Crisis of Aristocracy 1558-1641, London, Clarendon Press, 1966, pp. 385-400, for an outline of the interrelationship between city, Court and Inns of Court. 3   Susan Wells, Jacobean City Comedy and the Ideology of the City, « English Literary History », The Johns Hopkins University Press, i, 48, pp. 37-60, p. 39. 4   John Taylor, Heaven’s Blessing and Earth’s Joy : Or, A True Relation of the Supposed SeaFights and Fire-Workes as Were Accomplished before the Royal Celebration of the All-Beloved Mar 

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An anonymous account, The Magnificent Marriage, published almost simultaneously with the festivities, claims otherwise :  

The fight for a time continued fiercely, the victorie leaning to neither side, either of them attempting to assault and board each other, but at last the gallies, being sore bruised and beaten, began yo yeeld, whereupon the English Admirall fell down, and cast anker before the Castle, and then speared not in the best manner to thunder off their ordnance, whereat the Turks yielded both Castle and gallies, and submitted to the conquest of the English Admirall, who fired many of the said gallies, sacked the Castle, and tooke prisoner the Turke’s Admirall. 1

Here, the Christian Fleet is identified as English, and its victory is complete. Also in Johannes Maria de Franchis’ Marriage Hymn the Christian victory is a British victory, and the Turks are defeated :  

With that, the warlike Britans Mars-like bold, With ladders strive the Turrets top to wend ; First at the scout-holes taking nimble hold, Thence battlements, and thence to top ascend : Where the Turks vanquisht Britans to display. St. George his Cross in honor of the day. 2  

 

These differing judgements of outcome may be affected by differing political agendas, but may just as well be determined by point of view – how, and how well, if at all, they perceived the events of which they report. 3 My point here is not to decide who is right, but rather explore how riage of the Two Peerlesse Paragons of Christendom, Fredericke and Elizabeth, London, 1613. I quote the edition in John Nichols, The Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities of King James the First, His Royal Consort, Family, and Court, ii, London, 1828, pp. 527-535, p. 529. 1   The Magnificent Marriage of the Two Great Princes Frederick Count Palatine, &c. and the Lady Elizabeth, Daughter to the Imperial Majesties of King James and Queen Anne, to the Comfort of all Britain, in Nichols, op. cit., pp. 536-552, pp. 540-541. 2   Johannes Maria de Franchis, Of the Most Auspicatious Marriage : Betwixt, The High and Mightie Prince, Frederick ; Count Palatine of Rheine, Chief Sewer to the Sacred Roman Empire, Prince Elector, and Duke of Bacaria, &c. And the Most Illustrius Princesse, the Ladie Elizabeth Her Grace, Sole Daughter to the High and Mightie Iames, King of Great Brittaine, &c., translated by Samuel Hutton, London, G. Eld, 1613, iii.133. 3   One may evidently not trust the written accounts : for a fuller discussion of the way in which accounts diverge see Kevin Curran, Marriage, Performance, and Politics at the Jacobean Court, Farnham, Ashgate, 2009, p. 94. Contrasting John Taylor’s description of the fireworks to Chamberlain’s epistolary report, Curran concludes that the spectacle was haunted by mishaps and accidents whereas Taylor’s tract presents it in the most eulogistic terms. Nichols also remarked on the contrast, noting that « Notwithstanding all these eulogies of  

 

 

 

« here in olympia » 163 diverging interpretations and variant representations are invited by the nature of the urban encounter itself : it is equally likely for these reporters to interpret these encounters as aggressive or friendly, though differing agendas inform their understanding. Explanations must be sought in the political implications of the marriage, as well as in the application of the allegory of the masque, which must first be placed in the festive context of the wedding celebrations.  

 

 

The Wedding Festivities Narrowly conceived, the festivities of the wedding spanned 10 days, from the shows and fireworks on the Thames 11 February to the last masque, which is the subject of this paper, 20 February, and made use of areas of the city close to Whitehall and the Thames. In addition to Francis Beaumont’s masque, two other masques were performed (and a fourth, apparently abandoned one, was planned) : 1 Thomas Campion’s The Lords’ Masque and Chapman’s The Memorable Masque. In addition there were, as mentioned, displays of fireworks on the river, as well as a mock sea battle, tilting, and, of course, feasting. 2 The assumed coherence of such ‘festivals’ ( Jerzy Limon’s term) is precarious, as we shall see. The river procession was an integral part of the entirety of the performance, being a foreplay to the aquatic imagery of the masque’s device, in which the marriage occasion is allegorised as unification between the Thames and the Rhine, but this concord was shattered by the postponement of the masque. 3 As explained initially, the procession may also be seen as an  

hones John Taylor, these very sumptuous Fire-works do not appear on the whole to have succeeded ; see Mr. Chamberlaine’s Letter hereafter » (Nichols, op. cit., p. 535, note 1). 1   See David Norbrook, ‘The Masque of Truth’ : Court Entertainments and International Protestant Politics in the Early Stuart Period, « The Seventeenth Century », i, 1996, pp. 81-110 for an analysis of this masque and its enigmatic existence in a French pamphlet. 2   See Nichols, op. cit., pp. 512-622, for various documents relating to the festivities in a more extended perspective (from their engagement to their departure from London). For outlines, discussions and analyses of the individual elements of the festivities as well as the festival in its entirety, see Roy Strong, Henry, Prince of Wales, and England’s Lost Renaissance, London, Thames and Hudson, 1986, pp. 275-283 ; Jerzy Limon, The Masque of Stuart Culture, London Toronto, Associated University Presses, 1990, pp. 125-169 ; Curran, op. cit., pp. 89127 ; Martin Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 194-204. 3   Limon, op. cit., pp.147-157, and Curran, op. cit., pp. 93-127 (in particular 117-125), accentuate the relationship between such processions and the performed masques, and both insist on the necessity of ‘reading’ the two together. Limon, for all his insistence on the necessity of reading masques in the context of their ‘festivals’, does not register the significance of the severing of the masque from that context caused by the postponement.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

164 christina sandhaug enactment of the relationship between the Crown and the City, the ambivalence of which is aptly suggested by the two diverging accounts of the act of postponement. Ironically, the procession and the performance come together only in the printed account, which may in part account for its harmonious portrayal of the encounter, whereas Chamberlain writes before the eventual performance and knows nothing of the apparently friendly resolution at the time of writing. 1 The procession was of course the only public part of this masque, apart from the ensuing print masque, but most of the marriage festivities were certainly highly public events. Lauren Shohet has recently expanded the received notion of the ‘horizons of the masque’, concluding that they were more varied in production and heterogeneous in reception – in short, more public – than scholarship has had us believe. 2 In spite of the elitist impulses which fuelled masque-making, their occasions, performances, and topics consistently seeped into the public sphere by way of gossip, reports, letters, ‘news’ writing, and print. The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne was of course associated with an occasion that inspired public interest, 3 and the extended celebrations contained a great deal of public show, 4 such as the procession through the streets of London before The Memorable Masque. Even from Frederick’s very arrival in England, the wedding, including its foreplay and aftermath, was an exceptionally public event. 5 Pamphlets circulated widely, 6 and thousands witnessed the various processions and spectacles mounted in the streets, on the river, and in custom-made sports arenas (tilt-yards etc). 7 This publicity is for the most part decidedly urban, and the river procession particularly so. This urban setting turns the masque into an urban encounter, or at least occasions an urban encounter between an exclusive masque and a public audience, reinforced by the subsequent print publication. 1

  On 23 February, however, he writes to Ralph Winwood of the successful performance of the masque, and though he still insists on there being « much repining and contradiction of theyre emulators » the King managed, by a generous supper the next day, to « send both parties away well pleased ». Chamberlain, op. cit., i, p. 429. 2   Lauren Shohet, Reading Masques : The English Masque and Public Culture in the Seventeenth Century, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010 ; see pp. 37-66 for a consideration of the public dimension of the masque. 3 4   Shohet, op. cit., p. 85.   Butler, op. cit., p. 194. 5 6   Strong, op. cit., p. 176.   Curran, op. cit., p. 90. 7   Nichols, op. cit., p. 549. On the proliferation of printed material related to the wedding, Nichols asserts that « a folio volume would scarse contain all the Epithalamia published on this occasion » (Nichols, op. cit., p. 527).  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

« here in olympia » 165 Print masques constitute one way in which the world of the court masque encountered the public world of the city. Referring specifically to the cancelled but printed Neptune’s Triumph (1624), Shohet asserts that « the masque’s publication brings policy debate into the sphere of print », and she maintains the same for the cancelled, fiercely Protestant Masque of Truth, believed to be planned for the 1613 wedding celebrations. 1 Of course, this process of making public applies to masques that were performed as well, although their contents were not deemed seditious enough for censure. The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne, I shall argue below, resounds with all the major features of early Stuart politics, such as Crown finance and prerogatives, the Anglo-Scottish union, and England’s European position. One may prudently assume, then, that the allegory of this masque may have been received in the public sphere of print for its political signification.  

 

 

 

The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne (1613) The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne was offered by the two Inns of Court, and the main ‘producer’ has been identified as Francis Bacon. 2 It celebrates the occasion, the wedding and the ensuing marriage, in terms of a unity between the two rivers Thames and Rhine. 3 The most entertaining part, as usual, must have been the antimasque, which begins with the entrance of Iris and Mercury, rushing – or, rather, racing – onto the stage only to quarrel fiercely about whose prerogative nuptial celebration truly is : Juno’s or Jupiter’s. Reminding the modern reader, anachronistically of course, of the wizarding duels in Harry Potter, or the colourful combat between Flora and Merryweather in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, a comical combat of entertainment power ensues, in which Iris and Mercu 

1

  Shohet, op. cit., p. 82.   The print masque identifies him by name in the dedication, placed between the account of the procession and the cancellation on the one hand, and the account of the performance of the masque on the other. 3   Thomas Campion, A Relation of the Late Royall Entertainment Given by the Right Honourable The Lord Knowles, as Cawsome-House neere Redding : to our most Gracious Queene Anne, in her Progresse towarde the Bathe, upon the seven and eight and twentie dayes of Aprill, 1613. Whereunto is annexted the Description, Speeches, and Songs of the Lords Maske, presented in the Banquetting-house on the Mariage night of the High and Mightie, Count Palatine, and the Royally descended the Ladie Elizabeth, London, 1613, sig. C3v, foreshadows this part of the device, referring to ‘Rhenus’ and the ‘Thames’. Limon takes this to indicate collaboration (Limon, op. cit., p. 139), but the image is not particularly original and Elizabeth had also danced the role of ‘Thames’ in Daniel’s Tethys Festival (1610). 2

 

166 christina sandhaug ry ‘fire’ antimasque elements at each other and bring onstage alternately dancing water-nymphs, cupids, statues and country people. Realising that they must join forces in order to succeed in mounting a proper masque, they finally cease fire and welcome the Olympian Knights who dance the revels in what must have been a relatively short main masque. Appropriately, the Thames plays a physical part in this court masque, being the venue for the pre-performance procession of masquers. Rivers and oceans were common in British royal image-making, and both Princes were celebrated with aquatic festivity and river symbolism. 1 In spite of the fact that rivers are features of nature, they are particularly urban settings, being commercial centres of major cities as well as main entrances into them. 2 Capitals are also centres of power. The Thames, Ackroyd explains, was both centre and source of power in London, and he refers to what we today would call an ‘urban legend’ to corroborate this : 3 one monarch who was dissatisfied with his privileges threatened to remove his royal Court from London, whereupon the mayor reminded him of the importance of the river by stating that the King could not take with him the Thames. 4 Reinforcing the aquatic imagery of the masque, then, water, and things related to water, such as fountains, water-lilies, clouds and rainbows, characterise the scenery and clothing in the first part of the masque, and the first antimasque consists in dancing Naiads (river-nymphs) and Hyades. 5 Water imagery is connected to love by cupids who join the dance. The language used to describe this unification between the rivers is at times explicitly procreational, making the identification of the married couple with the rivers more prophetic, as when Iris explains that she is present in order celebrate the nuptials  

Betwixt two goodly rivers, which have mix’d Their gentle-rising waves, and are to grow Into a thousand streams, great as themselves[.] (The Masque, sig. B4r) 1

  Shohet, op. cit., p. 147.   The contrast between country and city has less to do with presence or absence of nature, than with pastoral and urban ideologies. Indeed, the presence of rivers seems to be the sine qua non of city-status even today, as travel writer Bill Bryson suggests in a diatribe on the lack of commendable features in Brussels : « It doesn’t even have a river. How can a city not at least have a river? » Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There : Travels in Europe, London, Black Swan, 1998, p. 69. 3   An ‘urban legend’ is a story that has lost its specificity with regards to source and subject 4 matter, and drifts in the urban consciousness.   Ackroyd, op. cit., p. 541. 5   These were daughters of Atlas in the shape of stars that could forecast rain. 2

 

 

 

 

« here in olympia »  

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Later, Mercury describes how the streams (rivers) are United in the fruitful vales, Bear all before them, ravish’d with their joy, And swell in glory till they know no bounds. (The Masque, sig. C1v)

This imagery is not merely procreational, but also imperial : the unbounded swelling of the rivers does not merely imply offspring but also religious and political expansion. According to Kevin Curran, such accentuation of fertility and reproduction signals the difference between the Stuart rhetoric of national representation and the Elizabethan separatist emphasis on chastity, defence and purity. 1 Here, the erotic poetry of regeneration is quite candidly connected to Jacobean language of political and religious union, but ambiguity arises from the allegory applied to accomplish it, regarding the manner in which union is to be achieved. As in all court masques, the dual obligation of The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne is to celebrate the occasion of the wedding and to glorify the monarch James I (and by extension his Court and country), and, again as with all masques, the crux is to link the two obligations into a coherent unity. The image of the unification of rivers accomplishes such unity, and is by a comparison of Thames to Alpheus connected to the main allegory of the device, the Court as Olympia and the resurrection of the « Olympian games » (The Masque, sig. B3r). The Olympic image, as we shall discover, is simultaneously pregnant with tension between isolation and expansion, pacifism and activism, tensions which structure the allegory of the device. Owing to the colonial enthusiasm expressed in The Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincon’s Inn, and the militant chivalry supposedly promoted by The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne, in addition to the role of St George in the firework displays and the defeat of the Turkish enemy in the mock seabattle, it is believed that the recently deceased Prince Henry had been actively involved in the preparations for the celebration of this match  

 

 

1

  Such rhetoric emerges typically in wedding masques, as in Chapman’s masque for the same wedding, in which the primeval union between Gaia/Earth and Uranos/Heaven prefigures the match in a kiss, graphically enacted by the ocean that receives the setting sun with open arms. See Curran, op. cit., pp. 17-56 (ch. 1, Developing a Language of Union) for a fuller discussion. See also Strong, op. cit., p. 10 for the importance of the « cult of dynasty which grew up over night and developed on an enormous scale » after the Stuart succession.  

 

168 christina sandhaug which he so heartily supported, being himself an aggressively stern Protestant. 1 The Protestant – bordering on Puritan – flavour of the cult of the Prince was articulated in terms of a revival of Elizabethan militaristic chivalry, and Princess Elizabeth was imagined as England’s phoenix on more than one occasion. 2 Although Prince and King agreed on the choice of groom for Elizabeth, the Prince’s activism is quite at odds with the monarch’s pacifistic and conciliatory vision of his Kingdom and his role in the European balance of power. The Queen was also at odds with her husband, on account of her Catholic leanings, and this is another tension that structures the masque. In fact, the anti-masque contention between Jupiter and Juno – by proxy – concerning the right to stage celebrations for the wedding, savours strongly of domestic strife. Finally, there is, in the blatant flaunting of supremacy on the part of Olympian Jove, accompanied by a deliberate disregard for other agents, a potent clash between monarch and people, represented by Parliament, Inns of Court and city. Mercury claims that his master is the God of gods with sovereign rights. Iris, on behalf of Juno, calls forth a « rurall company to perform May-games with their Countrey sports » (The Masque, sig. C3r), explained in the paratextual material of the print masque to signify « that the Match shall likewise be blessed with the love of the Common People » (The Masque, sig. B3r). Far from tipping the balance with regard to these relationships, The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne takes on the challenge of bringing them together. The result is a series of encounters more or less in the Olympic spirit of strife and conciliation.  

 

 

 

The Olympic Image Within the device of the Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne, Jupiter has decided to honour the wedding with a revival of the « Olympian games », which have been dormant since they were banned as pagan by Emperor Theodosius in 393 ad. 3 The verse of the masque explains that  

 

1   See Strong, op. cit., pp. 71-85 ; 175-185. Strong suggests that « what ended up as a masque may have begun as a device for a combat at the barriers, more in keeping with the Prince’s tastes and also with what the Inns had taken to court at an earlier date » (Strong, op. cit., p. 180). See also Limon, op. cit., pp. 125-168 for a discussion of traces of the late Prince’s influence on the wedding festival. 2   E.g. William Fennor, A Description of the Palsgraves Countrey (quoted in Strong, op. cit., p. 177). The king’s speech on the birth of Princess Elizabeth at the end of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII (perf. 1613) may also be read in this light. 3   The Olympic Games in Antiquity, in The Olympic Museum, at the official website of the Olympic Movement, http ://www.olympic.org/Documents/Reports/EN/en_report_658. pdf, accessed 1 June 2011, p. 13.  

 

 

 

« here in olympia » 169 it is the will of Jove that the Games entertain the newlyweds, and the published account proposes that « [t]he Olympian games portend to the match celebrity, victory, and felicity » (The Masque, sig. B3r). 1 The other obligation is fulfilled by representing James as Jupiter and his Court as Olympia, the location of the celebrations. The wedding celebrations take place « Heere in Olympia » (The Masque, sig. B4r) where there is said to be an « Altar of Olympian Iove » (The Masque, sig. C2r), and the scenery of the masque features the rise of a hill, on top of which Jupiter’s altar is raised, and below this a ‘camp’ of tents and pavilions. The activity of the masque takes place at the foot of this hill, and the only speakers are Iris and Mercury, sent by Juno and Jove, the leading couple of the Olympic Gods, whereas the characters of the main masque are Olympian Knights (who dance) and Jupiter’s Priests (who play and sing). The Olympic image in the masque has three meanings. The Olympian Games refer to the fictive post-performance event to which the Olympian Knights and Jupiter’s Priests are summoned to attend. Iris’ reference to Olympia designates the setting of the masque and has several geographical applicatons : the hall, the Court, London, England. Finally, Olympian Jove refers to the epithet of Jupiter as head of the Olympic gods. In the masque, these capacities of the image are brought together under the ‘Olympian’ banner, an amalgamation that, though evident to many, requires some comment. The Olympic Games are so called because they were originally held at Elis in Olympia on the Pelponnesos, whereas the Olympic Gods are so called because they were originally believed to reside on the mountain Olympus in Thessalia. However, the name Olympus in time became detached from the specific Thessalian mountain and came to refer to the dwelling place of the gods in general, and the term Olympic in connection to the gods therefore lost much of its geographical specificity and came to refer primarily to the chief family of Greek Gods rather than a place. The two meanings of ‘Olympic’ are joined by the fact that the Games originate in religious festivals, and even after they developed into sportive festivals, contestants appealed to and celebrated the gods for support. The altar of Olympic Jove at Olympia hosted offerings during the Olympic Games. Since it is the dynamics of the masque to create an image of the Court with which the Court may identify itself, and ultimately become, at least during performance, it is logical to assume that the Court here is repre 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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  The printed account uses ‘Jupiter’ and ‘Jove’ interchangeably, and confuses (seemingly deliberately) Greek and Latin names (e.g. Mercury is sometimes called Hermes).

170 christina sandhaug sented as Olympia, the site of the Olympic Games, and the courtly community as the Olympic family. The character of Jupiter is not present, but it takes little imagination to see that James himself was meant to fill that role : the match between the two rivers Thames and Rhine « concerns his general government » (The Masque, sig. B4v). In order to align the river metaphor of the wedding to the imaginative location chosen for the celebrations and the image of the Court as a New Olympia, the Thames is further compared to the river Alpheus (named after the river god), which flowed through the plain of Olympia, and was supposed to go under sea to Cicily to the fountain of Arethuse, with whom the river had fallen in love, and « united his waters with those of the spring ». 1 Pausanias explains how the river Alpheus at Olympia had become famous for love by the dissemination of this oracular legend. Further, he reports that it is the greatest and strongest of rivers, reinforcing the connection between the river and power, and that one immediately encounters the river upon arrival in Olympia. 2 Indeed, the Thames becomes Alpheus by way of the initial water procession, bringing the Olympian Knights to their Games. Thus, by way of a series of correspondences, the occasion, James and the Court, the Rhenish Palatinate, and the fields and hills of Olympia as well as the idea of the Olympic Games are brought together in ‘harmonious’ coexistence, quite in tune, as I shall argue, with James’ rhetoric of union and national – even international – representation. De Franchis’ Latin ‘marriage hymn’, published in English translation in 1613, is a poetic allegorisation of the marriage, in which the event is placed in a mythological – Olympic – narrative framework : Jove ordains the match in order to solve the wretched state of European religion, whereas Juno arranges for one of Cupid’s arrows to ensure Frederick’s infatuation with Elizabeth. The allegorical and poetically ‘creative’ description of the marriage arrangements and wedding festivities incorporates some of the actual events that took place, but I shall not be referring to this poem as a  

 

 

 

 

 

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  Arethusa, in Encyclopedia Britannica Online, http ://www.britannica.com, accessed 11 August 2008. This is also explained in a modern editorial note to the allusion, see The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Innby Francis Beaumont, edited by Philip Edwards, in A Book of Masques in Honour of Allardyce Nicoll, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1967 1970, p. 147. 2   Pausanias, Guide To Greece, ii, Southern Greece, translated by Peter Levi, London, Penguin Books, 1971, pp. 212-214. It is doubtful that Beaumont knew Pausanias, though, since the text is virtually unread until the eighteenth century ; see Christian Habicht, An Ancient Baedeker and His Critics : Pausanias’ ‘Guide to Greece’, « Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society », ii, 129, 1985, pp. 220-224, p. 220. Still, the legend must have been sufficiently known to be available for the writer and received by the spectators. I have not been able to identify the source.  

 

 

 

 

« here in olympia » 171 source of knowledge about the festivities. Instead, we must read it as an indication of how this festival was interpreted by an ‘informed outsider’ : apparently, the Olympic image is exaggerated to the extent that it informs the entire festival, suggesting that the image was readily received by a contemporary audience. Known mainly through scattered references in Classical sources, the Olympic image was in contemporary use in all three senses. 1 Myth as allegorical gloss on current power structures and topical affairs is commonplace in masques and entertainments even in an Elizabethan context, but ‘commonplace’ does not mean ‘insignificant’. 2  

 

 

The Olympic Games : War and Peace  

How do the Olympic Games, then, add « celebrity, victory, and felicity » to the occasion? And what are the further symbolic implications of the  

 

1   Pindar’s Victory Odes is perhaps the most obvious source, and if they were available must have informed seventeenth century concepts of the Olympic Games (they were translated by Abraham Cowley in 1656). Plutarch’s Lives and Morals include commentary on victors (and losers) and were available in translation in the early seventeenth century (both appeared in a new translation in 1603). Hesiod’s Works and Days, which includes at least one prolonged passage on Olympic Games, was published in London in a Latin edition in 1590, and translated by Chapman in 1618. Pausanias’ Travels in Greece, which narrates extensively on Olympia, does not appear in English translation until the eighteenth century, but might have been available in Latin and perhaps other translations. Nigel Spivey explains that fifteenth century humanists picked up numerous references to Olympia and athletics in their studies, translations and editing of Classical literature, and exemplifies how « far a general knowledge of Olympia and the Olympic Games had extended beyond scholarly circles in early eighteenth-century Europe » by referring to Metastasio’s melodramatic opera Olympiad (1733), with music by Vivaldi ; see Nigel Spivey, The Ancient Olympics, New York, Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 240-241. 2   The following brief list of examples does not in any way aim for completeness, and is drawn from references in Oxford English Dictionary, http ://www.oed.com, accessed 3 June 2011. The idea of Olympic Zeus/Iove/Jupiter is used in the sense mentioned above (‘Olympic’, adj. 1.1) in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (II.v.), which is the epitome of Elizabethan chivalry. The term ‘Olympian’ used in the same sense, as referring to Olympic gods and godesses and their place of residence (‘Olympian’, adj.1.1) may be found in Philemon Holland’s translation of Plutarch’s Morals (1603), but had also appeared in Richard Johnson’s Nine Worties of London (1592), in which the term is also connected ot the idea of chivalry and knighthood (which is further discussed below). The term ‘Olympian’ as referring to Olympia and relating to the ancient Games (‘Olympian’, adj.2.1) is used by Samuel Daniel in Tragedie of Cleopatra (1611), and as noun in the same sense by Shakespeare in Troilus and Cressida (1609, IV.v.78). Contemporary references to ‘Olympian Games’ as relating to « the competitive sporting and athletic festival held in honour of Zeus in the plain of Olympia in Elis » (‘Olympian Games’, n. 1) may be found in Sir Philip Sidney’s Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia (1593, i.49) and Lloyd’s Hilaria (1607, ii), as well as a little later in Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part 3 (1623, II.iii.53). The image, the idea, and the terms must have had a much wider distribution, de Franchis’ poem mentioned above being simply one instance.  

 

 

 

 

 

172 christina sandhaug Olympic image? The ancient Olympic festival was indeed an occasion for celebrity, victory (and, of course, loss) and felicity, as it was the scene of « lavish displays of wealth », « celebrity-spotting » and extra-sportive activities such as religious ceremonies and sacrifices, as well as « speeches by well-known philosophers ; poetry recitals ; parades ; banquets ; and victory celebrations ». 1 According to Nigel Spivey, « contests for heralds and trumpet blowers » were part of the festival (as he terms it), and Sophistic debates staged for entertainment : the Sophists, he explains, demonstrated « the sort of combative oratory suited to assemblies and law courts : so they put on shows of such verbal dexterity and aggression in front of Olympic crowds ». 2 The ancient Olympic Games had been banned in 393 AD, yet, as suggested by the brief outline above, the idea of ‘Olympic’ both as an attribute of the Olympic deities, as well as an adjective relating to the Games, was familiar enough to merit use by major Renaissance poets and playwrights. Pindar’s Victory Odes and Plutarch’s tales of winners and losers are possible sources for the association of « Olympic » with festivity and poetry, although contests were not on the actual sports programme in Olympia, as they were in other games. Hesiod, for instance, participated in a rhapsodes’ contest in Euboea : « I gained victory with a hymn, and carried off a tripod with handles ». 3 In such spirit of competition, the initial encounter between Iris and Mercury in The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne takes the form of antagonistic oratory, or antagonistic anti-masquing as it were. What we may be witnessing here is a reminder of the sponsors of the masque, the Inns of Court. Both chief deviser Bacon and scriptwriter Beaumont were associated with Inns of Court, and some of their training in oratory and debating may spill over into the production of the masque. Arguing for the continued dominance of scholasticism, Wilfred R. Prest maintains that « the formal teaching of both universities and Inns continued to be grounded on disputatious aural exercises throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ». 4 On the basis of such comparisons, in addition to the existing documents accounting for the 1613 festival, and recent studies of them, the wedding festivities come across as very much resembling an Olympic  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1   Spectators at the Games, at Perseus Digital Library Project, edited by Gregory R. Crane, Tufts University, http ://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Olympics/specs.html, accessed 1 June 2011. 2 3   Spivey, op. cit., pp. xviii, xvx.   Quoted in Spivey, op. cit., p. 5. 4   Wilfred R. Prest, The Inns of Court under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts, 1590-1640, New Jersey, Longman, 1972, p. 116.  

« here in olympia » 173 festival, staging sportive events such as tilts and runnings at the ring, fireworks and entertainments on the river, processions and masques, as well as other, minor, acts of ceremony and festivity, such as audiences, dinners and receptions. 1 The masque itself is a festival of which the Games are simply a part – and an extra, post-masque, part at that. After the revels dance, in which the Olympian Knights take out the ladies of the audience, they don their arms (which they have removed before the celebratory dance) and are called off to their Games. There was in fact a sportive event earlier in the day, and the masquers were invited at the King’s expense, as the winners of the original Games indeed were by their city states, but the postponement of the masque ruined the carefully planned order of events and robbed masque, sports and, dinner alike, of symbolic meaning. 2 The revival of the Olympic Games is a paradoxical image, because it is associated with, on the one hand, competition, fighting and war, and, on the other, with unity, justice and peace. Indeed, The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne is structured in accordance with this antithesis, and dramatises the paradox : when Mercury and Iris strive and compete, the masques they produce fail, but when they enter peace and join forces they succeed in generating a proper one and the « Olympian games » may proceed. Apart from the obvious parallels between Jupiter and James as « keeping state » on their thrones as heads of their States (The Masque, sig. B4v), Jupiter has reserved the administration of this union for himself, since « it concerns his generall government » (ibid.). The question is whether James is to be associated with, on the one hand, the thundering Jupiter who hurls bolts of lightning at his hated enemies and his terrified subjects, or the peaceful Jove in whose honour the truce and friendly Games are arranged. Ancient Olympic Games were part of the religious festival in honour of Zeus ( Jove, Jupiter) and hosted members of the various city states of Greece competing at sports in celebration of the religious festival. Although the Olympic truce ensured participants and spectators safe travel across the Greek world, and peace and justice came to be associated with  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Nichols prints two tracts or accounts that refer to the celebrations as a whole, as well as other material on the festivities and the marriage, including a bibliographical list of ‘tracts’ on the wedding ; see Nichols, op. cit. pp. 512-626. Limon refers to John Finett, assistant to the Master of Ceremonies, who claims that the festivities were to be considered one event spanning several days ; see Limon, op. cit., p. 125. 2   The entire festival is in fact associated with Olympic Games by de Franchis, op. cit., iii, p. 133.  

 

174 christina sandhaug the Games, the festival was also a place for political rivalries and controversies, and the sportive events were characterised by fierce competition and fighting. 1 War and sports are closely related, and the Olympic Games developed from ritualistic wars held between city-states at set intervals (every 4 years was common). These ‘games’ were symbolic enactments of the relationship between the city-states and served to re-establish political demarcations, and trained soldiers in the art of war (military rehearsals still often take on the form of sports and display/entertainment). These ‘wars’ were associated with religion, since the gods were celebrated for support, and some developed into sportive events, as the one in Olympia. Sports are, in one way, a sublimation of martial energy, and the sportive event an arena for playing out the combative impulses of humanity in a socially acceptable manner. Relating this modern idea to the ancient Olympics, Spivey lists many well-known sources, such as Lucian, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and concludes : « Ultimately, there was only one intent and aim of athletic contests : to feint the stress of battle ; to stay sharp and ready for war ». 2 More specifically oriented towards early modern culture, and to the ambience of the Court of Prince Henry in particular, Roy Strong relates sports to chivalry and war, arguing that « [e]xercises in the tiltyard were still practice for the realities of war ». 3 Even today, sports are associated with competitiveness, fighting and conquest, at least in terminology. 4 In the Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne, then, the Olympic Games are associated with ideas of knighthood and chivalry. The masquers are « Olympian Knights » and there was indeed a tilt on the preceding Monday, in which most of the masquers participated and at which most of the spectators to the masque were present. Also, the scenery of the masque features martial images. The Knights wore hats shaped like helmets and silver swords, and the camp of tents below the altar of Zeus is a military camp :  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the Pavilions were to sight as of cloth of gold, and they were trimmed on the inside with rich armour and military furniture hanged up as upon the walls, and behind the tents there were represented in perspective the tops of divers other Tents, as if it had been a Campe. (The Masque, sig. C4v) 1

  Perseus Digital Library Project, cit. 3   Spivey, op. cit., p. 18.   Strong, op. cit., p. 66. 4   A brief comparison between English and Norwegian in this regard reveals a common combative terminology in sports ‘lingo’ : a fight-to fight/en kamp-å kjempe, to crush/å knuse, to take/å ta, to beat/å banke. 2

 

« here in olympia »  

175

 

« Camp » is here used in the military sense as the temporary lodging, often in tents, of an army or body of troops. Limon has suggested that the introduction of the Olympic idea evoked the theme of knighthood and he calls the original Olympic Games an « ancient knightly tradition ». 1 England, he explains, « and Whitehall in particular, were considered the centre of knighthood, with James’ Court often described as the Temple of Knighthood ». 2 But a standing army fit for battle is also a peace measure, as in the modern expression ‘peacekeeping forces’. The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne registers both these implications of martial imagery. The wedding festival had already been conceived in martial, chivalric terms, from the investment of Frederick as Knight of the Garter (7 February), through the firework displays and river battle, and culminating here in the Olympic Knights being called to their Games. In an obvious follow-up to Frederick’s investment, the fireworks all centred on the heroic knighthood of St. George, rescuing damsels in distress and defeating the Dragon of Wrong. St George, as patron of England and protector of the royal family, conglomerates the chivalric theme with the wedding and overarching topics of politics and religion. According to legend, George rescues the Princess of the city of Silene/Lydda from a dragon, to which she was sacrificed to pacify the monster, and occasions the conversion to the true faith of the entire community, as well as the instigation of a Christian Church. 3 The Golden Legend places the dragon in water, « a stagne or a pond like a sea », and dresses the Princess as a bride, both images appropriately convenient for the occasion of the wedding. 4 The firework displays on 11 February 1613 drew quite freely on these ideas associated with the image of St. George. 5  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

2   Limon, op. cit., p. 161.   Limon, op. cit., p. 126.   This is the aspect of the hagiograpgy of St. George which was probably most familiar, owing to William Caxton’s translation of Voragine’s collection of the lives of the saints, The Golden Legend (Legenda aurea, 1265-1266), published in 1487. The Catholic Encyclopedia (vol. vi) claims that this legend added to St. George the dragon-slaying capacities celebrated in the firework displays, and explains how the red cross on white ground (now the English flag) became part of the arms of St. George, which became « a sort of uniform for English soldiers and sailors ». The Order of the Garter, founded by Edward III (c. 1347), further identified St. Geroge and the red cross with chivalry and knighthood, and The Catholic Encyclopedia reminds us of Red Cross Knight in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, whose foe is a « dragon horrible and stern ». See Jacobus de Voraigne, The Life of St George, in The Golden Legend, Or Lives of the Saints, translated by William Caxton, 1487, edited by F. S. Ellis, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1900, 1922, 1931, at The Catholic Encyclopedia, http ://www.catholic-forum. 4 com/saints/golden184.htm, accessed 1 June 2011.   De Voraigne, op. cit. 5   These events are described in great detail in Limon, op. cit., pp. 126-132 ; see also Taylor, op. cit., pp. 527-535. 3

 

 

 

 

 

 

176 christina sandhaug In Jacobean times, this kind of chivalry was associated with the Court of Prince Henry more than with that of the monarch, a central issue of domestic and European policy to which I will return in full below. Here, my point is simply that the seemingly militant attitude signalled by the use of Knights has been taken to evidence Henry’s involvement in the plans for the celebrations and to identify his voice in many of the entertainment sequences (colonialism and enforced religious conversion is the central theme of the device in Chapman’s masque). Strong goes far in suggesting that the Olympic device of The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne was transformed from a tiltyard device to a court masque after the Prince’s death, and in denouncing the result. 1 While not ignoring the echoes of the late Prince, I wish to adjust the activist impact of the Olympic image by pointing out that the idea of the Olympic Games – both ancient and as here resurrected for the occasion – is also one of peace, which makes the masque more palatable to the pacifistic, or at least non-activist, monarch in whose presence the masque was eventually danced. De Franchis frames the match as a peacemaking measure with a religious pretext : the wretched state of Religion, « so torne and persecuted in the world, by wickednesse and superstition » is « not to be remedied with fury and the destruction of men » but with « good counsell and exhortation » whereof the chief means is « the linking together of two royal families in a most profitable marriage ». 2 He does not offer a topical interpretation of the dragon fought by St George in the fireworks (described in iii.117-124), but Frances Yates calls him the Dragon of Wrong (3) and it takes little imagination to fill ‘wrong’ with topical meaning in a Protestant perspective. 3 The fireworks and sea-battle wage war on miscreants, in this case the ‘mahometan’ Turks, but the battle against the infidels is also associated with the victory over the Spanish Armada. 4 Not simply a militaristic adventure, then, overcoming the dragon and establishing the true faith may also be read in the light of Jacobean pacifism. During the original Olympics, truce forbade the execution of wars, legal disputes and death penalties, and such truces (of which there were many) provided a common basis for peace among the Greeks. Olympia could also be a place for real peacemaking and creation of political  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Strong, op. cit., p. 180.   De Francis, op. cit., sig. A3v. The front matter lacks pagination, which is here supplied. 3   Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 4 1972, p. 3.   Taylor, op. cit., p. 529. 2

« here in olympia » 177 alliances. Within the frames of the actual Games, the Olympic spirit prescribed piety to the gods and fairness in competition. Thus peace and justice, which are aspects of the Olympic spirit with which we associate the Games even today, also became incorporated into the Olympic idea. As such, the Olympic idea accords well with James ‘Solomonic’ pacifism. The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne opens with a contest in which Iris and Mercury first quarrel, on behalf of Juno and Jupiter, over the right to celebrate nuptials and then stage one antimasque each in competition. They then seem to enter a truce, and peace reigns as the main masque of Olympian Knights and Priests begin. The Olympian Knights even put down their weapons before they engage in the revels (an important point to which I will return below). Peace is also the blessing that the final song of the masque gives to the married couple : « Peace and silence be the guide / To the Man, and to the Bride » (The Masque, sig. D3r), obviously inviting a more local and short-term application to the wedding night, too. The marriage itself had no direct peacemaking effect, since the two countries were not warring parties, but it must be understood in the larger framework of English, ‘British’, and European relations. As mentioned, three central ingredients in early Stuart politics are Crown finance, epitomised by the failed negotiations for the Great Contract (1610), the Anglo-Scottish union to which James aspired from the very start (and even before he became James I), and England’s position in the European balance of power. Relations between Monarch and Court on the one hand, and Parliament on the other play an overtly instrumental part in the first two projects, whereas international policy, traditionally regarded at Crown prerogative, increasingly involved James relations to his eldest son, as well as to his wife, and, by indirection, his people. As I shall argue, all three features of political culture may be seen as resounding in the allegory of The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne, and I shall begin with Europe and then close in. Ironically, an fair amount of peace-treaties and truces had settled European political unrest to a certain degree by and during the early phase of James’ reign, but as Pauline Croft insists, « religious division was still destabilising Europe », and by the time of our wedding, the religious situation had become polarised, between the Protestant union (formed 1608), led by the groom Frederick, and the Catholic League (formed  

 

1

 

 

 

 

1

  Perseus Digital Library Project, cit.

