The Rough Proposal

Part of the PhD thing, apparently, is writing a rationale for the oral examinations.
Well, mine also happens to contain the questions and ideas I'm currently planning for the dissertation, so here goes.
(My advising professor has yet to approve it, so it's very likely it will change a bit.)

I propose to be examined in Renaissance literature from the period of 1530-1642 with a particular emphasis on the drama of the period from 1580-1620, with some awareness of the influence of contemporaneous prose and poetry, both secular and religious. My main goal is to create a general survey of canonical works in drama and modern criticism, with an awareness of the influences drawn from and had upon both poetry and prose. My particular interest with relation to this project is concerned with ideologies of rulership and the influence of both gender and the supernatural on these ideologies.

My interests lie particularly in the way dramatists choose to stage – and not to stage – acts of treason and betrayal with relation to ideas of rulership and kingship in both historically-based and completely fictional works. Specifically, I am interested in the representation and language of rebellion against an established or perceived figure of monarchical authority. As a part of this exploration, I plan to focus on the legitimizing and delegitimizing of the acts and language of treason; the presence or absence of the supernatural, the gender of the person(s) involved, and the presence or absence of a “legitimate” ruler are all elements I consider particularly relevant to the examination of treason within Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.

With relation to gender, I am primarily concerned with the ways in which both women and ideas of “femininity” influence, corrupt, and de-authorize the legitimacy of rulership. In the Early Modern period, power in the hands of women was frequently represented as dangerous, uncontrolled, and even evil. Concerns with the body and gendered behavior – by both men and women – permeate the language and actions of early modern comedies and tragedies alike, with feminine behavior by men and masculine behavior by women considered a threat to the legitimacy and efficacy of power. Women rulers – and male rulers considered excessively feminine – are portrayed on stage as transgressive, their authority tyrannical or weak, and frequently prone to mismanagement, vice, and corruption. Finally, concerns with female power and authority give rise to questions of legitimacy, both in terms of the type of power wielded and the constant fear of bastardy and tainted bloodlines.

From out of these concerns arises a significant fear of the supernatural, particularly with relation to witchcraft and prophecy (though these are not restricted by any means to the female gender, the majority of dramas and historical cases that deal with the supernatural do concern women). Like concerns about gender and femininity, I would argue, fear of the supernatural – devils, familiars, demons, witchcraft, prophecy, and conjuration – is a manifestation of the fear of monarchical illegitimacy. Figures of evil on the stage – most often associated with witchcraft (and femininity) – serve not only to condemn acts of treason in the eyes of both divinity and society, but also to delegitimize the traitor while simultaneously providing a scapegoat for the act of treachery itself. Particularly of interest to me is the frequency of supernatural involvement (or at the least, invocation) in acts of betrayal, and the time in which issues of gendered evil coincide with both political treachery and monarchical illegitimacy.

The early modern anxieties concerning legitimacy, tyranny, gender, and prophecy (for they cannot, ultimately, be divided from one another) are all, I would suggest, particularly significant to the process of confirming or denying the viability of the treasonous act. The particular elements of gender and the supernatural – as they relate to rulership – appear in drama as a means by which the playwright can legitimate or condemn acts of both political treason and personal betrayal. The way in which the plays of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods portray both betrayer and betrayed – particularly with regards to their gender and association (or lack thereof) with a vilified (rather than sanctified) supernatural – is particularly concerned with questions of political, spiritual, social, and blood legitimacy. The powerful women on the early modern stage are quite often also women linked with or accused of witchcraft and prophecy, their authority condemning and rejecting their gender even as they attempt to escape the bounds of appropriate feminine behavior.

The fundamental questions which I seek to answer are all preoccupied with concerns of gendered power, legitimate rulership, and the appearance and condemnation of evil. What role – if any – can a figure of female authority hope to have on a stage that automatically vilifies her? Do women have an authoritative position on the early modern stage that is not corrupted by either supernatural or political evils? How does gender and the performance of gender influence the legitimacy of monarchy? How does gender – specifically femininity – alter the severity of treason and betrayal? Considering the automatic assumptions of female treachery and frailty, is an act of treason rendered more or less acceptable when performed by a woman? How does the gender of evil – female witches, prophets, etc. – alter the perception of that evil and the acts that evil commits? In the case of witchcraft, how does the presence of evil allow for authorial subversion of monarchical ideology? Finally, does the presence of evil on stage allow – and even legitimize – acts of treason and betrayal?

