This, dissertation has been 65-5683 microfilmed exactly as received

THORNBERRY, Richard Thayer, 1925- SHAKESPEARE AND THE BLACKFRIARS TRADITION.

The Ohio State University, Ph. D ., 1964 Language and Literature, general

University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan SHAKESPEARE AND THE BLACKFRIARS TRADITION

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

Richard Thayer Thornberry, B.N.S., Ph.B,, A.M.

**********

The Ohio State University 1964 .

Approved by

'T f " A ) ^ Adviser Department of Englis ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to express my gratitude to Professors G. B. Harrison and

John Arthos for stimulating my interest in Elizabethan drama and in

Renaissance studies, to Professors Robert Estrich, Claude Simpson, and

Richard Altick for their continued encouragement, and to the members of my ever helpful Ph.D. committee (Professors John Harold Wilson, Edwin

Robbins, Francis Lee Utley, and John McDowell). In addition, I especi­ ally wish to thank the two persons who contributed the most to the. successful completion of this project, ray mother, Mrs. William Anderson, whose understanding and faith sustained me, and my adviser. Professor

Harold Walley, who, among countless other things, established an intellectual climate that was ideal for the study.

ii VTl'A

October 8, 1925 Born - Cleveland, Ohio

1943-1947 . Ü. S. Navy

1945 . . B.N.S., Marquette University,. Milwaukee, Wisconsin 1948 . . Ph.B., Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

1951 . . M.A., University of .Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan

1952-1953 U. S. Navy

1955-1961 Teaching A ssista n t, Department of E nglish, The Ohio S tate U niversity, Columbus, Ohio

1961-1964 Assistant Professor, Western Illinois University, Macomb, m i n o i s

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: English

Studies in Shakespeare. Professor Harold R. Walley

Studies in Elizabethan Drama. Professor G. B. Harrison

Studies in the Non-dramatic Literature of the Renaissance. Professors Austin Warren and John Arthos

Studies in M ilton. P rofessor Edwin W. Robbins

Studies in Linguistics and English. Professor Francis L. Utley

Studies in American Literature. Professor William Charvat

i i i CONTENT'S

Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...... Ü

VITA ...... i i i

Chapter I . INTRODUCTION...... • ...... 1

I I . THE DIFFERENCES IN THE CURRENT TRADITIONS AT HEACKFRIARS AND THE GLOBE ...... 46

Broad Types of P lays ...... 52 Point of View ...... 66 C h a ra c te rs...... 77 The Unities ...... 91 Sexual M atters ...... 104 Witty Dialogue ...... 114 S p e c t a c l e ...... 117 Conclusions ...... 131

I I I . THE INFLUENCE OF THE TWO TRADITIONS ON SHAKESPEARE• S LAST PLAYS ...... 134

Cvmbeline ...... 138 The W in ter's Tala ...... 170 The Tempest ...... 192 Henry VIII ...... , 217 The Two Noble Kinsmen ...... 245

. IV. CONCLUSION...... 276

APPENDIX A ...... 298

APPENDIX B ...... 320 bibliography ...... 327

iv CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

In 1608, after having presented their plays in public theatres from the time they began to function in 159^, Shakespearecompany acquired a private theatre called Elackfriars, a playhouse -with a clientele that differed in composition and taste from the audience at the

ŒLobe, the company's current public theatre; moreover, after approximately

1608 Shakespeare wrote five dramas that, although they deviate consider­ ably from one another, form a group that many scholars consider to be significantly different from his earlier plays. To help explain the differences, commentators have assigned various causes which range from

Shakespeare's physical and mental state at the time to changes within the realm of theatrical affairs. Authorities on theatrical matters, however, disagree as to whether the differences in the plays are causally related to the acquisition of the Elackfriars theatre. In this study I will investigate whether Shakespeare's last five plays, Cvmbeline. The Winter's

Tale. The Tempest. Henry VIII. and The Two Noble Kinsmen do, in fact, exhibit features that we can attribute to the tastes of the Elackfriars audience, and, ultimately, whether the total available evidence can tell us if Shakespeare wrote these dramas for the Globe, for Elackfriars, or for both theatres.

At present there is a remarkable amount of disagreement among scholars as to the answer to the latter question. Centering primarily

1 on Shakespeare's first three late romances ( Cvmbeline. The W inter's T ale. and The Tempest). Gerald Bentley, Alfred Harbage, and J, M. Nosworthy have each championed one of three possible positions. After a detailed analysis of the change in theatrical conditions brought about when the

King's Men acquired Elackfriars, Bentley, in 1948, concluded;

My basic contention is that Shakespeare was, before all else, a man of the theatre and a devoted member of the Bang's company. One of the most important events in the history of th a t company was i t s a c q u isitio n of the E lac k friars Playhouse in 1608 and its subsequent brilliantly successful exploitation of its stage and audience. The company was experienced and theatre-wise; the most elementary theatrical foresight demanded th a t in I6O8 they prepare new and different plays for a new and different theatre and audience, Shakespeare was their loved and trusted fellow. How could they fail to ask him for new Elackfriars plays, and how could he fail them? All the facts at our command seem to me to demonstrate that he did not fail them. He turned from his old and tested methods and produced a new kind of play for the new theatre and audience, Sometdiat unsurely at first he wrote Cvmbeline for them, then, w ith g re a te r d e x te rity in h is new medium. The V Enter's T ^ e . and finally, triumphant in his old mastery. The Tempest.'

In an impressive and valuable study of the traditions at the public and private theatres, Shakespeare and the. Rival Traditions (1952), a work that qualifies him to speak as an authority on the subject, Alfred Harbage stated the opposite position:

the plays of Shakespeare in this period [between I 609 and 1613]» contrary to a common critical assumption, are popular in ty p e ,2

I Gerald E, Bentley, "Shakespeare and the Elackfriars Theatre," Shakespeare Survey. I (1948), 49,

^Alfred Harbage, Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions (New York, 1952), p , 8 6 ,, 3 In 1955 Nosworthy expressed, without argument, the third major point of view on the issues I would concede, however, th at the acquisition of the Elack­ friars may have induced Shakespeare to pen dual-purpose plays, for such, most emphatically and triumphantly, the Romances are.3 The disagreement among these three commentators, however, is merely symptomatic of the current, widespread confusion about the matter. Directly or by inference, with or without qualification, Shakespearian scholars have offered each of the three answers for virtually every one of Shakespeare*s last plays,^ None of these writers has examined the

3 Cvmbeline. ed, J , M, Nosworthy (London, 1955)» P. xvi, ^Some have placed all of Shakespeare*s later work at Elackfriars: Wilhelm M, A. Creizenach, The English Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (Philadelphia, I916), p, 4l8; Louis B, Wright, Middle-dass Culture in Elizabethan England (Ithaca, 1958; 1935 ed, revised slightly), p, 18; surely David Daiches, C ritical Annroachss to L iterature (Englewood Cliffs, N, J,, 1956), p, 387; and, by implication, J, Isaacs, "Production and Stage Management at the Elackfriars Theatre," Shakespeare Association Pamphlet, 1933» pp. 3-5. Besides Bentley, some have placed only the romances there; %omas Marc P arrott, Shakespearean Comedy (New York, 1949), pp. 367 , 375, 381, and 394; Thomas W, Baldwin, The Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company (Princeton, 1927), pp. 317-318; and, with the qualification "primarily, " A, M, Nagler, Shakespeare»s Stage, trans, Ralph Hanheim, Yale Ikiiversity Shakespeare Supplements, 1958, p. 102, Others have allocated only individual plays to Elackfriars, Cvmbeline; Ashley H. Thorndike, Shakespeare*s Theatre (New York, 1925), p. 121; Martin Holmes, Shakespeare*s Public (London, I 96O), pp. xiii, 206-212; and J, Dover Wilson in Cvmbeline. ed, J , C, Maxwell (Cambridge, 1960k p. ix, Jg.mpge.t: 0, W, Wallace, The Children_of the Chanel at E lackfriars 1597-1603 (Lincoln, Nebraska, 19O8 ), p, 10, n, 3; Thorndike ( Shakespeare * s Theatre). p, 197; John Cranford Adams, The Globe Playhouse (Cambridge, 1942), p, 308; and Holmes (Public), pp, x iii, 214-223, ügnrzJCÜI: Frederick G, Fleay in A_Chronicle History of the Life and Work of VH-lliam Shakespeare (New York, 1886), p, 251 argues that "the extant play was performed as a new one at Elackfriars," The Two Noble Kinsmen: Kenneth Muir, Shakespeare as Collaborator (London, i 960), pp, 146-147; W, J, Lawrence, The Elizabethan Playhouse and Other Studies (Philadelphia, 1913), p. 4l and Shakespeare*s Workshop (Oxford. 1928), 4 problem in depth, however, and very few have presented even cursory arguments to support their positions.^ But one must be wary, also, about accepting the conclusions of either of the two major opponents, Bentley and Harbage.

We have seen that Bentley says,

Shakespeare was their loved and trusted fellow. How could they fail to ask him for new Elackfriars plays, and how could he fail them? All the facts at our command seem to me to demonstrate that he did not fail them.

p . 62; Allardyce Nicoll, Stuart Masques and the.Renaissance Stage (London, 1937 )I p. 142; and, with qualification, Paul Bertram, "The Date of The Two. Noble Kinsmen." fifi, XII ( I 96I ) , 30. Harbage allots all of Shakespeare*s last plays to the Globe, but others have located only specific dramas there. The Vinter*s Tale; Holmes (Public), pp. x iii, 212-214; and, by implication, W. J. Lawrence, Those Nut-Cracking Elizabethans (London, 1935). PP. 25-2?. The. Tempest; J. Isaacs, "Shakespeare as Man of the Theatre," Shakespeare Association, A_Series of.Papers on_Shakespeare and the Theatre (London, 1927), p. Ill; and Francis Neilson, Shakespeare and The Tempest (Rindge, New Hampshire, 1956), pp. 125 and 130. Henry VIII: Lawrence (Nut-Cracking), p. 189; Parrott (Comedy), p. 367; Holmes (Eaiîlia), pp. x iii, 223-227; and Tucker Brooke in Albert C, Baugh et al., A Literary History of England (New York, 1948), p. 540. The Two Noble Kinsmen; Tucker Brooke, Ibid. • Besides Nosworthy, seyeral scholars have contended that Shakes­ peare wrote his last plays for both the Elackfriars and the Globe; F. P. Wilson, "The Elizabethan Theatre," Neophilologus. XXXIX (1955). 43; Felix E. Schelling, Elizabethan Drama 1448-1642 (Boston, 1908), I, p. I 6O; Harley Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare. 2nd Ser. (London, 1954), p . 251 ; Lawrence B. W allis, Fletcher. _Beamont and .Company (New York, 1947 ), pp. 172-173 ; evidently Moody E. Prior, "The Elizabethan Audience and the Plays of Shakespeare," XLIX (1951). 123; and apparently G. H. Cowling, "Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Stage," Shakespeare Association, A Series of Papers, on Shakespeare and.the. Theatre (London, 1927), p. 157.

■^In Chapter III, I will discuss the arguments offered by those who have assigned the individual plays differently than I have. 5

But he seems to have disregarded some rather sizable "facts at our

command." Nosworthy^ and P h ilip Edwards^ have pointed out, f i r s t of a l l ,

that Bentley ignored Pericles, and Edwards states ■»diy this makes the argument vulnerable: Shakespeare "undoubtedly enters the world of his

Romances through th a t p la y ," and P e ric le s "was on the boards a t the Globe by the spring of I 6O8 at the latest." Secondly, both note that Bentley failed to take into account documentary evidence (Simon Formants Booke of Plaies) which seems to establish that The Winter*s Tale and, in all likelihood, Cvmbeline were performed at the Globe.

Harbage*s confidence in his own position drops off sharply even before he completes Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions :

There remains the possibility that he [Shakespeare] was forced to learn [what the coterie playwrights were offer­ ing their audiences], even against his inclinations, for he was sharer in a commercial enterprise as well as a creativ e a r t i s t . His company was, a f te r a l l , the one tdiich appropriated Marston*s The Malcontent, bought The Revenger*s Tragedy, and finally acquired both Blackfriars and most of its writers. No problem could be more fascinating than Shakespeare*s situation during the few years preceding his retirement, and it should be discussed some time with the refinement it deserves."

Considering the present status of the research on the problem, perhaps one should tread lightly. Granville-Barker, for example, speaks of Cvmbeline*s "probable connection with the Blackfriars";^ and Kermode,

^Nosworthy (Cvmbeline). p. xvi.

^Philip Edwards, "Shakespeare*s Romances: 1900-1957," Shakes- RgjaQ-jSacyjgyt x i (1958). 5.

^Harbage (Rival Traditions), pp. 303-304. 9 , Granville-Barker (Prefaces). p. 24?. 6 discussing The Tempest, says Blackfriars is "a strong probability,but the ŒLobe is "likely enough, and yet, "the play could easily have been 12 acted at both theatres." Or perhaps with our present knowledge the most appropriate position is one of complete skepticism, an attitude best expressed by Reese in a discussion of the romances:

No one knows whether Shakespeare, as he wrote the four romances udiich closed his active life, had in his mind's eye the new stage at Elackfriars or the old, bare platform of the Globe vdiich he knew so w ell,13

But probably the most accurate statement about the status of the problem was made in 1958 ty AUaixiyce Ni coll, vrtio, after reviewing the external evidence and some of the scholarly opinion on the issue, concluded:

The blunt truth is that we simply cannot tell, although the weight of documentary evidence, such as it is, inclines against the commonly held belief and towards the supposition that his [Shakespeare's] affiliations remained to the end with his company's older playhouse.1^

I think we are forced to conclude that on the issue scholarsMp has reached an impasse. Let us re-approach the whole problem by examining first of all the "documentary evidence, such as it is" to see viiat we can say with confidence about the matter. Some scholars mention Pericles in connection with the problem, and we know from the title pages of the

^^The Tempest, ed. Frank Kermode (London, 1958), p. 150.

p . 151.

p . 152.

M. Reese, Shakespeare: His World and His Work (New York, 1953)1 p . 165. But even here there seems to be confusion. In the con­ text of his statement Reese apparently includes Pericles among the four, but the title pages show that this is a ŒLobe play.

^^AUardyce Nicoll, "Shakespeare and the Court Masque," Si, XCIV (1958 ), 53. 7 first three quartos (l609, I 609, I 6II) that it was "acted ... at the

G l o b e . We know that the Booke of Plaies indicates that in I 6I I SHmon

Forman attended a performance of "the Winters Talle at the glob"^^ and that he appears also to have seen Cvmbeline there.A s fo r The Tempest, we have no contemporary evidence of a production at either theatre.^ We know that the King's Men presented Henrv VIII at the Globe, because they were performing i t \dien the Globe burned down in 1613,^^ and we know th a t sometime between the date The Two Noble Kinsmen was w ritte n (c . I 613) and 1634 Shakespeare's company presented it at Blackfriars, because the title page of the first edition says, "Presented at the SLack-friers.

^■^Sir Edmund K. Chambers, Tha 1 y.abethan Stage (Oxford, 1923), III, p. 489. lé Sir Edmund K. Chambers, Williap Shakespeare (Oxford, 1930), II, p. 340.

^^Ib id . . pp. 338 - 339. Forman does not s ta te where he saw the play, but it was probably at the Globe because the Booke of Plaies appears to consist of accounts of plays he attended at the Globe (Nosworthy, Cvmbeline. p. x i i i ) .

^®In the preface (dated I 669), to his adaptation of The Tempest. John Dryden said that "The Play i t self had formerly been acted with success in the ELack-Friers" The Tempest, or the Enchanted Island (London, 16 76 ; a reprint of the 1674 version).^ The preface, however, dates well over fifty years after The Tempest was written, and it does not indicate \dien the play was performed at Blackfriars (the Globe play Othello, incidentally, had been presented there by 1622),

Chambers (W illiam .Shakespeare) . I , pp. 4 9 3 -^ 6 , and I I , p . 344. 20 Chambers (E lizabethan Stage). I l l , p. 226. 8

That constitutes the ''documentary evidence, such as it is," As

N ico ll comments,

Except for the debatable The Two Noble Kinsmen, issued ei^toon years after Shakespeare*s death as by him and Fletcher and as "presented at the HLackfriers," we have thus absolutely no justification whatsoever for associating Shakes­ peare with the Elackfriars at a ll—and even The Two Noble Kinsmen presents an element of doubt since a title-page ascription of 1634 need not necessarily apply to the original production of the play.21

Furthermore, there is evidence that a "title-page ascription" of a play

exclusively to Blackfriars can lead one to conclude erroneously that the drama was not performed at the Globe. The 1652 title page of The Doubtful 22 Heir says, "As It was Acted in the private House in HLackfriers," but we know from Shirley*s prologue that it was presented, c, l640, at the

Globe.The available external evidence thus establishes that by 1634,

some twenty years after Shakespeare*s last plays were written, one of the

five, The Two Noble Kinsmen, had been performed at Blackfriars,

On the other hand, the documentary data would seem to justify the

conclusion that The Winter*s Tale and probably Cvmbeline were presented

at the ŒLobe in l6ll and that Henrv VIII was staged there in 1613, At the same time, however, evidence showing that a play was performed at the

ŒLobe does not establish that it was not produced at Blackfriars, In

^^icoU ("Court Masque"), pp, 52-53» 22 Gerald E. Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage (Oxford, 1941), I, p, 131,

^^Ibid,, pp, 30-31, n, 6, and The Dramatic Works and Poems of James Shirlev. eds, William Gifford and Rev, Alexander Dyce (London, 1833), IV, p, 279 . 9 fact, between I 6I I and I 613 all three could have been presented at both

th e a tre s . Furthermore, Tannenbaum and Race have challenged the authen­

ticity of Simon Formants Booke of Plaies, the work that links The Winter*s

Tale and Cvmbeline with the Globe; unfortunately, the man who presented

the Booke of Plaies to the world was J. P, Collier, a scholar vdio, at ph times, forged documents. Today we can say that the work is surely

genuine,^-5 but if we should ever uncover new evidence which proves that

it is not, the only justification we would have for associating Shakes­

peare’s last plays with the Globe between I609 and I 613 i s th a t when the

Globe burned down, th e drama being performed was Henrv V III.

In short, there is comparatively little external evidence to

help us solve our problem, and part of it is suspect. Since it is highly

unlikely that We will find new data of this type, I think we are probably

forced to conclude that the only way we can determine what audience or

audiences Shakespeare had in mind Wien he wrote his last plays is by

examining the evidence provided by the dramas themselves. In order to

evaluate this evidence, however, one should understand certain facts

about the theatrical context in which the plays were written—certain

facts about En^ish drama during the period from 1575 to 164-2, about both

the attitude of the King’s Men toward Elackfriars and the problems they

24- A selective bibliography regarding the debate appears in J. H, P. P afford, "Simon Forman’ s ’Bocke of P la ie s ,’ " RES, n.s., X (1959), 289 -291.

. ^^An espedLally convincing argument is fpund in J, Dover Wilson and R. W. Hunt, "The Authenticity of Simon Forman’s Bocke of Plaies." ms, xxiii ( 1947 ), 193- 200. 10 faced lAen they acquired it in I 6O8 , and, lastly, about the choice these problems imposed on their chief playwright, Shakespeare,

In the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Cenroline drama periods there were two major types of playhouses, the large, open-air, public theatre and the comparatively small, vdxolly enclosed, private theatre. Both began to function at approximately the same time, the private theatres in

1575 and the public ones in 1576, and both ceased operation when the theatres were closed in 1642.^^ The term "private" originally "signified a small amateur subscription theatre, and the source of the term was apparently the Act of Common Council of December, 1574, which granted the power to levy on and censor all new plays except those presented in "the pryvate house «,, of anie nobleman, citizen, or gentleman %-

1600, however, when the Blackfriars theatre with which we are concerned began to function, the private theatres were, for all practical purposes, open to the public—a person cc::7,d attend if he could pay the relatively high price,^^ and from then on the term "private playhouse" meant only a small, enclosed theatre, catering to persons of means. The public theatres, on the other hand, were always open to everyone, their prices were, generally speaking, low, and their clientele ranged from those at the bottom of the social ladder to those near the very top.

^^lliam A, Armstrong, The Elizabethan Private Theatres; Facts and Problems. Society for Theatre Research, No, 6 (1958)» P. 4, 27 ' W, J, Lawrence, "The Elizabethan Private Playhouse," Criterion. n (1929-1930), 424,

pp, 421-422, Chambers (E lizabethan Stage). I I , p, 508 , and Harbage (Rival Traditian& ) . pp. 45-46, 11 From th e year Shakespeare*s ccaçany was formed, 1594, u n til approximately I 609, they presented their plays only in public theatres, and their playhouse from about the autumn of 1599 was the famous Globe.

In c, August, 1608 , however, Henry Evans surrendered to the King*s Men the lease to the private theatre called Blackfriars, and thus, probably about the autumn of l609»^® the company could also present plays at a private playhouse, VH-th this step, they became the first group of pro­ fessional, adult actors to perform in a private theatre^^ and the first

company to operate simultaneously a public and a private theatre.

Between I 609 and 1642 Blackfriars was no side-line for the King*s

Men, Harbage says it "soon became their more important theatre"

Chambers comments, "possibly about th e end of James*s reig n [1625], the

Blackfriars began to come into greater prominence, and gra d u a l l y d is ­

placed the Globe as the main head-quarters of the London drama.

Bentley adds, furthermore, that during the period 1628-1633 "the average

takings at the Blackfriars were twice that at the Globe"^4 and that "In

the casual references of Caroline literature, the Blackfriars must be

mentioned five times for every one that the Globe is named,Besides

being important to the King*s Men, Blackfriars became important in its

^^Chambers (Elizabethan Stage). II, p, 214.

^^awrence ("Private Playhouse"), p, 428,

^^Harbage (Rival Traditions), p, 2?, 33 Chambers (E lizabethan Stage). I l l , p , 104. 34 Bentley (Jacobean and Caroline). I, pp. 30-31, n. 6, 12 own right. Wallace’s studies led him to call it "in its time the most famous, and historically as the model of the modern theatre-building, the most important structure in English stage-history, and, in The

Elizabethan Private Theatres . Armstrong goes even further :

The Blackfriars was the most eminent of the private theatres, and it is perhaps not too bold to end by claiming for the Blackfriars rather than the Globe the central place in the overall development of the Elizabethan stage and stagecraft,^'

But when the King’ s Men began actin g a t B la ck friars, the Globe did not become a side-line either. Foreign visitors in I 6IO and I 6I I considered it "the leading London theatre,and if the King’s Men ranked the Globe of slight consequence in I 613, they acted very strangely.

When the Globe burned to the ground on June 29, I 613, th e company, instead of saying "Good riddance," promptly rebuilt it, and they did so in a manner idiich indicates that they considered it to be important indeed. According to John Chamberlain, the new Globe was thought to be

"the f a ir e s t th a t ever was inEngland.Because the King’s Men erected such an e d ific e , Chambers suggests th a t between I 6O9 and I 6I 3, the period in which Shakespeare seems to have written all of his last five plays, "probably the ŒLobe was s till the more important of the two" th e a tre s.

Wallace (Children of the Chanel), p. 18.

^^Armstrong (Facts and.Problems). p. 17.

^®Chambers (Elizabethan. Stage). II, p. hl9.

^^Bentley (Jacobean and Caroline). I, p. 3. Chambers (EOdzabethan, Stage) . I l l , p . lOh. 13

However much the importance of each varied at times, the fact remains, as Armstrong has stated, that "the most eminent of the private theatres, the second HLackfriars, and the most eminent of the public theatres, the ŒLobe, were both regularly used by the King*s Men from about 1608 until 1642."^^ And however much the importance of each fluctuated after I 613, the Globe and Blackfriars were both clearly of major concern to the King's Men during the period Shakespeare wrote most or all of his final works.

Although one can understand readily enough both the attitude of th is g re a t public th e a tre company toward the Globe between I 609 and I 613 and their success there, this is not the case, with their private theatre,

Blackfriars, It should be noted initially that the idea of performing dramas at Blackfriars occurred to Shakespeare's company long before

1608 , Although they did not present plays there until sometime after

August, 1608 , James Burbage had owned the theatre property since 1596, In that year he purchased the premises "at extreame rates, and made it into 42 a playhouse with great charge and treble ,,," Undoubtedly he intended to have his company perform plays there idiich would be open to the public, and the usual assumption is that he planned to offer public theatre p l a y s , Chambers, however, comments that "The actual character of the plays" presented earlier at Blackfriars by children's companies "does not .,, bear out this view.In any event, after Burbage had made

^^Armstrong (Facts and Problems), p, 4,

^^rom the Sharers Papers of 1635 ; quoted in Chambers (E lizabethan Stage). II, p, 508 , n , 3. ^^e,g,, Lawrence ( 'Private iplayhouse"), p, 42?. 44 Chambers (E lizabethan Stage). I l l , p. 145, 14

extensive and costly alterations, the inhabitants of the Blackfriars area halted his plans by petitioning to the Privy Council for relief "by

reason of the great resort and gathering together of all manner of vagrant

and lewd persons . . . On the death of James Burbage in 1597i the property passed to his son Richard, and he, in turn, leased it to Henry

Evans, who, in I 6OO, began presenting public performances. The actors,

called the Chapel Children, continued to produce plays there until about

March, l608.^ In about August of that year James Burbage*s sons regained the right to occupy the premises, and, at that time, the King*s

Men finally won their hard-earned right to perform at the Elackfriars th e a tre .

Perhaps the main motive behind their desire to acquire Black­ f r ia r s in 1608 was that the private theatre offered better accommodations for winter performances. As J, Q, Adams puts it,

I t was then [ I6O8 ] that Burbage conceived the brilliant idea of converting the Elackfriars into a winter home for the King*s Men, The Globe, though admirably adapted to summer performances, was uncomfortable and difficult of access during the bitterly cold months of the year. The luxury of a winter home, enclosed and heated, and situated in the very heart of th e c ity , must have appealed to the members of the King*s company ,,,4 ?

Whether this was their major reason or not, the available evidence would seem to suggest that the King*s Men performed at Elackfriars from

45 Lawrence ("Private Playhouse"), p. 42?. 46 , Chambers (E lizabethan Stage). I I , pp. 53-54, and Bentley ("Shakespeare and the Elackfriars Theatre"), pp. 42-43, ^"^Joseph Quincy Adams, A Life of William Shakespeare (Boston, 1923), p. 405. 15 approximately the beginning of November until about the end of April and at the Globe for the remainder of the year.

Chambers suggests the p o s s ib ility th a t "the fundamental motive" of the King*s Men in acquiring Blackfriars in I 6O8 was to obtain the services of certain boy actors who had been performing there, and he cites evidence from the Sharers Papers of 1635J

In processe of time, the boyes growing up to bee men, \diich were IMderwood, F ie ld , O stle r, and were taken to strengthen the King^s service;^

But I should think that such a major step as taking over a private theatre was motivated more stron^y by the need for a better winter home than by the need for three actors who were "growing up to bee men,"

48 Entries in Sir Henry Herbert*s office-book and in Sir Humphrey Mildmay* s records have convinced Bentley that the King*s Men made use of their two theatres in this way from the time they began to perform at Blackfriars (Jacobean and Caroline. I, p. 3 and n. ?), and given the weather conditions in England and the nature of the two theatres, he is probably right; but since the evidence that he cites dates from periods in the l630*s and l640*s, there is room for doubt,. A petition dating approximately in January, I 6I 8 /16I 9, however, says that the "inconveni­ ences" caused by the performances of the Eing^s Men at Elackfriars occurred "almost everie daie in the winter tyme" (Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline. I, p, 5); furthermore, in I 6II Prince Otto of Hesse-Cassel stated that the other private theatre operating at the time, Whitefriars, offered plays "only from Michaelmas to Easter" (Chambers, Elizabethan Stage. II, p. 369), i,e,, from September 29 to about April 1, and there is perhaps an inherent likelihood that the King*s Men performed at Elack­ friars for a similar portion of the year in order to compete. Chambers, incidentally, offers no evidence but records his opinion that the King's Men "probably" used Blackfriars "alternatively with the Globe, as their winter house" from the "autumn of I 609" until "the end of their career in 1642" (Elizabethan_Stage. II, p, 510; see also p. 214).

^Chambers (Elizabethan Stage). II, p, 215, 16 players who might easily enough have been hired after they were too old to perform in a c h ild re n ’s company.

Another reason the King’s Men may have taken the step was to reduce competition. The Burbages, of course, were shrewd businessmen, and, as we know froiù Hamlet (II, ii, 353-379). the children’s companies

could be more than a match for the adult troupes, Wallace, however, taking the Hamlet references to apply specifically to the rivalry between the Blackfriars children and the King’s Men, argues that the competition

ceased in l604. He cites the fact that the "attack" on the Blackfriars

children was omitted from the editi;m of Hamlet published in 1604 and

"was never printed until the 1623 folio, which aims to preserve to liter­ ature and history the plays of Shakespeare from their most authentic source," and he contends, therefore, that after l604 the Blackfriars 50 company was "a mere h is to r ic a l foe." But, of course, the children

continued to perform until 1608, and as long as they did, they surely attracted patrons who might otherwise have come to the Globe, In fact,

Baldwin states that the Blackfriars company posed a distinct threat even after they had lost their theatre; referring to the "manager of the former company a t B la c k fria rs," he comments:

Even if he couldn’t save his theater, he would strive to pull the former clientèle to whatever new place of business he might secure. It would therefore be necessary for the Shakes­ pearean company to exert itself in order to retain the clientele with the theater,51

^^allace (Children of_the_Chapel). p, 183.

Baldwin (Organization, and Personnel). p, 31^. 17 It would appear, then, that in I 6O8 the King*s Men could have reasonably expected to reduce, at least to some degree, the competition from the

Blackfriars company by turning them out of their customary house and home.

The last main motive of the King*s Men for taking over Black­ friars seems to have been that they could thus serve, in a more adequate manner, their king. It would be an anomaly, indeed, if the King*s Men were not the number one company with both the general public and the clientele of the private theatres. As the Burbages stated it in 1635t

"the more to strengthen the [King*s] service «,, it was considered that house would be as fitt for ourselves ,

The King*s Men, therefore, had several important reasons for wishing to perform at Blackfriars, and, in spite of the fact that James

Burbage was unable to accomplish the feat in 1596, his company obtained the right to present plays there in I6O8 , J , Q, Adams explains •(diy they were able to do so : "the King* s Company , ,, now strongly entrenched in royal favor, felt no fear of the order of the Privy Council forbidding the use of Blackfriars for * public plays,*";^3 and F, P, TÆLlson comments,

"That what had proved impossible in 1596 had become possible by I 6O8 i s a pointer to the increased power of the company, now the darlings of the court,What was surely the major step toward their new status . occurred shortly after Queen Elizabeth died. On May 19, I 603,

52 Chambers (E lizabethan Stage) . 11, p, 215. 53 J, Q, Adams (ti£a), p. 405,

^^F, Pé Wilson ("The Elizabethan Theatre"), p, 42, 18

Shakespeare*s company passed under royal patronage, and from then until the closing of the theatres they were called the King*s Men. Furthermore, the troupe seems to have had financial reasons for wishing to strengthen this link with the court, Bentley comments that

the King*s men saw that the real future of the theatrical profession in London lay with the court and the court party in the private theatres. Their receipts for performances a t court showed them th is very c le a rly . In the l a s t nine years of Elizabeth, 1594-1602, they received from court per­ formances an average of a year; in the first five years of th e reig n of th e new king, I 603- 7 » they had averaged il31 per year in addition to their new allowances for liveries as servants of the king,55

In short, the relationship between the King*s Men and the court was sufficiently close by I 6O8 that they could finally carry out James

Burbage*s ill-fated plan of 1596,

Thus, the King*s Men had both the incentive and the right to perform at Blackfriars, But desire and opportunity do not necessarily assure victory, and the odds against their successfully operating both a public and a private theatre would seem to have been impressive, Bentley speaks of the "new and different ,., audience" at Blackfriars,^^ and in

Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions Alfred Harbage argues that over the years the public and private theatre companies had developed two very different traditions, These statements would appear to suggest that a company try in g to supply two audiences th a t had sh arp ly co n trastin g in te r e s ts - - a company try in g to s i t on two sto o ls—would probably face

55 Bentley ("Shakespeare and the Blackfriars Theatre"), p, 47,

p. 49, 19 certain disaster. What could possibly have induced the King*s Men to

conclude that they might succeed? At least part of the explanation seems to be that by l608 the differences between the audiences and traditions at the Globe and at Blackfriars were not nearly as great as between ' those at a typical public theatre and at Blackfriars,

The evidence would seem to indicate, first of all, that the audience at Blackfriars was neither substantially "new” nor "different,"

Wright notes that before I 6OO there was, for all practical purposes,

only one Elizabethan audience, and then a split began to develop,

Elizabethan drama flourished too luxuriantly to be restricted to any class, and in the sixteenth century the dramatic taste of the aristocrat was so nearly like that of the commoner that innumerable plays did duty both at court and in the pub­ lic playhouses. Gradually, however, as class consciousness increased, certain types of plays began to appeal more and more strictly to the élite, while, by the same token, other plays were pitched to the level of the ordinary commoners,57

Speaking of th e c o te rie p o rtio n , Harbage comments,

the private playhouses between 1599 and 1642 did not create this audience. They merely segregated and perhaps augmented i t ,,,, It existed during the nineties but was then merged with other elements from the population to form the universal audience of the public theatres,58

Wallace indicates how the private theatres drove the wedge that caused

the split. After describing the general characteristics of an early

performance at Blackfriars, he observes that "it is little wonder that

the spectacular effect was enough ,,, to attract from the public theatres

^^Wright (Middlerglass Culture), p, 6O8 , 58 Alfred, Harbage, Shakespeare*s Audience (New York, 1941), pp. 89- 90, 20 the most desirable part of their audience,and he suggests, moreover, th a t

The passage in Hamlet (late I 6OI) showing the drawing away of the genteel part of the audience to the more select Blackfriars, represents the condition not only in the Globe but in all the other public theatres.60

The Blackfriars audience thus does not seem to have been, in essence, a

"new" one but an integral part of a cross-section audience that had, in the past, regularly attended the Globe as well as other public theatres.

Furthermore, the Blackfriars clientele does not seem to have been radically "different" from the Globe audience. The King's Men, generally speaking, appear to have catered to a considerably more sophisticated segment of the London theatregoing public than did the other public theatre troupes, Wright comments,

Althou^ the attractions of the Swan, the Rose, and the Globe found interested spectators in all classes, the Bankside audiences contained a larger percentage of the sporting group than attended the theaters north of the city walls. Indeed, of a l l the public th e a te rs , th e Globe was th e most favored by fashionable theatergoers and well-bred dandies. Attending a play at the Globe or Blackfriars was the smart thing for a social-dimbing gallant, who, after dining at a fashionable tavern, "must venture beyond sea, that is, in a choice pair of nobleman's oars, to the Bankside, where he must sit out the breaking-up of a comedy, or the f i r s t cut of a tragedy; or rather, if his humour so serve him, to call in at the Black­ friars, >diere he should see a nest of boys able to ravish a m an."6l

^^allace (Children of,the Chanel), p. 124,

Ibid.. p, 164, He also cites The Poetaster and Cynthia's Revels in support,

•^Hfedght (M iddle-Class. C ulture), p , 6IO, 21

And Wright is not speaking of some period well into the seventeenth century, a time when we might expect the Globe and Blackfriars audiences to be more nearly on a par with one another; he is quoting from Middle­ ton's Father Hubburds Tales, and the date of th?.s work is 1604. In

Shakespeare's Aqdience Harbage, in all likelihood the scholar best qualified to speak with authority on the matter, notes the special quality of the Globe audience;

We should distinguish among three Elizabethan audiences, recognizing that various occasions and various theatres would obscure our distinction: there was the genteel audience of the private theatres; there was the plebian audience of such theatres as the Red Bull and perhaps the Fortune after the private houses had filched the gentry away; and then there was that audience both genteel and plebian .... of the Globe in the early decades of the seventeenth century.

Thus, although Shakespeare's company catered to other segments of the

London audience, both they and the Blackfriars troupe sought the patronage of the "genteel” members. Summarizing the evidence we have,

F. P. Wilson and Viliam Armstrong clarify the matter further. Wilson points out that the

audience at the Globe did not wholly consist of groundlings ... at the Globe there were courtiers as well, university men. Inns of Court men, gentlemen and th e ir wives (many of them up from the country), merchants and their wives, captains and soldiers, as well as journeymen and their apprentices. and Armstrong says that the private theatre audiences in general

consisted mainly of courtiers, gentlemen of the Inns of Court, wits, and women of fashion, together with such

^%arbage (Shakespeare's Audience), p. 90.

F. P. Wilson, Elizabethan and Jacobean (Oxford, 194$), p. 88. 22

hangers-on as gamblers, soldiers, prostitutes, and would-be gallants. Citizens and artisans were in a minority ...64

It would thus appear that one reason the King's Men may have thought they could operate both the ŒLobe and Blackfriars theatres simultaneously was that the Blackfriars patrons were not, to any marked degree, a "new” and “different" audience. Furthermore, since this seems to have been the case, it is hardly surprising to find evidence that the interests of the Blackfriars audience-between 1604 and 1608 were not radically different from those of the Globe audience. In 1600 or 1601 this was probably not the case. At least Jonson, in his prologue to

Cynthia's.Revels, hoped it was not. Pounding away at the wedge as hard as he could, he has the Prologue say.

If gracious silence, sweet attention. Quieke sight, and quicker apprehension, (The lights of iudgements throne) shine any where; Our doubtful author hopes this is their sphere. And therefore opens he himself to those; To other weaker beames, his labours close; As loth to prostitute their virgin straine. To ev'rie vulgar, and adult'rate braine. (11. 1-8 )

Speaking of Jonson's Muse, the Prologue continues,

Pied ignorance she neither loues, nor feares. Nor hunts she after popular applause. Or fomie praise, that drops from common iawes; That garland that she weares, their hands must twine. Who can both censure, vnderstand, define What m erit i s ...6 5

64 William A. Armstrong, "The Audience of the Elizabethan Private Theatres," RES, n.s., X (1959). 249. 65 ■ The Works of Ben Jonson. eds. C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson (Oxford, 1925- 1950), Vol. IV. 23 But even if Jonson* s hopes were well founded about 16OI, i t would be a mistake to assume that the tastes of the Blackfriars audience after l604 differed in any sweeping way from those of the Globe audience. The most startling evidence of this is that although in l604 The Malcontent was written for Blackfriars, it was performed later in the same year by the

King's Men at the Globe, and the only changes made were "additions," which, as Burbage states, had to be made in order to "entertains a little more time, and to abridge the not received customs of musicke in our

Theater.More surprising yet, Harbage, the scholar surely best qualified to pass judgment, classifies the author of The Malcontent.

Marston, as "a coterie dramatist unadulterated." 6? In addition, another play challenges the validity of any contention that the tastes of the

Blackfriars audience were uniformly aristocratic; regarding Eastward Ho. a Blackfriars drama written about l604 or I 605, Hazelton Spencer comments,

The play is a bid for the favor of the Jacobean Babbitts, . and as such is an interesting forerunner of the bourgeois drama of the eighteenth century and after. The shop­ keepers and their code are buttered as assiduously as ever in a court play the flattery of the monarch was trowelled on.68

The Plays of John Marston. ed. H. Harvey Wood.(London, 1934- 1939), If Pr 143, and Chambers (Elizabethan S tage). I l l , pp. 431-432. 67 Harbage (Rival Traditions), p. I 66. 68 Hazelton Spencer, Elizabethan Plavs (Boston, 1933), p. 475. 24

The Interests of the Blackfriars and Globe audiences would thus hardly seem to have been worlds a p a rt a f te r l604.&9

It would appear, then, that the Blackfriars audience was neither a "new" or "different" one to any marked degree and that the concerns of the Globe and Blackfriars clientele were far from totally dissimilar.

I f so, In 1608 the Klhg*s Men had at least these grounds for supposing that the simultaneous operation of the Globe and Blackfriars was both financially and artistically feasible. All they had to do was prove that

It could be done, and between about I 609 and 1642 this, In a phenomenally successful way. Is what they did.

69 I will discuss the major differences In Chapter II, It would be a mistake to assume that the Interests of the Blackfriars and Globe audiences were ever Identical, Although Shakespeare’s Henrv: IV. Othello. and The Taming of the Shrew, plays written for public theatres, were eventually performed at Blackfriars (Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline. I, pp, 128 - 129), we know from Shirley’s adverse comments on the Globe audience In the prologue to his Blackfriars play The Doubtful Heir that as late as c, l640 the tastes of the two audiences still differed;

PROLOGUE

SPOKEN AT THE GLOBE

All that the Prologue comes for Is to say. Our author did not calculate this play For this meridian; the Bankslde, he knows, , Is far more skilful at the ebbs and flows Of water, than of wit; he did not mean For the elevation of your poles, this scene. No shews, no dance, and, what you most delight In, Grave Understanders, here’s no target-f1ghtlng Upon the stage, all work for cutlers barr’d; No bawdry, nor no ballads ; this goes hard; But language clean; and, what affects you not. Without Impossibilities the plot: No down, no squibs, no devil In’t, Oh, now. You squirrels that want nuts, vdiat will you do? .,, (Works of S h irle y , IV, p, 2?9) 25

In 1608 , however, they still faced serious problems, and Bentley has ably delineated what they were. Characterizing the importance of

th e ir a c q u isitio n of B la c k fria rs, he comments, "I suspect th a t th is was

one of the turning points in Tudor and Stuart dramatic history."^® He

suggests that the King*s Men probably met in conclave periodically between March and Ju ly of I 6O8 to discuss how they would provide dramas for their two audiences, and he says that it "seems likely that one of . the foundations of their later unquestioned dominance of the audiences of the gentry was their decisions about plays and playwrights" reached at this time. 71 He believes that they decided to hire the experienced.

Blackfriars playwrights Jonson, Beaumont, and Fletcher to design dramas for their private theatre, and it is dear enough that these three great dramatists did write for the King's Men after 1608.^2 gg points out further that the need for Blackfriars plays was acute: since the children's company seems to have retained its plays, the King's Men had no repertory for Blackfriars, and, in addition, the Blackfriars patrons appear to have been considerably more interested in new plays than was the Globe audience.On the other hand, he notes that the King's Men probably had "more than a hundred" old plays in their repertory for the

Globe and that they had various Globe dramatists who could provide new

^^Bentley ("Shakespeare and the Blackfriars Theatre"), p. 40.

p . 43.

72lbid.. pp. 44-46; Chambers (Elizabethan Stage). Ill, pp. 222- 223 and 371 - 372 .

^^Bentley ("Shakespeare and the Blackfriars Theatre"), p. 46. 26 plays when necessary.We might add another reason that the problem of supplying plays for HLackfriars could have been especially critical.

Whereas the children had performed at Blackfriars once a week, the

King's Men may have performed there almost daily: at least by c, January,

1618 / 9, they presented plays there "almost everie daie in the winter tyme."7^ Thus, whereas the King's Men were well supplied with Globe plays, they gravely lacked works that could be performed at HLackfriars.

Taking in to co n sideration the f a c t th a t the demand was so g reat and th e need so urgent, Bentley believes that the King's Men decided to have one of their OLobe dramatists write for Blackfriars, and this playwright, of course, was Shakespeare.

In order to evaluate the evidence from Shakespeare's final plays, we should, last of all, attempt to understand as fully as possible

Shakespeare's situation in I 6O8 , and here again Bentley has been most helpful. Being "above all else a man of the theatre"??^ and a longtime member of the company, Shakespeare, naturally enough, had.certain obligations to the King's Men. Since the company's acquisition of

Blackfriars was "a very risky business," "Every possible precaution

94. pp. 46-4?. Unless The Second Maiden's Tragedy was com­ posed by one of the old Globe dramatists, however, none of the extant plays for the period 1609-I 613 except those by Shakespeare was written by a member of this group (see Harbage, I^val Traditions. p. 350).

75 Diary of Philipp Julius, Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, Prussia, for September 18, l602, quoted in Wallace (Children of the Chanel), p. 106, n, 1; Harbage (Rival Traditions). p. 44; and the epilogue to Eastward Ho ("once a week"). 76 This is stated in a petition by the inhabitants of Blackfriars (Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline. I, p. 5). 77 Ibid.. p. 40. 27 78 against failure needed to be taken,"' and because Shakespeare knew better than any other dramatist the potentialities and limitations of the company's actors, Bentley argues that one precaution the King's Men could take was to have him devote his full time to writing dramas for Black­ f r i a r s ,

Bentley points out, too, that besides his obligations to the company, Shakespeare had c e rta in more d ire c tly personal reasons fo r wishing the enterprise to succeed, "His income was derived from acting, from writing plays, from shares in dramatic enterprises, and from theatre 79 re n ts,a n d he had a vested interest in HLackfriars!

Why should Shakespeare have wanted to write for the HLack­ friars, or at least have agreed to do so? The most com­ pelling of the apparent reasons is that he had money invested in the project and stood to lose by its failure and gain by its success. He was one of the seven lessees of the new theatre; he had paid an unknown sum and agreed to pay l4s. 4d. per year in rent. He had at least a financial reason for doing everything he could do to establish the success of the HLackfriars venture, and what Shakespeare could do most effectively was to write plays which would insure the company's popularity with the audience in its new private th e a tr e ,80

We might argue at this point that Shakespeare also had a vested interest in the Globe; that, as Chambers has said, "From l609 to l6l3," the period to which we assign Shakespeare's last five plays, the King's

Men "used both houses, but probably the Globe was s till the more important

0-1 of the two ,,,"; that the King's Men had Jonson, Beaumont, and Fletcher,

all experienced HLackfriars playwrights, to attend to the private theatre.

p, 46, p. 38. %bid.. p. 47, 8X Chambers (E lizabethan Stage). I l l , p , 104, 28 82 ■sAiereas Shakespeare had never written a Blackfriars play; and we might

well conclude, as Ni coll has done, that Bentley* s

hypothesis is an attractive one; but it is just as probable that, when the second theatre came into use, he [Shakes­ peare] elected to continue his efforts at the Globe, the scene of his greatest successes,83

Bentley, however, cites evidence that he believes establishes

that Shakespeare did, in fact, write Cvmbeline. The Winter's Tale. Ifee

lempest. and The Two Noble Kinsmen^^ for Blackfriars, He says that these

plays exhibit "variations from the Shakespearian norm" which have

induced critics to discuss the plays "as a distinct genre,Further­

more , he comments that "Both Philaster^^ and Cvmbeline are unlike

Shakespeare's earlier plays because none of those plays had been written 87 for private theatres," But, as we will see later, there is general

agreement among scholars that the first member of the "distinct genre"

is a Globe play, Pericles, and, moreover, the title page of the first

82 Holmes suggests that the "place of ,,, production" for Troilus and Cressida. Hamlet, and King Lear.was HLackfriars (Public, p, x iii; see also pp, 119, 139, and 189); but the theatre was not available to Shakespeare's company until 1608,

^^Nicoll ("Court Masque"), p, 53. 84 Bentley includes The Two Noble Kinsmen on pp, 47-48 of "Shakes­ peare and the Blackfriars Theatre" but not at the conclusion of his a r t ic le ,

p . 47.

Beaumont and F letch er play sim ilar in many resp ects to Ænnbeline.

®"^Bentley ("Shakespeare and the HLackfriars T heatre"), p. 48, 29

edition of Philaster (1620) reads, "Acted at the Globe by his Maiesties

Semants,"®®

Although Bentley's argument has some serious flaws, it does,

ultimately, shift our attention from the inconclusive external evidence

to the plays themselves, and, in all likelihood, it is only here that we

can hope to discover whether Shakespeare wrote his last plays for the

Globe, for HLackfriars, or for both theatres.

To attempt to solve the problem, I shall try to answer two

questions: (l) idiat were the major differences in the current traditions

at the Globe and HLackfriars? and (2) do Shakespeare's last plays conform

to the tradition at Blackfriars or to the one at the Globe, or do they

bridge both traditions?

To find the answers, I have analyzed, inductively, the evidence

from a Globe set of plays, a HLackfriars set, and Shakespeare's final

plays. In order to determine the specific plays I should include in the

Globe and Blackfriars groups, I ascertained®^ which play is we have reason

to believe were written during the five-year period prior to the

acquisition of the Blackfriars theatre by the King's Men and were

^^Charabers (Elizabethan Stage). Ill, p, 222,

®^The major sources I consulted when allocating the plays were Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage; Alfred Harbage, Annals of E n g lis h (Philadelphia, 1940) and Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions (Appendix B); works devoted to specific authors, such as Chambers, W illla tn Shakespeare, and The Works of Ben Jonson. eds, C, H, Herford and Percy Simpson; recent editions, such as the New Cambridge and New Arden volumes of Shakespeare's dramas; and articles in scholarly journals. See Appendix.A. 30 performed during those years at the Globe or at HLackfriars.90 Inevi­

tably* I found that we can place more reliance on some plays than on

others. Certain of the dramas, for instance, were failures, and about

others there is some significant doubt about the dates they were written,

the theatre in which they were performed, or the trustworthiness of their

texts. I have thus placed the Globe and Blackfriars plays in two cate­

gories: those that are quite fully reliable and those that are somewhat

questionable. Listed in what is probably^^ their chronological order,

the plays I could classify as reliable are as follows:

Globe Blackfriars

Othello The.Malcontent Measure for Measure The Dutch Courtesan The London Prodigal Mong%.W_RiPMjg Volpone Tbe.lagh KinR Lear ^ tgac^-Ho Macbeth Sqp^gptgba A Yorkshire Tragedy Th? Isj? of Gullg The Revenger's Tragedy yfeg-j^elye Antony and Cleopatra A Trick to Catch the Old One The.Miseries of Enforced Marriage Your.Five Gallants Pericles The Widow’s Tears

The dramas that I had to rank as questionable are these:

-Globe

The F air Maid of Bristowe E& llotaf The M alcontent

90 Plays written during this period would inevitably reflect the current interests of the audiences, whereas, generally speaking, works that were merely revived would not. I have included as periferal works, however, two plays that were revived : The Case Is Altered and Mucedorus (see Appendix A). 91 Since we can seldom date the plays precisely, the chronologies may not be entirely accurate, but I have not based my conclusions on the assumption that they are. 31 Giaba S-asjçfriacg, The Devil*s Charter . Law Tricks Timon of Athene &y_PaZ Corlolantis The Knight of the Burning Pestle ■Cupid»g. Revenge Byiipn I fiyrPB I I The Faithful Shepherdess

In the second chapter I will present the primary differences I have found in these two sets of plays and devote special attention to the variations that have particular relevance to this study. In the third chapter I will then discuss each of Shakespeare*s last five plays in terms of these differences; more specifically, I will attempt to indicate tdiich features in a given drama we can attribute to the influence of the HLackfriars tradition and which to the tradition at the ŒLobe, and I will examine the total pattern of relevant evidence regarding each play in order to ascertain whether Shakespeare wrote it for Blackfriars, the ŒLobe, or both theatres.

Scholars have often used methods similar to this. Qy carefully - assigning plays to specific theatres, Harbage determined the traditions at the public and private theatres (Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions^, but he concentrated primarily on one kind of feature, ideas, and he examined dating from 1560 to I6l3. George F. Reynolds selected the dramas performed at one theatre and studied how they were staged (The

Staging of Elizabethan Plavs; the Red Bull Theatre. 1605-162692).

Isaacs examined all of the HLackfriars plays and likewise directed his attention primarily to matters of staging ("Production and Stage

^ London, 1?40. 32 Management a t the H Lackfriars Theatre")» Others have focused on dramas written during rather short periods of time; Wallace, for example, investigated chiefly the documentary evidence relating to the Blackfriars plays performed between 1597 and I 603 (The Children of the Chanel at

HLackfriars 1997-1601). and William W, Main concentrated on "Treatment,"

"Themes," and "Dramatic Roles" in all of the extant English plays for the period 1598-1602 ("Dramaturgical Norms in the Elizabethan Repertory"?^).

Each of these scholars based his study on certain premises, and

I, of course, have also. The first of these is that we can validly establish the current traditions at HLackfriars and the Globe even though some of the plays written for these theatres and performed there between l60h and about I 609 are not extant. Although the Queen*s Revels required fewer plays than the King*s Men did because they performed only once a week,the HLackfriars audience apparently "showed the g reater a v id ity for new plays,"95 and thus the chances are that the company presented more new dramas than the twenty I dare use. On the other hand, since the

HLackfriars plays were printed quite readily,9& they were not likely to be lost, and, on the basis of the evidence we have, we know of only two that,are not extant: Viper and Her Brood, a tragedy dated I 606, and

Silver Mine, a comedy assigned to the year 1608,97 jn addition, since

LIV (1957 ), 128-148. 94 See n, 75, 95 Bentley ("Shakespeare and the HLackfriars Theatre"), p, 46, 96 Chambers (E lizab eth an S tage). I I , p . 50. 97 Harbage (Amals.), PP» 76-77 and 80-81, 33 even dramas that failed (The Knight of the Burning Pestle and The Faith­ ful Shepherdess) were published, it seems likely that all plays successful enough to have seriously affected the tradition have survived.

The King*s Men normally performed six days a week, and thus even though the Globe patrons accepted old plays more readily than the HLack­ friars audience did, it is highly likely that quite a few more plays than the sixteen which I include were written for the Globe and performed there between 1604 and I 609, We know of only two, however, that have not survived; Gowrv. a tragedy assigned to l604, and The..Spanish Maze, a tragedy performed at court in l605;^® and since most of the unpublished dramas were probably failures, it is not likely that they exerted a significant influence on the Globe tradition.

For one further reason I believe that we can rely on the extant dramas to provide a quite solid foundation for this study. In analyzing

Shakespeare*s last plays I found that roughly nine out of every ten?? features in each work appear either in the Globe or Blackfriars dramas, or .in both sets.

The second premise underlying the method I have used is that the most reliable evidence for establishing the traditions at the two theatres at the beginning of I 609, the year Shakespeare seems to have begun to write his last plays, appears in the dramas written and performed during the five-year period from l604 to about I 609, Since the King’s Men did

?^Ibid.. pp. 74-77. As Harbage indicates, Robin Goodfellow. a comedy performed a t court in 1604, may be A MidsummerrMleht* s Dream.

Cvmbeline 86$, The Winter’s Tale 9^» The Tempest 93$, Henrv V III 91$, and The Two Noble Kinsmen 84$. 34 not actually acquire Blackfriars until about August of the year I 6O8 , their changes in policy would probably not have begun to exert signif­ icant effects on works dating before approximately the beginning of l609; as a precaution, however, I have ranked as questionable the single Globe play that may have been written late enough to exhibit a Blackfriars influence.lOO For the HLackfriars plays, the terminal date is, of course, August, I 6O8 ,

For a variety of reasons I have chosen l604 as the initial date.

Surely more than any other art form, commercial drama conforms substan­ tially to traditions. As John Harold Wilson has said, drama is a

slow and conservative institution. The audiences are accustomed to a certain type of play; the actors have become used to such and such mannerisms; the managers have seen the new fail and the old succeed, and failure is costly. The result is a tendency to keep dramatic production to the tried and safe, and to discourage innovation of any kind.^^l

But this adherence to tradition, as he says, is only "a tendency," There is also at work in drama at any time a counterforce, a pressure that, is produced partly by the audience*s desire for novelty and partly by the desire of theatre personnel to find the new and successful formula. It is the force called change. Renaissance dramas differ from those written in the Middle Ages, and Elizabethan plays differ from those written in the Caroline period. In his preface to The Roaring Girl, a Fortune play

^^^The play is Coriolanus (see Appendix), 101 John H, W ilson, The Influence of feaumont. and F le tc h e r on Restoration Drama (Columbus, 1928), p, vi. 35 dated c, I 6IO, Middleton graphically describes the effects of change on drama:

The fashion of play-making I can properly compare to nothing so naturally as the alteration in apparel; for in the time of the great crop-doublet, your huge bombasted plays, quilted with mighty words to lean purpose, was only then in fashion; and as the doublet fell, neater inventions began to set up. Now in the time of spruceness, our plays follow the niceness of our garments; sin^e plots, quaint conceits, lecherous jests drest up in hanring sleeves; and those are fit for the times and the termers.102

During the 159P*s, for instance, history plays were the rage, but their popularity, in time, diminished sharply; Shakespeare wrote his last typical history play, Henrv V. in about 1599* Change had taken its toll.

To mj .iimi?;e the effects of change, I have concentrated my attention . primarily on the plays that were written for, and performed at, the

Globe and Blackfriars a comparatively short time before I 609, namely the five-year period starting in 1604.

Some scholars m i^t have selected 1604 as the date for the ŒLobe plays because they find that Shakespeare*s Jacobean dramas differ significantly from his Elizabethan ones, and they ascribe the cause to what R, W, Chambers has called "the dogma of Shakespeare*s disillusioned early Jacobean period,Chambers himself questions the "dogma," however; he comments, "There i s abundant evidence th a t i t was in no s p ir i t of cynicism and gloom th a t the new re ig n began,and he adds.

^^^The Works of Thomas Middleton, ed. A, H, Bullen (London, I 885 - 1886), IV, p, 7, .

^®^R, W, Chambers, The Jacobean Shakespeare and Measure for Measure (London, 1938), p. 59*

p. 22, 36

"To us, the happy opening of the reign of James is overcast with a gloom which Shakespeare could not see,"^^^ My reason for choosing l604 as the date for the ELobe plays, howover, is that about this year significant changes occurred both in the relationship between Shakespeare*s company and the crown and in the area of more strictly theatrical matters.

As we have seen, Shakespeare’s company came under royal patronage on May 19, I 603, and from then on they became p ro g ressiv ely more closely affiliated with the court. In fact, by I 6O8 the a llia n c e was s u f f i­ ciently close that Adams can say that they were "strongly entrenched in royal favor" and F, P. Wilson can categorize them as "the darlings of the court," The extent of the effect of James* patronage on Shakespeare’s plays, and presumably on the other works written for the King’s Men, has been suggested by Bentley:

Surely this new status of the troupe must have been a steady and pervasive influence in the development of its principal dramatist, William Shakespeare,

More specifically, J, W, Lever has discussed certain of the influences of 107 James on Measure for Measure; and other scholars have cited his influ­ ence on Macbeth: commenting on Henry N, Paul’s The Roval Plav of Macbeth.

Muir, for example, says, "Paul provides plenty of additional evidence that Shakespeare had studied the tastes of James I before writing the play Since the status of Shakespeare’s company changed

, p. 25, Bentley ("Shakespeare and the Blackfriars Theatre"), p, 40, 107 J, W, Lever, "The Date of Measure for Measure." SQ. X (1959)» 381-388, 108 Macbeth, ed, Kenneth Muir (London, 1959), p, 197. 37 significantly just prior to l604 and since that change had important

effects on their subsequent dramas, 1604 would seem to be a logical date

to begin the study of the ŒLobe plays.

Furthermore, certain theatrical conditions affecting the ŒLobe

dramas altered in a quite significant way about l604. The War of the

Theatres, which had muddied the water for some time, was over by this

year, and Harbage notes that l604 marks the beginning of other changes in

public theatre plays and especially those written for the King’s Men:

A fter 1603 we may detect some signs of change. The newly built Fortune and Red Bull were certainly remote from the more fashionable section of London; and a "neighborhood" influence may be perceptible in Heywood’s direct appeals to the appren­ t i c e s , Shakespeare’s company was s t i l l playing by the Thames, within easy access of gentle as well as common, and this com­ pany, in the upshot, proved to be most interested in absorbing the Blackfriars clientele,1^9

He notes, more specifically, that after the Whr of the Theatres

came the company p o licy , te n ta tiv e a f te r I 603, and p o sitiv e a f te r I 6O8 , of stealing the thunder of rivals

The "rivals" were the coterie dramatists in general, and these included, most significantly, those who wrote for "the HLackfriars clientele," It

would seem, therefore, that about l604 the alliance between the King and

Shakespeare’s company and the changes in theatrical conditions induced

the Globe dramatists to reflect in their plays a rather different climate

from that which prevailed prior to 1604.