 

178 christina sandhaug 1 1609). Uniting his royal family to the Protestant faction by marrying his daughter to its leader should be seen as an act of international politics which may either ensure peace by balancing the religious polarities, as was in fact James’ plan when he intended to marry his eldest son, Henry Prince of Wales, to the Catholic faction, or, as hoped for by the said Prince and other militant Protestants at home, as a union that may consolidate the Protestant faction and in fact tip the balance of power and ensure Protestant supremacy. These diverging kinds of union rhetoric, one dominated by peace, balance and toleration and the other marked by militarism, conquest and confessional discrimination, are both registered – albeit uneasily – by Beaumont’s allegorical device in the masque. James was anxious to avoid religious warfare, and war in general. He sought to make peace, or at least avoid religious war, by creating family alliances. From the onset of his reign, he had promoted the use of marriage as a means by which to ensure unity between his Scottich and English aristocracies. 2 As with Jupiter in de Franchis’ poem quoted above, James saw himself as a peacemaking Solomon, who sought to end religious strife by peaceful means such as balanced alliances : 3 « Apparently he thought that an alliance between the chief Protestant and the chief Catholic powers would be the surest way of avoiding such a disaster » – i.e. religious war. 4 The other masques that celebrate the 1613 wedding lay great emphasis on the peacemaking qualities of their monarch, and attach these qualities to his knack for creating unions and alliances. This brings us back to the masque’s image of the two rivers that by way of marriage blend their waters and swell beyond any bounds, which ties in with other commonplace images of James as the great unifier ; as a tree whose branches shall cover the whole world, and the never setting sun whose light shall illuminate the universe. The marriage was already represented in the pan-Protestant perspective in The Lords’ Masque, and religious imperialism was the theme of The Memorable Masque. 5 James’ pacifism is also embodied in, as I have mentioned, the necessity of truce signalled by the Olympic image as well as the final agreement between Mercury and Iris on the threshold of the masque proper : after a series  

 

 

 

 

1

  Pauline Croft, King James, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. 82, 83.   Croft, op. cit., p. 66. 3   See Strong, op. cit., pp. 72, 84 ; Croft, op. cit., pp. 59, 82. 4   Godfrey Davies, The Early Stuarts, 1603-1660 (The Oxford History of England, edited by N. G. Clark), Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1937, 1949, p. 52. 5   Curran, op. cit., p. 105. Incidentally, the official motto of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games was « One World, One Dream ». 2

 

 

 

« here in olympia » 179 of retaliations, calling each other names (« Dissembling Mercury » (The Masque, sig. B3v), « foolish maid » (The Masque, sig. B4r), « Presumptuous Iris » (The Masque, sig. C1v)) and retorting sarcasms, Mercury sighs, « Iris we strive, / Like winds at libertie, who should do worst / Ere we returne » (The Masque, sig. C4r), and asks Juno to peacefully give way to the celebrations which are after all « in honour of the State / She governs » (ibid.). Iris complies on certain terms, bringing the fight to a close with « do it, we shall be pleas’d » (ibid.). I will return to the further implications for domestic politics and for family relations of this feud, but here my point is simply that this truce is the precondition for the main masque. As the above discussion of the Olympic image clearly shows, there is an overwhelming sense of chivalry to the wedding celebrations, too, associated with Prince Henry’s involvement and representing the attitude of his Court as opposed to that of his father. In spite of their increasing differences on many things political, on this match between Elizabeth and Frederick the King and the Prince agreed, though they had incongruent hopes attached to it. The young Prince’s image was one of war, sports and chivalry, and Strong paints a picture of a « militant » and « muscular » Protestant who longed to prove valiant for the faith. 1 Henry’s espousal of the project of colonial expansion was also tainted with an aggressively religious zeal, which perhaps emerges in Chapman’s masque for the same wedding, in which enforced religious conversion is the central movement of the device. Strong interprets Beaumont’s masque as « highly militaristic », but exaggerates the ties between chivalry and religion, I believe, perhaps as a result of his faulty identification of the Olympian Knights with Jupiter’s Priests, two groups of characters that are clearly distinct. 2 Building in large on Strong’s interpretation, Philip Finkelpearl sees this masque as exclusively chivalric and militaristic, connecting the religious dimension of Olympic Games to Protestant warfare and concluding that Beaumont’s intentions in the masque square with those of the Prince. 3 But there are limits to the degree to which a masque celebrated in the presence of the monarch may enthuse about perspectives deviant from his, and I suggest instead that the Olympic theme may be seen as registering both focal points of war and peace. Most recent scholarship on masques agree that they invite, or offer, or  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1   Strong, op. cit., pp. 42-43. See especially pp. 33-35 for a discussion of the Prince and the art of war, and how the ambience at Henry’s court suggests puritan leanings (pp. 15, 31). 2   Strong, op. cit., p. 180. 3   Philip J. Finkelpearl, Court and Country Politics in the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1990, p. 210.

180 christina sandhaug may register, a wide variety of interpretations, and that they are more ambiguous than monolithic. 1 An interesting perspective on these differing agendas embodied in the wedding festivities emerges if we return to the written accounts of the sea battle on the Thames performed the day before the actual wedding ceremony, thereby providing an allegorical setting for the marriage. The staged battle is an enactment of one of the devices in the fireworks two days previously, in which a Christian fleet fights the Turks. John Taylor has the fight end in a draw – a truce as it were – whereas an anonymous contemporary account, as well as de Franchis’ « Marriage Hymn », interpret the outcome in favour of the Christian army, and both identify ‘Christian’ with ‘British’. While not necessarily signalling political agendas, these diverging representations demonstrate the availability of opposing perspectives for the interpretation and understanding the same spectacle. The « Marriage Hymn » is fiercly Protestant throughout and this colours de Franchis’ presentation of events considerably, whereas John Taylor seems to have been, according to Nichols, in deep reverence for the Stuarts, and also a « fervent protestant and patriot ». 2 His loyalty is hard to pinpoint, but again, I think it wise to regard such accounts as registering the multiple agencies and relationships pertaining to such festivity rather than forcing them to square with one or the other agenda. The restoration of the Olympic Games, then, in addition to honouring the married couple, gives to the masque values of chivalry and knighthood, and of peacemaking. Moreover, it provides for the Court an image with which they may identify, because, in the masque, Jupiter reinstates the Olympic Games that are in fact celebrations of himself, just as James arranges for masques that are celebrations of himself.  

 

 

 

 

 

‘Here in Olympia’ : King and People  

It will be remembered at this point that Olympic Games are festivals, and that there were originally also contests for poets and artists at such festivals. In addition to tripods, as won by Hesiod, olive wreaths were bestowed on winners. In The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne the Olympian Knights are victoriously wearing hats whose bands « were wreathes of silver in forme of garlands of wilde Olives » (The Masque, sig. D1v). Olive wreaths are often confused with laurels, and it seems  

 

1

  E.g. Butler, op. cit. ; Curran, op. cit. ; Shohet, op. cit.   Bernard Capp, Taylor, John (1578-1653), in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http :// www.oxforddnb.com, accessed 28 February 2011. 2

 

 

 

« here in olympia » 181 both were used to crown athletic victors : Spivey refers to Plato’s Laws, in which he suggests that the Olympic prize of an olive wreath shall also be the civic award for military valour, and later quotes Euripides’ diatribe on the uselessness of athletes, in which he advocates the rewarding of laurels to politicians rather than athletes. 1 Laurels have the further connotation of poetic championship. My point is that such wreaths both signal victory – martial, athletic and poetic. 2 Again, the Olympic image may be seen as bringing together the perspectives of father and son, celebrating as it does both verbal and military triumphs. What’s more, the theme of Olympic Games is a very fitting emblem for the festivities, and in this sense The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne refers to itself : the wedding becomes an Olympic festival, containing many Olympic events of a military, sportive and artistic nature. The Court becomes the centre of the Olympic Gods, as the term Olympic in this connection had come to imply the community of the gods in the Olympic family detached from the geographical situation, as well as the setting for the Olympic festival. Claims Iris :  

 

 

 

 

I onely come To celebrate the long wisht Nuptials, Heere in Olympia, which are now perform’d Betwixt two goodly Rivers. (The Masque, sig. B4r)

This image of the Court as Olympia, at which festivals are celebrated in honour of the chief Olympic gods, may be read in the light of various aspects of domestic relations. 3 A pan-European union of religion was not the only kind of union on the monarch’s – and his political advisors’ – mind in the early days of the reign. Union rhetoric had been integral to national representation since the accession, and on James’ mind even before that, with regard to the proposed Anglo-Scottish union, which was the first project during which James revealed his belief in the monarch’s supremacy. Though this union is not promoted directly in this masque, the three burning tapers on 1

  Spivey, op. cit., p. 24.   Laurel wreaths and olive wreaths are often fused and used interchangeably. The myth of the laurel comes from Apollo’s pursuit of Daphne, whereas olive leaves were used for wreaths to crown Olympic victors. Both are associated with honour, valour, and victory. 3   The ‘here’ of masques is always the very place in which the spectators and the masquers find themselves, mythical gloss or no. Cf. Limon’s discussion of The Memorable Masque (Limon, op. cit., p. 144). Further, the world of the masques dissolves natural and geographical laws to the extent that islands may travel, and gods descend. 2

182 christina sandhaug Jupiter’s altar have been taken to signify his joint reign over three Kingdoms, and, of course, this image accords with – indeed, is part of – the representation of the British King as a leader of a Protestant, world-wide religious community promoted by all three masques for this wedding. 1 As chief deviser, and solicitor general to the monarch, Bacon’s mind must have been very much on union and empire in 1613, as evidenced by entries in the second edition of his Essays, published under his guidance in 1612. 2 Negotiations for the Anglo-Scottish union are more interesting for our purposes, however, for what they revealed of the relationship between James and Parliament. The rivalry between Mercury ( Jupiter) and Iris ( Juno) in the antimasque of the Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne consists in a struggle over prerogatives. Iris comes rushing in, with Mercury at her heels, trying to pass her. Both proclaiming their masters’ intention to celebrate the wedding, Iris asks : « But what hath he to doe with Nuptiall rights? » (The Masque, sig. B4v). In answer to Iris’ question Mercury outlines Jupiter’s rights over Juno’s – although she is the Queen of marriage, this capacity she derives from him :  

 

 

 

Alas, when ever offer’d he t’abridge Your lady’s power, but only now in these, Whose match concerns his general government? Hath not each god a part in these high joys? And shall not he, the King of gods, presume Without proud Junoes licence? Let her know That when enamoured Iove first gave her power To linke soft hearts in Undissolved bonds, He then foresaw, and to himselfe reserv’d The honour of this Mariage. (The Masque, sig. B4r)

There might of course be an element of domestic dispute in this contention between Jupiter and Juno. Marital discord between mythological figures is often used for comic relief, and since Jupiter is readily identified with James in State it is only logical that Anne fills the empty space of 1

  See Limon, op. cit., p. 163, for the identification of the tapers.   Francis Bacon, The Major Works : Including New Atlantis and the Essays, edited by Brian Vickers, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996, 2002. Reprinted in three editions in 1613. 38 essays appeared, among which we find Of Religion in which religious unity is seen as the glue that binds human society together (p. 300), and Of The True Greatness of Kingdoms where he argues for naturalization (p. 303). 2

 

« here in olympia » 183 the absent Juno. Taking a keen interest in her children’s marriages, the Catholic Queen was initially overtly opposed to the Protestant match, but finally gave her consent (not that it made any practical difference), even to the extent of blessing it. 2 Iris claims that Juno « smiled to see them ioyne, and hath not chid / since it was done » (The Masque, sig. B4r), and at the end of the antimasque Juno’s consent to let Jupiter feast is enlisted :  

 

1

 

 

 

If Iuno be the Queene Of Mariage, let her give happie way To what is done, in honour of the State She gouvernes. (The Masque, sig. C4r)

Iris grants Juno’s consent, and the main masque begins. The local application of the allegory to the royal couple, who were present and represented the absent mythic couple ( Juno and Jupiter were not represented on stage), is reinforced by references to infidelity and sexual transgression on the part of Jupiter (who is charged with being « wanton » (The Masque, sig. B3v) having clasped « weake mortalitie » in his arms (The Masque, sig. B4r)), but the symbolic meaning is certainly also political and religious, and supports the idea of an omnipotent King who is answerable to neither Parliament nor Church, but to God alone. Jupiter is of course both king and god, and answerable to none other than himself : he « knows / How to be first on earth as well as heaven » (The Masque, sig. C4r). The masque’s image of Jupiter as the « king of gods » must have appealed to James. Not only did he heartily embrace the doctrine of the divine right of kings, instructing his son Henry that he is God’s earthly representative, he also elevated the monarch above the law. Stuart reign was a return to theocratic kingship after the more moderate absolutism of the Elizabethan reign. 3 According to James’ Trew Law of Free Monarchies (1598), the King was accountable only to God himself, and this ideology of divine right resulted in increased tension between Crown and Commons : « There were major differences of approach, not least because the King asserted that all the Commons’ privileges derived from the Crown and he could withdraw them at will.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1   The allegorical figure ascribed to James is never represented by a character, because James never danced in masques himself, as Charles later did. Anne danced, though not on this occasion. 2   Chamberlain describes Anne’s changing sentiments towards the match, Chamberlain, 3 op. cit., pp. 404, 430.   Strong, op. cit., p. 234.

184 christina sandhaug By contrast, the Commons deeply believed their privileges were theirs by ancient rights and inheritance ». 1 Both James and Charles failed to recognise what Elizabeth before them had understood, namely that monarchy needed support from an increasingly broader segment of society. From the 15th century onwards the Crown had become increasingly aware of the need for support from secular authorities, but the 17th century saw the onset of an increasing disregard for this need, and isolation of the Crown from the secular world escalated. Mercury’s defence of Jove’s prerogatives and supreme powers of government in The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne is very suitable for a masque whose production was supervised by Bacon, who, as James’ Solicitor General, was charged with the defence of the King’s interests. He had been intimately involved in the parliamentary debates over royal prerogatives, particularly during the 1610 sessions which saw the failure of the negotiations for the Great Contract, and he later tried to temperate James’ absolutist rhetoric by relying on a more balanced approach, though it must be said that he supported James’ elevated view of the monarch’s prerogatives on the whole. If the monarch wished to solve his personal financial problems, Bacon’s reasoning went, he should nurse his relations to Parliament, and abstain from absolutist argumentation. His form of balanced absolutism admits a certain interdependency of Crown and Parliament : « The King’s Sovereignty and the Liberty of Parliament are as the two elements and principles of this estate [which] do not cross or destroy the one the other, but they strengthen and maintain the one the other ». 2 During the 1614 parliamentary sessions James followed Bacon’s advice and tried to humour Parliament by modifying his absolutism (though to no practical avail). 3 Domestic relations between Crown and Parliament may be further related to international affairs, since many Protestant forces in the Commons regarded James’ policy of toleration as confessional laxity. 4 Foreign policy, as well as the match 

 

 

 

1   James I, The Trew Law of Free Monarchies : Or the Reciprock and mutuall Duetie Betwixt a Free King, and His Natuall Subiects, in Political Writings. By Kings James VI and I, edited by Johann P. Sommerville, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 62-84, p. 60. 2   Francis Bacon, Works, xi, p. 177, quoted in Markku Peltonen, Bacon, Francis, Viscount St Alban (1561-1626), in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http ://www.oxforddnb.com, accessed 28 February 2011. 3   Croft, op. cit., offers a brief and lucid outline of the schism between James and Parliament from his accession onwards (especially pp. 60-61) and on their relationship during the negotiations for the Great Contract (pp. 75-82). 4   James was a Protestant institutionally, but he was only anti-Pope, and not anti-Catholic on a doctrinal basis.  

 

« here in olympia » 185 making for the royal offspring, was traditionally the prerogative of the Crown, but indirectly, forces in Parliament that grew restless with the monarch’s pacifism heaped hopes on the next in line, Prince Henry, to set things straight. 1 When Jupiter disregards Juno’s licence in the matchmaking process, the quarrel between Mercury and Iris takes on a political colour. Bacon was, obviously, a man of the law, educated at and connected to the Inner Temple, and writer Beaumont was attached to Gray’s Inn (though he was never called to the bar). This connection to the Inns of Court must not be ignored in discussions of a court masque offered by Inns of Court to the royal Court. Indeed, Prest claims that the « most striking affinity of the Inns of Court and the court was their mutual taste for the masque ». 2 Being caught up in the conventional patronage system of service and reward, masques to a certain extent served to regulate the relation between Crown and Inns, with the result that members of Inns were rewarded with legal positions to advise and represent the Crown, and many of the benchers in the Inns were senior members who held, or had held, such positions. 3 But, although the Inns did not formally have representation in Parliament, the connection to the royal Court was not the only channel for the Inns of Court mentality to enter the chambers of political culture, and the percentage of men with an Inns of Court background in the House of Commons had risen to fifty in 1640. 4 I have already pointed to the challenge to domestic peace caused by the opposed attitudes to royal prerogative held by the monarch and large proportions of the Commons, as many members of the Commons were « lawyers who felt a duty to preserve the balance of constitutional powers ». 5 One threat to this balance was of course James’ elevation of himself above that law. In fact, he regarded himself as lawgiver, unity of the law being a marked element in his own union rhetoric, and one of his favourite images of self-presentation was the British Solomon, the wise lawgiver. Ideologically, then, as well as politically, there was the potential for disagreement. Yet, the relationship was a relatively peaceful one, largely due to James’ policy of indifference and non-interference, and it was, paradoxically perhaps, Charles later strategy of « rapprochement » between royal Court and Inns of Court that eventually led to dissatisfac 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1   Dissatisfied voices will always look to the next level, as they do even as this is written, when British monarchists who fear that the politically outspoken Charles will ruin the royal family’s standing in the nation look to Prince William for comfort. 2 3   Prest, op. cit., p. 223.   Prest, op. cit., p. 230. 4 5   Prest, op. cit., p. 222.   Croft, op. cit., p. 60.

186 christina sandhaug 1 tion and sedition. In 1613, however, on 16 February, there was little other cause for disgruntlement than the revelation of the splendour of The Masque of The Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne, and the postponement of performance which severed procession from masque – and the extra cost this entailed. 2 Small matter, perhaps, but large enough to be smoothed over in print. Mercury’s manifestation of Jove’s ‘nuptiall rights’ are only partly absolutist, then. Indeed, he claims that Juno’s rule as Queen of marriage is authorised by Jove, but her consent is actually necessary for the main masque to proceed, quite in tune with Bacon’s ‘moderate absolutist’ arguments. Juno, I have claimed, may be read as embodying certain perspectives associated with Anne, but she is also the one who, by way of her messenger Iris, ensures the blessing – hence support – of the « Common People » (The Masque, sig. B2v). Curran, in his discussion of the transition from antimasque section to masque proper, completely ignores this implication of the allegory : « The May-games antimasque marks the formal end of Mercury and Iris’s competition for representation, and though there is no real justification for Jove’s securing control over the nuptial celebration, this is precisely what happens ». 3 He fails to see the role of the Olympic image, and the instrumentality of Juno’s consent, in securing the peace necessary for a successful masque. Strong also misreads the masque when he complains of the tameness of the Olympian Knights’ Games in this otherwise so militaristic masque. 4 If we read carefully, we see that the Knights remove their arms before dancing, and then put them on again as they are called off to their Games : the actual Games are post-masque, and their appearance in the main masque is peaceful. In this light, the seemingly trivial dispute between Iris and Mercury over nuptial rights/rites, becomes acutely political. Their measuring of strength becomes a power contest, but they are strongest as allies. Yet their alliance is not a compact between equally independent parties : although Juno’s consent and blessings are necessary, she, for all practical purposes, yields to let Jupiter have his way. The Crown’s relationship with the city of London, and the people in it, epitomises the relationship between ‘Crown’ and ‘people’. City spectacles, royal entries, coronations and other forms of public display served to maintain this relationship of seemingly mutual benefit : the city was  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Prest, op. cit., p. 232.   Limon, op. cit., p. 136, refers to the extra cost and labour related to the postponement. 3 4   Curran, op. cit., p. 123.   Strong, op. cit., p. 180. 2

« here in olympia » 187 cast as a major prop of monarchy and the city received exalted status as a result of royal presence. The increasing isolation of the Stuarts (Charles even denied the people a royal entry at his coronation) altered this relationship, with the result that the City supported Parliament and not Crown in the mid-century conflict. The water-procession of the Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne, apart from supporting the river-metaphor of the wedding and the Olympic image of the masque, was designed to include the river and the City in a public display of royal presence and power, but in light of the topic of the Olympic device it comes off as both territorial demarcation (aggression/war) and bid for loyalty and support (affability/peace). 1  

 

The image of the Court as Olympia and its members as an Olympic family of Greek gods answerable only to Zeus, and him only to himself, collides, in this masque, with the reality of a Court that must, sooner or later, relate to the surrounding society of city, people and parliament – and, ultimately, the world at large. This encounter is fraught with tension between aggression and affability, war and peace. The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inne represents this encounter in the combination of the isolationist image of the masque spectacle and the public display of the preceding water-procession. Encounters, as we have seen, are either militant or peaceful, represent either clashes or unions, but the Olympic image joins both in one and the same allegorical device. Rather than promoting one or the other agenda, the masque should be read as registering multiplicity and offering a plethora of potential, and simultaneous, interpretations. 1

  The Thames is still a prop for royalty, it would seem : on Wednesday 8 June 2011, the British Monarchy profile on Facebook posted a status proclaiming that they are « [v]ery excited to announce our summer 2012 show, Royal River : Power, Pageantry and the Thames » as part of Her Majesty The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations. http ://www.facebook. com/home.php#!/TheBritishMonarchy/posts/129120710501710  

 

 

 

 

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PERFORMING POLITICS IN EARLY MODERN DUBLIN Garrett Fagan

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n 7 September 1601 Elizabeth’s Lord Deputy in Ireland, Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy staged Norton and Sackville’s tragedy Gorboduc in the hall of Dublin Castle. 1 The Lord Deputy faced an Ireland anticipating a Spanish invasion force in the south and already gripped by a confederacy of overmighty rebel Irish aristocrats in the north. Why then did he choose a Senecan drama already forty years old to entertain his guests? Examining the circumstances around the Lord Deputy’s choice of entertainment will provide new contexts for our understanding of this play and the uses to which theatrical performance was put in the period. It will recover an Irish context to a play largely understood by critics as an English drama. 2 While literary scholars have recently given consideration to the Elizabethan colonization of Ireland, this undertaking has largely focused on poetry and prose polemic ; here, by contrast, we may trace the working out of those concerns in a dramatic and performative context. 3 This staging of Gorboduc by Mountjoy at Dublin Castle in 1601 constituted the first performance of a secular play in Ireland. 4 It will here  

I would like to thank Professor Roy Eriksen for inviting me to present a version of this article at the Centro Studi Leon Baptista Alberti, in Mantua 2009. I would also like to thank the attendees, particularly Roy Eriksen, Clare Guest, Per Sivefors and Sverre Blandhol for their stimulating discussion. 1   Thomas Sackville, Thomas Norton, The Tragedie of Gorbodvc, London, William Griffith, 1565. The play is also known by the title of the second edition : The Tragidie of Ferrex and Porrex, London, John Day, 1570. 2   For Gorboduc as the first English tragedy, see Irving Ribner, The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1957, pp. 41-53 ; Irby B. Cauthen, Jr., Introduction, in Gorboduc ; or, Ferrex and Porrex, by Thomas Sackville, Thomas Norton, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1970, pp. xi-xxx ; Henry James, Greg Walker, The Politics of Gorboduc, « English Historical Review », ccccxxxv, 110, 1995, pp. 109-112. 3   On the literary representation of early modern Ireland, see Representing Ireland : Literature and the Origins of Conflict, 1534-1660, edited by Andrew Hadfield, Brendan Bradshaw, Willy Maley, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993 ; Richard McCabe, Ireland : Policy, Poetics and Parody, in The Cambridge Companion to Spenser, edited by Andrew Hadfield, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 60-78. 4   « Mr Ogilby, the Master of Revel in this Kingdom informed Mr Ashbury, that plays had  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

190 garrett fagan be considered in the light of its immediate and local political context, a moment of violent crisis for Ireland : the rebellion of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone aided by Spanish confederates and English attempts to repress this. The political significance of performing Gorboduc in the Dublin of the time, its possible reception and uses to which that performance was put will be considered. If Gorboduc was the first secular play performed in Dublin, there already existed a rich culture of liturgical drama, civic display and performative practices of all kinds throughout Ireland. 1 The contextual frame for consideration of both Gorboduc and the civic performative practices existing in Dublin at the time is a complex and violent one, at once municipal, Irish and ‘British’. This examination seeks to trace the trajectory of a performance culture in Dublin which at the beginning of the sixteenth century was civic, public and participatory but had become by the century’s end ‘statist’, elite and didactic. This movement, from civic celebration and municipal identity to state-sponsored propaganda, culminated in the performance of the courtly masque drama Gorboduc in 1601. It will be shown that the representatives of the English Crown, specifically the Lord Deputy, increasingly aggregated to themselves the energies of a municipal performative tradition. The alarm caused in London by their aspiring too high and the co-option by the Lord Deputies from the 1560s onward of the use of performance to promote a policy of unrestrained violence in Ireland is examined below. The sixteenth century was one of violent tumult in Dublin. From midcentury, Ireland was torn by sporadic rebellion and severe repression as the English government sought to extend and solidify its limited control. By the end of century, a single grouping were dominant within Ireland, the « New English » : those Elizabethan conquistadors who extinguished  

 

 

 

often been acted in the Castle of Dublin when Blount Lord Mountjoy was Lord Lieutenant here in the latter end of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth and Mr Ashbury say he had saw a Bill for Wax tapers, dated 7 September 1601 for the Play of Gorboduc done at the castle one and twenty shillings and Two groats. But it is supposed they were Gentlemen of the Court that were actors on this occasion ». W. R. Chetwood, A General History of the Irish Stage, Dublin, 1749, p. 50. Ogilby was in Dublin from 23 February 1638 when he joined the viceregal household of Sir Thomas Wentworth as dancing master. 1   Alan Fletcher has provided an exhaustive account of all kinds of performance in Ireland and my discussion of Dublin performance pre 1600 is dependent on his work. Alan J. Fletcher, Drama and Performing Arts in Pre-Cromwellian Ireland : A Repertory of Sources and Documents from the Earliest Times Until c. 1642, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2001. See also Alan J. Fletcher, Drama, Performance and Polity in Pre-Cromwellian Ireland, Cork, Cork University Press, 2000.  

 

performing politics in early modern dublin 191 Gaelic Irish culture and aristocracy but also dislodged the Dublin community called the « Old English ». These « Old English », the descendents of Henry II’s Anglo-Norman colonists, had dominated the Viking settlement of Dublin for over 400 years. Their distinctive culture shaped Dublin and the surrounding area known as ‘the Pale’, at this time the limit of English authority in Ireland. Beyond this, Gaelic Ireland was largely untroubled by royal assertions of authority. Despite sporadic attacks in both directions, the long duration of their presence had led the Old English to reach a modus vivendi of sorts with their Gaelic Irish neighbours. Trading, marrying and living along side the native Irish, they were considered « Hiberniores Hibernis ipsis », ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’. However, a series of laws, of which the 1366 Statute of Kilkenny was the most significant, sought to throw a cultural cordon sanitaire around the Old English to preserve their distinctive identity from the pernicious influence of the Irish. 1 The efficacy of the statute may be judged by the regularity with which the authorities had to reiterate this and like laws throughout the sixteenth century. What is interesting is that the political threat to English authority in Ireland was considered as primarily cultural, best countered by prohibitions of social praxis. A particular target were Gaelic Irish modes of dress, speech and performance. 2 The « Old English » proudly differentiated themselves from both the Gaelic Irish and the English. 3 Eliza 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1   « Now many English of the said land, forsaking the English language, fashion, manner of riding, laws and usages, live and govern themselves by the manners, fashion and language of the Irish enemies, and have made diverse marriages and alliances between themselves and the Irish enemies, by which the said land and its liege people, the English language, and the allegiance due to our Lord the king, and the English laws are put to subjection and decayed, and the Irish enemies raised up and relieved contrary to reason », Statute of Kilkenny, 1366, in Statutes and Ordinances and Acts of the Parliament of Ireland, King John to Henry V, edited by H. F. Berry, Dublin, 1907, pp. 430-468. 2   The Gaelic Irish sported bushy beards and long fringes called ‘glibs’ : « there is again nothing which doth more contain and keep many of his subjects in this his said land in a certain savage and wild kind and manner of living than the diversity that is betwixt them in tongue, language, order and habit […] Wherefore it be enacted […] that no person or persons, the King’s subjects within this land being […] shall be shorn, or shaven above the ears, or use the wearing of hair upon their heads, like unto long locks called ‘glibes’ […] and that no person […] shall use of wear any mantles, coat or hood made after the Irish fashion », ‘An Act for the English Order, Habit and Language’ (28 Hen. viii. C.15), Irish Statutes, 1, 1786, pp. 119-122, cited in Constantia Maxwell, Irish History from Contemporary Sources (1509-1610), London, George Allen Unwin, 1923, p. 113. Ordinances and legal correspondence expressing concern at the presence and popularity in Dublin of Gaelic Irish harpists, pipers, storytellers, poets and gamblers are scattered throughout the government and municipal record. 3   « You must understand that the Kings of England have had dominion over a great part  

 

 

 

 

 

192 garrett fagan bethan visitors viewed Dublin as a strange domestic frontier, provincial but oddly foreign. The culture of Dublin then was a strange but distinct hybrid of English and Irish, consciously defining itself against both Ireland and England. 1 Having withstood the siege of the rebellious Earl of Kildare in 1534, Henry VIII granted Dublin full incorporation as a county borough in 1548, allowing the civic authority to grow in prestige, independence and autonomy. 2 For the first three quarters of the sixteenth century, Old English Dublin as a municipality gains wealth, confidence and prestige and sought the means to protect and promote its self-interest through cultural practice. Literary examples of this include Richard Stanihurst’s description of the city which forms part of the Irish section of Shakespeare’s historical source text, Holinshed’s Chronicles. 3 Stanihurst’s account bursts with pride at a Dublin he celebrates for its civility, its learned gentlemen, its loyalty and the antiquity of its traditions. 4 However, books were of limited use in communicating to a largely illiterate populace. Large scale civic processional and performance providof Ireland these 300 years or more by reason whereof both the country and the nation hath been divided into two sundry parts that is the English Pale and the wild Irish, and like as they of the English Pale always use the self same religion, customs, laws, manners of civil living that we use in England, so contrariwise they of the wild Irish, as unreasonable beasts, lived without knowledge of God or good manners […] hereof it followed that because their savage and idle life could not be satisfied with only the fruit of the natural unlaboured earth therefore they continually invaded the fertile possessions of [the English Pale] reaping where they sowed not and carrying away cattle which they nourished not. Therefore the King’s Majesty which is now dead […] layed in such substantial garrisons in the straits of his borders, that they could no more enter into the English Pale unless they would be either slain or taken prisoners ». See William Thomas, The Pilgrim : A Dialogue on the Life and Actions of King Henry VIII, edited by James Anthony Froude, London, Parker, Son and Bourne, 1861 [1546], pp. 66-67. 1   On Old English identity, see Natives and Newcomers : Essays on the Making of Irish Colonial Society 1534-1641, edited by Ciaran Brady, Raymond Gillespie, Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 1986 ; Nicholas Canny, Kingdom and Colony : Ireland in the Atlantic World 1560-1800, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1987. 2   « Dublin is the beautie and eye of Ireland [...] a yong London », Raphael Holinshed, Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, vi, Ireland, London, 1807-1808 [1577], p. 23 ; Charter of Incorporation, issued at Westminster 21 April, 1548, in Calendar of the Ancient Records of Dublin in the Possession of the Municipal Corporation, i, edited by J. T. Gilbert, R. M. Gilbert, Dublin, 1889-1944, p. 35. 3   Richard Stanihurst, A playne and perfect description of Irelande, in Holinshed, op. cit., p. 23. 4   This laudatory tone is continued in the work of Stanihurst’s university tutor and sometime house guest Edmund Campion. See Edmund Campion, Two Bokes of the Histories of Ireland, edited by A. F. Vossen, Assen, Van Gorcum Press, 1963 [1571].  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

performing politics in early modern dublin 193 ed the best means for the city to represent itself. In this manner, by and through itself, the city brought forth its self-image – an image which was created out of its people, place and polity. The cathedral of Christ Church had an important role in the cultural life of the city and had a long tradition of staging large-scale liturgical drama. 1 Religious drama was joined by a host of secular and municipal public activities : Parliaments, civic receptions, Riding of Franchises, Musters, Saints’ days and guild celebrations. Linking text and praxis, sixteenth-century annalistic writers in Dublin carefully record the performance of civic drama and ceremonial in the fabric of the city. 2 By 1466, three major festivals were established : St Patrick’s day (as Ireland’s saint), St George (patron of England and of the corporation’s own guild of St George) and Corpus Christi, the European wide celebration of the sacrament of the mass. As Fletcher notes, « these three festivals together encode in brief the complex nature of Dublin identity. That identity was international, loyal to its English cultural origins and also in some sense inalienably Irish and independent ». 3 Civic performance tracks political change. The Corpus Christi play grows in importance through the fifteenth and early part of the sixteenth century, coinciding directly with the period when the Old English are increasingly sharply defined in contradistinction to their Gaelic Irish neighbours. 4 In such circumstances, a cultural investment in Corpus Christi Pageant expressed a cultural consanguinity with England, participation in a Europe-wide practice and strengthened links with those mercantile partners such as York and Chester which also celebrated Corpus Christi. 5 There is an aptness to these guild-sponsored religious processional pageants : the carpenters present Noah, the fishermen present those fishers of men, the Apostles and the goldsmiths the « thre kings of Cologne, riding worshipfully with offerings ». 6 Unfortunately Dublin’s  

 

 

 

 

 

 

1   See M. Egan-Buffet, A. Fletcher, The Dublin Visitatio Sepulchi Play, « Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy », Section C, 90, 1990, pp. 159-243. 2   See the anonymous annalistic account of Dublin, Trinity College Dublin (hereafter tcd), ms 591 (E.3.28). 3   Fletcher, Drama, Performance and Polity, cit., p. 131. For instance in 1573 the Corporation ordered members of the council to wear hoods and gowns as was the practice in London. See Calendar of the Ancient Records of Dublin in the Possession of the Municipal Corporation, ii, edited by J. T. Gilbert, R. M. Gilbert, Dublin, 1889-1944, p. 230. 4   See A New History of Ireland, in Medieval Ireland 1169-1534, edited by A. Cosgrove, Oxford, 1987, pp. 533-536. 5   Alan J. Fletcher, The Civic Pageantry of Corpus Christi in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Dublin, « Irish Economic and Social History », 23, 1996, pp. 73-96. 6   Regulations for the Pageants of Festival of Corpus Christi Christi, Chain Book of the City of Dublin, Calendar of Ancient Records of Dublin, i, cit., pp. 239-240.  