Within the scope of this examination, I also plan to look at issues of kingship, the concept of divine right, and ideas of monarchical limitations, tyranny, and the question of legitimate deposition of a king. I intend to examine contemporary texts such as Machiavelli’s The Prince, Elizabeth I’s letters and speeches, and James I’s Basilikon Doron, in addition to the circulating pamphlet debate on tyranny and kingship. I plan to rely upon secondary sources examining kingship and theatre, as well as sources discussing treason and regicide.

With regard to the role of women in the early modern theatre, I plan to examine secondary sources that discuss the role of women in both society and in drama, with particular attention to women in positions of subversion and power, including Marilyn French’s Shakespeare’s Division of Experience, Theodora Janowski’s A Woman in Power in the Early Modern Drama, and the ideas of gender performance put forth in Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble. I also intend to look at the pamphlet debates about the autonomy of women and appropriate gendered behavior – with particular emphasis on Katherine Usher Henderson and Barbara F. McManus’ Half Humankind – as well as sources that discuss the role of women in early modern witchcraft, including Diane Purkiss’ The Witch in History as well as histories of religion and evil both on and off the stage, including Stephen Greenblatt’s Hamlet in Purgatory.

With these particular questions of treason, femininity, witchcraft, prophecy, and rulership in mind, I am particularly interested in the following works: Tamburlaine parts 1 and 2, Edward II, Woodstock, The Spanish Tragedy, Jack Straw, Titus Andronicus, Richard II, Henry VI parts 1-3, Richard III, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, The Revenger’s Tragedy, The Maid’s Tragedy, The White Devil, The Witch and Women Beware Women. I also plan to examine several pamphlets concerning the appropriate behavior of women and the rising fears of witchcraft, including James I’s Daemonologie and The Damnable Life of Doctor Faustus, as well as Hic Mulier and Haec Vir and their surroundings.

Failed Foul Wrinkled Witch

To follow up on my earlier post about Margaret of Anjou from Henry VI and Richard III...

The basic thesis of this particular paper - on the women of Henry VI and Richard III - is that the women of Shakespeare's tetralogy are the source and reason for the presence of the corrupt monarch Richard III - the Scourge of God and the bane of the kingdom.

Richard, in an attempt to retaliate against maternal cursing, truncates the maternal bonds in which he himself cannot participate: “Hath he set bounds between their love and me?” asks Elizabeth, “I am their mother; who shall bar me from them?” (R3 4.1.20-21). The Duchess of York also pleads for proper maternal rights: “I am their father’s mother: I will see them” (R3 4.1.22). Richard, however, is unmoved, and instead subjects himself to the maternal cursing of Elizabeth and the Duchess, which resonates with Margaret’s later hell-hound imagery:
Elizabeth: Death and destruction dogs thee at thy heels;
Thy mother’s name is ominous to children.
…
And make me die the thrall of Margaret’s curse:
Nor mother, wife, nor England’s counted Queen.
…
Duchess: O ill-dispersing wind of misery!
O my accursed womb, the bed of death! (R3 4.1.39-40, 45-46, 52-53)
Both women recognize the distortion of motherhood in the time and space of Richard III. Elizabeth’s exclamation that “Thy mother’s name is ominous to children” refers specifically to herself – Dorset’s mother – but also to maternity in general; transgressive femininity twists and degrades motherhood, both on a basic level in that sexually transgressive women lead to illegitimate children, but also on a more complex level. Transgression becomes embodied in the distorted state of both nation and king; Richard’s nation has become as corrupted as the mind and body of the man who has come to rule it: “The tyrannous and bloody act is done; / The most arch deed of piteous massacre / That ever yet this land was guilty of” (R3 4.3.1-3). The women have the power to engender; Richard – like his demonic mother Margaret – only to destroy, a benefit for England, even if a punishment for him. Richard’s power may destroy kings and kingdoms, but it will not be passed to future generations, guaranteeing that, with his death, England will be liberated from his threat by the far more masculine and heroic Richmond.