^^^Harbage (Rival Traditions), pp, 88 - 89 ,

p. 89 . 38

1604 appears also to have been a critical date for the HLack­ friars company. On February 4, l604, the Children of the Chapel at 111 Blackfriars came under "direct royal protection" and assumed the title

of The Children of the Revels to the Queen at HLackfriars, or, as they are normally called, the Queen*s Revels, If royal patronage influenced plays at the Globe, a theatre with a cross-section audience, we should not be surprised to find that it affected the plays performed at HLack­

friars, a theatre with an audience composed, generally speaking, of people rather high on the social ladder and thus likely to be more inter­

ested in court matters. Between I 605 and I 6O8 , th e year the Queen*s

Revels were suppressed, certain references in the Blackfriars plays proved to be of sufficient interest to James and other authorities that

Chambers says, "The h is to ry of the next few years [ I603-I 6O8 ] i s one of a 112 series of indiscretions ,,,"; the following plays, for various reasons,

created trouble : The Dutch Courtesan. Fhilotas. Eastward Ho (this play may have caused th e company to lo se the Queen*s p atro n ag eH ^), The I s le of Gulls, one of the two parts of Byron, and, lastly, a lost play, vdiich 11^ amazingly enough, was "a personal attack on James himself," Wallace’s

studies of the Blackfriars plays led him to conclude that the dramas designed for the Queen’s Revels changed in other ways after l604. Com­ paring the ones written while Elizabeth was s till alive with those penned after the accession of James, he says that in the latter "we find

Chambers (E lizabethan Stage). I I , p , 49,

p . 5I 0 ^^^Ibid, p, 53. 39 115 comparatively little singing, dancing, and instrumental music," and H 6 markedly fewer masques. G eneralizing on the changes, he comments,

"During James I the elements of dainty device in music and pleasing show 117 are le s s prom inent," We can th erefo re probably agree w ith Chambers that after the Queen*s Revels came under royal patronage they began a H 8 "new phase of their career," and we can probably conclude that the

HLackfriars plays dating from 1604 to August, l608, supply the best

evidence for the current tradition at Blackfriars,

The third premise underlying my method is that the extant texts

of the dramas I am considering substantially represent their form when

they were staged between l604 and I 615, The problem arises because the

first editions of some of the plays date well after the initial per­

formances , Although the HLackfriars dramas were normally published much

more quickly than those written for the Globe, five of the twenty were

not printed for several years; May Dav (I 6I I ). The.VQ,dow*s Tears (l6 l2 ),

The_Knight of the Burning. Pestle (I 613), and Cupid.» s_ Re venge ( 1615) , ^ ^

The in itial editions of certain Globe plays appeared later yet; Othello

115 Wallace (Children of:the Chanel), p, 113. 116_,., ... Ib iç i., p, x i i ,

^ ^ Ibid, . p. 5. With respect to Wallace*s comments, however, it should be noted that he assigns to the period in which Elizabeth reigned five Blackfriars plays scholars now date after she died; The Dutch C ourtesan. JP!Qlly&i The M alcontent. ]!fe.y_Pay, and The. Widow*s

T e a rs. . U 8 Chambers (E lizabethan Stage). I I , p , 50. 119 The first edition of The.Faithful Shepherdess is not dated, but Chambers confidently assigns i t to "1609 or I 6IO" (Elizabethan Stage. in , po 222). 40 was printed first in 1622, and five others in 1623 (Shakespeare*s First

Folio); Measure for Measure. Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra. Umon of

Athens. and Coriolanus. Of even more serious import, four of Shakes­ peare* s five last plays were first published in 1623 (First Folio);

Qymbeline. The Winter*s Tale. The Tempest, and Henrv VIII; and the date of the first edition of The Two Noble Kinsmen is 1634.

Although there is, of course, a risk in using such texts, I have taken two steps to reduce it to a minimum. If the available evidence indicates that a portion of a play is a later interpolation, such as the 120 Hecate scenes in Macbeth. I have disregarded the section. Secondly, in this study I have placed no great weight on argr single piece of evidence nor on even any single category of data, such as type of play or spectacle. I have taken into consideration a great mass of evidence of virtually every conceivable kind,^^^ and I have based my final conclu­ sions on the resulting patterns.

The fourth premise is that Shakespeare was sufficiently aware of the current HLackfriars tradition to be able to take into account the tastes of the Blackfriars audience. Although it is probably unnecessary to argue that Shakespeare was alert to the theatrical activity of his day, we might note that there are various reasons for concluding that he was.

In a study of Shakespeare's 1398-1602 plays in relation to all of the

120 It is unlikely that major revisions have escaped the notice of scholars; even the best leave toolmarks. 121 Some of the categories of this evidence, such as type of play, structure, and character, are so pervasive in their scope that it is highly unlikely that they could have been revised in any significant way. 41 extant English plays for the same period, Main presents an array of evidence showing that Shakespeare was quite thoroughly cognizant of the plays written for other companies; he concludes,

Shisdcespeare contributed nothing new in re p e rto ry m ateria ls, but he did contribute a new and masterful complexity of amalgamating and unifying standard repertory norms. Thus in comparison with the dramatic practice of his fellow play­ wrights, the characteristic feature of Shakespeare's drama­ turgy was his boldness in creating a larger synthesis out of more diverse dramatic elements.122

In addition, Shakespeare had an especially compelling reason for being alert to the activity at Blackfriars, As we have seen, the Globe and

Blackfriars dramatists seem to have competed for the patronage of the same theatregoers, and Shakespeare could hardly have done his part unless he knew what the com petition had to o ffe r, ' He may, in fa c t, have borrowed material from a I 606 B lackfriars play: Muir comments.

It is more likely that Shakespeare picked up one of Marston*s best images from the second scene of Sonhonisba than that Marston imitated several passages from one of the weakest scenes in Macbeth ,,,123

But even if Shakespeare was not quite fully aware of the current tradi­ tion at Blackfriars, he could have remedied this quite easily when his company acquired their private theatre; by I 609 fifteen of the twenty

Blackfriars plays were in print.

The last premise on idd.ch ray method is based, one that probably no longer requires any justification, is that Shakespeare, a commercial dramatist, took into consideration the interests of his audience. If the last five plays would be just the same whether Shakespeare wrote them for

^^^Main ("Dramaturgical Norms"), p, 148,

^^&uir (Macbeth), p, xxiii. 42

the Globe, the Blackfriars, or even for the Red Bull, then, of course, ray method is invalid, I am not saying, of course, that Shakespeare

slavishly wrote whatever his audience d e m a n d e d , 124 % am merely contend­

ing that one of the major factors a commercial dramatist such as

Shakespeare had to consider when he wrote his plays was what he could

reasonably expect to be of interest to his audience.

This premise has been widely accepted by scholars, Parrott, for

instance, suggests how it probably affected Chapman when he left the

Admiral’ s company, jo ined the Chapel children about I 6OO, and began writing Blackfriars plays. He says that Chapman

may well have felt the need of following Jenson’s critical guidance in the preparation of a play for the more refined and critical audience of a private theatre. The coarse buffoonery of The Blind Beggar which had delighted the gross public of the Rose was not likely to suit the taste of the gentlemen and courtiers >dio frequented Blackfriars,125

In his study Shakespeare and the,Rival Traditions Harbage found that

"Dramatists like Day and Dekker, vdio wrote for both types of theatres

[public and private], had to learn the trick of the chameleon," and in

this connection he both states the premise and presents an important

example from a play written by Shakespeare: That the drama’s laws the drama’s patrons give could be illu s tr a te d by many in c id e n ta l d e ta ils . The popular

124 In his perceptive essay "The Elizabethan Audience and the Plays of Shakespeare" (p. IO5), Moody Prior makes a particularly salient point regarding this matter; "It is true that in an important sense the audience exerts its influence on the dramatist and so helps, mold the play, but it is at least equally true that the imaginative and original dramatist also exerts an influence and thus in a sense creates his audience," ^^^The Comedies of George Chapman, ed, Thomas Marc Parrott (London, 1914), p, 893. 43

audience demanded the presence of the clown. He was worked in to n early every p lay, i f only fo r a few moments to bring "joy o* th* worm" to a Cleopatra.

A good deal of contemporary evidence supports the views of these scholars. In many prologues and epilogues authors stressed that their general aim was to please the audience. The Blackfriars playwright

Marston, for. instance, stated in his prologue to The Fawn. "lour modest pleasure is our authors scope." The reason that writers desired to please is obvious enough; the Epilogue to the HLackfriars play Eastward go says,

0 may you find in this our pageant, here. The same contentment idiich you came to seek; And as that show but draws.you once a year. May this attract you hither once a week.

Contemporary evidence also indicates that dramatists paid dose attention to the specific interests of their audiences. In the Induction to The

Isle of Gulls, a Blackfriars play dating I 605 or I 606, three gentlemen enter and discuss in detail what they want in a play, and the Prologue says to them, "Alas Gentlemen, how 1st possible to content you? ... all these we must have, and all in one play, or tis alreadie condemnd to the hell of eternall disgrace.When the King*s Men performed the HLack­ friars play The Malcontent at the GLobe, they had to lengthen the drama, in part "to abridge" what is called the "not received eus tome of musicke

^^^Harbage (RivaT Traditions). p. 83 .

127 The Complete Works of John Dav. ed. A. H. Bullen (London, 1881), I, p. 6. 44- in our T h e a t e r , "128 and lAen Jonson, a B lack friars playw right, composed

Volpone for the Globe, he seems to have permitted the audience to dictate the ending: he said he treated the malefactors as he did in order "to put the snaffle in their mouths, that crie out, we never punish vice in

our enterludes, &c."129 jn 1620, furthermore, the printer of The Two

Merry Milkmaids stated,in passing, the premise I have utilized:

Every writer must gouerne his Penne according to the Capacitie of the Stage he writes too, both in the Actor and the Auditor,130

Throughout his career Shakespeare likewise seems to have been

significantly concerned about what his audience wanted. The dancer in the epilogue to Henrv IV. Part II. says.

First my fear; then my curtsy; last my speech. My fear is, your displeasure; my curtsy, ray duty; and my speech, to beg your pardons, (11. 1-3) The,first lines of Pericles also suggest that Shakespearel31 wished to please his audience; Gower says.

To sing a song that old was sung, From ashes ancien t Gower i s come. Assuming man*s in firm itie s . To glad your ear and please your eyes, (Prologue, 11. 1-4)

The Plavs of John Marston. ed. H. Harvey Wood (London, 1934- 1939), I, p. 143. 129 Herford edition, V, preface,

130I ]Old English Drama. Students* Facsimile edition (1914),

131,On the controversial issue of whether Shakespeare wrote the lines, see Pericles, ed. F, D. Hoeniger (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), PP» l i v - l v i . I f he did not compose the sectio n , he su rely chose to r e ta in i t . 45 Finally, in the epilogue to The Tempest, probably the last play

Shakespeare wrote without a collaborator, Prospero appeals for applause

and adds:

or else my project fails, Which was to p le a se . (11. 13-14)

The available evidence would thus seem to indicate that Shakespeare did, in fact, take into account the interests of his audience, and therefore the final premise underlying the method employed in this study would appear to be valid.

Scholars have assigned various causes for the differences they find between Shakespeare’s last works and his earlier ones, and these

causes range from changes in his physical and mental state to changes in theatrical conditions. I make no c].aim that this study will provide a

complete explanation for the nature of his last plays. He may have been weary, he may have had a nervous breakdown, he may have wished to experi­ ment with a new form, he may have had a new vision to communicate; in fact, a thousand years of scholarship may never uncover all of the reasons or possible reasons he wrote the dramas in the manner he did. But cer­ tainly a vitally important influence on Shakespeare’s plays was the audience he had in mind, and, against the background established in this chapter, I will attempt to determine whether he took into consideration the interests of the Blackfriars audience, and whether the total pattern of external and internal evidence can tell us idiat theatre or theatres he had in mind vrfien he wrote Cvmbeline. The Winter’s Talé. The Tempest.

Henrv VIII. and The Two Noble Kinsmen. CHAPTER I I

THE DIFFERENCES IN THE CURRENT TRADITIONS

I. AT BLACKFRIARS AND THE GLOBE

Today we dare no longer make generalizations about Elizabethan drama without taking into account the differences between the dramas written for the public theatres and those written for the private theatres, and certainly the most authoritative work on the subject is Alfred

Herbage's 1952 publication Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions. The

idea, of course, was not original with him. Phillip Williams comments.

That the two kinds of Elizabethan theaters, public and private, catered to different audiences and therefore sup­ p lie d ra th e r d iffe re n t fa re s has been a c r i ti c a l ccmmonplace for some time ..,1 and, as we have seen, Louis Wright was able to say in 1935 1

Gradually, however, as class consciousness increased, certain types of plays began to appeal more and more strictly to the elite, while, by the same token, other plays were pitched to the level of ordinary commoners .2

Herbage's contribution to our understanding of the matter was to study it in considerable depth. His method was to attempt to classify all extant plays between I 56O and l 6l 3 into public and private theatre plays and

1 Phillip Williams, rev. of Alfred Herbage, Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions (New York, 1952), South Atlantip quarterly. LIII (1954), 273 . ^Wright (Middle-Glass Culture), p. 608. 47 then to generalize about the differences--primarily in the area of ideas—between the two sets of plays. He argues that at the public theatres and at the private theatres there were two quite distinct traditions, two "rival traditions," and that Shakespeare*s plays—with some reservations about the works he wrote after I 6O8 —f i t q u ite firm ly into the public theatre tradition.

While most of the scholars who reviewed the book grant that i t is a contribution of real significance, they argue that the work leaves the impression that the two traditions differed a good deal more than was actually the case, Clifford Leech observes.

Of course. Professor Harbage will admit that he is gener­ alising, that plays and dramatists passed from one type of theatre to the other and did not entirely change their char­ acteristics in so doing. Yet, however frequently it is disavowed, the terminology of this book—^-'Theatre of a Nation," "Theatre of a Coterie," "Two Views of life"— implies a hard-and-fast distinction idiich is with difficulty maintained, 3

And P h illip VH.Uiams says,

Perhaps the author*s well-known distrust of aesthetic criticism and his devotion to the historical method have led him to oversimplify and hence exaggerate the effects of the two traditions upon the dramatists,4

Perhaps F, P, 'Vfi.lson best states the attitude we should take toward

Harbage*s thesis; "No doubt the difference may be exaggerated; but it

exists,"^ One reviewer, R, C, Bald, makes an especially important

3 Clifford Leech, rev, of Harbage (Rival Traditions). MLN. LXX (1955), 293. ^Williams, p, 2?4,

% , P, Wilson, "The Elizabethan Theatre," Neophiloloeus. XXXIX (1955), 43, 48

observation when commenting on Harbage's "too simple" "dichotomy":

The richer and more aristocratic classes wore merely fortunate in having a wider range of plays to patronize; the significant thing, of course, is that they did not sup­ port exclusively the theaters which catered especially to their tastes.o

The current view on the matter, then, would seem to be that the

private and public theatre traditions differed in various ways but that

in other ways they overlapped, and this overlap was caused, at least in

part, by a fact that Bald notes—and that I have stressed in connection

with the Blackfriars audience—private theatre patrons also attended

public theatres. We could, therefore, expect to find in a study of the

traditions at one specific public theatre, the Globe, and one specific

private theatre, Blackfriars, considerable difference and some sim ilarity.

But, as we have seen, we must also distinguish among public

theatre audiences. For the period l604-l609 we must distinguish between,

the Red Bull, the Fortune, and the Globe, because if the social composi­

tion of the audiences differed, we could expect the traditions to differ.

Of the three, the Globe alone catered to the more fashionable, to the

genteel as well as the plebian London theatregoers;"^ the Globe, conse­

quently, W.AS a public theatre with a difference, a special public theatre.

Furthermore, Blackfriars was a private theatre with a difference.

Perhaps in time, as scholarship makes finer and finer distinctions, we will be able to distinguish between the traditions at the various private

^R. C. Bald, rev. of Harbage (Rival Traditions). MP. LI (1954-), 280. "^Harbage (Shakespeare's Audience). p. 90 and Wright. (Middle-dass Culture), p. 610. 49 theatres, but as of now we can say that Blackfriars was the most important English private theatre of the time, one that was destined to become far more important, and, most significantly, one \diose audience was in all likelihood essentially a segment of the Globe audience. The

Blackfriars was thus a rather special private theatre.

This means that in a study of the traditions at the Globe and the Blackfriars we should not be surprised to find less difference than we would find between the archetypal public theatre tradition and the archetypal private theatre tradition.

In analyzing theatrical traditions, moreover, one must also distinguish between different periods of time, Harbage generalizes about the distinctions between the private and public theatre concepts using plays dating over the long period from I 56O to I 613, Generaliza­ tions covering long spans of time, however, may or may not accord perfectly with those about short periods, and thus we should not be surprised if the differences Harbage cites do not conform neatly to those in the Globe and Blackfriars plays during the period l604 to I 609,

Furthermore, one must take into account the effects of change.

As we have seen, change constantly modifies traditions, constantly stirs the water and prevents stagnation, and although Harbage readily grants that "If we should visualize a simon-pure popular dramatist and a simon- pure coterie dramatist, we should see that the difference between them O varies within the Elizabethan age itself," the fact remains that in his wide ranging study he inevitably pays little attention to relatively

^Harbage (Rival Traditions), p, 301, 50 small changes within the broad-pattern he finds. To understand more completely the context of my analysis of the differences between the

Globe and Blackfriars traditions, however, the reader should note one particularly important effect of change: he should recognize not only that the two traditions overlapped one another but that between l604 and

1609 they were converging.

From a long range perspective, we can see that the public and private theatre traditions as a whole were themselves converging, F, P,

Wilson has pointed out the direction in which the two were headed: "As the links between Court and Parliament grew weaker, those between the

Court and the th e a tre s became stronger,and Wright has described the overall process by which the "rival traditions" slowly became virtually one:

The preferences of James I and his court helped to accentu­ ate the growth of a social differentiation in the drama, which continued to develop until ultimately in the Restoration it resulted in driving the citizen from the theater,10

Moreover, we can see that the traditions at Blackfriars and the Globe, as well as at Shakespeare*s earlier playhouses, were involved. Between about 1600 and sometime in the 1620*s the traditions at Blackfriars and the (xLobe had, to a considerable degree, 11 merged. Although, as we have

^F, P, Wilson (Elizabethan and Jacobean), pp, 84-85,

^ I f we can rely on Shirley* s caustic attack on the Globe audience in his prologue to The Doubtful Heir, a play written for Blackfriars c, 1640 but presented also at the Globe, the two traditions never com­ pletely merged; The Dramatic Works and Poems of James Shirley, eds, William Gifford and Rev, Alexander %rce (London, 1938), IV, p, 279 (the prologue is reprinted in Bentley f Jacobean and Caroline]. I, p. 31, n. 6). 51 seen, in I 6OO or I 6OI Jonson in his Blackfriars play Cynthia*s Revels sharply distinguished between the tastes and interests of his audience and those of the public theatre clientele, in the 1620*s some of the

Globe plays could be performed at Blackfriars: by 1622 Othello^^ and

Philaster^^ and by 1625 A King and Mo Kine.^^ But later yet even plays

Shakespeare wrote fo r h is company*s e a r lie r public th e a tre s were presented at Blackfriars: by I 63I The Taming of the Shrew^^ and by 1635 apparently 16 one part of Henry IV.

The merging process, however, had an effect on the Globe and

Blackfriars traditions as early as the period l604 to I 609. Harbage notes that "After I 6O3 we may detect some signs of change" in the plays written for the Globe as well as those designed for other public theatres.He observes that of the three public theatre companies operating at the time, Shakespeare*s "proved to be most interested in 1 Q absorbing the Blackfriars clientele," and he finds support in the fact that such plays as Yolpone and The Revenger’s Tragedy were part of the 19 company*s re p e rto ry , ^ Furthermore, he specifies the change that was coming about:

In the "War of the Theatres" ... Shakespeare*s company was a defender of popular ideals from attacks by the coterie. Then came the policy, tentative after I 603, and positive after 1608 [when the company began "wooing into the fold ... such

12 Bentley (Jacobean and Caroline). I, p. 129.

p. 113. ^^bid.. p. 111. ^ ^ Ib id .. p. 129.

^^Ibid., p. 128 . ^’^Harbage (Rival T ra d itio n s).p p . 88 - 89 .

^^Ibid., p. 89 . 52

s e le c t d ram atists as Beaumont, F letch er, and Chapman"] of stealing the thunder of [their coterie] rivals ,.,20

Doubtless the single most significant fact that announces the convergence of the traditions at the Blackfriars and the Globe is the performance in

1604 by the King's Men at the Globe of a play written for Blackfriars by a man Harbage calls a "coterie dramatist unadulterated," To prepare

Marston 's The Malcontent for the Globe, all the King's Men had to do was make a few additions, and even these changes were

not greatly needefull, only as your sallet to your greate feast, to entertains a little more time, and to abridge the not received customs of musicke in our Theater, (Induction, p, 1^3)

Although the already overlapping traditions at the Globe and

HLackfriars had clearly begun to converge by l604, there were still, of course, differences. The major ones—and especially those that bear special relevance to this study—are now our primary concern, I have grouped them into seven divisions : broad types of plays, point of view, characters, the unities, sexual matters, witty dialogue, and spectacle.

Broad T^pes of Havs

To understand the choices the two traditions offered Shakespeare idien he wrote his last plays, we should note first of all that there were a few important differences in the general kinds of plays performed at the Globe and Blackfriars between l604 and l609.

21 Ibid;. p, l66; Chambers (Elizabethan Stage). Ill, pp. 431-432, 53 On the basis of the broad classification^^ of plays into comedies

("plays ending in a resolution of difficulties'*), tragedies ("plays end­ ing in deaths"), and histories ("plays involving English [my italics] civil and foreign conflicts"), fifteen (or 75/^) of the twenty HLackfriars plays are comedies,five (or 25/^) are tragedies,and none is a history play (Harbage notes further that to the best of our knowledge no history plays "ever appeared in the coterie theatres "^^). Only seven (or 4^) of Of\ / the sixteen plays performed at the Globe are comedies, whereas nine (or

56^) are tragedies,and, surprisingly enough, not one is a history play.^® This tabulation shows clearly that during our period comedies and tragedies were equally popular at the Globe but that at Blackfriars

22 I am here indebted to Harbage for his classifications in Rival T ra d itio n s, p. 85 . 23 The Dutch Courtesan. Monsieur D*Olive. All Fools. The Malcon­ tent. Eastward Ho. Tfae fawn. Thg_Iglg_9f. , Thg..Flgire, May Day. The Knight of__the_ Burning_Eastle. A ïpjpk tç. .Catpb. ths.Old.png, Your Five Gallants. and T^e . 24 Philotas. Sophonisba. Byron I and II. and Cupid's Revenge.

Z^Harbage (Rival Traditions), p. 85 .

^^The Fair Maid of Bristowe. Measure, for Measure. 3?ha_L2iPlon Prodigal.. The Malcontent. Volpono. The Miseries of Enforced Marriage, and Ee£L2l£s.

^^Othello. King Lear. Me^pbjgtjji, A XgrkgMro Irftfigdyt Tragedy. Antony and Cleopatra. The.Devil's Charter. Timon of Athens, and Gorialanm. 28 Bernard Beckerman has commented that "Since Henrv V. dated 1599» probably appeared before the completion of the Globe, Shakespeare wrote no history play for the SLobe company,"; Shakespeare at the Globe 1599- 1609 (New York, I 962), p . x . 54 comedies were the predominant fare. The fact that none of the Globe plays i s an E nglish h isto ry p lay , however, deserves fu rth e r comment,

Harbage finds that 21 percent of the public theatres plays dating between I 56O and I 613 are history p l a y s , ^9 and thus i n i t i a l l y we can properly associate the history play with the public theatre tradition.

Furthermore, during the l604-l609 period various history plays were written for and performed by public theatre companies other than Shakes­ peare* s. Queen Anne*s Men presented The Travels of the Three English

B rothers. S ir Thomas W vatt. and I f You Know Not Me You..Know Nobody. P arts

I and II; and Prince Henry* s Men performed The Vftiore of Babvlon and When

You See Me You Know.Me (called, in the title page of the I 605 e d itio n ,

"the famous Chronicle Historié of King Henry the eight ..."^^),^^ As fo r Shakespeare's company, a few years before our p erio d , c. 1602,

Thomas Lord Cromwell was w ritte n fo r the Globe,and during our period there is some slight evidence of continued interest in the English history play. Since in some copies of the Q4 (I 6O8 ) edition of Shakes­ peare's Richard II the title page says, "As it hath been lately acted by

29 Harbage (Rival Traditions), p. 85 . Incidentally, Harbage states that "The plays presented by the King's Men between I 6O9 and I 6I 3 and by Lady ]^izabeth's Men toward the end of the same period have been omitted from the above tabulation, since both companies were occupying both types of theatre and presumably selecting new plays suitable for each." p. 86.

^^Chambers (Elizabethan. Stage). Ill, p. 4?2.

^^Harbage (Rival Traditions), p. 348.

^^ Ib id . . p . 346, and Chambers (Elijsabethan S tage). IV, p. 8. 55 the Klnges Majesties servantes, at the G lobe,it appears that this history play was revived in our period, and, for what it is worth, two of the plays written for the Globe between iSOk and 1609 include English history play elements: Richard I of England appears as a character in

■The.Fair_Maid of Bristowe (V, i, and V, iii), and King Lear was, of course, a legendary English monarch. Thus, although no English history play was written for the Globe during the period l604-1609, the type continued to be somewhat popular at other public theatres and, perhaps, though to a much slighter extent, even at the Globe.

We can note first of all, then, one broad difference in the two sets of plays : whereas the Globe tradition included almost an equal number of tragedies and comedies, the HLackfriars tradition included mostly comedies, and whereas English history plays had no place whatso­ ever in the Blackfriars tradition, they apparently had a very minor niche in the one at the Globe,

In addition, the HLackfriars and Globe comedies had three broad differences that are particularly important for this study. At HLack­ friars an essential characteristic of comedies (plays that end with a resolution of the problems) was that no character who appears onstage,

dies,and the principle applied not only to pure comedy but to the

variant called tragicomedy. In the preface to The Faithful Shepherdess

33 Chambers (William Shakespeare). I , p, 3^9,

^^n Blackfriars plays two characters who do not appear onstage die: Mistress Newcut^s husband in Your Five Gallants (V, i, 64) and Piso Sr, in Heire (V, 289). As we will see, Rafe in The Knight of the Burning Pestle is a special case. 56 entitled "To the Reader," Fletcher states his famous definition:

A tragie-oomedie is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is inough to make it no tragédie, yet brings some neere it, . which is inough to make it no comedie .. (Waller, Vol. II, p. 522) and the Blackfriars tragicomedies conform to this policy. In The Malcon­ tent. for instance, when Mendoza stabs Ferneze, and Pietro says, "Strike,"

Mendoza pretends to defend the body, saying

Do not; tempt not a man resolved; Would you inhumane murtherers, more then death? ( I I , V, p . 169>

And Aurelia, with utter finality, pronounces;

Hee*s dead. ( I I , V, p. 170)

But later we find that he is only badly injured:

0 a Surgion .... 0 helpe, helpe, conceals & save me. • ( I I , V, p . 173)

At the Globe, however, characters who appear onstage, and major characters at that, do die in plays that end happily. In The Miseries of

Enforced Marriage Glare dies (II, p. 503), but the play ends happily (V, pp. 574 - 576 ). In Shakespeare*s Pericles there are numerous deaths:

Antiochus and his daughter (II, iv, 9-12), the nurse Lychorida (IV, Prol.,

42), Leonine (IV, iii, 10, 30), Simonides (V, iii, 78), and both Cleon and Dionyza (V, iii, 95“98). In fact, in the HLackfriars play The Knight of the Burning Pestle, which satirizes the taste of public theatre patrons, Beaumont glances at the issue. When the Citizen and his wife insist that Rafe should die at the end of the play, the character called 57 Boy, idiû is one of the children putting on the play at Blackfriars, argues;

*Twill be very unfit he should die sir, upon no occasion, and in a Comedy too, (V, i , p. 229)

Since the Citizen and his wife represent "the popular audience,"^-5

Beaumont may have been saying that deaths of characters who appear onstage in plays that end happily occurred, at the time, exclusively in public theatre dramas. But, in any event, such deaths occur during our period only in the Globe set of plays.

The second notable difference between the Globe and Blackfriars comedies is that nearly all of those performed at Blackfriars can be classified as satirical comedies. In the Induction added by the King*s

Men to the Blackfriars play The Malcontent when it was performed at the

Globe, Burbage felt obliged to defend the satiric method:

,,, such vices as stand not accountable to law, should be cured as men heale tetters, by casting inke upon them, (Induction, pp, 142-143) and when Jonson, normally a Blackfriars playwright at the time, wrote .

Volpone for the SLobe, he realized that he had to depart from the usual satiric method and to defend what remained; he had his Prologue say about him:

All gall, and coppresse, from his inke, he drayneth, Onely, a little salt remaÿneth; Wherewith, he*ll rub your cheeks, til (red with laughter) They shall looke fresh, a weeke after, (11, 33-36)

^^Harbage (Rival Traditions), p. 10?, 58 Burbage and Jonson here take cognizance of the fact that the home of satire was the private theatres, Harbage goes so far as to say that

"all but about a dozen of the" fifty-five plays that "can be assigned with confidence to the coterie theatres between 1599 and l6l3" are 36 "classifiable" as "satirical comedies"p and this statement becomes more remarkable yet when we realize that nine of the dozen exceptions are tragedies.37 Although at times during our period the Blackfriars play­ wrights satirized, or were thought to have satirized, contemporary in sti­ tutions and specific persons,3® characteristically their plays hold up to ridicule and scorn general human defects ranging from tobacco addiction

(The Pleire. I, 386-40?) to, as Harbage puts it, "Criminal lusts, greed, cruelty, and treachery,"3^ Lust is ridiculed, for instance, in Your

Five Gallants (II. i, 9-25), greed in A Trick to_.Ca_tch the Old One (III, i , 191- 195), and cruelty and treachery in The Malcontent (V, iy, pp,

210-211, and III, iii, p, 182).

In some of the Blackfriars plays a few of the characters are not cured of their defects by the satiric method; they learn from experience.

Malheureux in The Dutch Courtesan learns the hard way to keep his desires in check (V, i, p, 134), and the malefactors in Eastward Ho are cured only after a shipwreck (IV, i) "gives them," as Summersgill has put it, 40 "time to repent as well as an immediate motive for repentance," In the

^^Ibid.. p, 71 . 37ibid.. pp, 346-350,

^^Ibid.. p, 79. 39i^,, p, 306,

^^Travis Sumraersgill, "Structural Parallels in Eastward Ho and The Tempest." Bucknell Review. .VI. iv (1957), p. 24, 59

Globe comedies, however, making characters suffer from the consequences of their defects is virtually the exclusive method of curing them. In

Measure for Measure, for instance, Angelo learns that he can misuse power for only a limited period of time (V, i, 371-379). In Thé London Prodigal

Matthew learns the wages of prodigality by bitter experience (e.g., IV, ii, 62-64), and the same is true of Scarborow in The Miseries of Enforced

Marriage (V, p. 55&). Particularly significant, however, is the change in technique the HLackfriars playwright Jonson fe lt compelled to make when he wrote Volpone for the Globe. In the preface to the play he said that his "speciall ayme" was "to put the snaffle in their mouths, that crie out, we never punish vice in our enterludes, &c." (11. 115-116), and this would seem to indicate that he had concluded that at the Globe one must do more than merely expose and ridicule malefactors; one had to have them suffer for their deviations from acceptable standards of behavior.

Apparently, then, in the SLobe comedies the usual method of

curing characters was to have them suffer from the consequences of their defects; but at HLackfriars the normal, though not exclusive, method was to satirize their shortcomings, and this was true to such an extent that s a ti r i c a l comedy was almost standard HLackfriars f a re .

The final difference between the kinds of comedy at the Globe and HLackfriars is that the only drama that can be classified as a solid precedent for Shakespeare's romances Cvmbeline. The Winter's Tale, and

The Tempest is a Globe play, the very successful Pericles (see Appendix

B). At the outset we can certainly agree on one point; it is virtually a commonplace today th a t P e ric le s i s a member of th e same genre, While 60

discussing "Eailiâss, Smksllfle, The Winter's Tale, [and] The Tempest" in

her book The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy (1956), M, C,

Bradbrook notes that

The unity of theme ■within these plays, and their beauty and power in depicting a realm on 'the other side of tragedy, "beyond hope and despair," has been sufficiently emphasized within the last few years,~

The editors of the authoritative New Shakespeare and New Arden editions

of Pericles both concur. In "the New Shakespeare volume (1956) J. C.

Maxwell calls Shakespeare*s Pericles "a turning-point in his career,

and F, D. Hoeniger in the very recent New Arden edition (1963) says,

It seems that already when at work on Pericles. Shakespeare*s mind was occupied with certain areas of experience which were to be crucial to his final plays. Peri des anticipates ■Cvmbeline. The Winter.*s Tale; and also, though less obviously. The Tempest in a number of characteristics which justify one in speaking of these plays as a group different from the earlier comedies, tragedies, and hi s t o r i e s , ^3

Many scholars have attempted to define precisely what distinguishes the

group from Shakespeare*s earlier plays and the statements vary widely,

but just as the differ in g reports on the number of ships comprising the

armada in Othel^ q "all confirm / A Turkish fleet, and bearing up to

Cyprus," so the varying descriptions of the distinctive qualities of the last plays "confirm" that they form a group apart. Ultimately, perhaps,

it is a matter of the spirit of the plays, and probably Theodore

C. Bradbrook, The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan ■Comedy (Los Angeles, 195&), p. 196,

Pericles, ed, J, C, Maxwell (Cambridge, 1956), p, xxix, 43 Hoeniger (Perid es), p. Ixxi; he discusses Pericles*s "Kinship with the Last Elays" on pp, Ixxi-lxxiv, 6l

Spencer has managed to net the elusive qiaality as well as anyone:

When we read Shakespeare's part in Pericles ,,, we are in another world from Timon. There is plenty of evil in the background but at the end of the play all these things are redeemed.

Rebirth through spring, through woman, acceptance of things as they are, but with a glory round them~that is idiat we find in all the plays from Pericles on.^5

Since Pericles is one of the l604-1609 Globe plays and since it

was very well received by the SLobe audience, the Shakespearian form

called dramatic romance or romantic tragicomedy clearly has a firm prece­

dent in the Globe tradition, but there remains the possibility that there

was also some precedent for it in the HLackfriars tradition. Parrott,

for instance, has stated that romantic drama was a HLackfriars

specialty,^ and since I suspect that many scholars share this view, I

will examine it in some depth. We might note, first of all, that Harbage

would flatly disagree with it. In his study of the public and private

theatre traditions he found that among the extant private theatre plays

for the period 1599 to l6l3 “romances are at a complete discount.In

fact, with respect to this period that encompasses ours, he says that most of the coterie satirists (which necessarily means most of the

coterie dramatists) participated in a "revolt against the romantic."^

44 Theodore Spencer, Shakespeare and the Nature of Man (New York, 1952), p. 185. 4<5 ' •Ibid.. p. 186. 46 Thomas Marc P a rro tt, William Shakespeare, a Handbook (New York, 1955). p. 60.

^^Harbage (Rival Traditions). p. 71.

^Ibid.. p. 101. 62

In the HLackfriars play The Knight of the Burning Pestle Beaumont satir­ izes romantic drama,^ and in May Day (III, i, 59-60), as Harbage notes,

"sneers are directed" at the Gesta Romanorum.^^ which is, interestingly

enough, one of the ultimate sources of Pericles.

Probably one of the major causes behind this disagreement between

Parrott and Harbage is that Parrott, along with other scholars,im agines

the Blackfriars theatre under the Queen*s Revels company to have been a

congenial home fo r Beaumont and F letch er and th e ir comedies. But such a

conception does not accord with the f a c ts , Beaumont and F letch er w rote,

at most, only three plays for the Queen’s Revels during this period, and

although two of them were comedies, both were failures. The Epistle to

The Knight of the Burning Pestle says that the play was "utterly

re ie c te d , and we may conclude with Chambers th a t the commendatory

verses written for The Faithful Shepherdess show that "the play was

damned,At Blackfriars, therefore, Beaumont and Fletcher were

apparently not, to say the least, very successful, and their comedies

were certainly not, by any means, the rage.

49 Hazelton Spencer, for instance, refers to "the general tone of the satire on the romantic drama" in the play; Elizabethan Plavs (Boston, 1933). p. 758. ■^^Harbage (Rival Traditions), pp, 91-92,

■^Sîoeniger (Pericles), pp. xiii-xiv, 52 P a rro tt ( Comedy) . p, 375;' e .g ., Bradbrook (Growth and S tru c tu re ). p. 197 . Chambers (Elizabethan Stage). I l l , p. 220. 54 Ibid.. p, 222. 63

A more specific cause of the disagreement is that Parrott,and probably many other scholars as well, associate Beaumont and Fletcher's highly successful romantic drama Philaster with the Blackfriars theatre.

But, as a matter of record, the title pages of the play indicate that

Philaster was written not for the Queen's Revels but for the King's Men, th a t up to a t le a s t 1620 it had been performed only at the SLobe, and that between 1620 and 1622 it was presented for the first time at

HLackfriars,^^

Although the evidence seems to point strongly against the possi­ bility that among the HLackfriars set of plays there is some precedent for the genre of Shakespeare's late romances, one play is a candidate.

To define the genre to anyone's satisfaction except one's own, a scholar would have to invoke the aid of Hercules, but Leayis and Pettet, for instance, have offered some useful observations. In explaining what is meant by "romantic" in our classification of Shakespeare's last plays,

Leavis says that the word impliesj

among other things, a certain fairy-tale license of spirit, theme and development—an indulgence, in relation to reality, of some of the less responsible promptings of imagination and fancy,57 and Pettet adds that

in the last plays ,,, all is ordered by a positive, con­ trolled, and altogether benign temper and shaped to a pattern of ideal poetic justice ,,, Even the gods, no

^^Parrott (Comedy), p, 375 and (Handbook), p, 60,

Chambers (E liz ab e th a n .S tase) . I l l , pp, 222-223,

^^F, R. Leavis, The Common Pursuit (New York. 1952), p, 175. 64

longer killing for their sport, are directly on the side of justice and moral order ,,,38

Such "fairy-tale license" and such a divinely ordered world do appear in

one of the HLackfriars plays, Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess. It is a play about shepherds and shepherdesses, a Satyr, a woman with magical powers, and A God of the River that intervenes to save a lovely lady who has been stabbed and thrown into a well; and, primarily as a result of the god's intervention and the woman's supernatural powers, it is a play in which all turns out as it should. It is a kind of fairy tale set in a world of "ideal poetic justice," Wallis calls the work Fletcher's "first play in the romantic vein" and suggests, in fact, that he "was probably stimulated to write" it "by the popular success of Shakespeare's

P e r i c l e s . "39 The play, furthermore, is not only romantic in nature, it is a tragicomedy—in his famous preface to the drama Fletcher even provides us with a definition of the form. If the play is romantic and a tragicomedy, its genre seemingly could not be significantly different from that of Pericles and Shakespeare's other late romances, because these works have often been called romantic tragicomedies. What notably distinguishes The Faithful Shepherdess from Shakespeare's late romances, however, is the story: in essence the play deals with a group of char­ acters who exhibit the whole panoply of attitudes toward sexual relations, ranging from the most ignoble lechery to the purest constancy.

KO E, C, Pettet, Shakespeare and the Romance Tradition (London, 1950), pp, 169-170 , 59 W allis (F le tc h e r. Beaumont and Company), p, 186, 65

The basic form of The Faithfifl Shepherdess thus resembles that of

Shakespeare*s dramatic romances, but the story element most assuredly does not,There is, however, a far more fundamental objection to classifying The Faithful Shepherdess as a precedent in the Blackfriars tradition for Shakespeare*s late romances. As the opposition to romance at Blackfriars might have led us to expect, Fletcher*s experiment was doomed; as we have seen, the commendatory verses show unm istakably th a t

"the play was damned,"

We thus find that among the l604-l609 dramas at the two theatres there was one presented at Blackfriars that resembles Shakespeare’s last romances in its form and one at the Globe that clearly belongs to the same genre, but from the point of view of this study the most significant difference between the two is that The Faithful Shepherdess was firmly rejected by the HLackfriars audience, whereas Pericles was warmly welcomed by the c lie n te le a t the Globe,

During the five years prior to the time that the King’s Men had to provide HLackfriars with dramas, the two traditions, therefore, seem

60 , It is possible, however, that Beaumont and Fletcher's question­ able HLackfriars play Cupid's Revenge may be part of the picture. We must handle the evidence from this play with considerable caution (see Appendix A) and we must recognize that it is a tragedy with a heavy emphasis on sex; but James E, Savage has found "sim ilarities in plot and characterization between Philaster and Cupid's Revenge" ("Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster and Sidney's Arcadia." XIV [1947], 195), e.g., "the gullible king, the noble but sentimental hero, the faithful friend, the evil woman, the brutish boor, the disguised page, and the sentimental maiden" (p, 203), and this has led him to suggest that "it seems not unlikely that Cupid's Revenge is an experiment with the essentially tragi-comic materials ,,, and that Philaster and the later romantic plays represent a more skillful exploitation of similar material," ("The Date of Beaumont and Fletcher's Cupid's Revenge." ELH. XV [1948], pp, 293-294,) 66 to have differed, first of all, vith respect to general types of plays.

Most of the Blackfriars plays are comedies, whereas the Globe works consist of an almost equal number of tragedies and comedies, and although no extant English history play was written for either theatre, it appears that we must associate this type of play solely with the Globe tradition.

Secondly, peculiar to the Globe grovç of dramas is the kind of play in which characters who appear onstage die even though the drama ends happily. Thirdly, one type of play that ends happily seems to have been almost distinctively Blackfriars fare, satirical comedy. Lastly, although in its general form The Faithful Shepherdess resembles Shakespeare's late romances, it failed at Blackfriars, and thus in the two traditions the only firm precedent for the romances is Pericles, a Globe play.

Point of View

The overwhelming interest at HLackfriars in one kind of play, the satirical conedy, bears a close relationship to another way in which the Blackfriars tradition differed from the one at the Globe; in their comedies the Blackfriars playwrights normally restricted their point of view and range of interest to that of a relatively limited segment of society. In Middleton's comedy Your Five Gallants, which deals with the attempt of five rogues to pass themselves off as gentle­ men, fitsgrave, the hero and the man who exposes them comments:

0 thou world. How art thou muffled in deceitful forms 1 There's such a mist of these, and still hath.been The brightness of true gantry is scarce seen, (III, ii, 145-149) 67

In most of the Blackfriars comedies the point of view is that of the true gentleman, the man who has, in the idiom of the time, "true gentry," the man who truly possesses "The quality or rank of gentleman" (NED). The term "gentleman" could refer in those days, of course, to a person*s technical "rank" in society (the status of a man who was not a noble but had been granted a coat of arms^^), but in the HLackfriars plays the

s tre s s i s norm ally placed not on rank but on " q u a lity ," The word

"gentleman" is customarily used in the more generalized sense of "a person of distinction without precise definition of rank* (NED). "A man

of superior position in society, or having the habits of life indicative

of this" (NED), a man, therefore, who, among other things, conformed to

certain rather high standards of social behavior.In play after play

the Blackfriars dramatists exerted considerable effort to convey the

standards of the "gentlemanly" sector of society and to prevent the clan

from becoming debased, and they did so by establishing the norm and

satirizing both those who deviate from it and those who try to rise into

the group from below.

The norm i s esta b lish ed by the heroes of various comedies. In

The Dutch Courtesan, for example. Preevil is a gentleman who properly

abandons his mistress when he plans to marry (I, ii, p, 80) and, with

proper concern for the welfare of his friend, cures Malheureux of his •

6 l G, B, Harrison, Shakespeare: The Complete Works (New York, 1952), pp. 1637-1638,

^^As Harrison notes, "The truth is that in England the qualities that distinguish gentlemen from common men have always been very vague," (ü&a., p. 1638) 68 infatuation for a courtesan (V, i, pp. 133-134). In Eastward Ho the

gentleman-apprentice Golding (I, i, 67 - 68 ) artfully tricks the tradesman

Touchstone into visiting the repentant malefactors (which makes the happy

ending possible),.and for his endeavor to help he receives the plaudit

"a true gentleman" (V, ii, 86), In A Trick to Catch the Old One the norm of excellence is Witgood, a reformed gentleman (I, i, 1, and I, ii,

65- 66) xdio brilliantly outwits the greedy Lucre (IV, ii, 37-40) and Hoard

(V, i i , 106).

Besides establishing the norm, the Blackfriars playwrights regularly pilloried those idio diverge from it. As we have seen, they satirized those with defects ranging all the way from tobacco addiction to treachery. In Eastward Ho. for example. Touchstone neatly summarizes the shortcomings of Quicksilver, the "bad" gentleman-apprentice (e.g.,

I , i , 67 ), in the follow ing way;

Of sloth cometh pleasure, of pleasure cometh riot, of riot comes whoring, of idioring comes spending, of spending comes want, of want comes theft, of theft comes hanging; and there is my Quicksilver fixed. (IV, i i , 325- 329)

One further notable result of the limitation of the point of view in most of the Blackfriars comedies to that of the true gentleman is that in many of the plays one prominent object of satire is the unworthy upstart. Historically, those who belonged to the gentlemanly sector of society had reason,to be concerned about upstarts. Louis

Wright gives us a long range view;

As the old feudal aristocracy, decimated by the Wars of the.Roses, gave way to new houses recruited from wealthy 69

merchants, it became increasingly easy for tradesmen to cross the line into the ranks of the gentry.63 and F, P. Wilson adds,that

the changing structure of society brought more and more into prominence the adventurers who in their greed for money and social advancement acted without moral scruples and at the expense of th e ir fellow members of the s t a t e .64

Not all of the defective upstarts, of course, were unscrupulous; some were simply inept, and some must have seemed indeed ridiculous. Wright notes that "the Elizabethan citizen’s first attempts to take his place among the learned or gentle" were "Naive, aidcward, and crude,and he gives us a vivid picture of citizens imitating their "betters":

Rich citizens strode in silk and velvet through the Royal Exchange, dined on rare dishes served in pewter or silver, and generally aped the manners of the gentry.

From this we can see at least part of the cause of the animosity toward the unworthy upstart that is reflected in the Blackfriars plays.

The rogues posing as gentlemen, in Your Five Gallants are an unscrupulous lot of upstarts. Frippery, for instance, describes in detail his method of "rising" from the status of a serving-boy to that of a would-be gallant (I, i, 287-316). Middleton’s brief statements about the five in his dramatis personae reveal their actual means of livelihood:

Frippery is a "broker-gallant," Primero a "bawd-gallant," Goldstone a

"cheating-gallant," Pursenet a "pocket-gallant," and Tailby a

Wright (Middle-dass Culture), p. 5. 64 F. P. Wilson (Elizabethan and Jacobean), p. 96. 65 Wright (Middle-dass Culture), p. 2.

^^Ibid.. p. 13. 70

"whore-gallant,” Some of the upstarts in the plays are obnoxiously, but innocuously, inept, such as Gertrude in Eastward Ho. a woman who ultimately classifies herself as having been "proud and lascivious and a fool" (V, v, I 67 ). But one in particular is unscrupulous, inept, and a genuine threat to society. In The Widow*s Tears the Governor of

Cyprus, characterized by the Captain (a reflector figure) as a "brainless, imperious upstart" (V, iii, 221), has apparently obtained his position by bribes (V, i, 1^5), and he exhibits a horrifying ignorance of justice

(V, i i i , 220- 370 ). To Lycus, the accused, the Governor says:

I say it is imagined thou hast murthered Lysander. How it will be proved, I know not. Thou shalt therefore presently be. had to execution; as justice, in such cases, requireth. Soldiers, take him away. (V, i i i , 244-248)

While discussing the governor, the Captain generalizes about "all u p s ta rts" :

Nor blushes he to see himself advanced Over the heads of ten times higher worths. But takes it all, forsooth, to his merits. And looks (as all upstarts do) for most huge observance. (V, i , 147 -150)

The attack on unworthy upstarts at Blackfriars was clearly both caustic and adept.

In the Blackfriars comedies, moreover, attacks were frequently directed at the social class from which most of the upstarts came. The

Citizen in The Knight of the Burning Pestle, surely referring to HLack­ friars (see Appendix A), says.

These seven years there hath been Plays at this House, I have observed it, you have still girds at Citizens; (Induction, p. lél) 71 and this introduces a play in which Beaumont exhibits the Citizen and his wife*s naivete about theatrical matters. The play failed, and Harbage th in k s he knows why; i t

probably did not fail so much because it satirized citizens as because it did so without animosity. The grocer is neither a fool nor a niggard, and his wife is not a slut. The self-assertiveness of the pair ,,, is treated as amusing rather than abhorrent,"?

Citizens did not normally get off so lightly in Blackfriars plays. In

The Dutch Courtesan, for example, a coneycatcher makes a fool of a citizen named MuUigrub (e.g., II, i, pp. 94-97), and both his wife (V, i, p, 135) and a citizen’s wife in Your Five Gallants (V, ii, 82-86) are s lu t s ,

In the Blackfriars comedies, then, the point of view is normally that of the "gentlemanly" class of society, and the playwrights looked down with a good deal of distaste at those who fell short of its standards and at those who tried to join the clan from below.

Furthermore, in the Blackfriars tragedies the point of view seems to be that of a group that looked upward with a good deal of fear. In the Byron plays and Philotas the dramatists examine with considerable sympathy a spirited man of rebellious tendencies who finds himself in conflict with his ruler and is summarily tried, convicted, and executed.

Just prior to mounting the scaffold, Byron expresses his hard-won aware­ ness that one should look upward with apprehension at the high and mighty;

They tre a d no ground, but rid e in a ir on storms That follow state, and hunt their empty forms; Who see not that the valleys of the world

67 Harbage (Rival Traditions). pp. IO 7 -IO8 , 72

Make even right with the mountains, that they grow Green and lie warmer, and ever peaceful are, When clouds spit fire at hills and burn them bare; Not valleys* part, but we should imitate streams. That run below the valleys and do yield To every molehill, every bank embrace That checks their currents, and when torrents come. That swell and raise them past their natural height, How mad they are, and troubled I Like low streams With torrents crown'd, are men.with diadems. CBvron II: V, iv, 146-1^8)

And near the very end of the play, immediately prior to his death, he

adds;

Fall on your knees then, statists, ere ye fall, That you may rise again; knees bent too late, Stick you in earth like statues; see in me How you are pour'd down from your clearest heavens; F a ll lower y e t, m ix'd with th ' unmoved centre. That your own shadows may no longer mock ye, (Bvron II: V, iv, 253-258) ,

This may, of course, be rationalization on the part of Qyron, but near

the end of Philotas' we find similar ideas, and they are spoken not by

Philotas, but by the Chorus;

The wrath of Kings doth seldome measure keepe; Seeking to cure bad parts they lance too deepe. When punishment, like lightning should appeare. To few mens h u rt but vnto a l l mens fe a re , (V, i i , 2245-2248)

In the last two lines of the play the Chorus underlines a moral that

closely parallels what Byron says;

The which may teach vs to obserue this strains. To admire high h ill's, but liue within the plaine, (V, i i , 2257 - 2256)

One further matter within the comparatively narrow range of interest in the Blackfriars set of plays deserves special stress in this

study, and that is their notably greater concern about friendship. It is

true enough that the play called The Fair Maid of Bristowe demonstrates 73 that friendship could be a matter of importance at the Globe : the friendship between Harbart and Sentloe is torn asunder by a conflict over a woman (I, iii, 117-118). But, as I will show more fully when I discuss

The Two Noble Kinsmen, from the earliest private theatre play, Damon and Pythias, which ends:

True friends are constant both in word and deed, True friends are present,,and help at each need; True friends talk truly, they glose for no gain. When treasure consumeth, true friends w ill remain, (Dodsley, Vol. IV; V, p. 104) down through the earlier HLackfriars plays (Sir Giles Goosecap. e.g., Ill, ii, 108-115), into the plays of our period (e.g.. The Dutch Courtesan. II, if p. 93) and on further into plays performed later at Blackfriars (The

Maid*s Tragedy. Ill, pp. 37“40), there is a clearly traceable line of concern about matters of friendship. In these plays, furthermore, friendship is not treated merely as an important matter; it is regularly treated as something—to quote Malheureux in The Dutch Courtesan—

"sacred" (II, i, p. 93).

The Blackfriars playwrights thus seem to write their plays from the point of view of a limited segment of society, to look at segments both below and above with a good deal of hostility, and to exhibit a special interest in friendship. Harbage comments that the private theatre plays as a whole are devoted "to the preoccupations of a clique,and he calls their dramatists "the writers for the theatre of the urban clique.TMs. certainly seems to be true of the Blackfriars

68 Itijl., p. 86. 89ibid.. p. 297 » 74 plays and playwrights, and the reason is, as we have seen, that to a considerable degree the Blackfriars audience was a limited segment of society that we might very well classify as a "clique."

In contrast, the Globe audience, though it consisted of a larger percentage of the more fashionable people than did the other public th e a tre s , was composed e s s e n tia lly of a cross sectio n of so ciety , and thus we need not be surprised to find that the Globe plays are devoted, as Harbage says of the public theatre plays generally, "to the interests of a community."70

In the Globe comedies we find, in place of a narrow concentration on the attributes of the "true gentleman," a wide ranging examination

(either direct or indirect) of the attributes of the good man, whether he be a servant (such as the extraordinarily devoted Butler in The

Miseries of Enforced Mfrriaee. a character whose virtues, in large part, make the happy ending possible), a member of the merchant class (such as

Matthew in The London Erodigal, who learns painfully the cost of not being a good man), or a ruler (Angelo in Measure for Measure, a warped man whose defects threaten Vienna and very nearly ruin him).

At the Globe, furthermore, we find no upstart pilloried, nor any citizen who is treated as a representative of his class abused or made a fool of, nor any citizen's wife who is a slut. Actually, the wives of

citizens seem to be defended in Globe plays. When Matthew in The London

Prodigal tries to induce a citizen's wife to become his mistress, she flatly refuses; "it / were a good deede to haue thee whipt." (V, i.

70 Ibid.. p. 86. 75 95-9&), and her name in the play suggests that she is a representative of her group; it is simply "a Citizens wife" (V, i, S.D.), It is particularly interesting to note that vhen Jonson took leave from Black­ friars to write Volpone for the Globe, he gave us the memorable Celia— a citizen's wife who unequivocally resists the varied advances of

Volpone (III, viij.

Among the tra g ed ies a t the Globe no play concentrates on the

conflict between a spirited, rebellious man and his ruler as do the

Blackfriars plays Bvron and Philotas. The closest approximation to this at the Globe is The Revenger's Tragedy: the interest in this play lies, however, not in rebelliousness versus firmly entrenched power, but in the problems of a man who avenges himself against a lecherous Duke who has poisoned his betrothed (I, i, 3^37).

The Globe plays show further that the Globe audience had much

broader concerns than the Blackfriars audience. Harbage found the same

to be true of public theatre dramas in general from I 56O to I 613;

I maintain that the popular drama came nearer than the coterie drama to being literature of the full landscape ...71

The "interests of a community," for instance, extended down to problems

faced by the lower classes, and especially by servants. Although in the

Blackfriars play Eastward Ho there appears an extensive examination of

what constitutes a good and bad apprentice, both Golding and Quicksilver

p. 300. 76

rank as gentlemen (I, i, 67 - 68 ).7^ in the Globe plays members of the

servant class regularly perform serious and significant functions. To realize this we need only consider such characters as the servant who kills Cornwall in King Lear, the butler in The Miseries of Enforced

Marriage that solves many of the problems of the play, the servant in A

Yorkshire Tragedy \dio in tervenes to prevent the husband from k illin g more people, and Cleopatra's devoted servants in Antony and Cleopatra.

The "interests of a community" extended upward to the problems of the ruling class, and these matters are shown to have wide ranging effects on the whole body politic. Although there are a few references to such effects.in the HLackfriars tragedies, such as in Philotas (V, ii, 2006-

2011),73 in the Globe plays waves of consequences that touch virtually everyone are set in motion by political events; Vincentio's delegation of his power to Angelo in Measure for Measure. King Lear’s division of his kingdom, Macbeth's misrule of Scotland, Antony's infatuation for

72 It is curious that two apprentices are, officially, gentlemen, but in I, i, we not only have Touchstone's word for it (speaking to Quicksilver, he says that Golding is "as good a gentleman born as thou art") but also, shortly after,Quicksilver's unchallenged statements that both he ("though I am a prentice, I can give arms") and Golding ("Wilt thou bear tankards, and mayst bear arms?") have coats of arms. In 3he Widow's Tears a character who is at least technically a servant plays a serious and important role and thus constitutes an excep­ tion to the general practice at Blackfriars. Lycus (or Lycas) is originally a "servant to the widow Countess" (Dramatic Personae) and later to Tharsalio. He helps in the test of Cÿnthia (e.g., V, i, I6-19), he and Tharsalio witness her "seduction" (V, i, 22-34), and he is almost executed fo r murder (V, i i i , 244-246).

73ln Cupid!*s Revenge the impending execution of the king's son, Leucippus, prompts a group of citizens to assemble and rescue him (IV, i, pp. 272-277). 77 Cleopatra, Pericles* search for safety and for Marina, and Coriolanus* desire for vengeance.

The second major d ifferen ce between the two tra d itio n s , then, was that the Blackfriars playwrights normally restricted their point of view to that of a relatively limited segment of society which seemed to look downward w ith d is ta s te and upward w ith fe a r and th a t they included among their special interests a notably greater concern about problems related to friendship. The Globe playwrights, in contrast, devoted their atten­ tion to matters of considerably broader social significance.

Characters

The third major difference between the Globe and HLackfriars traditions was that certain kinds of characters were peculiar to each set of plays. Since the Blackfriars plays are considerably more restricted in their point of view and interests, they include a narrower range of characters than do the Globe plays, and the characters that appear are those that are appropriate to HLackfriars purposes. Generally speaking, because of the satirical intent of most of the Blackfriars comedies and their concentration on deviations from the standard for the "class" of true gentlemen, the plays include a great many characters (mostly male, but some female) that represent departures from the norm. For instance, a glance at the dramatis personae.of Marston*s The Fawn tells the reader that he can expect a parade of eccentrics. The most,notable ones are:

Gonzago , , , A weake Lord of a s e lfe admiring wisedome, Granuffo, A silent Lord, Don Zuccone, A causelesly jealous Lord, So Amoroso Debile-Dosso, A sic k ly k n ig h t, Herod Frappatore ,,. a vitious bragart, (p , 146) 78

But eccentrics parade through most of the Blackfriars comedies, and they include not only humour characters with their one primary defect, such as the tobacco smoking addict Petoune in The Fleire (e.g.. I, 256-^23), but also quite complex characters, most notably the title character in

Monsieur D'Olive.7^

Of the many characters that can be classified as exclusively or predominantly Blackfriars fare, six of the nine that are particularly important for this study do deviate from the approved norm. Of these six, the first three deviate with respect to sexual matters.

The first is a humour character, the causelessly jealous husband.

Although we fin d humour characters ( e .g .. S ir Would-be P o litic and

Corvino) in Volpone. the play that the HLackfriars playwright Jonson wrote for the Globe, Jonson*s The Case Is Altered includes a passage

(evidently part of an interpolation for the revival at Blackfriars?^) which indicates that even about 1608 humour characters were essentially private theatre fare, Antonio Balladino says, mary you shall haue some now (as for example,, in plaies) that will ,,, write you nothing but humours : indeede this pleases the Gentlemen: but the common sort they care not for*t ,,, (I, i, 60-63) In the Globe play Volpone. in fact, we find an extraordinarily important kind of humour character: the causelessly jealous husband (Corvino, e.g.,

Parrott "inclines" to the belief that he is "one of the most original figures in our comic drama," notes that he is a "rattle-pated, witty, idle man-about-town," and "a vivacious fop," and comments that "The essential features of his character are unruffled good-humour, unfailing self-assurance, a most ingenious and reckless wit, and an unquenchable flow of speech," (Chapman*s Comedies, pp, 779-780)

"^^Chambers (Elizabethan Stage). Ill, pp, 357-358, 79 II, v), but, with respect to the two traditions between l604 and I 609, this particular humour character must be associated primarily with the

Blackfriars tradition. He appears in play after play: for instance, in

All Fools the character is Cornelio (I, ii, 21; II, i, 26O-26I and 272-

287 ); in Eastward Ho it is Security (II, iii, 101; III, i, 24); and in

The Widow's Tears it is Lysander (II, i, 59-62; IV, i, 30). The most memorable one of the group, however, is Zuccone.in The Fawn, a character called in the dramatis personae "A causelesly jealous Lord." Zuccone is so suspicious of his beautiful and virtuous wife that he has hired men to tempt her (IV, p. 200) and, to see whether she will become pregnant, he has refused to sleep with her during the last four years (II, i, p. I 65).