 

 

 

194 garrett fagan weather sometimes dampened religious fervour and dramatic enthusiasm as in 1523 when « It raynede so sore that ye mayor and his brethren tarryede in Chryschyrche [cathedral] ». 1 St George had long been a key figure in Dublin’s civic identity and the St George’s day pageant was one of the high days of the civic year. 2 To the east of the city wall stood St George’s Chapel and in 1426 Henry VI issued letters patent for a fraternity to be based there. By the sixteenth century, its guild was the most powerful in the city, drawing its membership from the city administration. The pageant included a procession of sixteen figures : the ‘Emperor’, ‘Empress’, ‘St George’ and the dragon led by a maid accompanied by horsemen and trumpeters. 3 With its mythological basis this was civic performance unalloyed with the religious observance necessary on Corpus Christi. Its key political inflection was the sharing of authority between city and state. In civic ceremonial both the Mayor and Lord Deputy had swords borne in front of them. As Fletcher notes, « by a metonymy […] establishing a parity that was at once an independence » the Mayor and Lord Deputy might be read for St George and the Emperor respectively, both equally armed and honoured by their ceremonial swords of state. 4 This dramatic metaphor of equivalence between the civic and vice regal swords underlined Dublin’s loyalty and the cultural Englishness of the corporation, a signification aimed both at Gaelic Ireland and London. This was not mere dramatic fancy. On numerous occasions Dubliners had fought to defend the Pale. 5 This civic defense was focused on the figure of St George. In 1474 a Fraternity of St George was established, the  

 

 

 

 

1

  Dublin Chronicle, tcd ms 543/2/14, 20 July 1523, fol. 233.   A contemporary verse recorded the importance of the Dublin St George celebrations : « in Ireland, S[ain]ctGeorge’s day / Was honoured brauelye euery waye, / By lords and knights in rick array, / As though they had been in England ». See The Shirburn Ballads 1585-1616, edited by 3 Andrew Clarke, Oxford, 1907.   British Library ms Additional 4791, fol.149r-v. 4   Fletcher, Drama, Performance and Polity, cit., p. 140. From 1403 the Mayor of Dublin, like London was entitled to have a sword borne in front of him in procession. See C. Blair, I. Delamer, The Dublin Civic Swords, « Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy », 88, 1988, pp. 87-142. 5   « the citizens have from time to time so galled the Irish that, even to this daie the Irish feare a ragged and iagged Blacke standard that the citizens have […] This standard they carie with them to their hostings, being never displayed but when they are ready to enter into battle and come to the shocke. The sight of which daunteth the Irish above measure », Holinshed, op. cit., vi, p. 23. As early as 1402 the citizens of Dublin, led by their Mayor had marched out of the city to defeat the marauding O’Byrne clan, killing 493 of them. See J. F. Lydon, The Defence of Dublin in the Middle Ages, in Medieval Dublin, iv, edited by Sean Duffy, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2003, pp. 63-77. 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

performing politics in early modern dublin 195 first standing army in Ireland, numbering as many as 500 men. Its purpose was to defend and protect the Pale and its captain was elected every year on St George’s day. 1 The Lord Mayor’s personation of St George was not a chivalric fantasy but a reminder of a very real Dublin fighting tradition which had a profound cultural investment in the figure of St George. This entwining of myth, civic performance and actual warfare is illustrated by the experience of one Richard Stanton, « a good servitor, an excellent markeman, as his valiant service that time did approve », praised in Holinshed’s Chronicles for his valour in defending the city walls from Irish attackers during the siege of 1534. 2 He is afterward appointed the processional serjeant to the Mayor, bearing the sword in the St George’s day parade and subsequently plays the part of St George himself in the 1546 ‘Triumph of Peace’ pageant. 3 Stanton, in reality the heroic defender of the city, personates its metaphorical protector and the icon of its cultural distinctiveness and bellicosity, St George. In this we can observe the congruity of pageant performance and civic life, as Stanton embodies back to the city its image of itself through civic performance, at once exemplar and icon of the city’s identity. However, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century this tradition of civic performance was under threat. English royal power sought to extend and secure itself throughout Ireland and with the intensification of hostility a cadre of administrators and soldiers were sent from England to take control in Ireland : the ‘New English’. These New English, eager to extend English State control in Ireland and to aggrandize themselves as its agents, viewed the Old English municipal authorities with suspicion and their cultural distinctiveness, pallid Protestantism and suspected recusancy with outright antipathy. The Old English civic performances of the St George’s procession and the liturgical feast of Corpus Christi were prohibited in 1565-1567. 4 The landscape of power and its performance in the city had altered. The aspirational optimism of the parity of St George and the Emperor as a metaphor of a consentual partnership between corporation and Viceroy no longer seemed appropriate or even possible. The source of this competition was an aggressively expansionary New  

 

 

1   Statutes, Edward IV, ii, pp. 682-831 ; E. Curtis, A History of Medieval Ireland, London, 1938, 2 2, p. 335.   Holinshed, op. cit., vi, p. 297. 3   I am dependent on Alan Fletcher’s tracing of Stanton’s career here ; see Fletcher, Drama, Performance and Polity, cit., pp. 142-145. 4   Dublin City Archives (hereafter dca), mr 35, p. 225.  

 

196 garrett fagan English administration headed by the Lord Deputy. The Lord Deputy was a figure with powers far beyond any analogous European figure.1 Although a Viceroy, he was in loco the de facto ruler of Ireland, with an army, parliament and Privy council. He could pardon traitors, dispose of their lands and had an entire nation’s administration in his patronage. As Fynes Moryson said, « under the Great Seal of Ireland the Lord Deputy may do all things of regal authority save coining of money ». 2 The panoply of power vested in the Lord Deputy was bodied forth in the ceremonial which attended his entry into Irish cities and towns. Henry Sidney, father of the poet, served three terms as Lord Deputy between 1566 and 1578. Lord Deputy Sidney’s progresses involved his entry to Waterford in 1567, to the accompaniment of cannon volleys, via a special barge decorated with tapestries. A pageant performed before the assembled civic worthies included an oration by one Nicolas White, declaring :  

 

 

not onlye the good will of them of the citie towards the maiesti bwt also vnto the said Lord Depwtie and also the franches vnto them grawntid by dyveres Kinges and prencise affore time and the lorde Depweti afforte also thanked them of theare gentil cwrtiesye as well towards the quines maiestie as vnto hyme particwlare. 3

In this description, the object of honour and the precise location of power is difficult to establish. The deputizing Sidney is both a conduit of regal power and an alternative to it. 4 After Sidney’s recall in 1578 a number of works, including his own memoir, seek to rehabilitate his service ; among these is John Derricke’s Image of Ireland. 5 A combination of verse and woodcut images, it recounts Sidney’s campaign against the Irish rebel Rory Og and the contest of English civility and Irish barbarism. In the final image, Sidney is seen enthroned, the sword of state beside him, surrounded by his officers (Fig. 1). This image is both reassuring and troubling – the woodcut shows Sidney formally receiving the  

1

  « No Vice-Roy in all Europe hath greater powers, or comes nearer the Majesty of a King in his train and State ». The present state of Ireland together with some remarks on the ancient state thereof, London, 1673, p. 165. 2   Fynes Moryson, Of the Commonwealth of Ireland, in Irish History from Contemporary Sources, 1509-1603, edited by C. Maxwell, London, George Allen, 1923, p. 384. 3   tcd ms 581 (e.3.18), fol. 94r-v, cited in Fletcher, Drama, Performance and Polity, cit., Appendix iiia, p. 305. 4   As early as 1571, Sir Edward Butler recorded his concerns that Leicester would marry Elizabeth and make Sidney king of Ireland ; see S. G. Ellis, Tudor Ireland : Crown, Community and the Conflict of cultures, 1470-1603, London, Longman, 1985, p. 260. 5   John Derricke, The Image of Ireland, edited by J. Small, Edinburgh, A. & C. Black, 1883 [1581].  

 

 

 

performing politics in early modern dublin

197

Fig. 1.

submission of the rebel chief in the foreground and embracing him in the background. The caption reads, « Loe where he sitts, in honours seat most comely to be seen / As worthy is to represent the person of the Queen ». 1 The association of Sidney as Irish viceroy with regal rituals and symbols constitutes him as not only the Queen’s representative but her rival. In terms of civic ceremonial in Dublin, the cultural charge and currency of St George is increasingly annexed to English state power vested in the person of the Lord Deputy. It is the Lord Deputy who now assumes responsibility for marking St George’s day, rather than the corporation. In 1578, Lord Deputy Sir Henry Sidney rides to Christ Church cathedral wearing his Garter robes, the cathedral hung there with cloth showing the Garter arms « all gorgiusly worked in metal ». 2 Here we observe a shift from the municipal to the vice regal and from the corporate to the domestic. Sidney places his own household, not the civic community at the centre of the events : paying extravagantly to celebrate St George’s day with a St George flag, trumpeters and gilded banqueting dishes for his vice regal table. 3 The political inference was clear : in Dublin it was no  

 

 

 

 

 

1

2   Ibid., plate 12.   tcd ms 772 (E.4.11), fol. 18.   Sidney’s domestic accounts show payment for a Standard and « gylding bancqueting

3

 

198 garrett fagan longer the municipality but the English state, and increasingly the physical person of the Lord Deputy, that was the origin of political power and the iconic locus of the city’s theatrical imaginary. Later Viceroys continued to annex the powerful political signification of St George to themselves. Essex’s arrival in Dublin as Lord Deputy in 1599 occasioned a « magnificente and princelei celebracion of Sainct Georges feaste ». 1 Sir Anthony Selden wrote to Edward Reynolds, Essex’s secretary in London, that the Dublin St George’s day celebrations « passed all the service I have seen done to any prince in Christendom ». 2 While the martial figure of St George remained central to civic identity, by the end of the sixteenth century the context of civic drama and performance in Dublin had changed from a municipal to a vice-regal mode. This development shadowed the increasing power of the New English as political conditions worsened and the Old English came under pressure. These were the conditions in which the first secular drama staged in Ireland, Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville’s Gorboduc, was performed on 7 September 1601 at Dublin castle for the Lord Deputy Mountjoy. Mountjoy was a favourite of Elizabeth, whose affections he shared with his rival, duelling adversary and later friend, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. 3 Despite an inauspicious beginning, Essex and Mountjoy became intimate personal friends and close political confederates. 4 Intelli 

 

 

 

dishes against St Georges feast and for Sondrie trumpeters », cited in Fletcher, Drama, Performance and Polity, cit., p. 395. Sidney had long celebrated St George’s day by wearing his Garter robes, proceeding to Christ Church with a guard of honor and a choir and having « kepte a royall feast and open house to such as wold come ». 1   bl ms additional 12562, fol. 5. 2   Cited in James Shapiro, 1599 : A Year in the life of William Shakespeare, London, Faber and Faber, 2005, p. 287. At a time when St George’s day celebrations in London were muted a previous Lord Deputy, Perrot, noted of Essex’s Dublin celebrations : « There was not greater state, plenty and attendance used at that time in the Court of England on the Queen and all her knights of the Order ». A local Irish witness marked Essex’s display a « regal pomp the most splendid that any English man had ever exhibited in Ireland ». Shapiro, op. cit., pp. 287-288. 3   Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy was clever, handsome and a capable and ambitious soldier. A favourite of Elizabeth, he was resented by Essex, whose remark on seeing Mountjoy in the Queen’s good graces – « now I perceive every fool must have favour » – provoked a duel in which Mountjoy wounded him. R. Naunton, Fragmentia Regalia : Memoirs of Elizabeth, Her Court and Favourites, London, 1824, p. 120. On the career of Mountjoy, see Cyril Falls, Mountjoy : Elizabethan General, London, Odhams, 1955 ; Frederick M. Jones, Mountjoy 1563-1606. The Last Elizabethan Deputy, London, Burn and Oates, 1958. 4   They soldiered together in the Azores campaign in 1597, Essex appointing Mountjoy as his lieutenant general of land forces, much to the chagrin of the much more experienced  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

performing politics in early modern dublin 199 gent, reflective, ambitious and a very capable soldier, Mountjoy was enthusiastic about drama and given to reading playbooks in his leisure. 1 He had attended the first performance of the Comedy of Errors at the Grey’s Inn’s Revels in 1594 with his friend Essex. 2 Having attended the Inns of Court, he was familiar with the Revels tradition, perhaps having read or heard of the famous performance there of Gorboduc. 3 It has been demonstrated above how performance in Dublin had changed over the course of the sixteenth century from a municipal, popular and public celebration of a civic community identity into a governmental expression of authority and power vested in the person of the English Lord Deputy through such ceremonial as the St George’s day celebrations. However, there had also grown up a tradition of domestic dramatic performance amongst the New English elites. These performances, using self-consciously English models of drama, served to express English civility in Ireland, most powerfully when such performances were centred on the Lord Deputy as the Crown’s viceroy. This represented, as Fletcher notes, « the means whereby loyalty to a class and culture could be trumpeted amongst those who witnessed, patronized and even participated in it directly ». By retaining performers and patronizing those of their associates, the New English elite « mutually connected as they often already were by ties of kinship and marriage, were further bonded in a close network of performance patronage ». 4 Certainly, the practice of masquing was well established as a domestic  

 

 

 

Sir Edward Vere. See Falls, op. cit., p. 81, Jones, op. cit., pp. 35-37. Their friendship permitted Mountjoy’s openly adulterous affair with Essex’s older sister Penelope, who was married to Lord Rich. Mountjoy’s correspondence frequently expressed his loyalty to Essex in strong terms : « I will be ever at youre Lordshipp’s commandement », Mountjoy to Essex, 4 November 1595, Warwick County Record Office, td 69/6.2, item 59. 1   « He delighted in Study […] in reading Playbooks for recreation », Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary of His Travels, ii, Glasgow, Maclehose, 1907 [1617], pp. 45-46. His father was patron to one of the most active troupes of players in England ; see Fletcher, Drama, Performance and Polity, cit., p. 423, n. 91. Mountjoy was recalled from an adventure against the Spanish in France in 1593, Elizabeth instructing him : « See that you lodge in court, where you may follow your books, read and discourse of warre ». Mountjoy was known for his scholarly habits, having « grown by reading to which he was much addicted to the theory of a Soldier » ; Naunton, op. cit., pp. 59, 80. 2   See William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors, edited by R. A. Foakes, London, 1962, pp. 115-117. Mountjoy attended a feast given by the Essex on 14 February 1598 at which plays were performed ; see Letters and Memorials of State, ii, edited by A. Collins, London, 1746, p. 3 91.   Entered Middle Temple 20 June, 1579. 4   Fletcher, Drama, Performance and Polity, cit., p. 213. It should be noted that the New English elites also patronised Gaelic Irish musicians, performers and fools ; see ibid., pp. 215-227 and passim.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

200 garrett fagan entertainment of the new English elite. 1 Lord Deputy Russell’s household was entertained at Galway in December 1595 when « the noble men and Captens presented my Lorde with a Maske » ; further entertainment was had at Dublin on New Year’s day 1596 when « certen llords and gentlemen presented my Lorde with a maske ». 2 These festive performances, acted by the elites themselves rather than professional performers, were not only a self-demonstration of cultural identity and civility but enacted and reified a sense of inclusion and fraternal community. In these circumstances, the conditions of performance and the personnel involved fulfill a similar function of inclusion and identification for the New English elites in Ireland as the communal dramatic practices of the Revels did for institutions such as the Inns of Court. It is likely therefore that Mountjoy found the cultural aspect of his vice regal job congenial, recognizing that it allowed for the cultural expression of political messages. In selecting Gorboduc with its dumbshow masquing interludes, Mountjoy was offering a familiar, even local, dramatic experience to his guests. Its well-known identity as an Inner Temple Revels play which had received royal approval would commend it to this elite community in Dublin. 3 Mountjoy’s choice of entertainment sought to engender a sense of inclusion and esprit de corps, providing his audience with English drama and a glimpse of how Westminster meditated on politics through theatre. The plot of Gorboduc, an analogue of Lear, 4 is as follows : Gorboduc, king of Britain, divides his kingdom between his two sons, Ferrex and Porrex, which engenders civil war and anarchy. The younger son, Porrex, advised by his counselors, kills the elder. In revenge their mother, Videna, then kills Porrex. The subjects rebel, killing the King and Queen. The nobility then savagely restore order and « the land was for along time almost desolate and miserably wasted ». 5  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Sir Henry Sidney’s household accounts for 1556-1559 include payment for visors and 9s 4d for « trimming » existing masking apparel ; see ibid., p. 217. 2   Lambeth Palace Library, ms 612, Carew Papers, fols. 43, 44v. 3   A second performance of Gorboduc followed swiftly from its Inner Temple debut. This took place approximately two weeks later at Court at the Queen’s request on 18 January, 1562. The most detailed description of the circumstances surrounding the performances is Marie Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies : Drama and the Elizabethan Succession, London, Royal Historical Society, 1977, pp. 39-41. 4   For a discussion on the possible influence of Gorboduc on Shakespeare, see B. H. Carneiro de Mendonca, The Influence of Gorboduc on King Lear, « Shakespeare Survey »,13, 1960, pp. 41-48. 5   Thomas Norton, Thomas Sackville, The Argument of the Tragedy, in Two Tudor Trag 

 

 

 

 

 

performing politics in early modern dublin 201 Critical discussion of Gorboduc has focused on its English performances with particular reference to Elizabeth and its identity and influence as an early Senecan tragedy. 1 I would like to consider the circumstances surrounding the first Irish performance of this play : how, emerging from a specific local dramatic context in Dublin and from the very particular political circumstances of 1601, it offered powerful and multivalent readings to its audience at Dublin castle. 2 At its Irish debut, Gorboduc was already forty years old and the context for its performance and reception may be understood in very different ways from that of its first performance in London at the Inner Temple Revels on 18 January 1561 in the presence of the young Queen Elizabeth. The play was there performed before a legal audience, offering counsel on state policy through dramatic metaphor in a courtly and sophisticated manner. On that occasion, it was understood to be a careful piece of advice to the young queen to marry soon, but to choose wisely. 3 If in the 1560s Gorboduc was understood as an optimistic but tactfully didactic encouragement to Elizabeth toward marriage and motherhood, then by 1601, with Elizabeth childless, her court beset by factions, Ireland in open rebellion and European neighbours hostile, it could only be darkly pessimistic. The image of the aged ruler was all too real and the succession crisis depicted all too present :  

 

For cares of kings, that rule as you have rul’d For public wealth and not for private joy, Do waste a man’s life and hasten crooked age, With furrow’d face and enfeebl’d limbs, To draw on creeping death a swifter pace[ :] (Gorboduc, I.ii.170-175)  

edies, edited by William Tydeman, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1992, p. 52, hereafter referred to as Gorboduc. References are to act, scene and line number and will be appear parenthetically in the text. 1   See Greg Walker, The Politics of Performance in Early Renaissance Drama, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 196-222 ; Axton, op. cit. ; James, Walker, art. cit. ; Gordon Braden, Renaissance Tragedy and the Senecan Tradition : Anger’s Privilege, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1985. 2   Its identity as the first secular play and first tragedy performed in Ireland is briefly discussed by Christopher Morash, A History of the Irish Theatre 1601-2000, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 2-3 and Fletcher, Drama, Performance and Polity, cit., p. 225. 3   See E. W. Talbert, The Political Import and the First Two Audiences of Gorboduc, in Studies in Honour of DeWitt T. Starnes, edited by Thomas Perrin Harrison, Austin, University of Texas, 1967, pp. 87-115 ; Norman Jones, Paul Whitfield White, Gorboduc and Royal Marriage Politics, « English Literary Renaissance », i, 26, 1996, pp. 3-16.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

202

garrett fagan

By the close of sixteenth century, English control in Ireland was perilously fragile. Nearly a decade of rebellion and inconclusive but savage warfare had depleted resources and resolve. The arch-rebel Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone had inflicted a crushing defeat on royal forces and revolt was endemic in Ireland. The restoration of English supremacy by a decisive military victory was imperative. 1 In 1598 Mountjoy was to be appointed Lord Deputy in Ireland, but Essex blocked this and had himself appointed to the post. Essex’s tenure was disastrous and deserting his post, he returned to London to face disgrace in October 1599. By November, Mountjoy was confirmed as his replacement and arrived in Dublin in February 1600, where he immediately began a successful but severe campaign against Tyrone. The power of the Lord Deputy as an Irish Viceroy and the representation of that in terms of public ceremonial has been demonstrated above. The Irish wars had irrefutably established Ireland as a site of resistance to Tudor rule. More troublingly, the plentitude of power invested in the Crown’s Lord Deputy in Ireland might easily sway ambitious and capable men to treason. A succession of such men had invested the Lord Deputy with a repertoire civic performance and display which, if it bodied forth the identification of the Lord Deputy with the Queen’s power, contained within itself the potential for rebellion. Tantalizingly for the Lord Deputy, too close an identification between the Crown and his own identity as an Irish Pro-Rex might slip into usurpation. Gorboduc contains numerous references to the overreaching ambition of the overmighty striving for power. The Queen, Videna, says of Porrex, Whose growing pride I do so sore suspect, That, being rais’d to equal rule with thee, Methinks I see his envious heart to swell, Fill’d with disdain and with ambitious hope.

(I.i.31-34) 2

A consistent theme of the play is the indivisibility of sovereignity and the ungovernable nature of the ambitious and martial who covet the throne. 1

  On the desperate military situation in Ireland, see Cyril Falls, Elizabeth’s Irish Wars, London, Methuen, 1950 ; Paul Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars : War, Government and Society in Tudor England, 1544-1604, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2003 ; Hiram Morgan, Tyrone’s Rebellion : The Outbreak of the Nine Years War in Tudor Ireland, London, Royal Historical Society, 1993 (Royal Historical Society Studies in History. New Series). 2   See also « Be such untamed and unyielding pride / As will not bend you noble hests ; / If Ferrex, the elder son, can bear no peer / Or Porrex, not content, aspires to more » (Gorboduc., III.i.833-836).  

 

 

 

 

 

 

performing politics in early modern dublin 203 A performance of Gorboduc in Dublin might well recall in the figure of the overmighty noble ‘Fergus, Duke of Albany’, Essex, the previous Viceroy in Ireland, recently executed for treason. 1 Fergus foreshadows those later ambitious royal usurpers of Elizabethan drama, Tamburlaine and Richard III :  

If ever time to gain a kingdom here Were offer’d man, now it is offer’d me : […] No issue now remains, the heir unknown ; [...] And Britain land, now desert, left alone Amid these broils uncertain where to rest, Offers herself unto that noble heart That will or dare pursue to bear her crown.  

 

(V.i.1479-1490)

Ireland was popularly known as a location in which English usurpers might gather support to themselves. Always the site of rebellion, it offered ambitious aristocrats the opportunity to build a rival power base to that of the monarch. This, however, was not a novel connection, it had deep textual roots. In Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI Ireland is where York is able to plot his attempt to gain the English throne :  

Whiles I in Ireland nurse a mighty band I will stir up in England some black storm Shall blow ten thousand souls to heaven or hell, And this fell tempest shall not cease to rage Until the golden circuit on my head Like to the glorious sun’s transparent beams Do calm the fury of this mad-bred flaw. 2

This was not a mere literary conceit. After the failure of Essex in Ire1

  Albany was understood by Elizabethans to be what we would call Scotland. Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regnum Britanniae relates that the legendary founder of Britain, Brutus divided his kingdom between his three sons, the youngest Albanactus received Scotland which he named after himself. That Fergus is Duke of Albany (Scotland) is significant given the concerns regarding James VI of Scotland’s ambitions toward the English throne and Essex (and Mountjoy’s) encouragement of them. Compare Eubulus the Secretary’s words : « Fergus, the mighty Duke of Albany [...] Daily he gathereth strength, and spreads abroad / That to this realm no certaine heir remains / That Britain land is left without a guide », Gorboduc, V.ii.1592-1599. 2   William Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI, III.i.348-354, in The Complete Works, edited by John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor, Stanley Wells, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2005, 2, pp. 55-89.  

 

 

204 garrett fagan land and his desperate attempts to seize the throne, the court in London formed a clear association of high office in Dublin with treason. Sir Anthony Standen, writing of Essex’s majestic celebration of St George’s day in Dublin, is darkly aware of its possible reception : « Though all this was to her majesty’s honour, yet what malice may hew out of this, you know ». 1 The linkage of drama and political power were well recognized by Essex himself. He had staged a performance of Richard II at the Globe on Saturday 7 February 1601, the day before his attempted coup. The plentitude of power and the subalternate dangers of high royal service in Ireland were explicitly associated with Essex’s Irish period, as when Shakespeare represents him as a martial princely figure in Henry V :  

 

 

 

How London doth pour out her citizens. The Mayor and all his brethren, in best sort, Like to the senators of th’antique Rome With the plebeians swarming at their heels, Go forth and fetch their conqu’ring Caesar in – As, by a lower but loving likelihood, Were now the General of our gracious Empress – As in good time he may – from Ireland coming, Bringing rebellion broachèd on his sword, How many would the peaceful city quit To welcome him! Much more, and much more cause, Did they this Harry. Now in London place him. 2

Read in terms of the expectation surrounding Essex’s appointment to Dublin in 1599, this is a dangerously ambiguous passage presaging political action. The figure of the young male martial hero occludes the aged Queen through public acclamation for Irish service and is rendered royal by association with an earlier Tudor prince. A performance of Gorboduc in Dublin in 1601 would unavoidably be understood in terms of the immediate political scandal of Essex’s aspiring treason. More than this, however, it linked Essex’s crime with the post he held in Ireland and that role’s new incumbent, Mountjoy. In the context of the performance of Gorboduc in Dublin, Mountjoy was representing both the potential plentitude of his power as a rival to the crown and his loyal disavowal of such. The words of Gorboduc’s Queen Videna, when spoken in Dublin, 1

  Cited in Shapiro, op. cit., p. 287.   William Shakespeare, Henry V, V.0. Chorus 24-35, in The Complete Works, cit., pp. 595626. 2

performing politics in early modern dublin 205 advertised Mountjoy’s loyalty, recalling as they do Essex’s role in Ireland and ultimate execution :  

When lords, and trusted rulers under kings, […] With wrong transpose the course of governance, […] Jove’s just judgment and deserved wrath Brings them to cruel and reproachful death.

(I.i.59-66)

Given Mountjoy’s appointment in Dublin, the court in London had good reasons for grave concern as to his loyalty. 1 While Mountjoy had been associated with the rival Cecil faction at court, he was deeply involved with Essex’s machinations regarding the succession, dispatching a secret letter in the summer of 1599 to James of Scotland indicating their support for his succession. 2 After his house arrest, Essex implored Mountjoy to use the army assembled for Ireland against the Queen’s councilors. However, by February 1600 Mountjoy had arrived in Dublin and Essex, increasingly desperate, mounted his ill-fated coup. Upon hearing of Essex’s execution for treason in London in 1601, Mountjoy was so panic-stricken he arranged for a ship so that he might escape to France. However, the Queen intervened personally in order to have evidence of Mountjoy’s involvement in the Essex conspiracy suppressed. In 1   Mountjoy’s correspondence to Essex proclaimed his fidelity in strong terms : « A harte most addicted to youre Lordshipp », Mountjoy to Essex, 5 August 1595, Warwick Record Office, td 69/6.2, item 55 ; « I am most your Lordshipp’s, more then my owne », ibid., item 57. Mountjoy’s support of Essex continued after his recall and fall : « my Lord Southampton and my Lord Mountjoy unto whom it seemed my Lord of Essex had committed the care of his fortunes (according to the feares had been conceaved at several times of his danger to be carried to the Tower) divers courses had been thought of for his delivery, either by procuring him means to escape privately into France, or by the assistance of his friends into Wales or by possessing the courts by his friends to bring himself again into her Majesties presence », Declaration of Sir Charles Danvers, Correspondence of King James VI of Scotland with Sir Robert Cecil and Others in England during the Reign of Elizabeth, edited by James Bruce, London, Camden Society, 1861, Appendix xi, p. 101. 2   After Mountjoy had been chosen to replace Essex in Ireland, he sent Henry Lee to James with the offer that « if the King of Scotland would enter into the cause at that time, my Lord Mountjoy would leave the kingdom of Ireland defensively garded and with 4 or 5000 men assist that enterprise which, with the party that my Lord of Essex would be able to make, were thought sufficient to bring to pass what was intended », Declaration of Sir Charles Danvers, cit., pp. 102-103 ; « My Lord Mountjoy imparted to Lord Southampton and myself, that the sommer before he had written to the king of the Scotts […] to give assurance that next after her Majesty he would endure no succession but his, and to intimate some course for his declaration during her Majesties time », Declaration of Sir Charles Danvers, cit., p. 102.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

206 garrett fagan the light of such clement action, it was clear what Mountjoy might do to demonstrate his loyalty : the speedy pacification of Ireland. In deciding to stage Gorboduc in Dublin on Queen Elizabeth’s birthday, 7 September 1601, Mountjoy was aware that this play would have certain resonances personal to his own circumstances and career, resonances which he might hope would be noted positively at court in London and fully complete his rehabilitation. Gorboduc’s plot concerning a succession crisis, ambitious princes, bad counsel, savage conflict and the threat of anarchy was all too close to his own experience. Essex’s trial for treason and the vengeful suspicions of the court in London are the personal context to Mountjoy’s presentation of a play admonishing the folly of usurpation. If Essex attempted to stage a coup d’état in London, then Mountjoy’s response, conscious of political scrutiny at court, was to stage a coup de théâtre in Dublin. The story of King Gorboduc was popularly linked to the Elizabethan polity. Spenser makes use of it in The Faerie Queene his epic foundation myth of the Tudor dynastic state which is itself intimately connected with Ireland. 1 The play of Gorboduc, set in a mythic period and depicting a succession crisis sundering a unified British land, reflected well the present crisis and threat in Ireland. James would create that unified British dominion again in 1603 and that likelihood was well recognized by 1601 (and signaled through Mountjoy’s secret dealings with Essex and James). Indeed Gorboduc, dwelling on the horror of war and having as its object the creation of a stable British state, stands as a metaphor for British self-creation amid the bloodshed and strife of English involvement in Ireland. Elizabethans had long looked to antique pre-histories as both legitimating and illuminating contemporary political developments. 2 The story of Gorboduc, recalling as it does the sundering and eventual reuniting of a proto-British state, would have been timely and resonant in a political situation which anticipated a union with James of Scotland and a res 

1

  Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ii.x.34-36, in The Works of Spenser, edited by J. C. Smith, E. de Selincourt, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1926. The Irish context to The Faerie Queene and to Spenser’s work more generally is by now well established. For representative studies see Andrew Hadfield, Spenser’s Irish Experience. Wilde Fruit and Salvage Soyl, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997 ; McCabe, art. cit. 2   « To delyght moste in reading of hystories […] not as many doe, to passe away the tyme, but to gather thereof such judgement and knowledge thereby as you may be the more able to direct your private actions, as to give counsel lyke a most prudent counseller in publyke causes ». See H. G. Dick, Thomas Blundeville’s The True order and methode of wryting and reading Histories, 1574, « Huntington Library Quarterly », 3, 1940, pp. 154-155.  

 

 

 

 

performing politics in early modern dublin 207 1 olution of Irish tumults. This tendency to seek political understanding through pre-history was particularly marked in the English engagement with Ireland. To English observers, there was a strange archaizing impulse, a sense in which Ireland was an antique location. The Elizabethan fondness for anachronistic medieval display in some manner rendered Ireland as a chivalric dreamscape. During the Parliament of 1543, when Henry VIII was proclaimed King of Ireland, the assembled nobles had a tournament « Ronninge at the ringe wth speares on horse bake », a display which was already self-consciously anachronistic, the military training of their grandfathers. 2 The late sixteenth-century historian Hanmer, writing to provide a context for the failure of Elizabethan policy in Ireland, is careful to make present the medieval, wistfully dwelling upon the banqueting of Richard II in twelfth-century Dublin, he presents an Arthurian Ireland peaceful, loyal and archaic to counter the failed state and entropic violence of his own experience. 3 For the New English, lived experience in Ireland, cultural practice and the ‘Irishness’ encountered textually through the mass of English policy documents, literary representations and official correspondence of the period created a situation whereby Ireland took on an imaginary dreamscape-like quality, functioning as a liminal space in which the desires and anxieties of English self-conception and aspiration might be projected and played out. In its turn, this imaginary space of Ireland found its physical analogue in the society and polity of Dublin and the Pale, where Englishness had been rendered hybrid and compromised by its interactions with Irishness. Viewed from this perspective Gorboduc, with its entropic violence and its depiction of a paleo-British identity as yet provisional and formless, appears as a peculiarly apt choice for performance in Dublin. In this dramatic space, lived experience and imagination were closely entwined. This can demonstrated in the cultural valency of the figure of St George in an Irish context. Long celebrated as an icon of municipal Dublin and Old English identity, by 1600 his feast day had been transformed  

 

1

  See note 1, p. 203 for the association of James of Scotland with Fergus, Duke of Albany 2 in Gorboduc.   tcd ms 591 (E.3.28), fol. 14v. 3   « Christmas drew on which the King kept at Dublin where he feasted all the princes of the land [...] and soe wonderfull it was for the people to behold such a puissant prince, the pastime, the sport and the mirth, the continuall musick, masking, mummings and stange shews [...] the Knights and Lords in rich attired, the Running at Tilt » ; see M. Hanmer, The Historie of Ireland, Royal Irish Academy, ms 1135 (23.G.15), 25 December 1171. Meredith Hanmer had been in Ireland from 1591 and his history was published in James Ware’s Historie of Ireland, Dublin, 1633.  