Even the women’s amphibolic language ultimately fails, opening space in the realm of politics for Richmond’s entrance. Margaret’s words that “fill the world” are her weapons, but even these deteriorate at the end of Richard III, just as she lost her son at the end of 3 Henry VI. Although many of her curses are fulfilled – “Margaret, now they heavy curse / Is lighted on poor Hastings’ wretched head” (R3 3.5.92-93) and “Now Margaret’s curse is fall’n upon our heads” from Grey (R3 3.4.15) – Margaret cannot prophecy or participate in the restoration of England by virtue of her alien and transgressive nature. “These English woes shall make me smile in France” (R3 4.4.115), she says, having returned, it seems, for the sole purpose of engendering hatred and murder. However, with the departure of this most-reviled “ruthless Queen,” Richard, as Margaret’s embodied curse, loses control and the play leaves behind female cursing in favor of the masculine space of Bosworth field. With the absence of transgressive femininity, the masculine principles upon which the nation should be founded are able to assert themselves once more, allowing Richmond to engage with and defeat Richard in a masculine contest of arms.

It is, finally, Richmond’s pure masculinity that brings a close to the tetralogy, not only fulfilling the Tudor myth of accession, but also destroying Richard and deflating the power of transgressive womanhood. With Richmond’s defeat of Richard, Margaret disappears back to the alien space of her home nation, Elizabeth’s angst dissolves into her daughter’s marriage to Richmond, and the Duchess of York loses her final child and the target of her anger. This fulfillment of the Tudor myth[1] finalizes the scourging of the nation and enables a generative move forward. Richmond “steps into a prepared role: Margaret, the incarnation of the wrong sort of vengeance, disappears, leaving the place vacant for the minister of God’s justice. Yet he must fight a battle, and go through all the military and political preparations” (Hammond 111). These preparations are the motions of masculine agency, the reenactment of Talbot’s lost heroism and the rejection of corrupt femininity in favor of true womanhood, controlled and nurtured by male power within the boundaries of appropriate marriage. Richmond proves his own worth by his recognition of his own power, his lauding of divinity, his appropriate relationship to women, and his military prowess: “God, and our good cause, fight upon our side; / The prayers of holy saints and wronged souls, / Like high-rear’d bulwarks, stand before our faces” (R3 5.3.241-243). With the blessing of the “wronged souls” murdered by Richard and the sanction of god, Richmond “enters the play as the synthesis that has been called for, and as the agent of divine justice” (French 71), scorching away the fog of female amphibology and restoring the sanctity of King, country, and masculinity.

---

[1] From Edward hall, particularly, Tillyard gleaned what has ever since been contentiously debated as ‘the Tudor myth’: this was the belief that, in the marriage of Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York and their accession to the throne after Bosworth, the union of the houses of Lancaster and York bore witness to God’s providential pattern in history’s finally redeeming the land from the curse brought about by the usurpation, deposition and murder of Richard II. (Knowles 43)