In the Blackfriars plays we find another sexual eccentric of importance for our study of Shakespeare’s last plays: an old man seeking sexual relations. In The Fawn S. Amoroso Debile-DosSois too old to engage in such activity, but this does not keep him from trying (e.g., V, pp. 218 -219). This type of character reaches full development, however, in Lorenzo, a figure in the comedy called Mav Day. By his estimate "A sound / old man" (I, i, 15-16) and by both his and Angelo’s estimate a

"January" man (I, i, 9 and 28), Lorenzo wishes to frolic sexually on May

Day by having an affair with Fran ceschina (I, i, 22), and a sizeable portion of the play deals with his failure to do so (IV, ii, 26-39) and with the ridicule he is subjected to (III, i, 173-175; III, ii, 35-45).

The last of those who deviate sexually is the only female char­ acter of major importance to this study: the lascivious woman. Lustful or wanton women appear at times in Globe plays. In King Lear, after

Edgar reads Goneril’s letter to Edmund proposing that he k ill Albany and 80

offering to let him "supply" Albany’s "place" in her bed for his "labour,"

he calls Goneril and Edmund "murderous lechers" (IV, vi, 267-282), but

Goneril’s sexual activities are touched upon lightly indeed. In a Globe

play called The Revenger’s Tragedy, the Duchess seduces her own stepson,

and the verbal portion takes place onstage (I, ii, 135“195); her primary

motive, however, is revenge (I, ii, 117-124 and 196-197). In the Globe

plays, therefore, a lascivious woman is a rarity,

. In the plays designed for Blackfriars, however, this is not the

case. In The Malcontent, a play performed at both theatres but written

for HLackfriars, Duke Pietro’s wife Aurelia, who is called a "subtile

lascivious Dutches" (I, vii, p, l60), commits adultery with both Mendoza

(I, iii, p, 148) and Ferneze (II, v, p, 171), aixi at one point she is

even caught in the act (II, v, p, 169), She herself characterizes her

attitude toward sexual relations as "ravenous immodesty, / Insatiate

impudence of appetite" (IV, v, p, 195), Furthermore, in the plays per­

formed only at HLackfriars there are many lascivious women. In The Fawn

Garbetza sleeps with her brother-in-law (V, p, 193), In The Fleire the

father of the two heroines objectively places them both in the category

of "a most lascivious whore" (II, 481), and one of them, Florida, has even slept with her seryingman (II, 210-224), In Soohonisba. after tricking gyphax into thinking he was having relations with Sophonisba instead of her, the wicked witch Erictho says.

We in the pride and haight of covetous lust Have wisht with womans gredines to f ill Our longing armes with Qyphax well strong lims: (V, i , p . 51) 81

In Your Five Gallants Mistress Newcut, her husband at sea, visits

Primerons brothel not for "gain, but for sheer pleasure and affection"

(II, i, 20), Moreover, doe in The Faithful Shepherdess is an impatient virgin; she says in two soliloquies:

0 happy be your names that have been brides. And tasted those rare sweets for which I pine: (I, i, p. 386) and

1 would fa in meet some Shepherd, knew I where: For from one cause of fear I am most free. It is impossible to ravish me, I am so •willing, (III, i, p, 405)

The most horrendous lascivious woman in the Blackfriars dramas, however, appears in the play Cu'oid's Revenge. Her husband dead little more than a week, Bacha has sexual relations with Leucippus to gain pearls and gold, but after she marries his father, she wants to continue her affair with

Leucippus and at one point even goes to her knees and pleads with him to have intercourse with her:

thou art a beast, worse than a savage beast. To let a lady kneel, to beg that thing Which a rig h t man would o ffe r, . (Ill, i, p, 254)

In a soliloquy later, though, she makes it clear that any man will do:

Lust will find a mate While th ere are men, and so w ill I : and more Than one, or twenty; (III, i, p. 256)

The last three of the six characters who deviate from the norm do so in other than sexual ways. The first is the pedantic man. The type of character called the pedant is not a part of the tradition of either theatre between 1604 and l609, but it appears that we should associate it 82 with the HLackfriars theatre rather than the Globe* A pedant named

Holofernes does appear in Shakespeare^s very early play Lovers Labour

Lost (IV, ii, and V, i), but Chambers thinks the play "suggests a courtly rather than a popular audience, and Harbage, very recently, has offered a complex argument supporting the "hypothesis" that Shakespeare wrote the play for a private theatre company called Paul’s Boys.?? In The Gentleman

Usher, which was probably written for Blackfriars a few years before.our period (1602)?^ there is "a pedant" (Dramatis Personae). He puts op what

Cortezza calls "a pretty show" (II, i, 192), and he begins by saying:

Lords of high degree. And ladies of low courtesy, I the Pedant here, Whom some call schoolmaster. Because I can speak best. Approach before the rest. (II, i, 196-201)

Although there are no pedants in either set of plays during the period

1604 to 1609, in the Blackfriars set there are characters who are pedantic. In All F o o ls there appears what Parrott calls a "pedantic notary,"?9 and his legal jargon (IV, i, 305-332) would break the jaw of an e lo c u tio n is t. In The Fawn, however, we fin d a much more f u lly

^^Chambers (VBilliam Shakespeare). I , p. 338. 77 Alfred Harbage, "Love’s Labor’s Lost and the Early Shakespeare," PQ. XLI (1962), 18 - 36. For reasons he does not state, however, he believes that Shakespeare introduced Holofernes into a version of the play he revised for a "popular audience" (pp. 27 and 30). 78 P a rro tt ( Chaman*_s„ Comedies ). p . 753 , and called "plausible enough" by Chambers (E lizabethan Stage). I l l , p. 251.

?9parrott (Chapman’s Comedies), p. 7 O8 . 83 developed pedantic character, one that Wood calls a "pedantic ,,, Buke."®®

To Granuffo and Tiberio, Gonzago, the Duke of Urbin, parades his learning:

you must know my age Hath'seene the beings and the quide of things, I know Dimensions and termini Of all existens ... (I, ii, p. 153)

Later, to Tiberio, he says,

Anexouè, ampexou, (th a ts Greeke to you now.) . . . Looks too lit, quos ego, a figure called Aposiopesis or Increpatio. (Ill, p. 188)

Herod says of Gonzago,

our Duke of Urbin is a man very happily madd, for he thinkes himselfe right perfectly wise, and most demonstratively learned; (I, ii, p. 156)

Gonzago him self unconsciously p o in ts out h is d efect when he says he h ates most "of all creatures breathing" people "that strugle to seeme wise, and yet are indeed very fooles ..." (V, p. 222). He himself is one of the fools in the play, and Hercules, the hero, formally charges him with having "a presumptions wisedora" (V, p. 222).

Another HLackfriars deviant notable for our purposes is the drunkard. Although in both sets of plays there are characters who become drunk, only in the HLackfriars play A Trick to Catch the Old One is there a drunkard, a man habitually intoxicated. In the ŒLobe plays, for instance, neither Cassio in Othello nor Lepidus in Antony and Cleopatra is habitually drunk, and the porter in Macbeth has simply been "carousing"

^^The. Plays of John Marston. ed. H. Harvey Wood (London, 1938), II, p. xix. 84 with the rest of the household and the guests (II, iii, 26-2?), In A

Trick to Catch the Old One, however, the usurer Dampit, except for the

short period of about sixty lines he is onstage in the first act (I, iv,

29- 76 ), is drunk, and Middleton exhibits and characterizes him as a disgusting drunkard (III, iv, and IV, v). Lamprey, for instance, says of him,

do but mark the conceit of his drinking; one must wipe his mouth for him with a muckinder ... (IV, V, 11-12)

And Audrey, his servant, tells him,

if you hold on as you begin, and lie a little longer, you need not take care how to dispose your wealth ; you*U make the vintner your heir. (IV, V, 49- 51)

Middleton*s attack focuses primarily on Dampit*s way of making a living, usury (IV, v, 62- 63), but it extends also to his habitual drinking.

The last of the six HLackfriars charactersvho depart from the approved standard and who.deserve special stress in this study is a very important one we met earlier in the discussion of point of view. He is the unworthy upstart, and, as we saw, the upstart group includes, among others, the five unscrupulous would-be gentlemen in Your Five Gallants.

Gertrude in Eastward Ho. and most notably the incredibly inept Governor of Cÿprus in The V5.dow*s Tears.

Of the nine Blackfriars characters the final three can be classi­ fied generally as approved characters. The first, oddly enough, is. a coneycatcher, but he is a very special kind. In order to make life miserable for two of the prime targets of the Blackfriars playwrights, citizens and their wives, Marston created in The Dutch Courtesan a memorable character.called Cocledemoy, and of the great number of figures 85 in the two sets of plays he alone can be called a truly delightful coney cat cher. He is called the "coni catching Cocledemoy" (I, i, p. 72) by Mulligrub, and he gulls the citizen MuUigrub and his wife with inexhaustible resourcefulness. Because Cocledemoy has stolen some goblets from him, the citizen decides to have Cocledemoy imprisoned.

Cocledemoy, in order to punish Mulligrub for this and to prompt him to forgive him, resorts to a long series of brilliantly conceived and executed deceptions. Disguised as a barber and pretending to prepare

Mulligrub for a shave, he puts a coxcomb on Mulligrub*s head and steals h is money bag ( I I , i , pp. 9^-96). He then concentrates on Mrs. M ulligrub.

Knowing th a t her husband has bought a new goblet from a goldsm ith and has had i t d eliv ered home, Cocledemoy pretends to be one of the gold­ smith* s servants, gives her a portion of salmon, tells her that her husband wishes to have the goblet sent back to be engraved with his

"armes," and, with Mrs. Mulligrub*s full permission, walks off with this goblet. A short while later Cocledemoy comes back, tells her that he is to take the salmon to the goldsmith*s house, where the Mulligrubs w ill have dinner, and, again with her full permission, walks off with the salmon. Utterly furious, Mr. Mulligrub pursues and finds Cocledemoy, and when the coneycatcher runs, leaving his doak behind, Mulligrub grabs the doak and chases him down the street. He runs right into the arms of two constables, however, and there stands Cocledemoy calmly reporting to them that Mulligrub has stolen his doak. While waiting for

Mulligrub to be tried, Cocledemoy, disguised as a sergeant, adds one further coneycatching touch: he "picks Malhereuxes pocket of his 86 p u rse" (V, i , p . 133 8 .D ,). In the play Cocledemoy receiv es no punish­ ment whatsoever because Mulligrub, in a spirit of forgiveness induced by the thought that he will be executed, fully pardons him, but the primary reason is that what Cocledemoy has done "has bin only Euohoniae gratia, for VB.ts sake" (V, i, p. 136), In the Globe set of plays no character comparable to this delightful coneycatcher appears except in Volpone. the Globe play by the Blackfriars playwright Jonson, but the difference in treatment is striking: Jonson severely punishes Mosca and Volpone,

Mosca’s sentence is, "first thou be whipt; / Then liue perpetuall prisoner in our gallies," (V, xii, 113-114); and Volpone*s is, "Thou art to lie in prison, crampt with irons, / Till thou bee'st sieke, and lame indeed," (V, xii, 123-124), It is clear enough that Jonson does not present the exploits of these coneycatchers "only ,,, for Wits sake,"

Another approved figure found only in the HLackfriars set of plays is a supernatural character who is willing and able to aid a good cause. The Satyr in The Faithful Shepherdess helps a lovely lady cure a series of deviant characters, and he has a number of remarkable powers.

He says to the lady:

Shall I dive in to the Sea And bring thee Coral, making way Through the rising waves that fall In snoie fleeces; dearest, shall I catch the wanton Fawns, or Flyes, Whose woven wings the Summer dyes Of many colours? get thee fruit? Or steal from Heaven Old Orpheus Lute? All these I*le venture for, and more, • To do her serv ice a l l these woods adore, (V, i , p, 444)

The Faithful Shepherdess as a whole was a failure, but as we will see in

Chapter III, the Satyr may have been popular with the Blackfriars audience. 87

In the Blackfriars plays there is a great deal of intrigue, and the third of the approved Blackfriars characters and the last of the nine exclusively or predominantly Blackfriars figures of particular relevance to this study is one that plays a central role in much of it. I will

call the character a hero-intriguer, and by this term I mean a central figure who resolves most or all of the problems in a play through intrigue. He is not absent from the Globe plays: the Duke in Measure for Measure solves most of the problems by various stratagems, and both

Challener and Harbart in The Fair Maid of Bristowe deserve honorable mention. But in the HLackfriars comedies the hero-intriguer is virtually

a standard fixture throughout the period l604 to I609, In The Malcontent

(performed at both theatres) Altofronto cleanses the court and regains

the power of ruler through intrigue, and by the same means the central

figures in eight reliable plays performed only at Blackfriars solve the

problems; Preevil, the hero of The Dutch Courtesan, cures Malheureux

of his infatuation with Francischina; Vandome, the hero of the main plot

of Monsieur D*Olive, cures Marcellina of her decision to live in darkness

after being insulted by her husband, and he cures St, Anne of his morbid

desire to keep his dead wife at home with him; in The Fawn the hero,

Hercules, manages to expose the defects of those at court and, with the

help of Dulcimel, to marry his "cold” son to her; Julio and Aminter, a

pair of heroes in The Isle of Gull s. succeed in marrying the heroines and

winning the kingdom; the hero of The Fleire. Antifrorit, manages to marry

his daughters to respectable men and in the process regain his dukedom ;

in A Trick to Catch the Old One Witgood regains his lost fortune ;

Fitsgrave in Your Five 5^11 ants exposes the five gallants and wins 88

Katherine's hand; and in The Widow's Tears Tharsalio marries a rich

widow and cures Lysander of the fear that his wife will not be constant

after he dies. VELth the possible exception of Eastward Ho.^^ in every

comedy we can confidently assign to HLackfriars during the period l604-

1609, a hero-intriguer makes the happy ending possible.

The Blackfriars playwrights, then, because of their comparatively limited point of view and range, of interests, restricted themselves

largely to certain kinds of characters, and the ones that are of notable

value for this study include the causelessly jealous husband, the old man

actively seeking sexual relations, the lascivious woman, the pedantic

man, the drunkard, the unworthy upstart, the delightful coneycatcher,

the supernatural character who is willing and able to aid in a good

cause, and the hero-intriguer.

Since the ŒLobe dramatists were not writing for a theatre that

catered to an audience with, restricted concerns but rather for a public

theatre, they exhibited in their plays an almost unlimited scope of interest and therefore a much wider range of characters. Of those that we can associate exclusively or predominantly with the Globe tradition, seven are especially important for this study. The first is the young child, such as the baby in A Yorkshire Tragedy (Sc, V), Scarborow's offspring in The Miseries of Enforced Marriage (V, pp, 560- 566), and

Macduff's son in Macbeth (IV, ii).

Û -1 If Golding can possibly be considered the hero of the play, he, too, may be a hero-intriguer, because he brings about Touchstone's forgiveness of the malefactors by tricking him into coming to the prison (V, iv ) . 89

The second is the notably loyal servant. In the Globe plays, in fact, some servants are so devoted that they readily risk their lives.

In The_Miseries of Enforced Marriage a butler (and among the two sets of plays only here does a butler become a major character) serves so well that he merits much of the credit for the happy ending, and in the process he willingly risks death (V, p. 563). A servant in A Yorkshire Tragedy bravely intervenes to prevent his master from committing further acts detrimental to the master and his family, and he suffers serious injury

(Sc, ?, 36- 53). Furthermore, in King Lear, it is a servant who tries to stop Cornwall from blinding Gloucester and who pays with his life , and he intervenes because he is loyal (III, vii, 72-75).

Three other characters, in one way or another, deviate from the mental norm. It is only in the Globe plays that we find mad characters

(King Lear and Lady Macbeth); it is only there—if we can consider

Mucedorus one of the group (see Appendix A)—that we find a subhuman man,

"a wilde man" (dramatis personae, p. IO 5 ); and it is only there that we find a benevolent man who has acquired supernatural powers by means of diligent study, Cerimon, the man in Pericles who brings Thaisa back from the dead (III, ii, 93).

82 In the Blackfriars play The Faithful Shepherdess there is a benevolent woman with supernatural powers « CLorin has the power to effect, for instance, a quick cure of the nearly dead Alexis: Fairly wipe away the blood: Hold him gently till I fling Water of a vertuous spring On his temples; turn him twice To the Moon beams, pinch him thrice. That the labouring soul may draw From his great eclipse. (IV, i, p. 4l6) (continued) 90

The last two Globe characters of importance to this study are figures of fun. The first is the comic porter (Macbeth. II, iii, 1-45), and the second is a character extraordinarily important for our purposes, the clown, %)eaking of the public and private theatre plays in general,

Harbage notes that

The popular audience demanded the presence of the clown. He was worked into nearly every play .,,^3 whereas

Blackfriars and Paul's took considerable pride in expunging clowns from their p l a y s , 84

Under the term "clown" I do not include here another type of character

called a "fool"; I follow Creizenach's distinction;

The word "fool," it should be noted, is not consistently used in the texts in the sense which denotes the professional jester as opposed to the involuntarily ludicrous clown ,,,85

Characters that are "involuntarily ludicrous" and designated as clowns

But she derives her powers primarily from her virginity; for example, she says she can heal "green wounds" because such secret vertue lies In Herbs applyed by a Virgins hand; (I, i, p, 373 ) Furthermore, we must be cautious about considering this feature a firm part of the Blackfriars tradition because the play failed,

^^Harbage (Bival-Traditions). p, 83, 84 Ibid. . p, 84, In the Blackfriars play Mav Day Gasparo is called "an old down" (Dramatis Personae), but he is not a clown in our sense; by I 563 the word could mean "boor," and he is a disagreeable old man who cannot possibly qualify as a husband for Aurelia (e,g,, II, i, 65-97 ). ^^Creizenach (The English Drama) . p , 308* 91 appear in such ŒLobe plays as Othello (III, i, and III, iv) and Antony and Cleopatra (V. ii, 241-281),

Between l604 and I 609 the broad interests of the ŒLobe audience resulted in a broad range of characters, and, for our purposes here, seven are especi&Lly important: young children, notably loyal servants, mad persons, a subhuman man, a benevolent man who has acquired super­ natural powers through study, a comic porter, and the traditional public theatre character called the clown.

The third major difference in the two traditions, then, was that

certain distinctive kinds of characters emerged. Of these, a total of nine in the Blackfriars plays and seven in the Globe plays will serve to help us determine how the acquisition of Blackfriars by the King's Men affected Shakespeare's last plays.

The Unities

Fourthly, the Globe and. HLackfriars.plays differ considerably in

structure, the durations of time covered, and in the range of geographical

settings. In other words, they differ in the degree to -(diich they adhere

to the "rules" called the classical unities.

In many of the Blackfriars plays the playwrights focused such

extensive attention on characters of particular interest to their audience

that it significantly affected the structure of the plays. Near the end

of The Widow's Tears Chapman suddenly devotes almost his full attention

to a minor character, an inept upstart who is the Governor of Qyprus, In

doing so, he develops the Governor out of all proportion to his importance 92 to the story, and, worse yet, he does so at the very end of the play

(V, i i i , 220- 370 )• It appears that Chapman felt compelled to pillory an unworthy upstart no matter how it affected the p lay stru ctu re.

In two other plays the stru c tu re i s even more p e c u lia r. In Your

Five Gallants a group of men woo a wealthy orphan and one wins her, but

Middleton devotes the bulk of the play to the exhibition and exposure of five unworthy upstarts, the five gallants mentioned in the title. In

The Fawn we find a similar pattern. The title character, who is the

Duke of Ferrara, manages to marry his son, a young man who has very little interest in the female sex, to Dulcimel, the daughter of the Duke of Albin, but during most of the play Marston exhibits and exposes a wide range of humour characters, and he devotes especially extensive attention to the curing of a causelessly jealous husband named Zuccone,

For this study, however, the most important structural feature in the Blackfriars group of plays is that many include, in addition to a well developed main plot, a loosely connected secondary plot, and this second plot concentrates on a character of particular interest to the

Blackfriars audience. In The Fleire the subordinate plot deals generally with the wooing of an old gentlewoman by a character named Petoune, and he is so important a part of the play that at the end the Fleire says.

Let all be pleased in this our comicke sport. Where’s Petoune? he shal haue his M istris too. He most deserues, for he did hotly woe ,,, (V, 306- 308 )

He is a butt of ridicule throughout his portion of the play, and his primary point of vulnerability is that he is addicted to smoking. Whereas

Horatio and Marcellus swear on Hamlet’s sword, Petoune, at one priceless 93 moment in the play, swears on his pipe (I, 386-391). The secondary plot in A ll Fools focuses on a ch aracter \dio i s both an u p s ta rt (dram atis personae; "a start-up Gentleman") and a jealous husband (e.g., I, ii,

21). Ineptly, he tries to climb the social ladder from farmer (I, ii, 37) to gallant, and his impact on the play is so great that the last line refers to him: "Horns cannot be kept off with jealousy" (V, ii, 333).

In A Trick to Catch the Old One the second plot centers on an ugly char­ acter named Dampit, vdio is, among other things, a usurer and a drunkard.

Dampit outlines his vile techniques in I, iv; he is drunk in III, iv; and in IV, v, he is dying from excessive drinking.

In two plays of this group the secondary plot becomes so important that it gives the play its name. In Law Tricks Count Lurdo, the central figure of the subordinate plot, looks at life essentially from the narrow point of view of legalistic principles, and his prime goal is to become rich by marrying wealthy women who will not live long and by acquiring their money through law tricks (I, i, p. 14). In

Monsieur D*Olive the second plot both gives the play its name and quite completely overshadows the main plot. Vandome, the hero-intriguer, has two problems to solve: reconciling Marcellina with her husband and persuading St. Anne to cease his excessive mourning for his dead wife and to remove her body from his home. The Duke wants to send someone to the King of France, who is related to St. Anne’s wife, to ask him to request the body so that it can be given a proper burial, and the man he chooses is Monsieur D*Olive. The play as a whole, however, consists largely of an exhibition of this wonderfully complex character. One phase of his character would have been especially interesting to the 94

HLackfriars audience; he is called "the perfect model of an impudent upstart" (I, i, 394-395), and, as an ambassador, he cheats his "followers"

( I I I , i i , 149- 201) and spends so much time preparing for his mission that there is no need for him to go (IV, ii, 135-136).

From the point of view of structure, however, probably the most important Blackfriars play for this study is The Dutch Courtesan. Here a delightful coneycatcher is the central figure in the secondary plot, and he gulls a pair of socially inferior characters. As we have seen,

Cocledemoy, in a sheerly delightful way, outwits at will both Mulligrub and his wife, and they belong to a group regularly treated badly at

Blackfriars, citizens and their wives.

As a result of the stress on characters of peculiar interest, then, many of the Blackfriars plays have structural peculiarities, and the most notable of these is a loosely connected secondary plot that exhibits one of the interesting characters.

Among the ŒLobe plays of the period, on the other hand, the structural norm was a single plot,^ but the notable Blackfriars pattern

86 Perhaps part of the explanation for the structural differences in the two sets of plays is suggested by a passage that was added to an old play lAen it was revived at Blackfriars during our period. In Jonson*s The Case Is Altered Antonio Balladino, idio surely represents the public theatre playwright Anthony Munday, says that "the common sort ,,, look for good matter," and he states as his policy, "let me haue a good ground ,,, the plot shall carry it," (I, ii, 76-77), Commenting on the passage, Harbage says it refers to the "distinction made between the educated taste for satire and the uneducated taste for story ,,," (Rival T ra d itio n s). p , 112, Since the Globe audience was composed of a ra th e r high percentage of the "common sort," the ŒLobe playwrights may have wished to concentrate on story, and they may have decided that the most effective way to tell a story was to use a single plot. 95 does appear in one work. When the Blackfriars playwright Jonson wrote

Volpone for the Globe, he introduced a secondary plot and exhibited a

credulous gull with fantastic projects viho is called Sir Politic Would-be.

Although Jonson says in his prologue that "The lawes of time, place, persons [my italics] he obserueth, / From no needful! rule he swerueth"

(11. 31"32), the fact remains that on the plot level the Sir Politic strand of the play has only tenuous links with the main plot (e.g., his wife visits Volpone [III, iv and III, v] and Kbsca tells the wife that her husband is rowing in a gondola with a courtesan [III, v, 19- 20]).^ 7

Jonson*s allegation that he observes "The lawes of time, place, persons" and that "From no needfull rule he swerueth" reminds us that this Blackfriars playwright was a classicist and that at the time there was considerable interest in the unities of action, time, and place. Of the coterie dramas written between 1599 and l6l3, Harbage writes,

the classical allegiances of the authors are in evidence— in the compression and integration of the dramatic struc­ ture, at least suggestive of the "unities" ...88

Although many of the Blackfriars plays for our period have two loosely

connected plots—whereas it is the Globe plays that normally have a

single plot, the Blackfriars works in general do seem to have been influenced to an important degree by a classical precept regarding time and p lace.

87 Jonas Barish states that the "orthodox opinion is "that the links of intrigue between the two plots.are frail." He does.not question this, but he does argue cogently that the subplot is integrated with the main plot "at the thematic level"; "The Double Plot in Volpone." MP. LI (1953), 83 ff. 88 Harbage (Rival Traditions), p. 71. 96

The Blackfriars playwrights as a group did not, to be sure,

rigidly restrict their dramas to one day and a single location, but,

characteristically, they limited the times and places in their plays much

more so than did their Globe counterparts, The cause of this would seem

to be that they, in contrast to the Globe playwrights, tended in general

to treat their material intensively rather than extensively—that is,

they tended to start their plays at a point late in the stories they were

telling rather than at or near the beginning, and this would appear to

suggest that they had been influenced by one particular classical concept.

In answer to the question posed by dramatists "how then shall we set

foorth a storie, which contains both many places, and many times?"

Sidney, in The Defence of Poesie. said, "they must not (as Horace saith)

beginne ab ovo. but they must come to the principall poynte of that ,,,

action which they will represent,

In two of the questionable HLackfriars plays the dramatists did

restrict the time period to a day. As the title suggests, May Day takes

place on one day; it begins in the morning, "the first minute of the

first hour of the first day" (I, i, ^-5)» and it ends in the evening of

the same day (V, i, 33~3^). In addition, The Faithful Shepherdess starts

on the morning of one day, "My early vows" (I, i, p, 372), and it

concludes the morning of the next, "the blushing Morn" (V, i, p, 428),

But the prevailing pattern in the Blackfriars tradition is established by

^^The Complete Works of Sir Philin Sidney, ed, Albert Feuillerat (Cambridge, 1912-1926), III, p, 39. 97 eight of the eleven reliable plays, and in these works the duration is more than a day but not more than about a week.

In two the period is well within a week. In The Dutch Courtesan

approximately two days elapse: at I, ii, p. 79 it is "night," at II, i,

p . 8 l it is "morne," at III, i, p, 104 a masque is announced for

"to-night," and at IV, i, p. 112 the masque is presented; a trial is then

set for the morning of the second day ("this morn," V, p. 127), and near

the end of the play we learn that the trial is over (V,i, p. 132). In

The Isle of Gulls the period is four days: "3 daies" elapse between I,

iii, p. 18 and II, ii, p. 32, and one between III, i, p. 70 and IV, i,

p . 77. The duration in the remaining six of the eight reliable plays,

however, seems to be approximately one week. In A Trick to Catch the Old

One a week would be sufficient time; Witgood must travel from an unnamed

country town to London between I, ii and I, iv, and at III, i, 26 he says

that he will have money for his creditors "Within these three days,"

which means by the end of the play. In The Fleire an Unstated period less

than seven days elapses between I and II: "I haue not yet bin seauen

daies heere" (II, 3); one passes between IV and V; "poysoned yesterday"

(V, 6-7); and one between V, 10-11, when we learn that the Knight and

Piso, Jr. are to be tried "to morrow," and V, 206, tdien the trial takes

place. The title character in The Fawn quickly becomes a court favorite

("spurted up in a moment" II, i, p. 159), but he could hardly do this and

accomplish his many purposes in less than a week. In The Malcontent,

again, there seem to be no explicitly stated gaps in time, but Ferneze 98 must sufficiently recover from his wounds between II, v, p, 173 and V, iy,

Po 212 so that he can walk, and probably he could do this in about a week.

In Eastward Ho two references to a period of less than one week suggest that this period was especially significant. Touchstone says that Flash has married Gertrude and has "turned two / thousand pounds* worth of good land of hers into cash within / the first week (IV, ii, 240-242), and he marvels that Golding has so quickly become an alderman’s deputy, noting that he has been "not a week married" (IV, ii, 52), Lastly, in

The Widow* s Tears Chapman attem pts to demonstrate how in sin cere widow*s tears are by having Tharsalio seduce and marry one widow in a short (but unspecified) time and by having Lysander quickly seduce another "widow"

(his own wife, who thinks he is dead), but since Lysander*s wife mourns in a cemetery vault for six days (V, ii, 106) before the seduction, the play seems to cover a period of roughly a week.

These eight plays constitute the bulk of the eleven plays we can assign with confidence to the HLackfriars theatre during the period 1604 and 1609, and in all eight the time lapse is between a day and about a week. The other three reliable plays, however, deserve comment.

In two of the three, the magic period seems to be one month. In

Monsieur. D*Olive. where the title character*s seemingly endless delay in setting out on his ambassadorial mission is an important part of the fun.

Chapman points out the period of the delay is one month (III, ii, 37-38;

I I I , i i , 179 ), and in Your ELve Gallants. lAere Pltsgrave must expose the nefarious five upstarts in order to be certain that he will win the hand of the wealthy orphan, Middleton sets the deadline, and the duration covered in the play, at "one month / The month unto this night" 99

(I, ii, 58“59). The last of the eleven reliable plays, Sophonisba. deviates much more abruptly from the pattern. Here approximately two years elapse; historically, Sophonisba was given in marriage to Syphax in 206 B. C, (II, i, p. 19 in the play), and she died c, 204 B. C. (V, i i i , p. 61).^ ^ VJith resp ect to the u n ity of tim e, th en , th e b est evidence indicates that the Blackfriars playwrights normally limited their plays to approximately a week or less. In contrast, the ŒLobe playwrights in general seem to have had no particular concern about restricting the time periods in their plays.

Although the Blackfriars playwright Jonson limited his ŒLobe play Volpone to one day (it begins "after sunrise," I, i, 1, and it con­ cludes with the courtes judgment, V, xii, IO 7 ff,, which is to be given

"ere night," IV, vi, 6I) and took pains to point out in his prologue that he had conformed to the unity of time (1, 31)» the regular Globe playwrights disregarded the "rule," Some of the reliable plays take place over a period of a week or less. In Measure for Measure, if we allot a few days for the interval between I, i and I, ii, the time period would be approximately a week, because between I, ii and the end of the play, three days elapse.In A Yorkshire Tragedy the only

90 This notable departure from the usual treatment of time in the reliable Blackfriars plays can perhaps be explained by the fact that Marston based Sophonisba on history. In the questionable HLackfriars plays Bvron I and II a comparable situation aidses; the two dramas cover the period from 1599 (Parrott, Chapman*s Comedies, p, 600) to July 31» 1602, the date of Byron*s death,

A, Daniel, "Time-Analysis of the Plots of Shakspere*s Plays," The New Shakspere Society*s Transactions. 1877-1879, 139. 100

apparent break in time is the Wife*s trip from Yorkshire to London and

back (Sc, ii, 124-12?), a total distance of about 350 miles, and thus,

if traveling time permitted, the total duration would be within a week.

But some plays cover a period of between a week and a month. The only

significant interval of time in Othello is that necessary for. the voyages

to Cÿprus, and the total time has to be "some days longer than"^^ the

"se’nnight" or week interval mentioned by Cassio at II, i, 77; and in 93 King Lear the time period is between three weeks and a month, But at

the Globe the period could just as well be an interval between a month

and a year: in Macbeth, for instance, it is over seven weeks.Or i t

could be a period of several years, as in The Miseries of Enforced

Marriagg. where, during the play, children are conceived, born, and grow

up to the age at which they can speak (Scarborow marries at I, p. h89 and

his children can speak by V, p. 562), Or it could be as much as ten

years, as in Antony and Cleopatra ("Historic time, about ten years, B, C,

40 to B, C. 30"^^), Or it could even be as much as "fifteen to sixteen years,as in Pericles. Jonson in his prologue to Volpone stressed that he had followed the classical rule with respect to the unity of time, but we can see that he was shoveling sand against the tide; the

ŒLobe playwrights evidently placed no lim its on the time periods covered in their plays,

^^Othello. ed, M, R, Ridley (London, 1958), p. Ixviii, 93 . Daniel ("Time-Analysis"), p, 222,

^ \b id .. pp, 207-208, ^ h h ± d.. p, 240, 96xbid.. p, 255. 101

The treatment of the unity of place in the two sets of plays follows a similar pattern. Of the eleven reliable Blackfriars works, ten are set in essentially one place. Five take place in one city:

The Dutch Courtesan (e.g., I, i, p. 93 "Cheapeside") and Eastward Ho (V,

V, 207 ) in London, Monsieur Olive in an unspecified European city, Ihe

Widow* s Tears in some city in Qyprus, and Tho Mai nontent in Genoa. Two others are located in a city and dLose by. Ill, ii of Your Five Gallants is set in "Combe Park," which is about ten miles from London; III, iii

"Near Combe Park"; and the rest in London. I, i of The Fawn takes place within view of the City of Urbin ("See yonder*s Urbin" [I, i, p. 14-7])and the remainder in Urbin. In two other plays the beginning of the play is set in an unspecified place some distance away from a city, but the rest of the play is located in the city itself. In A Trick to Catch the Old

One the first two scenes of Act I take place in a "Country Town" and the remainder in London. As the second play. The Fleire. opens. Antifront says, "some strange disguise I needes must take / both for my stelth away, as for my passage on the way ..." (I, 21-22); just vdiere he is we never learn, but since he has been banished from Florence (I, 13 and V,

292), it must be somewhere outside of the city; the rest of the play, however, takes place in Florence. And the last of the ten plays. The

Isle of Gulls, is located on a deserted island ("this desart He," I, i, p . 9 ).

Whereas the Blackfriars playwrights normally limited their geographical locations to essentially one place, there are exceptions.

Sophonisba. the eleventh reliable play, again deviates radically; it 102 takes place in various locations in one country ("Prologus": "The Sceane is Lybia"), I, ii is set in Carthage, II, ii in a battlefield area. III, i in the city of Cirta (p. 32), IV, i in a "desart" (p. 46), and V, i in another battlefield area (p. 57)» Moreover, in one of the question­ able plays» Bvron I . a single scene takes place in a different country from that in which the remainder is set. I, ii takes place in Flanders

(Brussels), but the rest of Bvron I and all of Bvron II is set in

Fran ce. Another questionable play likewise diverges from the usual pattern. Beaumont locates his play The Knieht of. the Burning Pestle in two countries, but the movement in part of one scene from England to

Moldavia (IV, i, pp. 211-213) occurs because the citizen and his wife, who represent public theatre patrons, insist upon it (IV, i, pp. 210-211),

With a few exceptions, then, the Blackfriars playwrights set

their plays in essentially one place* But, as in the case of the time periods, the pattern of evidence indicates that the Globe playwrights

felt no compulsion to respect what we call the unity of place. Among the plays we can confidently assign to the Globe during our period, three do

take place in one city, Jonson*s Globe play Volpone is set in Venice,

Moasure for Measure in Vienna, and The Revenger»s Traeedv in some unspeci­

fied city in Italy. One, The.London Prodigal, takes place in a city and nearby (e*g,. III, iii; "A high road near London,"), and another, A

Yorkshire Traeedv. in a hall and the general vicinity (Sc, I: "A room

in Oalverly Hall,"; Sc, VIII: "A high road," a short distance from the

97 Sophonisba and the Bvron plays, incidentally, are based on h isto ry . 103 hall; Sc. IX "A room in the house of a Magistrate," located nearby; and

Sc. X "Before Calverly Hall."). But the Globe playwrights could just as readily set their plays in various places in one country; Wilkins locates

The Miseries of Enforced Marriage in both Yorkshire ("welcome to York­ shire" I, p. 471 ) and London ("London streets" II, p. 490), and Shakes­ peare sets King Lear in many different locations in Britain (e.g., Lear’s palace I, i; Gloucester’s castle I, ii; Albany’s palace I, iii; a wood

II, iii; a heath III, i; the French camp dose to Dover IV, iii). Or plays could be set in two countries: Othello in Italy (Venice: e.g.,

I, i) and Qyprus (e.g., II, i), and Macbeth in Scotland (e.g.. I, i and

England (IV, iii). Or the ŒLobe playwrights could even locate their plays at sites in a great many different countries. Shakespeare sets

Antony and Cleopatra in Alexandria (I, i), Rome (I, iv), Messina (II, i), a plain in Syria (III, i), and Athens (III, iv ); and he locates Pericles in Antioch (I, i), ïÿre (I, ii). Tarsus (I, iv)‘, Pentapolis (II, i),

Ephesus (III, ii), and Mytilene (IV, ii).

Viewing as a whole the most reliable evidence bearing on the treatment of the unities, I think we can safely condude that there is a fourth major distinction between the two groups of plays. In the

Blackfriars works we frequently find a second plot that is loosely connected to the main plot and that concentrates on a character of peculiar interest, lAereas, in the Globe plays, we find this only once.

Furthermore, since the Blackfriars dramatists tended to treat their material intensively rather than extensively, they were normally able to lim it their time periods to about a week or less and their settings to 104 essentially one place, but in general the Globe playwrights, vho seem to

have been under little or no obligation to concern themselves about

classical precepts, exhibited such a widespread variety of practices that

I think we should probably conclude that their attitude toward the matter

of time and place was one of almost utter indifference.

Sexual Matters

The fifth major distinction between the Blackfriars and Globe traditions was that the Blackfriars playwrights seem to have treated sexual matters somewhat differently. First of all, they devoted consid­ erably more attention to sex than did the ŒLobe playwrights. It is, of

course, a matter of degree. Such Globe plays as Othello and Measure for

Measure deal extensively with sexual problems, and sizeable portions of other Globe plays concentrate on such matters; in Volpone Mosca convinces

Corvine that sexual intercourse will improve Volpone’s health (II, vi,

26- 35)1 and when Corvino offers Volpone his wife, she is very nearly raped (III, vii); in Pericles Antiochus commits incest with his daughter

(I, i), and the brothel scenes (IV, ii and vi), of course, are concerned largely with sexual matters; and in The Revenger’s Tragedy, for example, the Duchess seduces her stepson (I, ii, 135-195)* But, generally speak­ ing, in the Blackfriars plays sex is almost a preoccupation. Of the private theatre dramas assigned to the period between 1599 and I 613,

Harbage comments that "In all but a few of the plays the theme is sexual transgression and he says that after the period 1599-1600 the

^^Harbage (Rival Traditions). p, 71. 105 coterie plays

were soon purveying a quantity ... of lewdness such as the public theatres never knew. Jonson, Chapman, Marston, and especially Middleton proved of infini.te resource, and the vogue tended to grow.59

Although the dramatists specifically mentioned by Harbage wrote for other theatres, they all composed plays for HLackfriars during the period

1604—1609 and thus Harbage*s observation has particular relevance to this study. It would be a mistake to visualize all of the Blackfriars plays as filled to the brim with sex; they deal with many other matters, such as the extensive study of the title character in Monsieur D'Olive, or the fun generated by Cocledemoy’s coneycatching antics in The Dutch Courtesan. or the proper relationship between apprentices and masters in Eastward

Ho. Nevertheless, the HLackfriars plays as a whole do include an amazing amount of sexual story material. It is found most notably in such plays as The Faithful Shepherdess, which examines with care a vast range of attitudes toward sexual relations; The Fleire. where the two heroines become p ro s titu te s and remain ~o during most of the plays ; The Dutch

Courtesan, where the main plot is devoted to the curing of a man ïdio has become h e lp le ssly in fa tu a te d w ith a p ro s titu te ; Sophonisba. vrtiere a, significant portion of the play (e.g.. Ill, i) deals with Syphax*s ingenious attempts to seduce the heroine ; and Mav Dav. which is largely a light-hearted sexual romp.

Of particular interest for this study is a play by the same dramatist who wrote Mav Dav (Chapman), but this play is grimly serious.

^^Ibid.. p. 221. 106

In The Widow* s Tears a man who has just returned from Italy filled with

"Italian” ideas (I, i , 132-148) chooses confidence (I, i, 65-69 and I, i , 174 —182 ) or boldness (II, iv, 132 and 145) as his technique to seduce a highly respectable woman (a "fort of chastity," I, i, 12?) who has vowed to be constant to her dead husband (I, i, 88 -9I). He employs a bawd to tell her his sexual desire is virtually insatiable (II, ii, 82-

83 and 93- 94), and then he cold-bloodedly seduces her; generalizing about widows, he obliquely outlines the secret of his success:

This the way on*t, boil their appetites to a full height of lust; and then take them down in the nick, (III, i, 99-100)

He then induces his brother, Lysander, to make a "wager" (III, i, 223): he bets that Lysander^s wife will not respect her oft-repeated vow to remain constant after her husband*s death (II, iii, 52-54), After pre­ tending. to die, the brother comes to the vault where he is supposedly buried, and, disguised as a soldier, he finds that he can seduce his wife, with relative ease, right in the tomb (V, i, 114-123).

Harbage notes that after about I 6OO not only the "quantity" but the "quality" of the "lewdness" in the coterie plays differs from that in public theatre plays^^^ and comments further that the coterie works

are "sexy"—in that they serve appetite and curiosity with erotic stimuli

This is certainly true of some of the I 604-1609 Blackfriars plays.

^°°Ibid. ^°^Ibid,. p, 190, 107

Sometimes the playwrights do it merely with words, such as when Syphax says to the heroine of Sophonisba.

lie tack thy head To the low earth, whilst strength of too blacke knaves Thy limbs all wide shall strains: (III, i, p. 32) or when Frippery asks intimate questions of a novi ce-prostitute in Your

Pive Gallants (I, i, 242-252), But at other times suggestive events accompany words. In Sophonisba when Syphax thinks he w ill finally have intercourse with the heroine, he says,

now Erictho w ill'd Prepare my appetite for loves strict gripes: 0, you dears founts of pleasure, ELoud and Beauty, Rayse active, venus worth fruition Of such provoking sweetnesse. Hark: shee coms ... Sophonisba thy flame But squall mine, and weele joy such delight That Gods shall not admire, but even spight. (IV, i, pp. 49-50) and during the interval between acts IV and V, he has sexual relations with a woman viho pretends to be Sophonisba. Or, more notably, when

Tharsalio and Lycus in The Widow's Tears look into the burial vault and see Lysander having intercourse with Cynthia, Tharsalio says, "Look thou, sh e 's drawing on." (V, i , 2?) and Lycus comments, "She draws on f a ir ly ."

(V, i ,,2 9 ) .

Besides the greater attention paid to sexual matters and the periodic eroticism in the Blackfriars plays, one can discern three dis­ tinctive attitudes toward sexual relations that have special relevance to this study. First of all, in some of the Blackfriars plays approved characters express a more liberal attitude toward adultery than one finds in any of the Globe plays. It is true that Emilia in the Globe play 108

Othel^lo calls adviltery "a small vice" (IV, iii, 69) and Cleopatra*s

servants consider cuckoldry a matter for jest (I, ii, 65- 82 ), but Shakes­ peare surely introduces Emilia*s attitude as a contrast to the pure one

of Desdemona, and Charmian and Iras are, after all, the servants of

Cleopatra, In the Globe plays generally, however, approved characters,

such as Othello and Desdemona, treat adulteiy as a very serious matter indeed. In regard to the public theatre plays as a whole, Harbage

comments ;

In plays of the public theatres, the betrayed husband is usually unavailable for comment upon his wife's infidelity, having been murdered as its consequence In the trage­ dies where the husband survives, the wife is sometimes forgiven but is never taken back to bed and board ,,,, Vfi.th the single exception of Chapman's Blind Beggar of Alexandria, which might be so called, the popular troupes never played a comedy of adx3ltery,1^2

In the Blackfriars plays, to be sure, adultery is at times firmly- disapproved. In the comedy .The Malcontent, for instance, Aurelia,

Pietro's unfaithful wife, is deeply "contrite" (IV, v, p, 194) when she discusses the adulterous relations she has had with Mendoza:

,,, I, like a wretch given ore to hell. Brake all the sacred rites of marriage. To dippe a base ungentle faithlesse villaine ,,, îdiy should a better fate Attend on any, -who forsake chaste shee tes. Fly the embrace of a devoted heart, Joynd by a solemne vow fore God and man. To taste the brackish bloud of beastly lust. In an adulterous touch? Oh ravenous immodesty, Insatiate impudence of appetite . . . (IV, V, p, 195)

^°^Ibid.. pp. 248-249. 109

At other times, however, adultery is treated as such a light matter that approved characters lis t the advantages of being a cuckold. Speaking to

Security, Touchstone, the essentially admirable citizen in Eastward Ho. says:

Why, Master Security, that [being cuckolded] should rather be a comfort to you than a corasive. If you be a cuckold, it's an argument you have a beautiful woman to your wife; then you shall be much made of; you shall have store of friends, never want money; you shall be eased of much o' your wedlock pain, others will take it for you. Besides, you being a usurer and likely to go to hell, the devils will never torment you, they'll take you for one o' their own race. Again, if you be a cuckold, and know it not, you are an innocent; if you know it and endure it, a true martyr, (V, V, 190- 199)

At the end of All Fools an approved character named Valerio presents to the jealous husband Gornelio a very long, learned philosophical, legal, and historical justification for accepting with equanimity the honorable rank of cuckold (V, ii, 236-326). Although in these plays both defenses are essentially facetious, nothing remotely resembling them appears in the

Globe plays. Furthermore, in one of the Blackfriars plays even a heroine talks light-heartedly about cuckolding her future husband. When the two heroines of The Isle of Gulls are discussing marriage, Hippolita wishes for a husband "with a / fayre table in his forhead, like Time," and

Violetta comments, "and his face be good, let mee alone / to tricke his forehead ,,," (I, i, p, 10), I think we can safely conclude that in some of the Blackfriars plays adultery is viewed as a considerably less serious matter than it is in the Globe plays.

The second distinctive attitude that bears particular relevance to this study is that in some of the Blackfriars plays virtuous women 110 speak very candidly about sexual relations and about their sexual desires.

On being asked by her female companion what she means by saying she is

"vertuous enough for a Lady of fifteene," Dulcimel, the heroine of The

Fawn, answ ers,

Shall I speake like a creatur of a good healthful blood and, not like one of these weake green sicknesse, leane tisicke starvelihges; First for the vertue of magnanimity, I am very valiant, for there is no heroioke action so particularly noble & glorious to our sexe, as not to fall to action, the greatest deed wee can do is not to doe, (looke that no body listen). Then am I full of patience, and can beare more then a Sumpter horse, for (to speake sensibly) what burthen is there so heavy to a Porters backe, as Virginity to a well-complectioned young Ladies thoughts? (looke no body hearken) By this hand the noblest vow is that of Virginity, because the hardest ,,, (III, p, 182)

In The Isle of Gulls the two heroines talk frankly and extensively about their desire for sexual relations (II, iv, pp, 46-50), Hippolita, for instance, says, "By this stone, methinks I long like a woman / with child till I know the difference betwixt a maid and a wife," (II, iv, p, 4-7), and her sister,V ioletta, describing in detail a dream she had about a

gallant, says,

to bed we goe— ,,, % bed mate turnd, and as he would ha spoke; I sweat with feare, and in that feare I woke; But, seeing my kind bed fellow was gone, Lord how it chaft me that I wakt so soone : One minute dreaming longer I had tride The difference twixt a virgin and a bride, (II, iv, p, 49)

Hippolita’s comment on the dream is one of the most humorous and shocking lines in the two sets of plays: "0 twould ha vext a saint," Hippolita, furthermore, does not restrict her frankness to private talks with her I ll

sister. When the Duke declares the winners of the contest for the hands

of the two heroines, she remarks to him publicly,

Why, father, ist not time that we were sped? Tis a great charge to keepe a maidenhead: (V, i , p. 109)

Moreover, in Sophonisba the title character, a towering figure of virtue

who i s called in the a lte rn a te t i t l e of the play "The Wonder of Women"

(p. 1), says to her maid as she prepares for her wedding night,

I wonder Zanthia vihy the customs is To use such Ceremonie such strict shape About us women; forsooth the Bride must steals Before her Lord to bed: and then délaiss. Long expectations, all against knowne wishes. I hate these figures in locution. These about phrases forc’d by ceremonie; We must s till seeme to flie what we most seeks And hide our selves from that we faine would find us. (I, ii, p. 11)

In the Globe plays the virtuous women, such as Isabella, Desdemona, Celia,

Cordelia, and Marina, simply do not speak about sexual relations in such

a frank way.

Lastly, one Blackfriars play seems to convey the cynical attitude

that women are incapable of being sexually virtuous. There are, of

course, many fully virtuous women in the Blackfriars set of plays, such

as Beatrice in The Dutch Courtesan.'Mildred in Eastward Ho. Zoya in The

.Fawn, and Katherine in Your Five G allants: and o th ers are not only

virtuous, they are towers of constancy, such as Maria in The Malcontent.

Amoret and Clorin in The Faithful Shepherdess, and the title character

in Sophonisba. But The Widow’s Tears seems to answer, "Stuff and

nonsense I " Because of its cold-bloodedly serious tone and the fact that

Chapman introduces no virtuous women to maintain perspective. The Wdow’s 112

Tears conveys the idea that even the women who most clearly seem to be paragons—and even if they solemnly vow to remain constant—can be easily seduced. The play’s explicit object of attack, to be sure, is widows:

Tharsalio, the central character states that the "Italian air" has taught him

how short-lived widows’ tears are, that their weeping is in truth but laughing under a mask, that they mourn in their gowns and laugh in their sleeves; all of which I believe as a Delphian oracle, and am resolved to burn in that faith, (I, i, 143-147)

But the implications of the play seem to extend far beyond the constancy of widows, Parrott states that Tharsalio reveals an "utter disbelief in a l l womanly v irtu e " and th a t th is ch aracter holds th a t "the g re a te st of 101 shams is woman’s pretention to purity and constancy," ^ One might suppose that Tharsalio is a minor figure in the play or an lago-like villain, but, as Parrott says, he

dominates the play. He towers head and shoulders above all others like one of Nietzsche’s supermen amid a decadent race. Nor is his superiority merely that of physical energy and the stronger will, Tharsalio is the intellectual superior of his environment. His judgments of the world in which he moves and of the individuals vdio people it are proved right, and the conventional ideals of his fellows wrong, by the inexorable logic of events. And so far as Chapman shows us in this play, the world of Tharsalio is the world at large, %ere is no relief, no counterpoise, no hint even at a soul of goodness in things evil.lQ^

^^^P arro tt ( Chapman’s Comedie_s_) . p . 804,

P. 805, 113

This play, of course, is poles apart from the Globe dramas, but it is not a typical Blackfriars play either. It stands apart. Parrott observes that

Chapman, more especially in the scenes of his own, invention, displays a physical grossness almost unparalleled in Eliza­ bethan comedy. Nothing, at least, that I can recall prior to the worst excesses of Fletcher and his imitators is comparable for sheer animalism to the device by which Tharsalio, through the agency of the bawd Arsace, provokes the slumbering lust of his hitherto scornful mistress.^^5 and he adds:

We feel as we read The Widow* s Tears the approach of a later brazen age. Tharsalio seems to me a plain anticipation of the rouls and fortune-hunters of Restoration comedy. He would certainly be less out of place in a play of Wycherly’s than in the work of such old-fashioned Elizabethans as Dekker and Heywood. I t i s in h is cynical w it, rev ealin g as i t does an utter disbelief in all womanly virtue, that Tharsalio approaches most nearly to the Restoration man-about-town.lO^

The fifth major difference between the Globe and Blackfriars traditions, then, was that the Blackfriars playwrights concentrated much more attention on sexual matters and, at times, treated such material erotically. In some Blackfriars plays, furthermore, approved characters seem to view adiuLtery as a rather light matter, and virtuous women speak remarkably frankly about sexual relations and about their sexual desires.

Finally, one play. The >a.dow*s Tears, seems to argue seriously that widows are incapable of.constancy and to imply further that "the greatest of shams is woman’s pretention to purity and constancy."

105 Ibid. . pp. 803-804. Wallis, however, indicates that he would disagree with the charge against Fletcher : "Nor is the completely cynical tone of Chapman’s The Widow’s Tears duplicated in our corpus." (Fletcher. Beaumont and Company, p. 1?6).

^^^Parrott (Chapman’s Comedies). p. 804, 114

Vfiitty Dialogue

The playwrights at the two theatres did not always, of course, treat sex as a serious matter; they often used it as a topic for witty rem arks0 Although witty dialogue, or sparkling and amusing repartee, is a feature common to both sets of plays, the sixth major difference between , the two traditions was that whereas in the Globe plays such dialogue characteristically serves as an incidental delight or as comic relief, in the Blackfriars plays it often attains the stature of a central ingredient.

In the Globe,play Macbeth, for instance, the witty comments of the drunken porter (II, iii, 1-45) serve as cc. lic relief in a play that is almost uncompromisingly serious. In many of the Blackfriars plays, however, witty dialogue recurs regularly throughout, and in some it emerges virtually as.the raison d'etre of the plays. In fact, the demand for such dialogue was apparently so great that at times whole blocks bear virtually no relevance to the rest of the play.

Often the subject of the witty, dialogue is sex. In The Isle of

Gulls, a play devoted extensively to witty talk, the two heroines,

Violetta and Hippolita, discuss their forthcoming marriages and their desire for sexual relations, and the mention of the word "maydenhead" sets off a largely irrelevant but amusing discourse:

Vio, ,,, as I lay slumbering in my bed. No creature with, me but my maydenhead— Hip, Is that a creature? Vio, Some maintaine it is Got in the eye, conceiued in a kisse; O thers, whose speech seeme neere akin to tru th Say tis a passion bred ith heate of youth; Some callt a sigh, and some an amorous grone; 115 All differ in the definition: But, in the allowd opinion of most, Us neuer truly had till it be lost, (II, iv, p. 48)

Since the title character in The Fleire has been in Florence for less than a week, the heroines, Felicia and Florida, ask him about his initial reactions to the court, and the result, is a witty dialogue that has no bearing on the sto ry :

Flo: But how dost like the Court Fleirî Fie: Well ynough, if they did not catch their meate so; it comes no sooner from Table, but tone fellow has a fatte Ducke by the rumpe, thother a slipperie Ele by the taile, and an olde Courtier that best knew the tricks on*t, was mumbling of a Cunnie in a corner alone by himselfe, F e l. What good cheere d id s t see there? F ie , F aith th ere was much good meate, b ut me thought • your faire Ladie was your onely dish, Flo, I, but thats a costly dish, and will aske rich sawcing. Fie. Faith for mine owne part when I had a stoma eke, I shoulde like it best in it owne naked kinde, without anie sauce at all. (II, ,150-164).

The subject of the witty,remarks need not, of course, be sex. In

The Fleire. again, Sparke, lAo has been drugged, contends that he has been in hell, and this gives him an opportunity to make a series of humorous comments about members of so ciety . In h e ll he says he saw

a c itiz e n damn’d fo r refu sin g a de­ sperate debt, because t ’was tendred him on a Sabboth There was a poore m ercinarie woman damn’d because shee forsooke her Trade, and turnd Puri- , tane , • • , There was a Ladie damn’d because shee neuer painted: a Puritane for saying Grace without turning uppe the white of his eyes: A Tailer for neuer ha- uing scabbie fingers: A Vintner for making greate two pennie-woorths of Sugar, But there was a Innes of Court man damn’d ... and on being asked why, Sparke answers.

For hauing alwayes money in h'is purse. (V, 113-133) 116

In The Fawn Dondolo*s attempt to find candidates for the ship of fools

likewise permits him to make irrelevant but witty comments about various

social types. He has had to release quite a number because they

proved them selves eyther knaves or madd men, and so were all let go, thers none left nowe in our shippe, but a few Gittizens, that let their wives keepe their shoppe books, some philosophers, and a few Critiques; one of which Critiques has lost his flesh with fishing at the measure of Plautus verses, and another has vowde to get the consumption of the lungues, or to leve to posteritie the true orthography and pronunciation of laughing, a third hath melted a great deale a suet, worne out his thumbs with turning, read out his eyes and studied his face out of a sanguine into a meagre spawling, fleamy lothsomenes, & al to finde but why mentula should be the feminine gender since the rule is Propria quae maribus tribuuntur mascula. dicas. These Philosophers, Critiques and all the maides we could find at 16, are all our fraught nowe, (V, pp. 196-197 )

Of all the Blackfriars plays. Monsieur D*Olive probably ranks as the one most clearly designed as essentially a vehicle for witty dialogue.

We find there, for instance, a long and irrelevant debate about a "high point of state" (II, ii, 1^5)» which is "Whether in an aristocracy, / Or in a demo era tioal estate, / Tobacco mght be brought to lawful use"

( I I , i i , 166-168 ). Parrott says that one of D*Olive's "essential features" is "a most ingenious and reckless wit,and D'Olive's defense of tobacco amply illustrates this:

... Tobacco, that excellent plant, the use xdiereof (as of fift element) the world cannot want, is that little shop of Nature, wherein her idiole workmanship is abridged, where you may see earth kindled into fire, the fire breathe out an exhalation idiich, ent'ring in at the mouth, walks through the regions of a man's brain, drives out all ill vapours but itse lf, draws down all bad humours by the mouth, which time might breed a scab over the whole body, if already they have not: a plant of singular use; for, on the one side. Nature being an enemy to vacuity and emptiness, and, on the other, th ere being so many empty b rain s in the world as th ere are, how shall Nature's course be continued? How shall these

, p. 780. 117 empty brains be filled but with air, Nature*s immediate instrument to that purpose? If with air, what so proper as your fume? What fume so h e a lth fu l as your perfume ? What perfume so sovereign as tobacco? Besides the excellent edge it gives a man's wit (as they can best judge that have been present at a feast of tobacco, where commonly all good wits are consorted) what variety of discourse it begets, what sparks of wit it yields, it is a world to hearI ... ( I I , i i , 252- 272 )

In the Blackfriars plays, then, witty dialogue ranks as a far more important feature than in the ŒLobe plays, and this was true to such an extent that in some Blackfriars works the playwrights even introduced whole blocks of it that were virtually or wholly irrelevant.

Spectacle

The last major difference in the two sets of plays lies in an area I will call "spectacle,” a category in which, for convenience, I will include aural as well as visual effects. Commentators have often alleged or implied that in this category there are striking differences between Blackfriars and ŒLobe plays, and, as we will see in the next chapter, many of the scholars who have presented arguments for assigning one or more of Shakespeare's last plays to Blackfriars have cited evidence from this area to support their claims. Irwin Snith sums up this overall point of view as well as anyone:

Shakespeare's latest plays show an increased tendency toward the music and dances, the spectacles and masques, vdiich had become traditional at the KLackfriars and were expected by its audiences.108

108 Irwin Smith, Shakespeare's ŒLobe Playhouse (New York, 1956), p. 11. 118

Such allegations would lead one to expect to find, first of all, a marked contrast between the amount of music, song,^*^^ and dance in the

Globe and Blackfriars plays, but, as a matter of fact, although there is a difference, it is far from striking. Specific references^^^ to instru­ mental music appear in seven (64^) of the eleven reliable Blackfriars plays a total of twenty times,and they appear in five of the eleven trustworthy Globe plays eight times. XI ? An examination of both the r e lia b le and the. questionable dramas fo r the two th e a tre s shows th a t there are, in all, twenty-seven references to instrumental music in twelve (60^) of the twenty Blackfriars plays^^ and seventeen in eight

( 50^) of the sixteen ŒLobe plays,.The chances of hearing music in a

Blackfriars play would thus have been only slightly better than in a

Globe play, but, with luck, one might have heard considerably more in the

Blackfriars play , From this evidence I think we must conclude that

109 Martin Holmes, for instance, calls instrumental and vocal music a "requirement"; Shakespeare*s Public (London, I960), p, 209, Parrott calls it a "specialty"; Comedy, p, 307.

11 0 There was, of course, a good deal more music in the two s e ts of plays than these references indicate. Most of the songs, dances, and masques were probably accompanied by instrumental music even though the texts do not always explicitly say so, but to reduce speculation to a ■ minimum I have restricted myself to specific references, ' 111 The Dutch Courtesan 1, The Malcontent 4, The Fawn 3. The Isle of Gulls 1, Sophonisba 8, A Trick to Catch the Old One 2, and The Widow's Isacg. 1. 112 Othello 1, King Lear 1, The Revenger's Tragedy 1, Antony and Cleopatra 3. and Paci.c3.gs. 2, 113 Law Tricks 1, May Day 1, Bvron I 1, Bvron II 1, and The Knight of the Burning Pestle 3. 114 The Malcontent 4, The Devil's Charter 2, and Timon of Athens 3. 119 instrum ental music was a somexjhat more common fe a tu re in th e HLackfriars works but that it was a solid part of both traditions.

