“To Make Books of Nothing”: Brutan Drama in Early Modern England
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DOCTORAL THESIS “To make books of nothing” Brutan drama in early modern England Gilchrist, Kim Award date: 2018 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 24. Sep. 2021 “To Make Books of Nothing”: Brutan Drama in Early Modern England by Kim Gilchrist BA, MA A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Department of English and Creative Writing University of Roehampton 2017 Abstract Early modern drama representing the Brutan histories is highly diverse in terms of genre, tone, and date. However, this thesis argues that these texts and performances can be collectively addressed through a clearer understanding of their shared origins in the traditional account of Britain’s pre-Christian history, an account that operated as a dynamic force throughout English society from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries. Traditionally termed “Galfridian” by critics after its origin in the Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1135) by Geoffrey of Monmouth, this thesis argues that this account of British etiology be re-classified “Brutan” to reflect its transmission via anonymous medieval manuscript chronicles known as Bruts, themselves named for Britain’s putative founder, the Trojan exile Brute. In the early modern era, however, this foundational narrative was proved by historiographers to be a twelfth-century invention. This development triggered decades of dispute, doubt, and patriotic resistance, a process I term etiological erosion. This thesis asks what it might have meant to encounter drama representing Brutan figures during their slow cultural transformation from national founders to abandoned fictions. In terms of reception, this drama could both reinforce and destabilise perceptions of Brutan historicity. Chapter One establishes the social pervasiveness of the Brutan tradition from the medieval to the early modern periods, providing context for the representation of Brutan ancestry before Elizabeth I in Gorboduc (1562); Chapter Two argues that, even as the performance of Brutan figures was used to represent national and civic founding in pageants performed before Henry VII (1486), and the plays Locrine (c. 1590) and King Lude (1594), these figures also raised troubling iconographic associations with the Near East and civic destruction; Chapter Three argues that the propagandistic re-energisation of the Brutan histories in the early Jacobean era paradoxically foregrounded their instability, a tension perceptible in plays such as King Lear (c. 1606); the final chapter explores the aftermath of Brutan belief via texts including Cymbeline (c. 1610) and, finally, Milton’s A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle (1634). This thesis, then, argues that whilst Brutan drama can be addressed according to its social, commercial, and political functions, a fuller picture emerges when this century-and-a-half of cultural utility is understood as the product of a four-hundred- year tradition of national origins that was being gradually yet irrevocably eroded. 1 2 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................. 6 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 8 Textual note .............................................................................................................. 45 Chapter One: Geoffrey of Monmouth and Etiological Erosion ................... 47 Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Brutan histories in transmission ............................ 54 Gorboduc .................................................................................................................. 85 Chapter Two: Materialising Brutan Etiology (1486-1600)........................... 99 Foundations and Etymology ................................................................................ 101 Locrine ................................................................................................................... 118 King Lude ............................................................................................................... 147 The Conqueste of Brute .......................................................................................... 164 Chapter Three: Reading Brutan Erosion (1604 – 1608) ............................. 171 Leir ......................................................................................................................... 191 No-body and Some-body ........................................................................................ 207 King Lear................................................................................................................ 217 Chapter Four: The Diminution of Brutan Time (1610 – 1637) .................. 232 Cymbeline ............................................................................................................... 233 Fuimus Troes .......................................................................................................... 285 Albions Trivmph ..................................................................................................... 293 A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle (Comus) .................................................... 300 Conclusions ..................................................................................................... 305 Appendix One: A Chronology of the Brutan Rulers .................................. 315 Appendix Two: The Brutan Histories in Print, 1480-1631 ......................... 323 Works Cited .................................................................................................... 334 Primary Sources ................................................................................................... 334 Secondary Sources................................................................................................ 345 4 5 Acknowledgements First and foremost, thanks and gratitude to my thesis supervisors at Roehampton University, Clare McManus and Jane Kingsley-Smith, for support as generously exacting in its intellectual and methodological scrutiny as it has been creative, adventurous, and fun. I couldn’t have hoped for better mentors. My thanks also to Laura Peters, head of the Department of English and Creative Writing, for entrusting me with the bursary that enabled my work. The final months of this project have been undertaken whilst working in the department as a teaching fellow, where I have benefitted enormously from a welcoming culture and wonderful colleagues. This thesis began life as an essay written for my MA in Shakespeare Studies at King’s College London and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. As such, thanks are due to Sonia Massai and Lucy Munro for book studies and encouragement, and to Farah Karim-Cooper for first instilling in me what seemed the unlikely possibility that I might be PhD material. Thanks, too, to my dissertation supervisor Gordon McMullan for his amused intellectual rigour, and for suggesting that my proposed essay on drama and British antiquity sounded “more you” than the suggested alternatives. It was. My thanks to Tracey Hill and Alixe Bovey who kindly fielded my gnomic questioning on statues and giants, and to Margreta de Grazia and Martin Wiggins, who shared their unpublished work. This work has been improved, and my studies enlivened, through the opportunity to present at a number of conferences, including the Literary London Society, Modes of Spectatorship at Southampton University, the Shakespeare Institute’s British Graduate Conference and, most recently, Roehampton’s own Before Shakespeare conference. My thanks, especially, to the Before Shakespeare team of Andy Kesson, Lucy Munro, Callan Davies, and James Wallace whose innovative work has contributed much to my academic development. Entering academia at a later age, I thought, might be isolating. One of the joys of the experience, therefore, has been the discovery of so many new friends, many of whom have, through conversation or assistance with applications or drafts, supported my work. So, thanks to Derek Dunne, Amy Lidster, Robbie Hand, Callan Davies, and to Lana Harper, a constant friend with a brilliant mind, and co-founder of Shakesposium. And thank you to all Shakesposers for your wisdom and willingness to both listen and share. Beyond the early modern, sanity was often sustained by my 6 three- or more decade friendships, by Ivan and Sophie, Alex and Julia, Ian and Lucy, Rich and Mez, Kielan and Kate, Lucas, Ali and Liv, Amy and Mark, Sarah, and Nick Jewell who, a few steps ahead, gave sage thesis advice along with the heavy riffs. I note with some embarrassment that this study, which focuses on a seemingly endless parade of largely joyless, patriarchal, often misogynistic,