Body Lost, and Body Regained

In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the body establishes a corporeal link between spiritual and physical corruption; the spiritually figured and physically manifest body of Satan – as opposed to the more simple human bodies of Adam and Eve – enacts a performative signification for his self-corruption and as the vehicle for the corruption of the mortal bodies of Adam and Eve. The increasing physicality of Satan’s body in Paradise Lost calls to mind the significance of corporeality to the pollution of the human body; as Satan becomes increasingly rooted in his own body, his own degeneration becomes increasingly irrevocable, trapping a formerly-celestial being within an earthly form. In fact, the predominant source of corruption for both human and angelic kind lies within the realm of the body as a physical projection of rather than a mere vessel for the soul. As Paradise Lost progresses, Satan’s language and form become increasingly tangible as his spiritual nature degenerates. Satanic discourse assumes the mantle of corporeal signification as temptation, desire, and rebellion are inscribed on the outward form and function of the fallen angel’s body. The deeper Satan falls into corruption, the more physical his language and his form. Though Raphael insists on the intangible nature of the angelic body, Satan’s introduction to pain and the subsequent body of the text, articulated as it is within the discourse of the physical body, supplants the angelic body with a mortal form capable of both (sexual) pleasure and pain, the hallmarks of Fallenness in Milton’s epic. It is from the body and through the body that Sin and corruption enter into existence, and it is, therefore, through the body that divine punishment must act; ultimately, though, the body is also the site and source of redemption. While Satan’s increasingly tangible and corruptible body serves as the vehicle for Sin and Death (both literally and figuratively), the physicality he introduces into Eden is also the means by which Adam and Eve may ultimately be redeemed; the body – site of pleasure and pain, corruption and salvation – enables its own redemption even as it allows for the entry of corruption, revealing, finally, the intrinsic physicality of the soul.

Foul wrinkled witch!

The figure of the feminine in Shakespeare’s 1, 2, and 3 Henry VI and in Richard III continually transgresses the boundaries of femininity, rendering her a continual threat to King, Country, and Religion; in Henry VI and Richard III, the women are figured as both masculine and demonic, using witchcraft and war to achieve their ends. The fundamental problem of these plays lies with the continual violation of political, social, religious, and gendered boundaries; the women – Joan de Pucelle and the Countess from 1 Henry VI, Eleanor (Duchess of Gloucester) of 2 Henry VI, Elizabeth and the Duchess of York of Richard III, and – most importantly – Queen Margaret of 2 and 3 Henry VI and Richard III – continually refuse to be categorized within “appropriate” bounds, defying the enclosure of their gender and attempting to seize political power for themselves. This rejection of conventional roles and mores leads to their ultimate failure, both as women and as politicians. Because they become defined as transgressors – specifically as witches and prophetesses – they lose the capability to participate in acceptable politics; the turn from angels to demons embodied in the turn to witchcraft and prophecy ultimately defiles and nullifies the female body and mind, rendering women’s successful participation in the political game entirely impossible even as they metaphorically birth corruption into the national landscape.

Despite initial appearances, the impossibility of feminine political power – outside the sphere of appropriate female participation – does not cause complete impotence; the women are, in fact, quite politically successful for a time, followed, of course, by their exile, death, and/or downfall. Of these women, Margaret – transgressive against nation, husband, king, and religion – ultimately gains the longest-lasting power through her rejection of appropriate boundaries, although, ironically, it is Margaret’s transgressiveness (along with that of the other women) in the Henry VI trilogy that causes the need for her role in Richard III. Aligned with witchcraft and the amphibology of political prophecy, the language she speaks in Richard III is a language that holds sway over the entire play, politically, socially, and religiously. It at first seems contradictory that Margaret’s voice – the voice of treason and marital/martial betrayal in 2 and 3 Henry VI – returns to haunt those traitors who, in Henry VI, have escaped their punishment; her prophecies of death and devastation, precisely because they are drawn from a space of political transgression, enforce a higher (and older) order of political righteousness, speaking out in a rebellious voice against treason rather than for it.

However, despite Margaret’s seeming alliance with right in Richard III, her crimes from the Henry VI plays cannot be forgotten; the other women repeatedly remind her of her own villainous deeds even as she attempts to claim their sympathy. As a prophetess – though more truly, as a witch, because her prophecies manifest only as curses – she also fails, since she is unable to see the positives that result from the restoration of the throne to a “proper” figure of masculine authority in Richmond. The reason for this failure lies in the progression from 1 Henry IV through Richard III; taken alone, each play divulges the danger of transgressive femininity, but taken as a series, the tetralogy enables a more complex reading of the female threat. The women of 1, 2, 3 Henry VI and Richard III invade the Habermassian public space of the political forum, endangering masculine authority and engendering their own type of demonic offspring in the form of feminine political power, ultimately resulting in the creation of the most demonic monarch of all – Richard III – whose power is the bastardization of feminine political machinations and Machiavellian abuse of his supposedly legitimate masculine authority.