There was, however, one clear distinction between the use of music at the two theatres. In at least some of the plays performed at Black­ friars music was presented between the acts. In the Induction to The

Malcontent Burbage discusses the additions made to the original Black­ friars version in preparation for a Globe performance, and he says that they were made in order

to entertaine a little more time, and to abridge the not received eustome of musicke in our Theater, (p. 143)

Usually there are no stage directions for music during the act intervals in the Blackfriars plays, but in Marsto.n *s Sophonisba. for instance, they do appear. In a note to the reader Marston says that the "Musique of this Tragidy ,,, is printed ,,, after the fashion of the private stage," (p, 64), and we regularly find directions for music between the a c ts ,115

A pattern similar to that for instrumental music emerges from the evidence regarding songs in the two sets of plays. In nine (81^) of the eleven reliable Blackfriars plays there is a total of nineteen songs^^^ and in seven (64^) of the eleven reliable ŒLobe plays there are

' 114 Between I and II: "Whil'st the Musicke for the first Act soundes ,,," (p, 19); between II and III: "Organ mixt with Recorders for this Act," (p, 32); between III and IV: "Organs Vioils and Voices play for this Act," (p, 43); and between IV and V; "A Base Lute and a Treble Vi oil play for the Act," (p, 51).

^^^The Dutch Courtesan 2, The Malcontent 4, Eastward. Ho 6, The Fawn 1, The.Fleire 1, Sophonisba 1, A Trick to Catch the Old One 1, Your " 2, and The VQ.dow*s Tsars 1, 120

fourteen,Taking into account the questionable as well as the

reliable plays, we find that of the twenty Blackfriars plays fourteen

( 70 ^) include a grand total of sixty-eight songs,Forty, however,

occur in one play. The.Kniehtof the Burning Pestle, and thirty-six of

these are sung by Merrythought, a character whose most notable eccen­

tricity is that he continually sings songs. In the sixteen ŒLobe plays

e ig h t (50^) have a total of eighteen songs,The evidence thus indi­

cates that songs were more popular at HLackfriars but that they were a

frequent feature in both traditions.

Dances, likewise, were a firm part of both traditions but more

common at Blackfriars, In six (55^) of the eleven reliable Blackfriars

dramas we find a sum of nine dances^^^ and in three (2?^) of the eleven

reliable Globe works only three,In the entire group of twenty

Blackfriars plays, twelve (60^) include seventeen dances,and in the

sixteen Globe plays, seven (44^) include only nine,^^^

117 O thello 3, M easure_for Measure 1, Voloone. 4, King Lear 2, The Miseries of Enforced Marriage 2, Antony and Cleopatra 1, and Pericles 1. 118 Al} pools 2, Mav Day 2, The Knight of the Burning Pestle 40, CuBid^s. Revenge 1, and The Faithful Shepherdess 4,

^^^The Malcontent 4. 120 The Dutch Courtesan 1, .Ihe Malcontent 2, The Fawn 2, Sophbnis- 1, Your Five Gallants 1, and The Widow's Tears 2, 121 The_.Revengerls Tragedy 1, Antony and Cleopatra 1, and P eri cl,gg 1. 122 All Fools 1, Law Tricks 1, May Day 2, Bvron II 1, The Knight of_the Burning Pestle 2, and Cupides Revenge 1, ^^^The Fair Maid of Bristowe 1, The Malcontent 2, The Devil's Charter 2, and Timon of Athens 1, 121

From the total evidence we have about the instrumental music, songs, and dances in the two sets of plays, I think we can conclude that the Blackfriars audience was somewhat more interested in these, features, but since the contrast can hardly be called striking, it would appear that these three elements dare not be considered adequate criteria for assigning Shakespeare*s last plays.

Several commentators besides Smith leave the impression that masques can help to distinguish the Blackfriars from the Globe plays.

Parrott, for instance, has commented that a taste for "masque-like effects" was "especially true of the sophisticated audience at Black-

■ loll- friars," and Holmes, referring to Blackfriars plays, has said that the

"sine qua non of fashionable Jacobean drama" is "an interpolated m a s q u e . "125 An examination of the l604-l609 plays for both theatres reveals that masques were a quite firm part of the Blackfriars tradition but that they were also a part of the Globe tradition.

There are masques in four reliable Blackfriars plays (The Dutch

Courtesan. The Malcontent. Your Five Gallants, and The Widow*s Tears) and in two questionable plays (Mav Day and Bvron Masques,

124 Parrott (Comedy). p. 312. 125 Holmes (P u b lic), p . 20?, 126 The Dutch Courtesan: "Enter the Masquers, they daunce." (IV, i, p. 112 S. D.); The Malcontent; . V, iv, pp. 211-213, e.g., "the maske e n te rs ." (V, iv , p . 212 S. D .); Your Five G allan ts: V, i i , I 8 f f ., e.g ., "enter the Masque" (V, ii, 18 S. D.); The >B.dow*s Tears; "Music: Hymen descends, and six Sylvans enter beneath, with torches" (III, ii, 82 S. D.; li s t e d as a masque by Chambers (E lizabethan Stage). I , p. I 87 , n. 3); Mav Day; "Enter Aurelio, Leonoro ... in a masque dancing" (V, i, IO 9 S. Do); Bvron I I : Epernon says, "The Masque i s coming" ( I I , i , 2 ), and i t begins II, i, 3 S. D. 122 however, were not exclusively private theatre fare. Citing "examples from the public th e a tre s ," Chambers notes th a t

Shakespeare has a mask . . . in Romeo and J u lie t . 0. Another early example i s in I Richard I I (iv , 2) [an anonymous play w ritten c. 1592-1595]. Munday has a mask in his Death of Robert Earl of Huntinedon (1598; ii. 2). Dekker (ii, 204) in his Whore of Babylon (c, I 6O7 ) and his Satiromastix ( 16OI; 1 , 2302), and Tourneur, if it was Tourneur, in his Revepger's Tragedy (c, 1607; V, 3 ).127

At the Globe, specifically,, masques appear not only in The Reveneer's

Tragedy, a reliable play, but in three plays that are, for varied reasons, questionable (The Fair Maid of Bristows. The Malcontent [written for

Blackfriars but, with a few additions that are not relevant here, per- 128 formed at the Globe], and Timon of Athens). In the reliable play The

Revenger*s Tragedy we find the following stage direction:

E nter the Maske of / Reuengers the two B rothers, and two Lords more, / The Reuengers daunce. At the end, steale out their swords, and these fours kill the fours at the Table, / in their Chaires, (V, i i i , 54 5, D,)

A few lines later, another direction reads:

Enter the other Maske of entended / murderers; Step-sons; B astard; and / a fo u rth man, comming in dauncing, the Duke recouers a little in / voyce, and groanss,— calls a guard, treason, / At -^diich they all start out of their measure, and turning towards the Table, they finds them all to be murdered, (V, i i i , 66 S, D,)

127 Chambers (E lizabethan Stage). I , p, I87 , X28 The Revenger*s Tragedy: "Enter the Maske of Reuengers ,,," (V, i i i , 54 S, D,) and "Enter the other Maske of entended murderers" (V, iii, 66 S, D.); The Fair Maid of Bristows: "Enter ,,, the Maskers to dance," (I, i, 26 S. D,); The Malcontent: V, iv, pp, 211-213, e,g,, "the masks enters," (V, iv, p, 212 S, D,); Timon of Athens: "Enter Cupid w ith th e Maske of L adies," (KL, I , i i S. D ,), 123

Although the evidence indicates that masques should be considered

Globe as well as Blackfriars fare, it does appear that we should view these spectacular features as predominantly part of the Blackfriars tradition. In spite of the fact that among the entire group of twenty

Blackfriars plays only six (30^) include masques and that in the sixteen

Globe plays there are as many as four (25^), the best evidence—that based on the reliable plays—shows that four (36^1) of the eleven Black­ friars plays have masques, whereas among the eleven Globe plays there is only one (9^).

Moreover, if we make the qualitative distinction between simple and elaborate masques, we find that this further substantiates the con­ clusion, A simple masque consists merely of a dance by characters wearing masks, whereas an elaborate one includes a variety of spectacular embellishments, often including personages representing gods and normally ending with the participants dancing with the characters who comprise the

"audience" for the masque. In the total Blackfriars set, elaborate masques appear in three reliable plays (The Malcontent. Your Five

Gallants. and The Vfi.dow^s Tears) and in one questionable play (Bvron I I ). but. they are found in only two of the Globe set (Timon of Athens and The

Malcontent), and both are questionable plays,

Probably the most important distinction, however, is that whereas in both sets of plays masques of one type or another were used as . an

129 In The Revenger*s Tragedy the masque is rather more elaborate than the normal simple masque, but no gods are represented and the partic­ ipants do not dance with the "audience," 124 integral part of the action (e.g., The Revenger^s Tragedy at the Globe, and Your Five Gallants at Blackfriars). it would appear that only in the

Blackfriars plays were elaborate masques introduced primarily as inde­ pendent sources of interest—as ends in themselves. If the masque in the reliable Blackfriars play The Widow* s Tears or in the questionable play Bvron II was deleted, the story line would hardly be affected in the least. In none of the Globe plays is this the case except one, the questionable play T^mon of Athens: Timon. however, was surely never per­ formed at the Globe during our period (see Appendix A), and the masque may well be a later interpolation (possibly, even, for Blackfriars) because the many commentators who find a second hand in the play "invari­ ably" assign to the other writer the scene in which the masque appears

(I, ii).130

From this evidence I believe we can conclude that although masques and, as Parrott has put it, "masque-like effects" were part of both traditions, they were predominantly Blackfriars fare and that the use of an elaborate masque as a nonessential embellishment was probably an exclusively Blackfriars practice.

In the two sets of plays there were, however, some clearer differences within the category of spectacle, and certain of these have an important bearing on this study. Four are specific visual effects found only in Blackfriars plays.

^^^Timon of Athens, ed. H, J. Oliver (Cambridge, 1959), p. xxii; see also Chambers. William Shakespeare. I, p. 480. 125 In both The Widow* s Tears and in Soohonisba we find a lavish

celebration of an event related to marriage. In The Widow*s Tears a masque is performed in honor of a wedding ceremony (III, ii, 82-114), and in Sonhonisba the event celebrated is the wedding night. The stage directictisin the latter play read, in part:

Enter Foure boyes antiquely attiered with bows and quivers dauncing to the Cornets, a phantastique measure, Massinissa in his night gowne led by Asdruball and Hanno followed by . Bytheas and Jugurth, the boyes draw the Curtaines discovering Sophonisba ...

Mass. drawes a white ribbon forth of the bed as from the waste of Sopho.

Chorus with cornets. Organ, and voices. lo to Hymen. (I. ii, p. 12)

In Sophonisba there also appears another impressive visual effect found only in the Blackfriars plays, a sacrifice.The stage direction reads :

Cornets and Organs playing full musick. Enters the solemnity of a sacrifice, which beeing entred whilst the attendance furnish the Altar Sopho. Songe: ... (Ill, i, p. 36)

The third visual effect peculiar to the Blackfriars plays is the ostentatious display of clothing by characters who have recently attained higher status. In Eastward Ho Gertrude, the social climbing daughter of a citizen, insists that a tailor dress her "in the lady-fashion" (I, ii,

60), and she "trips about the stage" (I, ii, 62 S. D.). In The Vfiidow*s

131 Curiously enough, in Pericles the goddess Diana's first words to Pericles are: My temple stands in Ephesus: hie thee thither, And do upon mine altar sacrifice. (V, i, 241-242) but when he arrives at her temple, he complies with all of her commands except the one to perform a sacrifice (V, iii, 1-13). 126

Tears Tharsalio, having conquered the wealthy widow of the Governor of

Cyprus, proudly ’’Uncloaks .and reveals a splendid s u it” ( I I I , i , 60 S, D. ).

Within the area of spectacle the last Blackfriars feature that has special relevance to Shakespeare’s last plays is the imposing piece of

stage business called a descent from the stage "heavens," Admittedly, it seems odd that there is no evidence that such descents occurred in the

Globe plays. Surely at th is time the Globe had f a c ilit ie s comparable to

those at the public theatre called the Rose, and we know from Henslowe’s

diary that as early as June, 1595» he paid carpenters for "mackinge the 132 throne In the Heuenes, " —a throne Chambers believes to be the one

referred to in Jonson’s prologue to Every Man in His Humour; "Nor creak­

ing throne comes downe the boyes to please," (l, l6),133 Furthermore, in

the Globe play Antony and Cleopatra (IV, xv, 38 5, D,) the facilities for

descents w ere. probably employed to draw Antony up in to the "monument, "^3^

But the fact still remains that I found no descent in the 160^-1609 Globe

p lay s, and n e ith e r John Cranford Adams nor Chambers c ite s one in a Globe

drama dating before or during this period. Descents evidently did occur,

however, in the Blackfriars plays. When the masque in The Widow’s Tears

begins, the stage direction reads, "Hymen descends" (III, ii, 82 S, D,),

and when Cupid speaks his soliloquies in Cupid’s Revenge. he likew ise

132 Henslowe’ s K .arv. eds, R, A, Foakes and R, T, R ickert (Cam­ bridge, 1961), p . 7# . 133 Chambers (Elizabethan Stage). Ill, p. 77.

^^^J. C. Adams (Playhouse), pp, 349-350. 135 "^^Chambers surely means to refer to Cupid’s Revenge viien he ■ says, "in May Day Cupid ’descends’" (Elizabethan Stage). I, p. 189, 127

descends ("Descendit Cupid.": I, i, p. 227; "Descend Cupid,": II, i,

p. 235)0 Chambers is skeptical about the one in The Vadow^s Tears: he

argues that "this is in a mask" and the god "may have descended from a

pageant , "^36 But Adams accepts it as a legitimate descent from the

heavens,^37 and in the play Argus tells Tharsalio where "Hymen" descends

from: "your young nephew ... hangs in the clouds deified with Hymen*s

shape." (Ill, ii, 15-16). Furthermore, in Cunid's Revenge there is no masque nor any other social event that requires a pageant or similar

structure. I think we must conclude, therefore, that the evidence indi­

cates that descents from the heavens took place only in the Blackfriars

set of plays.

The Globe playwrights, on the other hand, introduced a broader

range, of visual effects into their plays, and some of these bear special relevance to this study. We might consider the first group essentially matters of stage business: banquets onstage, vanishing beings, a person

taken for a monster, and a bear onstage.

Banquets appear onstage only in the Globe plays. In Macbeth a

stage direction reads: "banquet prepared," (III, iv, l); in The

Revenger*s Tragedy: "A furnisht Table is brought forth: then enters the

7 Duke & his Nobles to the banquet, " (V, iii, 1); and in Pericles : "a banquet prepared." (II, iii, l). Likewise, beings vanish only in the

Globe set. The witches in Macbeth "vanish" (I, iii,79 S, D.), and

Chambers (E lizabethan Stage). I l l , p . 132, n. 3. 137 J. C. Adams (Playhouse), p. 339, n. 6. 128

Banquo underlines the f a c t by asking, '^Whither are they vanished?" ( I ,

iii, 80), One of the minor delights in Volnone is the third bit of stage

business of importance for this study. The high water mark of the well

deserved discomfiture of the eccentric Sir Politic occurs when he allows

himself to be covered by a tortoise shell in order to escape what he fears

will be his arrest, and in this plight he suffers the humiliation of being

mistaken for and treated as a "beast" (V, iv, 65). The last important

piece of stage business appears in Mucedorus. a play we must treat

cautiously because it is an old (pre-1598) work, and, although it was

probably part of the King*s Men repertory between l604 and I 609, we cannot

even be certain that it was revived at the Globe during these years (see

Appendix A), But, among the plays considered for this study, only here

do we find the striking sight of a bear on the stage, and this memorable

feature was interpolated sometime before, I6l0,^^® The stage directions

read ;

As he [Mouse] goes backwards the Beare comes in, and he tumbles ouer her, and runnes away and leaues his bottle of Hay behind him, ( I , i i , 15 S, D.)

E nter Segasto runing and Amadine a f te r him, being persued with a beare, ' ( I , i i i , 1 S, D,)

The second set of Globe features consists of considerably more elaborate effects; a scene set on board a ship in a storm, battles

138 , The Winter*s Tale, ed. J, H, P, Pafford (London, 1963), p, 69, n, on 1, 58 , 129 onstage, and visions. In Pericles Shakespeare sets one scene on board a ship during a storm; the hero says, for instance.

Thou God of this great vast, rebuke these surges. Which wash both heaven and hell; and thou, that hast Upon the winds command, bind them in brass. Having called them from the deepl (III, i, 1-4)

The sight of military forces battling on the stage was also solely Globe fare. In his prologue to Every I'fan in His Humour Jonson referred to this as one of the "ill customes of the age" (l, 4):

with three rustie swords. And helpe of some few foot-and-half-foote words, ïight ouer Yorke, and Lancasters long iarres: (1 1 .9 -1 1 ) In The Devil's Charter a stage direction describes the battle between the forces of Caesar Borgia and Katherin as follows;

A charge with a peale of Ordinance : Caesar after two retreates entreth by scalado, her Ensigne-bearer slaine: Katherin recouereth the Ensigne, & fighteth with it in her hand, Heere she sheweth excellent magnanimity. Caesar the third time repulsed, at length entreth by scalado, sur­ prise th her, bringeth her downe with some prisoners, (IV, iv , 2362- 2367 )

In Coriolanus the Romans engage the Volsces;

Enter the army of the Volsces, (I, iv, 23 S, D.)

Alarum, The Romans are beat back to their trenches, (1, 30 S, D,)

Another alarum. The Volsces fly, and Marcius follows them to the g ates, ( 1 , 43 5, D ,)

They fight, and all enter the city, (l, 62 S, D,)^^^

Lastly, only in the Globe plays do we find the supernatural events we call

139 Both The Devil's Charter and Coriolanus are questionable plays, but Harley Granville-Barker has stated that battles took place onstage in the reliable Globe plays Antony and Cleopatra and King Lear (Prefaces to ghakespeare. I [Princeton, 19^], pp, 476-477), and, although I do not find conclusive evidence in the texts to support this, he may well be r ig h t. 130

visions. Three apparitions and eight kings manifest themselves to

Macbeth (IV, i, 69-124), and the goddess Diana appears to Pericles (V, i,

241- 250) in what he explicitly calls a "vision" (V, iii, 69).

Only in the Globe plays, furthermore, do we find visual effects

designed to evoke horror, and the last group of Globe features within the

category of spectacle serves to illustrate this. The most famous example,

of course, is the blinding of Gloucester in King Lear (III, vii, 67-94), but there are many others. In A Yorkshire Tragedy a distraught father

holds up his little son in his hand and stabs him. The stage direction

reads :

Husb,•takes vp the childe by the skirts of his long coate in one hand and drawes his dagger with th‘ o th e r, (Sc, IV, 11?)

and shortly later the father says, "take that" (Sc, IV, 121). In The

Revenger^s Tragedy Vindid k ills the Duke by having him kiss a poisoned

, skull ; while the Duke howls, the poison eats out his teeth and tongue

( I I I , V, 169-174). Furthermore, only in the Globe plays do we fin d the

grisly sight of severed heads. In The Revenger*s Tragedy an officer

brings on the stage the "yet bleeding head" (III, vi, 42) of the Duchess*s

youngest son, and in Measure for Measure the head belongs to Ragozine (IV,

iii, 80 and IO 6 ). The most familiar severed head, however, is Macbeth*s:

after Macduff kills the tyrant off-stage, he returns in triumph carrying

"Macbeth’s head" (V, viii, 54 S. D.), The Globe theatre, but not l40 B la c k fria rs, could a t times become a chamber of h o rro rs.

140 Blackfriars dramatists did, however, introduce horror into plays they wrote for other theatres, M. St. dare %rne notes that Chapman and Marston were "guilty" of "horrors and sensationalism designed 131

There are, then, a number of notable differences between the two sets of plays within the last category, spectacle. Although music

(except between acts), songs, and dances have little or no value as dis­ tinguishing features, masques were predominantly ELackfriars fare, and the pure embellishment type of masque was probably an ex clu siv e ly ELack­ friars ingredient. In addition, a series of miscellaneous visual effects of value for this study were peculiar to each tradition.

Conclusions

In this chapter I have discussed the seven major distinctions I have found between what would have been the current traditions at the two theatres -sdien the King*s Men acquired Blackfriars in about August of 1608 , and I have devoted special attention to the specific differences that will help us determine the influence the ELackfriars tradition exerted on Shakespeare*s last plays. To summarize the most important distinctive features in the two sets of plays I would like to offer brief descriptions of what the King’s Men in August, I 6O8 , could reasonably have considered to be a typical ELackfriars and a typical

Globe play.

The ELackfriars play would have been a satirical comedy or tragicomedy in which none of the characters who appear onstage die, it would have been set in one place during a period of a week or less, and

to curdle the blood" ("Shakespeare’s Audience," Shakespeare Association, A_Series_ of Papers on Shakespeare and the Theatre [London, 1927], P. 199*)* I t was fo r P aul’s Boys th a t Chapman wrote Bussv D’Ambois (Chambers fElizabethan Stage~1. Ill, pp, 253-25^) and that Marston wrote Antonio’s Revenge (Ibid. . pp, 429-430), 132

it would have included a secondary plot dealing primarily with an

exceptionally interesting character. The play as a whole would have

dealt with, and regarded from a narrow point of view, characters and

problems of particular concern to the segment of society that patronized

Blackfriars, it would have emphasized sexual matters, and its happy

ending would have been brought about primarily by the activities of a

hero-intriguer. In the play there would have been a generous amount of

witty, and often irrelevant, dialogue and, as the most notable visual

effect, perhaps a masque.

The typical Globe play, on the other hand, would just as likely

have been a tragedy as one that ends happily (and even if it were the

latter, a character who appears onstage may die), it would have had

virtually no lim its on geographical setting or duration, and it would

have consisted of merely one plot. The play would have dealt with a very

wide range of both characters and problems so that it would have provided

something of interest for aH segments of the Globe*s. cross-section

audience, it would have had a broad point of view, and it would have. included a number of visual effects peculiar to the Globe tradition, such as sights designed to evoke horror.

Sometime around August, I 608, Shakespeare and his company undoubtedly looked over the current traditions at the Globe and Black­ friars just as we are doing now and began to ponder how they might supply their two theatres with suitable plays. As astute theatrical men, they surely realized that the traditions had significantly overlapped one another by at least l60h and that afterward the traditions had been 133 converging, but they surely also perceived that there remained a variety of differences. Given this situation, their problem was to determine

■what policy they should pursue, and, at least for the purposes of this study, the most important single decision they had to make was whether

Shakespeare should take into account the differences in 'the two traditions when he wrote his subsequent plays. CHAPTER I I I

THE INfLUENCE OF THE TWO TRADITIONS

ON SHAKESPEARE»S LAST PLATS

Faced with the remaining differences in the (Robe and Blackfriars traditions and the need to supply plays for both theatres, the King's Men would seem to have had three altern a tiv es. They could have had the former Blackfriars playwrights continue to write for Blackfriars and have had the Globe playwrights go on writing for the (Robe. They could have had all of their dramatists design plays for both theatres. Or they

could have combined the two methods and have had th eir dramatists write some plays for one theatre and others for both.

Documentary evidence provides a few important clues about the altern ative the King's Men chose. During the period I 609- I 613 we can reasonably conclude that eleven extant plays were written for the King's

Men by playwrights other than Shakespeare. Of that number, the former

Blackfriars dramatists wrote nine (Beaumont and/or Fletcher six, Jonson two. Chapman one), and Daborne (apparently a freelance writer^) and an anonymous playwright each wrote one.^ The only available external evidence on which we can base a reasonably sound conclusion about

^ Chambers (Elizabethan Stege). I ll, p. 2?0. 2 The, Second Malden's Tragedy; Oiambers (Elizabethan Stage). IV, p. 45.

134 135 theatre or theatres these playwrights had in mind idien they wrote their plays applies, unfortunately, to only three dramas, but this evjldence is highly significant. The three works are famous ones ty the Blackfriars playwrights Beaumont and îletcher; Philaster. A King and No King, and

The Mftid»s Tragedy. The title page of the first edition of Philaster in

1620 says that it was "Acted at the ŒLobe by his Maiesties Seruants,"^ and the title page of the first edition of A._Klng and No King in I 619 says the same thing: "Acted at the Globe, by his Maiesties Seruants. If we had only this evidence, it could be argued that even though Blackfriars is not mentioned, the plays may have been performed there also, but in the second editions of the plays the title pages state that they had been acted at Blackfriars: Philaster (1622) "at the Globe, and Blacke-friers" and A Kin^ and No King (1625) "at the Blacke-Pryars. Furthermore,

Armstrong has alleged , reasonably enough, that the name of a private theatre on an edition of a play boosted sales.^ The logical inference would appear to be that before the dates of the first editions the plays had been performed only at the Globe and that between the dates of the first and second editions the plays were first performed at Blackfriars,

It would therefore seem reasonable to conclude that during the period we are concerned with, 1609 through I 613, P hilaster and A. King and No__King were performed exclusively at the GELobe and that, in all likelihood, they

3Chambers (Elizabethan Stage). I ll, p, 222,

^Ibid,. p, 225,

^Ibid,. pp, 222-223 and 225.

^Armstrong (Facts and Problems). p, 3. 136 ware written only for that theatre. Consequently, we can probably

conclude that the King's Men did not choose their first alternative and merely have all of the former Blackfriars dramatists continue to write for their old theatre.

The above evidence likewise shows that the King's Men apparently did not choose their second alternative and have all of their playwrights design all of their plays for both theatres, and this conclusion is further substantiated by external evidence relating to the third play,

Th^ Tracedv. The I 619 title page of the first edition of this play, likewise by Beaumont and Fletcher, reads, "As it hath beene divers times Acted at the Blacke-friers by the King's Maiesties Seruants."?

Since the edition of A King and No King published the same year and the edition of Philaster in the following year list only the Globe, and since the second editions of both list Blackfriars, I am inclined to trust the title page of Tho Maid's Traeedv and conclude that by the year I 619 the play had probably been performed only at Blackfriars. If so, during the period in question, 1609-1613, The Maid's Tragedy seems to have been presented only at Blackfriars, and this would indicate, presumably, that it was written solely for Blackfriars. It would appear likely, therefore, that the King's Men had Beaumont and Fletcher write some plays exclusively for Blackfriars and others exclusively for the Œlobe.

The external evidence concerning the three Beaumont and Fletcher plays thus indicates that during the period in ràich Shakespeare wrote

?" Chambers (Elizabethan Stage). I ll, p. 224. 137 his last plays the King's Men did not decide to have all of the former

BLaokfriars playwrights continue to write for HLackfriars, nor to have

all of the playwrights write dual-purpose plays. They seem to have

decided to permit at least some of their dramatists to write plays

either solely for the (2.obe or solely for Blackfriars, If the policy

extended likew ise to Shakespeare, i t would seem that he could have written any or all of his last plays exclusively for the Globe or exclu­

sively for Blackfriars,

But, of course, the most economical alternative the King's Men

could have chosen was to have some of the playwrights design dramas for both theatres, and on this matter the external evidence relating to both

Shakespeare's last plays and the I 609-I 613 plays by other King's Men dramatists is strangely silent.

To find a reasonably full answer to the question of how the

King's Men chose to solve the problem posed by the acquisition of

Blackfriars, scholars w ill have to turn, I fear, to the labyrinth of internal evidence, and in the remainder of this study I will attempt to indicate how this might be done, I will examine the evidence provided by Shfdcespeare's last plays to ascertain how the policy decisions of the

King's Men seem to have affected Shakespeare's last plays, I w ill try to determine whether Shakespeare continued to operate in the safe, familiar waters of the Globe tradition, Wiether he sailed into the well-

charted but new waters of the ELackfriars tradition, or whether he ventured into the dangerous, uncharted, new waters of the dual-purpose play. 138

Cvmbeline

Among Shakespeare's last plays, Qymbellne poses a special problem for this study because, with the presently available evidence, we cannot say for sure lAether Shakespeare wrote the play before or after the

King's Men acquired Blackfriars in about August, 1608. In Nosvorthy's careful analysis of the dating problem in the recent (1955) New Arden edition of Cvmbeline. he ccmCLudes:

Any attempt at close dating must n ecessarily be approximate and impressionistic. The only claim that can be advanced with real confidence i s that Cvmbeline f a lls within the range 1606-U . I am inclined to accept I 6O8 or I 609 as the most probable date, but the best that can be said for this conclu­ sion, in our present state of knowledge, is that it is the one le a s t lik e ly to be wrong,®

The terminal date is I 6I I because, as Chambers says, "Forman . . . saw

■Cvmbeline. probably between 20 and 30 April I6II, and in any case before his death on 12 September l6U."9 Nosworthy places the earliest possible date in I 606, because Shakespeare took m aterial for Cvmbeline from "the section [in Holinshad] dealing with the reign of King Kenneth in h is 10 History of Scotland," and "his first extensive use of the Scottish chronicle was for Macbeth.d a t e d "generally" in 1606,^^ Nosworthy se le c ts "I6O8 or I 6O9 as the most probable date" for Cvmbelin^ because he believes that "the acquisition of the HLackfriars may have induced

Q Nosworthy (Cvmbeline). p. x v ii.

^Chambers (William Shakespeare). I, p. 485.

^^Nosworthy (Cvmbeline). p. x iv .

12 Ibid.. p. XV. 139 Shakespeare to pen dual-purpose plays" and because it is his opinion

(offered without supporting evidence) that "such, most emphatically and

triumphantly, the Romances are."^^ But, unfortunately, at present we

simply do not know lAether Cvmbeline is a dual-purpose play or not, and

i f i t i s not, Nosworthy*s argument for "I 6O8 or I 609" collapses.

The crucial question, then, is if we ignore the Blackfriars

problem, vdiat i s the e a r lie s t possible date for flvmb^jlinaî Nosworthy

observes that

The theory that Shakespeare abandoned tragedy and, turning to a more romantic kind of drama, produced Pericles. Cvmbeline. The VQ.nter*s Tale and The Tempest in unbroken succession is an inherently likely one, powerfully substantiated by indisputable . similarities of style, matter, characterisation and outlook

If he is correct, the earliest date for Cvmbeline depends on the date of

Pericles. In a very recent (1963) and diligent examination of the prob­

able date for Pericles. Hoeniger sets the lim its "between I 6O6 and I 6O8 "

and argues that since the first reference to this extremely popular play

appears in I 6O8 , Shakespeare probably completed the work "late in I 607 or

early in l 608 ."^^ If Shakespeare had finished Pericles by "late in

1607 ," he could have written Cvmbelj,ne immediately afterward,to take

advantage of the great interest in Pericles, and completed it sometime

early in I 6O8 . I f so, Shakespeare could have w ritten Cvmbeline before

^^Ibid. . p. x v i. Ry Hhe Romances" here he means Cvmbeliqg ("the f ir s t play of the se r ie s" ). The %nter*s Tale, and The. Tempest. 14 Ibid. , p . X V .

^%oeniger (Pericles), p. Ixiv.

^^erhaps hurriedly. Nosworthy notes some of i t s many "imper­ fections" (Cvmbeline. pp. xxxii-xxxiii), and Granville-Barker says, "it is full of imperfections" (Prefpcgs. I, p. 543). 140 the King's Men had any reason to think that they could acquire HLackfriars

(probably March, l608^^) and well before the actual acquisition in about

August, I 6O8 .

On the basis of the available facts, I think we should conclude that we simply do not know for sure idiether Shakespeare wrote Cvmbeline before or after supplying plays for HLackfriars became a serious problem for the King's Men. He may have written it before it was necessary for him to decide whether to take the interests of the HLackfriars audience into consideration, and in this case he would have designed it for the

Globe; or he may have written it afterward, and in this case he could have designed it for Blackfriars, for the Globe, or for both theatres.

Prom the external evidence, we derive some slight aid. We know that in the Booke of.Plaies Simon Forman gives an account of a performance 1_8 of Cvmbeline. Although questions have been raised, the document is probably authentic, and although Forman does not state specifically where he saw the play, he probably saw it at the Globe because the Booke of

^Bentley notes that "in a letter dated 11 March I 6O8 Sir Thomas Lake officially notified Lord Salisbury that the company of the Children of HLackfriars must be suppressed and that the King had vowed that they should never act again even if they had to beg their bread" ("Siakespeare and the Blackfriars Theatre," p. 43; see also Chambers, Elizabethan Stage. II, pp. 53“54). Bentley comments, therefore, that "as early as March I 6O8 " Burbage "knew his theatre was without a tenant" ("Shakespeare and the Blackfriars Theatre," pp. 42-43) and that "March to July I 6O8 . . . are the months for discussions among the King's men of prospective per­ formances at the Blackfriars" (Jüà«» P« ^3).

^^Chambers (William Shakespeare). II, pp. 338-339. 141

Plaies seems to be a record of plays he attended thereEven i f we are wholly correct on this matter, however, we know only that Cvmbeline was performed at the Globe ; we do not know whether Shakespeare wrote the play for the Globe e x clu siv ely .

As we can see, a thick haze envelops the date of Cvmbeline and the theatre for which the play was written. In the following pages I w ill attempt to dispel some of it by analyzing the relevant internal evidence.

Cvmbeline. of course, is one of Shakespeare's late romances, and, as we have seen, whereas no HLackfriars play satisfies the requirements for the type, scholars generally agree that Shakespeare's extraordinarily successful Globe play Peri dies is a member of the group.Nosworthy goes further, referring to "Pericles. Cvmbeline. The Winter's Tale and The

Tempest. " he mentions not only their "indisputable similarities of style, matter, characterisation and outlook, he i^icates what may have been

Shakespeare's road to Cvmbeline. He says that Mucedorus

may very w ell have reminded him of a yet untried way of handling dramatic material, and have led him to Pericles and then via Love and Fortune [The Rare Triumphs of Love and

1 9 Nosworthy ( Cvmbeline). p . x i i i . 20 See Appendix B. 21 Nosworthy (Cvmbeline). p. xv. Hoeniger notes many parallels (Pericles, pp. Ixxi-lxxiv). 142

Fortune, a public theatre play written c. 158222] to Qyabeline without further prompting,23

I think that we may reasonably conclude that Cymbeline i s Shakespeare's second dramatic romance» that probably part of his motive in writing it was to capitalize on the popularity of his first one, the ^obe play

P e ricles, and that Cvmbeline i s thus, generally speaking, a SLobe type of play. This alignment of the overall type of the play with the Globe tradition is further confirmed by the presence of two lesser features,

Whereas in the HLackfriars plays that end happily characters who appear onstage do not die, in the (Hobe set they do (e.g., Pericles V, iii, 95-

98 ), and in Cvmbeline both CLoten (IV, i i , 11?) and the Queen (V, v , 31) perish. Furthermore, only the Globe audience had an interest in plays based on English history (though it was slight between 1604 and 1609), and Cvmbelinp deals in part with events that occurred at an early period in En^and. Cymbeline, like King Lear, is a ruler of Britain, and one of the interlocking strands of the play is concerned with a dispute between

Rome and Britain (e.g.. Ill, i and v; V, ii, iii, and v). All in all, I think we should classify Cvmbeline. in a broad sense, as a Globe type of play. Structurally, there are several strands of story material in the play. The main characters of each are Cymbeline and Lucius (the dispute

22 Chambers (Elizabethan Stage). IV, p. 26. 23 Nosworthy (Cvmbeline). p. xxxviii; see also pp. xxiv-xxvii. The “further prompting" refers to Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster. The problem of the relationship between this play and Cvmbeline has no direct relevance to this study because the title pages of Philaster show that it was written for the Globe and therefore after the l604-l609 period. This study, however, seems to have considerable relevance to that problem (see C opter IV). 143 between Rome and B ritain); Posthvmus, Imogen, and lacfaimo (the issu e of

constancy); Arviragus, Cruiderius, and Belarius (the problem of offspring separated from a parent); and doten and the Queen (the endeavor to gain control of the kingdom). But the strands are all tightly interwoven.

Imogen, for instance, serves an important function in every strand, and v ir tu a lly a l l of the c o n flic ts in the play are resolved in one grand se t of denouements in the fin a l scene. Consequently Cvmbeline consists of one complex plot, and a sin^e plot is a characteristic of the Globe, but not the Blackfriars, plays.

Shakespeare's treatment of time and space in Cvmbeline likewise seems to follow the unrestrained practice of ŒLobe playwrights. The play covers a period of about six months^^ and takes place in two countries, Britain (e.g.. I, i) and Italy (e.g.. I, iv). This contrasts sharply with the characteristic Blackfriars practice of limiting the duration of a play to a week or less and the setting to essentially one place.

^^doten dies earlier (IV, ii, 117). 25 For some reason Daniel does not offer an opinion about the overall time period covered in Cvmbeline. but he does state that "The time, then, of the drama includes twelve days represented on the stage; with in ter v a ls." Those in ter v a ls include "Posthumus' s journey to Rome," "lachimo's journey to Britain," "lachimo"s return journey to Rome," "Time for Posthumus's letters frcm Rome to arrive in Britain," "Imogen and Pisanio journqy to Wales," "Pisanio returns to Court," "CLoten journeys to Wales," and then another period of "a few days perhaps" ("Time- Analysis," pp. 249-250). Pafford suggests an overall duration of "6 months" (The,>ft.nteris Tale, p. xxxviii, n. 2). 26 Nosworthy observes, incidentally, that in 1759 William Hawkins "elected to rewrite the play in conformity with the classical unities" and comments that "He merits the passing tribute of a sigh, for Hercules is remembered for lesser labours." (Cvmbeline. p. 218). 1 #

0ns particular se t of in ter ests in Cvmbeline in d icates further that Shakespeare wrote the play for the Globe. Notably loyal servants and problems faced by the servant class were, as we have seen, dobe featu res. Cvmbeline would be a rad ically d ifferen t play i f Pisanio,

Posthumus's servant, did not decide to disobey his master's order to k ill

Imogen. But Pisanio is apparently one of the Globe's notably loyal servants (e.g., the Butler in The Miseries of Enforced Marriage, vdiose activities largely make possible the happy ending of that play). After coercing Pisanio into agreeing to be his servant, Cloten says, "Come, and be true" ( l U , v, 162), and in a soliloquy Pisanio shows h is lo y a lty to

Posthumus by commenting:

Thou bid'st me to loss: for true to thee Were to prove false, lAioh I will never be. To Mm that is most true. ( n i , V , 163-165)

Furthermore, a fter having w ritten to Posthumus that Imogen i s dead,

Pisanio explains his motive:

Wherein I am fa ls e I am honest; not true, to be true. (IV, iii, 42)

In short, Pisanio concludes that a higher loyalty to his master demands that he both disobey and lie . In a soliloquy Posthumus, 160 thinks

Pisanio has carried out his order and killed Imogen, states the general principle servants should apply when faced with the problem of whether to obey an e v il command:

0 PisanioI Every good servant does not a ll commands: No bond but to do ju st ones. (V, i , 5-7) 145

Among the visual effects in Cvmbeline. several are found only in

GELobe plays. The most spectacular feature in the play is the supernatural event we c a ll a v isio n , lifhile Posthumus slee p s, the god Jupiter (as w ell as Posthumus*8 deceased parents and his two brothers) appears (V, iv, 30-

122), and this supernatural occurrence reminds one of Pericles*s vision of

Diana (V, i , 241-250). At the end o f the v isio n we find another unique

GELobe feature ; Posthumus*s parents and brothers "vanish" (V, iv , 123

S. D .; c f. Macbeth I , i i i , 79 8. D,). During the course of the play, too, as, for instance, in Coriolanus (I, iv), a battle occurs onstage. The stage directions read:

Enter, from one sid e, Lucius, lachimo, and the Roman Army: from the other side, the British Army; Leonatus Posthumus following, like a poor soldier. They march over and go out. Then enter again, in skirmish, lachimo and Posthumus : he vanquisheth and disarms th lachimo, and then leaves him. (V, ii, 1 S. D.)

The b a ttle continues : the Britons f ly ; Qymbeline i s taken: then enter, to his rescue, Belarius, Gtdderius, and Arviragus. (V, i i , 11 S. D.)

Re-enter Posthumus, and seconds the Britons: they rescue Cymbeline, and exeunt .... (V, i i , 14 S. D.)

The description does not seem to be lAoUy complete, but apparently a battle must take place on the stage. The two armies march across and off, and then, although no stage direction seems to say so, they have to re-enter to comply with the two later directions "The battle continues: the Britons fly" and "Posthumus ... seconds the Britons."

Lastly, we find in Cvmbeljne a particular use of visual effects that was peculiar to the Globe tradition: Shakespeare introduced sights designed to evoke horror. There is, first of all, a familiar and 146 excdiudvely CsLobe featur»» a severed bead (e.g., Macbeth V, v iii, 54

S. D.}. After QuLderlus kills doten, he returns to the stage and says,

This doten was a fool, an empty purse; There was no money in H : not Hercules Could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none: Yet I not doing this, the fool had borne My head as X do his. (IV, ii, 113-117)

If the more hardened spectators failed to shudder at this, they did not have long to wait for a second, far more potent stimulus. To see any live person in contact with a corpse is horrible enou^, but to see

Imogen, a sensitive and beautiful woman we have come to admire, make a

"bloody pillow" (IV, ii, 3&3) of a dead body, and even worse a headless body, and worse yet the headless body of CLoten, a stupid man we have come to detest—this is surely a formula guaranteed to freeze the blood of the most blase spectator in the house. For us, it is an embarrassing moment, but I do not think we can wish it away by saying, as does

Nosworthy,

the headless corpse is a narrative convention only, not a stage r e a lity .27

Surely at a performance the spectator—unless he is simply unwilling to suspend his disbelief—sees what he accepts to be a "headless corpse"; surely for him it la. a "stage reality." Furthermore, Shakespeare seems to have been so intent on adequately motivating Imogen to lie on the corpse that he was willing to risk a descent into absurdity:

The garments of PosthumusI I know the shape of *s le g : th is i s h is hand;

27 Ibid. . pp. 140-141, n. on 1 . 285. 14?

HLs foot Mercurial; his Martial thigh; The brawns of Hercules . . . (IV. ii, 308-311)

Shakespeare here seems to have been striv in g extraordinarily hard to evoke some kind of response in his audience, and the comment by Lucius on the sight indicates that Shakespeare intended the response to be one of horror ;

. . . nature both abhor to make h is bed VQ.th the defunct, or sleep upon thé dead. (IV, ii, 357-358)

Some commentators, however, have suggested that Shakespeare intended the severed head and Imogen* s "sleep" on the "bloody pillow" to be humorous. Nosworthy comments that Shakespeare augmented "the horror beyond what is reasonable" and "makes Guiderius enter bearing ' CLoten*s dotpbll,* so that lAat would otherwise be serious is rendered ludicrous or fantastic.M oreover, with respect to Imogen*s mistaken belief that the headless body is her husband*s, J. C. Maxwell says,

Here as else^ere, I think his [Shakespeare * s ] technique is rather more like a deliberate pushing of the convention to extremes, with a strong encouragement to savour the comic implications.29

Both Nosworthy and Maxwell apparently assume that humor and true horror would have seemed incompatible to Shakespeare*s audience, but I doubt this, because in the Globe tradition the two were frequently juxtaposed.

After the Luke in The Revenger*s Tragedy kisses a poisoned skull and howls, "My teeth are eaten out," Vindid comments coolLy, "Then those that

p. Iv. 29 Qvmbeline. ed. J. C. Maxwell (Cambridge, I960), p. xxxvi. 148

did eat* are eaten." (Ill, v, 169-172); even more surprisingly, In A

Yorkshire Tragedy a father lifts his little boy high in the air, raises

his dagger, and, lAen the ddld says "Oh, lAat mill you do, father? I am

your iM te bole," answers, "Thou shalt be my red bole: take that." (Sc.

IV, 119-121), Whether Shakespeare Intended the sigh t of the severed head

and of Imogen on the "bloody pillow" to evoke horror or sons more cotm|0.ex

emotion Involving horror, I think we can safely conclude that he probably

had in mind the audience at the Globe.

Considering udiat would have probably been a typical HLackfriars

and a typical Globe play at the time the King's Men acquired Blackfriars,

I think we can see e a s ily enough iddch pattern Cvmbellne f i t s . I t Is one

of Shakespeare's group of late plays that we classify as dramatic

romances, and the only work In the two traditions we can confidently place

In that category Is a Globe play, the extremely successful Pericles: moreover, the work at times resembles an English history p l^ , and even though the play ends happily, some of the characters who appear onstage die. Shakespeare's treatment of the unities likewise fits the Globe pattern: the structure of Cvmbeline con sists of one p lo t, and the play takes place over a period of approximately six months In two countries.

The scope of Interest, furthermore, is that of the Globe pLays: it extends down to a notably loyal servant and to the problem of whether a servant should obey all of his master's orders. Lastly, Cvmbeline includes a number of visual effects found exclusively in Globe plays: a vision, vanishing beings, a battle onstage, and two horrifying sights

(a severed head and a lo v ely young lady lyin g on a headless corpse). On the basis of this evidence I believe we can safely conclude that the 149 Globe trad ition exerted an extensive influence on Cvmbeline.

While writing Cvmbeline. however, Shakespeare did introduce

several features that resemble HLackfriars fa re, but he seems to have

treated them in a markedly different way than Blackfriars playwrights had

done. We have observed that of the two theatres Blackfriars was the home

of satirical comedy and that a common practice in this type of drama was

to rid icu le d efective characters. At one point in Cvmbeline Imogen,

curiously enough, seems to resort to this Blackfriars technique. When

doten criticizes the absent Posthumus by calling him, for instance, a

"base wretch" (II, iii, 118) and "a base slave" (1, 12?), Imogen answers:

Profane fellowl Wert thou the son of Jupiter and no more But what thou art besides, thou wert too base To be his groom: thou were dignified enough. Even to the point of envy, i f Hwere made Comparative for your virtu es, to be styled The under-hangman of h is kingdom, and hated For being preferr'd so w ell.... He never can meet more mischance than come To be but named of thee. His meanest garment. That ever hath but clipp'd his body, is dearer In my respect than all the hairs above thee. Were they a ll made such men. (II, iii, 129-141)

At Blackfriars such a speech would silen ce a character for good

(e.g., after Francisohina is subjected to suda treatment in The Dutçh

Courtesan, she says, "Ick vil not speake ..." V, p. 134) or cure him

(e.g., after Zuçcone is verbally idiipped in The Fawn, he admits that he has been as cruel "As a Tiger, as a very Tiger." IV, p. 205). In

Cvmbeline. howeverÿ Imogen's verbal thrashing of doten has a very differ­

ent result. After repeatedly muttering to himself, doten exits on the

speech: I ' l l be revenged: % .s meanest garment! " W ell. (II, iii, 160-161) 150 and »hen we see him later he is still, to say the least, neither silent nor oured. The sting of her attack has not abated at all, and his plans for revenge are not pretty;

She said upon a time—the b ittern ess of i t I now belch from my heart—that she held the very garment o f Posthumus in more respect than my noble and natural person, together with the adornment of my qualities* With that suit upon my back, w ill I ravish her; first kill him, and in her eyes; there shall she see my valour, idiioh w ill then be a torment to her contempt. He on the ground, sqr speech of insultment ended on his dead body, and when my lust hath dined,—Wiich, as I say, to vex her I w ill execute in the clothes that she so praised,—to the court I 'll knock her back, foot her home again. She hath despised me rejo icin g ly , and I ’l l be merry in my revenge. ( I l l , V , 136-150)

The second way Shakespeare seems to have deviated from the practice of Blackfriars playwrights was in his handling of an allegedly unworthy upstart. As we have seen, d o te n c a lls Posthumus a "base wretch" and "a base slave"; he i s referring to the fa c t that Posthumus has married above h is statu s; in h is eyes. Posthumus i s an iq>start. and therefore unworthy. To Cÿmbeline, also, he is an upstart and thus unworthy. The king says to Posthumus, "Thou basest thing ... If after this command thou fraught the court / U3.th thy unworthiness, thou diest ..." (I, i, 125-127 ) and to Imogen, "Thou to o k 'st a beggar; w oddst have made my throne/ A seat for baseness." When Imogen says, "he is /

A man worthy any woman, overbuys me / Almost the sum he pays," Qymbeline storms, "What, art thou mad?" (I, i, ld-1^7).

The speeches of doten and Qymbeline could have come right out of a Blackfriars play, but in that play they would have been right about

Posthumus. We saw, for instance, that in The %dow's Tears a captain. 151 with sp e c ific reference to the Governor of Qyprus, generalizes about the unworthiness of upstarts:

Nor blushes he to see himself advanc’d Over the heads of ten times higher worths, But takes it all, forsooth, to his merits. And looks (as all upstarts do) for most huge observance. (V, i, 147-150) and the Governor i s la te r exhibited as in cred ib ly inept (V, i i i , 220-270),

In Cvmbeline. however, Shakespeare handles the matter of Posthumus's worthiness very differently. At the beginning of the play we learn from two gentlemen that “a l l / Is outward [my i t a l i c s ] sorrow“ (I , i , 8 -9 ), and the reason i s that Imogen, idicnn Qymbeline had planned to marry to his wife’s son by » former marriage (CLoten), has married a “poor but worthy gentleman" (I, i, 7)* the end of the play the “upstart" Posthumus proves to Qymbeline as well that he is a “worthy gentleman": when Post­ humus pardons Xacbimo, the king bursts with pride and exclaim s, “Nobly doom’d I" (V, V , 420). In Cvmbeline. therefore, i t would appear that

Shakespeare introduced two men vho have the characteristic Blackfriars bias against upstarts and that in the course of the play he proved them both to be wrong.

Lastly, Shakespeare’s divergence from the treatment of material in Blackfriars plays may also extend to lAat Granville-Barker has called

“the ch ief theme of the play"; “Chastity—and married dhastity, that larger v ir tu e or constancy. There appears to be a curious relationship

3 0 Harbage says, “The most ominous feature of our coterie lit e r a ­ ture is its unabashed categorizing ..." but he notes that Shakespeare "declines to categorize" (Rival Traditions, p. 314), 31 Granviile-Barker (Prefaces). I, p. 518. 152

betwean the Imogen-Po gthumus -la ohimo strend of the ld.ay, lAioh deals with

the constançy of Imogen, and the HLackfriars play IheJ&dow's Tears, which

seems to be completely qynical about the constancy of women. As we have

seen, Parrott says that the central figure in The.Widow*s Tears.

Tharsalio, exhibits an "utter disbelief in all womanly virtue" and believes

that "the greatest of shams is woman’s pretention to purity and con­

stancy" ;32 and Tharsalio does so in a play in lAieh, as Parrott observes,

"His judgments of the world in uhioh he moves and of the individuals vAio

people it are proved right ... by the inexorable logic of eventsThe

fact that The Widow’s Tears apparently states categorically that women

are incapable of constan «y whereas Cvmbeline deals in part with a woman

who gloriously withstands a rigorous test of her constancy means virtually

nothing by itself: plays about constant and devoted wives were common

fare not only at the Globe (e.g.. The London Prodigal and A_Yorkshire

Tragedy) but even at HLackfriars (e.g., Sonhonisba). Given the total

context of this study, however, what raises suspicions in my mind is the

fa c t that in Cvmbeline and The Va.dow»s Tears there are three major

p a ra llels idiiefa are relevant to the issu e of constancy and that during

the l604"l609 period not one of the elements in the three appears in any

Globe play nor in any other HLackfriars play.^^ In both Cvmbeline and

32 Parrott ( Chatanan*s Comedies ). p. 804.

p. 805.

^^The HLackfriars iHay The Faithful Shanherdess is the only candidate, but though GLorin, in order to cure Thenot, offers to break her "hdy vow" of constancy to her dead lover (IV, i, p. 426), I find no assertions by «an that women do not keep their vows. Incidentally, since constancy is a central issue in this play and is firmly upheld as a glorious virtue, I wonder if there was not some interrelationship between 153

The Widow’s Twars a man makes a wager on the constancy of h is wlfe,^^ a man influenced by Italian attitudes chooses boldness as his technique for seducing a woman, and men conclude that women's vows are untrust­ worthy.

In The Widow's Tears Lysander and the cynical Tharsalio make a

"wager" (III, i, 223) on whether Lysander's wife Cynthia w ill remain constant when subjected to a "trial" (III, i, I 85 ) . In Cvmbeline the cynical lachimo makes a similar wager with Posthumus on whether Imogen will prove constant (I, iv, 136-182).

In The Widow's Tears, moreover, Tharsalio has recen tly returned from Italy with new ideas about women, (ÿnthia says to him,

I fear me in your travels you have drunk too much of that Italian air, that hath infected the whole mass of your ingenuous nature ... [and] poisoned the very essence of your soul ... (I , i , 132- 135)

As the technique he will use to seduce the "fort of chastity" (I, i,

127 ), Eudora, Tharsalio chooses boldness. He is termed "the bold gentleman" (II, iv, 132)* Eudora says of his actions, "0 incredible boldness I" (II, iv, 143); and he himself begins the play with a soliloquy in which he rejects Fortune, "Thou blind imperfect goddess," and adds:

I renounce Thy vain dependence, and convert my duty And sacrifices of my sweetest thoughts it and the utterly cynical The Widow's Tears. We can date neither with sufficient precision to say which is the earlier, but perhaps one is an answer to the other. 35 I t i s p ossib le that Cvmbeline i s , in part, an answer to The Widow's Tears (see n . 34). 154

To ft acre noble deity» sole friend to worth* And pfttroness of a ll good spirits» Confidence; She be ay ^de» and hers the praise of these Ify worthy undertakings» (I, 1» 8-14)

In Cvmbeline when lachimo» an Ita lia n (I» iv» 103)» sets out to seduoe

Imogen» he uses an extraordinarily clever method (I , vi» 11-140), and he expresses the key to the method in a prefatory aside:

Boldness be my friendi Arm me» audacity, from head to foot) (I . V i , 18-19)

The major issues in The Vfl.dow*s Tears, furthermore, are idiether two women w ill respect their vows to remain constant (Cynthia*s appears at I I , i i i , 52”54, and Eudora>s at I , i , 88-91)* Before either f a l l s ,

Argus states his distrust of Eudora* s vows as well as of women* s resolu­ tions in general:

Well, for vows, they are gone to heaven with her husband, they bind not \q>on earth; and as for women*s resolutions, I must tell you, the planets, and (as Ptolemy says) the winds have a great stroke in them. (II, iv, 37-40)

When Lysander finds his wife has failed to fu lfill her vow of constanqr, he has a few choice words to say about women:

Is*t possible there should be such a latitude in the sphere of this sex, to entertain sudi an extension of mischief and not turn devilT What is a woman? What are the worst :Aen the best are so past naming? As men like this, let them try their wives again. Put women to the te s t, discover them? Paint them, paint them ten parts more than they do themselves, rather than look on them as they are; their wits are but painted that dislike their painting. (V, ii, 63-70) 155 When Posthumust who has a lso put h is w ife's constancy "to the te st," b elieves that Imogen has been u n faith fu l, he sta te s, muoh more economically, his opinion of women and their vows:

the vows of women Of no more bondage be, tc >diere they are made. Than they are to their virtues ; lAidh is nothing. (II, iv, 110-112)

In Qymbeline we find, therefore, three important features that appear only, among the two sets of plays, in The Widow's Tears, but, as in the case of Imogen's satirical thrusts and Posthumus's rise to higher sta tu s, the outcome d iffe r s ra d ic a lly . In Ihe Va.dow's Tears the

Italianate Iharsalio, using boldness as his technique, succeeds in seduc­ ing the "fort of chastity" who has vowed constancy, and he describes his last and boldest step by saying proudly.

This the way on't, boil their appetites to a full height of lu st; and then take them down in the nick. (in , i, 99-100)

Furthermore, Qynthia, the w ife vdio vows to be constant and whose con­ stancy is the issue of the wager, is easily seduced by a passing s o l d i e r "look thou, she's drawing on." (V* i, 2?). In Cvmbeline. on the other hand, Imogen i s true to her marriage vow and im pressively rejects the bold technique of the Italian lachimo:

Away I I do condemn mine ears that have So long attended ^ e e .... Thou ... Solicit'st here a lady that disdains Thee and the d ev il a lik e . (I , V i , 141-148)

36 In a ctu a lity , i t i s her husband in d isg u ise. 156

I t would seen, therefore, that Shakespeare chose to treat the theme of oonstanpy in Qymbeline in a rad ically d ifferen t way than Chapman had handled i t in the HLackfriars play The TAdow's Tears.

The evidence from Cvmbeline would thus seem to indicate that

Siakespeare wrote a play of the same type as the recently successful

Globe play P e ricles, generously introduced trad ition al Globe fare and, in several instances, appears to have sharply deviated from HLackfriars p ra ctices. There are, however, three features in Cvmbeline that do not seem to f i t th is conception.

We have seen that in the HLackfriars pLays adultery was treated a t times as a considerably le s s serious offense than i t was in the Globe plays, and in Cvmbeline Posthumus would seem, at f ir s t ^ an ce, to take a

HLackfriars attitude toward adultery. Although he considers the apparent infidelity of Imogen such a serious matter that he orders his servant to kill her (HI, ii, 1-11, and III, iv, 21-33). the fact remains that after he thinks she is dead there is a startling change in his attitude.

Speaking directly to the audience, he says.

You married ones. If each of you should take this course,’ how many Must murder wives much better than themselves For wrying but a littleI (V, i , 2-5)

Nosworthy cmaments on the speech:

Since he still believes in Imogen's guilt, his attitude towards her should remain unchanged, however much he may repent of the supposed murder. To term her alleged offense "wrying but a little" seems contrary to the moral code of the play...37

^^Nosworthy ( Cvmbçline). p. 152, n . on Scene i . 157 It is» furthermore, as we have seen, contrary to the "moral code" of the

CELobe set of plays but not, apparently, to the code of some of the approved characters in certain Blackfriars plays. In the latter group we find spirited, though less than wtoUy serious, arguments for accepting the status of cuckoldom with equanimity (Eastward Ho. V, v, 190-199 and Ajl.

Fools. V, i i , 236- 326) and a heroine who talks lightly of cudcolding her future husband (The Isle of Gulls. I, i, p. 10). At first glance.

Posthumus's speech would seen to be a HLackfriars influence, and, in contrast to the other p a ra llels noted, th is one would seem to be a feature

Shakespeare introduced without accompanying i t with a divergence from

Blackfriars practices.

On the other hand, the grieving and remorseful Posthumus may simply be saying that he now realizes that infidelity is, relatively speaking, "wrying but a l i t t l e ," that compared to such offenses as

"murder" (1 , 4), it is a "little" fault ( 1 , 12) and as such should be pardoned rather than avenged by murder, and p articularly so because otherwise the offender cannot "repent" (1, 10), If so. Posthumus's speech may well be part of a larger pattern of interest in Cvmbeline as well as in most of Shakespeare's other late plays, that of forgiveness.

When Posthumus pardons lachimo, Qymbeline is so impressed that he declares, "Nobly doom'd!" and promptly adds, "We'll learn our freeness of a son-in-law; /Pardon's the word to all," (V, v, 420-422). Since

Posthumi^ demands "vengeance" (I I , v, 8) in h is la s t speech before he appears in Act V and expresses his new attitude toward adultery, he himself seems to have learned "freeness" or, as Prospero puts it, the idea that "the rarer action is / In virtue than in vengeance" (Thg 158

Tempest. V, i , 27-28). I submit that we must assume that he learned i t iM le he was suffering from the lo s s of Imogen and coming to the conclu­

sion that among the hierarchy of serious offenses adultery i s "wrying but a little." If Posthumus's peculiar speech is simply part of Shakes­ peare's concern with forgiveness in Cvmbeline (as w ell as in most of the

other late plays), I do not believe we can safely attribute it to the influence of the Blackfriars tradition.