 

 

208 garrett fagan into an assertion of the power of the English government centred on the person of the Lord Deputy. St George, the martial English hero and symbol of Protestantism victorious, is an apt totem a figuration of which can be seen in Spenser’s Red Crosse Knight, the perfect martial British Christian. Book V of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, « the Legend of Justice », depicts his analogue Artegall dispensing a very rough justice in Ireland as he seeks his consort queen Britomart. A contemporary addition to the manuscript of a policy document by Spenser grimly anticipates the victory of Essex over the Irish through synecdochically opposing the figures of St George and St Patrick :  

 

 

Mark Irish when this doth fall Tirone and Tire all A peere out of Ingland shall come And Irish shall Tire all and some St Patrick to St George a Horse boy shalbe seene And this shal happen in ninetye nyne. 1

However, this was not merely a literary conceit. Mountjoy himself identified personally with the figure of St George. 2 This identification, expressed through martial activity in Ireland in defense of English civility, was part of actual lived experience. 3 In real life, a version of Spenser’s « Red Cross knights » had ridden out in defense of the Englishness of the Pale in the guise of the Fraternity of St George. 4 An Irish genealogical text depicts a figure, a soldier wearing a contemporary neo-classical masquing costume, dressed as St George trampling the Irish dragon and  

 

1

  Clearly, this dates from Essex’s campaign in Ireland and was presumably written in late 1598 or 1599. Spenser left Ireland on 9 December 1598 for London, fleeing his large Cork estates and Tyrone’s forces. In London he advocated a harsh and punitive response circulating his Irish policy tract A Briefe note of Ireland at court. The document quoted above comprises sections of this and is titled Spenser’s discourse briefly of Ireland, British Library, Harleian ms 3787, 21, fol. 184. 2   « He was very comely in all his apparel but the robes of St George’s Order, became him extraordinarily well », Moryson, Itinerary, cit., II, ii, 45. 3   « There they had close 400 shot, the rest of their forces to the greatest show stood on a hill fast by the same […] knowing they attended us there, being the way we never showed before and to honour St George’s feast the more we faced there ambuscade, where I believe your Lordship was the best skirmish for an hour long that was in Ireland a good while, want of powder parted us both » ; Sir Oliver Lambert to Mountjoy, 24 April 1600, cspi, cit., 134, pp. 119-120. 4   After the fraternity was disbanded in the early sixteenth century, its cultural significance remained strong. During the rebellion of Thomas Fitzgerald in 1535, it was reported that « a companie of white coats with red crosses landed at Dublin secretlei in dead of night » ; see Holinshed, op. cit., vi, p. 298.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

performing politics in early modern dublin 209 1 holding a sword and a severed Irish head. This strange coalescence of St George, spectacular violence and the dramatic masquing figure indicates that amongst the Elizabethans in Ireland there was a commonly shared psychological modus operandi which allowed them to accommodate the savagery of their actions through displacing them to a literary-dramatic or mythic realm. Mountjoy framed his experience of campaigning in Ireland in the terms of an Inns of Court Revel : « I have played the lord of misrule in theas parts this Christmas », 2 suggesting (as if in a terrible instance of Bakhtinian ‘carnival’) that at war in Ireland he felt free of the constraint of norms of behaviour. In a very real sense, then, the New English Elizabethan conquistadors lived in the chivalric dreamscape of a mythic Britain, perhaps as means of accommodating the failure, savagery and relentless attrition of the Irish wars. War was pursued in pitiless manner. Execution, by beheading or hanging, was freely used and with little discrimination between adversaries and non-combatants. 3 Reflecting the conditions in which they lived and the acts they perpetrated, the textual representation of cultural practices in Ireland are suffused with violence. Thus, those English newly arrived, first encountering Ireland through the textual representation of histories or official documents, were already accultured to the savagery of the conflict. John Derricke’s Image of Ireland depicts the martial glory of Sir Henry Sidney riding out through the city gates of Dublin to fight the Irish (see Fig. 2). 4 In this depiction, the signs of civility are encoded in a dense visual field : the spire of Christ Church cathedral ; the St George’s crosses on the soldiers shields ; the massive walls, a cultural cordon and guarantor of identity, its spikes topped with the bearded heads of Irish rebels. 5 This was verisimilitude, but more than that. Those sites, like  

 

 

 

 

 

1   Albon Leveret, Athlone Officer of Armes of the whole realme of Ireland 1649-57, go ms 46, British Families, iii. 2   Letter to Sir George Carew, 1 January 1601, Lambeth Palace Library, ms 615 (Carew Papers), fol. 31v. 3   A characteristic of war in Ireland was the extent to which civilians or non combatants were not spared and the use made of largely indiscriminate extra judicial execution. On the intensity of war in Ireland and the viciousness with which it was pursued, see David Edwards, The Escalation of Violence in Sixteenth-Century Ireland, in The Age of Atrocity : Violence and political conflict in early modern Ireland, edited by David Edwards, Pádraig Lenihan, Clodagh Tait, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2007, pp. 34-78 ; John McGurk, The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland, Manchester University Press, 2009. 4   Derricke, op. cit., Plate vi. 5   The legend over the spiked heads reads : « These trunkles heads do pleynly show each rebelles fatal end, and what haynous crime it is, the Queene for to offend » Sir Henry Sidney  

 

 

 

 

210

garrett fagan

Fig. 2.

the city walls, which functioned as physical signs of identity and bulwarks against cultural threat were celebrated in public ceremonial, but equally bodied forth more sinister messages about the savagery with which English civility was demonstrated and upheld. 1 Decapitation was a cultural practice which was frequently recorded and lauded in the textual representations and witnesses of the Irish wars. The presentation of heads to the Lord Deputy was a frequent sign of good service and triumph. 2 Edmund Campion records the ugly death of the rebel Shane O’Neill :  

is given the following verse « For he that governes Irish soyle, presenting there her grace / Whose fame made rebelles often flye, the presence of his face ». See Derricke, op. cit., Plate vi. The celebration of the city walls as a cultural cordon in Dublin was marked by the important ‘Riding the Franchise’ ceremony ; see Fletcher, Drama, Performance and Polity in Pre-Cromwellian Ireland, cit., pp. 130-131 and passim. 1   The grisly use to which physical sites which represented the festive celebration of community identity were sometimes put is recorded in the torture of one Art O’Toole by a soldier : « Within vii miles of Dublin [they] bounde him to a maypole [and a man] did with his thombs thrust oute both his eyes ». Charles Montague to Sir Henry Harrington, pro sp 63/202, i, fol. 243. 2   « Sir Nicolas Arnold by authority to straine the rebels at his discretion, whereof he presented the Govenour many times with a number of principall outlaws heads », cspi, cit., 25 March 1571, p. 192.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

performing politics in early modern dublin

211

The soldiers with their slaughter knives […] mangled him cruelly, lapped him in an old Irish shirt and tumbled him into a pit, within an Old Chappell hard by whose head 4 dayes after Capt Pierce cut off [and sent] to the Deputy, who set it before him on a pole at the Castle of Divelin, where it now standeth. 1

There is a disturbing confluence of cultural practice here in which decapitation, civic display, association with the mythic St George and the authority of the Queen’s Viceroy in Ireland as the guarantor of English civility are bound up. In such circumstances the attenuated boundary of civility and savagery is reflected in the liminalities of performance, textual representation and lived experience. What was Mountjoy’s intention in staging Gorboduc on 7 September 1601? Clearly following on from the misadventures of Essex and his own complicity, this was meant to be taken as a sign of loyalty directed primarily toward London. 2 However, with Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone in open and triumphant rebellion and Mountjoy engaged in savage warfare, Ireland stood in a state of near anarchy and was a fulcrum of geopolitics as Spain prepared to land troops in Cork. 3 The play had a powerful local resonance in Ireland, showing how attempted usurpation engenders anarchy. When Clotyn in Gorboduc says that the uprising people, forgetting truth and love, Contemning quite both law and loyal heart,

have slain their rulers, and Mandud continues that they carried on with rage, In their rebellious routs, to threaten still A new bloodshed unto the prince’s kin, To slay them all and to uproot the race[,]

(V.i.1352-1359)

the present threat of Tyrone to the English in Ireland and the need to contain that threat was clear. At its initial staging forty years previously, the play had been taken 1

  Campion, op. cit., p. 186.   « When the government of Ireland was imposed up on my Lord Mountjoy, his former motives growing stronger in him, by the apprehension of my Lord of Essex’s danger, whose case he seemed extraordinarily to tender », Declaration of Sir Charles Danvers, cit., p. 103. 3   On the Nine Years War, the rebellion of Tyrone and his defeat at the battle of Kinsale, see A New History of Ireland, iii, Early Modern Ireland 1534-1691, edited by T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin, F. J. Byrne, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1976 ; Falls, Elizabeth’s Irish Wars, cit. 2

 

 

 

212 garrett fagan as a cautious encouragement to marry, a warning to the young queen against submission to a foreign power and inter alia the legitimacy of her subjects to take a view on such matters. In the Dublin of 1601, the « unnatural thraldom of [a] stranger’s reign » (Gorboduc, V.ii.1694) might clearly be understood as a Spanish/Tyrone confederacy. Jacqueline Vanhoutte identifies in the play an attempt to temper the principle of divine right with the concept of ‘native land’ as an additional source of legitimacy and locus of identity. 1 Underlying this, in Vanhoutte’s reading, is a version of nationhood in which kings draw their authority in part from « Britain land and the mother of ye all » which reconfigures traditional conceptions of divine right monarchy. 2 By representing Britain as a mother, moreover, Sackville and Norton also take an uncompromising stance against foreigners, for it would be, as the counselor Arostus declares, « against the rules of kind, / Your motherland to serve a foreign prince » (V.ii.1695-1696). Played in Dublin, this appeal to native land as a basis for identity and loyalty suggests an attempt to recapitulate the divisive identity politics of « Gaelic Irish » and « Old » and « New English », Gael and Gall. « The nationalism the play evokes, in other words, is incipient, neither fully formed nor yet culturally dominant. It co-exists with and complements the dynastic notions central to Gorboduc’s socio-political vision ». 3 This suggests a necessarily vague and flexible locus of identity capable of accommodating the fractious and contradictory elements of the Irish polity gathered together in Dublin castle. 4  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Jacqueline Vanhoutte, Community, Authority, and the Motherland in Sackville and Norton’s Gorboduc, « sel : Studies in English Literature », ii, 40, 2000, pp. 227-239. On Gorboduc’s ambiguous attitude toward sovereignty, see also Franco Moretti, ‘A Huge Eclipse’. Tragic Form and the Deconsecration of Sovereignty, « Genre », i/ii, 15, 1982, pp. 7-40. Moretti argues that Gorboduc shows a ‘contest’ between competing versions of the body politic and that « the first movement of the first English tragedy is thus to sever the connections that sustained the dominant culture » (p. 12). 2   Vanhoutte, art. cit., p. 228. Vanhoutte’s reading of Gorboduc suggests that the play offers ‘native land’ as an additional locus of identity to the person of the monarch. The play « complicates the commonplace identification of the body politic with the monarch, and it circumscribes royal sovereignty by assigning authority to the ‘native land’ (V.ii.170) » and by giving « that ‘native land’ a maternal shape, Gorboduc adapts Elizabeth I’s own maternal rhetoric in order to urge the queen to accept its political vision » (ibid., p. 228). 3   Vanhoutte, art. cit., p. 235. 4   It is interesting that Mountjoy balances concern for his queen with fidelity to his native land as justification for his overtures to James of Scotland : « The cause that moved my Lord Mountjoy to enter into this course with Scotland and to proceed therein afterwards was, as he protested his duty to his majesty and his country ; for he could not think his country safe, unless by the declaration of the successor it could be strengthened against the assaults of our most potent enemies who pretended a title thereunto, nor could he think her Majesty  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

performing politics in early modern dublin 213 What sort of audience and what sort of atmosphere might have witnessed the play and how might they have responded? How might Gorboduc have been understood in Dublin in 1601? The play had had a textual afterlife following on from its performance in 1561. In the intervening years, it had come to be understood less as a marriage advisement and more as cautioning against the dangers of civil discord. It had been printed in 1590 in a single volume along with Lydgate’s Serpent of Division (1422), a life of Caesar which dwelled upon the dangers of civil war, usurpation and divided succession. 1 It was therefore understood in a reasonably recent form to be taken as a corrective to civil dissent. Anticipating a Spanish invasion force and with Tyrone’s rebellion in the ascendant, the crowd gathered in the hall of Dublin Castle that night would have constituted a political theatre of its own.The Gaelic-Irish Chieftains, Anglo-Irish aristocrats, New English administrators, Dublin aldermen and adventuring soldiers were met in warily pragmatic and shifting alliances, as likely to oppose or endorse Tyrone, the ascendant political power in Ireland, as the new arrival from London. 2 The immediate context to the performance was a febrile one. The competing groups gathered there were sharply attuned to shifts in the balance of political power and themselves of uncertain allegiance. 3 In Gorboduc, the wise counsel Arotus acknowledges from the stage the political calculations circulating amongst the audience :  

of the title of discended crown Uncertainly the diverse minds do think Even of the learned sort, and more uncertainly Will partial fancy and affection deem. (V.ii.1645-1647) so safe by any means as by making her owne kingdom safe by that union against theyre attempts now », Declaration of Sir Charles Danvers, cit., p. 102. 1   On the 1590 single volume edition of Gorboduc and John Lydgate’s Serpent of Division, see H. N. MacCracken, Editor’s Introduction, in The Serpent of Division, by John Lydgate, New Haven, H. Frowde, 1911, p. 47 ; Harold Stein, Studies in Spenser’s Complaints, New York, Oxford University Press, 1934, p. 92, note 34. 2   Tyrone had won a stunning victory over the English at the ‘Battle of the Yellow Ford’ at Blackwater in 1598. William Camden indicates the seriousness with which he was viewed by the English authorities : « his Industry was great, his soul large and fit for the weightiest business. Much knowledge he had in military affairs, and a profound dissembling heart », cited in Shapiro, op. cit., p. 61. 3   The difficulties of Ireland coupled with the huge potential rewards for newly arrived colonisers created fierce and bitter competition between rival factions of the administration both in Dublin and London. This vicious political infighting led one Lord Deputy, Henry Sidney to lament that service in Ireland « was subject to the ear and not object to the eye », Holinshed, op. cit., iii, p. 1552.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

214

garrett fagan

Two days before the performance, hysterical rumours had circulated around Dublin : a second Armada was in preparation, a grand European alliance was poised to invade England, James VI of Scotland was coming to Tyrone’s aid. 1 The heightened atmosphere of the world of the play would be familiar : as Tyndar, ‘the parasite of Porrex’ notes in the play, « [r]eported tales / Without the ground of seen and searched truth » and « secret quarrels run about his court » (II.ii.683-685). In the political conditions of Ireland at the time, allegiance and loyalty were opaque and mutable qualities. In the context of Essex’s treason, even the figure of the Lord Deputy was doubtful, no longer a stable guarantor of the crown. To such an audience, Gorboduc contains much topical content which would have had relevance in Dublin’s governmental circles. Fierce debates among English policy makers attempted to account for the failure of reform, which focused on issues of racial identity and social custom. Primogeniture was a key cultural figure of English civility and the Irish practice of ‘Tanistry’ (elective succession and inheritance) was held to both frustrate English attempts at colonization and to be a proof of Irish barbarism. 2 The central concern of Gorboduc is the anarchy that results  

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Report of Patrick Strange at Cork : « Babble of the King of Scots come to aid the traytor Tyrone which is to have the aid of Denmark and the Spanish that are in Flanders shall come into England. Thus shall the great O Neil be rescued. This kind of blasphemy was never so in use as now it is […] the people are hollow hearted and rumours may affect them », cspi, cit., 4 September 1601. On 7 September 1601, the date of the performance, the Mayor of Waterford reports the intelligence gathered from « 2 scholars of Madrid » aboard « a ship of La Rochelle » that there was a fleet at Lisbon and 8000 men massed at Coruna. cspi, cit., 7 September 1601, 62. As Gorboduc has it, « rascal numbers of the unskilful sort / Are filled with monstrous tales » (II.ii.698-699). 2   « In England and all well ordered Common-weales men have certaine estates in their Lands and possessions, and their inheritances discend from Father to Son, which doth give them encouragment to builde and plant and to improve their Landes […] but by the Irish custom of Tanistry the cheeftanes of every country and the cheefe of every sept had no longer estate than for life in their Cheefereies, the inheritance whereof did reside in no man […] When their cheeftaines were dead son or next heires did not succeed them but their Tanistes, who were elective and purchased the elections by stronge hand […] These Irish customes made all the possessions uncertain being shuffled and changed and removed so often from one to another , by new elections and partitions which uncertainty of estates hath bin the true cause of such Desolation & Barbarism in this land, as the like was never seen in any Countrey that professed the name of Christ », Sir John Davies, Discovery of the true causes why Ireland was never entirely conquered to this day, London, 1612, pp. 167-168. For a consideration of theme of primogeniture in Gorboduc in an English context rather than an Irish one, see Vanhoutte, art. cit., p. 228.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

performing politics in early modern dublin 215 when the English legal principle of primogeniture is abandoned. As Philander says, he intends to show by certain rules Which kind hath graft within the mind of man That Nature hath her order and her course, Which being broken doth corrupt the state Of minds and things[.]

(I.ii.287-291)

When the Queen Videna complains that it is the King’s refusal of primogeniture which precipitates the crisis in the play, the term ‘kind’ can be understood in the context of Ireland to refer to racial stock : « So great a wrong, and so unjust despite, / Without all cause, against all course of kind » and further, « in kind a father, not in kindliness […] Therefore the more unkind to thee and me » (I.i.10-21). 1 In the context of the 1560s, this might be considered to advance, as Vanhoutte suggests, a concept of legitimacy based on native land as well as divine right. 2 In the Dublin of 1601, this takes on a more exclusive and excluding signification. When Gorboduc rages that his sons are, « for their lawless swerving out of kind, / Worthy to lose what law and kind them gave » (I.ii.89-90), ‘kind’ would be understood in Dublin castle to not only refer to family inheritance but to invoke the valent policy topos of ‘degeneration’. Through this ‘degeneration’, specifically the Old English community in Dublin and the Pale but equally other Englishmen succumbed to the pernicious and deleterious effects of Ireland on English civility and racial identity. 3 By September 1601, Mountjoy had been in Ireland for a year and a half, arriving the previous February. He had waged a savage war of attrition against Tyrone in that time, striking deep into the rebel’s stronghold in Ulster in the north of Ireland. This was warfare characterized by extreme savagery. 4 The fictional lament of Eubulus in Gorboduc – « What waste of towns and people in the land, / What treasons heap’d on murders and  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  The Old English were considered the « English by Blood » and new arrivals « English by 2 birth ».   See above and Vanhoutte, art. cit. 3   « Why are they that were once English, not English still? No, for some of them are degenerated and growne mere Irish, yea and even more malitious to the English than the Irish themselves », Edmund Spenser, A View of the Present State of Ireland, edited by Andrew Hadfield, Willy Maley, Oxford, Blackwell, 1997, p. 54. « But when their posteritie were not so warie in keeping as their ancestors were valiant in conquering, the Irish language was free denizened in the English Pale, this canker did take such deepe root as the body that before was whole and sound was little by little festered and in such manner wholie putrified », Ho4 linshed, op. cit., vi, p. 4.   See The Age of Atrocity, cit.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

216 garrett fagan on spoils / Whose just revenge even yet is scarcely ceas’d » (I.ii.347-349) – finds its echo in the documentary witness of official correspondence : « God be thanked we did kill and drown, as we all did judge, about the number of a thousand or eleven hundred […] but truly I was, never since I was a man of war, so weary of killing men ». 1 Mountjoy’s strategy was a ‘scorched earth’ programme, destroying crops, inducing famine and conducting war through the winter months to harry his enemies. Gorboduc underlines the absolute freedom of action and lack of restraint afforded to the prince. When Eubulus laments,  

 

 

 

With fire and sword thy native folk shall perish, [...] Whom shall the fierce and bloody soldier Reserve to life? Whom shall he spare from death? […] Lo, guiltless blood shall thus each where be shed : Thus shall the wasted soil yield forth no fruit, But dearth and famine shall possess the land[,] (V.ii.1728-1743)  

Mountjoy’s audience would have heard not an abstract figure but a declaration of the terms upon which hostilities were to be conducted. The Senecan tragedy of the stage is but a grim mimetic echo of the real tragedy presented by a contemporary witness :  

Where other deputies used to assail the rebels only in summer time, this lord persecuted them most […] all winter long. This brake their hearts, for the air being sharp and they naked they were driven from their lodgings, into the woods bear of leaves […] As in harvest time the Deputy’s forces cut down the corn before it was ripe, so now in winter time they carried away or burnt all the stores of victuals […] former mention hath been made in the Lord Deputy’s letters of carcases scattered in many places, all dead of famine. 2

In Dublin castle, the advice of the play’s counselor Eubulus – « This shall, I think, scatter the greatest part […] Wearied in field with cold of winter  

1

  Captain Thomas Woodhouse to Geoffrey Fenton, 23 Sept 1586, cspi, cit., p. 161.   Moryson, Itinerary, cit., II, ii, pp. 48-49. See also Spenser, A View, cit., p. 3 : « a most rich and plentiful country full of corn and cattle […] yet ere one year and a half was brought to such wretchedness, as that any stony heart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glennes they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them ; they looked like anatomies of death. [...] they did eat of the very carrions [...] the very caracasses they spared not to scrape out of the grave [...] in short space there was almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly made void of man and beast ». 2

 

 

 

 

performing politics in early modern dublin 217 nights » (V.i.1440-1442) – would be a chilling reminder to some of the audience, survivors of Mountjoy’s previous winter campaign, who were attending Dublin castle to sue for surrender and peace. The play begins with a masque in which « six wild men clothed in leaves » enter, one of whom has a bundle of sticks around his neck. The others try to break the sticks but cannot until they take the sticks one by one and break them. As Norton’s direction has it, « [h]ereby was signified that a state knit in unity doth continue strong against all force, but being divided is easily destroyed. As befell Duke Gorboduc, dividing his land to his two sons which he before held in monarchy ». 1 Played in Dublin castle, these wild green men stealing into the assembled company might have seemed not aristocratic mummers but as the actual, present and atavistic danger of Gaelic Irish woodkern, the raiders ever hemming in the Old English Pale. The leaf-covered figures perhaps served as ghastly reminders of the terrible realities of the war presently being waged. These masquers would be all too familiar to the audience as the adversaries so savagely enjoined in battle. In the circumstances of Ireland at the time, the dramatic space allowed for antagonists to encounter one another in conditions in which the savagery of the conflict and the psychic attrition it caused on the combatants, might be transfigured in mimetic terms in ways which perhaps made it bearable. Fynes Moryson, commenting on a performance of sword-dancing, is aware of the uneasy frisson of such entertainment :  

 

 

 

 

 

I have seene them often dance before the Lord deputy in the houses of divers Irish lords […] and it seemed to me a dangerous sport, to see so many naked swords so neere the Lord Deputy and cheefe Commanders of the army, in the handes of Irish Kerenes, who had lately been or were not unlike to prove Rebells. 2

However, there was also a particular anthropological reference at work. English legal ordinances had long singled out for proscription those Irish figures who stood as metonyms for the dangers of cultural miscegenation : bards, musicians, performers and gamblers. In this time of war, these Gaelic professions were the object of martial law orders to be killed on sight. Edmund Campion describes these Irish figures in a manner that echoes the costume of the masquing leaf-clad wild men : « There is among them a brotherhood of Carrowes [gamblers]. They play away Mantle and all to bare skinne and then trusse themselves in strawe or  

 

1

 

  Gorboduc, « The order of the dumb-show before the first act, and the significance there2 of ».   Moryson, Itinerary, cit., ii, 662.  

 

218 garrett fagan 1 leaves ». Moryson’s judgment when discussing these naked ‘carrowes’ is typical of the period : « Could a Provost Marshall be better employed than in hanging up such Raskells and like vagabond persons? ». 2 Thus, the masquing wild men of Gorboduc offer both a mimetic physical and cultural threat to the state and at the same time a coded allusion to the audience of the means and present policy to destroy that threat. At a wider level, the dumb show suggested the corporate unity of English civility and loyalty in Ireland, a unity which guaranteed their strength and represented their shared cultural values. This could be read in ambiguous ways, individually as a challenge to the Lord Deputy, tainted by his proximity to Essex’s treason and corporately in the political situation those attending faced. The real presence of English civility and loyalty to the Crown, present in the Lord Deputy, and his audience in the hall of Dublin castle was here encountered as an image on the masquing stage. In the Senecan play of Gorboduc with its neo-classical mode, the bundle of rods borne by the masquers can be read as a ‘Fasces’. In a play which deals with right government and the entropic dangers of anarchy and division, this symbolic ‘Fasces’ with its connotations of imperial rule would stand as a stark warning of the possibility of the Elizabethan imperial project being dismantled by Irish hands. Its destruction as part of the dumbshow in Gorboduc signaled the imminent danger Tyrone presented. However, the image of the fasces was more nuanced than this simple warning. The fasces lictoriae symbolised the imperium, the power and authority of the magistrate. Borne by the lictors in procession, they were the Pro-Consul’s badge of office. The sundering of the bundle of twigs on stage might be read as a statement directed at Mountjoy both to the seriousness of the current situation and the need for him to maintain a prudent understanding of the limits of his office. This symbolism also extended to the audience. The fasces was the symbol of the civic authority of the Roman Republic. As such, it offered a signification particular to a Dublin audience of Gorboduc. The axe-head of the fasces represented the power to punish and behead. While the magistrate did not have the power of summary execution over Roman citizens, this was altered in times of emergency. United in the municipal symbol of the ‘Fasces’, the Old English community of Dublin were offered in Gorboduc  

 

 

 

1

  Campion, op. cit., p. 19 (Chapter iv : of the mere Irish).   Moryson, Itinerary, Oxford Corpus Christi College, ms 94, fol. 256, cited in Fletcher, Drama and Performing Arts, cit., p. 190. For typical martial law edicts to execute Irish performers, to be carried out by a Provost Martial, see bl Harley, 697, fol. 143v, fol. 141. 2

 

performing politics in early modern dublin 219 an apt symbol of their resolution. The sundering of the bundle provided an abject lesson for the Dublin city fathers in what was to be lost or gained in the present crisis. To both Mountjoy and the watching audience, the dumbshow in which the bundle of twigs is broken provided simple warnings of the current emergency and subtle messages about the privileges and protections they enjoyed and their own responsibilities in maintaining them. Gorboduc, as an early Senecan English tragedy, marks that transition from the medieval mindset of Fortune, dealing equally with the good and the wicked to a much more retributive Fortune. In the moral world of Gorboduc, as in the political arena of Ireland the admonition, confirmed in the Elizabethan polity through texts such as the Mirror for Magistrates, is that the punitive cost to those guilty of error or inordinate aspiration would be mortally high. The staging of the play then was not merely a statement of war but a public admission of Mountjoy’s own private loyalty. In the play, the sin of Pride is a metaphor for the unlawful exercise of royal powers. Gorboduc the king subverts ancient custom and arrogates to his own person unlawful prerogative powers which the play depicts as engendering scenes of murder, rebellion and chaos. Philander advises Gorboduc’s younger son on the correlation between rule and humility : « See them obey, so shall you see them rule. / Whoso obeyeth not with humblenesse / Will rule with outrage and with insolence » (I.ii.297-299). Mountjoy was signalling his own awareness of such dangers and reassuring his guests – Gaelic aristocrats and the Old English municipality – that should they remain his confederates they would preserve themselves from catastrophic civil war and they could be assured of respectful treatment from the Lord Deputy. With his old friend Essex beheaded for treason which he was an ancillary party to, and now himself enjoying the greatest plentitude of power and latitude of action afforded to any of the Queen’s mighty servants, by staging this play Mountjoy was signaling publicly a recognition but also a repudiation of the viceregal temptations to aspirant power which had been so self-consciously and beguilingly played out by his predecessors Sidney and Essex in their St George’s day pomp. If previous Lord Deputies had inhabited through ritual the figure of an Irish Pro-Rex to Elizabeth’s English Queen, Mountjoy’s Gorboduc indicated to both London and Dublin that he would stay within the bounds of his office. The decision to celebrate the Queen’s birthday by staging Gorboduc in Dublin in 1601 begins to look like a manoeuvre of political calcula 

 

 

220 garrett fagan tion : a ‘theatre of terror’. And so it proved : two days later Mountjoy set out from Dublin on his campaign which would lead to the crushing of Tyrone’s forces at Kinsale on Christmas Eve 1601 and the decisive end to Elizabeth’s Irish wars. 1 This was followed by a savage scorched earth policy extirpirating all resistance throughout Ireland. This was the realization of Gorboduc’s theatrical warning, that undecided succession and the usurper’s aspiration to royal power led to entropy. The intended target of the message of the wisdom of fidelity to the English crown in the performance of Gorboduc is as much the Lord Deputy himself and his Old English allies as the Gaelic Irish rebels :  

 

 

no doubt as there is a secret mystery of State in these solemne pomp : and as his Lordship therein for his person and carriage, was most comely, and (if I may use the word Maiesticall) ; so the magnificence of this feast wrought in the hearts of those Rebells, and by their relation in the hearts of others after submitting […] such an awful respect to her Maiesty, and such feare tempred with loue to his Lordship, as much auailed to containe them in due obedience. 2  

 

1

  « The war was won at Kinsale, the battle marked the failure of the Spanish effort , the collapse of Ulster resistance, the completion of Tudor conquest and the eclipse of Gaelic Ireland », A New History of Ireland 1534-1691, cit., iii, p. 135. 2   Moryson, op. cit., ii, p. 99.  

 

SAINT GEORGE FOR ENGLAND, AND THE RED HERRING « FOR YARMOUTH » : BRITISH IDENTITIES AND POLITICS IN THOMAS NASHE’S LENTEN STUFF  

 

 

Per Sivefors

I

t would not be exaggerated to say that 1599 was a seminal year in Elizabethan history and culture. As James Shapiro points out in his account of this year, this was the time when Elizabethans sent off an army to crush an Irish rebellion, weathered an armada threat from Spain, gambled on a fledgling East India company, and waited to see who would succeed their aging and childless queen. 1

Thus, there was a great deal of concern over political change, directed both at exterior and interior affairs. Such concern arguably raised the issue of political and national identity, and if literary texts could, like Shakespeare’s Henry V (a play premiered this very year), depict England as « a model to thy inward greatness, / Like a little body with a mighty heart », the question of what actually constituted « England » did not find any easy or obvious answers. It is relevant, then, to ask to what extent Thomas Nashe’s Lenten Stuff, published in this year and describing the port town of Yarmouth as well as its main source of income, the herring, responds to such anxieties. 2 Presumably, one of the first things to strike the reader would be that it does not respond, at least not in the sense of expressing unambiguous patriotism. Lenten Stuff was written during Nashe’s stay at Yarmouth  

 

 

 

1   James Shapiro, A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare : 1599, New York, HarperCollins, 2005, p. xi. 2   It may of course seem crude to suggest any high degree of topicality in Nashe’s notoriously multifaceted text ; in fact, one common claim is that it ultimately lacks coherence and meaning. While this claim has been forwarded by critics from C. S. Lewis to Jonathan Crewe, it should be obvious from what follows that I do not consider Lenten Stuff to be ‘empty’ in the sense that it was unintelligible to its readers, or in the sense that it could not be situated in the wider political context of its time. See C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1954, pp. 394-463 and Jonathan V. Crewe, Unredeemed Rhetoric: Thomas Nashe and the Scandal of Authorship, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, especially pp. 89-101.  