Hell in a Handbasket

What fascinates us about Satan is the way he expresses qualities that go beyond what we ordinarily recognize as human. Satan evokes more than the greed, envy, lust, and anger we identify with our own worst impulses, and more than what we call brutality, which imputes to human beings a resemblance to animals ("brutes"). Thousands of years of tradition have characterized Satan instead as a spirit. Originally he was one of God's angels, but a fallen one. Now he stands in open rebellion against God, and in his frustrated rage he mirrors aspects of our own confrontations with otherness... Satan has, after all, made a kind of profession out of being the "other"; and so Satan defines negatively what we think of as human.

Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan.

No doubt due to a fairly devout Catholic upbringing, the concept of Satan has always fascinated me. As a child, I expressed a disbelief in the very concept of evil - and along with that, disbelief in sin or Hell. That said, I suppose I've had to reevaluate that over the years.

Now I certainly don't believe in Hell as a physical place with devils and little red pitchforks; I'm a confirmed secular humanist (read atheist for those of you who don't want to look that up) and I think the notion of either god or a devil rather absurd in most senses. I think they're very interesting semiotic referents, however.

The very sense of divinity and devilry - of a god and a devil - is one that intrigues me so deeply that I've decided to dedicate my life to it. I believe not in the literal nature of such things, but in the symbolic value of them. Evil - and Satan - is something that human beings use as a scapegoat: "he's evil, that's why he did it," and that sort of thing. Now evil in the sense of abject cruelty, sociopathic behavior, murder, and so on I can believe in. People who are intentionally sadistic and whose behavior does far more harm than good - if any good at all - most certainly fall under the domain of "Evil."

But that isn't the evil of Satan.

Satan's evil is far more abstract than that and, as my students suggested while reading Paradise Lost, is an evil that arises from the ideology of subjugation. Satan is evil not because he is cruel, but he is evil because he chooses to rebel against godhead. The oppressive state apparatus - to borrow a term from Althusser - of religion uses Satan as a means by which to enforce obedience to their institutional ideology. Of course, there were devils and dark gods long before the rise of the Church, so naturally that isn't where it all begins, but they all seem to serve the same purpose.

But I digress. Pagels' point in the above paragraph is that we see in the figure of Satan a kind of kinship that is - whatever Milton may say about it - not one of superior beings to a lowly and base creature. Satan is not a "brute"; Satan's allure is that he is as human as we are, and yet more than human. He was an angel, the greatest of them, and his disobedience to god caused his demonization. Semiotically speaking, Satan is what we risk becoming when we risk rebellion; any act of subversion or tactic of defiance creates in us a mirror of Satanic behavior. Yet, Pagels suggests, Satan is more than human, as well. He is "a spirit" whose strength springs from "intense spiritual passion... strength, intelligence, and devotion" (xvii); Satan is more than humans can become because he begins as more than we are. Satan is both like us and Other to us; as god - since humans are ostensibly made in god's image - is both like and unlike us, so Satan is both like and unlike us.

Satan seems to me the more interesting of the two. But then, as my advisor tells me, I "do evil." Not brutality or cruelty, of course, but rebellion. And it strikes me that in a nation founded on the fundamental principles of freedom enforced by rebellion, we'd be a little less wrapped up in our righteousness, but that's a rant for another day.

Honestly, though, if you had to choose between godhead and defiance, which would you choose? Me, I'll go with defiance, thanks. Makes things a hell of a lot more interesting.

Besides, who says Satan isn't part of the whole ineffable plan?

The Doctrine and Discipline of Milton

A reaction to John Milton's Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Of Education, and Areopagitica. The first is a defense of divorce, the second elucidates Milton's ideas on Education, and the third is a defense of publication freedom.