This analysis, however, may be vulnerablo at one point, because it assumes that Shakespeare was indeed concerned with forgiveness in the last ]plays. Forgiveness, of course, can make reconciliations possible, and Northrop Frye cautions us that

The spirit of reconciliation lAich pervades the comedies of Shakespeare is not to be ascribed to a personal attitude of his own, about which we know nothing whatever, but to his impersonal concentration on the laws of comic form.38

This argument would carry greater weight if Shakespeare's use of forgive­ ness in the last plays was confined to the comedies, but, as Foakes has noted, in the history play Henrv VIII

the general emphasis throughout the play on peace and forgiveness is entirely the author's contribution.39 and th is means that Shakespeare not only diverged from h is sources to

stress forgiveness, he did so in a type of play to which "the laws of

comic form" do not apply. In short, i t i s true that in the romances

Shakespeare set out to write plays that end happily, and it is true that

3 8 Northrop Frye, "The Argument of Comedy," English In stitu te Essays,. 1948 (1949), 62.

^^King Henry V ip . ed. R. A. Foakes (London, 1957). p. x x x v ii. 159 forglT«n«8s Is one way to achieve that purpose, but if, as Henrv VIII seems to show, Shakespeare was concerned with forgiveness at th is la te stage of his career,^^ could he not simultaneously express his point of view and use it as a means to end his play happily? I suggest that the evidence indicates that this is precisely what he did.

The second feature in Cvmbeline th at does not seem to f i t the general pattern of evidence is Jupiter's descent from the stage heavens :

Jupiter descends in thunder and ligh tn in g, s ittin g upon an eagle . . . (V, iv, 93 S. D.r^

Sudi a descent, as we have seen, was exclusively a Blackfriars feature, and one appears, in te r e stin g ly enough, in The Widow's Tears (I I I , i i , 82

S. D. ), a play Shakespeare may have paid considerable attention to as he wrote Qvmbftlinft. We must start, 1 think, with the presui^tion that

Jupiter's descent constitutes an influence of the HLackfriars tradition.

We have seen, however, that as early as the 1590's a public th eatre, the Bose, had f a c i li t i e s for such a descent, and we know from the Globe play Antony deopatra that the SLobe probably had sim ilar equipment. There is, in addition, evidence to show that ascents and descents were not exclusively private theatre fare during the period

kO In the late tragedy Coriolanus. the title character, as Aufidius says, chooses "mercy" over "honour" (V, iii, 200} or, to use Coriolanus's words, "compassion" (V, i i i , 196) over "revenge" (V, i, 91).

Some scholars have suggested that the vision as a lAole was a later interpolation (e.g.. Chambers, WLUiam Shakespeare, I, p. 466 and J. Dover %lson in his prefatory note to the New Shakespeare ed. J. C. Maxwell, pp. vii-x). The authenticity of vision, however, has been ably defended by Maxwell (HzlsL.* pp. xiii-xv) and especially by J. M. Nosworthy ( Cymbeline. pp. x x x iv-xxxvii). 160

Cvmbeline was w ritten. In Heywood*s The Golden Age, written for the most plebian of the public theatres, the Red B ull, and dating sometime before

1611,^^ there are not only ascents and descents,but the same god as in

Cvmbeline. Jupiter, uses the same kind of stage device, an eagle:

“lupiter first ascends iqion the Eagle" (V, i, p. ? 8 ) , ^ I t i s a p a ra llel that prompted John Cranford Adams to say.

The ea&le [in Cymbeline 1 was apparently most successful . . . Heywood promptly borrowed i t or had one made for h is own Red Bull play, Th? ^

But the most important evidence that shakes the presumption that the descent was a Blackfriars influence is that ?Aen Shakespeare intro­ duced i t , he seems to have had in mind sp e c ific a lly the Globe th eatre.

During the theophany. Posthumus*s father appeals to Jupiter, "Peep through thy marhLe mansion" (V, iv , Ô7), and la te r , a fter Jiqxiter has ascended, he observes, "The marble pavement c lo se s, he i s enter'd / His radiant roof." (V, iv, 120-121). The latter reference led Hodges to conclude that

the Heavens ceiling through idiich the machine came down - appears not to have been painted like the sky after the usual fashion, but with marbling ...^

^^Chambers (Elizabethan Stage). H I, p. 344.

p. 109. n. 1. 44 The Dramatic Marks o f Thomas Hevwood. reprinted by John Pearson (London, 1874), H I .

^^J. C. Adams (Playhouse), p. 338.

^ C . Walter Hodges, The Globe Restored (London, 1953). p. 77. 161 and ha notes further that th is

tallies in an interesting way with a further reference, in liaen of Athens. IV, i i i [191], vAere lia o n speaks of Heaven as *the marbled mansion a ll above, " I suppose one must be on one*s guard against reading too much into such metaphors, but I am in clin ed to wonder whether, since both Cvmbeline and Tlmon are dated at about the time idien the King's Men began to play at the "private" Blackfriars theatre, a Heavens there might have been a marbled one.^7

He i s surely correct in assimdng that both Cvmbeline and limon were written with the same heavens in mind, but the question is whether it was the heavens at the Globe or a t Blackfriars. There certain ly seems to be every reason for supposing that XLofiU was written before the King's Men acquired Blackfriars (see Appendix A), but waiving that, there is evidence that seems clearly to show that when Shakespeare wrote both Umon and

Cvmbeline he envisioned the heavens at the Globe. In one play that we know was written for the Globe, Othello, we find a passage that describes the appearance of the heavens. At a crucial moment in the play, Othello says,

Now, by yond marble heaven. In the due reverence of a sacred vow I here engage my words. ^ (III, iii, 460-462)^

It is possible, of course, that both theatres had a "marble heaven," but additional evidence indicates otherwise. The title page of the first quarto of pthmlio ( 1622) states that this version reproduces the play

n. 2. 48 This could, of course, be merely a metaphor, but the presence of another passage suggests that it is not. Othello asks, "Are there no stones in heaven / But i^at serve for the thunder!" (V, ii, 234-235) and on th is speech John Cranford Adams comments that Shakespeare "Ranees at" the Globe's "thunder-machine" (Playhouse, p. 371)* 162

"As it hath beene diuerse times acted at the Globe, and at the ELack-

Friers [qjr italics] and in this edition the line inferring to the

"marble heaven" was d eleted .50 One can imagine the e ffe c t O thello's reference to a "marble heaven" would have had, esp ecia lly a t such an important moment, if the Bladcfriars heaven did not have such an appearance.

1 think we can safely con^ude that descents were public as well as private theatre fare, that the Globe doubtless had the requisite facilities at the time was written, and that when Shakespeare introduced the descent in to Cvpibelina he had s p e c ific a lly in mind the heavens at the Globe. I do not believe, therefore, that we can attribute the descent of Jupiter in Cvmbeline to the influence of the Blackfriars tra d itio n .

Frankly, the last feature that does not fit the pattern leaves me quite thoroughly puzzled. Except for the stage direction "Jigdter descends in thunder ... he throws a thunderbolt." (V, iv, 93 S. D.), the play is absolutely devoid of loud noises. It looks as though, for some reason, all unnecessary 51 Xoud sounds have been systematically eliminated.

^Chambers (William Shakespeare). I, p. ^57.

^^"516- 523. lago ... asaïgal Om. 01."; New Variorum Othello, ed. Horace H« Furness (Philadelphia, 1886), p. 210. Why the preceding lines ("lago ... 19.") should have been deleted I cannot say. Perhaps this passage and the reference to the "marble heaven" were both objectionable. If the person making the deletion had wished to omit just the long passage, he could probably have simply dropped the word "Now" in "Now by yond marble heaven"; the line would have then read : Never, lago. ^y yond marble heaven,

5Aj. Adams notes that "disguise sounds" were used to "accompany the lowering and raising of ears" (Playhouse, p. 365). 163

For instance, while Lear (like Cymbeline, an English king) retains his rule, he enters with a "Sennet" (I, i, 35 8. D.) and exits with a

"Flourish" (I , i , 270 S. D .), but there are no comparable stage directions in Canbalipe. Granviile-Barker notes another peculiarity. In discussing how Cvmbeline might have been influenced by the small, enclosed Black­ friars theatre ("If Cymbeline was written for the Blackfriars "52), he makes the general observation that "If violence is still the thing, noise will not be«"55 and he states that

the stage directions for the battle are unusual.... Here is action enough, certa in ly . But lAy are there none of the accustomed directions for alarums, drums and trumpets? ... as it stands, the elaborate pantomime really looks not unlike an attempt to turn old-fashioned dumb show to fresh and quaint account. It is certainly not a battle by either of the very different patterns of Antony and Cleopatra or Coriolanus. nor is it at all like the simplified affair we find in King Lear. I t has, one would say, a sty le of i t s own.5^

He is reluctant to place much importance on his observation:

Stage directions make a perilous basis for argument; and we ought, it may be, to lay these to the account of some editor preparing the text for printing ...55 but he adds later.

This may ... be editorial omission—or it may not.56

If it is not, there is indeed a strange contrast between the omnparative silen ce of the b a ttle and the noise in the Globe plays %diere b attles occur o n s t a g e . 57 in The Devil!s Charter we find, for instance, "A charge

52 Granviile-Barker (Prefaces). I, p. 471.

p. 470. pp. 476-477.

p. 477. p. 483. 57 See n. 139 « Chapter II herein. 164 with a peale of Ordinance" (IV, iv, 2362 S. D.) and "Sound Drums and

Trumpets" (1. 236? S. D«), and in Coriolanus "Enter, with drum" (I, iv,

S. D.), "They sound a parley" (1. 13 S. D,), and "Alarum" (1. 30 S. D.),

From the evidence we have, then, it appears that Qymbeline fits the pattern for a typical Globe pLay and deviates from certain practices in the 1604-1609 Blackfriars plays but that the only text we have, the one in the First Folio (1623), is virtually devoid of all of the stage directions for the loud noises we would normally expect. If the version of Cvmbeline used for FI bad been revised for a Blackfriars performance, we might expect the loud noises to have been merely muted; for instance, we might find in place of trumpets either cornets or a combination of com ets and trum pets,^ but th is i s not the case. Inasmuch as the trad i­ tions at the two theatres were converging at such a rate that by the

1620*6 some Globe {days were being performed at HLackfriars, the best speculation I can offer is that a con^>aratively short time before 1623, the date of FI, the King's Men hurriedly prepared Cvmbelin^ for presenta­ tion at Blackfriars, and, instead of altering the stage directions for loud noises, they simply crossed them off and made the necessary changes during the actual performance. In fact, since there are many similarities between Philaster and Cvmbeline. and since the title pages of Philaster indicate that the first presentation of this Globe play at Blackfriars took place sometime between 1620 and 1622, I would speculate further that this hypothetical performance of Cvmbeline at Blackfriars also occurred between 1620 and 1622.

J. Lawrence, Shakespeare's Workshop (Oxford, 1928), p. 56. 165

Looking at the total body of available external and internal

evidence» 1 believe therefore that we should probably conclude that

Cvmbeline is a play that conforms essentially to the pattern for a Globe

play and one in iM ch Shakespeare seems to have deviated markedly from

certain practices in HLackfriars plays. Although I w ill discuss some of

the broader values of this conclusion in Chapter IV, I wish to mention

two that have immediate relevance to this study. I believe, first of

a ll, that the conclusion establishes that Shakespeare probably wrote

Cvmbeline exclu sively for the Globe, Some scholars have assigned Cvmbeline

to Bladcfriars, however, and a few of these have offered evidence to sup­

port their positions, but it should be remembered that they were severely

handicapped when they made their assignments, because no extensive

examination of the problem was then available.

Bentley assigns Cymbeline. as well as Shakespeare's other late

romances, to HLackfriars, and his main reason is that they differ "from

the Shakespearian norm" so much that they "have commonly been discussed

as a d istin c t genre.But, as Nosworthy and Edwards have pointed out^^

and as I have stressed in Chapter I I , Appendix B, and the discussion of

Cvmbeline. Pericles is a member of that genre, and Pericles was written

for the Globe.

Baldwin assigns Cvmbeline. as well as The Winter's Tale and ^

Tempest, to Blackfriars because the three fall into the category of

^^Bentley ("Shakespeare and the HLackfriars Theatre"), p. 4?,

^^Nosworthy ( Cvmbeline). p. xvi; Edwards ("Shakespeare's Romances: 1900-1957"). p. 5. 166

of tragicomedy» and this was both a form Shakespeare seldom used before At I 6O8 and a form the Blackfriars audience preferred. But Shakespeare had

not only written a tragicomedy for the (Eobe shortly before he wrote

Cvmbeline. he had written a tragicomedy of the same type, the highly suc­

cessful play Pericles. Marvin Herrick in his recent and authoritative

work, Iratdcomedv. c a lls P ericles "an early example of the romantic tra g i- 62 comedy that soon became fashionable in En^and, "

Parrott assigns Cvmbeline to Blackfriars on the grounds that

"Shakespeare, it seems, was trying his hand in a new type of drama ... which Beaumont and Fletcher introduced with great success upon the

stage,"^3 and his reasoning appears to be that since that stage was 66. Blackfriars, Shakespeare must have written the play for Blackfriars.

But, as we have seen, Beaumont and Fletcher were far from being success­

ful Blackfriars lEaywri^ts during the period 1604-1609, and they wrote

the f ir s t of th e ir "new type" of dramas, P h ila stey . not only for the

King's Men but for the GEobe. Discussing Cvmbeline further, Parrott says

"as might be expected of a play aimed a t a Blackfriars audience, i t

stresses the scenic and spectacular,"^^ but I have been unable to

attribute any such features in the play to the Blackfriars tradition.

^^Baldwin (Organization and Personnel), pp. 317-318.

^ ^rvin T. Herrick, tragicomedy: Its Origin and Development in I ta ly . France, and England (Champaign, 1955). P. 255.

63,T a rro tt (Comedy), p. 375.

and (Handbook), p.

^^Parrott (fiaillfidl). P. 375. 16?

lik e Parrott, Holaes erroneously a llo ts Cvmbeline to HLackfriars because it was the type of play "that was becoming increasing^ popular as produced by Beaumont and fletdier" and othersSecondly, he assigns it to Blackfriars because in the last scene Shakespeare siqoplies a

"sufficiently com|dicated series of wvelations to satisfy the needs of the HLackfriars playgoer without letting his characters lose their in d iv id u a lity ,"^7 but such plays as Measure for Measure and Perl d e s serve as asqdo evidence that such a "complicated series of revelations" was hardly exdusively HLackfriars fare. Lastly, he argues that Cvmbeline was a HLackfriars play because it contains "a good deal of music, a certain amount of stage spectade and that ?ine qua non of fashionable

Jacobean drama, an interpolated masque.Music^^ and stage spectade, however, were both traditional features at the ŒLobe. The theophany in

Cvmbeline. furthermore, is a vision, a si^ematural event, not—as are a l l o f the masques in the two trad ition s—a form of so cia l entertainment.

In Cvmbeline it is actually the god Jupiter «dio appears (V, iv, 93-119)$ just as in Perides it is actually Diana (V, i, 241-2^). But vAen

"gods" appear in the masques, they are merely impersonated Ty mortals: in

^^Holmes (filblls)* p. 206.

p. 211.

p. 207.

^^In Cvmbeline there are two songs ( I I , i i i , 22-30 and IV, i i , 258-281) as in the Globe play King.Lear (I , i v , 181-184) and i n . i i , 74-77) and three references to instrumental music (II, ill, 20; IV, i i , 186 S. D.; and V, iv , 30 S. D.) as in the Globe play A ntony and CLeonatra (I I , v i i , 1 S. D.; II, vil, 120 S. D.; and IV, i i i , 12 S. D.). 168

Th# Widow'8 Tears, fo r Instance. "%wen" i s Tharsalio's nephew (Argus says to Tharsalio. "your young nephew ••• hangs in the dlouds deified with Hymen's shape." I I I . i i , I 5-I 6 ) and in Your Five Gallants when

FLtsgrave needs "a Heroury" for a masque. Pursenet says h elp fu lly . "I have a boy shall put down all the Mercuries i' / th< town." (IV. v iii.

303-304).

J. Dover VQAson states the case for the vision more impressively.

Relying heavily on Bentley, he believes that Blackfriars was the theatre

Shakespeare had in mind because HLackfriars "served a more sophisticated and more fashionable audience." and because the vision in Cvmbeline "was clearly designed in response" to "the taste of a public nourished on the court masques which, especially after the advent of Inigo Jones in 160?. became the rage o f Jacobean London. But the fa ct remains that the vision in Cvmbeline is a supernatural, not a social, matter.

The arguments of these scholars very properly carried consider­ able weight at one time, but in the light of our present fuller knowledge about the internal evidence bearing on the problem. I think we must conclude that when Shakespeare wrote Cymbeline he probably had in mind ex clu siv ely the Globe theatre.

In passing, both Dover Wilson and Baldwin c a ll atten tion to the date of Qmbellne. Wilson comments that the year Shakespeare wrote the play was the one that the King's Men "began playing at the Blackfriars 71 Theatre as well as at the ŒLobe," and Baldwin says that "the situation"

70 ■ In J. D. W ilson's prefatory note. J. C. Maxwell ( Cvmbeline). p . i x . 169 of the King's Men in l60d "Evidently ... called for effective action on the part of ... Shakespeare himself.But I think one further imme­ d iate value of the conclusion 1 have offered concerning Cvmbeline i s that it raises the question mhether the King's Men really had acquired HLadc- friars by the time Shakespeare wrote Cvmbeline. The mere fact that

Shakespeare wrote lAat certainly appears to be an exclusively SLobe play would, in itself, suggest the possibility that they had not. But the evidence would appear to indicate that he wrote not only a Globe play but one that in certain respects deviated sharply from practices in the

Blackfriars plays. As we have seen, Bentley has argued convincingly that the acquisition of Blackfriars by the King's Men was "a very risky business" and that "Every possible precaution against failure needed to be taken, and although the traditions at the ŒLobe and Blackfriars did not differ as much as he probably thought, the venture could surely s till have proven to be financially disastrous. If so, it was a time for

Shakespeare's company to woo the HLackfriars audience with great care.

It was certainly not an appropriate moment for their ddef dramatist to write a play that deviated radically from practices in dramas that were recently written for them; and yet this study seems to indicate that in

Cvmbeline th is was what Shakespeare did. Since i t i s hardly lik e ly that the timing of Shakespeare and the King's Men was off, it seems to me that we should seriously consider dating Cvmbeline before they would have been significantly concerned about the reactions of the Blackfriars audience.

^^Baldwin fOrganigation and Personn»!^. p. 3 1 4 .

^^Bentley ("Shakespeare and the HLackfriars Theatre"), p. 46. 170

At the beginning of my discufislon of the {day, I indicated that it is possible to date it prior to the time the King*s Men oohld have reasonably thought they might acquire Blackfriars (March, I 6O8 ) and e a sily before the date of the actual acquisition ( 0. August, I 6O8 ); I now suggest that the evidence from this study indicates that the play should be dated perhaps before March and quite surely before August.

Taking all of the evidence into consideration, I think we can probably conclude that Shakespeare wrote Cvmbeline. the first of his final plays, exclu sively for the Globe and that i t looks as though he did so sometime before the King’s Men acquired Blackfriars,

ÆtoJantwls-ïals Although the available evidence seems to indicate that Shakes­ peare wrote Qymbeline before the acquisition of Blackfriars, there can be little doubt that it was after this notable event that he wrote yhe

>a.nter*s Tale. Chambers notes that the "dance of twelve Satyrs" (IV, iv,

352 S. D. ) was evidently "inspired by" a dance in Jenson’s masque called

Oberon. the Faerv Prince, and the date of Jenson’s work was January 1, 1611.75

The external evidence relating to the theatre Shakespeare had in mind is likewise considerably firmer than for Cvmbeline. In the Booke of

7k As we will see, this conclusion is further substantiated by the strik in g change in Shakespeare’s attitu d e toward the Blackfriars trad ition he wrote Tbo.lfftBter’ 8.

75 Chambers (William Shakespeare). I, p. 489. See also Ashley H. Thorndike, "Influence of the Court Masques on the Drama I 6O8 -I 5 ," PHA. XV (1900), 116-119. 171

Fifties Forman specifically identifies the place where he saw The Winter's

Thle performed : “the Winters Talle at the ^ob 16U the 15 of maye .. « "76

If the gooke is authentic (and it surely is), we can reasonably conclude that soon after Shakespeare wrote the play the King's Men performed it at

the Globe. Although this suggests that Shakespeare designed Ihe Winter's

Tale for the Globe, it does not preclude the possibility that he wrote it for HLackfriars as well, and thus we must turn once again to internal evidence.

The Winter's Tale, first of all, is one of Shakespeare^s late romances and since we have seen that Pericles is the only play among the l604-l609 (ZLobe and Blackfriars works that belongs in the same c a t e g o r y , 77

I think we can safely conclude that The Winter's Tale can be broadly

classified as a Globe type of {d.ay. This conclusion derives further siq>port from the fa c t that only at the Globe did characters idio appear onstage die in plays that end happily (e.g., Pericles; V, iii, 95-98), and in The Winter's Tale two such diaracters perish: Mamillius (III, ii,

146) and Antigonus (III, iii, 107-108).

In addition, rather than adopting the usual mathod of curing a defective character in the Blackfriars plays—holding him iq) to ridicule and scorn (e.g.. The Fawn: IV, pp. 203-206), Shakespeare (Aose to eradicate the jealousy of Leontes essentially by the characteristic

Globe method—having him learn by suffering the consequences of h is defect. Leontes suffers not only from the death of his young son

^^Chambers Shakespeare). I I , p. 340. 77see Appendix B. 172

MafldJLUus, a blow he considers to be a result of divine displeasure at

his "injustice" (III, ii, 147-148), but—for "sixteen ye«rs" (IV, i, 6)—

from the agonizing thought that his jealousy has also caused the death of

his dear wife, Hendone (III, ii, 237-239). Only after that extremely

long period can he be termed f u lly cured. He then says to Hermione and

Polixenes, the two he fa ls e ly accused,

both your pardons. That e'er I put between your holy looks Hy ill suspicion. (V, i i i , 147-149)

In his handling of ÿlace and time, Shakespeare likewise seems to

have followed Globe p ractice. He sets the location of the play in two

countries, Sicilia (e.g.. I, i) and Bohemia (e.g.. Ill, iii), and the

minimum duration at "sixteen years" (IV, i, 6), and we have seen that the

virtually unlimited treatment of these matters is a characteristic of

only the Globe se t of p lays.

Furthermore, The Winter's Tale deals with a very broad spectrum

of interests, ranging from the problems of kings down to those of rural

people. We find, for instance, that Leontes is anxious to assure himself

and his subjects that he is a just king rather than a tyrant. At the

beginning of the trial of Hermione he says.

Let us be clear'd Of being tyrannous, since we so opeïüy Proceed is justice, wbich shall have due course. Even to the g u ilt or the purgation. (in, ii, 4-7)

But the concerns in the play include those of people far down the social ladder, country folk. The old shepherd's son, for instance, tries, ineffectually, to handle the problem of purchasing the items needed for a 173 sheep-shaaring feast (IV, iii, 38-125)• The play thus seems to be designed to appeal to an audience with wide ranging interests.

The play also includes characters found only in (xLobe plays. As we have noted, young children were exclusively dLobe fare, such as the child in "Armes" carried onstage in A Yorkshire Tragedy (Sc. V, S. D.) and the young sons of Maoduff (Macbeth. IV, i i ) and Coriolanus (V, i i i ) .

In The VB.nter»s Tale Paulina brings onstage the infant Perdita (II, iii,

26 S. D.), and one of the most interesting characters in the play is the young son of Leontes, Mamillius (I, ii, 120-211 and II, i, 1-32).

Furthermore, the presence of one character in the play would, by itself, virtually prove that Shakespeare wrote The >ftnterls Tale with a public theatre audience in mind. A memorable figure in the play is a clown (Dramatis Personae ; III, iii, 80-142, etc.), a character who, as Autolycus diplomatically puts it , "wants but something to be a reasonable man" (IV, iv , 614- 615), and clowns, as we have seen, ware ex clu siv ely public theatre fare (at the Globe: e.g., Othello. Ill, i and iv; Antony and deon atra. V, i i , 241-281)1

In the area of visual effects, there are two features we may be able to associate with the Globe tradition and one we can confidently assign to it. In The Winter*s Tale there may have been a banquet onstage, because Perdita is "mistress o' the feast" (IV, iv, 68 ) and Polixenes says, "Methinks a father / Is at the nuptial of h is son a guest / That best becomes the tab le." (IV, iv , 404-406). But sin ce the tex t does not include the usual stage direction in Globe plays, sudi as "a banquet prepared" (jPeyioles. II, iii, l), we cannot be certain.

Another visual effect, one of great importance, is likewise troublesome. At a memorable monent in the play Antigonus leaves the 174 stage "pursued by a bear" (I I I , i l l , 58 S. D .), and, as we have seen, among the plays I have considered for this study the only similar sight occurs in an addition made sometime before I 6IO to Muoedoru^. an old public theatre play that was probably in the repertory of the King's Men between 1604 and 1609:

Enter Segasto runing and Amadine a fter him, being persued with a beare. (I, iii, 1 S. D.)

The striking fact that there are bears in both plays has attracted the notice of many scholars,^^ and Chambers, for instance, has said that "The bear [in T heJan terls,T alel perhaps came o rig in a lly from Mucedorus."^^

It is possible, however, that the idea for the animal came partly, or even s o le ly , frmn Jonson's masque called Oberon. a work performed on

January 1 , I 6I I , and one from which Shakespeare probably borrowed the

"dance of twelve Satyrs"; in the masque we find the statement "Oberon, in 80 a chariot ••• drawne by two idiite beares," And even if the idea for the bear did come from Mucedorus. we dare not confidently c la s s ify i t as a GELobe influence, because there is no external evidence that the King's

Men performed the play at the Globe between 1604 and 1609. On balance, however, I think we can conclude that there is something more than a

78 See, e.g.. Chambers (lÆlliam Shakespeare). I, p. 489; Lawrence (tiairScastilML) I pp. 26- 27 ; Parrott (Comedy), pp. 387-388; The VHLnter's Tale, ed s. John Dover Wilson and ArÙiur Quiller-Couch (Cambridge, 1950), pp. 156- 157 , n. on 1 . 58 ; and George F. Reynolds, "Mucedorus. Most Popular Playï" Sfcudias in the Renai«san«# (New ïork, 1959), 262.

Chambers a>nkespeare). I , p. 489. 8û Pril"jtic Works of Ben Jonson. eds. C. H. Herford and Percy Saimpson (Oxford, 1925-1950), VU, p. 351. 11. 295-297. See also n. 75 herein. 175

definite possibility that the bear in %e Winter's Tale was an exclusively

ŒLobe feature. The last Globe feature 1 find in The Vinter's Tale also concerns

the bear. We have seen that sights which induce a feeling of horror

appear only in the Globe plays, and the sig h t of the good old Antigonus

fleeing from the bear and shouting "I am gone for ever" (III, iii, 38 )

surely evokes horror, Nevill Coghill contends that the event comes at a

crucial point in the play, and he arguas not only that the sight evokes

horror but that the horror is mixed with humor and that the juxtaposition

serves an important structural function in the play:

It is at the moment idxen the tale, hitherto ^oU y and deeply tragic, turns suddenly and triumphantly to comedy. One may modulate in music from one key to another through a chord that i s coamon to both; so, to pass from tragedy to canedy, it may not be unskillful to build the bridge out of material that is both tragic and comic at the same time. Now it is terrifying and pitiful to see a bear grapple with and carry off [personally, I find no evidence in the text that the bear does all of this onstage] an elderly man to a dreadful death, even on the stage; but (such is human nature) the unexpectedness of an ungainly animal in pursuit of an old gentleman (especially one so tedious as Antigonus) can a lso seem w ild ly comic; the te r r ib le and the grotesque come near to each other in a frisson of horror instantly succeeded ty a shout of laughter; and so this bear, this unique and perfect link between the two halves of the play, slip s in to place and h old s.81

If Coghill is correct, it looks as though Shakespeare used as a structural

device the same kind of juxtaposition of horror and humor that we noted in Cvmbeline. and both sights that evoke horror and this mixture are

features found only in the Globe set of plays (e.g., A Yorkshire Tragedy.

Sc. IV, 119- 121).

81 N ev ill C oghill, "Six Points of Stage-craft in The VSinteyts M ft» ” SbafeBApgftCfl, S w ïa z . x i ( 1958 ), 34- 33. 176

At this point, a review of the evidence will serve to indicate to lAat extent The Winter’s Tale resembles the typical Globe play. It is one of Shakespeare*s group of dramatic romances, the first one of idiich is Pericles, an extremely successful Globe play, and, as only in the

Globe set of plays, characters tdxo appear onstage die even though the play ends happily. The basic method of curing the errant Leontes is not the satirical technique characteristic of the Blackfriars plays but the

Globe method of having the character lea m to mend h is ways by suffering the consequences of his defect. The treatment of place and time likewise follow s Globe practice because the play takes place in two countries and covers a very long period of time, at least sixteen years. The point of view i s the wide ranging approach of the Globe plays, the problems extending from those of kings down to those of country folk, and the play includes exclusively Globe characters: small children, and, most notably, a down, a uniquely public theatre figure. Lastly, in the area of visual effects there are two possible Globe features, a banquet onstage and a bear, and one we can definitely link with the Globe, a sight designed to evoke horror. From this evidence I think we can safely condude that the Globe trad ition exerted a profound influence on The VB.nter*s Tale.

There remains, however, the question >diether the Blackfriars tradition had any effect on the play. Two striking features shodd alert us to the possibility that lAen Shakespeare wrote The Winter* s Tale he began to take into account the taste of the audience at his company* s newly acquired private th eatre. Although masques were part of both traditions, they are more characteristic of the Blackfriars plays, espedally if they consist of something more elaborate than a dance 177 characters who are wearing masks and even more so if they do not serve to advance the story. In The Winter's Tale there is no masque of any type, but there are two memorable features that seem to be clearly related to elaborate masques. The first is one that is completely unnecessary to the story, the “dance of twelve Satyrs" (IV, iv, 353 S. D.), Chambers and Thorndike note that Shakespeare probably borrowed the idea from

Jonson's elaborate masque named Oberon. which included an anti-masque of

Satyrs,®^ and thus the dance in The Winter's Tale should probably be considered a possible Blackfriars feature. Secondly, elaborate masques also seem to have influenced the unnecessary but justly famous use of a

“statue" in the play. After Paulina draws a curtain (V, i i i , 20; see 1.

59 e t c .) discovering what seems to be a statue of Hermione on some kind of pedestal (“descend" 1. 99)» the work of art suddenly undergoes a transformation and becomes a woman :

'Tis time; descend; be stone no more ; approach; Strike all that look upon with marvel. (V, i i i , 99-100)

Although various ea rlier works of litera tu re may have been the actual 83 sources for the overall idea here, there are sufficient parallels between the details in the transformation scene and those in certain extant elaborate court masques performed about the time The Winter's Tale was w ritten to suggest that the audience would have associated the sigh t with elaborate masques. Thorndike cites, for instance, the use of

82 See n. 75 herein. 83 Ashley H. Thorndike, The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakspere (Worcester, Mass., 1901), p. 146, n. 6: Lyly's Woman in the Moon and Marston's Pygmalion's Image; Fafford (The Winter's Tale, p. xxxiv; A1cestis and Ovid's Metamorphoses. 178 Oh statues in The Masque of the Inner Teacle and Gray's Inn, dated l6l3.

'Where thefollowing lines appear:

I r is . Behold the Statues lAich wild Vulcan plac'd %der the A ltar of Olympian Jove, And gave to them an artificial life: ShsQl daunee for joy of these great N uptialls: See how they move, drawn by this Heavenly joy. Like the wild Tree, which followed Orpheus Harp* [The Statues come down, and they a ll dance ..

But two others include parallels that are closer yet. In Tethv's

Festival, dated 1610, we find that a "curtains" was drawn to discover, among other things, "on eyther side ... a great statue of twelve foot high, representing Neptune and Nereus," and this real statue rested on

"pedestals,Furtherm ore, in The Lord's Mask, dated I 613, there suddenly "appeared four noble women-statues of silver, standing in several n i dies"; shortly la te r Prometheus leads them down and f i l l s "their breasts with love's desires," and "the masquers court the four new trans­ formed la d ies Although The Lord's Masjc and the ones mentioned by ühomdike date after The ludjn-^er's Tale, the use of statues in these extant masques bears sufficient similarity to that in the transformation scene in The Winter' s Tale to suggest that we should classify the sight in the play as masque-like. Since both the dance of the satyrs and the

8^ Thorndike in (InflWRM), p. 146, n. 6 also cites The Golden ______I, dated I 6I 6 , where "the EuLUs" were tumod in to statues (Works of Jonson). VII, p. 423, U . 69-76. 85 The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, eds. Arnold Glover and A. H. Waller (Cambridge, 1905-1912), X, p . 284, 86 The,Complete Works of Daniel, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (London, 1885-1886), III, pp. 310- 311, 11. 32- 44. 87 The Works of Dr. Thmnas Campion, ed. A. H. Bullen (London, 1889), pp. 200-201. 179 use of a "statue" are features that are uuneoessary to the story and that we can associate with elaborate masques, I think we should start with the assumption that the Blackfriars tradition may very well have influenced

The likelihood grows stronger, moreover, lAen we note that the play seems to include a number of other features we can associate quite confidently with the Blackfriars plays. The first notable departure from the dLobe norm is that the general structure of The Winter*s Tale appears to be that of a typical Blackfriars play. We have seen that whereas the characteristic Globe drama consists of one plot, the typical Blackfriars play includes both a main plot and a loosely connected secondary one that focuses on a character of particular in te r e s t. In TheJfQ.nter*s Tale. interestin^y enough, we find not only the story of Leontes, Hermione,

Polixenes, and their children but an essentially independent subplot that concentrates primarily on the memorable Autolycus. This character, of course, has some relevance to the main story. He says he has been

Florizel's servant in the past (IV, iii, 13-14; Florizel himself, however, shows no sign of remembering th is [IV, iv , 657-681]), and, as Pafford notes, he has two e ffe c ts on the main p lot:

He influences the action first in compulsorily providing Plorizel’s disguise to assist him to reach the ship, and next in deflecting the Shejdierd and down from their pro­ posed visit to the king and getting them on board.88

®®Pafford (The Winter*s Tale), pp. Ix x ix -lx x x . 180

But th is i s hardly what makes Autolycus memorable. As Pafford says, "Autolycus is a vivid character Wio has little to do with the plot ... "^9

However ingeniously we may try to firmly relate him and the parts of the play he dominates (IV, iii; IV, iv, 220-330, 603-8?4) to the rest of the play, I think we must admit that they remain essentially an independent focal point of interest, and a structure with such a peculiarity is a characteristic of the typical Blackfriars play. Furthermore, Autolycus himself seems to be a type of character that would have appealed to the Blackfriars audience. Pafford has suggested that Perhaps a l i t t l e of Merrythought from The Knitdit of the Burning Pestlft [one of the 1604-1609 HLa«friars plays"J was at the back of Shakespeare's mind when he was creating Autolycus,90 and certainly part of the pleasure we derive from this character can be traced to the merry songs he sings^ But the lion's share comes from the fact that he is a delightful coneycatcher, and, as we have seen, in the two sets of plays the only character of this type is Cocledemoy in the

Blackfriars play The Dutch Courtesan.

The connection between Autolycus and Cocledemoy was noted long ago by H. Harvey Vbod. Although he was in error about the d irection of

89 go Ibid.. p. xxvi. ^ ibid.", p. XXXV.

^^Pafford says that "Autolycus often echoes Merrythought" (Ibid.. pp. Ixxx-lxxxi, n. 7 ), and he cites numerous examples. 181

the influence» he vas surely correct in the remainder of his statement

about Cocledemoy:

• •• in the rich development of the character of this admirable rascal it seems possible to trace the influence of Shakespeare's Autolycus*92

Classified by Mulligrub as the "conicatching Cocledemoy" (I, i, p. 72),

Marston's character is a thief—he steals, for instance, Mulligrub's money bag (II , i , p, 96 ). He i s a pickpocket—he "picks Malhereuxes

pocket of his purse" (V, i, p. 133 S, D,).^^ And he is a confidence man-

pretending to be a goldsmith's servant, for instance, he neatly relieves Mrs. Mulligrub of a new goblet and a portion of salmon (III, i, pp. 106-

110). But, throughout, Cocledemoy i s a delight—lAat he has done "has

bin only Euphoniae gra tia , for Wits sake" (V, i , p* 136), and Wood thus

certain ly c la ss ifie s him adeptly as an "admirable rascal."

Autolycus, likewise, is a coneycatcher: as Pafford notes,

"Shakespeare almost certainly used Greene's Cony-catching Pamphlets" as

sources for some of the character's ex p lo its.L ik e Cocledemoy,

Autolycus is a thief—"a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles" (IV, ii,

26). He, too, is a pickpocket—his main victim is the down (IV, iii,

80, 126-127 ), but others are guests at the sheep-shearing feast: priding

himself on his accomplishments, he says, "I picked and cut most of their

92 / The Plays of John Marston. ed, H. Harvey Wood (London, 1934- 1939), II, p. xvi.

9 3 For some reason, pockets are picked only in the HLackfriars set of plays: besides The Dutch Courtesan. Your Five Gallants (II. i, 120 So D .), and The_Fawn (V, p . 192).

^^Pafford (The, Winter's Tale), p. xxxiv; discussed in detail pp. xxxiv-xxxv. 182 festival purses" (IV, iv, 626). And he, as well as Cocledemoy, is a memorable confidence man—in order to gain easy access to the clown*s purse, he pretends that his “shoulder-blade is out" (IV, iii, 78), and at the feast in order to learn “whose purse was best in picture" (IV, iv,

613) he pretends to be a “pedlar" (IV, iv, 181, 606-6l4), But, through­ out, Autolycus—like Codedemqy—is a delight. Pafford states the case very effectively:

On the stage the crimes of Autolycus are hardly felony at all; they are primarily tridcs: that the down should be robbed is almost as if he had slipped on a piece of orange peel or as if Autolycus, with appropriate patter, had per­ formed a conjuring tr ic k . For Autolycus has the great over­ riding virtue of being merry-hearted: and he is an in telli­ gent rogue, a schemer of ability: he excites admiration and provokes laughter at the same time ...95

Furthermore, although Shakespeare relied extraordinarily heavily on Greene*s Pandosto as he wrote The VB.nter*s Tale, he added a l l of the memorable features of Autolycus. In a careful examination of the rela­ tionship between the play and the main source, Pafford observes that

Shakespeare took Pandosto and worked at it carefully, quarrying m aterial from i t for a play ju st as he had worked with Lodge * s Rosalvnde. Plutarch, Holinshed and other sources . 96

While doing so, Shakespeare took a character from Pandosto called Capnio and divided his plot functions between Camillo and Autolycus, but he independently developed Autolycus into a delightful coneycat cher.97

^^Ibid.. pp. Ixxx-lxxxi. ^^Ibld.. p. xxvii. 97 Pafford says, “Autolycus is mainly Shakespeare*s invention but is to some extent built from Capnio with the aid of Greene's coney- catching rogues ..." (Ibid.. p. xxx; see also pp. xxviii-xxx). 183

In shorty there Is some evidence to suggest that Shakespeare, in the first fiLay he wrote after his company had acquired Blackfriars, departed from his source in order to introduce a type of character that he had reason to believe would be popular with the HLackfriars audience.

It appears, then, that in Ihe %nter's Tale Shakespeare used the characteristic Blackfriars structure and focused on a figure that would have appealed to the Blackfriars clientele. There is, however, a peculiar phenomenon involved, Shakespeare did not choose as the primary victim of

Autolycus a HLackfriars type of character (in The Dutch Courtesan

Cocledemoy>s victim s are a repugnant citizen and h is w ife) but a d istin c - 98 t iv e ly Globe character and another figure he added to the play, a down. In a play for a company operating both Blackfriars and the Globe, then, Shakespeare has a Blackfriars character gull a GLobe character.

This curious compounding of HLackfriars and Globe features is a process we might call "fusion, "—and Shakespeare seems to have used it with every other Blackfriars feature in The Winter!s Tala.

He apparently applied the process to Autolycus in one other way.

Although Marston passed no moral judgment n h is d elig h tfu l coneycatcher— he neither punished him nor had him plan to reform, Shakespeare had his similar character at least say that he will mend his ways.

Clown. Thou w ilt amend thy lif e ? Autolycus. Ay, an it like your good worship,,.. Clown. ... I would thou wouldst be a tall fellow of ^ y hands, Autolycus, I will prove so, sir, to my power, (V, i i , 167-182)

,, p, xxix. 184

Shakespeare here may well have been reaoting to the same pressure from

the Globe audience that seems to have prompted Jonson in his Globe pL&y

Volpone to pass judgment on h is great coneycatchers Volpone and Mo sea (V, x ii, 107-125). If so, Shakespeare*s choice to have his "admirable rascal" say he w ill reform would be another example of fusion.

Curiously enough, the character to idiom Autolycus says he will mend h is ways and the onelAo has been h is main victim , the down, seems

also to be a product of fusion. He is not only an exdusively ŒLobe

character, a clown, he is also a standard Bladkfriars character, an

unworthy u p start. During the play he r ise s to the exalted status of gentleman, but he exhibits, with blazing clarity, that he is manifestly

unqualified for his new status. For instance, idiUe speaking to Autolycus he says.

Clown, You denied to fig h t with me this other day, because I was no gentleman bom. See you these dothest say you see them not and think me s till no gentleman born: you were best say these robes are not gentlemen bom: give me the lie , do, and try whether I am not now a gentleman born, Autolycus, I know you are now, sir, a gentleman born, down. Ay, and have been so any time these four hours, (V, i i , 138-148)

Since we can reasonably srq>pose that this abuse of an upstart wodd have offended the Globe audience, i t looks at f i r s t glance as though Siakes- peare's treatment of the down wodd have been objectionable to them. As a matter of fa c t, however, Shakespeare seems to have handled the problem very d e ftly . His making fun of an unworthy upstart wodd have probably pleased Blackfriars spectators, but since he chose a down, a character no ŒLobe patron codd have considered worthy of the status of a gentleman. 185 h is treatment would surely not have offended Globe spectators. With the sk ill of a master mariner, Shakespeare apparently avoided both Sqrlla and

Chaxybdis.

Shakespeare evidently had one further use for the clown in carry­ ing out idiat seems to have been a highly conscious application of the principle of fusion. Only in the HLackfriars plays do we find characters who have recently risen in status ostentatiously parading their new clothing; in Eastward Ho. for instance, the upstart Gertrude dresses in

"the lady-fashion" and "trips about the stage" (I, ii, 60; I, ii, 62 S. D.). In The Winter's Tale the clown and his father, both of idiom have recently attained the rank of gentlemen, come onstage wearing "the blossaas of their fortune" (V, ii, 135)t and, as we have seen, the clown says to Autolycus: See you these clothes? say you see them not and think me still no gentleman bom: you were best say these robes are not gentlemen born: (V, ii, 140-142)

L astly, Shakespeare seems also to have used the technique of fusion in his treatment of Leontes. The question of idiethor he provides a motive for the intense jealousy of Leontes has long been a matter of controversy among Shakespeare scholars,^ but the fact that the problem exists is ample evidence that Shakespeare did not provide Leontes with dearly adequate motivation. Furthermore, a comparison between The Winter*s Tale and Shakespeare*s main source, Pandosto. shows that he

99 See, for instance, pp. Ivi-lviii. 186 rejaotad the motivation offered by Greene I t would thxis seem that Shakespeare deliberately chose to create a character who is causelessly jealous, a figure that conforms to Bmilia's definition of "jealous souls”: They are not ever jealous for the cause. But jealous for they are jealous : 'tis a monster Begot upon it s e lf , born on itself* (Qiballa, i n , iv , 160-162)^°^ But why would Shakespeare, a genius at motivation, have done th is! This study leads me to suggest that he did so because the King's Ken were operating Blackfriars as well as thé Globe at the time, and, as we have seen, humour characters—a species that dramatists did not need to motivate—and especially one type, causelessly jealous husbands, such as Zuecone in The Fawn, were virtually standard features in ELadcfriars plays. I submit, therefore, that at the beginning of the play Leontes is, in essence, a humour character, a causelessly jealous husband.^^^ Interestingly enough, however, Shakespeare did not cure him by the Black­ friars method of ridicule, the technique Marston, for instance, applies to Zuccone in The Fawn (IV. pp. 203-206); he cured him, as we have seen earlier, essentially by the Globe method of having him suffer for some

Pafford eoBuents that "Greene . . . makes Pandosto's jealousy understandable ..." (Ibid. . p. xxxii). See The life and Complete Works of Robert Greene, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (London, 1881-1883), IV, pp. 235-238, or Pafford (The Winter's Tale), pp. 185-186, e.g., "Bellaria ... oftentimes coming herself into his bed chamber to see that nothing should be amiss to ndslike him." ^^^Noted also by Pafford (ïïbü., p. Ixxii, n. 3). 102 Although the word "humour" had several different meanings, I . think we should probably conclude that when Shakespeare had Paulina refer to Leontes* jealousy as "that humour / That presses him from sleep" (II, i i i , 38-39). he was stating that Leontes is a humour character. 187 sixteen years from the consequences of his jealousy. Shakespeare thus evidently cured a Blackfriars character by the SLobe method, and this appears to be another example of fu sion .

Given the current traditions at the ŒLobe and Blackfriars theatres, then, the evidence Indicates that there are various features In

The vanter*6 Tale that we should probably associate with the Blackfriars tradition. These Include three visual effects, two masque-llke features

(the dance of the twelve satyrs and the statue scene) and the ostentatious parading of clothing by characters idxo have recently risen In social status; one structural peculiarity, a loosely connected secondary plot that focuses on a particularly Interesting figure; and three distinctive kinds of characters, a delightful coneycatcher, an unworthy upstart, and a causelessly jealous husband. These HLackfriars features do not, of course, make The Winter's Tale radically different from Shakespeare's two earlier ŒLobe romantic tragicomedies, Perld es and Ovmbellne. but certain of then do have rather marked effects on the play.

First of all, contrary to his practice In Pericles and Ovmbellne but paralleling that of various HLackfriars playwrights, Shakespeare

Introduced masque-llke features that have no necessary relationship to the story, and, as a result. In The_Wlnter's Tale be placed an unchar­ acteristic amount of stress on spectade as an end In Itself. In the second place. In contrast to h is practice In h is two e a r lie r romances but like that of many HLackfriars playwrights, he arranged the structure of

The Winter's Tale In such a way that It provided an opportunity to exhibit a character idio Is not essential to the story, and, consequently, Shakes­ peare focused an unusual amount of attention In The Winter's Tale on a 188

character who serves as an essentially independent source of entertainment

in himself. Lastly, one Blackfriars feature seems to have significantly

affected the major center of in te r e st in The Winter*s Tale. In Shiüces-

peare's earlier plays as a lAole he characteristically motivated with

meticulous care the behavior of his major figures, such as Othello, the

jealous husband in a considerably more serious play. At Blackfriars, on the other hand, it was a common practice to attribute the behavior of a / character to some postulated disposition or humour. In The %nter*s

Tale, as critics have repeatedly pointed out, Shakespeare did not provide

his central figure (the jealous Leontes) with adequate motivation for his

actions, and thus, contrary to his customary procedure, Shakespeare did

not concern himself in The Winter's Tale with an explanation of idiy a

character behaves as he does but concentrated almost fu ll attention on

the results of his behavior. It would appear, therefore, that idiile writing The Winter's Tala Shakespeare departed from his earlier practice in three important respects, that the changes were all in the direction

of practices at Blackfriars, and that the three had significant effects on the play.

Although I w ill discuss other values of this evidence in Chapter

IV, I wish to note here first of all that the conclusions I have drawn

concerning the influence of the Globe and Blackfriars traditions on The

Wintey*s Tale would, seem to indicate >hat audience Shakespeare had in mind idien he wrote the play. The evidence appears to show that Shakespeare chose to write The Winter's lAle largely according to the Globe pattern but that in certain respects he departed from his earlier practice in order to introduce Blackfriars features, united nearly all of them with 189

Globe featu res, and thereby wrote a play that d iffe r s in sig n ifica n t ways

from the Globe romances P ericles and Cvmbeline. Since i t i s hardly lik e ly

that Shakespeare would have done this unless he had in mind the audiences

at both theatres, I believe we can probably conclude that he designed

Xhe W inter's Tale as a dual-purpose play. Inasmuch as the Globe features

bulk much greater in number and effect than the HLackfriars ones, how­

ever, 1 think we should conclude further that Shakespeare entered the

dangerous waters of the dual-purpose play with some caution. It would probably be best, therefore, to classify The Winter's Tale as an

experimental dual-purpose play.

Some scholars have assigned The Winter’s Tale exclusively to

ELackffiars, however, and a few of these have presented arguments. At

the end of the section devoted to Cvmbeline. I discussed the positions of

those who assign Shakespeare's dramatic rcmiances as a group to Black­

fr ia r s. One commentator has offered two arguments for placing The

Winter's Tale there. Parrott believes that

the last scene of The Winter's Tale, the unveiling of the statue, was evidently planned for the indoor theatre where the possibility of brilliant^® 3 lighting on the inner stage of a darkened house would make the discovery more effective

1 certainly agree that the scene would have been, and doubtless was,

"more effective" at HLackfriars, but since this would surely be true of

103 Incidentally, Nicoll comments on this statement: "There was no 'brilliant lighting' in the early theatres: the sole means of illum ination was by candle-light." ("Shakespeare and the Court Masque," p . 5^).

^^^Parrott (Comedy), p. 381. 190

any discovery scene» and there were several in the Globe playsI do

not b eliev e that we can consider the statue scene by i t s e l f to be con­

clusive evidence that the play was written solely for Blackfriars.

Parrott adds also that The Winter*s Tale is a true Blackfriars comedy 1 of sensations and surprises," But in Pericles, for instance, the

range of sensations includes the excitement of the storm scene (111, i),

the pathos of Marina's situation ("This world to me is like a lasting

storm ..." IV, i, 20), and the wonder evoked by the presence of a goddess

onstage (V, i, 241-250). Furthermore, in Pericles Cerimon's revival

(ill, ii, 93) of the "dead" (ill, i, 18) Thaisa would certainly rank as

an extraordinary surprise. On the basis of the total available body of

external and internal evidence, 1 think we should probably conclude that

Shakespeare wrote The VB.nter*s Tale for the Globe as well as for

Blackfriars.

One scholar has recently argued that Shakespeare wrote T)ie

Winter's Tale exclusively for the Globe. Holmes finds idiat he considers

to be Blackfriars fare in the play, but he suggests that the Globe

audience would have been "eager to see something of the special features

^For instance, in the Globe play The Revenger's.Tragedy Antonio discloses the corpse of his wife: "DLscouering the body of her dead to certaine Lords ..." (1, iv, 1 8. D.). In Pericles, a work of the same general type as The Winter's Tale. Helicanus surely draws the curtain of the inner stage to reveal the disconsolate Pericles; he says, "Behbl.V him." (V, i , 36), and Hoeniger observes that "In Shakespeare's th eatre, the inner stags with its curtain would have been the natural place for such a discovery ..." (Perides, p. 140, n. on 1. 35).

^°^arrott (gSBSdz), P. 381. 191 associated nith" the Blackfriars "productions of the King's Men" and that

Shakespeare complied. This fare consists of two elements :

••• a musical interlude at the shearing-feast, when Autolycus and two shepherdesses sing their merry ballad to the tune of "Two maids wooing a man" [IV, iv, 294] and a dance of twelve satyrs to do duty for the fashionable entertainment of the masque.107

I would grant that the song may have been designed for the same audience

Beaumont had in mind vhen he introduced the ballads sung by Merrythought in Ihe Knight of the Burning Pestle and that the masque-like dance was probably influenced by the HLackfriars tradition, and I would grant further that the presence of a few such isolated features could Indicate that Shakespeare introduced them to esdilbit Blackfriars fare to the

Globe audience. But inasmuch as th is study in d icates that the Blackfriars features which Shakespeare introduced in The Vinter's.Tale materially affected the nature of the play, I think that the more probable conclu­ sion is that he wrote the play for both theatres

The evidence supplied The Winter's Tale may have one further bearing on the question of what audience or audiences Shakespeare had in mind vhèn he wrote his last plays. Since it seems to show that Shakes­ peare's attitude toward the Blackfriars tradition shifted sharily between the time he wrote Cvmbeline. in vhlcb. he deviated from various Blackfriars

^^Holmes (Public), pp. 212-213.

^^^t appears that Holmes, understandably enough, wished to try to reconcile what he found in the play with the fa c t that Forman's Booke of Plaies records a ULoiae performance (Ibid. . p. 212), but evidence that the play was presented at the Globe does not prove that Shakespeare wrote it solely for that theatre. 192 practices, and The Winter's Tale, and since we would expect his attitude to change a fter h is company had to take the in ter ests of the Blackfriars audience into consideration, I believe we should consider the evidence from The Winter's Tale to be a further indication that Shakespeare wrote

Cvmbeline sometime before the King's Men acquired B lackfriars.

The total pattern of available external and internal evidence would thus seem to indicate that Shakespeare wrote the first of his last five plays, Cvmbeline. exclusively for the Globe and that he wrote (though experimentally) the second of the five, The_VBLnter*s Tale, for both the

GLobe and B lackfriars.

The Tempest

When Shakespeare began to envision the play that we usually consider to be the last of his series of dramatic romances, The Tempest, he had apparently written two for the Globe, Pericles and CvmbeHn?. and one for both theatres, Thq Winter's Tale. %th this experience, he could ea sily enough have designed The Tempest for the GLobe or for both theatres, or he could even have decided to write it exclusively for

Blackfriars. tbfortunately, in the case of this particular play we have no^^ external evidence to help us determine what he did, and, therefore, we must rely wholly on internal evidence.

As we w ill see, th is data seems to show that Shakespeare drew heavily on both traditions. Under these circumstances a lesser dramatist

^John Dryden stated in the preface (dated I 669) to his adapta­ tion of The Tempest that "The Flay it self had formerly been acted with success in the Black-Friers :" The Tempest, oy tfre Enchanted Island (London, 1676 ; a reprint of the l6?4 version); but we have no way of know­ ing tdien "formerly" was nor whether the play was also performed at the Globe. 193 might have written a play that consisted essentially of a hodge-podge of heterogeneous features, and yet, remarkably enough, Shakespeare managed to produce one of his very finest plays « It was an achievement that deserves to be classified as a triumph of dramaturgical magic. We will go behind the scenes to watch Shakespeare, the master magician, at work, and we w ill see that his secret seems to have been to introduce only a few of the distinctive features from each tradition in an essentially pure state and then to integrate the remainder by means of the technique he employed ejcperimentally in Ihe Winter's Tale, the device I have called fu sion .

Four SLobe features in The Tempest do not seem to be fused to any significant extent with Blackfriars fare, and they are all primarily visual effects. The first scene is set aboard a ship at sea, and the play opens in a striking and memorable way: the stage direction reads,

a tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard. (I, i, S. D.)

As we have seen, the only parallel in the two sets of dramas occurs in the Globe play P ericles : at one point the t i t l e character i s on board a ship at sea, and he describes with stark vividness the thunder and lightning :

Thou god of this great vast, rebuke these surges. Which wash both heaven and hell; and thou, that hast Upon the winds command, bind them in brass. Having call'd them from the deep! 0, still Thy deafening thunders; gently quench Thy nimble, sulphurous flashesi (ni, i, 1-6) 194

In ^e_Tenroest Shakespeare also Included a banquet onstage» tdilch is another exclusively ŒLobe feature (e.g., "a banquet prepared," Perides.

II, iii S. D.)j Enter several strange Shapes, bringing in a banquet ... (n i, iii, 20 S. D.) A short time later, and periodically during the play, we find a third

Globe ingredient: vanishing beings (Macbeth. I , i i i , 79-80). For example, the "Shapes" that bring in the banquet vanish (III, iii, 40), and, subse­ quently, Ariel "vanishes in thunder” (III, iii, 83 S. D.), The last e sse n tia lly pure ŒLobe feature i s a comic one that seems to duplicate in considerable measure a memorable visual effect in Jonson's ŒLobe play yolpone. In The Tempest Trinoulo escapes from a storm by climbing under

Caliban's "gaberdine" (II, ii, 39-40), and, on seeing the result,

Stephano thinks it is "some monster of the isle with four legs" (II, ii,

6?). In Volpone Sir P o litic tr ie s to escape from some men by getting under a "tortoyse-shell" (V, iv , 54), and, viewing the sig h t, the f ir s t merchant asks, "What beast i s this*" (V, iv , 65),

Shakespeare may also have introduced two Blackfriars features that are not significantly integrated with Globe fare. First of all, a virtuous woinan may possibly speak surprisingly candidly sbc'nt her desire for sexual r ela tio n s. In answer to Ferdinand's question "Wherefore weep you?" Miranda says.

At mine unworthiness that dare not offer What I desire to give, and much less take What I shall die to want. But this is trifling; And all the more it seeks to hide itself. The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunningI And prompt me, plain and holy innocence* I am your wife, if you w ill marry me; 195 If not, 1*11 die your maid: to be your fellow You may deny me; but I 'll be your servant, Whether you w ill or no, ( i n , i , 77 -86 )

Whether Miranda i s expressing an in terest in having sexual relation s i s

ultimately a matter of interpretation, but if she is, I would suggest that one reason Shakespeare included this statement was that in the

Blackfriars set of plays some virtuous women speak very candidly about their desire for sexual intercourse. Sophonisba, for instance, lAile preparing for her wedding night, says to her servant Zanthia:

I hate these figures in locution. These about phrases forc'd by ceremonie; We must s t i l l seeme to fLie what we most seeke And hide our selves from that we faine would find us. (Sophonisba, I, i, p. 11)

Certain of the unmarried heroines are even more frank. Dulcimel, in The

says,

what burthen is there so heavy to a Porters backe, as Virginity to a well-com;d.ectioned young Ladies thou^ts? (Ill, p. 182) and in The Isle of finlls Hippolita comments,

by this stone, methinks I long like a woman with c h ild t i l l I know the difference betwixt a maid and a w ife. (II, iv, p. 47)

In the Blackfriars plays we have also noted that witty dialogue ranks as a considerably more importât feature than in the ŒLobe plays and that the HLackfriars playwrights would introduce it with little or no

concern about i t s relevance to the story. In The Tempest, two portions of II, i (1-105 and 142-190) consist of repartee between Sebastian and

Antonio at the expense of Gonzalo, and Shakespeare seems to have designed the sections as examples of witty dialogue. Early in the scene Sebastian 196

says of Gonkalo, "Look, he 's winding up the watch of his wit; by / and

by it will strike." (II, i, 12-13), and he and Antonio obviously wish to

show that they are wittier than he is. Their jests are certainly not very

im pressive, but the two portions of the play do seem to be designed as

witty repartee. Furthermore, the handling of one topic parallels the

treatment of the same general subject in the HLackfriars play The Widow's

Tears. Antonio and Sébastian select Gonzalo as the butt of their jokes,

and th eir gibes reach a climax during th eir running commentary on the

absurd utopia Gonzalo would make of the island i f he were king (I I , i ,

143- 169); for exançjle, Gonzalo says,

I , the commonwealth I would by contraries Execute all things; for no kind of traffic Would I admit; no name of magistrate; Letters should not be known; riches, poverty. And use of service, none; contract, succession. Bourn, bound of land, t i l t h , vineyard, none; No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil; No occiQ>ation; a l l men id le , a ll; And women too, but innocent and pure; No sovereignty;— Sebastian. Yet he would be king on * t. ( n , i , 147 -156)

In The Widow's Tears the Governor of Cyprus, the proponent of another

absurd utopia, is likewise the butt of a running commentary by two wits

(Tharsalio and Argus):

GOv. ... I’ll turn all topsy-turvy, and set xç a new discipline amongst you. I’ll cut off all perished members. Thars. [aside] That’s the eurgeon’s office.... Gov. I w ill spew drunkenness out o f’ th ’ city— Thars 0 [aside] Into th’ country. Gov. Shifters shall chsat and starve, and no man shall do good but where there i s no need. Braggarts sh a ll live at the head, and the tumult that haunt taverns. 197 Asses shall bear good qualities* and wise men shall use them* I will iMp lechery out of* th* city; there shall be no more cuckolds. They that hereto­ fore were errant eornutos, shall now be honest shop­ keepers* and justice shall take place. I will hunt jealousy out of my dominion.... 1*11 have no more beggars. Fools shall have wealth* and the learned sh all liv e by th eir w its. 1*11 have no more bankrouts.... To conclude* I will cart pride out of* th* town. Arg. An*t please your honour* pride* an*t be ne'er so beggarly* w ill look for a coach. (V* iii* 285-322)

Commenting on one set of lines in the two sections* Kermode says*

. . . nowhere in Shakespeare* not even h is le s s intensive work* is there anything resembling the apparent irrelevance of lines 73-97 [75-101 in Craig's edition]. It is a possible inference that our frame of reference is badly adjusted* or incomplete ...^ ®

I suggest that "our frame of reference" for not only this group of lines but the en tire two section s (II* i* 1-105 and 142-190) has been "incom­ plete" and that at least part of the missing frame is that irrelevant witty dialogue was exceptionally popular at Blackfriars.