 

222 per sivefors in 1598 due to the quarrel over the play Isle of Dogs and was evidently composed in return for the kindly treatment Nashe had received at the prospering fishing town.Thus, Nashe’s own position as a writer exiled from the capital is at the margin of England, in what seems like deliberate opposition against the metropolitan centre, London. 1 It squares with such an assumption that while Lenten Stuff owes a substantial debt to ‘patriotic’ genres such as chorography, it can in many ways be said to parody such writing in its rambling structure and self-consciously mocking tone. 2 At the same time, distancing and parody are also a form of acknowledgement, and the numerous references in the text to Ireland, Scotland and the political and historical unity of England arguably make Lenten Stuff a text that not only responds to issues of national identity but makes the identity as such ambiguous. Topical concerns of this kind are not merely stray references in Lenten Stuff, for the decentering of national awareness in the text can be said to correspond to the baffling structure and style that critics have frequently remarked upon. 3 It is no news to Nashe criticism that issues of national identity inform his writing. In dealing with Nashe’s perhaps most well-known piece, The Unfortunate Traveller, critics have begun to explore the implications of 1

  The issue of ‘centre’ versus ‘margin’ has been frequently discussed in the context of Nashe in general and Lenten Stuff in particular ; see especially Lorna Hutson, Thomas Nashe in Context, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989, pp. 245-268 ; Georgia Brown, Redefining Elizabethan Literature, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 53-101.Unlike Hutson and Brown, my own focus is not so much on how Nashe positions himself as a ‘marginal’ writer but on how marginality in the text is explored as an issue of national identity. Among other takes on marginality in Lenten Stuff, Peter Holbrook’s analysis has the virtue of capturing the political implications in Nashe’s subversion of decorum, but rests on a too dichotomized view of ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ culture. After all, the very style of Nashe’s narrative, with its self-conscious, even excessive nods at learning, keeps it from being unambiguously ‘popular’. See Peter Holbrook, Literature and Degree in Renaissance England : Nashe, Bourgeois Tragedy, Shakespeare, Newark, University of Delaware Press, 1994, pp. 52-56. 2   The most extensive treatment of Lenten Stuff as a parody of chorography is Henry S. Turner, Nashe’s Red Herring : Epistemologies of the Commodity in Lenten Stuff (1599), « English Literary History », 68, 2001, pp. 529-561. Turner’s essay is usefully reprinted in the recent collection Thomas Nashe, edited by Georgia Brown, Farnham, Ashgate, 2011, pp. 431-464. 3   Although the present essay is not specifically concerned with Nashe’s style – a topic which, as Brown points out, remains insufficiently discussed – I remain indebted to the work of especially Hutson and Brown for their discussions of Lenten Stuff as a self-consciously ‘marginal’ text that explores the parallels between town and text for authorial selfexpression and that (pace Brown) turns the marginal into a source of paradoxical empowerment. See Hutson, op. cit. ; Brown, Redefining Elizabethan Literature, cit., especially pp. 65-66, 81-82.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

saint george for england 223 Nashe and national identity, but Lenten Stuff has largely been ignored in this respect. 1 This is the more surprising as ‘nationhood’ and ‘nationalism’ have been among the more extensively discussed topics in recent scholarship on the period and the text has potential for extensive analysis from this horizon. Particularly, I would argue that the tension between ‘English’ and ‘British’ constitutes a powerful area of anxiety in Nashe’s text, and his praise of the port town of Yarmouth and its main source of wealth, the herring, can be analysed from precisely this context. In enacting issues of succession and how to define the borders of the English, Lenten Stuff shatters any easy assumptions about an English centre, a « body with a mighty heart ». For as David Baker has said of Shakespeare’s Henry V,  

 

if Britishness [...] is coming into being by means of the very exclusions, the assertions of difference that are employed here to define it, then Shakespeare can only represent a Britain on stage by reminding his audience of the other nations that this Britain is meant to incorporate. 2

Such reminders of political difference arguably take place – though the linguistic exuberance and parodic verve are all Nashe’s own – in Lenten Stuff as well. I suggest, then, that Lenten Stuff raises issues of succession and political unity that evoke the subtext of a ‘British’ identity. This is due partly to Nashe’s focus on the marginal port town and the insignificant fish of the herring, partly to direct references to the conflicting ‘margins’ of the emerging British state. 3 To my knowledge, no one has suggested that 1

  Among recent critics of The Unfortunate Traveller, Andrew Fleck traces the metaphorical and philosophical connections between body politic and body natural, observing that the foreign bodies in the text, unlike the Englishman Jack Wilton’s, are continually violated and torn apart. This treatment of the body, Fleck suggests, is coloured by a « nationalist complexion that evokes the period’s understanding of the political trope of the body politic ». See Andrew Fleck, Anatomizing the Body Politic : The Nation and the Renaissance Body in Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller, « Modern Philology », iii, 104, 2007, pp. 295-328, p. 297. Stephen Guy-Bray sees Nashe’s patriotism as arising largely out of his literary concerns, of his attempts at defining the ‘Englishness’ of literature in English ; see Stephen Guy-Bray, How toTurn Prose Into Literature : The Case of Thomas Nashe, in Early Modern Prose Fiction: The Cultural Politics of Reading, edited by Naomi Conn Liebler, New York, Routledge, 2007, pp. 33-45 (also available in Thomas Nashe, cit., pp. 575-587). A focused discussion on the context of France in The Unfortunate Traveller is in Richard Hillman, The Unfortunate Traveller in and out of France, in Critical Approaches to English Prose Fiction 1520-1640, Ottawa, Dovehouse Editions, pp. 157-182 (also available in Thomas Nashe, cit., pp. 549-574). 2   David J. Baker, Between Nations : Shakespeare, Spenser, Marvell, and the Question of Britain, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997, pp. 23-24. 3   Obviously, this view is informed by the perspective on England as a « ‘national’ culture  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

224 per sivefors Lenten Stuff deals in any way with British identity, despite Nashe’s long acknowledged debt to such texts as Camden’s Britannia. 1 None the less, Lenten Stuff is arguably suffused with what Philip Schwyzer identifies as main claims of the ‘old’ British history writing :  

that the history of Britain is not that of the rise of one people but of the interaction of many ; that these islands have never consisted of a single core and its periphery but of several shifting and competing centres ; that British history began neither in 1066, nor with the Anglo-Saxon or Roman invasions, but a good deal earlier ; and that close cultural contacts between Britain and mainland Europe existed long before the arrival of Julius Caesar. 2  

 

 

Certainly, ‘ancient’ British history is present in Lenten Stuff, in for example references to Norwich’s pre-Roman founder « Gurguntus » (156) or frequent allusions to Troy and its mythical derivation Troynovant. 3 Moreover, the awareness of history as interaction between people is also very much part of Nashe’s rambling account, bringing in topical references to Scotland and Ireland and doing so on the level of history as well as current political events. Even more obviously, the text deals with the issue of core and periphery, and while critics such as Lorna Hutson and Georgia Brown have acknowledged the importance of this  

 

within a connected but conflicted British state » explored in works such as British Identities and English Renaissance Literature, edited by David J. Baker and Willy Maley, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 1, and in the new ‘British’ historiography, e.g. in J. G. A. Pocock’s well-known claim that Britain was « no single nation but [...] a problematic and uncompleted experiment in the creation and interaction of several nations » ; see John G. A. Pocock, The Limits and Divisions of British History, « American History Review », ii, 87, 1982, p. 318. More specifically, I also draw on Claire McEachern’s understanding of English nationalism as defined by the succession issue in the 1590s, which in McEachern’s view enforced an acknowledgement of cultural difference to quite a new extent. See Claire McEachern, The Poetics of English Nationhood, 1590-1612, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996, especially pp. 194-197. 1   Nashe mentions Camden explicitly on three occasions in Lenten Stuff ; see Turner, art. cit., p. 553, n. 9. 2   Philip Schwyzer, British history and ‘The British history’ : The same old story?, in British Identities and English Renaissance Literature, edited by David J. Baker and Willy Maley, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 11-23, p. 11. For more general discussions of the assumptions underlying ‘Britishness’ in the early modern period, see for example Conquest and Union : Fashioning a British State, 1485-1725, edited by Steven G. Ellis and Sarah Barber, London, Longman, 1995 ; The British Problem, c. 1534-1707. State Formation in the Atlantic Archipelago, edited by Brendan Bradshaw and John Morrill, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1996. 3   All references to Lenten Stuff are to the edition in Thomas Nashe, The Works of Thomas Nashe, iii, edited by Ronald B. McKerrow, revised by Franck P. Wilson, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1958. Page references will appear parenthetically in the text.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

saint george for england 225 issue for Nashe’s authorial self-projection, the wider political ramifications of Lenten Stuff have gone largely ignored. The preoccupation with marginality, borders and space can, I believe, be connected to the particular situation of the country in the last years of the century, bringing in considerations of English history and politics into the discussion and reflecting the problems of defining national space. In intertextual terms, this preoccupation is not surprising, since chorographical writing constitutes one of the main points of departure for Nashe’s text. Indeed, Nashe’s complex indebtedness to this genre has been fully explored in Henry Turner’s claim that Lenten Stuff is « an elaborate parody of chorographical writing » that satirizes the chorographers’ idea of physical description and observation of objective fact. 1 True, Turner’s focus is more on the methodological and theoretical aspects of chorography than on its participation in a nationalist project. But his insistence that the herring represents « the very object that reconciles potentially divisive oppositions » – between London and the outports, between foreign and domestic – has the potential for a more specific discussion of the topicality of Nashe’s text. 2 Yarmouth and the herring become figures for the tension between centre and margin in Britain (including Ireland and Scotland), and their marginal position is simultaneously a source of anxiety and exhilaration. One background for my argument is succession, a defining political issue in the 1590s and also part of the complex narrative of Lenten Stuff. As I will argue, the concern with centre and margin in this text can be seen from precisely this background, which, as Claire McEachern points out, was decisive for the development of a national rhetoric on homogeneity and integrity. 3 Nashe’s text can then be said to enact the gaps and spaces in such rhetoric rather than embrace it, as its focus is consistently on the margin, the outback, the liminal spaces.  

 

 

 

1

  Turner, art. cit., p. 531. For a more rigorously political reading of chorographical writing, see especially Richard Helgerson’s discussion, which suggests that Elizabethan chorography was characterized by gradual distancing from royal absolutism ; in these works « duty to country and duty to king no longer quite coincided », as Helgerson says of Norden’s Speculum Britanniae, a work published the year before Lenten Stuff. See Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood : The Elizabethan Writing of England, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1992, p. 126. Arguably, in its emphasis on the marginal port town and the herring, Lenten Stuff can also be said to participate in the distancing from royal absolutism. 2   Turner, art. cit., pp. 542-543. 3   As McEachern says, its « self-consciously ideological and partisan character » is particularly what distinguishes the England of the union discussions in the 1590s ; see McEachern, op. cit., p. 194.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

226 per sivefors From this perspective, it is illuminating to consider the parodic elements of the text. As critics have frequently pointed out, Lenten Stuff can be said to constitute a mock encomium, whose terms are, in Paula Blank’s words, « intentionally overblown ». According to such arguments, the result is a text « deliberately void of meaning », a work that itself mocks any notions of clear interpretation. 1 However, such conclusions need nuancing. Nashe may scorn his detractors because they, he says, « have fisht such a deepe politique state meaning as if I had al the secrets of court or commonwealth at my fingers ends » (214). But it would be mistaken, I believe, to take Nashe simply at face value, partly since the denial of meaning and significance is a standard rhetorical device in early modern authorial self-presentation, partly since such self-presentation becomes a source of actual empowerment to Nashe. 2 Even more importantly perhaps, the denial of « politique » intentions does not preclude political consequences in the text’s inversion of chorographical ambitions and hierarchies. While, as Brown points out, the emphasis on marginality and triviality in the mock encomium is deeply entwined with the production of ‘authorship’, such marginalization – as the following discussion will show – also has consequences for the presentation of national identity in Lenten Stuff. 3 As a starting-point, it is appropriate to consider the port town, since it is in several respects a marginal entity yet also at the focus of Nashe’s text. For one thing, as Hutson rightfully points out, Nashe’s praise of Yarmouth can be seen in the context of struggle between London and the provinces, and the Merchant Adventurers of London were « particularly oppressive in their determination to maintain trading privileges at the expense of provincial port towns ». 4 Indeed, it is a commonplace for Nashe to position himself self-consciously on the side of the provincial port town : he says he could have burst out in « a boundlesse race of oratory » praising the monarch, but does not want to offend the « graue modesty » of the magistrates. However, he adds, « I purpose not in the like nice respect to leape ouer the laudable petigree of Yarmouth » (158 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1   Paula Blank, Broken English : Dialectics and the Politics of Language in Renaissance Writings, London, Routledge, 1996, p. 78. The most influential discussion of Nashe’s writing as « devoid of meaning » is in Crewe, op. cit. ; for commentary, see Brown’s introduction to Thomas Nashe, cit., p. xxvii. 2   On this latter point, see especially Brown, Redefining Elizabethan Literature, cit., pp. 53101. 3   For the ‘mock’ or paradoxical encomium, see Brown, Redefining Elizabethan Literature, 4 cit., pp. 81-86.   Hutson, op. cit., p. 254.  

 

 

 

saint george for england 227 159). Hence, tensions with London and the court certainly form part of Nashe’s highly partial depiction of Yarmouth. But there is also the issue of the general reputation or aura that surrounded port towns in the period in addition to the particular economic conflicts. Port towns were generally associated with the marginal and exposed to foreign threats of all kinds. Because of this very exposure they were not considered worthy patterns ; George Puttenham famously suggested, for example, that proper English speech should not model itself on that of « port towns, where straungers haunt for traffike sake ». 1 The risk of military invasion from the sea was, unsurprisingly, a common theme among writers, but there was also the idea of cultural threat, envisioning the port town as the orifice through which all sorts of foreign habits and ideals might enter the country. Yarmouth is no exception to this pattern, as is demonstrated by a 1586 catechism by Bartimaeus Andrewes, « preacher of the word of God at great Yarmouth » :  

 

 

 

 

 

Your Towne bordering vppon the sea, is in perrill to forraine inuasions, and to be steyned with the corrupt manners of other Countries, to drinke in iniquitie euen as water, therefore the more care to be hadde ouer it. Christ saw such Townes bordering on the Seas to be in most daunger sundrie wayes, and therefore frequented them most, & vouchsafed his presence & doctrine chiefliest amongst them. 2

Water serves as a convenient metaphor for all the threats to which the port town is exposed ; « corrupt manners » flow as easily into it as the water that surrounds it. By necessity, Andrewes suggests, Christ favours such towns especially and is keen on maintaining his peace there – a notion that is also echoed in Nashe’s text, as we will see presently. The port town, hence, is considered to be both particularly vulnerable and particularly protected. Andrewes was not the last preacher to issue warnings to the citizens of Yarmouth. In September 1599, about half a year after Lenten Stuff was published, William Younger delivered a sermon at Yarmouth on a theme similar to Andrewes’. However, in Younger’s text the foreign threat is all the more specific as the title-page of the printed edition claims that the sermon was preached « vpon occasion of those present troubles, which then were feared[,] by the Spaniards ». Employing the same aquatic metaphor as Andrewes but writing well after the Spanish Armada, Younger hits a standard note of condemnation of mortal sins :  

 

 

 

 

 

1

  George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, London, 1589, sig. R2v.   Bartimaeus Andrewes, A very short and pithie catechisme, verie profitable for all that will come prepared to the Supper of the Lord, London, 1586, sigs. A5v-A6r. 2

228

per sivefors

How often hath the Lord cried vnto you in effect, Yarmouth, Yarmouth, thou that swellest in the vanitie of thy conceit, that sayst with Leodicea, Reu. 3. I am rich & increased with goods, and haue neede of nothing : and therefore pride and enuie striue which shall get the vpper hand, as the vnruly waues of the sea encounter one another : wickednesse walkes vp and downe among you without controlment, and iniquitie runs full sea in the channels of thy streets[.] 1  

 

To Younger, material riches are a main source of the iniquity that pervades the city, the implication being that the « vanitie » of the people is to be defeated before foreign enemies can be so. Fundamentally, therefore, military success is dependent on a righteous mind : « If [...] wee will haue peace in our land betwixt Spayne and vs, wee must labour for peace in our consciences betwixt God and vs ». 2 In marginal Yarmouth, the enemy is both external and internal ; the water of iniquity floods the streets as a result of the sinfulness of its citizens. Nashe’s text offers an instructive contrast to this perspective, for Lenten Stuff can be said to exploit the very marginality that is a source of concern to preachers like Andrewes and Younger. While similarities to the sermonizing style of Andrewes or Younger may be hard to detect in Lenten Stuff, sermonizing would have seemed perfectly natural to Nashe as his longest piece of prose writing, Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem, is precisely a warning to the citizens of London – indeed, it compares London to Jerusalem in much the same way that Younger compares Yarmouth to Jerusalem. But Nashe’s Yarmouth clearly is not London, and his objective is anything else than warnings. Coastal towns generally seem to offer an irresistible impulse to him as a writer : « I had a crotchet in my head, here to haue giuen the raines to my pen, and run astray thorowout all the coast townes of England [...] & commented and paralogized on their condition in the present, & in the pretertense » (167). As for Yarmouth, he praises the capability of the port town to sustain not only its own inhabitants but the whole « monstrous army of strangers » who come there for food during the fair :  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hollanders, Zelanders, Scots, French, Westerne men, Northren men, besides all the hundreds and wapentakes nine miles compasse, fetch the best of their viands and mangery from her market. For ten weeks together this rabble rout 1

  William Younger, A sermon preached at Great Yarmouth, vpon Wednesday, the 12. of September 1599 [...] The argument whereof was chosen to minister instructions vnto the people, vpon occasion of those present troubles, which then were feared[,] by the Spaniards, London, 1600, sig. 2 B4v.   Younger, op. cit., sig. E2r.

saint george for england

229

of outlandishers are billetted with her ; yet in all that while the rate of no kinde of food is raised, nor the plenty of their markets one pinte of butter rebated, and at the ten weekes end, when the campe is broken vp, no impression of any dearth left, but rather more store than before. (158)  

As Hutson remarks, the town of Yarmouth seems to thrive on the very « outlandishers » that the government of London was always anxious to expel. 1 By complete contrast to Younger, material wealth in Nashe is not a source of anxiety but of more wealth, and not even the « rabble rout » is able to alter this perspective. « Monstrous armies of strangers » do not act as a threat so much as a confirmation of the commercial strength of the marginal port town. This tendency can be further understood from the complex symbolic function that water serves in Lenten Stuff. To Nashe water is generally not figured as a threat invading the streets of Yarmouth. Indeed, the metaphorical values of water to an island country were obvious to many writers, and water as a symbol of wealth and prosperity certainly figures elsewhere in Nashe’s works. 2 But Lenten Stuff particularly explores the twin function of water as a source of riches and a source of defence. Nashe explicitly compares the fishing fleet of Yarmouth to the power of the Spanish fleet : it is « nothing behinde in number with the inuincible Spanish Armada » (157), he says, and even though its ships are less impressive in size they « would haue beene reckoned in the nauy of K. Edgar », which, like the Armada, sailed « round about England euery Summer » (158). In one sense Nashe draws on a common figure to describe Yarmouth, a figure used in the rhetoric of British identity by for example James I when he succeeded Elizabeth on the English throne. James describes the island of his Scottish and English kingdom as « a little world within itself, being entrenched and fortified round about with a natural, and yet admirable strong pond or ditch ». 3 In a similar vein, also drawing  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Hutson, op. cit., p. 256. Obviously, Nashe himself is an « outlandisher », and Yarmouth becomes a figure for his self-definition as an author ; in the words of Hutson, « both town and text exist as part of an ongoing process of self-defence and self-creation » (p. 256). 2   In Pierce Penniless Nashe had suggested that London was « the fountaine whose riuers flowe round about England » (Nashe, Works, cit., i, p. 193). The emblematic force of this passage, in which the strength of the English language spreads around the country in concentric circles, also creates the idea of a country endowed with « a richer puritie of speech [...] that any Nation vnder heauen » – a patriotic emphasis that also associates water with a sense of political and linguistic unity. By contrast, Lenten Stuff focuses on the marginal port town and thus deflects the attention from London. 3   Quoted in McEachern, op. cit., p. 140. For a discussion of James and British identity, see Jenny Wormald, James VI, James I and the Identity of Britain, in The British Problem, c.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

230 per sivefors on the idea of ‘Britain’, Camden approvingly cites « an antient Writer » who says of Britain that « the sea is thy wall, and strong fortifications doe secure thy Portes ». 1 To Nashe, water is not just a defence but a source – the source – of abundance, and he observes that the citizens of Yarmouth do not get « a beggars noble » by farming, for « their whole haruest is by Sea » (171). 2 In other words, water constitutes a powerful combination of defence wall and horn of plenty. This configuration has ramifications on a national level, for the marginal port town seems almost relocated to the position of ‘centre’ in the country as a whole. The extolling of Yarmouth is something found in sources contemporary to Nashe, but in Lenten Stuff the figure of plenty is so pervasive as to make the marginal Yarmouth a source of riches as important as or even more important than London. « If there be any plentifull world, it is in Yarmouth » (171), Nashe claims. At the same time he emphasises the defence function of the town « to the Counties of Suffolke and Norfolke against their enemies » (169). 3 It is from Yarmouth to the rest of the country that riches are diffused, not the other way round : « this common good within it selfe is nothing to the common good it communicats to the whole state » (169). Moreover, Nashe emphasises that it is by its spread of commodities, especially through the fishing industry, that Yarmouth achieves this common good : « all the Realme it profiteth many waies, as by the free Faire of herring chiefly » (169). « Regall Yarmouth » (172) then takes on the role of a central resource spreading prosperity across the country. Strictly speaking, Yarmouth is not a community « that rivals London », as Lawrence Manley claims ; it is on the verge of replacing London altogether. 4 Issues of centre and margin, self and other are as always at the heart of Nashe’s writing, and here  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1534-1707 : State Formation in the Atlantic Archipelago, edited by Brendan Bradshaw and John Morrill, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1996, pp. 148-171. 1   William Camden, Remaines of a greater worke, concerning Britaine, the inhabitants thereof, their languages, names, surnames, empreses, wise speeches, poësies, and epitaphes, London, 1605, sig. B1v. 2   Other early modern sources on Yarmouth stress this fact as well : « the men of Yarmouth have not any lands, but only their sea labour to maintain them » ; see Henry Manship, The History of Great Yarmouth, edited by Charles John Palmer, Great Yarmouth, 1854, p. 77. 3   Cf. the chronicler Manship, who cites a « late very learned writer of this kingdom » as saying that « these port-towns be most excellent, not only for merchandize in time of peace, but also, for defence and offence in time of war, be most conveniently seated » ; see Manship, op. cit., p. 99. 4   Lawrence Manley, Literature and Culture in Early Modern London, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 339.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

saint george for england 231 they are rethought on a national level, providing the country with an ever-flowing nexus of material riches. 1 The question is what this country comprises, and Nashe seems to intend Britain when speaking of England, since he implies in the alreadyquoted passage on the fishing fleet that water flows ‘round about’ the country (and hence includes Scotland). In addition, he refers to King Edgar, the celebrated tenth-century monarch to whom the kings of Scotland and Strathclyde swore allegiance. The case is even more obvious when Nashe says of Yarmouth that « her sumptuous porches and garnisht buildings are such as no port Towne in our Brittish circumference [...] may suitably stake with, or adequate » (171 ; emphasis added). Indeed, Nashe’s rhetoric of abundance in Lenten Stuff sounds remarkably like Camden’s praise of « this plentifull abundance, these goodly pleasures of Britain ». 2 Nashe’s Yarmouth, « reared and enforced from the sea most miraculously » (156), is defined by the ocean yet as full of resources as Britain itself, once, in Camden’s words, « the very barne, garner, and storehouse for victuals of the West Empire ». 3 Yarmouth is itself almost an island, its port having « as it were but a welte of land » (157), and its fleet is directly compared to that of Edgar encircling the British island nation. This synecdochic thinking is reflected also in the central symbol of the herring : « small thinges we may expresse by great, and great by smal, though the greatnesse of the redde herring be not small » (186). For the herring also seems invested with a sense of (literal) British « greatness » as Nashe immediately alludes to the mythical giant of Albion : « It is with [the red herring] as with great personages, which from their high estate and not their high statures propagate the eleuaute titles of their Gogmagognes » (186). Part of the mythical narrative of Gogmagog is also the legendary founding of Britain by Brutus of Troy, which is accounted for in Nashe’s source, Camden. Troy is in fact strongly present in Nashe’s account of the herring. For example, Helen is nothing compared to « our dappert Piemont Huldrick Herring, which draweth more barkes to Yarmouth bay, than her beautie did to Troy » (185) and the herring is fetched in with as much pomp as « in Troian Equipage » (186). The « new Troy » that Brutus was reputed to have founded in Britain is also  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1   For Nashe, abundance and waste, see the discussion in Brown, Redefining Elizabethan Literature, cit., pp. 53-101. 2   William Camden, Britain, or A chorographicall description of the most flourishing kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland,translated by Philemon Holland, London, 1610, sig. 3 A2v.   Camden, Britain, cit., sig. A2r.

232 per sivefors referred to in Nashe’s hyperbolic claim that the red herring « empals our sage senatours or Ephori in princely scarlet as pompous ostentyue as the Vinti quater o[f] Lady Troynouant » (175). 1 The herring, for all its seeming insignificance, or precisely because of it, thus seems to be invested with a sense of the British rather than the strictly speaking English. But the herring cannot be reduced to the teleological purpose that the myth of Troy is identified with in Camden’s history – its ostentatious insignificance is always reminding the reader that it lacks the potential for reduction to a national purpose. 2 If there is a ‘British identity’ here, it is a self-consciously deflated one. This paradox requires further discussion. Generally, it is no news that the herring has a wide symbolic significance in Nashe’s text. To Turner, the herring « acts as a unifying principle, or strange tool » in encyclopaedic terms, encompassing all worldly knowledge, and as a part of the rising fishing industry it also takes on the qualities of both a natural and a manufactured object. 3 Its go-between status is even more stressed by Manley : « the herring [in Lenten Stuff] negotiates between lack and plenitude, desire and fulfillment ; he makes and unmakes gods ». 4 From such a position, the herring is even figured as a ruler, a motif which is insistently stressed in Lenten Stuff. The herring is a « well meaning Pater Patriæ, & prouiditore and supporter of Yarmouth » (191) and is « meate for a Prince » (223). In fact, it is even jokingly invested with divine powers : « so reuengefull a iust Iupiter is the red Herring » (194). But from such a privileged position, the herring also becomes an emblem of the problematic negotiation between different parts of the British realm. A standard argument about group identity that it is « produced by distinction from another group », but in Nashe’s text there is an uncertainty about such distinctions that the herring stands in for, or even mitigates. 5 Manley’s previously cited claim on the herring as mediator  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  According to McKerrow’s commentary, the Vinti quarter probably refers to the aldermen of London. It should be noted that the word « of » reads « or » in the first edition, but this is, again in McKerrow’s view, « a misprint » that « should have been corrected » (Nashe, Works, cit., iv, p. 388). 2   As regards the truth value of the narrative of Troy and Troynovant, derived from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, Camden takes a remarkably pragmatic position, claiming that even made-up stories can serve a useful purpose : « Let Antiquitie heerein be pardoned, if by entermingling falsities and truthes, humane matters and divine together, it make the first beginnings of nations and cities more noble, sacred, and of greater maiestie » ; see Camden, Britain, cit., sigs. A4v-A5r. 3 4   Turner, art. cit., pp. 538, 540.   Manley, op. cit., p. 339. 5   For the definition of « group identity », see McEachern, op. cit., p. 25.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

saint george for england 233 can, I believe, be taken to a wider political plane. At least this seems to be the implication of passages such as the following :  

The redde herring is a legate of peace, and so abhorrent from vnnatural bloudshed that if, in any hewing or slashing, or trials of life & death, there were that hang-man embowelling is, his pursuiuants or balies returne non est inventus, out of one bailiwick he is fled, neuer to be fastened on there more. The Scotish Iockes or Redshankes (so surnamed of their immoderate raunching vp the read shanks or red herrings) vpholde & make good the same. (188)

Here, the notion of the herring as a « legate of peace » seems to echo the standard image of Christ as mediator, which, we saw, is also present in Andrewes’ idea of Christ’s special presence in port towns. Nashe himself underscores this Christological parallel when he says of the herring that « in Yarmouth he hath set vp his state house, where one quarter of a yeare he keepes open court for Iewes and gentiles » (186). 1 But these divine peace-making qualities of the herring are also connected by Nashe to the different parts of Britain and the relations between them. Indeed, he even gives voice to the « Scotish Iockes or Redshankes » in reporting their « clacke or gabbling » phonetically :  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How, in diebus illis, when Robert de Breaux, their gud king, sent his deare heart to the haly land, for reason he caud not gang thider himselfe, (or then or thereabout, or whilome before, or whilome after, it matters not,) they had the staple or fruits of the herring in their road or channell, till a foule ill feud arose arose amongst his sectaries and seruitors, and there was mickle tule, and a blacke warld, and a deale of whinyards drawne about him, and many sacklesse wights and praty barnes run through the tender weambs, and fra thence ne sarry taile of a herring in thilke sound they caud gripe. (188)

In reproducing this talk, which is (of course) claimed to be authentically « vsurpt from some of the deftest lads in all Edenborough towne » (188), Nashe not only provides the Scots with a voice but also chalks out a Scottishness that is defined by a sense of history and its iconic representative, Robert Bruce. The herring becomes part of that history only to be disrupted by violence, condemned by the Scots themselves, who are thus, by implication, on the side of peace and unity. This attitude is suggested by Nashe to be mutual : « The sumpathy thereunto in our owne frothy  

 

 

 

1   It scarcely needs pointing out that the fish was associated with Christ through the Gospel narratives and that it had been a symbol of Christ himself in the early days of Christianity. Even though none of these parallels is mentioned explicitly in Lenten Stuff, at least the New Testament would surely have been a point of reference for both Nashe and his readers.

234 per sivefors streames we haue tooke napping ; wherefore, without any further bolstring or backing, this Scotish history may beare palme » (188). 1 Thus, in Nashe’s restlessly associative prose it seems that the foil of the herring as peacemaker is really Scotland and its uncertain relation to England. If so, this reflects an actual concern at the turn of the century. As historians argue, the English policy towards the Scots was « vague and fluctuating » at this time, with James VI becoming more circumspect « as Elizabeth’s life drew to a close and the question of his succession to the English throne came into the foreground ». 2 The « spectre of an aging monarch » makes the question of national unity acute, as McEachern points out, and the peacemaking herring therefore raises questions of national unity as well as its religious justification. 3 But the answer to them, in Nashe’s burlesque account, is « sumpathy », as if implying that parody and marginality (as figured by the herring) are the adequate response. 4 Arguably, the ideological coupling of Britain with theological considerations has further echoes in Nashe’s text. As Christopher Highley points out, « by the later sixteenth century the language and imagery of Britain had become irrevocably linked with the Protestant cause in both England and Scotland ». 5 Lenten Stuff seems to reflect this development as well, at least in its employment of the herring for anti-Catholic joking. It comes as no surprise that the herring serves as a comical national symbol against the current Spanish enemy : « such a hot stirring meate it is, is enough to make the crauenest dastard proclaime fire and sword against Spaine » (191). But the anti-Catholic tendency is even clearer in an extended narrative of a herring-smoker, who goes off to Rome to peddle some of his abundant catch, which « glowe[s] and glare[s] like a Turkie brooch, or a London vintners signe » and thus attracts – of course – the « Popes caterer » (206). Once served up at the Pope’s dinner table, the  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1   « Bear palm » could, according to McKerrow, mean « win credit or applause » (Nashe, Works, cit., iv, p. 401), but it also carries the more obviously religious associations of « Victory, triumph ; supreme honour or excellence, as in martyrdom » (oed, Definition 2.b). 2   Cyril Falls, Elizabeth’s Irish Wars, London, Methuen, 1950, pp. 80, 83. According to McKerrow, Nashe cannot have completed Lenten Stuff before the late autumn of 1598 3 (Nashe, Works, cit., iv, p. 371).   McEachern, op. cit., p. 194. 4   Apart from mentioning the « Scotish Iockes or Redshankes » Nashe yokes together Yarmouth and Scotland in a clearly fictitious anecdote of the confession by « sixe hundred Scotish witches » who claim they had all been together « in Yarmouth road » and created a « great floud » in envy of the town’s riches – a crime for which they are « executed in Scotland » (188). 5   Christopher Highley, ‘The Lost British Lamb’ : English Catholic Exiles and the Problem of Britain, in British Identities and English Renaissance Literature, cit., pp. 37-50 : 48.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

saint george for england 235 herring sends forth such a stench that « the Pope it popt vnder boord » (209), causing the cardinals to perform an exorcism on the « euill spirit of an heretique » that « thus nefariously and proditoriously prophanes & penetrates our holy fathers nostrils » (210). Theologically and politically, then, the herring constitutes a bastion against the enemy. At the same time, the extended anecdote is garnished with references to Camden and the Britannia and interrupts the narrative to describe the city of « Borrough Castle », which « because it is so auncient » deserves « some more speciall mention » (204-205). Following this is an account that itself implies a British narrative : « In [the city] one Furfæus, a Scot, builded a monastery, at whose perswasion Sigebert, king of the east Angles, gaue ouer his kingdome and led a monasticall life there » (205). It is as if the ideological drive underlying the anti-Catholic joking cannot but spawn considerations of the « ancient » history of Britain. However, and more strikingly the figure of the herring embodies the problems of maintaining political and ideological unity ; what constitutes « Britain » is always a contested matter in Lenten Stuff. By the time Nashe wrote, the issue of Catholic Ireland was acute and it arguably constitutes a subtext of the book. If late 1598 and 1599 was a time when, as Paul Hammer has suggested, « the queen’s hold on Ireland teetered on the brink of disaster » and the factionalism at court was becoming endemic, the anxieties about political and national unity arguably found their way into Lenten Stuff as well. 1 The earl of Tyrone’s victory at the Yellow Ford in August 1598, just a few months before Nashe finished Lenten Stuff, was the biggest English military defeat for several decades. 2 It is perhaps less surprising then that on the very first page of his book, Nashe enters on a fictitious dialogue with a soldier going off to war, who complains that his scarcity of money prevents him from being Nashe’s patron. However, the soldier promises that « after my returne from Ireland I doubt not but my fortunes will be of some growth to requite you » (147). The issue of waste and resourcefulness, which critics have discussed extensively in connection with Nashe’s own position as an author, also becomes a question of war, peace and national unity. 3 As the imaginary soldier says to Nashe,  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1   Paul E. J. Hammer, Patronage at Court, Faction and the Earl of Essex,in The Reign of Elizabeth I : Court and Culture in the Last Decade, edited by John Guy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 65-86, 84. 2   For discussion of this, see for example Shapiro, op. cit., pp. 53-57 ; Paul E. J. Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars : Government and Society in Tudor England, 1544-1604, Basingstoke, Palgrave 3 Macmillan, 2003, pp. 211-216.   See especially Hutson, op. cit. ; Brown, op. cit.  

 

 

 

236

per sivefors

before God, money so scatteringly runnes heere and there vpon vtensilia, furnitures, ancients, and other necessary preparations, (and, which is a double charge, looke how much Tobacco wee carry with vs to expell cold, the like quantitie of Staues-aker wee must prouiæde vs of to kill lice in that rugged countrey of rebels) that I say vnto you, in the word of a martialist, wee cannot doo as wee would. (148)

War, then, constitutes a waste of resources that only the herring – and, supposedly, Nashe’s praise of it – can remedy. But the herring in Lenten Stuff alludes to the Irish events in a fashion that also suggests an uncertainty in controlling British national space. Towards the end of the book, there is a fable about a « A faulconer bringing ouer certaine hawkes out of Ireland » (201), in which arguably the bird of prey serves as a potent symbol related the control over the Irish territory. 1 One of the falconer’s birds escapes and dives for a fish only to be swallowed by a shark, and as a consequence all the birds of the land are up in arms against « that trespasse of bloud & death committed against a peere of their bloud royal » (201). In fact, they are organised even formally as an army : the sparrow-hawk is field marshal, the peacocks are heralds, the cocks become trumpeters and the cranes serve as pikemen, « euery one according to that place by nature hee was most apt for ». When the fish realise they have to « elect a king amongst them that might deraine them to battaile » (202-203) the winner, unsurprisingly, is the herring. The issue of Ireland is here linked to that of succession, the « election of a king », a ruler – like the future king James – over different races. In other words, mixed up with the allegory terms of warfare and strife is the idea of monarchic rule, warfare and internal discord, and significantly they prefer the peaceful herring to any more aggressive species : « No rauening fish they would putte in armes, for feare after he had euerted their foes, and flesht himselfe in bloud, for interchange of diet, hee would rauen vp them » (203). As in the passage declaring the herring to be a legate of peace, the associations of the text create links to succession, national identity and the question of political rule.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  In an apparent recasting of this image Andrew Marvell, writing more than half a century later, could compare Cromwell returning from Ireland to « the falcon high » whose « falconer » – i.e., the parliament – « has her sure », and Nashe’s fable arguably anticipates this symbolic re-enactment of political control. See Andrew Marvell, An Horatian Ode upon Cromwel’s Return from Ireland, in The Complete Poems, edited by George de F. Lord, London, Everyman, 1993, pp. 55-58. For discussion of Marvell’s poem from the perspective of ‘British’ national identity, see Baker, op. cit., pp. 124-152.  