In the excerpt from Writing the English Republic, Norbrook suggests that Milton, “Finding that the government was dealing well with liberty in the state… turned to domestic liberty, in which he included marriage, education, and freedom of speech. This is a very broad category; but one of Milton’s aims is to span conventional distinctions between the political and the religious, the public and the private, authorship and citizenship” (109). In reading Milton’s treatise on Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Areopagitica, and Of Education, one cannot help but notice the way in which Milton conflates these dichotomies; each treatise implies the natural conflation of all three of the pairings Norbrook mentions, especially as they concern authorship.

Milton’s frequent use of “Author” in Paradise Lost to imply the master in the relationship – both for god and Adam – is an apt demonstration of the way in which Milton seems to suggest the power of the written word. His eloquent defense of free speech in Areopagitica implies the necessity for the citizen-author to the freedom of both individual and nation. The figure of the author-citizen, as the use of “Author” in Paradise Lost implies, is a figure of considerable authority and, naturally enough, represents the image of the authoritative scholar Milton projects. This author-citizen was a synthesis not only of public and private, but of a modern man and “a return to that lost civic virtue and purity of language” (Norbrook 113) that Milton valued in Classical writing and government. As author and citizen, Milton’s suggestions, especially in treatises that could be construed as somewhat controversial, resonate with his image of the ideal nation; he desires England to be a nation of rationality and the author-citizen is the ideal member of that nation.

However, the author-citizen figure so staunchly defended in Areopagitica is already present in both Doctrine and Of Education. The rational tone that combines the language of legal and religious discourse in Doctrine attempts to argue the value of the author-citizen as more valuable to the public sphere if he is contented in the private: “The republican male must be fit of rthe public sphere, and ideological antagonism in marriage disrupts that fitness” (Norbrook 115). This conflation of the two spheres – which had hitherto and would thereafter often be kept completely separate – completely embodies Milton’s republicanism in which, Norbrook says, “he wants to destroy… a hierarchy in which power is handed down from above” (110). Although Norbrook focuses on Milton’s early defense of monarchy, specifically in Of Reformation, the ideas contained therein continue to apply to Milton’s later ideas, and Norbrook suggests that these ideas were always more compatible with republicanism than monarchy: “[Civill Government mentioned in Of Reformation] is a commonwealth in which all the parts are subordinated to the whole rather than the body’s being subordinated to the monarchical head” (113). Milton, Doctrine’s author-citizen, refuses to accept either religious or political authority that would attempt to dictate rules that suffocate the private person, rendering him unable to participate in the public sphere.

Of Education seems to be a synthesis of Milton’s republican attitude of defying authority with an understanding of self-discipline that would enable the educational system to produce more author-citizens. Following these, Areopagitica is rather unsurprising; the figure of the author-citizen – a man educated in a republican fashion and allowed to escape the strictures of a religious authority that does not have his happiness and peace foremost in mind – must have the freedom to be an author-citizen and must not be stifled by an oppressive government whose irrational fears have begun to lead it away from republic and back toward tyranny. The fundamental element of the author-citizen, as Norbrook suggests, is that he is a synthetic figure; he fuses both the public and the private, the religious and the political, and, most important of all, the citizen and the author.

The questions that arise from the depiction and articulation of the author-citizen relate to the contradictions inherent in the act of synthesis. As Norbrook points out, Doctrine is rife with contradictions both to itself and to Of Education: “As in his relations with democracy, a certain opening in the direction of wider communication creates an abrasive effect when it is then sharply limited. He expected wives to converse, but the ideal curriculum he set out in Of Education… made no mention of women” (118). Other contradictions that are complicated rather than resolved by Milton’s synthesizing appear in his desire to limit Catholic publications – “Milton then does not object to the suppression of royalist opinions in a time of war” (Norbrook 120) – while speaking against the limiting of publication in Areopagitica. At what point do we listen to the author-citizen and at what point to we ignore the strictures he sets forth? When is the authority of the author liberating and when does it cross the line it professes to defend between freedom and tyranny, especially in light of Norbrook’s observation that “Areopagitica would have been still less accessible to the artisans who were enthusiastically entering political debate. It speaks for, rather than to, them; the community it speaks to is that of intellectuals deeply versed in literary culture” (125)?

Norbrook, David. Writing the English Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.