Although Shakespeare introduced into The Tempest a few of the distinctive features from each tradition in an essentially pure form* he seems to have integrated the remainder by applying the principle of fusion. F irst of a ll* The_Tempest i s one of Shakespeare's la te romances* and since he wrote the earliest of the grotq>* Pericles, for the CELobe* it is* broadly speaking* a Globe type of play; but one way in which The

Tempest d iffe r s from h is three previous romances i s that there are no deaths. One could argue that deaths would be inappropriate in the play

^^Kermode (The Tempest), pp. 46-47* n. on 1 . 74. 198 because Prospère wields almost absolute power and he concludes that "the rarer action is / In virtue than in vengeance" (V, i, 27-28),^ but since by precept and practice characters who appear onstage do not die in

Blackfriars plays that end happily, I think that probably at least one reason Shakespeare chose to diverge from his usual procedure and write a play in idiich deaths were inappropriate was that he thought it would

112 please the Blackfriars audience. If so, Shakespeare applied a HLack­ friars precept to a ŒLobo type of play, and this indicates that he utilized the principle of fusion.

In addition, Shakespeare seems to have included in the intricately woven character of Prospero, the central figure in The Tempest, one significant strand from each tradition. In the first place, he is a benevolent man with supernatural powers that he has acquired through devoted study. While narrating a series of past events to Miranda early

^Kermode says, "the virtue of forgiveness ... supplants revenge as the duty of the courtier." (The Tempest, p. l i i i ) , 112 Although one can argue in this instance that to Fletcher the lack of deaths was a positive requirement for a l^ay that ends happily— he said that even a "tragie-comedy ... wants deaths" (Waller edition. Vol. I I , p. 522), it is dangerous, of course, to base arguments on the absence of evidence. As a general policy, I have resisted the temptation to comment on the absence of certain traditional GB.obe and Blackfriars features in Shakespeare*s last plays, but I wish to record my belief that besides fusion Shakespeare employed one other major principle vhen w riting dual-purpose plays, one that might be called "exclusion." In Ihe Tempest, for instance, in spite of unlimited opportunity and in contrast to his practice in Cvmbeline and The Winter's Tal^. Shakespeare seems to have excluded one strik in g Globe feature, sigh ts designed to evoke horror. Wly this should be true I cannot say with any certainty because there could have been many possible reasons, but it seems inherently likely that in w riting a fu ll-fle d g e d dual-purpose play an author would have excluded features that might have proven significantly offensive to either audience. 199 in the play, Prospero says that he neglected "worldly ends" and was "all dedicated / To closeness and the bettering of my mind" (I, ii, 89-90);

"my lib r a r y ," he points out, "Was dukedom large enough" (I , i i , IO9-IIO); and late in the play, during a magnificent preview, of his future life , he sta te s, clim a ctica lly , what he intends to do with the major key to h is supernatural power:

And deeper than did ever plummet sound 1*11 drown my book, (V. i , 56- 57 )

Among the two se ts o f p lays, we have seen that there i s ju st one benevo­ le n t man who has derived supernatural powers ty means of study and th is i s Cerimon in the Globe play Peri d e s He comments,

*Tis known, I ever Have studied physic, through which secret art. By turning o*er authorities, I have. Together with my practice, made familiar To me and to my aid the blest infusions That dwell in vegetives, in m etals, stones; And I can speak of the disturbances That nature works, and of her cures, lAich doth give me A more content in course of true delight Than to be thirsty after tottering honour ... (II I, i i , 31- ^ )

At the same time, however, another major strand of Prospero*s character seems to have been derived from the Blackfriars tra d itio n . We

113 £ . K. Chambers has commented that "You cannot d isso cia te . . . Cerimon from Prospero ..." f^hft|c*»«PAane: A Survey [London, 1925]» p. 286), and Pettet says that in The Tempest "Shakespeare gave over his play for the f i r s t time to the enchantments of a wizard" and "perhaps" used "Cerimon as his prototype." (Romance Tradition, p. l64). 114 It is at least a possibility that Glorin in the Blackfriars play TheFaithful Shepherdess struck a responsive note in the Blackfriars audience despite the fact that the play as a whole failed. Sie, as noted in n. 82, Chapter II, is a benevolent woman with supernatural powers, though she derives them e sse n tia lly from her v ir g in ity rather than from study. 200 have seen that In the Blackfriars plays one type of character regularly solves most of the problems, and since he normally does so through some type of intrigue, I have called him the hero-intriguer. Like this standard Blackfriars figure,Prospero manages to solve the important problems in Thq y^qpest. and he does so largely by means of deft maneuvers from behind the scenes. In fact, his kinship to his Blackfriars counter­ parts is, in some cases, strikingly dose. like Hercules in The Fawn

(I, i, pp. 147-148 and V, p. 211), he brings about the marriage of his offsp rin g, lik e Altofronto in Thm MalcontAnt (V, iv , p. 213), he succeeds in regaining his dukedom. In fact, one Blackfriars hero-intriguer manages to bring about both the marriage of his offspring and recover his dukedom. Antifront, a deposed duke in The Fleire. wishes to marry his daughters to respectable men and to become the ruler once again (II,

4-70-481), and he succeeds in accomplishing both goals (V, 277-304).

In carrying out his purposes in the play, Prospero*s major assistant is Ariel, and in important respects Ariel’s character also appears to have resulted from the process of fusion. He is, first of all, a traditional Globe figure, a notably loyal servant. He not only complies readily with Prospero*s orders (his master calls him, for instance, "ray industrious servant," IV, i, 33), he is independently resourceful. When the Boatswain reports that the wrecked ship is once again seaworthy, Ariel says to Prospero, "Sir, all this service/ Have I

115 As we have seen in Chapter I I , the hero-intriguer i s almost a standard feature in the HLackfriars plays, but the character is not wholly absent from the Globe dramas. Challener and Harbart in The Fair Majid of Bristow could be so classified, and, most notably, the Duke in Measure for.Measure. 201 done since 1 went," and Prospero is so amazed that he almost explodes with admiration: "My tricksy spiritI" (V, i, 225-226),

But Ariel's character, like that of Prospero, seems to have à

Blackfriars component. An important one of h is many^^ strands i s paralleled only, among the two sets of plays, in the character of the

Satyr in the Blackfriars play The Faithful Shepherdess.^'^ Like Ariel, the Satyr aids a person who has supernatural powers to cure d efective characters: e.g., he pinches Alexis thrice to help dorin cure him of lustful thoughts and then he lectures to him (IV, i, pp. 4l6-4l7). And, like Ariel, he has a vast array of supernatural capacities: he asks d o r in , ,

What new service now i s meetest For the Satyr? shall I stray In the middle Air, and stay The sayling Rack, or nimbly take Hold the Moon, and gently make Sute to the pale Queen of night For a beam to give thee lig h t? Shall I dive in to the Sea And bring thee Coral, making way Through the rising waves that fall In snoie fleeces; dearest, shall I catch the wanton Fawns, or F lyes, Whose woven wings the Summer dyes Of many colours ? get thee fruit? Or stea l from Heaven old Orpheus Luts? A ll these I 'le venture fo r, and more. To do her service all these woods adore. (V, i , p. m )

Luce has pointed out that this speech is quite similar to one spoken by

Ariel to Prospero: All hail, great masteri grave sir, hailI I come To answer thy best pleasure; be ' t to fly .

^ ^ S ee, for example, Kermode ( Tfae_Tempest), pp. 142-145. ^^Although the play failed at Blackfriars, this does not neces­ sarily mean that all of its features displeased the Blackfriars audience. 202

To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride On the curl'd clouds, to thy strong bidding task Ariel and all his quality. (I, ii, 189-193)118

It would thus seem that in creating the character of Ariel Shakespeare drew on both the Blackfriars and the Globe tra d itio n s.

Furthermore, in accomplishing one of Prospero*s aims in the play,

Prospero and A riel employ a method that appears to be a combination o f means found in the Blackfriars and the Globe dramas. As is the case with many of the hero-intriguers in the Blackfriars plays, such as Hercules in The Fawn. Prospero attempts to cure markedly defective persons. With respect to Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio, he says ultimately,

they being penitent The sole drift of my purpose doth extend Not a frown further. (V. i , 28-30)

To make their repentance possible, it is first of all necessary that they be brought to the island, and this is achieved by a i^mpest that causes a shipwreck. Kermode considers this fact so important that he classifies

"the happy shipwreck" as "the tragicomic theme of the jxlay, "H^ and among the two se ts of dramas the wreck of a v e sse l in a storm creates the

concütions necessary for penitence only in the Blackfriars play Eastward

Ho. As Summersgill observes.

Each play depends upon the same basic p lo t device: a tempest interferes with the plans for a group of sinners

118 Kermode (The Tempest). pp. 21-22, n. on 1. 189; he does not list the source.

p . XXV. 203 Tv causing a shipwreck, and gives them time to repent as well as an immediate motive for repentance

After the wreck places these malefactors on Prosperous island, he (through Ariel) seems to attempt to cure them tqr using, in part, the

Blackfriars technique of verbal abuse. Entering "like a harpy" and accompanied with "Thunder and lightning" (III, iii, 53 8 . D.), Ariel taunts Alonso, Sebastian, and Antonio :

You are three men of sin, whom Destiny, That hath to instrument th is lower world And lAat is in 't, the never-surfeited sea Hath caused to belch up you; and on th is island Where man doth not inhabit; you 'mongst men Being most unfit to live. I have made you mad; And even with such-like valour men hang and drown Their proper selves. [Alon,, Seb., &c. draw their swords.] You fo o ls I I and my fellow s Are ministers of Fate: the elements. Of Whom your swords are temper’d, may as well Wound the loud winds, or with Taemock’d-at stabs Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish One dowle that ’s in iv plume: my fellow -m inisters Are like invulnerable. If you could hurt. Your swords are now too massy for your strengths And w ill not be u p lifted . But remember— For that *s my business to you--that you three From Milan did supplant good Prospero; Exposed unto the sea, which hath requit it, Him and his innocent child: for idiich foul deed The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have Incensed the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures. Against your peace. (Ill, iii, 53-75)

The method of cure, however, appears also to include features

from the GloTse tradition. Continuing the treatment, Ariel seemingly

employs the ch aracteristic Globe technique of making the evildoers su ffer

^^^Summersgill ("Structural Parallels"), p. 24; Eastward Ho. e.g., IV, i, 128-129; V, V, 70-71. 204 from the oonsequonces of their defects. He first reminds Alonso that he has already lost his son, and then he tells all three the terrible price they Hill pay unless they repent;

Thee of thy son, Alonso, They have bereft; and do pronounce by me Lingering perdition, worse than any death Can be at once, shall step step attend You and your ways; whose wraths to guard you from— Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls Upon your heads—is nothing but heart-sorrow And a dear life ensuing. (Ill, iii, 75-82)

In addition, as one of the consequences of their defects, all three then begin to decline steadily into a state of mind exhibited only by characters in SLobe plays; madness (e.g., jMapbeth. V, i) . Prosperous prime object,

Alonso, now frantic, plans to commit suicide:

the thunder. That deep and dreadful organ-pipé, pronounced The name of Prosper: it did bass my trespass. Therefore my son i* the ooze is bedded, and I 'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded And with him there l i e mudded. (Ill, i i i , 97-102)

All three, however, share the same general mental condition. Gonzago says.

All three of them are desperate ; their great guilt. Like poison given to work a great time after. Now 'gins to bite the spirits. ( I l l , ii i , 104-106) and, turning to Adrian, he adds,

I do beseech you That are of suppler Joints, follow them swiftly And hinder them from what th is ecstasy May now provoke them to . (Ill, iii, 106-109) 205

Later in the play, Prospero describes the ultimate state of mind of the three :

A solemn air and the best comforter To an unsettled fancy cure thy brains. Now useless, boil'd within thy skullt (V. i, 58-60) and Alonso says, "a madness held me" (V, 1, 116).

I think that we should probably conclude that the method of cure chosen Iqr Shakespeare in The Tempest was an adept fusion of HLackfriars and Globe means. Shakespeare's choice, moreover, seems to have had a striking effect on his treatment of time in the play.

By placing the method in the hands of an all-pow erful magician,

Shakespeare found a way to cure in a convincing manner the main object of

Prospero's concern, Alonso, without a long lapse of time (e.g., sixteen years for Leontes in The %nter's Tale ). This^^ made it possible for

Shakespeare not only to lim it the play to a short period of time, but to approach perfect unity of time more closely than even any Blackfriars playwright had done,^^^ Since near the beginning of the play the time is

"At le a s t two glasses" beyond "the mid season" (I , i i , 239-240) and in the final scene it is "On the sixth hour" (V, i, 4), The_Temp^st covers a period of less than four hours (the Boatswain, incidentally, puts it at

"three," V, i, 223).

121 And Prospero's narration of events that occurred in the past (I, ii, 38-174).

^ ^ In May Day the period extends from morning (I , i , 4-5) to evening (V, i, 33-34). 206

In The T&npest. in ter estin g ly enough, Shakespeare lik ew ise chose

to comply essentially with the unity of place. The first scene is set at

sea but within view of an island (Miranda sees the shipwreck: I , i i , 5**

1 3 ); and the remainder takes place on the island itself. Shakespeare's

treatment of his setting was thus substantially that of the Blackfriars

playwrights, who, characteristically, limited their plays to one place or a place and nearly, and it paralleled almost exactly the practice of Day in Ihe lsle of rtiilia. who set his entire play on a deserted island ("this desart He," I, i, p. 9).

Shakespeare may, of course, have had many reasons for choosing to

conform to the c la ss ic a l u n ities of time and place in The Tempest and

Kermode offers several possibilitiesbut considering the fact that

the Blackfriars i^aywrights normally placed considerably more severe lim its on time and place than the Globe w riters, 1 suggest that probably

one of his reasons was to please the Blackfriars audience.

X23 Kermode (The Tempest), pp. Ixxi-lxxvi.

^^^t is conceivable that Shakespeare's choice was at least in part dictated by the reaction of the Blackfriars audience to his disre­ gard of the unities of time and place in The Winter's Tale. If, as I have argued, Shakespeare designed The Winter's Tale as an experimental dual-purpose play, it was probably performed at Blackfriars, and I think that we can reasonably suppose that at least some portion of the audience would have been sufficiently influenced by the positions of such classi­ cists as Sidney and Jonson to be critical about the fact that the play, for instance, covers a period of some sixteen years. In fact, critics could have been quite specific in their charges. In The Winter's Tale Perdita appears as a child in arms, i s lo s t , grows up, and by the end of the play is ready for marriage, and this parallels rather closely Sidney's famous complaint in his Defence of Poesie that in some plays two characters "fall in love ... she is got with childe, delivered of a faire boy: he is lost, groweth a man, falleth in love, and is readie to get an other childe, and a ll th is in two houres space ..." The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Albert Feuillerat (Cambridge, 1912-1926), H I, p. 38. 207

Although in The Tempest Shakespeare treatment of two of the unities, time and place, seems quite clearly to have been influenced by the usual practice of the Blackfriars playwrights, this does not appear to be true of his handling of the third, the unity of action. In contrast

to the characteristic HLackfriars pattern of a main plot and a loosely

connected secondary plot that focuses on a particularly interesting

character. The Tempest consists of one complex p lot centering on the

character of Prospero. Shakespeare does extensively exhibit one peculiar figure, Caliban, and he may thus conceivably have been taking into account the heavy concentration on eccentric characters in Blackfriars plays, but he still chose to integrate Caliban carefully into the story by having him be both Prosperous servant and one of the conspirators.

Shakespeare's treatment of the u n itie s in The Temoest would thus seem to have been a mixture of Blackfriars and SLobe practices.

The particularly interesting character Shakespeare delineates in

The Tempest. Caliban, may also be, in part, a mixture of Blackfriars and

ŒLobe features. Among the plays that I considered for th is study, there i s only one in which a subhuman man appears, and that i s Mucedorus. an

old public theatre play that was probably part of the repertory of the

King's Men during the period 1604-1609 but one that we cannot be certain was revived at the Globe between those years. As we have seen, in this play there appears a character called "a wilde man" (Dramatis Personae).

Bremo, as well as Caliban, is a "salvage" man, a subhuman man, a being, 125 as Kermode notes, that ranks below man ju st as angels rank above him.

^^%ermode (The Temoest). p. xxxix; see also p. lix . 208

and, consequently, i f we can accept the evidence from Mucedorus. one main

strand of Caliban's character can be associated with the Globe trad ition .

His character, however, seems also to include a component from

the HLackfriars tradition.^^^ Even though he is utterly unqualified for

any responsible position, if the conspiracy in which he, Stéphane, and

Trinculo are engaged had succeeded, he would have been one of the

"viceroys" of the island (III, i i , 115-118). Caliban would thus seem to

be an inchoate form of an exclusively Blackfriars type of character, the

unworthy vçstart.^^^ I f so, lik e Prospero and A riel, Caliban may w ell

be a product of fusion.

He i s not, however, the only unworthy upstart type of character

in the play. He is one of three conspirators who plan to rise to the

status of rulers of the island, and the other two, Stephano and Trinculo,

126 Since Bremo and Caliban both have a strand of satyr in their make-up (Ibid.. p. xxxix), it is perhaps worth noting that a satyr appears in The Faithful Sheoherdass. He is, however, a very different kind of character from Bremo and Caliban. Although he i s "outward rough and tawny hu*d," Qorin coments that his "manners are ... gentle and ... fa ir ." (IV, i, p. 415), In addition, he is an enemy of lust; in sum­ marizing h is orders from Pan, he says. Then must I watch i f any be Forcing of a Chastitie: If I find it, then in haste Give my wreathed horn a B last, And the Fairies all will run, Vttldly dancing by the Moon, And w ill pinch him to the bone. Till his lustful thoughts be gone. (Ill, i, p. 404) • 127 For example, the unbelievably inept Governor of Cyprus in The_mdow«s Tears (V, i i i , 220-370). 209 are also unworthy. Their incompetence is so evident» in fact, that even

Caliban ultimately recognizes it:

What a thrice-double ass Was I, to take th is drunkard fo r a god And worship this dull foolI (V, i , 295-297)

Besides being an incipient upstart who is unworthy to be a ruler, Stephano, as Caliban notes, is a "drunkard," and, as we have seen, in the two sets of plays the only drunkard appears in a Blackfriars play (Dampit in A

Trick to Catch the Old One. Ill, iv and IV, v). But Stephano, like

Caliban, may be a product of fusion. Perhaps to compensate for the heavy

Blackfriars influence on his character, Shakespeare chose to make this quite significant figure a "Butler" (Dramatis Personae), and the only character with th is rank in the two sets of plays i s a memorable one, the very important Butler in the Globe play The Miseries of Enforced Marriage.

As for the visual effects in The Tempest. Shakespeare seems to have chosen to repeat one of those he employed in The VOinter's Tale.

There a shepherd and especially a down pretentiously display the doth- ing of gentlemen (V, ii, 135-1^3), and in The Tempest two of the con­ spirators, Stephano and Trincdo, ostentatiously exhibit dothing appro­ priate to the higher status they wish to attain (an effect paralleled, for instance, in the Blackfriars play Eastward Ho. idiere the social climbing Gertrude dresses up in "ladylike fashion" and "trips about the stage," I, ii, 60-62). After Ariel enters "loaden with glistering apparel" (IV, i, 194 S. D.) and hangs it on a line, Trincdo shouts,

0 king Stephano 1 0 peer I 0 worthy Steph­ ano i look Wiat a wardrobe here i s for thee I (IV, i , 221-222) 210

The two conspirators then squabble over tâio w ill wear what garments and proudly put on the attire (11, 227-244). Perhaps the incongruous sight of a shepherd and a clown displaying the clothing of gentlemen in The

VQjaterjs Tale was so successful that Shakespeare chose to follow it in

The Tempest with the even more incongruous sigh t of a "dull fool" and a drunken butler pretentiously arrayed in the clothing of rulers.

The primary visual delight in The Tempest and the last feature in the play that seems to be the result of fusion is the spectacle that is normally called a masque. In celebration of the betrothal of

Ferdinand and Miranda, three goddesses appear, bless the couple, and please them with both a lovely song and a dance of nymphs and reapers

(IV, i , 60-142).

This spectacle would seem to have been rather heavily influenced by the Blackfriars tradition. First of all, it is a lavish celebration of an event related to marriage, and such events are peculiar to the

Blackfriars tradition (The Widow*s Tears. I ll, i i , 82-114, and Sophonisba.

I, ii, pp. 12-13). Secondly, it includes a descent ("luno descends," FL.

IV, i), and, as we have seen, this is a feature found only in the Black­ friars set of plays (e.g.. The Widow's Tears : "Hymen descends," I I I , i i , 128 82 S. D.). Lastly, the spectacle should surely be associated with the

Blackfriars tradition because it has no necessary relationship to the story and it is either an elaborate masque or something that clearly

128 By the time Shakespeare wrote The Tempest, however, his com­ pany had surely performed Cvmbeline at the Globe, and that play included a descent apparently specifically designed for the Globe. 211 resembles one. Although scholars often call it a masque,Kermode argues that it is

an entertainment which, in the absence of any revelation of the masquers and of dances involving the spectators, is not really a masque at aU.^30

But since even he notes parallels between the spectacle and the elaborate

Masoue_ of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn.^^^ I think we can safely con­

clude that Prospero's gift to the lovers includes features that we can properly associate with elaborate masques.

At the same time, however, this spectacle seems also to have been influenced by the Globe tradition, first of all, characters vanish only in the Globe plays, and one of the places in The Tempest that Shakespeare introduced this impressive stage trick was near the end of the betrothal

celebration:

Enter certain Reapers, properly habited: they join with the Nymphs in a graceful dance; towards the end whereof Prospero starts suddenly, and speaks; after 3*1 ch, to a strange,hollow, and confused noise, they heavily vanish. (IV, i, 139 S. D.)

Far more important, however, we have seen that another exclusively Globe feature is a vision (e.g., Pericles. V, i, 241-250; "vision," V, iii, 69),

129 For example. Chambers (William Shakespeare). I , p . 493. 130 Kermode ( The Tempest), p . I x x ii. 131 On the line reading "You nymphs, call'd Naiads" (IV, i, 128), Kermode comments, "Beaumont, in his Masoue of the Gentlemen of_Grav«s-Inn and the Inner Temple, of l6 l3 , has a masque of Naiads, joined l a t e r by one of Knights. This Masque was also performed during the marriage cele­ brations, and there are other slight points of similarity. Iris is the presenter in both; and there are two verbal parallels which are easily e:q>lained by the occasion and the theme." (The Tempest, p. 102, n . on 1 . 128). 212 and, curiously enough, whereas the betrothal spectacle is never called a masque, it is twice designated a vision: Ferdinand says, "This is a most majestic vision" (IV, i, 118), and Prospero speaks of "the baseless fabric of this vision" (IV, i , 151).

This evidence would therefore seem to suggest that although in the betrothal spectacle Shakespeare introduced various subsidiary features we can associate with the Globe and Blackfriars traditions, fundamentally he had Prospero please Miranda and Ferdinand with a vision, a Globe featu re, and he chose to give i t the form of a Blackfriars feature, an elaborate masque (or something closely resembling one) that has no integral function in the play. It would appear, then, that when

Shakespeare designed his most memorable visual effect for The Temoest he employed once more the technique he seems to have u tiliz e d period ically in The >B.nter»s_Tale and quite regularly in The Temoest: fusion.

By reviewing the internal evidence from The Temoest and keeping in mind the ty p ica l Globe and Blackfriars dramas, I think we can see how

Shakespeare solved the problem posed by the acquisition of Blackfriars as he wrote the play. The Tempest is one of Shakespeare’s late romances, the f ir s t one of which was P ericles, a Globe play, but in contrast to a ll of the previous ones and in conformity with Blackfriars practice it has no deaths. A character seeks to cure defective figures by the Globe method of having them su ffer the consequences of th eir d efects, one result being that they go mad, a state of mind found only in Globe plays; but he a lso uses the Blackfriars s a tir ic a l method of verbal abuse and another distinctive Blackfriars feature, a wreck of a vessel during a 213 tempest which leads to repentance* The play consists of essentially one

p lo t, a Globe p ractice, but i t conforms quite s tr ic t ly to the u n ities of

time and {d.ace, which were matters of notably greater concern to the

Blackfriars playwrights. Among the characters in the play there are a

number of Globe figures: a benevolent man who has gained siqiematural

powers through study, a notably loyal servant, an important figure who is

a butler, and, perhaps, a subhuman man. But there are also several

HLackfriars characters: a hero-intriguer, a being that uses his super­

natural powers to aid a good person, a drunkard, and three figures that

closely resemble unworthy upstarts. Furthermore, the Blackfriars fare in

the play includes two sections that consist essentially of irrelevant

witty dialogue, and may include a woman who speaks remarkably candidly

about her desire for sexual relations. Lastly, among the visual effects

in The Tempest there are a series o f Globe features : a scene se t on

board a ship at sea in a storm, a banquet onstage, vanishing beings, the

humorous sight of persons covered in such a way that they give the

appearance of being a beast, and a vision. But there are also Blackfriars

visu al effects: the ostentatious parading of garments by characters who

are not worthy to wear them, a descent from the stage heavens, the cele- .

bration of an event closely related to marriage, and a masque-like

spectacle.

A ll in a l l , th is evidence indicates that The Temoest includes a

mixture of characteristic features in virtually every single area in

which I have found differences in the two traditions. To have transmuted

this mixture of materials in such.a way that a magnificent play resulted was truly a piece of dramaturgical magic on Siakespeare's part, and I 214 think that ve can probably safely conclude that his key secret was to integrate the features from the two traditions fcy brilliantly applying the principle of fusion.

Given these conclusions about The Tempest and viewing them against the background established by this study, I think we can reasonably say that Shakespeare would surely not have written the play in the manner he did unless he was consciously taking into consideration the interests of the audiences at both of his company's theatres. If so, one value of this study of Ihe_ Tempest is that it indicates quite clearly that Shakes­ peare wrote the play for both the Globe and Blackfriars.

Some scholars, however, have offered evidence and arguments for assigning the play exclusively to Blackfriars. First of all, Bentley and Baldwin have presented reasons for considering Shakespeare's late romances as a group to be Blackfriars plays, but, as I indicated at the end of the section devoted to Cvmbeline. their positions no longer seem to be te n a b le .

VQ.th respect to The-Tempest specifically, Parrott refers to the

"masque-like effects" he has "noted in Shakespeare's former plays for

Blackfriars" and argues that "it is in The Tempest they culminate.

Although I readily grant that the masque-like features in The Winter's

Tale probably do "culminate" in the betrothal spectacle in The Tempest and that this indicates that Shakespeare at this point in the play probably had the Blackfriars audience in mind, it seems to me that this

132 Parrott (Comedo), p. 393. 215 by itself does not conclusively prove that he wrote the entire play solely for Blackfriars,

Holmes also assig n s The Tempest to B lackfriars^^^ because of its masque features,^^^ but, having assigned Cvmbeline to HLackfriars, he adds as further support that the descent and certain "ideas and effects" in Ganbeline are repeated in The T e m p e s t . ^35 The total available evidence bearing on Cvmbeline. however, indicates that Shakespeare wrote it exclusively for the GtLobe,

Although Kermode admits that "the play could easily have been acted at both theatres, he concludes that "Blackfriars was the natural home of the play." His argument is that music was an important private theatre feature and that The Tempest "is impregnated with atmospheric music, vdiich would fare less well in the great yard of the Globe than in the small private theatre,I certainly agree with his premises, but

I hesitate to accept his conclusion without qualification because, as we have seen, music is only somewhat more characteristic of Blackfriars than

SLobe plays and because Shakespeare used "atmospheric music" rather extensively in the SLobe play Pericles. Near the beginning of the play

Antiochus says, "Bring in our daughter, clothed like a bride ,,," (I, i,

6); when she appears, the stage direction reads "Music," and Pericles, surely expressing verbally what the music suggests, comments: iSee where she comes, appareil*d like the spring, Graces her subjects, and her thoughts the king Of every virtue gives renown to menI (I, i, 11-13) ^%olmes (Public), xiii. l%bid.. p. 219. pp. 219-220, ^^^Kermode (The Tempest), p, 152, 216

Near the middle of the play» idien Cerimon.miraculously revives the "dead"

Thai sa, the audience would have been listening to "rough and woeful music" (III, ii, 88), And close to the end, Shakespeare set the mood for

Pericles' vision of the goddess Diana with, as Pericles describes it.

Most heavenly music! It nips me unto listening, and thick slumber Hangs upon mine eyes: l e t me r e s t . (V, i , 234- 236)

I t would appear that even "atmospheric music," though unquestionably more effective in a small, indoor theatre, will hardly serve to distinguish a

Blackfriars from a Globe play,^^®

Given the total available evidence concerning The Tempest. I think we should finally conclude that Shakespeare probably wrote the play for the Globe as well as Blackfriars. Furthermore, looking at all of the plays usually considered to be the members of Shakespeare's group of late romances, I think we can quite safely accept the following sequence of events. After having taken a hand in the composition of

Pericles and noting its enormous success at the Globe, Shakespeare quickly followed i t w ith another Globe p lay , Cvmbeline. Then when the

King's Men acquired Blackfriars, he first of all wrote an experimental

^ In "Music and i t s Function in th e Romances of Shakespeare," autkespeare Survey. XI (1958). 60-69, J. M. Nosworthy discusses thé increasing frequency and importance of music in Shakespeare's romances from P e ric le s to The Tempest, and a t one p o in t he comments, "That 3*1 ch serves for the part in The Vflinter's Talg serves for almost the whole in Ihe_Iempest. " (p. 6?), If music was both more effective at Blackfriars and a more important concern of the patrons there, perhaps the change noted by Nosworthy can be explained at least in part by the fact that Shakespeare seems to have been considerably more interested in Wiat might prove successful a t B la c k fria rs when he wrote The Tempest th an when he wrote The Winter's Tale. 217 dual-purpose play, The_Winter's Tale. Later, apparently convinced that the technique of fusion was an effective way to solve the problem posed by the acquisition of Blackfriars, he wrote, with great confidence and skill, a full-fledged dual-purpose uLay. The Tempest.

After having perfected his dual-purpose play technique in The 139 Tempest. Shakespeare wrote Henry VIII. We have only one item of external evidence that bears on the question of vhat audience he had in mind, but it is weighty indeed. On June 29, I6l3, the Globe theatre burned down, and the drama the King's Men were performing at the time was *'a new ixLay, " Henry VIII.T h e fact that the play was presented early at the GLobe, however, does not eliminate the possibility that

Shakespeare wrote it for both the Globe and HLackfriars r

The prologue and epilogue to the play offer some clues. In the former we find lines which indicate that Shakespeare (or at least the author of the prologue^^^) assumed that a substantial part of the audi­ ence had attended a public theatre play, Samuel Rowley's When You See Me

You Know Me. This work was a c. I603-I605 history play which dealt likewise with the reign of Henry VIII.Bullough comments on Rowley's drama.

^^^Probably with a collaborator; see, for example, Chambers (Wtlltam Shakespeare). I, pp. 496-497, but see also Foakes (Henry VIII). pp. xvii-xxvi.

^^Charabers (Va.lliam Shakespeare). II, p. 344 and I, pp. 495-496. ^^See Foakes (Henry VIII). p. 4, n. on prologue.

^^^Ghambers (Elizabethan Stage). Ill, p. 472 and Harbage (Rival Traditions), p. 348. 218

This piece was very anhistorioal; it contained much clowning by the court jesters Will Summers and Patch, and showed Henry VIII walking the streets at night in disguise and being put in prison for fighting. Shakespeare's Prologue seems to refer to these ingredients when it warns the audi­ ence not to expect a merry, bawdy play, A noise of targets, or to see a fellow In a long motley coat guarded with yellow, and disclaims any intention To rank our chosen truth with such a show As fool and fight ...1^3

The likelihood that the writer of the prologue had this public theatre

play in mind is further strengthened by Bullough's detailed analysis of

the relationship between the texts of the two plays, a study that led him

to conclude : “There is enough here to prove positive influence

It would thus seem that one of Shakespeare's motives^^^ in writing Henry

VIII was to present a more accurate^^ version of the reign than Rowley

had offered in When You See Me. and this would appear to imply that a

sizable portion of the spectators had seen the version performed at a

1^3Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakes­ peare . IV (London, 1962), pp. 4)7-438. Chambers has suggested that the connection is a possibility (William Shakespeare. I, p. 498 ), Foakes a probability (Henry VIII. p. 5, n. on 11. 14-19; see also n. on 1. 16), Lawrence a certainty (Shakespeare's Workshop, p. 70). 1U4 V Bullough (Sources), p. 442. 145 Perhaps the immediate occasion was a wedding; Bullough comments that "The play may well have been written in connection with the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth, James I's daughter, to the Elector Palatine in February, l6l3." (Sources, p. 4)6). 146 Sa.r Wotton's letter indicates that Henry VIII was also "called All is True" (Chambers, Wiataw-SMtgPPgflr?, II, p. 344). 219 p u blic th eatre* I f so, th is p a rt of the audience was su rely composed essentially^^^ of public theatre clientele*

Additional evidence which indicates that the author of the pro­ logue had in mind the Globe's audience appears in what is surely a punning reference to groundlings, a group found only in public theatres:

To rank our chosen truth with such a show *** Will leave us never an understanding friend, (11. 18 - 22)

In the prologue to The Doubtful Heir, for instance, a drama written for

Blackfriars but performed at the Globe, Shirley refers to those who stand in the p it at the Globe as "Grave understanders * "^^

Three references in the prologue, however, would seem at first glance to indicate that the audience contemplated was not that of a public theatre*^^ One segment of the spectators would apparently have paid a

"shilling" for admission (1. 12), and, for a public theatre, this may seem too high* But we know that the Globe had shilling (or "twelve- penny") seats; in the Induction to The Malcontent, a section written

1^7 Private theatre audiences, of course, also attended public theatres, but since we have seen in Chapter II that there is no evidence that an English history play was ever written for them, surely not very many Blackfriars patrons would have gone to see When You See Me. and surely not enough to induce Shakespeare to take notice of them here in his prologue* 148 The_Dramatic Works and Poems of James Shirlez. eds* William Gifford and Rev* Alexander Byce (London, 1938), Prologue, 1* 8 (the Prologue is reprinted in Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline. I, p* 31. n, 6); see also Foakes (Henry_VIII). p* 6, n* on 1* 22* 149 Fleay has argued that the first and third ones show that the play was performed early at HLackfriars (see below)* 220 specifically for the Globe, Sly says,

any man that hath wit, may censure (if he sit in the twelve-penny roome) (Induction, p. 142)^

In another line the prologue classifies the entire audience as

"gentle hearers" (1, 17), and this might seem to suggest that the patrons were members of the gentry. But the prologue to another English history play by Shakespeare, Henry V. a drama unquestionably written for a public theatre audience, refers to the spectators as "gentles all" (1. 6).

The word "gentle" would thus seem to be a term that could be used to flatter a public theatre audience.

Lastly, the prologue addresses the patrons as "The first and happiest hearers of the town" (1. 24), and this would likewise seem to refer to a private theatre audience. As W. J. Lawrence has noted, how­ ever, in 1613 the statement could easily enough have been applied to the audience at the Globe:

Only two years earlier it had been registered as the premier house in the itinerary of Prince Otto of Hesse-Cassel.^51

In 1611 Prince Otto commented that "In London there are seven theatres ... whereof the most important is the Globe

The prologue, taken as a idiole, thus seems quite clearly to have been written for the spectators at the Globe. The epilogue appears to

1^0 See a lso Harbage ( Shakespeare's AiiHl AnemL p. 64; Chambers (WLlliamJSiaakfljscflare) . I, p. 496; and Lawrence (Shakespeare's Workshop). pp. 65-67.

^^^Lawrence (Sba]jc9gpgflE9.lp„ %rKsh9P). P. 66. ^^^Chambers (Elizabethan Stage). II, p. 369. 221 add something more to our understanding of the composition of the audience. It assumes that some of the patrons had come to see Henry VIII primarily for two reasons:

others [come], to hear the city Abused extremely, and to cry "That's w itty!" (1 1 . 5 -6 )

Since, as we have noted, two of the ways in which the Blackfriars plays

differ from those written for the Globe are that they frequently attack

citizens^53 and that they include a comparatively great amount of witty

dialogue, we should probably conclude that one segment of the audience may have been composed largely of Blackfriars patrons,^5^ If so, we must

s till determine >riiether Shakespeare took into account any of their

particular interests when he wrote the play, and the full context of the

above lines provides an in itial clue. Although the statements by the

epilogue (11. 1-5) as well as those by the prologue (11. 13-22) indicate

that some of the other segments of the audience would not have found

what they expected in Henrv VIII. the epilogue, after acknowledging Wiat

the Blackfriars contingent hoped the King's Men would include in the play,

adds flatly that this is something "we have not done" (l. ?).

1 5 3 For example, in The_Kni^t of the Burning Pestle, the Citizen complfidns that "These seven years / there hath been Plays at this House, I have observed it, you / have still girds at Citizens ;" (Induction, p . 161). 154 Since, as far as we can determine, no English history plays were written for any of the private theatres, it seems odd that some of the Blackfriars clientele would have come to see Henrv VIII. but it appears that they did. 222 The prologue and epilogue together would thus appear to supply grounds for the oonjecture^^^ that Wien Shakespeare wrote Henrv VIII he had in mind th e dLobe audience, th a t one segment of the audience was com­ posed primarily of Blackfriars patrons, and that this segment, among others, would not find in the play Wiat it had hoped for. Furthermore, the evi­ dence provided by the play itself seems also to lead to this conclusion.

Although, as we will see later, Henry VIII must be classified as a rather peculiar species of historical drama, it certainly belongs where it was placed by the editors of the First Folio: with Shakespeare's

English history plays. In fact, Bullough has very recently argued that it is an integral part of Shakespeare's cycle;

If in the symphonic pattern of En^sh history as Shakes­ peare SAV i t Henrv V was a h ero ic movement flow ing between the sombre and anguished moods of other reigns, Henrv VIII is a resplendent Finale, ritualistically expanding through conflict into grace and happy augury. It is also a fitting end to the dramatist's great cycle, Wiich has shown all the English monarchs from the doleful tragedy of Richard II to what Hall styled "The Triumphant Reigne of Kyng Henry the V I I I , "156 Speaking of English history plays, Harbage, as we have seen, says that

"so far as we know, none ever appeared in the coterie theatres," whereas at the public theatres between I56O and I 613 approxim ately one of every five works ("21 per cent") was an English history play,^^^ Furthermore,

^•55jhe prologue and epilogue could conceivably have been designed for merely the (TLobe performances of the play.

^^^Bullough (Sources), p, h50, ^5?Harbage (Rival Trad&tiopf). p, 85 , Among the private theatre dramas there were history plays, such as Bvron I and II in the Blackfriars group, but apparently none were based on English history. Why this should be, I simply cannot say. It may be. that the private theatre patrons did not need to be informed about the history of their country or that their dramatists decided that commentaries on English history were too risky (between l604 and I 6O8 , even the plays written about the histories of other countries. Philotas and the Bvron plays, resulted in difficulty with the authorities [see Herbage, Rival Traditions, p, 7 9 ]). 223

I have shown that during the years l604 tb I609 various English history plays were written for public theatres other than the GLobe (including the one that was also based on the reign of Henry VIII, When You See Me

You Know Me); that perhaps a short vdiile before this period Thomas Lord

Cromwell was written for the Globe; that there is some evidence that during the period the King's Men revived Shakespeare's Richard II at the

Globe ; and that the l604-l609 Globe plays The Fair Maid of Bristowe and

King Lear both include figures from English history, ïhus I think we should probably conclude that Henrv VIII is a type of play that Shakes­ peare could have reasonably expected to be satisfactory fare only at the

Globe.

Although, admittedly, a person who writes a drama based on history faces certain difficult problems if he wishes to comply with the unities,

Shakespeare’s treatment of time, place, and action in Henrv VIII seems to correspond to Globe practice. The play includes events that took place over a period of about twenty-five years, from the "Field of the doth of Gold" in June, 1520, to 1544, the year Cranmer was "called before the

Council,"^■5® The play, furthermore, is set at various locations in

En^and; London (e,g,. I, i), Westminster (II, i), and Kimbolton (IV, ii), Vdth respect to the unity of action, I think we can certainly agree initially that the drama does not have the characteristic Blackfriars pattern of a main plot plus a loosely connected secondary plot focusing on a particularly interesting character. Just what the structure is, however, has long been disputed. Perhaps, for instance, Foakes assesses

158 Daniel ("Time-Analysis"), p, 346, 224 the play correctly when he contends that it exhibits "careful organiza­ tion "^-59 and "grows through a series of contrasts and oppositions,"^^®

Or perhaps, as Bullough has said, it is "carefully arranged to show various facets of the King's natureand i s

built up on a series of portraits of six people of importance in their day—Buckingham, Katherine, Wblsey, Ann Boleyn, Cranmer and Gardiner—with the King as the pivot round viiom they revolve.lo2

But, in any event, we can safely conclude that the play focuses on Henry and a series of important events that occurred during his reign, and thus we can probably say that Shakespeare conformed, however loosely, to the characteristic Globe practice of restricting a play to a single plot.

The problems in the play range all the way from those faced by the king of England down to those faced by a lowly Porter and his Man.

Henry must, for instance, weed out his false counsellors, such as Wolsey and Gardiner, and identify the true ones, such as Cranmer. But at the other end of the social scale, the Porter and his Man must try to preserve some kind of order among the multitudes that have come to see the christening of Elizabeth. To the Lord Chamberlain, the Porter com plains,

We are but men; and what so many may do. Not being torn a-pieces, we have done: An army cannot rule 'em. (V, iv , 79-81)

^^^Foakes (Henrv Vin). p. I v i. 160 Ibid.. p. xlvii; see xlvi-lvd

^^^Bullough (Sources), p. 448.

pp. 449- 450. 225 The play likewise includes certain kinds of characters found only in the Globe plays. One is the Porter himself, a comic fellow who was invented by Shakespeare^^^ and tdio is reminiscent of the drunken Porter in Macbeth (II. iii, 1-45). Both, for instance, make memorable jokes about sexual immorality. Talking to Macduff about "drink," Macbeth's

Porter comments, for. example.

Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance ... (II, iii, 32-33)

The Porter in Henrv VIII says to his man :

Bless me, what a fry of fornication is at the doorI On my Christian conscience, this one christening will beget a thousand ... (V, iv , 35-37)

Only at the Globe, too, do we find onstage the very young, such as the babe in arms in A Yorkshire Tragedy ("Enter a maide with a child in her Armes ..." Sc. V, 1 S. D.). The child in Henrv VIII is a very special one; it is Elizabeth. At the christening, her godmother, the

Duchess of Norfolk, enters "bearing the child richly habited in a mantle"

(V, V , 1 . S. Do).

The last Globe characters in Henrv VIII are notably loyal 164 servants. Departing from his source, Shakespeare developed in a memorable way, for instance, Cromwell and Patience. Speaking to Wblsey,

163 Foakes (Henrv VIII). p. xxxvii.

Foakes comments on IV, i i : "The f a ith f u l m in istra tio n s of Griffith and Patience to Katherine in this scene, like those of Cromwell in III. ii, seem to be the dramatist's invention, enlarged from mere hints in the chronicles." (Henrv VIII. p. 134, n. on Scene ii). 226 his fallen “master," Cromwell (who will later rise to a high position,

IV, i, 110-112) amply demonstrates his loyalty;

0 my lo rd , Must I, then, leave you? must I needs forgo So good, so noble and so true a master? Bear witness, all that have not hearts of iron. With what a sorrow Cromwell leaves h is lo rd . The king shall have my service; but my prayers For ever and for ever shall be yours, (III, ii, 421-427) and Katherine's servant Patience is so loyal that it is to her the former queen entrusts her last wish:

When I am dead, good wench. Let me be used with honour: strew me over V&th maiden flowers, that all the world may know I was a chaste w ife to my grave: embalm me. Then la y me f o rth : although unqueen*d, y e t lik e A queen, and daughter to a king, inter me. (IV, ii, 167-173)

In Henrv VIII there are also two visual effects found only in the Globe set of plays. One of the more spectacular features in the play is Katherine's "vision," and these religious events are Globe fare

(e.g., Pericles. V, i, 241-250). Furthermore, during the vision, "six personages ... vanish,“ and vanishing beings are likewise exclusively

Globe features (Macbeth. I, iii, 79 S, D.). The stage direction for the vision reads:

The vision. Enter, solemnly tripping one after another, six personages, dad in white robes, wearing on their heads garlands of bays, and golden vizards on their faces; branches of bays or palm in their hands. They first congee unto her, then dance; and, at certain changes, the first two hold a spare garland over her head; at which the other four make reverent curtsies; then the two that held the garland deliver the same to the other next two, who observe the same order in their changes, and holding the garland over her head : which done, they deliver the same garland to the last two, who 227 likewise observe the same order: at which, as it were by inspiration, she makes in her sleep signs of rejoicing, and holdeth up her hands to heaven: and so in their dancing vanish ... . (IV, ii, 83 S. D.r°5

Lastly, in contrast to the Blackfriars plays, Henrv VIII becomes, at times, extremely noisy. Whereas in private theatre dramas the softer cornet was normally employed (e.g., "Comets sound a charge,"

Sophonisba. II, ii, p. 24 S. D.), the Coronation in Henrv VIII begins with "A lively flourish of trumpets" and ends with "a great flourish of trumpets" (IV, i, 37 S. D.; in the Globe drama King Lear, for instance,

Albany says, "Let the trumpet sound ..." V, iii, 107). Most notably, however, shortly before Henry enters Cardinal Wolsey's home, we find the stage direction "chambers discharged" (I, iv, 49; in the Globe play The

Devil's Charter we find "A charge with a peale of Ordinance" IV, iv,

2362I The direction in Henrv VIII has an important niche in the history of English drama. In his famous letter. Sir Henry Wotton says.

Now, King Henry making a masque at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain chambers being shot off at his entry, some of the paper, or other stuff, idierewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch ... This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabric ...16?

165 Although the dancing, for example, distinguishes this vision from those in the 0.obe plays and reminds one somewhat of the betrothal spectacle in The Tempest, the last three lines quoted and Katherine's l a t e r comments e s ta b lis h unequivocally th a t she has undergone a super­ natural experience rather thain watched a social entertainment. She calls the beings both "Spirits of peace" (l. 83) and "a blessed troop" (l. 8 7 ), and she says, "They promised me eternal happiness" (1. 90). 166 Lawrence (Shakespeare's Workshop), pp. 52-53, 55-56. See also below.

Chambers (Vailiam Shakespeare). I I , p . 344-. 228

1 think we can probably conclude that both the flourishes of trumpets and the thunderous and fiery explosion would have been woefully out of place in the small, enclosed Blackfriars theatre.

In summary, Henry.VIII i s , f i r s t of a l l , an E nglish h isto ry play, a type of drama we can associate only with the Globe tradition. The treatment of the unities conforms to the practice of Globe playwrights in that the play takes place over a period of some twenty-five years and in various places in one country and seems to consist, however loosely, of essentially one plot. The problems in the drama range from those of a king down to a Porter and his Man, and the play includes some exclusively

Globe characters : a comic porter, a small child, and notably loyal servants. Finally, the play contains two visual effects found only in the Globe set of plays, vanishing beings and a vision, and it includes sound effects clearly foreign to a Blackfriars play. Viewing this internal evidence as a whole, I think we can reasonably conclude that

Henrv VIII conforms closely to the pattern for a Globe play.

Given the documentary evidence and this data, it would certainly require.an imposing display of contrary evidence to upset the presumption that Shakespeare wrote Henrv VIII with only the Globe tradition in mind.

There are, however, several features in the play that deserve discussion as possible Blackfriars influences.

Cardinal Wolsey is a man who has risen "from ... humble stock"

(IV, i i , 49) to an extraordinarily high position: as Norfolk says.

The force of h is own m erit makes h is way; A gift that heaven gives for him, lAlch buys A place next to the king. (I, i, 64-66) 229

Summing up his weaknesses, Katherine bitterly points out that he is also unworthy of that position:

He was a man Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking Himself with princes; one that, by suggestion. Tied all the kingdom: simony was fair-play; His own opinion was his law: i* the presence He would say untruths; and be ever double Both in his words and meaning: he was never, But where he meant to ruin, pitiful: His promises, were, as he then was, mighty; But his performance, as he is now, nothing : (IV, ii, 33-42)

Wolsey is, in short, a familiar Blackfriars target, an unworthy upstart.

The cardinal's humble background and his unworthiness, however, were historical facts, and thus the question of whether there is a Blackfriars influence here depends upon how Shakespeare chose to treat Wolsey.

In a Blackfriars play, such a character would be satirized. As is the case with the upstart governor of Cyprus in The Widow's Tears, his lowly origin and incompetence would be held up to ridicule and scorn.

For example, the Captain comments about the governor.

Nor blushes he to see himself advanc'd Over the heads of ten times higher worths. But takes it all, forsooth, to his merits. And looks (as all upstarts do) for most huge observance. (V, i , 150) and the governor convicts himself of ineptitude \dien he says to Lycus:

I say it is imagined thou hast murthered Lysander. How it will be proved, I know not. Thou shalt therefore presently be had to execution; (V, i i i , 244-246) 230

In ffenry VIII Buokinghani. in a state of "choler** (I, i, 130), does make a few biting comments, about Wolsey*s early social status:

This butcher's cur is vonom-mouth'd ... A b eg g ar's book Outworths a noble's blood.... I'll to the king; And from a mouth of honour quite cry down This Ipswich fellow's insolence; or proclaim There 's difference in no persons. (I. i. 120-139)

But on the udiole Shakespeare does not subject the cardinal to the Black­ friars type of satirical treatment. When Henry finds the letter to the

Pope, which is the instrument that leads to Wolsey's fall, he does not resort to a stream of abuse (as for example, in The Fawn. IV, pp. 203-

204); he employs an oblique, ironic, and spare technique. He first of all lets Wolsey defend himself on a lesser matter, his inordinate wealth

(proven by an inventory), and says of the cardinal's answer,

'Tis nobly spoken: Take notice, lords, he has a loyal breast. For you have seen him open 't. (Ill, ii, 199-201)

But then, after handing Wolsey both the inventory and the catastrophic letter to the Pope, he exits "frowning" with the lines:

Read o'er this; And after, this: and then to breakfast with What a p p e tite you have. (Ill, ii, 201-203)

Later, however, Shakespeare departs much more radically from Blackfriars practice: with impressive objectivity, he has a character sum up the admirable qualities of his unworthy upstart. In answer to Katherine's lis t of Wolsey's weaknesses, Griffith notes that "Men's evil manners 231 live in brass; their virtues / We write in water." (IV, ii, 43-46), and he lists Wolsey's "virtues";

This cardinal. Though from an humble stock, undoubtedly Was fashion'd to much honour from his cradle. He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one; Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading ... He was most princely: ever witness for him Those twins of learning that he raised in you, Ipswich and Oxford! one of which fell with him. Unwilling to outlive the good that did it; The other, though unfinish'd, yet so famous, So excellent in art, and still so rising, That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue. (IV, ii, 48-63)

I think we should probably conclude that Shakespeare introduced an

unworthy upstart into Henrv VIII because it was unavoidable and that he

chose not to treat the character in the Blackfriars manner.

A seemingly more promising sign of a Blackfriars influence lies in the fact that Henrv VIII differs from Shakespeare's other, and much earlier, English history plays in one notable respect: it includes such

a display of visual effects that Foakes has called it "a play of

spectacleand "a play of pageantry. We may well ask idiether

this deviation should be attributed to the influence of the Blackfriars

tra d itio n .

The major difficulty with this attractive possibility is that

the deviation follows a general trend in the English history plays

^^®Foakes (Henrv VIII). p. xlvii.

^^^Ibid.. p. 8, n. on 11. 12-13. 232 written by public theatre playwrights. Foakes observes that

The plays written after I6OO on themes taken from English history tend to be of a different kind, not so much glorifying England or presenting an idea of history with lessons for the present, as making use of stories from the past for effective theatre,170

He c ite s as an example When You See Me. You Know Me. an e a r lie r pulxLic theatre history play vdiich was also based on the reign of Henry VIII, and he notes that

half of it is devoted to the famous dLowns of Wblsey and the King, Patch and W ill Summers, Here lig h t entertainm ent is the keynote, and the seriousness of purpose that had earlier made great drama out of history is quite lacking,!^

Furthermore, Bullough, commenting on the relationship between this play and Henry VIII. says,

There is enough here to prove positive influence; and it may well be that the great part given to ceremonial in Henry VIII was in imitation of When You See Me and an attempt to outdo its court pageantry,172

There is, of course, a great deal of pageantry in Henrv VIII.

Alice Venezky in Pageantry on the Shakespearean_Stage comments that

audiences were attracted to the Globe by the prospect of viewing exact reproductions of such spectacles as the pro­ cession to the trial of Katherine, the parade returning from the baptism of Elizabeth, and most magnificent of them all, the coronation procession of Anne Boleyn ,,,173

The procession following the coronation, for instance, is indeed a triumph of visual display. After "A lively flourish of Trumpets-,” there

p. x i i i . 172 Bullough (Souices), p, ( ;2,

^^^Alice Venezky, Pageantry on the Shakespearean_Stage (New York, 1951). p . 23, 233 is a parade of high ranking persons of the realm, some of them dressed

especially lavishly:

Marquess Dorset, bearing a sceptre of gold, on his head a demi-coronal of gold. Vfl.th him, the Earl of Surrey, bearing the rod of silver with the dove, crowned with an earl's coronet. Collars of SS, (IV, i, 37 S. D.)

W, J, Lawrence traces the origin of some of the sartorial display that provides such an abundance of spectacle in Henrv VIII to a play written not for Blackfriars, but for the most plebian of the public theatres,

the Red B u ll:

The Red Bull Theatre was the lo w est-class house of i t s tim e, y e t when W ebster's The White Divel was produced th e re c irca 1Ô11 the ambassadors in the play were arrayed in elaborate jewelled collars of their various orders. This was apparently somewhat of an innovation, and it set a precedent that rival companies could not afford to ignore. Consequently, as we learn from a letter written in l6l3 by Sir Henry Wotton to his nephew, when the King's Men came to produce Henrv VIII at the Globe the play was "set forth with many extraordinary circum­ stances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage ; the Knights of the Order with their Georges and garters, the Guards with their embroidered coats and the like .«."I?*

The spectacle and the pageantry that distinguish Henrv VIII from

Shakespeare's earlier history plays thus seem quite clearly to have been

a part of the public theatre tradition. They were, furthermore, part of

the tradition at that special public theatre, the C3.obe. In Pericles,

for instance, the setting for II, ii is

A public way or platform leading to the lists, A pavilion by the side of it for the reception of the King, Princess, Lords, &c, and then a procession of six knights, each attired to fight in the lists, slowly files past Simonides and Thaisa,

^^^W, J, Lawrence, Pre-Restoration Stage Studies (Cambridge, 1927 ), p , 252, 234

At the same time, however, we dare not conclvide that such spectacle and pageantry were absent from the HLackfriars plays. They were, in fact, a solid part of the Blackfriars tradition, Sonhonlsba. for instance, begins with the stage direction

Enter at one dore the Prologue: too Pages with torches: Asdrubal and Jugurth too Pages.with lights: Massinissa leading Sophonisba: Zanthia bearing Sophonisbas trains Arcathia and Nicea: Hano and i^heas. At the other dore too Pages with targets and Javelines, too Pages with lights, Syphax armd from top to toe ,,, _ (Prologue, p. 7)

It would appear, then, that the most notable general deviation from Shakespeare's earlier English history plays, the features that led

Foakes to call Henrv VIII "a play of spectacle" and "a play of pageantry," cannot be attributed in any significant degree to the influence of the

Blackfriars tradition. Yet, since there was clearly an interest in such features at Blackfriars, Shakespeare may very well have given some thought to the likelihood that the Blackfriars segment of the Globe audience would derive considerable pleasure from the deviation.

It is more likely yet that the Blackfriars contingent would have particularly enjoyed one other spectacular feature. As we have seen, the evidence from the two sets of plays indicates that the Blackfriars audience had a someidiat greater preference for masques, and in Henrv VIII there is a masque. During the festivities at Cardinal Wolsey*s home, there appears the stage direction: Hautboys, Enter the King and others, as masquers, habited like shepherds, ushered by the Lord Chamberlain. They

175 See also Your five Gallants. V, ii, I8ff,; The Fawn. IV, p, 207; and The_I&dow's Tears. I, ii, 37 S. D, 235 pass directly before the Cardinal, and gracefully salute him. (I, iv, 64 S. D.)

Later, the masquers "choose Ladies for the dance" (I, iv, 75 8, 0.), the music begins, and the participants dance. The spectacle, however, is essentially a simple masque (one much less elaborate than that in the

Globe play The Revenger*s Tragedy [V, iii, 1-70]), it is an integral part of the action since (unhistorically) Henry here meets Anne (11, 91 ff.), and it appears in Holinshed.^^^ We can probably assume, therefore, that

Shakespeare might easily enough have included the masque even if the

King's Men had not acquired Blackfriars. But, considering the greater interest in masques at Blackfriars, there is considerable likelihood that part of his motive in retaining the masque was that he thought the

Blackfriars portion of the Globe audience would enjoy it.

A considerably stronger case can be made that one of the charac­ ters in the scene at the cardinal's home was influenced by the Black­ friars tradition. As we have seen, old men ardently searching for an opportunity to engage in sexual relations appear only in the Blackfriars plays. In May Day, for instance, Lorenzo is such a character, and he is effectively cured of any further attempt to seduce Franceschina (IV, ii,

38-39). In Henry VIII. Lord Sands is old enough and ardent enough to respond to the statement "Your colt's tooth is not cast yet."^^^ with "No,

176 Reprinted in Bullough (Sources), pp. 478-481 and Foakes (Henry VIII). pp. 204-206.

^^^Foakes notes that "colt's tooth" is "a proverbial expression for wantonness, especially in old men ..." (Henrv VIII. p. 42, n. on 1 . 48). 236

ay lord; / Nor shall not, while I have a stump," (I, iii, 48-49).

Furthermore, speaking of the ladles at Wolsey's house, he says,

Sir Thomas Lovell, had the cardinal But half my lay thoughts in him, some of these Should find a running banquet ere they rested, I think would better please 'em: by my life. They are a sweet so ciety c f f a i r ones, (I, iv, 10-14)

Like Lorenzo in Mav Day, however. Lord Sands does not succeed in his venture: he makes a "play" (I, iv, 46) for Anne, but she sharply rebuffs him (I, iv, 48), He is a very minor character in the play, to be sure, and he serves both to Introduce the audience to Anne and to indicate that she is a "dish fit for a king," but I believe we can probably conclude that one of Shakespeare's motives for developing the character in the manner he did was to please the Blackfriars contingent of the Globe audience.

Probably the most likely Blackfriars influence on Henrv VIII and at the same time the most important one involves the manner in which

Shakespeare treats the fall of Buckingham. We have seen earlier that the

^ackfriars tragedies Bvron and Philotas deal with high ranking men who find themselves in serious conflict with their kings and, as a result, fall. In Henrv VIII Shakespeare devoted an extensive portion of the early part of the play (I, i; much cf I, ii; and II, i) to the final stages in the story of the Duke of Buckingham, a man who also finds himself in serious conflict with his king and falls. By itself, of course, this means very little, but it is curious to note that there are many significant parallel details and that the resulting pattern has no counterpart in the Globe set of plays. 237 The parallels include, first of all. that all three men are arrested for treason (Buckingham: I, i, 201; Byron in Bvron XI. IV, i i , 275 - 290; and Philotas; III, iii, 1131-1134), they are tried

(Buckingham; II, i, 1-36; Byron in Byron II. V, II; and Philotas; V, ii), and they are executed (Buckingham; II, i, 132-133; %ron in

Bvron II. V, iv, 26l; Philotas; V, ii, 2234). All three are rash. To dissuade Buckingham from rushing to the king to cry out against Wolsey,

Norfok cautions him,

let your reason with your choler question What 'tis you go about; to dimb steep hills Requires slow pace at first; ( I , i , 130- 132)

Even after Byron has been forgiven by Henry IV (Bvron I . V, ii, IO 7 -IO9 ), he has a "trait'rous ... relapse" (Bvron II. I. i, 1), and Henry says appropriately that he has a "hot spirit" (Bvron II. I, i, 71). Philotas, for instance, calls "Patience" that "base propertie, / And silly gift of th' all enduring A sse.... I must sayle by the Compass of my minde."