 

 

 

 

 

saint george for england 237 Arguably, this connection is also explored in the immediately preceding parody of Marlowe’s Hero and Leander, often considered to be a central piece of Nashe’s text. In Nashe’s version, the story of the two tragical royal lovers becomes a delightfully absurd episode of metamorphosis, in which the gods out of compassion transform Leander into a ling and Hero into a herring, and the tears over their tragic fate are used as an explanation of why fish goes with mustard (which of course provokes tears because it is so strong). Critics have tended to read Nashe’s version of Hero and Leander in terms of literary competition with Marlowe, though arguably, to Nashe and Marlowe alike the story of Hero and Leander was also about national and European identity, with the port cities of Sestos and Abydos, « sea-borderers, disjoined by Neptune’s might », representing the intersection of two nations and continents. 1 The intertextual parallels in Lenten Stuff to Marlowe invoke this concern in a series of ways. For example, the equation of Hero and Leander, succession and Ireland can be said to have a counterpart in the king’s favourite Gaveston in Marlowe’s Edward II. 2 Gaveston’s connection to Hero and Leander is quickly established at the beginning when he reads a letter from the king that scandalously invites him to share the kingdom with him : « thy amourous lines », Gaveston addresses Edward after reading a letter from him, « might have enforced me to have swum from France, / And, like Leander, gasped upon the sand ». 3 But the play also relates this erotic coupling to the Irish question as Edward orders to « direct our warrant forth / For Gaveston to Ireland » and offer protection to the country as the « wild O’Neil, with swarms of Irish kerns / Lives uncontrolled within the English pale ». 4 Marlowe’s play can be said to combine anxieties about succession (a monarch refusing to act the monarch) and imperial expansion (wars with Ireland and Scotland). Edward, as the ‘Hero’ of the play, fails to uphold his position as monarch, being the unchaste ruler of a divided country. By contrast, Nashe’s version of the Hero and Leander tale enacts suc 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  Christopher Marlowe, Hero and Leander, in The Complete Poems and Translations, edited by Stephen Orgel, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1971, l. 3. For Nashe’s literary competition with Marlowe, see especially Brown, Redefining Elizabethan Literature, cit., pp. 84-86. 2   For discussion of Nashe’s knowledge of Marlowe’s play and how it is reflected in his Summers Last Will and Testament, see my Underplayed Rivalry : Patronage and the Marlovian Subtext of Summers Last Will and Testament, « Nordic Journal of English Studies », ii, 4, 2005, pp. 65-87. 3   Christopher Marlowe, Edward the Second, edited by Charles R. Forker, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1994, I.i.7-8. 4   Marlowe, Edward the Second, cit., I.iv.368-369 and II.ii.163-164.  

 

 

238 per sivefors cession via comical obsession over Hero’s virginity : « Neither her father nor mother vowed chastitie when she was begote, therefore she thought they begat her not to liue chaste » (196). It even appears that Nashe’s narrative creates underground links between failing imperial warfare and failing chastity :  

 

 

 

By the sea side on the other side stoode Heroes tower, such an other tower as one of our Irish castles, that is not so wide as a belfree, and a Cobler cannot iert out his elbowes in ; a cage or pigeonhouse, romthsome enough to comprehend her and the toothlesse trotte, her nurse, who was her only chatmate and chambermaide ; consultiuely by her parents being so encloistred from resort, that she might liue chaste vestall Priest to Venus, the queene of vnchastitie. (196)  

 

Considerations of royal virginity spark associations to « our » Ireland and its castles, although chastity, it seems, is not the solution to the problems. It is instead the elect king, the Hero/herring, that represents such a solution : a Britain, it seems, in the making and transformation of itself. It is in line with such symbolism that the final outcome of the narrative is – again – peace, albeit an unstable one. The herring avoids all areas of contention from Britain’s past : « she shunneth vnquiet Humber, because Elstred was drownd there, and the Scots Seas [...] & euery other sea where any bloud hath bin spilt » (201). The specific references to the queen of the invading Scythians in Britain’s mythical past, as well as the « Scots seas », invest the story with legitimising power but also suggest – as in the story of the Scottish redshanks – that history is a source of anxiety in that very process of legitimation. Apparently, it is only by invoking the contentiousness of the past, and by doing so in self-consciously bathetic terms (the herring as king), that legitimacy and unity can be depicted. The ending of the work testifies to this as well, as it re-establishes comic affirmation of the herring as a unifying force. Admitting that his « conceit is cast in a sweating sickenesse », in a final rhetorical flourish Nashe draws a circle around England’s chief enemies, moves on to Ireland and England itself and then finally lands in Yarmouth and on the herring : « [N]o more winde will I spend on it but this : Saint Denis for Fraunce, Saint Iames for Spaine, Saint Patrike for Ireland, Saint George for England, and the red Herring for Yarmouth » (226). It is likely that Nashe did not invent this list all by himself. Nashe’s ever-scrupulous editor McKerrow refers to the « Popish gods of nations » in Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft, but I would suggest that another work is more likely as an inspiration, namely Richard Johnson’s popular prose romance Seven  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

saint george for england 239 Champions of Christendom, printed in 1596/1597 for Cuthbert Burby, for whom Lenten Stuff was also published some two years later. 1 The titlepage of Johnson’s work lists « Saint George of England, Saint Dennis of Fraunce, Saint Iames of Spaine, Saint Anthonie of Italie, Saint Andrew of Scotland, Saint Pattricke of Ireland, and Saint Dauid of Wales ». Unlike Nashe, Johnson puts England’s patron saint first, and in the narrative itself Saint George is by far the most accomplished hero of the group. What is relevant in this text for the present discussion is its investment in national sentiment. In her modern edition of Seven Champions of Christendom, Jennifer Fellows points out that the spirit of the work is « that of a rather naive nationalism ». 2 By contrast to Johnson, Nashe reverses the list of patrons, finishing by Saint George but then adding the red herring for Yarmouth. Hence, rather than establishing England as the victorious centrepiece of his narration, he lands – as he does throughout the narrative – on the marginal, the outback, so if the nationalism is there, it is parodic rather than strictly speaking ‘naive’. Nashe’s audience clearly grasped the joking nature of the list : the chronicler Henry Manship says, in clear reference to Nashe, that  

 

 

 

 

here (by way of merriment) let me remember to you, an odd conceit of a late pleasant-pated poet, who, making a catalogue of national gods or patrons, (as St Dennis for France, St James for Spain, St Patrick for Ireland, St George for England,) he then termeth Red Herring to be the titular god of Yarmouth. 3

Of course, Manship seizes the opportunity for provincial self-assertion, although he obviously has to underscore the harmlessness of his source : the « pleasant-pated » Nashe produces « merriment » with his « odd conceits ». Nashe’s « conceits » cannot be understood as an expression of outand-out nationalism, because they might be offensive if taken strictly at face value. Instead, they have to be defined as « pure » entertainment that does not question any emerging hierarchies within or without the country. As a concluding gesture, Nashe’s comic emphasis on the red herring and the port town cannot be but inconclusive as it draws the attention, once again, to the marginality of the things celebrated.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1   Richard Johnson, The most famous history of the seauen champions of Christendome Saint George of England, Saint Dennis of Fraunce, Saint Iames of Spaine, Saint Anthonie of Italie, Saint Andrew of Scotland, Saint Pattricke of Ireland, and Saint Dauid of Wales, London, 1596. As McKerrow notes, Scot cites « St. Michael » as a patron of France (Nashe, Works, cit., iv, p. 416), but Johnson’s work, like Nashe’s, has St. Denis. 2   Jennifer Fellows, Introduction, in Richard Johnson, The Seven Champions of Christendom, edited by Jennifer Fellows, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003, p. xvii. 3   Manship, op. cit., p. 120.  

 

240 per sivefors It goes without saying, then, that Lenten Stuff is indeed a « baffling », « elusive » and « protean » text, as critics have variously appointed it.1 But as a text without a clear centre, it can be said to constitute a map of the country’s political identity at the time : not so much a single core and periphery as « several shifting and competing centres », in Schwyzer’s already-quoted assessment. In Nashe’s text, the port town of Yarmouth becomes both a centre and a margin, relocated to the position of centre in the very awareness of it as margin, border, in-between. Similarly, the herring is not only « for Yarmouth » – it stands, figuratively and literally, for Britain, for its uncertain definition as well as the troubled connections between all the « shifting » centres it contained. What the paradoxical relationship between peace-making and pugnacity in Lenten Stuff reveals, therefore, is the insight that the port town of Yarmouth and the fishy goods it yields produce borders – and the exchange across them.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

 

 

  Hutson, op. cit., p. 245 ; Turner, art. cit., pp. 431, 432.  

 

IMITATION IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY PILGRIMAGE ARCHITECTURE : THE CASE OF IMPRUNETA  

Paul Davies Introduction

I

nside the pilgrimage church of S. Maria at Impruneta (Fig. 1), located about six miles south of Florence, stands a four-columned tabernacle that very closely resembles the more famous one of 1448 in Florence’s SS. Annunziata (Fig. 2). So close is the similarity that at first glance the two structures appear to be almost identical. Although often noted in the literature, this resemblance has not – to my mind – been sufficiently investigated. 1 Most scholars have assumed that it is the result of both 1   The literature on the tabernacle of the Madonna at Impruneta is to be found in three places ; it can be found in studies on (1) the church of S. Maria di Impruneta and its cult, (2) Michelozzo, and (3) Luca Della Robbia. The principal works in category (1) are Giovanni Battista Casotti, Memorie istoriche della miracolosa immagine di Maria Vergine dell’Impruneta, Florence, 1714 ; Raffaello Bianchini, L’Impruneta, paese e santuario, Florence, 1932 ; Marcello Cagnacci, Impruneta e la sua basilica : Guida storica, artistica, turistica, Florence, Pochini, 1969 ; Richard Trexler, Florentine Religious Experience : The Sacred Image, « Studies in the Renaissance », 19, 1972, pp. 7-41 ; Giuliano Pinto et alii, Impruneta una pieve, un paese : Cultura parrocchia e società nella campagna toscana, Florence, Salimbeni, 1983 ; Impruneta una pieve, un santuario, un commune rurale, edited by David Herlihy, Richard Trexler, Impruneta (Florence), F. Papafava, 1988 ; Roberto Bizzochi, Patronato dei Buondelmonti sulla pieve dell’Impruneta, in Impruneta una pieve, un santuario, un commune rurale, cit., pp. 128-143 ; Carlo Nardi, La ‘Leggenda riccardiana’ di S. Maria all’Impruneta, « Archivio Storico Italiano », 149, 1991, pp. 503551 ; and the important recent study by Megan Holmes, Miraculous Images in Renaissance Florence, « Art History », iii, 34, 2011, pp. 433-465. Those in (2) are principally Howard Saalman, Michelozzo Studies, « Burlington Magazine », cviii, 1966, pp. 242-250 ; Harriet McNeal Caplow, Michelozzo, ii, New York, Garland, 1977 (« Outstanding Dissertations in the Fine Arts »), pp. 453-455 ; Miranda Ferrara, Francesco Quinterio, Michelozzo di Bartolomeo, Florence, Salimbeni, 1984, pp. 351-353 ; Francesco Quinterio, Riflessi umanistici negli interventi di Antonio degli Agli al Santuario dell’Impruneta, in Giuliano Pinto et alii, op. cit., pp. 137-151. Those in (3) are Allan Marquand, Some unpublished monuments by Luca della Robbia, « American Journal of Archaeology », 1893, pp. 153-170 ; Wilhelm von Bode, Luca della Robbia, « Jahrbuch der königlich preussischen Kunstsammlungen », 31, 1990, pp. 1-33 ; Marcel Reymond, Les Della Robbia, Florence, Alinari, 1897, pp. 67-83 ; Leo Planiscig, Luca Della Robbia, Florence, Del Turco, 1948 ; John Pope-Hennessy, Luca della Robbia, Oxford, Phaidon, 1980, pp. 50-54 ; Giancarlo Gentilini, I Della Robbia : La scultura invetriata nel Rinascimento, Florence, Cantini, 1992, pp. 131-132.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

242 paul davies tabernacles being designed by the same sculptor-architect, and on the basis of Vasari’s attribution of the SS. Annunziata tabernacle to Michelozzo di Bartolomeo, they have drawn the conclusion that the one at Impruneta was also designed by him. 1 Others have explained the resemblance in terms of artistic influence, with an as yet unidentified workshop attempting to imitate the high quality design and craftsmanship of Michelozzo’s. 2 But neither of these arguments has ever been fully tested or explored. What this study sets out to do, therefore, is to reassess these assumptions by questioning the premise on which they are based, namely that imitation in this particular case is explicable in terms of ‘workshop style’ or ‘artistic borrowing’. In doing so, it explores the various other possible reasons for imitation, ones which have at their root concerns that are primarily devotional rather than artistic. And by focussing on the devotional and cultic circumstances that inspired the two tabernacles – both were built to house miracle-working images of the Virgin Mary – the essay asks whether the quotation of one by the other is in some sense related to their function as objects of devotion, the foci of pilgrimage. Ultimately, what this essay becomes is an investigation into the nature of imitation in pilgrimage architecture, exploring whether imitation in this context is in some sense a special case, distinct from that in other building types, a form of mimesis to which a particular – and perhaps different – set of norms apply. At the same time, it becomes an exploration into how pilgrims were meant to encounter these shrines and into what they might have thought when they came across a ‘copy’ of a celebrated shrine that they had previously seen in a different urban setting. In other words it looks at the idea of the devotional urban encounter as expressed through architecture. But before any attempt can be made to address the assumptions, it is necessary to look closely at the form of the Impruneta tabernacle and what is known of its history. The study will, therefore, begin by assessing the extent of its similarities with the one in Florence and whether 1

  Among those to attribute the shrine to Michelozzo are Reymond, op. cit., p. 74 ; Planiscig, op. cit., p. 34 (with Pagno di Lapo) ; Frederick Hartt, Florentine Art under Fire, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1949, pp. 58ff. ; McNeal Caplow, op. cit., p. 453 ; Ferrara, Quinterio, op. cit., pp. 351-353. 2   See for example Ulrich Middeldorf, Filarete?,« Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Instituts von Florenz », 17, 1973, pp. 75-86, who advances an attribution to Filarete, and Ugo Procacci, Mostra di opera d’arte trasportate a Firenze durante la Guerra e di opera restaurate, Florence, Giuntina, 1947, p. 19, who proposes a collaboration between Luca della Robbia and Pagno di Lapo. A useful survey of the positions taken by various scholars can be found in Quinterio, op. cit., p.146.  

 

 

 

 

 

imitation in fifteenth-century pilgrimage architecture 243 one of the two might be considered a ‘copy’ of the other ; then it will reconstruct as far as is possible the Impruneta tabernacle’s building history and in particular whether it pre- or post-dates the one at SS. Annunziata ; after that it will consider its patronage in order to establish whether possible motives for the imitation lie there ; and lastly it will compare the two miracle cults in order to assess whether there are cultic parallels which might have prompted the decision to ‘imitate’ or ‘copy’. Only once these issues have been addressed will the discussion return to the question of ‘imitation’ and what its purpose may have been.  

 

 

The Tabernacles at Impruneta and SS. Annunziata The generic similarity between the two classicising tabernacles is striking and unmistakeable. Both (Figs. 1 and 2) have the same, relatively simple format, being approximately square in plan, with four columns raised on a low podium and capped by canopies consisting of an entablature enclosing a coffered ceiling. These features, by themselves, are not what make the similarity so striking. Rather, it is their decorative exuberance, an exuberance that was at odds with the more restrained Brunelleschian aesthetic of the time. This over-abundance of ornament is reflected in the capitals, which are more embellished than was the norm for Corinthian or Composite types at the time. It appears too, in the elaborately decorated bases, and in the fluting of the shafts (which gave them an ornamental character that was highly unusual for columns in 1440s Florence, which tended to be smooth-shafted). Their entablatures too are also swathed in decoration – with no surface left unadorned. When considered in closer detail, the overall impression of likeness is reinforced. The devotee would have been struck by the form of the railing running around each tabernacle, which is made from bronze and designed to look like rope netting – a complete departure from earlier patterns in Florentine bronze railing design. Even though this is the largest and most prominent of the detailed features that they have in common, it is by no means the only one. The prominent corner capital of each tabernacle (Figs. 3 and 4) is both distinctive and virtually identical. Both have a swag, which is suspended from the volutes and which cradles a small scallop shell in its curve, and both have abaci with parallel bands of fluting and egg-and-dart ornament covering a part of the capital that was normally left unadorned. In addition to this particular similarity, their entablatures share the same repertoire of decorative forms including the running band of scallop shells (Figs. 5 and 6).

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Fig. 1. Tabernacle of the Virgin, S. Maria, Impruneta (photo : author).  

imitation in fifteenth-century pilgrimage architecture 245

Fig. 2. Tabernacle of the Virgin, SS. Annunziata, Florence (photo : author).  

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All this is not to say, however, that one of the two tabernacles is a precise replica of the other. There are in fact many minor differences on closer inspection. For example, the SS. Annunziata tabernacle has two pairs of capitals, one Corinthian and the other Composite, arranged on the diagonal axes, while the shrine at Impruneta has four different capitals, but all of Composite type. The SS. Annunziata shrine has elaborately designed bases of two types, corresponding with the two capital types, whereas the tabernacle at Impruneta, by contrast only has decorated bases at the front part of the shrine – the Fig. 3. Composite capital from the Tabernacle more visible part – while of the Virgin, SS. Annunziata, Florence those at the back are left (photo : author). unadorned. The tabernacle at SS. Annunziata has elaborate fluting of two types, again designed to correspond with the two types of capital, whereas the shafts at Impruneta have simpler fluting, but fluting none the less – an unusual feature for the time. This is a list that could easily be extended. Nevertheless, such is the strength of the similarity that to everyone – save perhaps the most observant of architects and sculptors – the Impruneta tabernacle’s close relationship with the SS. Annunziata shrine in Florence would have been immediate and striking. Just as the two tabernacles resemble each other in form so do they in terms of their planning. At SS. Annunziata, the tabernacle is set tight into the corner of the church’s nave on the inner face of the church’s façade just to the left of the main entrance (Fig. 7), its placement determined by the location of the thaumaturgic image of the Annunciation, which was frescoed on the inner face of the church’s façade, and was therefore  

imitation in fifteenth-century pilgrimage architecture 247 immovable (Fig. 7, a). 1 Its footprint, which is almost perfectly square (reflected in the 3 x 3 coffers on the ceiling), was as large as it possibly could be given the available space, even to the extent of the image being located slightly off centre. 2 The tabernacle was cut off from the rest of the nave by a railing, which controlled access and indicated a notional separation between the nave of the church and the holier space around the image. It was raised on a platform designed to be consistent with the height of the church’s side chapels, again as a mark of respect. Beside the tabernacle, and only acces- Fig. 4. Composite capital from the Tabernacle of the Virgin, S. Maria, Impruneta sible through it – at least (photo : author). when approached from the church – is a side chapel (Fig. 7, b), which was intended to function as a choir, and a treasury for some of the votive offerings.  

1   For analyses of the form of the SS. Annunziata tabernacle, see McNeal Caplow, op. cit., i, pp. 453-455 ; John Onians, The Bearers of Meaning : The Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1990, pp. 142-146 ; Gabriele Morolli, ‘Sacella’ : I Tempietti marmorei di Piero de’Medici : Michelozzo o Alberti?, in Michelozzo, scultore e architetto (1396-1472), edited by Idem, Florence, Centro Di, 1998, pp. 131177 ; and Wolfgang Liebenwein, Die Privatisierung des Wunders : Piero de’ Medici in SS. Annunziata und S. Miniato, in Piero de’ Medici il Gottoso (1416-1469). Kunst im Dienste der Mediceer, edited by Andreas Beyer and Bruce Boucher, Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 1993, pp. 251-290. 2   In the case of SS. Annunziata the ceiling has an arrangement of 3 x 3 coffers, each bearing palle – the armorial emblems of the Medici. See, for example, Ferruccio Canali, I tempietti della Santissima Annunziata di San Miniato di S. Maria all’Impruneta, in L’architettura di Lorenzo il Magnifico, edited by Gabriele Morolli et alii, Milan, Silvana, 1992, pp. 33-36, illustrated on p. 36. While the tabernacle itself is square, the parapet around it is slightly rectangular, measuring 4.86 metres across the front and 4.50 metres along the side.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Fig. 5. Entablature from the Tabernacle of the Virgin, SS. Annunziata, Florence (photo : author).  

Fig. 6. Entablature from the Tabernacle of the Virgin, S. Maria, Impruneta (photo : author).  

imitation in fifteenth-century pilgrimage architecture 249

Fig. 7. Comparative plans of SS. Annunziata (A) and S. Maria (B) showing the layout of the tabernacle tabernacle and adjacent treasury/chapel (shaded lightgrey) (drawing: author).

Again all these features find parallels at Impruneta, where the tabernacle is set in an almost identical distribution of spaces (Fig. 7). It too stands in the corner of the church’s nave, even though in this case it is at the eastern end of the nave to the left of the arched opening into the chancel. In footprint it is rectangular (3 x 4 coffers in the ceiling) rather than square as at SS. Annunziata, deeper than it is broad, a plan that was largely determined by the relatively restricted amount of wall space at the base of the church’s triumphal arch against which it was to stand and on which the miracle-working image of the Virgin Mary was enshrined (Fig. 7, a). It too was therefore as large as it possibly could be, with its railing projecting slightly beyond the jamb of the arch. It is raised on a platform equal to the height of the adjacent side chapel, as in the Florentine church, and the floor of the church’s chancel. Like the one in SS. Annunziata, it is ringed by a railing restricting access and it too has its own private chapel space, which is accessed from the church interior via the tabernacle (Fig. 7, b), but in this case the precise function of this space remains uncertain.

250 paul davies From this analysis, it is evident that one of these tabernacles is ‘modelled’ on the other in terms of both form and planning. The key question to address next, therefore, is which was modelled on which – which was the ‘archetype’ and which the ‘copy’? Dating the Two Tabernacles While the tabernacle at SS. Annunziata is securely dated (1448), the Impruneta one is not. 1 Even though a vast amount of information has survived about Impruneta’s miracle-working image and its attendant cult, documentary references to the four-columned tabernacle that was built to house it are remarkably scanty. 2 The principal piece of evidence for its dating appears in an account book in the archive of the Chapter of S. Maria del Fiore. There, under the year 1466, appears a payment to Luca della Robbia for work undertaken at the church of S. Maria di Impruneta. 3 Although the payment is unspecific, insofar as it does not itemise what was done there, it is generally accepted that it refers to a campaign of decoration that included the frieze, ceiling and high-relief sculptures of the tabernacle’s ‘altarpiece’, all of which are works in glazed terracotta, the hallmark-medium of Luca della Robbia’s workshop (Fig. 1). Given that these terracotta sculptures were clearly designed to fit into the stone tabernacle, it follows that the tabernacle is either coeval with, or predates, the applied terracotta sculpture. This document therefore would appear to provide us with a terminus ante quem of 1466 for the tabernacle’s design. This argument nevertheless leaves open the question of how much earlier than 1466 the tabernacle was built. One possible answer is that it was built as part of the same campaign, and another that it was erected some time earlier and only later adorned by Luca della Robbia. Unfortunately there is no documentary evidence whatsoever to establish a firm terminus post quem, but the dating can be narrowed down a little more 1

  For the building history of the SS. Annunziata tabernacle, see especially Louisa Bulman, Artistic Patronage in SS. Annunziata 1440-c. 1520, PhD, University of London (Courtauld Institute), 1971 ; Howard Saalman, Documenti inediti sulla Cappella della SS. Annunziata, in Scritti in onore di Ugo Procacci, Milan, 1977, p. 227 ; Ferrara, Quinterio, op. cit., pp. 231-234, and Liebenwein, op. cit. 2   The literature on the cult is extensive but the key works are Casotti, op. cit. ; Trexler, op. cit. ; Pinto et alii, op. cit. ; Impruneta una pieve, un santuario, un commune rurale, cit. 3   The document is published in Rufus G. Mather, Nuovi documenti robbiani, « L’Arte », 31, 1918, pp. 190-209 and in Allan Marquand, The Brothers of Giovanni Della Robbia, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1928, p. 149.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

imitation in fifteenth-century pilgrimage architecture 251 with the aid of a poem by Fra’ Domenico di Giovanni Corella, entitled Theotocon, which includes a description of the procession of the image of Impruneta to and from Florence. In it the author says :  

Soon when divine things had been accomplished with praise, This same [image was] brought back by the pious clergy, Having been enhanced more opulently with new gifts, It was taken back to its proper place [And] recently enclosed with marble columns. 1

As the poem is usually dated to 1468-69, given that it was dedicated to Piero de’ Medici who died in 1469, its description of the marble columns as ‘recently’ erected would suggest that the tabernacle is more likely to have been designed and built in the 1460s than in previous decades. 2 This probable dating of c. 1460-1466 for the four-columned tabernacle leaves a number of issues relating to the ensemble as a whole unresolved. Chief among these is whether the small wall-tabernacle set under it – the one which immediately frames the miracle-working image – was made at the same time as the four-columned tabernacle or rather earlier. 3 The same question can be asked of the other elements belonging to the altar, such as the Donatello-inspired low-relief scene showing the legendary finding of the image. The only available written evidence is again that of the poem, which says that within the new four-columned tabernacle, the « old consecrated altar [was] raised in front of it [i.e. the image] ». 4 This would suggest that the altar’s components, as distinct from the four-columned tabernacle which enshrines it, are all earlier.5 On the ba 

 

1

  The relevant passages are published in Casotti, op. cit., Parte Seconda, pp. 8-9 : Mox ubi divinis rebus cum laude peractis Haec eadem Clero se referente pio Muneribus cumulate novis opulentior inde Ad proprium rursus ducitur ipsa locum Quam sacra marmoreis nuper presepta colupmnis[.] 2   The poem must predate 2 December 1469 when its dedicatee Piero de’ Medici died. For its dating, see Theotocon, edited by Lorenzo Amato, Roma, Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2011. 3   For the dating of the wall tabernacle, see Pope-Hennessy, op. cit., p. 246. Caution is needed when researching the history of the wall tabernacle because the documents use the word tabernaculum or tabernacolo to mean either the removable wooden tabernacle that housed the image or the wall tabernacle that housed the wooden one or sometimes even the four-columned tempietto itself. 4   In Latin, Ante dicata sibi suscipit ara vetus ; see Casotti, op. cit., Parte Seconda, pp. 8-9. 5   The dating of the earlier elements of the altar (some now moved to the museum) is beyond the scope of this essay.  

 

252 paul davies sis of the known surviving documentation alone, this is as close as we can get to the dating of the four-columned tabernacleand the elements that stand under it, at least for the time being. Patronage of the Tabernacle at Impruneta No less difficult than the dating is the problem of identifying the tabernacle’s patron. What little evidence there is appears at first sight to be conflicting, with three individuals or bodies having a reasonable claim to be considered patron. One is Antonio degli Agli, the pievano, who is universally regarded as the patron in the fifteenth-century primary sources as well as in the secondary literature that depends upon them – indeed to the exclusion of all other possibilities ; the second is the Buondelmonti family whose coat of arms appears on the basement of the shrine (Fig. 8) suggesting that they may have an equal if not greater claim ; 1 and the third is the Compagnia della Madonna, the confraternity that had been set up with the express purpose of looking after the Virgin and her cult and – significantly – the one that actually issued the payment to Luca della Robbia for his work in 1466. 2 These three apparently contradictory pieces of evidence can be reconciled – at least in part – by scrutinising the data more closely. Let us take the pievano’s claim first. Antonio degli Agli – theologian, humanist and prelate – is recorded as making a number of significant contributions to the fabric of the church and its attendant canonica during his tenure as pievano and later as provost (1439-77). 3 The earliest record appears in a papal Bull of 1469 issued by Paul II, which states that « the said Antonio bishop [...] has greatly increased the said church during his tenure of office both in revenue and in its buildings and orna 

 

 

1   First noted byGiancarlo Gentilini, I Della Robbia. La scultura invetriata nel Rinasci2 mento, i, Florence, Cantini, 1992, pp. 131-132.   See p. 250, note 3. 3   For Antonio degli Agli’s life, see above all Vespasiano da Bisticci, Vite di uomini illustri del xv secolo, Florence, Barbera Bianchi, 1859, pp. 207-208 ; Arnaldo d’Addario, Agli, Antonio, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, i, 1960, pp. 400-401 ; John H. Swogger, Antonio deli Agli’s ‘Explanatio symbolorum Pythagore’ : An Edition and a Study of Its Place in the Circle of Marsilio Ficino, PhD thesis, University of London, 1975 ; Quinterio, op. cit. ; and Nelson H. Minnich, The Autobiography of Antonio degli Agli (ca. 1400-77), Humanist and Prelate, in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smyth, i, edited by Andrew Morrogh, Florence, Giunta Barbèra, 1985, pp. 177-191 ; Diana Webb, Sanctity and History : Antonio Agli and Humanist Hagiography, in Florence and Italy : Renaissance Studies in Honour of Nicolai Rubinstein, edited by Peter Denley, Caroline Elam, London, Westfield Publications in Medieval Studies, 1988, pp. 297-308.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

imitation in fifteenth-century pilgrimage architecture 253

Fig. 8. Buondelmonti arms from the Tabernacle of the Virgin, S. Maria, Impruneta (photo : author).  

ments ». 1 Of about the same date are passages in Fra’ Domenico di Giovanni Corella’s poem Theotocon that also refer to Antonio’s keenness to improve the building’s fabric. One describes « Antonio degli Agli, a father mighty with exceptional piety » as « wishing to adorn the building ». 2 Another, which appears just after the description of marble columns mentioned above, adds that « Antonio wish[ed] to furnish it better so that it might be accessed more safely by the people ». 3 More weighty evidence still for his particular claim appears in a letter he penned himself. Addressed to the Buondelmonti family, it records that he had spent  

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

  This Bull, issued by Paul II elevating the church to the status of collegiate, is published in Casotti, op. cit., Parte Seconda, pp. 82-88, especially p. 82 : « prefatus Antonius Episcopus qui dictam Ecclesiam tempore suo tam in redditibus quam etiam in edificiis & ornamentis amplificavit ». 2   For the passage see Casotti, op. cit., Parte Seconda, p. 6 : Ut simulacra monent variis conflata metallis Nuper in hoc celebri multa reperta solo Allius hanc ornare volens Antonius edem Eximia pollens relligione pater. 3   « Sed melius munire volens Antonius illam / Ut cum plebe simul tutior ipse foret[.] » See Casotti, op. cit., Parte Seconda, pp. 8-9.  

 

 

 

 

 

254 paul davies the huge sum of 12,000 florins on the church. 1 This was an enormous sum of money, equivalent to a third of the cost of building the Badia in Fiesole. 2 All these statements, and especially the last, have been taken to suggest that Antonio be regarded as patron and that he paid for the construction of the whole complex including the tabernacle. But they are all problematic insofar as they are rather vague and do not specify precisely what he spent the money on. Therefore, even though there can be little dispute that he contributed in some way to the beautification of the complex as a whole it cannot be assumed that he was necessarily responsible for everything in it. The documents could just as easily be referring to the canonica beside the church or to various other parts of the church than to the tabernacle. Thus, there is little hard evidence here to link him unequivocally with the patronage of the tabernacle. 3 Equally problematic is the nature of his involvement in the project’s funding. His statement that he had spent 12,000 florins on the church is actually rather ambiguous. He might have meant that he paid for the improvements to the church and canonica with personal funds or alternatively with funds that ultimately came from the church’s income. If the former, he should certainly be regarded as ‘patron’ of those parts of the complex that he funded, but if the latter, his patronal role would perhaps be better regarded as that of ‘director’ or ‘advisor’. The extent of his involvement as financier of the project can be assessed if we consider his capacity personally to fund such a building campaign. In short, it is highly unlikely that he was. His surviving autobiography makes it clear that he had no inheritance to draw upon and that he began life as a member of a well-to-do Florentine family that had fallen on hard times. 4 As a young man, he struggled to support his mother and siblings by do1

  The letter is published in Casotti, op. cit., Parte Seconda, pp. 170-172.   The observation is made in Saalman, Michelozzo Studies, cit., p. 250. Yet another reference to his patronage of the church and canonica fabric is made in a recorded but unused epitaph written by Sebastiano Salvini (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 5140, fols. 123v124) : « Here lies Antonio degli Agli, bishop of Volterra and outstanding theologian whom the chorus of the Muses and the paupers mourn : the poor because they have lost, alas, the kindest refuge ; the Muses because they no longer have both the melodious lyre and song. Who in his time wrote more books? Who was more elegant? Who finally more learned? Did he not preside over the churches of Ragusa, Fiesole and finally Volterra? The temple of his holy Mary in the Pine Groves preserves his bones and name. While life remained, as you can see, he always served and embellished it. What now? [His] soul is safe in heaven where he has happily attained the rewards of his labours ». This translation from the Latin original is taken from Minnich, op. cit., p. 185 ; for the Latin text, see p. 191. 3   For the fifteenth-century work undertaken on the church and canonicate complex as a 4 whole, see note 1, sections 1 and 2.   Minnich, op. cit., p. 178. 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

imitation in fifteenth-century pilgrimage architecture 255 ing odd jobs, such as managing the construction of a Florentine palace, illuminating the initial letters of manuscripts and doing the accounts for a wool merchant. 1 In fact, it was not until he was given a canonry in S. Lorenzo in Florence by Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici in 1428 that he acquired a reliable income. 2 Later in life, after he had risen through the ecclesiastical ranks and been successively appointed bishop of Ragusa, Fiesole and Volterra, he would still probably not have amassed a sufficient fortune from his various benefices to allow him to fund a building campaign on such a scale. His salary as pievano of Impruneta amounted to just about 500 florins. 3 Although a very good salary, it would nevertheless have taken all this income spread over 24 years to have amounted to the sum he claims to have spent on the church complex. A close reading of the letter claiming that he spent 12,000 florins on the complex would suggest an alternative interpretation. While he does indeed say that he spent that amount on the church, crucially he does not explicitly say the money was his own. 4 Instead, it allows for the possibility that funds could have come from other institutional funds such as the pieve’s resources which ranked second in the diocese only to the cathedral of Florence in terms of the size of its income. 5 That the pieve’s income rather than his own personal funds may have been used to support the project might also explain why his personal coat of arms – a rampant lion – does not appear on the tabernacle or indeed on any other part of the complex save for one place, his own tomb, located in the right transept arm. 6 So, a viable hypothesis is that he was not the patron in the sense of financing the project, but it does not exclude the possibility that he was the brains behind it. Antonio degli Agli’s claim to be the tabernacle’s patron is also challenged by the presence on the basement of the tabernacle of the Buon1

2   Ibid., pp. 178-180.   Ibid., p. 180.   In 1439 according to a Bull issued by Eugene IV, the annual income of the pievano at Impruneta was given as 500 florins. See Bizzochi, op. cit., p. 129, note 7. 4   Casotti, op. cit., Parte Seconda, p. 171 : « Posso mostrar’ havere speso in nelle cose estraordinarie di questa casa piu di dodici mila fiorini ». Nor does he specify exactly what part of the complex the money was spent on. 5   For the size of the Impruneta pieve’s income, see David Herlihy, Santa Maria Impruneta : A Rural Commune in the Late Middle Ages, in Florentine Studies, edited by Nicolai Rubinstein, London, 1968, p. 244. For Antonio degli Agli’s responsibility for increasing the pieve’s revenue, see the Bull issued by Paul II in 1469, published in Casotti, op. cit., Parte Seconda, p. 82. 6   For the tomb, see Ulrich Middeldorf, Una tomba fiorentina del Quattrocento dimenticata, in Impruneta una pieve, un santuario, cit., pp. 135-142. 3

 

 

 

 

256 paul davies delmonti coat of arms (Fig. 8). 1 The stemma appears clearly at the foot of the shrine in full view of the devotees and was especially prominent when pilgrims knelt before the shrine. 2 The presence of this coat of arms would seem to point in a completely different direction, providing us with what might appear to be incontrovertible evidence of Buondelmonti patronage, since according to custom, patrons usually placed their arms on the chapels or churches they built in order to indicate ownership. But the presence of a coat of arms on an ecclesiastical building does not necessarily mean that the family to whom it referred necessarily planned and financed its construction. Rather it simply signifies that they possessed the patronage rights, the ius patronatus. According to the rules associated with ius patronatus, the patrons of a church were accorded various privileges. 3 One was the right to appoint the priest ; another was the honour of pride of place in religious processions ; and among other more minor rights was precedence in choosing prime burial locations within the church. These privileges were extended to the patrons in exchange for their ‘protection’ of the church – that is ‘protection’ in the broadest sense, including the maintenance of the church’s fabric. Thus, while there was an expectation that the patrons would provide for the upkeep of the church buildings, the presence of the coat of arms does not establish that they did so. It simply indicates possession of the patronage rights. The question of whether or not the Buondelmonti contributed to the planning and funding of the tabernacle needs to be carefully reviewed in the light of all this. One means of answering this question is to establish whether the Buondelmonti – the richest and most powerful family in that part of the Florentine contado – would have wanted to contribute financially to the tabernacle project. Under normal circumstances, the answer would undoubtedly have been ‘yes’. Such was their pride in their church that they advertised their patronage rights not just by placing their coat of arms over the main entrance, but also by appending an inscription that left the visitor in no doubt of their status : « arma patronorvm et defensorvm istius plebis » (Fig. 9). 4 So important was it to family prestige  

 

 

 

 

1

  For the Buondelmonti patronage of the pieve at Impruneta, see especially Bizzochi, op. 2 cit., 128-134.   See p. 252, note 1. 3   For an excellent analysis of patronage rights, see Jill Burke, Changing Patrons : Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence, University Park Pennsylvania, Penn State Press, 2004, pp. 101-118. 4   There are two coats of arms over the portal. That on the left is the older version, that on the right the newer ; see Casotti, op. cit., p. 20.  