( I, 168 - 171 ), and Alexander refers to his "impudence" (IV, ii, I 786 ).

In all three cases intermediaries seek to bring about the man's fall

(in Henrv VIII it is Wolsey, e.g., II, i, 39-44; in the Bvron plays there are two: Savoy, Bvron I. I, i, 9-94, and La Fin, Bvron I . I, i,

95-101; in Philotas it is Graterus, III, iii, IO63-IO69 and 1135-1136).

In th e t r i a l s of a l l th re e , the testim ony of someone close to th e man serves in large part to convict him (the Surveyor in Henrv VIII. I, ii,

132- 209; La Fin in Bvron II. V, ii, 123-135; Antigona in Philotas. II, iii, 724-725). In each case the playwright focuses extensive attention 238 on the way the man faces death (Henrv VIII. ii, i, 55-136;^^® Bvron II .

V, iv; Philotas. V, ii, 2084-2234). And lastly, normally well apart from the man who falls, there stands his king, Henry VIII never appears with

Buckingham, Henry IV and Byron are onstage together for normally rather brief periods in six scenes,^79 and Alexander and Philotas are together fo r only 209 of the 2258 lines in the play.lGO

I t would thus appear that Shakespeare began Henrv VIII with a cameo-sized HLackfriars type of tragedy. There are, however, other matters to consider. The parallels may, first of all, be simply

7 Parrott (who assumes that Shakespeare collaborated with Fletcher vMle writing Henrv VIII) comments that "The elegiac note of 11, 245-61 FBVron I I . V, iv ] seems to have made a sp ecial im pression on Fletcher, who imitated this passage more than once, notably in Bucking­ ham's farewell (Henrv VIII. II, i, 55-136) , , , " The Tragedies of George Ghaman. ed, Thomas Marc Parrott (London, 1910), p , 623, The passage reads : Never more Shall any hope of my revival see me; Such i s th e endless e x ile of dead men. Summer succeeds the Spring; Autumn th e Summer; The f ro s ts of VS.nter the f a l l 'n leav es of Autumn: All these and all fruits in them yearly fade. And every year return : but cursed man Shall never more renew his vanish'd face. Fall on your knees then, statists, ere ye fall. That you may rise again: knees bent too late, Stik you in earth like statues : see in me How you are pour'd down from your clearest heavens: F a ll lower y e t, m ix'd w ith t h ' unmoved cen tre. That your own shadows may no longer mock ye. S trik e , s tr ik e , 0 s trik e ; f ly , f ly , conmianding soul. And on thy wings for this thy body's breath. Bear the eternal victory of DeathI

l? 9 ln ËïEfiiiJ: in , i i , 214-284; V, i , 59-155; and V, ii, 39- 192, In Bvron H. Ill, ii, 56-128; IV, i , 90; and IV, ii, 86-108, 165- 225, 250- 266, Although Henry IV and Byron are onstage together fairly often, they seldom associate with one another, 180 ■ I I I , 852-903; IV, i i , 1267-1414 and 1779 -1787 , 239 coincidental, simply events that commonly occurred when high ranking men fell. In addition, Shakespeare's treatment of the Buckingham episode differs in three major respects from that accorded to the two Blackfriars tragic figures.

In the first place, whereas both Byron and Philotas are guilty of treason, Buckingham seems to be innocent. Byron was engaged in a con­ spiracy "looking forward to an Invasion of France by S p a i n ( Bvron I .

I l l , i , 78-85 and Bvron II. I, ii, 32-35), and Philotas likewise partici­ pated in a plot against his king (he confesses, V, ii, 2211; see also

Daniel's apology, 11. 2323-232$ and 2353)• But Buckingham seems to have been merely the victim of Wblsey's enmity. There has been a "private difference" between the two (I, i, 101). The duke says that his surveyor,

\riio has "lost" his "office" (I, ii, 1?2), "is false; the o'er-great cardinal / Hath show'd him gold; my life is spann'd already" (I, i, 222-

223; incidentally, Holinshed says that the surveyor was "partlie provoked with desire to be revenged, and partlie mooved with hope of reward"^^^).

And the surveyor's testimony carries such great weight that at a pre­ liminary investigation it induces Henry to come to a fateful decision;

"Call him to present trial ..." (I, ii, 211). Thus idien Byron and

Philotas fall, it has a markedly different effect and considerably differ­ ent implications than >dien Buckingham does.

Secondly, as we have seen earlier, the point of view in the

Bvron plays and Philotas seems to be that of a clique looking upward in

^®^Parrott (Chapman's Tragedies), p. 593. Xd2 Reprinted in Bullough (Sources). p. 458 and Foakes (Henrv m i), p. 188. 240 fe a r a t a powerful king (Qyron II. V, iv, 146-158, 253-258; Philota?. V, ii, 2245-2248, 2257-2258), but the point of view throughout Henrv VIII seems to be quite different* It is surely that of a community observing a former king of their country grow in stature from a ruler who is dominated by a brilliant but devious cardinal to one Wio can independently wield power with perceptivity and decisiveness—one who can, for instance, resolutely choose (V, iii, 130) the "true-hearted" Cranmer (V, i, 154) over the flattering Gardiner (V, iii, 122-124), The fall of Buckingham would therefore seem to be an unfortunate incident that occurs before

Henry has had time to grow to significant stature rather than an example of the vulnerability of high ranking men when they find themselves in conflict with their rulers.

Lastly, ^ron and Philotas face death in a rather radically different way than Buckingham does. Although Byron ultimately attains some semblance of composure and even nobility at the very end (V, iv,

259- 261), a t one p o in t he says.

I ' l l take my death with all the horrid rites And representments of the dread it merits ; Let tame nobility and numbed fools ühat apprehend not what they undergo. Be sudi exemplary and formal sheep, I will not have himl83 touch me till I will; If you will needs rack me beyond my reason. Hell take me but I 'll strangle half that's here, And force the rest to kill met (Bvron I I . V, iv, 192-200)

183 A reference to the hangman, who wishes to cut Hyron's hair (V, iv , 184), 241

Philotas faces torture and death nobly enough at first, but his later conduct drives Alexander to say contemptuously, "I neuer thought, a man that had a mind / T'attempt so much, had had a heart so weake," (V, ii, 2173 - 2174 ). In order to avoid further torture, Philotas even implicates a wholly innocent person (V, ii, 2222-2232), Buckingham, on the other hand, faces death like a martyr; for example, he says,

I forgive all; There cannot be those numberless offences •Gainst me, that I cannot take peace with: no black envy Shall mark my grave. Commend me to his grace; And, if he speak of Buckingham, pray, te ll him You met him half in heaven: my vows and prayers Yet are the king's; and, till my soul forsake. Shall cry for blessings on him: may he live Longer than I have time to tell his yearst (II, i, 83-91)

In fact, as Foakes points out, Shakespeare even has Buckingham exhibit "a patient endurance and forgiveness for ■vdiich there are only hints in the 184 chronicles," ^yron would have called Buckingham one of the "exemplary and formal sheep," but Shakespeare seems to have a word to say, in passing, to those who shared Byron's opinion. The Second Gentleman says of Buckingham, "I do not think he fears death," and the First Gentleman answers, "Sure, he does not: / He never was so womanish ,,," (II, i,

37-38).

There are, consequently, some rather sharp differences between the way the HLackfriars playwrights handled the stories of Bvron and

Philotas and Shakespeare's treatment of Buckingham's story in Henrv VIII. but there are also many parallels that form a pattern found only in the

184 Foakes (Henrv VIII). p, xxxvi. 242

HLackfriars tradition. It is certainly possible that the resemblances were coincidental, and if so, we would have to conclude that Shakespeare unintentionally introduced fare similar to that present in the HLack­ friars plays. But viewing the pattern of parallels against the background provided by this study, I think it is very likely that Shakespeare took into consideration the Bvron plays and Philotas and that he did so in order to supply the Blackfriars segment of the Globe audience with a vignette tragedy handled substantially in the Blackfriars manner.

Although, as I have indicated in passing, one can offer arguments against accepting every one of the possible HLackfriars influences, the weight of the evidence would seem to indicate that the Blackfriars tradition did have some effect on Henrv VIII. This influence appears to include: conceivably some of the material that makes this historical drama "a play of spectacle" or "a play of pageantry," possibly the retention by Shakespeare of the masque mentioned in Holinshed, probably an old man ardently seeking to indulge in sexual relations (Lord Sands), and, very likely, the treatment of the Buckingham portion of the play.

If this is so, we can probably conclude that the internal evidence as a whole indicates that Henrv VIII was very heavily influenced by the

Globe tradition and comparatively slightly affected by the tradition at .

HLackfziars. Viewing this conclusion against the background established by the external evidence, the prologue and epilogue, and this study as a whole, I believe that we can probably quite safely infer that Shakespeare wrote Henrv VIII exclusively for the Globe but that he chose to introduce at least a .few features that he had reason to believe would be of 243 particular interest to the members of the ŒLobe audience that also attended plays at his company's other theatre, Blackfriars.

As far as I have been able to discover, only two scholars have offered arguments that might conflict with my assignment of Henrv VIII exclusively to the Globe. Fleay has suggested that the prologue estab­ lishes that the play was performed early at Blackfriars:

the . . . Prologue shows th a t the ex tan t play was performed as a new one at Blackfriars, for the price of entrance, a "shilling," 1. 12, and the address to "the first and happiest hearers of the town," 1. 24, are only applicable to the "private house" in Blackfriars; the entrance to the Globe was twopence, and the audience at this "public house" of a much lower class.185

As I have noted at the beginning of the discussion of Henrv VIII. however, the references could apply and, given the total available evi­ dence, surely did apply to the Globe and its audience.

W, J, Lawrence has argued that the stage directions in the only extant text, the 1623 First Folio version, indicate that the play was performed at Blackfriars sometime between l6l3 and 1623• Since he finds no evidence of cornets being used in public theatres until c, 1620^^? and since two stage directions in Henrv VIII call for comets (I, ii, 1 and

II, iv, 1), he believes that the "source" of the folio text "was a later

Blackfriars prompt book"'*' used for "a revival of Henrv VIII between

1613 and 1623 Inasmuch as the traditions at the Globe and HLackfriars

185 Fleay (Chronicle History), p. 251. X86 And as Lawrence has noted in Shakespeare's Workshop, pp. 65- 67 .

^®^ibl(i,, p. 67 and p. 153, n. 34.

^^^Ibid.. p. 71, p. 72 . 244

were steadily converging during this period, a performance at Blackfriars

is surely a possibility. On the other hand, although he says that there

is no "dear testimony,"^^0 he himself believes that the King's Men used

cornets in Globe performances about 1620:

It may be taken, I think, that by this period the King's Men had begun to use cornets at the Globe ...191

and, if so, it is also possible that the folio text represents a revival

of Henrv VIII at the Globe between approximately 1620 and 1623. Further­

more, although in the folio text comets are used twice, we also find

there the stage direction for the explosion that caused the destruction

of the Globe: "chambers,.discharged" (I, iv, 49 S. D.), Since such a

blast would hardly have been appropriate in a small, indoor theatre at

any time, I am reluctant to agree that the folio text is based on a

"HLackfriars prompt book." I would thus have to reject Lawrence's conten­

tion that his evidence indicates there was a performance of Henrv VIII

at Blackfriars "between I6l3 and 1623."

Given the total available evidence, then, I think we should

probably conclude that Shakespeare, after having perfected the technique

for a dual-purpose play, wrote Henrv VIII exdusively for the Globe.^^Z

p. 67.

p. 153, n. 34.

192;ifl)y he should have chosen to do so is a question beyond the scope of this study and perhaps one we will never answer satisfactorily. But one of his motives may have been that he felt that in The Tempest he had achieved the goal of perfecting the technique for a dual-purpose piayo 245

The Two Noble Kinsmen The last play we have any compelling reason to associate with

Shakespeare is one he wrote in collaboration with the former Blackfriars playwright Fletcher, The Two Noble Kinsmen.^93 in this case, the external evidence indicates that we should link the play initially with the Black­ friars theatre rather than the Globe, The title page of the first extant edition of the play reads, "Presented at the Black-friers by the Kings Maiesties servants . . . We dare not, however, consider this to be conclusive proof that Shakespeare and Fletcher wrote ihe play for Black­ friars exclusively. The first edition dates 1634, some twenty years after the composition of the play (l6l3^^^), and, as Nicoll has pointed out, "a title-page ascription of 1634 need not necessarily apply to the original production of the play." 1 9 6 It seems odd, to be sure, that the writer of the title page did not mention the Globe if the play had been performed there. This did happen, however, in the case of another drama written for the King's Men. Licensed in 1640 and first printed in 1653,

Shirley's The Doubtful Heir includes a prologue showing that it was per­ formed at the Globe, and yet the title page of the first edition states,

"As I t was Acted a t the p riv a te House in E lackfriers."^?? Perhaps the explanation for such a discrepancy is that if a publisher im^JAed that a

^^^See, for example. Chambers (William Shakespeare). I, pp. 528- 532, and Kenneth Muir, "Shakespeare's Hand in The Two Noble Kinsmen." Shakespeare. Survey. XI (1958), 50-59, 194 Chambers (E lizabethan Stage). I l l , p . 226,

^^^Ibid..195 pp, 226- 227 . 196 Nicoll ("Court Masque"), p, 53, 19?Bentley (Jacobean and Caroline). I, pp. 30-31, n. 6 and p. I 3I, 246 play had been performed only at a private theatre, he sold more copies.

This, at least, has been alleged by Armstrong:

The term "private house" does not seem to have been current until the earlier seventeenth century, when it occurs most frequently in the descriptions appended to the titles of published plays, where it ... was used by publishers to increase their sales by advertising the fact that the play was of the sophisticated kind written for the indoor theatres. From this point of view, "private house" may well have similar connotations to the term "private hotel," the word "private" being designed merely to suggest a degree of exclusiveness and superiority.198

However lik e ly th is explanation may be and however many years elapsed before the first edition of the play, I think we must nevertheless con­ clude that the available documentary evidence establishes the presumption that Shakespeare and Fletcher wrote The Two Noble Kinsmen solely for

Blackfriars,

To determine idiether this was actually what.happened, however, we must take into consideration the evidence provided by the play itself.

This evidence, as we will see, indicates that the two playwrights intro­ duced a great many traditional Globe and traditional Blackfriars features and that they integrated nearly all of them by the method Shakespeare experimented with in The VHnter's Tale and brought to perfection in The

Tempest, the technique I have called fusion.

There is, in fact, only one such feature that does not seem to 199 have been so integrated. It is a lavish spectacle that celebrates a

198 Armstrong (Facts and,Problems). p. 3. 199 In the spectacle, however, the use of garlands reminds one of the vision in Henrv VIII (IV, ii, 83 S. D.), surely a Globe play. Such extensive use of the principle of fusion might well raise the question whether Shakespeare and Fletcher chose some simple way to divide the 24? marriage, a Blackfriars feature, and it appears at the very beginning of th e p lay ;

Enter Hymen with a torch burning; a Boy, in a white robe, before, singing and strewing flowers; after Hymen, a Nymph, encompass’d in her tresses, bearing a wheaten garland; then Theseus, between two other Nymphs with wheaten chaplets on their heads; then Hippolyta, the bride, led by Pirithous, and another holding a garland over her head (her tresses likewise hanging); after her, Emilia, holding up her train • •• Music. (I, i, 1 S. D.)

Bie event most clearly resembles the one designed for a marriage in The

VQ^dowls Tears. The stage direction there, for instance, closely parallels the first.lin e of the one from (Die Two Noble Kinsmen:

Music: Hymen descends, and six Sylvans enter beneath, with torches (III, ii, 82 S. D.)

In their treatment of the other features characteristic of the

Blackfriars or Globe traditions, however, the two playwrights seem to have consistently employed the technique of fusion. The least important and most mechanical use of the method will serve to illustrate. Only in the Blackfriars plays do we find a sacrifice performed onstage ("the / solemnity of a sacrifice" Sophonisba. Ill, i, p. 36), and only in the

Globe plays do we find the stage trick that causes beings to vanish.

labor, Harbage comments that "The portions of The Two Noble Kinsmen assigned severally to Shakespeare and Fletcher are as distinct in their sexual emphasis as in their versification. The jailor’s daughter is disrespectfully used only while under Fletcher’s manipulation," (Rival Traditions, pp, 357-358X As a general matter, however, I did not find that Fletcher dealt with the Blackfriars features and Shakespeare with those from the Globe tradition. 248

(îü&sbsih, I, ill, 79 s . D .). In "Die Two Noble Kinsmen. E m ilia, accom­

panied by her maids, performs a sacrifice to the goddess Diana:

Enter Bnllla ... one [of her maids] before her carrying a silver hind, in which Is convey'd incense and sweet odours, nAich being set upon the altar [of Diana], her Maids standing aloof, she sets fire to It ... (V, 1, 137 S. D.)

And ^en she completes her prayer, the stage direction reads:

Here the hind vanishes under the altar ... (V, 1, 163 S. D.)

Normally, however, the features selected for fusion rank as more

Important matters, and the playwrights seem to apply the method with

considerably more Ingenuity.

Viewed in the broadest perspective. The Two. Noble Kinsmen, the

main plot of which Is based on Chaucer's courtly romance The Knight's

Tale, seems to be the same general type of play as Shakespeare's other

la te romances. In h is argument fo r assigning the members of the group

beginning with Cvmbellne exclusively to Blackfriars, Bentley says.

The evidence. I t seems to me. I s to be seen In Qymbellne. The W inter's Tale. The Temnest. and Po&le Kjpprngp ... The variations idrich these plays show from the Shakes­ p earian norm have long been a su b jec t fo r c r itic a l comment. The first three of them In particular, since they are the only ones which have been universally accepted as part of the Shakespeare canon, have cœnmonly been discussed as a distinct genre.... No competent critic vho has read care­ fully through the Shakespeare canon has failed to notice that there Is something different about Qymbellne. The v a n te r 's T ale. The. Tempest, and The ..Tag, KjPSmsE.

Although it appears that Bentley's explanation of the "variations" can no longer be accepted, his classification of The Two Noble Kinsmen as a

200 Bentley ("Shakespeare and the Blackfriars Theatre"), pp. 4-7-48. 249 member of the group surely can. In Shakespeare and the Nature of Man.

Theodore Spencer comments,

Shakespeare's p a r t in The Two Noble Kinsmen . . . was h is l a s t piece of dramatic writing, and though it does not show him at the height of his powers, it is highly characteristic of the final period, differing only in degree, not in kind, from ‘The.Winter's Thle and

But Spencer notes, as Bentley does not, that the first drama in the genre is the Globe play Pericles. He says, for instance.

Rebirth through spring, through woman, acceptance of things as they are, but with a glory sound them—that is what we find in all the plays from Pericles on.202

I believe we can probably safely conclude that The Two Noble Kinsmen is a member of a group of dramas that had its genesis in the Globe tradition?^^

In addition, the milieu of the play, a world of knights and tournaments, likewise has a legitimate counterpart only in the Globe drama Pericles. In the tournament scene (II, ii) Pericles, who is called

"'The mean knight'" (II, ii, 59)t enters the lists, fights with distinc­ tion, and wins the fair lady, Thaisa. In The Two Noble Kinsmen, for instance, the major problem in the main plot, the contention between two friends, culminates in a tournament between Palamon and Arcite with their respective "Knights" (V, i, 7 S. D.) to determine which one will win the fair lady, Emilia (V, iii). It is a world, however, that provides the setting for part of one Blackfriars play. The Knight of the

201 Spencer (Nature of Man), p. 190. 202 Ibid.. p. 186.

^'^^ainoe The Winter! s Tale, and especially The Tempest appear to be dual-purpose plays, however, they had probably been performed at Blackfriars by this time. 250

Burning Pestle, but there, significantly, the world is satirized. There a "little citizen family representing the popular [i.e., public theatre] audienceinsist that the Blackfriars company perform in addition to th e ir scheduled play a drama in which one of the members of the "fam ily," an apprentice, plays the role of a grocer who decides to become a knight.

Rafe, the apprentice, says,

amongst all the worthy Books of Atchievem ents, I do not c a ll to mind, that I yet read of a Grocer Errant, I will be the said Knight: Have you heard of any that hath wandred unfurnished of his Squire and Dwarfeî my elder Prentice Tim shall be my trusty Squire, and little George my dwarfe, hence, my blew Apron, yet in remembrance of my former Trade, upon my shield shall be pourtraid a Burning Pestle, and I will be call'd the Knight of the Burning Pestle. (I, i. pp. 173-174)

At one point, Rafe challenges Jasper, the hero of the Blackfriars play within a play ("The London Merchant"), and the result is uproariously funny. The "knight" says.

Go, Squire, and tell him I am here. An Errant Knight at Arms^ to crave delivery Of that fair Lady to her own Knights arms. If he deny, bid him take choice of ground. And so defie him.

But Jasper, idille apparently quoting or parodying a romance, quickly, easily, and decisively defeats Rafe, and the Citizen knows why: "Jasper is enchanted" (II, i, p. 187). The Knight of the Burning_Pestie failed a t B la c k fria rs, but th is does not n ecessarily mean th a t Beaumont offended the audience by ridiculing the world of romances : Harbage notes that

^^^Harbage (Rival Traditions), p. 107. 205 -'«Quoted, or parodied, from some romance." The Works of Beaumont ; and Fletcher, ed. Rev. Alexander Byce, II (London, 1843), p. l66. n . "h." 251 most of the coterie satirists were engaged in a "revolt against the romantic."206

L a stly , The_Two Noble Kinsmen i s another type of play found only in the GLobe group; it is both a drama that ends happily and one in which a character who appears onstage dies. The play was entered in the

Stationers’ Register as "A Tragicomedy,"20? in sharp contrast to

Blackfriars practice, one of the two main characters perishes; Arcite

(V, iv, 95). More surprising yet, the man who so weightily expressed the dictum that a tragicomedy "wants d e a t h s "^08 none other than

Shakespeare's collaborator on The Two Noble Kinsmen. Fletcher,

The genre of the play, the milieu, and the death of a character who appears onstage indicate that The Two Noble Kinsmen was, in its broad basic fundamentals, a Globe type of play. The main problem Shakespeare and Fletcher chose to examine in the drama, however, was a conflict between love and true friendship, and this appears to be a matter that would have appealed primarily to a Blackfriars audience.

While in prison, Palamon and Arcite calmly discuss their friend­ sh ip ; P a l. I s th ere record of any two th a t lo v ’d Better than we do, ArciteÎ

^rbage (Rival Traditions). p. 101. Harbage points out, too, th a t in May Day ( I I I , i , 59-60) "sneers are d irected " a t the Gesta.Romanorum (Rival Traditions, pp. 91-92), one of the ultimate sources of Pericles. 2°7chambers (Elizabethan Stage). Ill, p. 226. Waller edition, II, p. 522, 209 Perhaps the epilogue glances at the problem. It seems to apolo­ gize to the audience because the play did not make them smile: "No man smile? / Then it goes hard, I see." (U . 4-5); and later it promises them "many a better" play (1. 16). 252 Arc. Sure, there cannot. Pal. I do not think it possible our friendship Should ever leave us. Arc. Till our deaths it cannot.

Enter Emilia and her Woman [below].

And after death our spirits shall be led To those that love eternally. (II, ii, 112-117)

But when Palamon, and later Arcite, see Emilia, we hear the first note of

conflict, and the enmity rises in a crescendo climaxed by Palamon*s threat

0, th a t now, th a t now Thy false self and thy friend had but this fortune. To be one hour at liberty and grasp Our good swords in our hands I I would quickly teach thee What * twere to filch affection from anotherI (II, ii, 206-210)

Near the end of the play, after Arcite has defeated his kinsman in the tournament, he summarizes for Emilia his conflict between love and friendship :

To buy you I have lost what's dearest to me, Save idiat is bought; (V, i i i , 112-113) and after a horse rears, falls, and mortally injures Arcite, Palamon tells his dying friend;

0 miserable end of our alliancet The gods are mighty. Arcite, if thy heart. Thy worthy, manly heart, be yet unbroken. Give me thy last words. I am Palamon, One that yet loves thee dying. (V, iv , 86-90)

It is the moving story of a great friendship torn asunder because two men love the same woman.

Certain relationships between love and friendship seem to have been examined in one of the Globe plays. At the beginning of The Pair 253 210 Maid of Bristowe. Vallenger and Qiallener appear to be friends. For example, the former says, "Friend Challener" (I, i, ?), and the latter, at another point, asks Vallenger, "What meanes ny friend ..." (I, i, 39).

But when Vallenger comes to a birthday celebration for Anabell, Challener's beloved, he (though he has been until now "an enemy to women" I, i, 10) falls in love with her (I, i, 36). The argument that ensues, in fact, resembles the one in The Two Noble Kinsmen :

Chal. Vallinger, thou art a traitor to thy frend. val. Not to my frend but alwaies to ny foe. Cha. Why dost thou loue the saint I do adore, val. To anger thee I swear to loue her more. Cha. I loued her first, when thou didst loue disdaine, val. I loue her now, therefore thy loue is vaine. Cha. Forsweare to name her else thou art my foe. val. Forsweare ny Anabell, hence dotard go, Cha. Prepare thee Vallener it is decreed For Anabell, or thou ore I must bleed? v a l. On S ir i t s welcome spare n o t but th ru s t home. Here they fight, Vallenger falls downe And Challener flies away ... (I, ii, 43-53)

Whether they have really been friends, however, is indeed questionable.

Vallenger, above, seems to say that Challener has not been his friend but

"alwaies" his "foe." After the fight, moreover, Sir Godfrey says to

Vallenger, "why I thought you had bin frends." (I, ii, 60). And through­ out nearly all of the remainder of the play Vallenger is so despicable that he can hardly be considered capable of true friendship. Vallenger's

"friendship" thus seems to have been merely a pretense. In the same play, however, another pair of men are indeed.friends, and they face one type

210 Although this is one of the questionable plays, it is a border­ line case (see Appendix A). 254 of conflict between love and friendship. Disturbed because Sentloe has fallen in love with a courtesan and will not abandon her, Harbart vainly says to him:

if thou wilt not leaue her company I vow my frendship [un]to thee is cold. (I, iii. 117-118)

He does not, however, cease to be his friend; he disguises himself and manages to bring Sentloe back to his senses. "When he discloses his id e n tity to Sentloe, he says, "behould thou Herbert and thy friend" (IV, i i i , 762 ), and Sentloe answers, "0 my deare Harbart: 0 my louing frend"

(IV, i i i , 786 ). In The Fair Maid of Bristowe we do not find, as we do in

The Two Noble. Kinsmen, that two true friends become enemies because they love the same woman, but we can probably conclude that the play does indicate that the Globe audience had some interest in the relationship between love and friendship.

In The Fair Maid of Bristowe. however, even the relationship between Harbart and Sentloe lacks the golden glow that haloes the friend­ ship of Palamon and A rcite in The Two Noble Kinsmen. In the Fair Maid friendship i s very important. In The Two Noble Kinsmen, however, i t i s virtually sacred: as we have seen, Arcite tells Palamon that theirs will persist "Till our deaths ... And after death our spirits shall be led /

To those that love eternally." (II, ii, 114-117). At the private theatres, the early dramatists in general concentrated heavily on matters related to friendship, and Blackfriars playwrights, to some extent, continued to deal with these subjects (and, most notably, the almost sacred dimension of friendship) down almost to the very time The Two Noble Kinsmen was w ritte n . 255 In what seems to be the e a r lie s t extant private theatre drama,

Damon and Pvthias. the nature of true friendship is a central concern.

In “The Last Song," which ends the play, we find;

True friends are constant both in word and deed. True friends are present, and help at each need; True friends talk truly, they glose no gain. When treasure consumeth, true friends w ill remain

Generalizing about the distinguishing features of the select drama from

Damon and Pvthias. dated c, I 565, down to "the blank period 1591-1599."

Harbage comments that

on the basis of extant plays as well as the earlier titles, we can see that the theme of friendship—pervasive in the polite literature of the Renaissance—was a favorite with the chorister companies,

Harbage states, however, that after 1599 the select drama changed:

In all but a few of the ixLays the theme is sexual trans­ gression, coupled in tragedy with treachery and murder, and in comedy with cupidity and fraud. I t i s a body of drama preoccupied with lu st and murder or lu st and money, and with the exhibition of the foolish and the foul,2l3

But at Blackfriars the interest in friendship did not wholly cease. In

Sir Giles Goosecap. dated between I 6OI and 1603,^^^ friendship even retained the golden glow. In discussing their relationship, Momford comments to Clarence, methinks plain and prose friendship would do excellen t well betwixt us ,,, ‘tis time, I trow, that we both lived

A-^lact. Collection of Old English Plavs. ed, W. Carew H a z litt, IV (London, 18?A), p. 104.

Harbage (Rival Traditions), pp, 66-67 ,

^^Ibid.. p, 71 , 214 Chambers (Elizabethan Stage). IV, p. 15, The edition is ^ Parrott (CbaPmanls Comedies). 256

like one body, thus, and that both our sides were slit, and concorporate with organs fit to effect an individual passage even for our very thoughts ... (I, iv, 59-64) and in a soliloquy Clarence says,

0 sacred [my italics] Friendship, thanks to thy kind power, That being r e tir 'd from a l l the fa ith le ss world. Appear'st to me in my unworldly friend; And for thine own sake le t his noble mind moving precedent to all his kind . (Like just Deucalion) of Earth's stony bones Repair the world with human blood and flesh. And dying Virtue with new life refresh. (Ill, ii, 108-115)

In the Blackfriars plays written between 1604 and 1609, moreover, there is evidence^^ that the golden ideal of friendship continued to be a matter of concern. In Bvron I. the false friend La ïln refers to the concept when he says,

I never yet was traitor to my friends: The laws of friendship I have ever held. As my religion; (II, i, 135-137)

But, ominously, he betrays Ryron (Bvron II. V, ii, 130-135). In the play, however. Chapman contrasted La Pin with a true friend, D'Auvergne, and

Ryron's major regret when he faces death is "the sad loss of his worthy friendship" (Bvron II . V, iv, 239). In furthermore,

Leucippus and Ismenus, like Palamon and Arcite in The Two Noble Kinsmen, are both blood relations and true friends. Leucippus is the son of the

Duke of Lycia, and Ismenus is the Duke's nephew (Dramatis Personae).

^^^The Bvron dramas and Cupid's Revenge, however, are question­ able plays (see Appendix A). 257

Leudppus, during a period of danger, assures Ismenus

I shall live yet many a golden day to hold thee here dearest and nearest to me ... (IV, i, p. 269) and Wien Leucippus selflessly orders Ismenus to leave and later asks for at least one reason why he refuses, Ismenus is so torn with inner conflict that he becomes incoherent:

Do you th in k ; w ell, w ell, 1 know what 1 know, 1 pray come, come. *Hs in vain: but 1 am sure. Devils take ’em; what do 1 meddle with 'em? You know your self. Soul, 1 think 1 am; is there any man i ’th' world? as if you knew not this already better than 1. Pish, pish. I'll give no reason. (IV, i, p. 278 )

Among the 1604-1609 Blackfriars plays, however, the closest parallel to the situation in The Two Noble Kinsmen appears in The Dutch Courtesan.

Here a man not only must choose between the conflicting claims of friend­ ship and love, he treats friendship as a sacred matter. To his great distress. Malheureux finds that he has fallen in love with Francischina, a courtesan:

That 1 should love a strumpet 1 a man of Snowe Now shame forsake me whether 1 am f a lle n I (11, i, p. 83)

Moreover, Francischina has been jilted by Malheureux's friend, Freevill, and, to avenge herself, she tells Malheureux that he cannot enjoy her favor unless he kills Freevill. In a soliloquy Malheureux expresses Wiat he conceives to be the nature of friendship and the essence of his

c o n flic t: To kill my friendi 0 tis to kill my selfe ... 0 wit how vile. How hellish art thou, Wien thou raisest nature

^^^The quality of love here, however, differs considerably from that of Palamon and Arcite's love for Emilia. 258

Gainst sacred [my italics] faith1 thinks more to kill a friend To gaine a woman, to loose a vertuous selfe, For appetite and sensual end, whose very having. Looseth all appetite, and gives satietie; That corporall end, remorse and inward blushinges. Forcing us loath the steame of our owne heates, Whilste friendship dosde in vertue being spiritual Tastes no such la n g u ishinges and moments p leasu re, lAth much repentance, but like rivers flow. And further that they runne, they bigger grow, (II, i, pp. 92-93)

Thus, in the l604-l609 Blackfriars set of plays there seems to have been considerable precedent for treating problems of true friendship.

Furthermore, Ihe Maid's Tragedy, a drama written for Blackfriars sometime between about l608 and l6 ll,^ ^ shows that friendship continued to be a matter of interest to the Blackfriars audience down to within a few years before Ihe Two Noble Kinsmen was w ritte n ( l6 l3 ) . In The Maid's

Tragedy there are two great friends, Melantius and Amintor, and at one point, for example, Melantius carefully examines the.nature of true friendship. Speaking to Amintor, he says: '"tis not like a friend, /

To hide your soul from me" (III, p, 37), He adds later that "The name of friend is more than family, / Or all the world besides" (III, p. 39),

And, discussing an injury to Amintor's honor, he says,

nothing is so wild as I thy friend Till I have freed thee; still this swelling breast; , I go thus from thee, and will never cease My vengeance, till I find my heart at peace, (III,'p. 40)

It would appear, then, that problems involving the golden type of friendship dealt with by Shakespeare and Fletcher in the main plot of

The Two Noble Kinsmen were matters of concern not only at the early

217 Chambers (E lizab eth an Stage), pp. 224-225, 259 private theatres, but at Blackfriars right down to within a few years before The Two Noble Kinsmen was written. It would seem, consequently, that in the main plot of an essentially Globe type of play Shakespeare and Fletcher chose to concentrate on a predominantly Blackfriars type of problem, and this suggests that they applied the principle of fusion.

Their treatment of place, time, and action also appears to involve fusion. Although the typical Blackfriars play would have been s e t in e s s e n tia lly one lo c a tio n , The Two Noble Kinsmen takes place in two cities, Athens (e,g,, I, i) and Thebes (I, ii), as well as at locations in the vicinity of both (e,g,. I, iv and II, iii). Furthermore, although the typical Blackfriars play would have covered a duration of approximately a week or less. The Two Noble Kinsmen encompasses a period of well over a month. At least “ten days!' pass between I, iv, when Palamon and Arcite are taken prisoner, and II, iv, 26, And later in the play, on finding the two engaged in a fight, Theseus gives the following command:

you shall both to your country. And each within this month, accompanied With three fair knights, appear again in this place ,,, ( II I,V i, 290- 292)

The treatment of place and time would thus seem to follow Globe rather

than Blackfriars practice.

On the other hand, as Kittredge notes, the “time is much con­ densed" from that in the source (a minimum of “seven years'*),^® and in

two of the Blackfriars plays, as in The Two Noble Kinsmen, the dramatists

stress that the most important interval is one month. In Monsieur

218 “Palamon languishes in prison for seven years The Com­ plete Works of Shakespeare, ed, George Lyman Kittredge (Boston, 1936), p, 1410, 260

D*Olive the title character hopes in vain that he can "linger" his

"journey another month" (III, ii, 179). and in Your Five Gallflnts Katherine says she craves "the quiet respite of one month, / The month unto this night" before she chooses a husband (I, ii, 30-59: she selects him at V, ii, 96-97)» Thus, although Shakespeare and Fletcher did not employ the time period characteristic of the typical Blackfriars play, they may have reduced the period in the source to a duration for which they could have cited precedents in the Blackfriars tradition.

Of much greater significance, however, is the fact that when they designed the structure of The Two Noble Kinsmen they appear to have had in mind the Blackfriars audience. Besides the main plot, there is not only one loosely connected subplot focusing on a particularly interesting character, there are two, and neither appears in the source.2^9 The dramatists linked the first one, which is very brief (II, iii, and III, v), to the main story by having "four Country People" provide Arcite with information that makes it possible for him to see Emilia once again (II, i i i , 60- 82 ) and by having the characters in this portion of the play entertain Theseus and Hippolyta (III, v, 100-159), But this subplot functions as an essentially separate focal point of concern, and, as we will see, at its center stands an especially interesting character,

Gerrold, The second subplot is far from brief. It is a very fully developed section of the play, and its links to the main plot are, on the whole, quite slight. Although the jailer plays the role of a father in

219 Of the major secondary plot, Kittredge says, "there is no trace in Chaucer" (Ibid. ). and the same is true of the brief subplot. 261 one portion and a "Keeper" in the other, the dominant center of interest in this subplot, the Jailer*s Daughter, never appears with any of the principals in the main story. We are told that she provides the cell of

Arcite and Palamon with "strewings" (II, i, 25), that she brings Palamon

"water in a morning" (II, iv, 22), that Palamon, as a gentlemanly gesture, has kissed her once (II, iv, 23-26), that she has fallen in love with

Palamon (e.g., II, iv, 1), and, serving as the only sound link for the

OO A two sections, that she has made it possible for Palamon to escape (II, vi, 1-4). Speaking to her father about the aid he received, Palamon makes h is only referen ces to her;

Your gentle daughter gave me freedom once ... Pray, how does she? I heard she was not well; her kind of ill Gave me some sorrow. (V, iv , 24-27)

When the jailer answers that "she's well restor'd, / And to be married shortly" (V, iv, 27-28), Palamon, wishing to repay her kindness to him, says,

I am most glad on't.... Prithee tell her so; Commend me to her, and, to piece her portion. Tender her this. [Gives purse.] (V, iv , 29-32)

Except for the fact that she helps Palamon escape, a matter that is merely narrated, the Jailer's Daughter and her entire story could be removed from the play without affecting the main plot in the least.

220,, "Thus the underplot ... is brought into connection with the main story." Ibid. 262

In Th9_Tifo_Nable_Klnsinen. therefore, the treatment of place and perhaps time seems to correspond to Globe practice, and the handling of the third unity, action, surely conforms to Blackfriars practice. It would thus appear that Shakespeare and Fletcher once more made use of the principle of fusion.

In choosing the content for the brief subplot, the playwrights may well have applied it again, first of all, the central figure of this section, Gerrold, is a pedantic schoolmaster. He is called "our thing of learning" (II, iii, 51)» and he readily parades his knowledge before his rural companions :

What te d io s ity and d isen san ity Is here among ye I Have my rudiments Been labour'd so long with ye, milk'd unto ye, And, by a figure, even the very plum-broth And marrow of my understanding laid upon ye, And do you w ill cry "Where?" and "How?" and "Wherefore?" You most coarse frieze capacities, ye jane judgments, Have I said "Thus let be," and "There let be," And "Then le t be," and no man understand me? Proh Deum, medius fidius, ye are all dunces I ( I I I , V, 2-11)

A pedantic man such as this, as we have seen, is a figure peculiar to the

Blackfriars plays. In The Fawn, for instance, he appears as Gonzago, a man who likewise parades his learning:

You must know my age Hath seene the beings and guide of things, I know Dimensions and termini Of all existens: (I, ii, p, 153)

Secondly, Gerrold is in charge of a group that performs vdiat

is surely an antimasque (III, v, 136-14?), Chambers comments, 263

doubtless the antimask of Beaumont's contribution to the Princess Elizabeth's wedding was furbished up again for the delight of a popular audience in Ihe Two Noble Kinsmen. ^

His evidence is that the characters in the dance are "from one of the anti-masks in Beaumont's InnerJTemnle. and Grav's Inn Mask of 20 February

1613."222 Since elaborate masques and visual effects associated with them were primarily Blackfriars fare, in this brief subplot a Blackfriars character seems to present what is a predominantly Blackfriars visual d e lig h t.

At the same time, however, the members of Gerrold's group rank far down in the social scale. They are country folk and the many problems they face in preparing to put on an entertainment (e.g., II, iii, 24-35 and III, v, 27 - 55) would probably not have been of significant interest to the patrons at Blackfriars, a group Harbage calls an "urban c l i q u e . "223

Furthermore, Gerrold and his unsophisticated folk present the show before

Theseus and Hippolyta, and in an early play by Shakespeare a group of unsophisticated folk likewise present an entertainment before the same two r u le rs . The p lay , of course, was A Midsummer-Night's Dream (V, i ,

106- 360). i t i s a p o s s ib ility th a t th is drama was w ritte n fo r, and

221 Chambers fE llzab athan_Stage). I . p. 18?. 222 Chambers (va.lliam -Sbakespeare) . I , p. 53O; see also Thorndike ("Influence of the Court Masques"), p. 114.

^^^Harbage (Rival Traditions), p. 297. 264

performed only at, a contemporary wedding,but Harbage argues against i t :

there is no recorded instance before or during Shakespeare's career (theories about "courtly" plays like A Midsmnmer Might's Dream and Merrv Wives notwithstanding) when a regular play was bought, rehearsed, and acted by a professional com­ pany exclusively for a special audience.... "court" plays were public plays acted at court for a fee ofjElO.ZZji

Harbage, consequently, classifies A M.dsummer-Night.'s Dream as a public theatre play.^^^ Why Shakespeare and Fletcher should have chosen to include fare similar to that in a public theatre play some seventeen years old I cannot say for sure, but it may be that the drama had some special appeal to Jacobean audiences. A contemporary letter by Dudley Carleton 227 says, "On New yeares night we had a play of Robin goode-fellow," and th is le d Chambers to conclude th a t A Midsummer-Night's Dream "was probably one of the first plays chosen for revival before James, on 1 January

1604."228 Furthermore, since the King's Men would have had to rehearse the play, they may well have performed it about the same time at the

ŒLobe. If so, the presentation by unsophisticated people of an enter­ tainment before Iheseus and Hippolyta may be a Globe feature. Lastly, within the entertainment there is a morris dance (III, v, 108), and

Wallace's studies led him to allege that such a dance was public theatre fare. In reference to the early Blackfriars plays, he says.

224 Chambers (iajliam _Shakespeare). I , pp. 358-359.

^^^Harbage (Rival Traditions), p. 116.

^^^Ifeid.. p. 346.

Chambers (W illiam Shakespeare). I I , p . 329. 228 I, p. 362. 265

The notable thing about the dancing is that it differs from the public theatre jig and Morris.229

The fragmentary subplot in The Two Hoble Kinsmen thus includes an exclusively Blackfriars character, a pedantic man, and a predominantly

Blackfriars type of spectacle, an antimasque. At the same time, however, it also includes features that we should probably associate with the

ŒLobe: problems of rural people, the presentation by unsophisticated folk of an entertainment before Theseus and Hippolyta, and a morris dance. It is therefore surely something more than a mere possibility that even in this brief subplot Shakespeare and ïletcher applied the principle of fusion.

From the point of view of this study, however, the real delight in The Two Noble. Kinsmen is the quite fully developed secondary plot, the part of the play that focuses on the Jailer's Daughter. In terms of the fusion technique, it is a minor masterpiece. This plot deals, first of all, with a girl who is in love with a man far above her in social status:

I am base, Ify father the mean keeper of his prison, And he a prince. To marry him is hopeless ... (II, iv, 2-4)

The problem is thus one faced by members of a comparatively "base" or

"mean" social class and therefore one that would probably have been of interest primarily to the multi-class audience at the Globe, At the same time, however, the plot provides virtually all of the play's substantial interest in sexual matters, a major preoccupation in the Blackfriars set o f p la y s.

229 Wallace (Children.of the Chanel), p. 118 and n. 2. 266

Essentially, the character of the Jailer's Daughter seems to have been woven largely from two Blackfriars strands, and both of these should have appealed to the Blackfriars audience's interest in sex. Although she is sufficiently virtuous that she will be married to a good man (the

Wooer) at the end of the play (V, iv, 28), she says of Palamon in a soliloquy, for example,

Let him do What he w ill with me, so he use me kindly; For use me so he shall, or I 'll proclaim him. And to his face, no man, (U , V i , 28-31)

She is thus an essentially virtuous woman who is extraordinarily anxious to have sexual relations. She resembles, therefore, first of all, the virtuous women in Blackfriars plays who speak candidly about their desire for intercourse, such as Hippolyta, one of the heroines in The Isle of

Gulls (II, iv, p, 4?), Such characters as Hippolyta, however, are at least willing to wait for marriage. But knowing that marriage with

Palamon is out of the question, the Jailer’s Daughter wants an illic it sexual relationship. Furthermore, she wants this relationship with such intensity ("use me so he shall, or I 'll proclaim him ,,, no man") that

I believe we must associate her also with the characters called lascivious women, and it is primarily in the Blackfriars plays that we find these fig u re s . M istress Newcut in Your Five Gall ants, for example, comes to

Primero's brothel "for sheer pleasure and affection" (II, i, 20),

Later in the drama, however, the playwrights added another strand to her character, and this one has counterparts only in the Globe plays.

Her hopeless desire for Palamon, her concern that her father may hang because she helped Palamon escape (e,g,. III, ii, 22), her exposure to 26?

the cold while wandering in the wood (III, iv, i), her lack of sleep and

food (e.g.. Ill, ii, 25-28), her fear she will have to beg (III, ii, 22-

23), her fear that Palamon is dead (III, ii, 18)—it is all too much for

the young girl, and soon she becomes, as the Ihird Countryman puts it,

"as mad as a March hare" (III, v, 73). In the two groups of plays, as we

have seen, it is Only in the ŒLobe set that characters go mad (e.g.. Lady

Macbeth, V, i).

Once the Daughter goes mad, her ta lk becomes almost in cred ib ly

lewd. For example, she asks that a wedding gown be brought to her early

the following morning because

I must be abroad else, To call the maids and pay the minstrels; For I must lose my maidenhead by cocklight; ‘Twill never thrive else. (IV, i, 110-113)

And, speaking of what she imagines Palamon's sexual prowess to be, she

says.

They come from a l l p a rts of the dukedom to him. I 'll warrant ye he had not so few last night As twenty to dispatch. He'll tickle't up In two hours, if his hand be in. (IV, i, 136-139)

Her speeches thus become a wild mixture of Globe raad-talk and Blackfriars

sex-talk—a truly potent formula for fusing material from the two

traditions.

Witnessing her behavior, her father concludes sadly; "She's

lost, / Past all cure," (IV, i, 13p-l40). But he is mistaken. A doctor

advises that the Wooer, a man who courted her before she fell in love

with Palamon, pretend in every way to be Palamon. 268

I t i s a falsehood she is in, idiich is with falsehoods to be combated, (IV, i i i , 103- 105)

One of his specific prescriptions makes a major contribution to the

sexual interest of the secondary plot. When the doctor learns that the

Daughter has asked the Wooer to sing and he has not complied, he directs the Wooer to do whatever she asks—he even advises him; "Lie with her, i f she ask you," (V, i i , 17-18). And, l a t e r , th a t i s ex actly what she requests ;

Wooer, Come sweet, w e 'll go to din n er. And then we'll play at cards. Da ugh. And shall we kiss too? Wooer. A hundred tim es. Daugh. And twenty? Wooer, Ay, and tw enty, Daugh, And then we'll sleep together? Doctor. lake her offer. Wooer. Yes, inarry, will we, Daugh, But you shall not hurt me. Wooer, I will not, sweet, Daugh, If you do, love. I'll cry. Bxeunt.

After she receives this novel psychiatric "treatment," all is well; we leam from her father that "she'3 well restor'd, / And to be married shortly" (V, iv, 27-28), The entire incident is one that abundantly reflects the strong preoccupation with sex which characterizes many of the Blackfriars plays, but, curiously enough, among the two sets of works th e only play in -(diich sexual in terc o u rse i s p rescrib ed fo r illn e s s i s one written for the Globe, Volnone. To induce a jealous husband to let his wife sleep with Volpone, Mosca tells him that others idio are competing for his master's favor

haue had (At extreme fees) the colledge of physicians Consulting on him, how they might restore him; 269 Where, one would haue a cataplasme of spices, Another, a flayd ape dlapt to his brest, A third would ha' it a dogge, a fourth an oyle With wild cats skinnes: at last, they all resolu'd That, to preserue him, was no other means. But some yong woman must be straight sought out. Lustie, and full of iuice, to sleepe by him; (VolEone. II, Vi, 26-35)

I think we should probably conclude, therefore, that when Shakes­ peare and Fletcher wrote the secondary plot of The Two Noble Kinsmen they integrated distinctive features from both the Globe and Blackfriars tradi­ tions and that they did so with brilliant ingenuity.

Reviewing the internal evidence as a ^o le, I think we can prob­ ably say, first of all, that The Two Noble Kinsmen is one of Shakespeare's group of dramatic romances, the first one of which was a Gd.obe play,

Pericles: it is a tragicomedy in which a character vho appears onstage dies, an exclusive trait of Globe plays; and it is a play set in a world of knights and tournaments, an attribute that can be legitimately assigned to only one drama in the two sets, the Globe play Pericles.

Moreover, in contrast to the characteristic Blackfriars play, The Two

Noble Kinsmen takes place in two different locations, and it covers a time period of well over a month. On the other hand* the period was radically reduced from that in the source, and the principal duration, one month, had precedents in two Blackfriars plays. Furthermore, the structure of the drama is characteristic of Blackfriars plays: besides the main plot, there is a full-fledged and essentially independent secondary plot focusing on a particularly interesting character. This

character, however, is not only a woman who speaks extremely candidly about desiring sexual relations, a Blackfriars feature, and a lascivious woman, a predominantly Blackfriars ingredient, but a figure who goes mad. 270 an exclusively Globe feature. The structure also includes a fragmentary subplot dealing primarily with another character of special interest to

Blackfriars audiences, a pedantic man, but his major function in the play is to train a group of unsophisticated folk so that they can present an entertainment before two rulers, a feature of an early public theatre play that may well have been revived at the Globe in l604. The key issue in the main plot is that two upper class figures are torn ty a problem involving friendship, a matter that was predominantly a Blackfriars interest, but the problems in the play range down to those of country folk. Although the main plot is devoid of sexual matters, a major concern of the Blackfriars audience, the secondary plot certainly is not, A jailer's daughter wishes in vain to have sexual relations with a man, goes mad, and recovers only after another man takes a doctor's advice and, pretending to be the first man, has intercourse with her. Madness, however, is an exclusively Globe feature, and the only drama among the two sets in which sexual intercourse is prescribed as a cure for illness is one written for the Globe. Lastly, the visual effects in the play include; a vanishing being, a Globe feature ; a masque-like spectacle, primarily a Blackfriars ingredient; and two exclusively Blackfriars features, a lavish celebration of a marriage and a sacrifice. It would appear, therefore, that ühe Two Noble Kinsmen contains a great many features present in the typical Globe play and in the typical Blackfriars play and that the two playwrights amalgamated virtually all of them by means of fu sio n . 271

Given this conclusion and the fact that the acquisition of

HLackfriars meant that the King's Men had to supply both of their theatres with satisfactory plays, I think we may, with considerable con­ fidence, infer that Shakespeare and Fletcher teamed up to write The Two

Noble Kinsman in such a way that it would perform successfully at both theatres. It would appear, then, that the total pattern of available evidence indicates that Shakespeare's last service to his company was to face once more the challenge of writing a dual-purpose play in order to help them solve the problem posed by the acquisition of HLackfriars.

With the previously available evidence, most notably the 1634 title page, it is hardly surprising that various scholars have assumed that Ihe Two Noble Kinsmen was written exclusively for HLackfriars. Two have offered additional evidence and arguments in support of this con­

clusion. Bentley includes the play within the scope of his argument for assigning all of Shakespeare's late romances exclusively to HLack­ f r i a r s , ^30 as we have seen, he does not take into account either

Pericles or the evidence from Forman's Booke of Plaies, and his conclu­ sion conflicts with the internal evidence supplied by Qvmbeline. Ihe

W in ter's Tala, and Sna-ISfflBfifil.

Bertram lim its h is a tte n tio n to The Two Noble Kinsmen and presents internal evidence from the 1634 text that he believes establishes grounds for "the assumption that the play was written with performance at

230 Bentley ("Shakespeare and the HLackfriars Theatre"), pp. 47-48. 272 231 H Lackfriars in mind," Commenting th a t "the p lay shows unusually

strong signs of having been written with performance at an indoor theatre

specifically in mind," he notes, first, that "The text ... calls fre­

quently for the use of cornets rather than trumpets,and, c itin g

Shakespeare * s. Workshop by Lawrence, he states that "the exclusive or

predominant use of cornets is one indication of a text prepared or adapted

for an indoor theatre.It is true that Lawrence was unable to find

evidence of a comet being used in any public theatre play before c.

1620^^^ and that in the 1634 text of The Two Noble Kinsmen cornets rather than trumpets are used except in one instance (and here the trumpets were

certainly not blown on the stage, because Hnilia is listening to a fight offstage); "Cornets, Trumpets sound as to a charge," (V, iii, 56 S. D .).

But the real issue is whether the original version of the play, the one dating c, l6l3, called for cornets. If it did, this would indeed be strong evidence that the authors had only HLackfriars in mind. But, unfortunately, the first text we have is the 1634 version, and, as

Bertram himself says, "the exclusive or predominant use of cornets" can indicate that a text has been "adapted [my italics] for an indoor theatre." The 1634 text, therefore, may be merely the HLackfriars version of The Two Noble Kinsmen. If, as the total available evidence seems to show, the play was written for both theatres, it would have been a simple

^^^Bertram ("The Date of The Two Noble Kinsmen?*), p. 30.

p . 29.

p . 29, n. 21. 234 Lawrence (Shakespeare * s Workshop). p. 153 1 n. 34. 273 matter for the company to adjust the stage directions to suit the require­ ments for the theatre they were using at the time.

. Next, Bertram notes that the text is "unusually specific in its indications of scenery and scenic effects,It would appear, however, that the stage directions calling for "scenery" should be disregarded, because I 613 seems to have been too early for scenery at either Black- friars or the Globe, In the 1634 text we find, for instance, "Athens, A garden, with a castle in the background," (II, i), but, assuming that this was a genuine stage direction and not merely an appeal to the imagination of readers, it apparently should be dated at least as late as the 1620's, Although Ni coll, speaking of the period of Shakespeare's last plays, states that "painted scenes" "had for long been known in court productions" and speculates that "it is probable that they were used at least by some among the children's companies," 236 the question whether th e K ing's Men, an ad u lt company, used scenery a t e ith e r th e a tre in 1613 is another, matter;

Now, while it is true that a few stage-directions in plays from 1611 onwards do tentatively suggest that occasionally some set-pieces may have been introduced on the professional stage during the second decade of the seventeenth century, such evidence as there is neither gives any authority for a belief that the King's Men utilised stage decorations when they started playing at the SLackfriars in I 6IO nor contra­ dicts other later evidence which seems to prove definitely that "scenes" (in the sense of complete settings) entered the London theatres for the first time during the twenties and thirties of the century,237

'^Bertram ("The Date of Ihe Two Noble Kinsmen"), p, 29,

^^^icoll ("Court Masque"), p. 59*

2 3 7 j^., pp. 274 Moreover, stage directions that are "nnnsnally specific" in regard to

"scenic effects" (as distinguished from "scenery") appear also in a

Shakespearian drama written about the same time exclusively, in all like­ lihood, for the Globe. In Henrv VIII we find, for example;

... Enter two Vergers, with short silver wands; next them, two Scribes, in the habit of doctors; after them, the Archbishop of Canterbury alone; after him, the Bishops of Lincoln, Ely, Rochester, and Saint Asaph; next them, with some small distance, follows a Gentleman bearing the purse, with the great seal, and a cardinal's hat; then two Priests, bearing each a silver cross; then a Qentleman-usher bare-headed, accompanied with a Sergeant-at-arms bearing a silver mace; then two Gentlemen , bearing two great silver pillars ... (II, iv, 1 S. D.)

Bertram notes, last of all, that The Two Noble Kinsmen "is 238 exceptionally lavish in its use of music." But, as we have seen, music, both instrumental and vocal, was only somewhat more common fare at Blackfriars than at the Globe.

^^^Bertram ("The Date of Ihe Two Nobj.e Kinsmen"), p. 29. 239 Moreover, there appear to be some grounds for suspecting each of Bertram's specific allegations. He lists (p. 29) music accompanying formal processions (I, i, and I, v) and the morris dance (III, v), "ceremonial flourishes for nearly all of Theseus' appearances," the use of "horns and recorders," and eight songs. Among the two sets of plays, I have found no instance in >diich music accompanies a formal procession, but i t does accompany the coronation parade in Henrv VIII ("Music" IV, i, 37 S. D.), and this play was surely written exclusively for the Globe. Musicians played for dances in both groups of plays (e.g.. The Malcon­ tent. V, iv, p. 212 S. D. and Pericles. II, iii, 97), and, furthermore, as we have seen, Wallace found that morris dances were public.theatre fare (Children of_the Chaoel. p. 118 and n. 2). Flourishes announce entrances in Globe plays, such as Antony and Cleouatra (e.g.. I, i, 10 S. D. and II, vi, 1 S. D.), horns are employed in King Lear (I, iv, 8 S. D.), and, for ■vdiat it is worth, recorders are called for in an earlier Globe play, Hamlet (III, ii, 302; it is certainly more than a mere possibility, however, that the King's Men revived Hamlet at the Globe between 1604 and 1609). Lastly, the eight songs in The Two Noble Kinsmen 275

I find it difficult, therefore, to accept the arguments of

Bentley and Bertram for assigning Ihe.Two Noble. Kinsmen to Blackfriars.

I grant readily, of course, that the total available evidence indicates that Shakespeare and Fletcher did write the play for Blackfriars, but this evidence likewise appears to establish that they wrote it also for th e ŒLobe.

do total twice as many as in any of the Globe dramas (Volpone has four), but six of the eight are sung by a mad woman, and although there are no such songs in either set of plays, they remind one of those sung Ophelia in Hamlet (IV, v). CHAPTER IV

CONCLUSION

We have seen that in about August, 1608, Shakespeare's company,

which had been performing at a public theatre, the ŒLobe, acquired a

private theatre named Blackfriars; that beginning about this time Shakes­

peare wrote a series of plays which scholars have considered to be

substantially different from his earlier plays ; and that some commentators

have alleged that the changes resulted because Shakespeare was taking

into account the tastes of the Blackfriars audience. We have noted,

furthermore, that although in l604 the current traditions at the Globe

and Blackfriars overlapped one another and afterward steadily converged,

they continued to differ in a variety of ways. Lastly, against this

background, we have seen that an examination of the overall pattern of

external and internal evidence bearing on Shakespeare's last plays seems

to point to three fundamental conclusions. First, although two of the works, Qvmbeline and Henrv VIII. appear to have been designed exclusively

for the Globe, the remaining three. The Winter's Tale. The_Tempest, and

The Two Noble Kinsmen, seem to have been written in such a way that they

could be performed at -ither the Globe or Blackfriars or at both theatres.

Secondly, \diile all five of the last plays (though they differ in varying degrees from one another) are, basically. Globe types of plays, it appears that in Henrv VIII Shakespeare included a few Blackfriars features

276 277 and that in the romances following Cvmbeline (The Winter's Tale and especially Ihe Tempest and The Two Noble Kinsmen) he began to introduce certain characteristic Blackfriars features and to amalgamate these with features from the Globe plays. This, then, would suggest that the inter­ ests of the Blackfriars audience exerted a somewhat limited but definite influence on four of Shakespeare’s five last plays. Lastly, the kind of romantic tragicomedy that Shakespeare turned to late in his career cannot be attributed to the influence of the Blackfriars tradition. Essentially, it is a type of play that was rooted in and grew out of the Globe tr a d itio n ,

Mth respect to the last plays individually, the evidence would first of all seem to indicate not only that Shakespeare designed the initial play, Qvmbeline. exclusively for the Globe but that on certain matters he deviated sharply from practices in the Blackfriars plays, and this appears to imply that when he wrote the play he was not significantly concerned about the reactions of the Blackfriars clientele. In The

Winter’s Tale, however, a play written well after the King’s Men acquired

Blackfriars, he seems to have included some HLackfriars features and to have fused several of them with features from the Globe tradition, and thus we can probably conclude that he wrote, experimentally, a play that might serve both of his company’s theatres. In his next work.. The

Tempest, perhaps because he discovered that the fusion technique he used in The Winter*s Tale offered genuine promise, Shakespeare integrated a great many of the characteristic features in the two traditions and thus created Wiat appears to be his first full scale dual-purpose play. Later, probably with the aid of a collaborator, Shakespeare evidently designed 278

Henrv VIII solely for the Globe, but, in contrast to his practice in the other play he wrote exclusively for this theatre, Cvmbeline. he seems to have introduced a few Blackfriars features, and he probably did so in order to please the members of the Globe audience who normally attended plays at his company's private theatre. Finally, with the aid of

F letc h e r, Shakespeare composed what was probably h is l a s t work. The Two

Noble Kinsmen, and since the two playwrights appear to have amalgamated numerous Globe and HLackfriars features by means of fusion, we should probably conclude that The Two Noble Kinsmen, like The Tempest, was a full-fledged dual-purpose play.