 

imitation in fifteenth-century pilgrimage architecture 257

Fig. 9. Buondelmonti arms from the façade of S. Maria, Impruneta (photo : author).  

that later, in the sixteenth century, a member of the family could refer to the church as « the right eye and greatest honour of our house ». 1 Thus there can be little doubt that they would have wanted to exploit their patronage rights by contributing to the tabernacle that stood over the miracle working image of the Virgin, the most revered object in the church. Families usually jealously guarded their association with miraculous images of this sort as they could derive not just prestige from their association with it, but also a private share in its thaumaturgic powers, as has been demonstrated for the Medici’s involvement at the shrine of the miracle-working fresco of SS. Annunziata in Florence. 2 What is more, the Buondelmonti were also – as far as the meagre evidence allows us to infer – ardent devotees of the image as is suggested by their eagerness to be buried close to the shrine. For example, Manente Buondelmonti (d. 1498), one of Antonio degli Agli’s successors as pievano,intended to have a wall tomb erected for himself close to the shrine in the adjacent north transept chapel. 3 Later in the sixteenth century the Buondelmonti  

 

1   asf, Regio Diritto, filza i, fol. 481r : « occhio destro e onore della nostra casa », cited in Biz2 zochi, op. cit., p. 128.   Liebenwein, op. cit., pp. 261-264. 3   According to Andrea Buondelmonti’s will, a tomb resembling that of Antonio degli  

 

 

258 paul davies built an underground mausoleum close to both tabernacle and high altar. 1 Moreover, they always seem to have been keen to participate in the almost annual processions to Florence where they took pride of place at its head. 2 But circumstances were far from normal. One of the Buondelmonti family’s fundamental rights as patron of the church – namely that of appointing the pievano – had been overridden by papal privilege in 1439. In that year the post of pievano became vacant and the Buondelmonti candidate was overlooked by Pope Eugenius IV who instead appointed his own candidate, Antonio degli Agli, to the post. 3 This must have come as a bitter blow to the family as they had always used the post to provide a clerical family member or else a close client with a position of considerable power and income. For example, the post was awarded in the fourteenth century to Stefano Buondelmonti and to Manente Buondelmonti in the later fifteenth, followed by Andrea Buondelmonti early in the sixteenth. 4 This withdrawal of one of their rights would have presented them with a quandary, whether to withdraw some of their support for the church as a means of protesting at their treatment, running the risk of having their patronage rights completely revoked and given to another family, or to be seen to fulfil their duties as patrons to the letter in the hope that they would not lose further privileges or patronal rights. 5 Precisely which course of action they chose to adopt is not recorded, but it is clear that these circumstances created a significant amount of tenAgli was to have been erected in the Chapel of St Sebastian directly across the church from Agli’s, thus very close to the shrine, and was to have housed the bones of Manente Buondelmonti, his predecessor as pievano of the church. This tomb was never erected being replaced by a floor tomb. This too had disappeared by the early eighteenth century when Casotti mentions it in his account, recording the inscription that he had found the collection of family inscriptions made by Lorenzo di Benedetto di Messer Filippo Buondelmonti. See Casotti, op. cit., p. 26. 1   Ferdinando Rossi, La Basilica di Santa Maria dell’Impruneta, « Bollettino D’arte », 35, pp. 85-93. 2   For the fullest description of the procession and its hierarchies, see Francesco Rondinelli, Relazione del contagion stato in Firenze l’anno 1630 e 1633 con un breve ragguaglio della miracolosa imagine della Madonna dell’Impruneta, Florence, Landini, 1634. On pp. 272-275 is a full record of the procession held in 1511 by Bartolomeo di Giovanni, one of the officials who arranged the processions and who had been in post since 1470. 3   See, for example, Minnich, op. cit., p. 181. 4   For Stefano Buondelmonti, see Cagnacci, op. cit., p. 20 ; for Manente and Andrea Buondelmonti, see Casotti, op. cit., pp. 27 and 32. 5   Patronage rights could be taken away if the patrons did not keep their part of the bargain. See Burke, op. cit., p. 103.  

 

 

imitation in fifteenth-century pilgrimage architecture 259 sion between the Buondelmonti family and their pievano Antonio degli Agli, who was now benefitting from the privilege that the patrons once thought was rightfully theirs. It was not just a matter of privilege and honour for the Buondelmonti. It hit them in the pocket. The family was being denied access to the lucrative income from the pieve and from the churches under its jurisdiction that would have provided salaries for the pievano and other appointees. Throughout the period of Antonio degli Agli’s incumbency as pievano, the Buondelmonti manoeuvred to wrest as much of the income back from the pieve as they could. 1 This history of enmity between the Buondelmonti and Antonio degli Agli affects the way in which we interpret the presence of the Buondelmonti coat of arms on the tabernacle. While it cannot be ruled out that the coat of arms reflects a donation made by the Buondelmonti to the building fund – indeed they may have wanted to do so on devotional grounds alone – it is more likely that it was placed there simply to acknowledge their patronal rights over the church. Antonio degli Agli could have made sure that it was prominently placed in the design as a means of mollifying the sense of ill-will that had arisen. In the letter Antonio degli Agli wrote to the Buondelmonti, he seems to be suggesting that the 12,000 florins that had been spent on the church was money that was not theirs, and that by contributing the pieve’s income to the embellishment of the church fabric he was in effect enhancing their patrimony. Moreover, the tone of the letter seems to be one of assuaging a perceived grievance and Antonio makes it clear that he would never do anything without the prior approval of the family. Thus, the inclusion of the arms on the tabernacle might be read as a form of peace offering on Antonio degli Agli’s part, recognising and acknowledging their historic rights over the church. In this light, the presence of the arms might have been added to the monument, not because the Buondelmonti contributed to the building fund, but to recognise them officially as patrons of the church and as a means of mending the bridges that had been broken in having their rights removed. Thus, contradictory though this may appear at first sight, the presence of the Buondelmonti arms on the tabernacle can be reconciled with the idea that Antonio degli Agli acted as ‘patron’, at least in the sense of providing the project with artistic direction. The third candidate for the role of tabernacle’s patron is the Compagnia della Madonna, which made the sole recorded payment that can 1

  For the tension between the Buondelmonti and Antonio degli Agli, see especially Bizzochi, op. cit., passim.

260 paul davies be associated with the shrine’s construction. This payment of 1466 confirms that the confraternity was involved as ‘patron’ in the sense of supplying at least some of the funds for construction. Indeed, there is clear evidence to suggest that the confraternity saw one of its roles as being responsible for the maintenance of the shrine of the Madonna and of the church fabric in general. This evidence appears in the confraternity’s statutes or capitoli drawn up in the fourteenth century ; 1 and it is further confirmed in amendments to the statutes that were redacted in 1448, where it explicitly states that one of the functions of the Compagnia was to pay for the church to be adorned. 2 And they did indeed fulfil this role. Despite the fact that there are so few documents it is known that the Compagnia paid for, among other things, the construction of a sacristy to serve the shrine of the Madonna. 3 Given that the confraternity had this particular raison d’être and that they did in fact make a payment that can be associated with the shrine, it can be safely concluded that it did at least in part fund its construction. It certainly had the wherewithal to do so. It ran the finances of the miracle cult of the Madonna and, as is evident from the statutes, any money arising from gifts and pious donations to the image of the Madonna belonged to the Compagnia. As a result it would make sense that the confraternity would be responsible  

1   Capitoli della Compagnia della Madonna dell’Impruneta, Florence, A. Cecchi, 1866, p. 28 : « ordiniamo che i nostri uficiali correttori si debbino spesso aggregarsi insieme col nostro Piovano e Vicario, co’loro Camarlinghi ; e avendo colloquio et esaminazione delle fazioni di nostra tutta Compagnia, per sue opere e costumi conseguire e mantenere, debbino dimandare i Camarlinghi della faultade et entrata e debiti e mobile che e’ nella Compagnia ; e d’intera e pacefica concordia dispensare l’entrata d’essa Compagnia nelle infrascritte cose. In prima, nelle antidette negli a dietro Capitoli : appresso, negli ornamenti e conservamento delle ecclesiastiche cose della cappella della tavola gloriosa di Nostra Donna, ed eziandio degli altari d’essa pieve, quanto la santuaria reverenzia d’essa chiesa invita o richiede ». 2   Archivio di Stato, Florence, Capitoli delle compagnie religiose soppresse, 78, fol. 53 : « Essendo nell’anno 1448 ad riformare alcune chose nella decta pieve furono chiamtatj degli uomini del populo e pivierj gli infrascripti cioe Fruosino di nicolo et Pauolo di francescho camarlinghi auna della compagnia della donna ; Nicholo di Giovanni, piero di panj dello sodara[?] camarlinghi della compagnia del populo ; Domenicho d’antonio di giunta ; francischo di domenicho da teserata, antonio di domenicho di pierone a quali dicti huominj del populo et pivierj commissono dovessino insieme chol piovano ordinare dicte chose per ornamentho et ordinamento di decta pivierj et per augmentatione al divino ufitio e fare piu cose ad honore di dio et della chiesa decta ad consolatione di tuctj coloro che visitano decta chiesa a conservatione d’ paramenti arientj et tucte le cose apartengono alla sacrestia et a qualunche cose vedessono essere di bisogno a decta chiesa. Il perche e sopradecti furono insieme. Et tralloro et chil piovano che al presente mesere Antonio degli Agli, e avendo preso maturo consiglio et prudentemente examinatho et chalculato ciascuna cosa ». 3   Capitoli delle compagnie religiose soppresse, cit., fol. 54 : « al fine rimasono in questa concordia et diliberatione cioe : ch’ella sagrestia grande edificata dal decta compagnia ».  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

imitation in fifteenth-century pilgrimage architecture 261 for financing the shrine’s embellishment. Further evidence supporting the Compagnia’s claim to be patron can be found in the decoration of the shrine itself, which is covered in pine cones. Although the pine cone might simply be read as a reference to the name of the town Impruneta, a corruption of ‘in pineta’, or ‘in the pine woods’ and thus as a reference to the shrine’s founding miracle of the discovery of the image of the Madonna among the pine trees, it may also associated with the Compagnia. We know that pine cone was the emblem of the Opera, which was born out of the Compagnia della Madonna in the early sixteenth century. 1 Thus, although we do not know for certain what the emblem of the Compagnia was, it would seem likely that the Opera simply adopted it. Pine cones adorn the shrine everywhere, especially on the ceiling, where they parallel the Medici palle on the ceiling of the SS. Annunziata shrine. In the light of this, it is worth considering more closely the arms of the Buondelmonti at the foot of the shrine and observing that the Buondelmonti arms are not shown alone. They are surrounded by a wreath of pine cones (Fig. 8). Perhaps this was intended as a means of acknowledging that the Buondelmonti were the official patrons but that the Compagnia had actually paid for the shrine to be built. What remain to be reconciled are the rival claims of Antonio degli Agli and the Compagnia della Madonna to be considered patron. The answer to this problem is again to be found in the statutes of the Compagnia della Madonna where it states unequivocally that confraternity was to regard the pievano as their « adoptive father », and to accept him as the organisation’s prior. 2 So, this is how Antonio could say that he had spent 12,000 florins on the church. He had indeed spent that much money – the Compagnia’s – in his capacity as its prior. Thus the question of patronage seems to be a complicated one in this case. Funds for the tempietto-like shrine were provided in large part by the Compagnia della Madonna probably using money from the votive offerings left by pilgrims. Contributions to the building fund may have come from the Buondelmonti and perhaps too from the pieve’s other revenue streams. But artistic direction would appear to have rested with Antonio in his capacity as prior of the confraternity, though his intentions were presumably subject to approval by both the Compagnia della Madonna and  

 

1   See Casotti, op. cit., p. 24. For the papal bull of 1505 establishing the opera, see Ibid.,Parte Seconda, pp. 101-105 ;see also Bizzochi, op. cit., pp. 132-133. 2   Capitoli della Compagnia, cit., p. 14 : « E noi cosi volendo seguire, ordiniamo e vogliamo che la nostra università di tutti i confrati si riconoschino adottivi figlioli del nostro piovano ».  

 

 

 

262 paul davies the Buondelmonti. In addition to this, it has already been argued that the tabernacle dates from the 1460s. Thus it is possible to conclude that the tabernacle was conceived by Antonio degli Agli in imitation of the earlier one at SS. Annunziata. The Two Miracle Cults of the Virgin Mary Before tackling the question of imitation, it is necessary to compare the two miracle- cults in order to assess whether there was any particular relationship between them that might have prompted Antonio degli Agli in his capacity as priore of the Compagnia della Madonna to have the Impruneta tabernacle designed in imitation of the SS. Annunziata one. Both of these miracle-working images of the Virgin Mary were of immense devotional significance to the city of Florence during the fifteenth century, and even though their individual cult histories are well known, it is worth rehearsing them here in order to identify parallels between them, parallels that may have a bearing upon our understanding of the imitation process. The tabernacle at SS. Annunziata was erected to house a celebrated miracle-working fresco of the Annunciation, which according to tradition was begun in 1252 by one of the friars at the church, but finished overnight by an angel. 1 This early date for the fresco has recently been questioned on stylistic grounds and the image has been re-dated to the early fourteenth. 2 Falling into the category of acheiropoieton – an image not fashioned by human hand, it had in terms of popular belief a heavenly quality that provided the potential for a miracle cult. This potential seems to have been realised at some point in the first half of the fourteenth century. Its popularity as an object of considerable popular devotion was already established by 1341. 3 In that year an altar is recorded as having already been built beneath the image and a document records a testamentary bequest of 20 lamps to the Virgin Annunciate. Thereafter the cult appears to have developed rapidly, with the image gaining a 1   For the image and its cult, see Megan Holmes, The Elusive Origins of the Cult of the Annunziata in Florence, in The Miraculous Image in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, edited by Erik Thunø, Gerhard Wolf, Rome, « L’Erma » di Bretschneider, 2004, with full references to the earlier literature. For the tabernacle see Liebenwein, op. cit. 2   Megan Holmes, The Elusive Origins, cit., pp. 104-119. 3   Archivio di Stato, Florence, Diplomatico, SS. Annunziata ; cited in Louisa Bulman, Artistic Patronage in SS. Annunziata 1440 - c. 1520, PhD, University of London (Courtauld Institute), 1971, p. 11 ; Holmes, The Elusive Origins, cit., p. 110ff., especially p. 111.  

 

 

 

imitation in fifteenth-century pilgrimage architecture 263 reputation for performing miracles, many of which are recorded. 1 The rise in its fortunes was such that c. 1364 an opera was formed to look after the income and offerings. 2 In that same year the Consuls of Florence’s Guilds began to make an annual procession on feast of the Annunciation, March 25, the first day of the Florentine year ; 3 and from 1390 the Signoria – the highest organ of state – brought an annual offering to the shrine. 4 This escalation in the miracle cult’s reputation is also reflected in changes made to the church itself. During the second half of the fourteenth century the area around the image began to rival the high altar as the church’s focal point. 5 Aspiring families increasingly preferred chapels closer to the image than to the high altar. And so, with no space available for construction of new chapels, aisles were turned into chapels by running walls between the nave piers and walls. During the fifteenth century the status of the cult grew still further, and took on an international dimension. Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy (1433-1477), counted himself among the image’s devotees and sent a life-size votive statue of himself to the shrine. 6 Among other eminent figures who made donations was the King of Portugal who gave three particularly large silver lamps to the shrine in 1488. 7 During the later fifteenth century, the miracle-working image took on another civic role in welcoming foreign dignitaries to the city. On arrival in Florence, such dignitaries would be taken immediately to the shrine where they would be honoured by having the veil protecting the image removed. This honour was accorded in 1471 to Duke and Duchess of Milan, 8 and to the Duke of Ferrara in 1504.9 Indeed, according to the early sixteenth-century chronicler Baccio Carnesecchi, the image of the Virgin Annunciate was not shown to « any but the greatest personages ». 10 Like that at SS. Annunziata, the shrine at Impruneta also housed a mir 

 

 

1   For the miracles associated with the image of SS. Annunziata and the history of their recording, see, most recently, Sara F. Matthews-Grieco, Media, memory and the Miracoli della SS. Annunziata, « Word and Image », iii, 25, 2009, pp. 272-292. 2 3   Bulman, op. cit., Section 1, p. 11.   Ibid., Section 1, p. 12. 4 5   Ibid., Section 1, p. 12.   Ibid., Section 1, p. 11. 6   Luca Landucci, A Florentine Diary from 1450 to 1516 by Luca Landucci continued by an anonymous writer till 1542, edited by Iodoco del Badia, New York, 1927, p. 15 ; Richard Trexler, Public Lifein Renaissance Florence, Ithaca London, Cornell University Press, 1980, p. 6. 7   Francesco Bocchi, Opera di M. Francesco Bocchi sopra l’imagine miracolosa della Nunziata di Fiorenza, Florence, 1592, p. 110. 8   Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, ii, edited by Gaetano Milanesi, Florence, Sansoni, 1878, p. 446. 9 10   Trexler, Public Life, cit., p. 9, note 1, and pp. 98-99.   Ibid., p. 98.  

 

 

264 paul davies acle-working image of the Virgin Mary that was remarkably powerful, this one not finished by an angel but painted by St. Luke the Evangelist. 1 The image differed from the SS. Annunziata one insofar as it worked its principal miracles not for individuals but for whole communities. 2 Moreover, it seems to have worked its miracles not in situ in its shrine but rather when taken out in procession. It has been suggested that the image was already a significant cult object when the church was consecrated in 1054 – but this is highly unlikely. 3 The first important miracle recorded seems to have occurred at much the same time that the fresco at SS. Annunziata began to work its miracles – in the mid-fourteenth century. According to the account of the pievano of the time, Messer Stefano Buondelmonti, incessant rains were damaging the crops in Impruneta during the course of 1340. In response, the townsfolk took the image out of the church and paraded it through the town. 4 The rain stopped and the ‘miracle’ was attributed to the Virgin of Impruneta. In her honour, the comune ordered that a procession to the church take place on the second Sunday in May as a gesture of thanks to the Virgin Mary for her intercession. 5 From this point on the image seems to take on a specifically apotropaic role. Generally she warded off inclement weather, droughts and flooding, but she also protected against other threats to the community such as military attacks. 6 Its power was recognised not just by the community of Impruneta but increasingly by Florence too. In times of crisis, the Florentine government would ordain that the image be brought into Florence so that she could act as a protective force. 7 She would be brought to the city in an elaborate procession which began in the evening with the confraternity of S. Maria dell’Impruneta together with its canons carrying the image to Florence by candlelight. The image would reach the gate of San Piero Gattolino at dawn where she would then be met by another procession that had started at the cathedral. The two processions would meet in front of S. Felice and the image would be installed in an exalted place in the piazza 1

  For the attribution of this image to St Luke, see especially Robert Maniura, Pilgrimage to Images in the Fifteenth Century. The Origins of the Cult of Our Lady of Częstochowa, Woodbridge, Boydell and Brewer, 2004, pp. 61-62 ; Holmes, Miraculous Images in Renaissance Florence, cit. ; and Nardi, art. cit. 2   Trexler, Florentine Religious Experience, cit., passim. 3   Franco Del Grosso, Origine del culto alla Madonna d’Impruneta e suoi rapport con la città di Firenze, in Pinto et alii, op. cit., pp. 33-77. 4   See Capitoli della Compagnia, cit., p. 25 ; and Del Grosso, op. cit., pp. 57-58. 5   See Capitoli della Compagnia, cit., p. 25. 6 7   Trexler, Florentine Religious Experience, cit., pp. 11-12.   Ibid., 12-13.  

 

 

imitation in fifteenth-century pilgrimage architecture 265 there. Sometimes the image was taken to the Piazza della Signoria, as in 1390, when it was the centrepiece of an outdoor service there to ward off the plague, or else set up on the high altar of Florence Cathedral. 1 The practice of bringing the Impruneta image into Florence was not an uncommon event. Although the ritual was only enacted seven times in the second half of the fourteenth century, 2 the practice increased dramatically in frequency in the fifteenth century when it was brought into the city no less than forty-five times. 3 And in the years between 1420 and 1435 it was brought in 14 times, that is to say almost every year. 4 In fact, so frequent was the event becoming that in 1435 the Florentine government passed a law that attempted to restrict how often the event could take place, stating that « Sacred objects […] are normally respected and held in greater reverence if they are rarely seen. The magnificent priors wish therefore to prevent the singular devotion toward the figure of Our Lady of Impruneta from being diminished by her being brought to Florence too frequently ». 5 So celebrated did the cult become that its fame reached not just other parts of Italy such as Bologna but even Poland where it is mentioned in archival records at the shrine of the Virgin Mary at Częstochowa. 6  

 

1   Alle bocche della piazza : Diario di un anonimo fiorentino (1382-1401) (bnf, Panciatichiano 158), edited by Anthony Molho, Franek Sznura, Florence, Olschki, 1986, p. 98-99 : « E fessi la procisione questi tre dì [13, 14, 15 October 1390], ciaschuna chiesa nel popolo suo e i religiosi nelle loro contrade, acciò che Idio cessi e lievi via la mortalità », and for a full description of the event, see below, note 105 ; cited in Trexler, Public Life, cit., pp. 49-50 ; for the document relating to work executed on preparing the high altar of Florence Cathedral for the reception of the image of Impruneta in 1430, see http ://www.operaduomo.firenze.it/cupola/ 2 ita/html/s021/c241/t008/tblock00.htm.   Bianchini, op. cit., pp. 85-88. 3 4   Ibid., pp. 88-102.   Ibid., pp. 90-91. 5   Archivio di Stato, Florence, Prov., fol. 207r-v : « Res sacre deoque dicate raritate ipsa videndi commendari maiorique in reverentia habere solent ; ideo magnifici […] priores […] prohibere cupientes ne singulis devotio quam florentinus populous ad tabulum Sancte Marie Imprunetis […] si Florentiam frequentius delata fuerit, aliqua ex parte minuatur ». Cited in Bianchini, op. cit., p. 91 and Trexler, Florentine Religious Experience, cit., p. 17. 6   The Bolognese reference to the shrine at Impruneta is found in the chronicle of Graziolo Accarisi of 1459 that survives in a seventeenth-century copy in the Archivio di Stato, Bologna, Codici miniati, no. 46 bis : « rispose Gratiolo Gratioli che a così gran tribulationi il rimedio era prima di placar l’ira divina svegliata dalli nostri peccati, perché del restante sperava dal Signor Iddio ogni pietoso ajuto, et che perciò a lui pareva si dovesse pigliar l’esempio da’ Fiorentini, i quali, visitati dalle tribolazioni […] conducono (l’immagine della Madonna dell’Impruneta – dipinta da san Luca) nella città per tre giorni continui et processionalmente per la città l’accompagnano con lumi, salmi et hinni et a questa guisa ottengono la remissione delle loro colpe et felice effetto alle loro domande ». The document in Częstochowa mentions an image painted by St. Luke painted « apud Florentiam in pado de Pinetis » ; see Cagnacci, op. cit., p. 25. Another, less specific document is discussed in Maniura, op. cit., pp. 60-61.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

266 paul davies From these miracle cult histories, we learn that both shrines housed objects of enormous consequence for the city of Florence. Both images appear to have had international reputations. The one at SS. Annunziata was probably more closely associated with miracles worked on behalf of individuals, whereas the one at Impruneta tended to work for communities as a whole, but of the two, that at Impruneta had the more important civic role and was seen as a greater talismanic force in protecting the city, at least at the time that the shrines were built. 1 Explaining ‘Imitation’ at Impruneta The extremely high status of the Impruneta cult affects the way in which imitation and its purpose can be interpreted. The idea that imitation was in this case merely casual – the product of a decision made by the artists alone – seems unlikely. With the object enshrined at Impruneta being of such significance, the character of its housing and the ‘messages’ it relayed to its devotees would have been the subject of careful consideration by the Compagnia della Madonna and Antonio degli Agli. It remains conceivable, however, that they would have turned to the designer of the SS. Annunziata tabernacle to produce a design of equivalent splendour for their shrine. But, given the importance of the shrine, the mere employment of the same workshop is insufficient in itself to explain the resemblance. As it happens, it is extremely unlikely that the tabernacle was designed and executed by the same workshop. First of all, the shrine at Impruneta is less refined in its detailing than the one at SS. Annunziata, both in terms of design and execution. 2 The ornamented column bases at Impruneta (Fig. 10), though based on antique models (such as one drawn later by Giuliano da Sangallo) seem rather clumsy by comparison with those at SS. Annunziata (Fig. 11), which reflect a clear understanding of the proportions of ancient Roman bases. 3 Moreover, the profiles of the Impruneta bases have more in common with late medieval exemplars than with ancient Roman ones, as can be seen, 1

  Trexler argues that Impruneta was the most remarkable and durable of the Florentine cults ; see Trexler, Florentine Religious Experience, cit., p. 11. 2   Noted by among others Ferruccio Canali, I Tempietti della Santissima Annunziata di San Miniato al Monte di Santa Maria all’Impruneta, in L’Architettura di Lorenzo il Magnifico, edited by Gabriele Morolli et alii, Milan, Silvana, 1992, pp. 32-36. 3   The base drawn by Giuliano da Sangallo appears in the Taccuino senese (Biblioteca degli Intronati, Siena), fol. 15v. It has the same profile except for the the reversal of the cyma moulding ; see Stefano Borsi, Giuliano da Sangallo : I disegni di architettura e dell’antico, Rome, Officina, 1985, p. 271.  

 

 

imitation in fifteenth-century pilgrimage architecture 267

Fig. 10. Base from Tabernacle of the Virgin, S. Maria, Impruneta (photo : author).  

Fig. 11. Base from Tabernacle of the Virgin, SS. Annunziata, Florence (photo : author).  

268 paul davies for example, in the cyma recta moulding of the base, which is much too vertically arranged in its form by comparison with antique prototypes and seems rather closer to medieval examples such as, for example, the cornice of the Tomb of Cardinal Marco da Viterbo (d. 1369), in S. Francesco, Viterbo. 1 In addition to this, the shrine at Impruneta lacks the conceptual rigour of the SS. Annunziata shrine, where each capital type is associated a particular type of base and with a distinctive form of framed fluting. While the Impruneta tabernacle interprets antique sources through a medieval lens, the one at SS. Annunziata, by contrast, uses antique sources in a more knowing way. There is another fundamental design difference to do with the media used to provide the architecture with colour : at Impruneta the shrine is embellished with glazed terracotta, whereas at SS. Annunziata it is embellished with coloured mosaic of two sorts – round tesserae and square ones – reflecting a good knowledge of Donatello’s work. All this would suggest that, despite the similarity, the two shrines were not produced by the same workshop. So, the Impruneta one must be ascribed to an as yet unidentified workshop, one under the guidance of an architect that had less understanding of ancient Roman architectural forms. Other explanations for this ‘likeness’ that depend on the notion of ‘artistic influence’ are also difficult to sustain. Such explanations, which see the artist as the primary agent in establishing an art-work’s form, might work well for less prestigious commissions, but it is inconceivable in this case where the structure was being designed to house one of the most holy and powerful objects in Florentine society. It must, therefore, have been done with the cognizance and approval of the patrons, Antonio degli Agli, the Compagnia della Madonna, and perhaps also the Buondelmonti family. So, if the design decisions were not left up to the architects, why did Antonio degli Agli, in his capacity as prior of the Compagnia della Madonna, choose to model the tabernacle on the one in SS. Annunziata? The choice can hardly be ascribed to a lack of imagination or of artistic sensibility on Antonio’s part. After all, Antonio was a major scholar, who produced in his lifetime more than 126 books and who moved in artistic circles, and who numbered Leon Battista Alberti and Marsilio Ficino among his friends. Moreover, he had some personal acquaintance with  

1   This tomb is discussed in Julian Gardner, The Tomb and the Tiara : Curial Tomb Sculpture in Rome and Avignon in the Later Middle Ages, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992, pp. 124-125 and fig. 144.  

imitation in fifteenth-century pilgrimage architecture 269 the arts as a practitioner. According to his surviving autobiography, he seems as a young man to have illuminated initial letters in manuscripts as a means of earning money to support his studies. 1 While this would have been simple repetitive work rather than high quality illumination, it would nevertheless have brought him into contact with the art world in a direct way. He also admitted in the autobiography to being enthralled in his youth with painting, sculpture and theatrical productions. 2 This list should also include architecture. He notes in his autobiography that a learned Florentine merchant – probably Antonio Corbinelli (d. 1423) – on realising his state of penury engaged him to manage the construction of his house. 3 There is another possible motive for imitation that needs to be considered, namely that Antonio’s decision to imitate the shrine at SS. Annunziata was conceived as an expression of deference and gratitude to the Medici, who had done so much to promote his career. He had been given his first big career opportunity by Cosimo de’ Medici and had strong personal ties with Piero, describing himself in his autobiography as his « teacher ». 4 And there is no reason to doubt this, as he was appointed canon of S. Lorenzo in Florence, his first major office, when Piero would have been about 12 years old. 5 Also, when Piero in 1441 sponsored the poetry competition on theme of ‘Friendship’, known as the Certame Coronario, Antonio submitted a poem himself. 6 His ties to the Medici led him to write a letter of condolence to Piero on the death of his father, Cosimo de’ Medici in 1464. So, given the patronal connections between the two men, it might be deemed possible that Antonio considered emulating the SS. Annunziata tabernacle as a means of honouring and paying due homage to his patrons. And it is worth noting that according to the dating of the tabernacle advanced above, the tabernacle was designed and erected before Piero’s death, at a time when he was head of the family and when such a gesture might have had its greatest impact. 7 Yet it is worth asking whether Antonio degli Agli would have flattered the Medici in this particular way. As was the case with most scholars the standard approach to gaining patronal favour was literary. So, for  

 

1

2   Minnich, op. cit., p. 178.   Ibid., p. 179. 4   Ibid., p. 180.   Ibid., p. 181 : « preceptor olim tuus ». 5   John Swogger, Antonio degli Agli’s Explanatio symbolorum Pythagore : An Edition and a Study of Its Place in the Circle of Marsilio Ficino, PhD Thesis, University of London, 1975, p. 6 17.   Ibid., p. 18. 7   For the relationship between Antonio degli Agli and Piero de’ Medici, see Minnich, op. cit., pp. 181-185 and Quinterio, op. cit., pp. 141ff. 3

 

 

 

 

270 paul davies example, when he wished to ensure the continuance of his esteem and favour at the papal court after the election of Pope Sixtus IV in 1471, he dedicated a life of St Francis to the newly elected Franciscan pope, in the full knowledge that this would strike a chord with the new pontiff. 1 Using the design of the tabernacle to do this sort of task would scarcely have been necessary, given the other possibilities open to him. But it cannot be dismissed on these grounds alone. There is another issue, one far more significant, which would militate against the idea that the decision to imitate was motivated primarily by the desire to ingratiate himself with the Medici. Knowing that the tabernacle was built to exalt the most important of Florence miracle-working images of the Virgin Mary, Antonio would probably not have conceived it as a vehicle for self-promotion ; to have done so, would have risked the Virgin interpreting this as an insult. On balance, therefore, it is unlikely that the similarity between the two shrines can be explained in terms of an expression of gratitude to the Medici for past assistance or of a desire for self-advancement. In the case of Impruneta, therefore, the normal patterns of intention – both artistic and patronal – are an insufficient means of explaining the desire for imitation, inadequate because the miracle-working image and its importance for Florentine society introduced a set of additional and over-riding sensitivities that needed to be observed. The decision to imitate the shrine in Florence is puzzling and counters expectations. Given the exceptionally high status of the image, one might expect a patron to choose an architectural housing that was distinctive, that might provide a recognisable and individual character for the cult. That leaves us with the need to explain why Antonio degli Agli and the Compagnia della Madonna chose to sacrifice artistic individuality in favour of ‘imitation’, ‘referencing’ or ‘quotation’ in this particular case. By choosing to ‘imitate’ the patrons were doing something that might have been considered dangerous. In modelling itself on a ‘rival’  

1   He seems throughout his life to have avoided advancement to high office. He turned down the bishopric of Ragusa. According to Vespasiano da Bisticci his reluctance to accept the role of Bishop of Ragusa prevented him from being made cardinal. It would seem that he was content to spend his life at Impruneta. And when appointed Bishop of Fiesole, following Leonardo Salutati’s death in 1466, he was probably promoted because of his earlier role as the pope’s tutor during the 1440s rather than to any intervention on the part of the Medici. So, Antonio degli Agli had relatively little to gain from flattering his powerful friend Piero de’ Medici by emulating one of his commissions. He was not interested in advancement. Moreover, his revenues were so high that he had no need for material things. See Vespasiano da Bisticci, Vite di uomini illustri del secolo xv scritte da Vespasiano da Bisticci, Florence, Barbera Bianchi, 1859, pp. 207-208.

imitation in fifteenth-century pilgrimage architecture 271 shrine at SS. Annunziata it risked sending a message to pilgrims that the Impruneta shrine was deferring to the one in Florence, that it was less powerful. So, there must have been a very good reason for following this course of action. One particular parallel for devotionally motivated imitation in the later Middle Ages is the proliferation of ‘copies’ of celebrated shrines. The practice of ‘copying’ celebrated pilgrimage sites was central to medieval architecture, and it was a practice that continued into the Renaissance and beyond. Chief among the many celebrated pilgrimage churches that spawned ‘copies’ was the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of Christ’s entombment and resurrection. 1 And then, from the fifteenth century onwards, the Holy House at Loreto, the supposed structure in which the Virgin received the annunciation from the angel Gabriel. 2 Among other, slightly less exalted shrines that were copied were the Porziuncola of St Francis of Assisi, 3 and the Sainte Chapelle in Paris. 4 In such cases, the aim of the copying seems to have been at least in part to ‘borrow’ some of the sanctity associated with the original site and to transfer it to a new, less holy location, which might as a consequence be deemed more sacred. In part, it also allowed some inaccessible or difficult-to-visit shrines, such as those in Jerusalem, to be visited through the imagination by being ‘rebuilt’ or ‘re-imaged’ elsewhere. Could this be what is happening at Impruneta? While this cannot be dismissed as a possibility, 1   See Richard Krautheimer, Introduction to an ‘iconography of medieval architecture’, « Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes », 5, 1942, pp. 1-33 ; Damiano Neri, Il S. Sepolcro riprodotto in occidente, Quaderni de ‘La Terra Santa’, Jerusalem, Franciscan Printing Press, 1971 ; Martin Biddle, The Tomb of Christ, Stroud, Sutton, 1999 ; Colin Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West : From the Beginning to 1600, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 58-66 and 328-362. See also Christopher S. Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction : Temporalities of German Renaissance Art, Chicago, Chicago University Press, pp. 25-60 ; for an interesting discussion of the copy at S. Vivaldo, see Frida Forsgren, Art and Drama. Religious Performance and Realism in the Italian Quattrocento, PhD dissertation, Oslo University, 2007, pp. 164-181. 2   For the copies of the Holy House at Loreto, see M. Bulgarelli, La Santa Casa di Loreto : L’edificio sacro e le sue copie, « Lotus International », 65, 1990, pp. 79-88. 3   A copy of the Porziuncola survives in Rab, Dalmatia. See Milenko Domijan, Rab : The City of Art, Zagreb, Barbat, 2007, pp. 201-209. With thanks to Donal Cooper for alerting me to this example. 4   For copies of the Sainte Chapelle, see Claudine Billot, Les Saintes Chapelles (xiii-xvi siècles) : approche compare de fondations dynastiques, « Revue d’histoire de l’église de France », 73, 1987, pp. 64-86 ; Claudine Billot, Les Saintes Chapelles royales et princières, Paris, Centre des monuments nationaux, 1998 ; Inge Hacker-Sück, La Sainte-Chapelle de Paris et les chapelles palatine du moyen age en France, « Cahiers Archéologiques », 13, 1962, pp. 217-257. With thanks to Julian Gardner for these references.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

272 paul davies it is worth reflecting on why a shrine just outside Florence would need to ‘stand in’ or ‘substitute’ for a shrine that was readily accessible inside the city just a few miles away. Equally problematic is the fact that the Impruneta image was an established, powerful cult in its own right and did not need to ‘borrow’ the sanctity that the image at SS. Annunziata might have afforded it. An alternative possibility is that ‘imitation’ might have been intended as a means of expressing the image’s cultic significance for Florence and Florentine pilgrims. One of the design problems with which the patrons and the architects had to contend was that of how best to express the fact that the shrine was essentially ‘Florentine’ and worked on behalf of the Florentine community as a whole. It was difficult to do so as Florence was not an official patron and references to Florence as well as to Impruneta, the Compagnia and the Buondelmonti would be difficult to incorporate clearly. But one way in which the image’s importance for Florence could be expressed was by making an obvious reference to the most powerful of the Florentine shrines that could be found within the city walls. It may have been designed in this way therefore to allow and encourage Florentines to identify with this particular image as if it were part of their pantheon of saints. The Impruneta Tabernacles and the Issue of Multiple References Further explanations for ‘imitation’ at Impruneta can be advanced once the discussion is broadened to include the other sites of cultic significance inside the church at Impruneta. One of the remarkable features of the interior of the church is that the tabernacle of the Madonna does not stand alone. It has a twin, which stands on the other side of the triumphal arch (Fig. 12). It is identical in most significant respects, having the same sort of fluted Composite column, the same elaborate entablature, the same Della Robbia ceiling, and the same bronze-work railing (Fig. 13). It differs only in certain aspects of its attendant ornament. It had a different type of frieze in stucco (now missing owing to bomb damage sustained in 1944), a different terracotta backdrop again by Luca Della Robbia’s workshop, variant capitals and simpler bases. Such are the similarities in the carving of ornament with the tabernacle of the Madonna that it must have been conceived and executed at the same time. And like the tabernacle of the Madonna, this twin tabernacle was built to house an object of devotion of some significance – even if it

imitation in fifteenth-century pilgrimage architecture 273

Fig. 12. The Tabernacles of the Virgin and of the True Cross, S. Maria, Impruneta (photo : author).  

did not have the high civic status of the Madonna with which it is paired, In this case, the object is a relic of the true cross that had been donated to the church, according to tradition by Pippo Spano (Filippo Buondelmonti degli Scolari, 1329-1426), the celebrated condottiere. This tradition is entirely credible as the donor was a member of the Scolari branch of the Buondelmonti family, previously joint owners of the church’s ius patronatus with the main branch of the family. 1 And this leaves us with the question of why the church at Impruneta should house a pair of almost identical tabernacles. This pairing cannot refer to SS. Annunziata as there is only one tabernacle there. It might of course be read as a way of providing a lavish display, one that could rival or even outdo the arrangement at SS. Annunziata in its splendour. But there could be another explanation. The idea of twinning tabernacles in this particular way may well be in its own way a form of ‘quotation’ or ‘copying’. In this instance it could be read as making a ‘reference to’ or ‘quoting from’ the first great shrine 1

  Little is known for certain about the donation of this relic. The tradition certainly goes back as far as Casotti, op. cit., pp. 34-35.

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Fig. 13. The Tabernacle of the True Cross, S. Maria, Impruneta (photo : author).  

imitation in fifteenth-century pilgrimage architecture 275 of the Virgin Mary in the Early Christian West – S. Maria Maggiore in Rome. 1 There, during the fifteenth century pilgrims on entering would have seen two magnificent tabernacles of thirteenth-century date at the end of the nave, positioned to either side of the triumphal arch that opens onto the chancel. Although both were dismantled in the early eighteenth century, the original arrangement is recorded in a drawing included by Giorgio Vasari il Giovane (1562-1625) in his compendium of architectural plans of 1598 as well as in an early seventeenth-century image published by De Angelis in his 1621 book on the church and its history (Figs. 14 and 15). 2 From these images it is clear that the two tabernacles originally nestled in the corners of the nave just in front and to either side of the triumphal arch. Erected at slightly different times – that on the right being the earlier of the two dating from 1256 and that on the left rather later – they were broadly similar to each other in composition though rather different in style. 3 Each was of two storeys. The lower comprised a four columned canopy that enclosed an altar, while the upper, reached by stairs, was an elaborate superstructure with space to protect, house and display objects of devotional significance. Notwithstanding the clear formal similarities, it is their cultic and iconographic similarities that link the arrangement with Impruneta. The two tabernacles in S. Maria Maggiore had identical cultic functions to the ones at Impruneta. The one on the left (cornu evangelii) housed the most powerful image of the Virgin in Rome, the icon of the Virgin known as the Salus Populi Romani, and like the image at Impruneta it was attributed to St Luke. 4 The other – on the right (cornu epistolae) – housed a collection of relics, chief among which were several Christological relics, including pieces of wood from the crib and fragments of 1

  It is worth noting that Giovanni Rucellai in his mid-fifteenth-century Zibaldone drew a parallel between the tabernacle of the Salus Populi Romani in Rome and that of the miracle working image in Orsanmichele, Florence ; see Brendan Cassidy, Orcagna’s Tabernacle in Florence : Design and Function, « Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte », 55, 1992, pp. 180-211, especially p. 203 and note 105. 2   Paolo de Angelis, Basilicae s. Mariae Maioris de Urbe a Liberio Papa I usque ad Paulum V Pont. Max. descriptio et delinatio, Rome, 1621. 3   For a discussion of the liturgical arrangement of the two tabernacles in S. Maria Maggiore, see Julian Gardner, The Capocci Tabernacle in S. Maria Maggiore, « Papers of the British School at Rome », 38, 1970, pp. 220-230 ; Cassidy, art. cit., pp. 202-205 ; Steven Ostrow, Art and Spirituality in Counter-Reformation Rome : The Sistine and Pauline Chapels in S. Maria Maggiore, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 252-253. 4   For this tabernacle, see Giovanni Biasiotti, L’immagine della Madonna detta di S. Luca a S. Maria Maggiore di Roma, « Bollettino d’arte del Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione », 10, 1916, pp. 231-236.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Fig. 14. View of the tabernacles of the Salus Populi Romani and of the Relics (Capocci) as shown in De Angelis.

his swaddling clothes. 1 The iconographical arrangement was very close too. At S. Maria Maggiore, the two tabernacles framed apse mosaics by Jacopo Torriti (c. 1290-1295) which have on their central vertical axis a scene illustrating the Death and Assumption of the Virgin and then immediately above it in the half dome a Coronation of the Virgin. 2 This 1   For the Capocci tabernacle, see Gardner, art. cit., pp. 220-230. For the relics it housed see Ostrow, op. cit., pp. 252-253. 2   The arrangement at S. Maria Maggiore has been interpreted as consciously reflecting the church’s twofold spiritual personality – presenting Christ and the Virgin together in both their divine and human capacities. There, the lower of the two inscriptions that stands under the apse mosaic, says that Mary is rewarded with the Assumption and Coronation

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Fig. 15. Plan of the tabernacles of the Salus Populi Romani and of the Relics (Capocci) as shown in De Angelis.

same vertical sequence of images – set above the principal panel of the Madonna and Child – was to be found on the altarpiece of 1375 by Pietro because she is the Mother of God and thus entitled to sit beside her son on the throne as Queen of Heaven. For this analysis of S. Maria Maggiore dual spiritual character, see Ostrow, op. cit., pp. 252-256.

278 paul davies Nelli and Jacopo del Mazza that once stood on the high altar at Impruneta. 1 At S. Maria Maggiore, the figure of Christ appears on the right of the image in every scene, a placement that is meant to be read as referring to the Christological tabernacle on that same side of the church, while the Virgin Mary is shown consistently on the left and thus closer to the Marian tabernacle. This arrangement again finds a parallel at Impruneta. The tabernacles at S. Maria Maggiore in Rome would thus appear to be the model for the housing of the image and relic at Impruneta, insofar as they share the same placement in the church, the same functions and the same iconography. And, as if these parallels were not enough, further evidence still for the existence of a connection between the two cults is to be found in an early document : the fourteenth-century statutes of the Confraternity of the Madonna of Impruneta. Here in the rule-book that governed the running of the cult of the Madonna dell’Impruneta there is a preface that provides a brief discussion of thaumaturgic images. After a description of the Veronica and the Volto Santo in Lucca – both images of Christ – the text then turns to images of the Virgin Mary and in doing so focuses exclusively on one image, that of the Salus Populi Romani in S. Maria Maggiore :  

 

it is worth recalling the faithful intentions of the eminent doctor of the church St Gregory, who as a last resort sought God’s help in alleviating a plague that was afflicting the Roman people with sudden death. He took the panel of the image of Our Lady, and carried it in a procession through the city of Rome with all the participants arranged according to their rank ; and the corrupt air was clearly seen to dissipate in front of the oncoming procession and angelic voices were heard singing hymns of praise around the Virgin’s image […] This image, housed in the major church of S. Maria della Neve [i.e. S, Maria Maggiore], has a ritual associated with it that springs from the reverence owed to it. On the vigil of her Assumption the panel of the Saviour from the sancta sanctorum is taken in a procession of lights – a Roman feast day – to the church of S. Maria della Neve. God has granted many miracles through the reverence owed these two panels, miracles which the vast number of books in Rome record in full. We excuse ourselves of speaking any more about the images of Our Lord and his Mother elsewhere in Italy because since the places where divine mercy, both ancient and modern, are so many, and the miracles innumerable, it would be prolix to deal with them. 2  

1   The painting was destroyed in the bomb that devastated the church in 1944 and has since been reassembled like the tabernacles. See Hartt, op. cit., p. 57 and figs. 20 and 21. 2   Capitoli della Compagnia della Madonna dell’Impruneta, Florence, A. Cecchi, 1866, p. 9 : « Ancora e’ molto degno di ricordare la fedele intenzione del singulare dottore santo Gregorio ; il quale per ultimo ricorso dello invocare Iddio che cessasse la pestilenzia al populo  

 

 

imitation in fifteenth-century pilgrimage architecture 279 This fourteenth-century text therefore already seems to acknowledge a link between the cult at Impruneta and the one at S. Maria Maggiore, in that it was the only other Marian cult discussed in detail, and this fact would not have been lost on the members of the confraternity who together with their prior, Antonio degli Agli, was responsible for commissioning the two tabernacles. It is worth noting that this act of formal and cultic ‘reference-making’ to S. Maria Maggiore’s tabernacles may not be an isolated instance. There may well be a chain of ‘copies’ or substitutes. 1 The tabernacle arrangement inside the Madonna dei Miracoli in Castel Rigone, near Perugia is one such example. 2 There, the two tabernacles house a miracle-working image of the Virgin – the Madonna dei Miracoli in the tabernacle on the left and a thaumaturgic crucifix in the tabernacle on the right, exactly the same arrangement as at S. Maria Maggiore and Impruneta. Another example can be found in S. Francesco in Padua where two tabernacles flank the entrance into the presbytery. 3 Thus, at Impruneta the two tabernacles simultaneously ‘copy’, ‘refer to’ or ‘quote from’ the architecture of two quite distinct and celebrated devotional models – the shrine at SS. Annunziata and the two shrines in S. Maria Maggiore in Rome. They can do this by ‘copying’ or ‘quoting’ from the models in different ways. The tabernacle of the Madonna romano dello improveduto morire, prese la tavola della imagine di Nostra Donna, e con composta e graduata processione quella portando per la citta’ di Roma, manifestamente si vide la corrotta aria fuggire innanzi a la divota processione ; e udivansi voci angelice cantare laudose reverenzie di Madonna intorno a quella tavola, dicenti : Regina celi letare, etc. La quale tavola collocata nella chiesa maggiore di Santa Maria della Neve, per reverenzia di quella, e’ costituzione osservativa, che nella vigilia della sua Assunzione si trae la tavola, dov’e’ la imagine del Salvatore, di sancta sanctorum, e colla luminaria e romana festa si conduce a la detta chiesa di Santa Maria della Neve. Sotto la reverenzia d’esse due tavole ae Iddio tante grazie e miracoli fatte e mostrati, che moltitudine di libri ne sono pieni nella detta citta’ di Roma. Onde di non piu’ dire delle immagini di Nostro Signore e sua Madre nelle parti d’Italiaci rendiamo scusati : impero’ che tanti sono i luoghi, il dove la divina misericordia, per antico e per moderno, ae operati et a opera innumerabili et indicibili miracoli, che non ne bisogna prolissa scrittura ». 1   The topic of architectural mimesis, copying and in particular ‘substitution’ is dealt with in Alexander Nagel, Christopher S. Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, New York, Zone Books, 2010. 2   For the Madonna dei Miracoli in Castel Rigone, see Guido Batocchioni, Chiesa della Madonna dei Miracoli di Castel Rigone, « Quaderni dell’istituto di storia dell’architettura », ii, 1988, pp. 87-92, which includes earlier bibliography. 3   For S. Francesco in Padua, see Francesco Cessi, S. Francesco Grande, in Padova. Basiliche e chiese, edited by Claudio Bellinati, Vicenza, Neri Pozza, pp. 209-215.  

 

 

 

 

 

280 paul davies ‘refers to’ the shrine at SS Annunziata by ‘quoting from’ its form and its planning, while the two tabernacles when read together refer to S. Maria Maggiore through their placement and twinning. What seems to be at the root of the decision to ‘copy’ or ‘quote’ is the set of parallels that exist between the cultic objects the structures were designed to house. Likeness in Pilgrimage Architecture : Sacral Aggregation  

An intriguing question emerges from this discussion : why was the Impruneta arrangement of shrines designed to refer to multiple other shrines? And how does this affect our understanding of the purpose of ‘imitation’ and ‘copying’? One possible explanation may be inferred if we examine the ritual practices associated with objects of special devotion. In times of crisis, when the Virgin of Impruneta was brought into Florence she was brought into union with Florence other major saints :  

 

On Sunday 16 October a general procession was made through the city of Florence conducted by the bishop with the clergy, with the provosts of the baptismal churches […] and with the head of St Zenobius and the arm of St Phillip and with many other relics, and all the members of religious houses with their crosses and their relics, and the friars of the Certosa with their huge number of relics. And the image of the Virgin of Impruneta was brought in on this day and erected in the Piazza dei Signori, and there on the platform [in front of the palace] had been built a stage where the clerics stood together with the Signoria and their colleges, and [on] a stage erected higher up stood the bishop who sang the mass. And there were stages erected higher still and lavishly adorned, one on which the multitude of relics [was placed] so that everyone in the piazza could see, and another for the organs and singers. And the bishop preached during the mass. 1

Although the idea behind this bringing together of Florence’s chief relics might well have something to do with the ‘lesser’ saints paying homage 1   Alle bocche della piazza, cit., p. 99 : « Domenicha a dì xvi si fe’ la procisione generale per la città di Firenze, messer lo veschovo cholla chericeria, cho’ pievali e / chon cotte indosso e cholla testa di santo Çanobi e chol braccio di santo Filippo e cho molte alter reliquie, e tutti religiosi cholle loro croci e loro reliquie, e’ frati di Certosa cho[l]le loro reliquie i[n] gran quantità. / E venne i[n] questo dì i[n] Firenze la tvaola di Santa Maria in Pianeta, e posesi i[n] su la piaça de’ Signori, e quivi i[n] sulla ringhiera, fatto un grandissimo palcho dove stetono e’ chierici, e’ Signori Priori e’ loro Cholegi, e uno palcho più alto dove stette messer lo veschovo a cantare la messa, e più palchi più alti, molti adorni, dove stette la moltitudine delle reliquie, che ogniuno di sulla piaçça le potea vedere, e uno palcho per gli organi e pe’ cantori. E predichò messer lo vescovo fra la messa ». A reconstruction of this arrangement can be found in Trexler, Public Life, cit., p. 50 ; see also p. 356.  

 

 

 

imitation in fifteenth-century pilgrimage architecture 281 to the Virgin, it might equally have to do with the idea of bringing together a pantheon of saints so that they could work together in unison. What they could do in concert was more powerful than anything they could do individually. This practice of increasing the power of relics by bringing them together finds parallels in the many picture frames that were produced as containers for multiple relics and which encircled an image with a small relic collection, thus sacralising the image and at the same time creating a miniature pantheon. 1 So, by making allusions or references to SS. Annunziata and S. Maria Maggiore, the architecture is in some sense notionally unifying the three Marian cults, encouraging the pilgrim to pray, not just to the Madonna in her guise as the image of the Madonna dell’Impruneta but also to her in the form of both the Virgin Annunciate at SS. Annunziata and the Salus populi romani in Rome as well as to Christ as represented in the other tabernacles. Architecture is thus being used as a mechanism to allude to other cults, perhaps even as a means of aggregating cults. In this way, by bringing together several cults in the devotee’s imagination, the prayers of the faithful might be magnified and strengthened. Conclusion Besides establishing a more secure footing for the history of the tabernacle of the Madonna at Impruneta, this study argues that the similarities between the tabernacles at Impruneta and the one at SS. Annunziata have little to do with the identity of the architect or with artistic influence. Rather, it maintains that the purpose of ‘reference-making’ or ‘copying’ in this case – and perhaps in most other instances too – is related to issues associated with devotion rather than art. And by extension it would appear that ‘copying’ in the case of shrines may well be a special case, distinct from other secular forms of copying, and with a different set of motives. In the case of Impruneta, the most likely reasons for the decision to visually refer to other shrines were, I would contend, twofold. One was the importance of creating a sense of ‘belonging’, that is to say of identifying the shrine as being Florentine, because, even though it stood in the contado well beyond the city boundary, it contained Florence’s most powerful miracle-working image. The other was what might be called ‘sacral aggregation’, the idea of creating visual references to other shrines so that the devotee might be prompted to pray, 1

  See the many examples in Treasures of Heaven : Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe, edited by Martina Bagnoli et alii, London, British Museum Press, 2011, pp. 200-205.  

282 paul davies not only to the Virgin of Impruneta but also to other celebrated images and relics too – the ones to which the ‘copying’ process refers – in the belief that prayers to multiple sources of miracles might produce a greater chance of intercession.

INDEX OF NAMES

Ackroyd, Peter, 161, 166.

Agazzari, Alfonso, 146, 149, 154. Agli, Antonio degli, 241, 252-262, 266, 268-269, 279. Alberti, Leon Battista, 10, 18-19, 21, 189, 189, 247, 268. Allen, William, 66, 81, 140-143. Andrewes, Bartimaeus, 227-228, 233. Angelis, Paolo de, 47-48, 264, 275-277. Anne, Queen of England, 168, 182-183, 186. Aquinas, Thomas, 52. Aristotle, 31, 53, 174. Aske, Robert, 32, 116, 134, 136, 149, 160, 165, 200, 251. Atkinson, Robert, 136-137. Augustine, Saint, 50-52. Aylmer, John, Bishop of London, 140, 150-151.

B

abb, H. S., 76, 214. Baccio Bigio, Nanni di, 89, 263. Bale, John, 73, 79. Bacon, Sir Francis, 24, 102, 109, 121, 165, 172, 182, 184-185. Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 140. Baker, David J., 223-224, 236. Beaumont, Francis, 24, 259, 170, 172, 178, 185. Beecher, Donald, 126. Bembo, Pietro, 32. Bernini, Gianlorenzo, 39. Birde, William, 80. Blandhol, Sverre, 189. Blank, Paula, 226. Blount, Charles, Lord Mountjoy, 189190, 198. Bona of Savoy, Duchess of Milan, 263.

Boniface VIII, Pope, 84. Borromini, Francesco, 39. Botticelli, Sandro, 32-33. Briant, Alexander, 150-151, 153. Bromley, George, 137. Brooke, Arthur, 124, 150. Brookes, Mr, 150. Brown, Georgia, 222, 224, 226, 226, 231, 235, 237. Brown, William J., 77, 81. Bruce, James, 205. Bruce, Robert, 233. Brunelleschi, Filippo, 34, 36, 39, 243. Bryson, Bill, 166. Builth, Sir Hywel of, 117. Buisseret, David, 18, 73. Buondelmonti, Andrea, 6-9, 261-62, 272-73. Buondelmonti family, 241, 252-253, 256, 258-259, 261-262, 272-273. Buondelmonti, Filippo, 258, 273. Buondelmonti, Manente, 257. Buondelmonti, Stefano, 258, 264. Burby, Cuthbert, 239. Burton, Robert, 18-19. Butler, Sir Edward, 141, 196. Butler, Martin, 163-64, 180.

Camden, William, 67, 205, 213, 224,

230-232. Campanella, Tommaso, 22, 102, 107. Campion, Edmund, 143-44, 146-51, 15355, 192, 210-211, 217-218. Campion, Thomas, 163, 165. Cardinal of Como, 142, 146, 148. Carnesecchi, Baccio, 263. Carey, Sir Robert, 110. Castelli, Giovan Battista, 146. Castells, Manuel, 18.

284

index of names

Castiglione, Baldassare, 32, 46-47. Caxton, William, 66, 175. Cecil, William, Lord Burghley, 75, 135, 137, 139-140, 144, 151-53, 156, 205. Certeau, Michel de, 15, 23. Chamberlain, John, 159-160, 162-164 183. Chapman, George, 66, 163, 167, 171, 176, 179. Charles I, King of England, 62, 64, 183185, 187. Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, 263. Charles V, Emperor, 77. Chaucer, Geoffrey, 63-66. Classen, Albrecht, 16, 117-118. Corbinelli, Antonio, 269. Cowley, Abraham, 171. Craig, Hardin, 81, 252. Creighton, William, 154. Croft, Pauline, 177-178. 184-185. Curran, Kevin, 162-164, 167-168, 178, 180, 186.

D

aniel, Samuel, 165, 171. Dante Alighieri, 10, 21, 71-73, 78-79, 8286, 90-91, 283. Danvers, Charles, 210-211, 213. Davidson, Clifford, 77, 79, 81, 91. Day, William, 151. Dekker, Thomas, 57-60, 62-64, 7-68, 108-109, 122. Denham, Sir John, 64. Derricke, John, 196, 209-210. Devereux, Robert, Earl of Essex, 198, 203-206, 219. Dickey, Stephen, 124. Domenico di Giovanni Corella, Fra’, 251, 253. Donatello, 42, 251, 68. Douglas, Sarah K., 135. Du Bellay, Joachim, 21. Dubois, Claude-Gilbert, 121, 128.

Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester, 196. Duncan-Jones, Katherine, 111, 120, 123, 128. Dutton, Richard, 77.

Edgar, King of Scotland, 229, 231.

Edward III, King of England, 153, 155, 175. Egerton, Thomas, 137, 148. Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 14, 16, 57-59, 61, 204. Ellis, James Richard, 112. Ellis, Steven G., 179, 196. Elyot, Sir Thomas, 133. Englefield, Francis, 147. Ennius, Quintus, 55. Erasmus Roterodamus, 113. Ercole I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, 263. Eugenius IV, Pope, 258. Euripides, 181. Eyck, Jan van, 38-39, 49.

Faustus, John, 75, 85.

Fellows, Jennifer, 239. Felton, John, 136. Ficino, Marsilio, 32, 252, 268-269. Finett, John, 173. Finkelpearl, Philip, 179. Firenze, Andrea da, 34, 37, 39, 49. Fitzgerald, Thomas, Earl of Kildare, 208. Fletcher, Alan, 190, 193-196, 197-199, 201, 210, 218. Fletcher, John, 179. Florio, John, 85, 118. Flowerdewe, Edward, 137. Forman, Simon, 13-5, 20-21, 23, 25, 27. Fortescue, Sir John, 133, 136. Foucault, Michel, 127, 138. Foxe, John, 21, 73, 77-82, 85, 90. Francesca, Piero della, 50. Franchis, Johannes Maria de, 162, 170171, 173, 176, 178, 180, 193, 210.

index of names Francis of Assisi, Saint, 270, 272. Frederick of Palatine, 159, 163, 164, 170, 177, 179.

G

alli, Tolomeo, 146. Gerard, John, 148. Gilbert, George, 144, 154. Golding, Arthur, 11-12, 122-123. Gore, Sir John, 63. Gorges, Arthur, 124. Gower, John, 63. Greene, Robert, 9, 110. Gregory XIII, Pope, 142, 144.

Hake, Edward, 113.

Hambly, John, 140. Hammer, Paul E. J., 202, 235. Harrison, Stephen, 201. Hatton, Christopher, 148. Havely, Nick, 79, 84. Healy, Thomas, 81-82. Henry, Prince of Wales, 163, 167, 176, 178, 185. Henry I, Duke of Guise, 119. Henry II, King of France, 117. Henry II, King of England, 191. Henry III, King of France, 76, 119. Henry IV, King of England 56. Henry V, King of England, 56, 115, 125, 191, 204, 221, 223. Henry VI, King of England, 109, 203. Henry VII, King of England, 57-58. Henry VIII, King of England, 77, 168, 192, 207. Hesiod, 121, 171-172, 180. Heywood, Jasper, 143, 147. Heywood, Thomas, 56, 63-64, 74. Highley, Christopher, 234. Holt, William, 147. Homer ,52-53, 55, 66. Howard, Philip, Earl of Arundel, 154. Hutson, Lorna, 74, 222, 224, 226, 229, 235, 240.

285

Ive, Paul, 87. James I, King of England, 55, 57-64,

74, 149, 159, 162, 167, 180-185, 203, 20507, 212, 214, 229, 234, 236. Jeffries, Sir John, 141, 157. John II, King of Portugal, 263. Johnson, Richard, 171, 238-239. Jonson, Ben, 55, 57-62, 74, 109-110. Julius II, Pope, 52.

Hartt, Frederick, 42, 242, 278. Hussey, John, Lord, 134.

Kempe, William, 110.

Kiernan, Pauline, 114. Klein, Bernhard, 73. Klevar, Harvey L., 125-226.

Laclos, Pierre Cholderlos de, 129.

Lafréry, Antoine, 90. Lancaster, John, 148, 159. Limon, Jerzy, 163, 165, 168, 173, 175, 181282, 186. Livy, 120. Lloyd, Ludovic, 171. Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, 31-32, 36, 51-53. Lucian, 108. Luther, Martin, 77, 93. Lydgate, John, 63, 66, 213.

MacCaffrey, Wallace, 134.

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 76. Manetti, Giannozzo, 48. Manley, Lawrence, 19-22, 24, 58, 67, 230, 232. Manship, Henry, 230, 239, 242. Marie de France, 116. Marlowe, Christopher, 7, 10-11, 21-22, 66, 71, 71-91, 93-95, 97, 99, 101-103, 105, 237. Marston, John, 126-227.

286

index of names

Mary Queen of Scots, 58, 139, 157. Mary I Tudor, Queen of England, 153. Mayne, Cuthbert, 141, 149, 154-255, 157. Mazza, Jacopo del, 278. McEachern, Claire, 224-25, 229, 232, 234. McKerrow, R. B., 17, 224, 232, 234, 239. McRae, Andrew, 110. Medici, Cosimo, 269. Medici, Giovanni, 41. Medici, Giovanni di Bicci de’, 255. Medici, Piero de’, 247, 257, 269-270. Mellowes, William, 136. Merlau-Ponty, Maurice, 23. Merritt, J. F., 19-20. Metastasio, Pietro, 171. Michelangelo, 9, 49, 89. Michelozzo di Bartolomeo, 241-242, 247, 254. Middleton, Thomas, 102, 126. Mildmay, Sir Walter, 145. Milton, John, 134, 285. Minshull, Catherine, 77. Moffet, Thomas, 123. Monmouth, Geoffrey of, 55-56, 115, 203, 232. Montrose, Louis, 13-14. More, Thomas, 22. More, Thomas, of Lincoln’s Inn, 154. Morone, Giovanni, 142. Moryson, Fynes, 196, 199, 208, 216-218, 220. Muir, Kenneth, 123. Munro, Ian, 17, 21. Munson Deats, Sara, 75.

Nashe, Thomas, 7, 1, 17, 19, 25-26, 71,

74, 211, 221-240. Neale, John, 139, 145. Nelli, Pietro, 258, 269, 278.

Norden, John, 25, 225. Norton, Thomas, 26, 134, 138-140, 145146, 150-154, 157, 189, 198, 200, 212, 217. Nowell, Alexander, 151.

O

g, Rory, 196. O’Neill, Hugh, Earl of Tyrone, 190, 202, 211. O’Neill, Shane, 210. Ortelius, Abraham, 73, 87. O’Sullivan, Richard, 135. Ovid, 10, 33, 57, 65-66, 71, 105, 111-112, 122-123.

Parker,

Matthew, Archbishop of Canterbury, 139. Parmiter, Geoffrey de, 134-139, 141. Parry, William, 151. Parsons, Robert, 56, 143-147, 150-52. Pater, Walter, 49. Paul II, Pope, 52. Peend, Thomas, 111-112. Percy, Henry, Earl of Northumberland, 90. Perugino, 50-57. Pettie, George, 123. Philip II, King of Spain, 142-143. Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 32. Pile, Steve, 14. Pinard, Ugo, 87, 90. Pindar, 171-172. Pippo Spano [Filippo Buondelmonti degli Scolari], 273. Pius V, Pope, 136, 143, 147. Plato, 10, 50, 52-53, 121, 174, 181. Platter, Thomas, 114. Plowden, Edmund, 135, 138, 142, 148149. Plutarch, 171-172. Prest, Wilfrid, 135-136, 142, 172, 185186. Puttenham, George, 104, 227.

index of names

Rabelais, François, 117.

Radcliffe, Ann, 128. Raleigh, Sir Walter, 73, 90. Raphael, 49-51, 192. Ritson, Joseph, 116. Robbia, Luca della, 42, 241-42, 250, 252, 272. Rowley, Samuel, 80-81, 126. Rowse, A. L., 14-15. Rubens, Peter Paul, 61-62. Russell, Sir William, Lord Deputy, 200.

Sackville, Thomas, 26, 189, 198, 200,

212. Sander, Nicholas, 142. Sangallo, Giuliano da, 266. Savonarola, Girolamo, 32-34. Scot, Reginald, 238. Schwyzer, Philip, 224, 240. Sellaio, Iacopo, 34. Sforza, Galeazzo Maria, Duke of Milan, 263. Shakespeare, William, 7, 9-11, 14, 19, 21-22, 55-56, 58, 63, 66, 71-72, 74-75, 81, 85, 88, 93-95, 97, 99-103, 105-107, 113-117, 119-129, 168, 171, 189, 198-200, 203-204, 221-223. Shapiro, James, 48, 55, 198, 204, 213, 221, 235. Sherwin, Raphe, 151. Shohet, Lauren, 164-166, 180. Sidney, Sir Henry, 196-198, 200, 209, 213. Sidney, Sir Philip, 63, 138, 171, 219. Simancas, Diego de, Bishop, 142-143. Sixtus IV, Pope, 270. Smith, D. K., 73, 91. Smith, Irwin, 115. Snagge, Robert, 139. Snyder, Susan, 119. Socrates, 174.

287

Spenser, Edmund, 58, 63, 66, 71, 73, 71, 175, 189, 206, 208, 213, 215-16, 223. Spivey, Nige,l 171-72, 174, 181. Standen, Sir Anthony, 294. Stanihurst, Richard, 192. Stanton, Richard, 195. Stow, John, 17, 19, 57, 127, 180. Strong, Roy, 163, 174, 176, 186. Stubbes, Philip, 114. Sullivan, Garrett A., 73. Swinnerton, Sir John, 62.

Tatlock, John S. P., 56, 63-64.

Taylor, John, 67, 161-62, 174-175, 180. Theodosius, Emperor, 168. Throckmorton, Francis, 154-155. Tiptoft, John, 137. Torriti, Jacopo, 276. Turner, Henry, 222, 224-225, 232, 240.

V

anhoutte, Jacqueline, 212, 214, 215. Vasari, Giorgio, 10, 34, 89, 242, 263. Vasari, Giorgio, il Giovane, 275. Virgil, 55-56, 60-61, 64-67, 82-83, 100. Viterbo, Marco da 268. Vogtherr, Heinrich 117.

Waad, William, 113.

Walpole, Henry, 154. Walsingham, Francis, 75, 90, 135, 140, 152. Ward, Joseph, 124. Watson, Robert N., 124. Watson, Thomas, 85. Webster, John, 62. Weimann, Robert, 56. Wentworth, Peter, 156. Wentworth, Sir Thomas, 190. White, Nicolas, 196. Williams, Gordon, 115, 119. Winwood, Ralph, 164. Woodbridge, Linda, 121-122.

288

index of names

Wotton, Sir Henry, 74. Wray, Christopher, Lord Chief Justice, 149, 151.

Yates, Frances, 57, 176.

Younger, William, 227-228.

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EA R LY M O D E R N A N D M OD E RN S T UD IE S a se rie s dire cte d b y roy erik sen 1. Ashes to Ashes. Art in Rome between Humanism and Maniera, edited by Roy Eriksen and Victor Plathe Tschudi, 2006. 2. Urban preoccupations, edited by Per Sivefors, 2007. 3. Imitation, Representation and Printing in the Italian Renaissaince, edited by Magne Malmanger and Roy Eriksen, 2009. 4. Serafino Della Salandra, Adamo caduto, revisione, saggio, traduzioni e note a cura di Flavio Giacomantonio, 2009. 5. The Formation of the Genera in Early Modern Culture, edited by Clare Lapraik Guest, 2009. 6. John Milton, Il Paradiso perduto, a cura di Flavio Giacomantonio, con un saggio di Vittorio Gabrieli, 2009. 7. Il Paradise Lost di John Milton e il tema della caduta nella tradizione letteraria italiana: da Giambattista Andreini a Serafino della Salandra, Atti Milton Conference, Matera, 10-11 novembre 2006, a cura di Flavio Giacomantonio, 2009. 8. Urban Encounters. Experience and Representation in the Early Modern City, edited by Per Sivefors, 2013.