It is, of course, impossible to anticipate all of the values, or perhaps even the kinds of values, of a given piece of research, but perhaps some of the more important implications of this study deserve

comment. In essence, I have offered merely some a d d itio n a l inform ation about why Shakespeare seems to have written his last plays in the manner

that he did, but, as is commonly the case in the intricately interrelated world of Shakespeare studies, the waves started by these new facts or probabilities may extend many leagues and may pound even far distant

shores.

Perhaps, first of all, it would be well to mention briefly a few

of the values this study may have for general readers and critics. It

should, for example, provide all who read Shakespeare's plays with

information about what theatre or theatres Shakespeare had in mind -tdien

he wrote the last plays, and thus it will better equip them to visualize

early performances. Secondly, since with the exception of some of the noble sentiments about friendship in The Two Noble Kinsmen I have been 279 unable to assign any of the concepts in Shakespeare's last plays to the

HLackfriars tradition, this would seem to suggest that we can now, with considerably greater confidence, treat the ideas in Shakespeare's dramas as an essentially unbroken chain of thought. Lastly, this study may also serve to help us interpret Shakespeare's last plays someWiat more satis­ factorily and to assist us in solving some of the problems they pose. It may, for example, give us a due to the response Shakespeare intended when he created Autolycus, the coneycatcher in The Winter's Tale, because it suggests that the character is dosely allied to Cocledemoy in The

Dutch Courtesan, and it shows that the antics of Marston's rascal were designed "for VHts sake." In addition, with our more dear awareness th a t the humour character called th e cau selessly jealous husband was almost a standard feature in HLackfriars plays, we may be able to under­ stand more readily why Shakespeare chose not to provide Leontes with dearly adequate motivation for his jealousy. Furthermore, this study may aid us in solving one of the major questions. about The Tempest. With the knowledge that the Blackfriars dramatists characteristically treated their material in an intensive rather than an extensive manner, we should be much better equipped to understand why Shakespeare, dose to the end of his career, radically deviated from his usual practice and conformed to the unities of time and place.

Certain implications of this study are more directly germane, however, and thus merit fuller examination. Since this research indi­ cates how the HLackfriars tradition influenced Shakespeare's last plays and determines the theatres for idiich they were probably designed, it 280

may, first of all, provide helpful information for certain kinds of

specialized studies. In his work entitled Shakespeare at the Globe 1599-

1609 Bernard Beckerman had to end his analysis with the year I 609 because

he could not know idiat effects the acquisition of Blackfriars exerted on

Shakespeare's last plays and could not know whether Shakespeare wrote any

of them for the ŒLobe,^ Likewise, Harbage in Shakespeare and the Rival

Traditions found it awkward to discuss Shakespeare's I 609-I 613 plays

because he could not, with full confidence, assign them to the Globe,^

He found, for instance, that he had to lis t the works under the designa­

tions "POPULAR OR SELECT" and, with specific reference to all of the

1609-1613 plays he allots to the King's Men, "At Globe and Blackfriars,"3

îfy findings should provide information that can supplement studies such

as these two as well as aid scholars who pursue similar kinds of goals

in the future.

My research may also supply some information that can help us

better understand the early stages of a particularly important develop­

ment in English drama. We know that in the 1390's there was, in essence,

a single Elizabethan audience, one that Harbage has called "the universal

audience of the public theatres,"^ We know also that about the turn of the century the private theatre dramatists began to woo, with considerable

success, the more sophisticated part. And we know that by late in the

^P. x i,

^Harbage (Rival Traditions), pp. 303-304,

^Ibid,. p. 350,

^Harbage (Shakespeare * s Audience). p , 90. 281 1590-1642 period the English theatre was well on its way to becoming, as

Ni coll has put it, "the exclusive property of an aristocratic clique,"^

I would suggest that the most crucial initial step in the long trend

toward the new alignment occurred when the King's Men began to operate

simultaneously both a public and a private theatre. Since they were both

the King's Men and the pre-eminent troupe, other companies would surely

have watched attentively the outcome of their dangerous venture, and, in

fact, about five years later, the manager of the only other public

theatre troupe operating at the time does seem to have tried to follow in

the footsteps of the Burbages. Harbage comments.

When Henslowe adapted the Hope on the Bankside in I 613, he was evidently planning a straddle for the Lady Elizabeth's Men between W hitefriars, a "private," and the Hope, a "public," theatre, in imitation of the straddle of the King's Men between HLackfriars and the Globe.°

By about the 1620's, moreover, the joint operation of the HLackfriars and

the Globe resulted, as we have seen, in a marked convergence of the

traditions at the two theatres. I would suggest, therefore, that the

King's Men may have spearheaded a trend that caused the gradual closing

of the gap between the public and private theatre traditions. Further­ more, I would suggest that in the early stages of the trend a very

important function was performed By Shakespeare.

From the vantage point provided by this study, I would offer

the observation that Shakespeare belongs in the vanguard of the forces

that narrowed the gap between the traditions at the public and private

5 AUardyce Nicoll, British Drama. 4th ed. (London, 194?), p. 110.

^Harbage (Rival Traditions), p. 2?. 282 theatres.7 ^nce he was the chief dramatist of the leading company and he designed plays that bridged the traditions at a public and private theatre, he may not only have helped to merge the traditions at the

Globe and HLackfriars, he may well have aided later dramatists by exhibit­ ing a method for solving the problems inherent in the dual-purpose type of p lay.

Furthermore, the analysis in this study of Shakespeare's method should serve to extend our knowledge of his dramatic techniques. Faced with the problem of supplying plays for a public and a private theatre, he integrated material from each of the traditions at the two playhouses with such skill that he managed simultaneously to provide both of his audiences with suitable fare and to create from the diverse material in the two traditions new features that were unified in their effect.

This study may also contribute a few facts to our all too slight knowledge of Shakespeare the man. It shows that he was the kind of man who, near the end of his illustrious career, was willing to add to his already burdensome task of perfecting his typo of romantic tragicomedy the difficult and risky chore of writing dual-purpose plays. Moreover,

although we had some reason to think that if he wrote plays for the

Blackfriars audience their interests might have exerted a corrupting influence on the concepts in these works, this is not the case. In

7Whether Shakespeare deserves credit for the first dual-purpose play I simply cannot say at present. Beaumont, Fletcher, and Jonson— all former HLackfriars playwrights~wrote dramas for the King's Men after the acquisition of Blackfriars and before Shakespeare wrote The 283 reference to the policy employed by the King's Men of "stealing the thunder" of the coterie playwrights "after I 6O8 ," Harbage says,

the practical adaptability of these King's Men involved some measure of ethical capitulation. There hovers a dubiety about the situation which might occasion a resigned pursing of lips on our part if we were dealing with a mere group of business associates, but which concerns us more vitally in view of the fact that these associates were also artists—and one of them the artist of our idolatry.°

But the evidence provided by th is study would seem to show th a t idien

Shakespeare wrote The Winter's Tale. Ihe Tempest, and The Two. Noble

Kinsmen, he introduced no ethically objectionable ideas that can be attributed to the HLackfriars tradition,^ It would thus seem that, although Shakespeare was willing to exert a great deal of effort to make it possible for his company to succeed in their HLackfriars venture, this effort did not include a willingness to compromise his own ethical principles.

As is often the case in research, however, a few of the more important contributions of this study have resulted primarily from an accidental discovery. On analyzing Cvmbeline against the background of the traditions at the GLobe and HLackfriars, I found that Shakespeare appears to have written it exclusively for the Globe and, moreover, on certain matters he seems to have diverged sharply from practices in

HLackfriars plays, Furthermore, on examining The Vfi.nter's Tale in the

^Harbage (Rival Traditions), p, 89 , 9 After his inevitably less intensive examination of the problem, Harbage comments on Shakespeare's l a s t plays th a t "There i s no change in their fiber ..." (Rival Traditions, p, 304) and that "Shakespeare never succumbed" (Ibid, . p, 307). 284

same manner, I found that Shakespeare seems to have introduced what can

be designated as HLackfriars fare. Since Shakespeare's relationship with

the HLackfriars audience appears to have altered between the time he

wrote Cvmbeline and The V&nterfs Tale, and since the most likely cause

would have been his company's interest in performing at Blackfriars and

their ultimate acquisition of this theatre, I have been forced to the

conclusion that Shakespeare may have written Cvmbeline before the King's

Men had reason to think they might present plays there (c. March, 1608)

and that he quite surely wrote it before the actual acquisition (c,

August, 16081

Placing Cvmbeline before March of I 6O8 , however, would seem to lead to the conclusion that between the beginning of I 607 and March of

1608 Shakespeare wrote Antony and Cleopatra. Coriolanus. Tlmon of Athens.

Pericles, and Cvmbeline and that between March, I 6O8 , and sometime early in 1611, the likely date of The Winter's Tale, he wrote nothing. On the face of it, this would seem highly improbable. Given the evidence we have, however, it is definitely possible that Antonv and Cleopatra was written in 1606,^^ Coriolanus in 1609,^ and Umon of Athens in I 605 or

1606.^2 If any of these dates can. be fully accepted, it would relieve the congestion, and if all can, it would indicate that during the period in question Shakespeare wrote only Pericles, a play that at most required

H. Case in Ridley (Antonv and Cleopatra). PP, xxvi-xxx, 11 See Appendix A, 12 James G, McManaway, "Recent Studies in Shakespeare's Chronology," Shakespeare Survey. Ill (1950), 30, ^ 285 little more than the addition of three acts and that may be simply a revision of a complete play (see Appendix B), and Cvmbeline. which, probably because he wished to capitalize on the success of Pericles, he seems to have written hurriedly. Why he would have written nothing

(except perhaps Coriolanus) between Cvmbeline and The Winter's Tale I do not presume to know, but I should think that he would have devoted part of the time to an examination of the HLackfriars plays to prepare himself for writing The. Winter's Tale, because this play appears to be the first one in which he took the interests of the HLackfriars audience into account.

To be sure, the best that can be said for this line of reasoning is that it is a possible way of explaining the facts at hand, but, awkwardly enough, the alternative explanations may be even less satis­ factory. If we date Cvmbeline after March of 16O8 but before August, this would indicate that during a period in vdiich the King’s Men were probably giving ever more serious thought to acquiring HLackfriars

Shakespeare was blithefully writing not only a four-square Globe play but one that in various ways deviated radically from practices in plays recently written for the company’s prospective audience. Since Shakes­ peare was a sh arer in the company, I hardly think he would have done th a t.

Another possible explanation is that Shakespeare wrote Cvmbeline after

August, 1608, merely for the use of the King’s Men on the tours they took during the plague that raged from July, 1608, to December1609.^^

13 Chambers (E lizabethan S tage). I I , p. 214. 286

The difficulty here, however, is not only that Shakespeare could hardly know there was going to be an extended plague period but that sometime in

1611 (when the King's Men presumably had firmly established themselves at

Blackfriars) Forman seems to have seen a performance of the play at the

ŒLobe.

Frankly, I think we face a choice among explanations none of which is entirely satisfactory. Primarily because early in I 6O8 was the latest logical time for Shakespeare to have tried to capitalize on the popularity of Pericles at the Globe and because he was a sharer in a company engaged in a very risky financial venture, I am inclined to conclude that the most probable (or the least improbable) explanation is that the dates usuall y assigned to some of the other plays are wrong and that Shakespeare had written or substantially completed Cvmbeline bv

March, I6O8 , or, in any event, by the date the King's Men acquired

HLackfriars, c, August, I 6O8 ,

In view of the likelihood that Cvmbeline was written earlier than is generally thought, it would perhaps be well to examine once more two of the most troublesome problems in Shakespeare studies. The first of these is the long-debated question of the relationship between Cvmbeline and Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster. In 1901 Ashley Thorndike tenta­ tively dated Philaster in 1608,^^ pointed out a sizable number of important sim ilarities between the two plays,and, commenting that "it

Ih Thorndike comments th a t "The d ate, I 6O8 . . . i s no more than a conjecture; but on the whole it seems a probable one." (The Influence of Beaumont and F letch er on Shaksnere. p. 65).

^^Ibid.. pp. 152-160 . 287 is ... probable that" Philaster "was written before Qvmbeline." concluded,

"In that case we could not escape the conclusion that Shakspere was

indebted to Philaster. After Chambers examined the evidence regarding

the date of P h ila s te r . however, he commented, " . . . I fea r th a t the view

of Thorndike ... that I 6O8 is à 'probable' conjecture is biased by a 17 desire to assume priority to Qvmbeline." and in a subsequent discussion

of the relationship between the two plays, he decided that "it is impossi-

1 O ble to say with ■vdiich play the priority rests," Comparatively recently

(1952) Harold S, VfiLlson has stated the obvious conclusion; "if some

unlooked-for evidence should one day tu rn up to show th a t Qvmbeline

preceded Philaster." Thorndike's "hypothesis would be in a sad plight.

Since the evidence I have found appears to show that there is

some reason to think that Shakespeare wrote Qvmbeline before the King's

Men had decided to acquire Blackfriars, the issue would seem to be

whether Beaumont and Fletcher wrote Philaster before or after this time.

In analyzing the problems the decision posed for the King's Men, Bentley

notes that none of these two dramatists' "plays before I 6O8 , when Black­

friars was acquired, was, so far as we can find, written for the King's 20 Men," whereas " a ll the Beaumont and F letcher plays of the next few

p. 157 .

Chambers (E lizabethan Stage). I l l , p. 223.

Chambers (W illiam Shakespeare). I , p. 483.

S. VS.lson, "Philaster and Qvmbeline." English Institute Essays. 1951 (New York, 1952), p. 148. 20 Apparently a few of the Beaumont and F letch er plays of th is period were designed for other companies. Harbage assigns The Coxcomb and The Scornful Lady to the Queen's Revels and The Honest Man's Fortune to the Lady Elizabeth's Men (Rival Traditions, p. 350). 288 years are King's men's plays, several of them famous hits, Philaster.

The Maid's. Tragedy. A King and No King. .OaptalS. Ths_2HoJjo^3s

Kipsmm. Eonduca. Monsieur Thomas. Vale^ntinian." He argues, therefore,

that "It seems a reasonable assumption ... that another of the policies agreed upon at the conferences of 1608 was to secure the services of

Beaumont and F letch er fo r the company in i t s new e n te rp rise a t the

Blackfriars."21 Bentley, to be sure, implies here that Beaumont and

Fletcher wrote Philaster for Blackfriars even though, as we have seen, the title pages of the first two editions indicate that they designed it for the Globe, but the remainder of his argument would appear to be essentially valid. Once the King's Men decided to undertake the task of performing at both the Globe and HLackfriars, they surely had to enlist the aid of additional dramatists, and the pattern of evidence Bentley o ffe rs would seem to show th a t they requested plays from Beaumont and

Fletcher.Under these circumstances, Philaster.^^ the first of their plays for the King's Men, would date after the decision to acquire

Blackfriars, and if, as I have suggested, Cvmbeline was written before this, it would follow that Philaster should be dated after Qvmbeline.

It might be argued, however, that since in about I 6O6 Beaumont

(or perhaps both dramatists) wrote Ihe Woman Hater for Paul' s, they did not write exclusively for Blackfriars and, consequently, that they may

23. Bentley ("Shakespeare and the.Blackfriars Theatre"), pp. 4$-46. 22 As we w ill see sh o rtly , Beaumont and F letch er would probably have welcomed such a req u est 23 Chambers c a lls E&LP h ila s te r Beaumont and F le tc h e r's " e a r lie s t play fo r the company" (E lizabethan Stage. I I , p. 213). 289 have written Philaster for the Globe before the King's Men had given aiy thought to acquiring Blackfriars, For the sake of completeness, it is a possibility worth considering.

While discussing Beaumont in An Essay of Dramatic Poesv. John

Dryden stated that "The first play that brought Fletcher and him in esteem was their Philaster ; for before that, they had written two or o il three very unsuccessfully ,,," The primary issue would thus seem to be what those "two or three" were and when the last one was written. The strongest likelihood is that Beaumont and/or Fletcher’s first three plays were The Woman Hater. The Knight of the Burning Pestle, and The Faithful

Shepherdess.^'^ and the editions available to Dryden would have shown him that the latter two were spectacular failures,^^ If these unsuccessful dramas were two of the ones Dryden referred to, then Philaster had to have been written after the later one. The Faithful Shepherdess, and we can quite safely date this drama early in 1608,^? I should think, furthermore, that the most likely time in 1608 that Fletcher would have turned from the Queen's Revels and joined Beaumont in writing Philaster for the King's Men would have been sometime after early in March. By

î'Iarch 11 the king had vowed that the Queen's Revels would never perform

24 Essays of John Drvden. ed. W, P, Ker (Oxford, 1926), I, p, 81, 25 Chambers (E lizab eth an .S tag e) . I l l , pp. 216-217, James Savage, however, has recently offered evidence vdiich indicates that Cupid's Revenge may date as early as "1607, or the early part of l608" (see Appendix A), 26 Chambers (E lizabethan Stage). I l l , pp. 220 and 222, 27 See Appendix A, 290 again,and the f i r s t two months or so of 16O8 would seem to be too short a time for Fletcher to write one new kind of play, a pastoral tragicomedy (The Faithful Shepherdess), and to collaborate on another, a special type of romantic tragicomedy (Philaster). If Bentley is right in arguing that "March to July I 6O8 ... are the months for discussions among the King's men of prospective performances at the B lackfriars,"^9 however, it appears that we would have to date Qvmbeline. which deviates from practices in Blackfriars plays, before March. Since Philaster would seem to have been w ritte n sometime a f te r e a rly in March and Qvmbeline before then, it looks as though we would again have to conclude that

Philaster probably dates after Cvmbeline.

Even if we ignore the problem of identifying the "two or three" plays Dryden had in mind, however, I think we would still find it d iffi­ cult to date The Faithful Shepherdess after Philaster. It hardly seems likely that Fletcher would have written his strange pastoral tragicomedy for the Queen's Revels after (and perhaps immediately after) he and

Beaumont had virtually perfected their golden formula for romantic tragicomedy in Philaster and after this play had been performed very successfully by the King's Men. It seems even less likely when we

28 Bentley notes that "in a letter dated 11 March I 6O8 S ir Thomas Lake officially notified Lord Salisbury that the company of the Children of HLackfriars must be suppressed and that the King had vowed that they should never act again even if they had to beg their bread." ("Shakes­ peare and the Blackfriars Theatre," p. 43). The vow would hardly have escaped Fletcher's notice. 29 Bentley comments th a t "as early as March 1608" Burbage "knew his theatre was without a tenant" (Ibid. . pp. 42-43),. 291 remember that Dryden said Philaster was the "first iû.ay" that brought them "in esteem,"

Lastly, regarding the entire question of the relative dates of

Philaster and Svmbeline. I would ask one question. Does it not seem inherently more reasonable that Beaumont and Fletcher, two talented but unsuccessful dramatists, would write the first-rate romantic tragicomedy

Philaster with Qvmbeline in front of them than that Shakespeare, a play­ w right whom Thorndike him self c a lls "a consummate adapter,would write the second-rate romantic tragicomedy Cvmbeline with Philaster in fro n t of him?

With respect to the question of which is the earlier play,

■Cvmbeline or Philaster. and therefore idiich influenced the other, I submit that the scales, which have long been in balance, now tip down in favor of Cvmbeline. If this is indeed the case, I think we are not likely to be far wrong if we reconstruct the history of the relationship between Cvmbeline and Philaster in the following manner. The failure of

Fletcher’s The Faithful Shepherdess at HLackfriars in early 6IO8 , the suppression of the HLackfriars company in March, and the King's vow that they would never perform again^^ would su rely have induced Beaumont and

Fletcher to try to locate a new company to write for, and their choices were strictly limited. Of the other private theatre companies, the only one they had previously been associated with, Paul's, had disappeared,^^

30 Thorndike (Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher), p. I 60. 31 See n. 28. 32 Chambers says that "The last traceable appearance of the Paul's boys was on 30 July I 6O6 ..." .( Elizabethan Stage. II, p. 22). 292 and the only remaining one, the King's Revels, could not have looked very

appealing to them. Unlike the Queen's Revels and Paul's, this was a very

recently organized troupe (at the very earliest, I 6O6 ), and there is reason to think that it was merely holding on by its fingertips. Chambers

describes it as a group of boys "who appear to have acted for a brief and

troubled period, -vriiich probably ended in I 6O8 or early in I 609, and he notes that "Ihe inhibition of I 6O8 [the closing of all of the London theatres in March] hardly gave the company a chance, and then came the plague [July, I 6O8 , to December, 1609^-^]. They were probably broken before the end of I 6O8 Beaumont and F le tc h e r's th re e other p o ssi­ ble choices were all public theatre companies. Two were performing at plebian theatres, Queen Anne's Men at the Red Bull and Prince Henry's at the Fortune, and the third, the King's Men, presented their plays at the fa r more fashionable Globe. Since Beaumont and F letch er would hardly have wished to write for the lowest level theatre audiences if they could possibly avoid it, their selection of the King's Men would seem to have been almost inevitable. 37 Bentley has alleged^' that Shakespeare's company probably consid­ ered the two young playwrights "very desirable" because of two "great assets," their social standing and their experience at writing for private theatres and especially for Blackfriars. But whatever advantages may have accrued from their social status, the fact remains, as Bentley

p. 66. p. 65.

^^Ibià.. p. 214. ^^Ibid.. p. 67 . 37 Bentley ("Shakespeare and the Blackfriars Theatre"), p. 45. 293 admits, that "in 1608 none of their plays had been a great success,"

They had, in fact, recently written two dramas tdiich had failed at HLack­ friars (The Knight of the Burning .Eestle. 160?, and The Faithful

Shepherdess. 1608), and—if Dryden was correct—they may not have written a single successful play for any theatre. There is reason to think, consequently, th a t Beaumont and F letch er may have been considerably more eager to write for the King’s Men than the company was to have them do so, and if this was the case, I would suggest that the two dramatists were probably under considerable pressure to prove to the King's Men that they could write a successful play,

Ikider these circumstances, they would surely have paid extra­ ordinarily close attention to what was popular at the Globe,and what they would have seen was that the most recent "hit" was Pericles and that Shakespeare had tried to capitalize on its success with another play in the same vein, Cvmbeline. It would, therefore, seem natural enough, i f n ot v ir tu a lly in e v ita b le , th a t Beaumont and F letch er would have written a play of the same general type as Pericles and Cvmbeline. that they would have profited from Shakespeare's experimentation in both of these dramas, and that given time—and if they had not completed the play by July, l608, they could have labored on it for another xdiole year and a h a lfth e s e bright and talented men who were hungry for success would have written a play that resembled Cvmbeline but was superior to it. In

38 As we have seen, the title pages of Philaster indicate that i t was w ritte n fo r th e GLobe, 39 Chambers says th a t "the plague kept the London th e a tre s closed from July l608 to December 1609" (Elizabethan Stage. II, p, 214), 294 other words, it would seem natural enough, if not virtually inevitable, th a t Beaumont and F letch er would have w ritte n P h ila s te r.

I would, of course, admit immediately that I have not proved beyond all possible doubt that Cvmbeline preceded and therefore influ­ enced Philaster—certainty may, in fact, always elude our grasp, but I would suggest that the burden of proof has shifted to those viio defend

Thorndike's thesis.

The second of the two troublesome problems is one of considerably broader significance. In The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on

Shaksnere. Thorndike summarized a portion of his research in the following way:

An examination of all the plays acted I 6OI-I6II revealed a surprising paucity of plays which could be dLassed with either set of romances [those by Shakespeare or by Beaumont and Fletcher] and a s till more significant absence of experiment­ ing with romantic material. In the light of the work of other dramatists, it became dear that the romances wore neither the development of current forms nor the results of manifest tendencies in the drama, but that they must have been an unexpected departure Isug^y due to the innovation of either Beaumont and F letch er or Shakspere.^0

Thorndike, of course, bestowed the laurel wreath on Beaumont and

Fletcher,and the nudeus of his argument was that since Philaster probably preceded Cymbeline and since Perides should not be classified

as one of Shakespeare's late romances, Shakespeare was probably the

debtor. But i f Cymbeline probably dates before P h ilaster and i f Peri d e s is a legitimate member of Shakespeare's group of dramatic romances,

^^Thorndike (Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher), p. 16?, p . 167. Ii2 See Appendix B. 295

Shakespeare seems to have written two of the plays in the new romantic tragicomedy form before Beaumont and Fletcher wrote their first, and if the wreath goes either to Shakespeare or to Beaumont and Fletcher, the cond-usion would appear to be that "the unexpected departure" in the development of English draraa^^ was "largely due to the innovation" of

Shakespeare.

This, of course, is a rather surprising allegation, but I am not at all sure that it is quite as curious as the notion that two apparently unsuccessful playwrights could suddenly write a play that firmly and quite perfectly embodied an essentially new dramatic forra.^ It is certainly possible that the new type of . romantic tragicomedy could leap, virtually fully formed, from their heads, but when we consider that even

Shakespeare had to exert laborious efforts to bring to perfection such forms as th e chronicle play and romantic comedy, I wonder i f Beaumont and Fletcher's feat doesn't seem a mite improbable, I wonder if it is not more likely that this form, like others, had to be licked into shape slow ly.

Although the early history of this new romantic tragicomedy form 45 is undoubtedly quite complex, I would suggest that the type was

^It was an extraordinarily important development; Nicoll, for instance, comments that the form "flourished" from 1611 "until the closing of the theatres in 1642" (British Drama, p, 131), /^^Thorndike says, "Like lamburlaina and Every Man in His Humour. Philaster seems to have introduced a type of play of wide influence in the drama," (Influence of Beaumont and FletLcher. p, 119), ^•^See, for example, Nosworthy (Cvmbeline). pp, Xxiv-xxvii and x x x v iii; W allis (F letch er. Beaumont and Company), pp. 163-1?4; and Savage ("Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster and Sidney's Arcadia" and "The Date of Beaumont and F le tc h e r's Cuoid's Revenge"). 296 perfected in gradual stages and that the basic line of initial develop- ment runs from Pericles, through gymbeline. to Phllaster. Pericles would seem to represent the first, almost embryonic, stage of the form, and since Cvmbeline is certainly a considerably more mature romantic tragicomedy than Pericles, it would mark the second major stage. After

Shakespeare wrote Cvmbeline. however, Beaumont and F letch er seem to have taken over the development of the form. At this time they seem to have written a play of the same general type as Pericles and Cvmbeline. the justly famous Philaster. and in so doing they nourished the form almost to its full g ro w th ,If this is indeed the main line of the early development of the new romantic tragicomedy form and if Thorndike was correct in saying that the innovation was due largely to Shakespeare or to Beaumont and Fletcher, I think we should probably reclaim the wreath h Q from Beaumont and Fletcher and place it on the head of Shakespeare,

In this study I have attempted merely to determine how the interests of the audience at his company’s newly acquired private theatre, Blackfriars, affected Shakespeare’s last plays and Wiat this implies, I do not profess to offer a complete explanation of why Shakespeare wrote these dramas in the manner he did, or, needless to say, why he began to

46 Approaching the problem largely from the point of view of sources, Nosworthy came to essentially the same conclusion (Cvmbeline. pp, xxxvii-xl), 47 In a c tu a lity , we should probably say th a t when Beaumont and Fletcher wrote Philaster they pursued one line of development and that when Shakespeare wrote The_Winter’s Tale and The Tempest he pursued another, 48 I do not doubt th a t Beaumont and F letch er exerted in flu en ces on some of Shakespeare’s last plays, but I do not believe that we should expect to find any before The/Winter's Tale, 297 write them. But in the light of the evidence it is possible to suggest at least a partial explanation. Since an edition of Mucedoyus was pub­ lish e d in 1606, there may have been a revival of this rather rickety old romantic play at the Globe about that tim e,^ and the fact that the drama was reprinted suggests that, if it was revived, it performed well.

Perhaps with this in mind Shakespeare turned to Pericles. Although his work on th is p lay may very w ell have prompted him to consider a new approach to drama (and, perhaps, to life) that he wished to explore, idiat we can say with certainty is that the finished product proved to be extraordinarily popular at the Globe, Under these circumstances, we could reasonably expect that Shakespeare, as a commercial dramatist and a dedicated artist, would have designed similar but progressively better plays for the Globe, Although the evidence offered by this study would appear to show that after he wrote Cvmbeline he took the interests of the Blackfriars audience into account, it seems likewise to show that -vdien he wrote Cvmbeline. The Winter's .Tale. and The Tempest he did in fact write these progressively better plays of the same type as Pericles for the Globe,

49 I am here indebted to W, J, Lawrence for his observation that the printing of a new edition of a play usually indicates that the drama was revived (Workshop, p. 70). APPENDIX A

EVIDENCE FOR ASSIGNING PLAYS TO THE GLOHI

AND TO BLACKFRIARS

In determining the dramas we have good reason to believe were written during the five-year period prior to the time the King*s Men acquired Blackfriars, l604-l609, and were presented during these years at the Globe or B lackfriars, I have tried to take in to consideration a l l of the available evidence and argm ents (see Chapter I , n. 89). In th is appendix, however, I include only what appears to be the most pertinent data. Basically, I concur with Harbage's assignments in Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions (pp. 348-349), but, for reasons I will explain la te r , 1 have included a few additional dramas. I have granted full status to one play, A Trick to Catch the Old One. I have c la ssifie d as questionable three others. The Malcontent (at the Globe), Law Tricks, and

May Day. Lastly, I have categorized as peripheral the play Mucedorus.

Reliable Globe Plays

Since the Globe was the only commercial theatre the King's Men used between 1604- and the l^ e they acquired Blackfriars, we are surely safe in assuming that Shakespeare had the Globe in mind when he wrote the plays we can confidently assign to the period from the beginning of l604 to August, l608.

298 299 As for the dates of Shakespeare's reliable Globe plays, the only work that poses much of a problem is Othello. Chambers (William Shakes­ peare. I, pp. 461-462) assigns the play to the year 1604 because it was performed at court on November 1, l604, because such a date is "consonant with the stylistic evidence," and because this "would give time for an apparent echo of the Moor's murder in Dekker and Middleton's I Honest

Whore, i, I, 37» of that year." He notes in passing, furthermore, that

Malone claimed that he had "indisputable evidence" that Othello should be dated l604. Alfred Hart ("The Date of 'Othello,'" Times Literary Supple­ ment. October 10, 1935» 631), however, has suggested an earlier date.

With respect to the "apparent echo" in I Honest Whore he points out that the Dekker-Middleton play had to have been completed by sometime between

January 1 and March 14, l604, and since Elizabeth's illness and death and a plague caused the companies to cease playing between March 24, 1603, and April 9, l604, this would date Othello—"if we accept this allusion"— before "March, I 603." I wonder, however, whether the play does allude to Othello. In I Honest Whore, the Duke says to a man who has dis­ rupted the solemnity of a lady's funeral procession, "thou k illst her now ... And art more sauage then a barbarous Moor" (I, i, 36-37; The

Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker. ed. Fredson Bowers [Cambridge, 1953-

1961], I I , p. 22). While it is true that Othello is a Moor and that he . killed Desdemona, I wonder if the words "sauage" and "barbarous" fit

Shakespeare's sensitive and noble character. Would they not better describe, for instance, the Moor of Shakespeare's source, Cinthio's

Hecatommithi? Or, since the interruption is in actuality not a killing but only a breach of decorum, could not the Duke's words refer merely to 300 a general conception that Moors were "sanage* and "barbarous" and thus people tdio were lik e ly to be in d ifferen t to decorum? I would ask, in fact, whether it isn*t more likely that the authors of I Honest Whore would have made their sweeping generalization about Moors before Othello had been performed rather than afterward.

Hart argues further, though, that "Certain lines and words found in the first quote of Hamlet suggest that Othello had been on the acting list some time before July 26, l602," the date the play was entered in the Stationers* Register. He cites several phrases and words in the Bad

Quarto o f Hamlet that are p aralleled in O thello, and he asks us to choose between believing that Shakespeare "may have stooped to stealing from the th ie f that had stolen and mutilated Hamlet" or that the th ie f had remembered the phrases and words from a performance of Othello. I should think, however, that there could be at least one other possible explanation for the sim ilarities : coincidence.

In any event, for the reasons I have offered or others, neither

Herbage nor M. R. Ridley accepted Hart's arguments. In 1952 Herbage assigned Othello to the l604-l608 Globe group (Rival Traditions, p. 348), and in 1958 j^dley stated that l604 "can be reasonably accepted" (Othel:)o. p. xv). I have, therefore, elected to consider Othello a reliable Globe play.

Scholars date the remainder of the relia b le Globe plays by

Shakespeare easily within the 1604-1609 period (see James G. McManaway,

"Recent Studies in Sahkespeare's Chronology," Shakespeare Survey. I ll

CI950] , pp. 29-^30)2 Measure-for Measure (1604), King Lear (I 605 or I 606), 301

Macbeth ( I606), Antony.and_Ca.eopatra (I 606-I 607 ), and Eerioles (I 606-

I 6O8 ), As for Perides. the last play in the series, Hoeniger argued in

1963 that since the first mention of this very popular play occurs in

1608 , Shakespeare probably finished writing it "late in 160? or early in

1608" (Perides. p. Ixiv).

The first of the non-Shakespearian reliable Globe plays is The

London Prodigal. The title page of the I 6O5 edition of this anoi^ous play reads, "As it was plaide by the Kings Maiesties seruants" (Chambers,

Elizabethan Stage. IV, p. 27), and thus it was surely written for the theatre the King's Men used, the Globe, Furthermore, Chambers believes that Fleay may be right "in regarding an allusion to service 'under the king' (II, i, 16) as.pointing to a Jacobean date" (Ibid.. p. 28), and

Harbage dates the play after 1603 (Rival Traditions, p. 3 ^).

The 1616 edition of Jonson's Voloone reads, "Acted in the yeere

1605. By the K, M aiesties S ervants," Chambers comments th a t "Jonson dates the production I 6O5 , and the uncertainty as to the style [of dating] he used leaves it possible that this may cover the earlier part of 1606" (Elizabethan Stage. Ill, p, 368),

The title page of the first edition (I 6O8 ) of the anonymous drama A Yorkshire Tragedy says, "Acted by his Maiesties Players at the

Globe," Chambers comments th a t the play "takes i t s m aterial from the history of Walter Calverley, executed for murder on 5 Aug, I 605, which is told in Stowe's Annales and was the subject of contemporary pamphlets," and he dates the work "c, I 606" (Elizabethan Stage. IV, pp. 5^55).

The f i r s t e d itio n of The. Revenger' s Tragedy, another anonymous play, dates I 6O7 , and the title page states, "As it hath beene sundry 302 tim es Acted, by the Kings M aiesties Seruants," Chambers notes th a t the earliest possible date "may be fixed by the borrowing of the name and

character of Dandolo from The Fawn (I 6O6 )" (Elizabethan Stage. IV, p.

4 2 ).

The title page of the first edition (l60?) of The Miseries of

Enforced Marriage by George >fi.lkins states, "As it is now playd by his Maiesties Seruants," and Chambers, noting that the drama "was based on

the life of Walter Calverley, as given in pamphlets of I 605" and that it "appears to have tnen still on the stage xdien it was printed," dates the work in the year l60? (Elizabethan Stage. Ill, p. 513).

Reliable Blackfriars Plays

The Stationers' Register entry for Marston's The Malcontent dates

June 26, 1604. Chambers observes th a t in the Induction Sly says, "This

play hath beaten all your gallants out of the feathers ; Blackfriars hath

spoiled Blackfriars for feathers," and he comments, "It is dear there­

fore that the original actors were the ELackfriars boys, and there is

nothing else to suggest a connexion between Marston and these boys during

Elizabeth's reign." Noting a reference to "the Scots," which, he says,

"should be Jacobean," he concludes, "I think that this is Marston's first

play for the Queen's Revels after the formation of the syndicate early in

1604 ..." (Elizabethan,Stage.. Ill, p. 432).

For June 26, I 605, the Stationers* Register entry regarding

Marston's The Dutch Courtesan states, "as yt was latelie presented at the

Blackeffryers," and the first edition (I 605) says, "As it was played in

the HLacke-Friars by the Children of her Maiesties Reuels." Chambers 303 argues that since this ■was "a Queen's Revels play, this must have been on the stage at least as late as l603," and he notes that "several passages are verbal imitations of Florio's translation of Mon'taigne, published in that year ..." (Elizabethan Stage. Ill, pp. 430-431). Since the I605 entry says "latelie presented" and the Blackfriars children did not receive royal protection until "4 February l604" (Elizabethan Stage. II, p.# 49), 1603 would seem rather too early, and thus I am inclined to agree with Harbage (Rival Traditions, p. 349) that the play should be dated no earlier than l604.

In the first edition (I 606) of Chapman's Monsieur D'Olive the title page reads, "as it was sundrie times acted by her Maiesties children at the Blacke-Friers." Chambers comments that "The title-page suggests a Revels rather than a Chapel play," and, noting allusions to

"Jacobean knights," "the calling in of monopolies," "the preparation of costly embassies," and "perhaps ... the royal dislike of tobacco," he dates the play l604 (Elizabethan Stage. Ill, p. 252).

The title page of the first edition (I 6O6 ) of The Fawn says, "As it hath bene diuer s times presented at the blacke Friars, by the Children of the Queenes Maiesties Reuels." Chambers notes that "As a Queen's

Revels play, this must date from 1604 or I 6O5 ..." and, pointing out that

The Fawn seems to have influenced various German plays, two of which were performed in l604, he tends strongly to the year 1604. An apparent allu­ sion to "the execution of Sir Everard Digby on 30 Jan. I 606," however, forces him to conclude that the play was revised after this date

(Elizabethan Stage. Ill, pp. 432^433).

The title page of the first edition ( 1605) of Eastward Ho. which was written by Chapman, Marston, and Jonson, states, "As It was playd in 304

th e H L ack-frlers, % The C hildren of her M aiesties R euels," Chambers

points out that the play could not have been performed before "late in

1604," because the prologue refers to a drama presented at that time,

Westward Ho (Elizabethan Stage. Ill, p. 25Ô).

Marston's Sonhonisba was entered in the Stationers' Register on

March 17, I 606, and the title page of the first edition ( 1606) s ta te s ,

"as i t h ath beene sundry tim es Acted a t the ELacke F k iers," Chambers

says th a t "The mention of EL ackfriars w ithout the name of a company

points to a performance after Anne's patronage had been withdrawn from the Revels boys, late in I 6O5 or early in I 6O6 ..." (Elizabethan Stage.

I l l , p. 433). In the first edition (I 606) of The Isle of Gulls by John Day,

the title page reads, "As it hath been often playd in the blacke Fryars, by the Children of the Reuels," In a letter. Sir Edward Hoby notes that

c. February 15» I6O6, there was considerable talk about "a play in the

Slack Friars" called the "Isle of Gulls," and Chambers finds confirmation

for the date in allusions to "East-ward, West-ward or North-ward hoe," to

a "quartering for treason on 30 Jan. I 6O6 ," and perhaps to Volnone. a

play dating I 6O5 or early I 606 (Elizabethan Stage. Ill, p. 286).

Edward Sharpham's The Fleire was entered in the Stationers'

R eg ister on May 13, I 606, and the title page of the first edition in 160?

says, "As it hath beene often played in the ELacke-Fryers by the Children of the Reuells, " Allusions to the Union, to Northward Ho !. and to "an extraordinarie execution" indicate that the play was written in I 6O6

(Elizabethan Stage. Ill, p. 491). 305 The Stationers' Register entry for A Trick to Catch the Old One by Thomas Middleton is dated October 7, I 607 , and since the title page of the first edition (I 6O8 ) reads, "As it hath been lately Acted, by the Children of Paxiles," the play was clearly written for Paul's Boys, In the second edition (also I 6O8 ), however, the title page says, "As it hath beene often in Action, both at Paules, and the Elack-Fryers," and Chambers comments that "the Children of ELackfriars ... must have taken the play over from Paul's when these went under in I 6O6 or I 6O7 " (Elizabethan

Stage. Ill, p. 439). This shows, then, that the play was performed at

Blackfriars sometime during the year I 6O8 . Chambers, without argument, dates the play "160^<>1606 (?)," and Harbage (Annals, p. 76 ) assigns it to the period "l604-l607"; but since the play was registered in October of 1607 and "lately Acted" in I 6O8 , perhaps the most likely date for the play i s 1607 . Thus, although this drama was designed for Paul's, it was performed at Blackfriars and written during the period 1604-1609. I have, therefore, included it in this study,

Middleton's Your Five Gallants was entered in the Stationers'

R egister on March 22, I 6O8 , with the statement "as it hath ben acted by the Children of the Chappell," an earlier name for the ELackfriars children which was resurrected here (HHlKabftthan Stage. II, p. 53), a.nd the title page of the undated first edition (Chambers, without argument, suggests 1608 , Ibid.. p. 58) states, "As it hath beene often in Action at the Blacke-Friers." Chambers, however, notes that "Middleton is not generally found writing for ELackfriars" (Ibid. ). and he concludes, therefore, that this drama "may have been in preparation for Paul's when they ceased playing [c. I 606 or I 6O7 , Ibid.l and taken over by 306

ELackfriars" (Elizabethan Stage. Ill, p. #0). Your Five Gallants was thus performed at Blackfriars during our period, and Chambers confidently dates the composition of the play in 160? because of the likelihood that it was being written when Paul's closed and because of allusions to

"closure for plague" and to "fighting with a windmill" (Ibid.).

The title page of the first edition (1612) of Chapman's The

Widow's Tears reads, "As it was often presented in the blacke and white

Friers," The play was thus produced at Blackfriars before the Queen's

Revels lost their house in l608 and moved to Whitefriars. Although his reasoning i s not f u lly clear to me. Chambers comments th a t th e play "had been staged both at Blackfriars and at Whitefriars before publication, and was probably therefore produced shortly before the company moved house" (Elizabethan Stage. II. pp. 58-59), If he is correct, this would indicate that the drama was first produced at Blackfriars c, 160? or l608. He is not positive, however, as he dates the play in his headnote

"1603<>1609," but he is confident that the play was written after James became king, because of references to the "number of strange knights abroad" and "perhaps é,« to the crying down of monopolies" (Elizabethan

Stage. Ill, p, 257). Parrott has argued that the play was probably written in "1605 or thereabouts"; he says, "There is no positive evidence for this date, but it fits in well with the general chronology of Chap­ man's plays so far as this has been fixed, and the general tone and technic of the play seem to me to indicate a late period in his career as a writer of comedies," But his lack of confidence in this date is indicated by his statement that the play was "performed certainly before 307 the closing of the theatres on account of the plague, July, I 6O8

(Chapman's Comedies, p. 798), Since The Widow's Tears would seem clearly to be a Jacobean Blackfriars play, Harbage is certainly correct in placing it in the 1604-1608 ELackfriars group (Rival Traditions, p. 348), and Chambers may very well be right in his contention that it was per­ formed at ELackfriars c, I 607 or I 6O8 ,

Questionable Globe Plays

The anonymous play The F a ir Maid of Bristowe was entered in the

Stationers' Register on February 8 , I 605, with the comment "played at

Hampton Court his Maiesties players," and the first edition (I 605) s ta te s , "As i t was plaide a t Hampton before the King and Queenes most excellent Maiesties," Harbage assigns the play to the l604-l608 Globe group (Rival,Traditionp. p, 348), and I have included it because the play was ap p aren tly w ritten a f te r Shakespeare's company had become "his

Maiesties players" on May 19, I 603, and thus a work th a t would have been influenced by the new milieu. The fact remains, however, that the play had to have been written before January, 1604, because, as Chambers notes,

"The court performance must have been during the Christmas of 1603-4, which was at Hampton Court" (Elizabethan Stage. IV, p, 12), and thus I have classified the play as questionable.

In l604 two editions of the Blackfriars version of Marston's The

Malcontent were printed, but in the same year a third appeared. The title page of the latter reads, "With the Additions played by the Kings

Maiesties servants" (Elizabethan Stage. Ill, p, 431), and the Induction indicates clearly that the King's Men had appropriated the play (p, 143), 308

incorporated certain “additions" (Ibid. ). and performed it at the Globe

(Burbage says, "our Theater," Ibid. ). Dating l604 (see above). The

Malcontent is thus a play written between 1604 and 1609 and presented at

the Globe, Since the version performed was essentially the one Marston

wrote for a private theatre, however, and since that playhouse was, of

all places, Blackfriars, I have treated the play as a questionable source

of evidence for establishing the Globe tradition.

The title page of the first edition (l60?) of The Devil's Charter

by Barnabe Barnes states, "As it was plaide before the Kings Maiestie,

vpon Candlemasse night last: by his Maiesties Seruants." The work was

thus part of the repertory of the King's Men, and although the.title page

establishes only the latest possible date. Chambers assigns the play to

"2 Feb. 1607 " (Elizabethan.Stage. Ill, p. 214) and Harbage (Annals. p.

78 ) concurs (" I 6O7 "). The title page also says, however, that the printed version is "more exactly renewed, corrected, and augmented since by the Author, for the more pleasure and profit of the Reader," and since this raises a question about the trustworthiness of the text, I have categorized the work as questionable.

As James McManaway notes, "Lacking objective evidence, commenta­ tors agree on a date between I 605 and I 6O8 " for Timon of Athens ("Recent

Studies in Shakespeare's Chronology," p. 30), Shakespeare would thus have written the play during our period and designed it for the Globe, I have ranked it questionable because it does not seem to have been performed, and i t may n o t, in fa c t, be fin is h e d . Chambers comments, "No

Jacobean representation is recorded. There almost certainly was none,"

(feO-lliam Shakespeare. I , p, 483), and, on the b asis of a number of 309 deficiencies that are highly uncharacteristic of Shakespeare's other works, he concludes, "I do not doubt that it was left unfinished by

Shakespeare, and I believe that it is unfinished still" (Ibid.. pp.

481-482). I have chosen to consider Timon on a provisional basis rather than reject it completely because I think we must assume that while

Shakespeare was writing the play, he expected to complete it and to have it performed by the King's Men, and if this is so, the drama has some value as an indication of what Shakespeare thought would be satisfactory fare at the Globe.

Regarding Coriolanus. Chambers says, "There is practically no concrete evidence as to date, and the attempts to find some have been far-fetched" (William Shakespeare. I. p. 479). He comments, however, that "The evidence of style and metre puts Coriolanus between Antony and

Cleopatra and Pericles. It may have been produced early in l608" (Ibid.. pp. 479-480). McManaway agrees that "Evidence, other than stylistic, is scant," but he notes that G. B. Harrison has found "an allusion" to a

"project for bringing clean water into London, work on which began in

February 1609," and McManaway concludes thait "Since this was a common topic of conversation, the play may have been written shortly before or just after this date" ("Recent Studies in Shakespeare's Chronology," p.

30). Although Harrison mentions that "much discussion and opposition" preceded the undertaking ("A Note on Coriolanus." Adams Memorial Studies

[Washington, 1948], p. 240), McManaway may be correct in suggesting that the play was written c. February, I 609, and since the King's Men acquired 310

Blackfriars in August of I 6O8 , I feel obliged to rank Coriolanus as questionable.

In this study I have considered, in a peripheral way, one further drama that we should probably associate with the Globe during the l604-

1609 perio d . In i t s o rig in a l form the anonymous play Mucedorus was written as early as sometime before 1598 (the date of the first edition), and we cannot be sure what company in itially performed it nor where i t was presented (EIizabethan_Stage. IV, pp. 34-36). Harbage, however, places it in the repertory of Sussex's Men and Pembroke's Men, a public theatre company, noting that their plays were "later taken over by the

Chamberlain's Men" (Rival Traditions, p. 344), and he may be right since

Mucedorus did become the property of Shakespeare's company, perhaps as early as 1598 (Elizabethan Stage. II, p. 197). A second edition appeared in 1606, and the reprinting of the play, to borrow Lawrence's logic

(Workshop, p. ?0), may well mean that it was revived about that time at the Globe. Sometime between I 6O6 and I 6IO additions were then made to the drama, and although we have no independent confirmation for this,

J. P. Collier said that they appeared in an edition dating I 609 (Chambers,

Elizabethan Stage. IV, pp. 34-35)» The revised version, moreover, can be firmly linked with the King's Men because according to the title page of the 1610 edition it "was acted before the Kings Maiestie at White-hall on

Shroue-sunday night. By his Highness Seruants vsually playing at the

Globe." Mucedorus. therefore, was probably part of the repertory of the

King's Men during the period I 604-1609, it may have been performed at the

Globe c. 1606, and for some reason (presumably for a performance some­ where) it was revised between I 6O6 and I 609 or I 6IO. Furthermore, 311 Mucedorus appears to have been a play that might well have influenced the tra d itio n a t the Globe: Chambers comments, "Evidently i t was a popular play, as the number of editions shows" (Elizabethan Stage. IV, p . 36)—there were at least seven between I606 and 1620 and at least five more before the closing of the theatres in 1642 (Ibid.. p. 34). Conse­ quently, although Mucedorus was basically an old play during the 1604-

1609 period, it would seem to deserve at least a minor niche in this study,

auestjonable,Blackfriars Plavs

Samuel Daniel's Philotas was entered in the Stationers' Register on November 29, 1604, and the f i r s t e d itio n , including an Apology w ritte n in 1604, was published in I 605. Although Chambers does not s ta te h is reasons specifically, he concludes that "the performance was pretty

clearly by the Queen's Revels" in 1604 (Elizabethan Stage. Ill, p. 2?6), and Harbage concurs (Aspslg. p. 74), Although in the Apology Daniel says merely th a t the audience was composed of "the b e tte r s o rt of men," a reference which could apply either to the clientele that patronized

Paul's Boys or to those that patronized the Queen's Revels, Chambers and

Harbage are probably right in their assignment of the company because

Daniel was affiliated in an official way with the Queen's Revels (their patent required that he approve their plays [Harbage, Rival Traditions, p. 80]), The Apology establishes further, however, that Daniel wrote

"three Acts" of the play in I6OO and planned to have the completed drama performed "in Bath by certaine Gentlemens sonnes; as a private recreation" at a Christmas celebration (Chambers, Elizabethan Stage. Ill, p, 2?5), 312

Although the play was considered to be suitable for presentation at

Blackfriars, I have ranked the drama questionable because of the date of

the first three acts and because of the very special audience Daniel had in mind when he wrote them.

The title page of the first edition (I 605) of Chapman's All

Fools says, “Presented at the Black Fryers, And lately before his

M aiestie," and since the Chamber and Revels accounts establish that the court performance dates January 1, I 605, Chambers concludes th a t "the play was ... probably on the ELackfriars stage in 1604" (Elizabethan

Stage. Ill, p. 252). I have classified the work as questionable because we cannot be sure when Chapman wrote i t . Chambers dates A3.1 Fools

"1604 (î)" because it could have been written at least as early as 1599.

He notes that "in Jan.-July 1599 Henslowe paid Chapman" for a play that was "called the world Rones a udielles & now all foolles but the foolle," and this work might be All Fools (ibià. )•

John Day's Law Tricks was entered in the Stationers' Register on

March 28, loOB, and the first edition (I 608) says, "As it hath bene diuers times Acted by the Children of the Reuels." Chambers dates the first production in the year 1604 because the play apparently refers to an inundation in that year and because it states that a year has passed since a term a t tE nchester, an a llu sio n th a t Chambers says "can only refer to the term ... in l603" (Elizabethan,Stage. Ill, pp. 285-286).

Chambers takes th e designation "Children of the Reuels" to mean the

Queen's Revels (e.g.. Ibid.. p. 133, 2) because this was the name of the group during the period I 605-I 606 ( Ib id . . I I , p. 23), and.he comments that "The name given to the company suggests that the play was on the 313 stage in 1605-6" (Hjid., III, p. 285). Harbage, on the other hand,

believes that the name refers to the King’s Revels (Annals. p. 78 ;

Rival Traditions, p. 3 ^), a children’s company that performed at White­

friars, and it is certainly true that in a Chancery pleading the King's

Revels are referred to as "the Children of the revells" (Chambers,

Elizabethan_Stage. II, p. 66). If Chambers’ date for the play, l604, is

correct, however, the company that performed it must have been the

Queen's Revels, because the King’s Revels functioned at the very longest

from 1606 to early in 1609 (Ibid.. II, pp. 65- 67 ). Since there is dis­

agreement about this play, however, I have elected to consider it

questionable.

The first edition (I 6I I ) of Chapman’s Mav Day s ta te s th a t the

drama was "diuers times acted at the ELacke Fryers." Chambers comments

that "The chorus iuvenum with which the play opens fixes it to the

occupancy of the Blackfriars by the Chapel [the earlier name for the

Queen’s Revels] and Revels in 1600^9," and he dates the play "c. I 609"

because of "a dear imitation" of "ch. v. of Dekker's Gull’s Hornbook

(1609)" (Elizabethan_Stage. Ill, p. 256). Earlier, however, Parrott

was inclined to date the drama "late in I 6OI, or early l602, probably in

the spring of l 602" because of "the numerous imitations or parodies of.

other plays vAiich we know to have been produced from 1599 to I 6OI"

(Chapman’s Comedies, p. 731), and he considered both the parallel to the

. Gull’s Hornbook and a parody of a line found only in the 1604 Quarto

edition of Hamlet to be revisions (Ibid.. p. 732). In the Annals (p. 68)

Harbage assigned the play to the, period "I 6OI-I609," but, probably

choosing to follow Parrott, in Rival Traditions (p. 347) he dated it 314

prior to l604. For myself, I am suspicious of Chambers' date "c, I 609"

because the Queen's Revels lost ELackfriars in I 6O8 , but it nevertheless

does appear that Chapman could have written the play sometime between

the l604 version of Hamlet and the year I 6O8 and then interpolated the

"imitation" of the Gull's Hornbook later. VELth some misgivings I have

included the play, but I have classified it as questionable.

The first edition of Francis Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning

Pestle appeared in I 613 and included an induction and an epistle to

Robert Keysar, Chambers comments that "The references to the actors in

the induction as boys and the known connexion of Keysar with the Queen's

Revels fix the company" (Elizabethan Stage. Ill, pp. 220-221). There has

been considerable dispute, however, about whether the play should be dated

1607 , which would mean that the play was written for ELackfriars, or

1610, which would mean th a t i t was w ritte n fo r W h itefriars. Chambers

s e le c ts IÔ07 for three reasons. First of all, the play alludes "to Day's

Travels of. Three_English Brothers of that year." Secondly, the induction

states that "This seuen yeares there hath beene playes at this house,"

and Chambers notes th a t " i t was ju s t seven years in the autumn of I 607

since Evans set up plays at the Blackfriars." Lastly, the statement in

the epistle "Perhaps it will be thought to bee of the race of, Don Quixote

00. it is his elder aboue a year" can refer to Shelton's translation,

which may possibly have been made in 1608 (Ibid. . pp. 221-222). Since

.this translation was not actually entered in the Stationers' Register

until January 19» I 6II, however, I6IO is also a possible date for the

play. Furthermore, there is a reference in the drama to a printed

version of the Foure Prentices of London, and although the earliest 315 extant edition appeared in l6l5t Chambers observes that some scholars date an earlier version I 6IO, If the play was written in I 6IO, however, the theatre was W hitefriars, and Chambers notes that this playhouse "can only be traced back two or three years and not seven years before I 6IO"

(Ibid.. p. 221). In the Annals (p. 78 ) Harbage dated the play "160?- c. 1610," but in Rival Traditions (pp. 102 and 348) he settled on I 607 .

Even if there was no question about the date and the theatre, however, I would still have to classify the play as questionable, because it was a failure: the epistle states that the drama was "in eight daies ... begot and borne," and "exposed to the wide world, who ... utterly reiected it"

(Chambers, Elizabethan Stage. Ill, p. 220). The drama, therefore, can hardly be considered to be a fully reliable index to the tradition at

Blackfriars.

Written by Fletcher (and probably Beaumont), Cubid's Revenge was performed at court by the Queen's Revels in January, 1612, and Chambers comments, "It cannot therefore be later than 1611-12, while no dose inferior limit can be fixed" (Elizabethan Stage. Ill, p. 225). If the play dates I 609 or later, it had to have been written for Whitefriars, the new playhouse for the Queen's Revels, and thus the date becomes a matter of crucial importance. In his Annals (p. 78) Harbage suggests

"c. 1607 - 1612," but in Rival. Traditions (p. 349) he assigns the play to the 1604-1608 category and to Blackfriars. He may have accepted James

Savage's argument in "The Date of Beaumont and F le tc h e r's Cupid's

Revenge" (ELH, XV [1948], 286-294). Savage notes (pp. 287-293) references to Catholics giving bribes to avoid persecution; to drawing and quarter­ ing, which may allude to the executions of the conspirators in the 316

Gunpowder Plot; and to King James's "dunne Nagge," He believes that these allusions point to "a date of 160?, or the early part of I 6O8 "

(p. 293). On the basis of parallels between Cupid's Revenge and

Philaster. he argues further that "Philaster and the later romantic plays represent a more skillful exploitation of similar material" (p. 294; see also his "Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster and Sidney's Arcadia." ELH.

XIV [1947 ] , 194-206). Lawrence Wallis argues, however, that I 6IO or I 6II is a more likely date because the play has

the appearance of being a hurried job turned out after [my italics] Philaster and The Maid's Tragedy had been acclaimed in order to supply the immediate need of the Second Queen's Revels Comparer of boy actors. Significantly, the Coxcomb falls into this class, and both plays were presented at Court by th is company in 1612 . . . (F le tc h e r. Beaumont and Company, p. 180)

All in all, there seems to be sufficient evidence to include Cupid's

Revenge in this study but not enough to place very much reliance on it.

Chapman's Bvron plays ("The Conspirade. And Tragédie of Charles

Duke of Byron, Marshall of France") were entered in the Stationers'

Register on June 5» I 6O8 , and the title page of the first edition (I 6O8 ) says, "Acted lately in two playes, at the Black-Friers." Since "on 29

March I6O8 the French ambassador, M. de la Boderie, reported that all the

London theatres had been closed ... on account of two plays which had given the greatest offense" and one of these "was one of the parts of

Chapman's Conspiracy and Tragedy of Bvron" (Chambers, Fligabethan Stage.

II, p. 53)» and since Chapman's source was Grimeston, General Inventorie of the History of France (I 607 )," i t would seem reasonable enough to agree with Chambers th a t the plays were f i r s t performed in I6O8 (Ib id . , 317 I I I , pp. 257 - 258 ). Elias Schwartz ("The Dates and Order of Chapman's

Tragedies,” LVII [1959]» 80-821 however, has found references in

Northward Ho. dated c, I 605, to the final scene in Bvron II. Dismissing the date of Chapman's source with the argument that "we must assume that

Chapman depended on an unknown source or on Grim eston's French o rig in a ls rather than on Grimeston himself" (p. 81), he proposes a revision of the dates of Chapman's tragedies that puts the Eiyron plays in "1601 or

1602" (p. 82 )* There is, moreover, one further reason for caution. As a result of the political furor, the text we have "has been ruthlessly censored"; in fact, in his epistle to the first edition Chapman calls the plays "these poor dismembered poems" (Chambers, Elizabethan Stage.

I l l , p . 258 ). Because of the dating problem and the condition of the text, I have had to place something less than full reliance on these dramas.

In the winter of I 6I 8 -I 6I 9 Ben Jonson mentioned to Drummond that

"Flesher and Beaumont, ten years since, hath written the Faithfull

S hipheardesse," and Chambers comments th a t "there is nothing to contra­ dict" the year "I6O8 - 9" (Elizabethan Stage. Ill, p. 222). The undated first edition can be assigned to I 609 or I 6IO because one of the com­ mendatory verses was dedicated to a man who died in May, I 6IO (Ib id . ). and because Sir John Harington listed a copy in a library catalogue that can be dated "in or about I 6IO" (Ibid.. p. 183 and n. 2). Furthermore, since the writers of verses accompanying the first edition include Field,

Chapman, and Jonson, and since Beaumont's verses refer to "the waxlights" and to the dancing of a boy "between the acts," Chambers assigns the play 318 to the Queen’s Revels Cibid. . p. 222). Because the ELackfriars company was the one for which Lhe Faithful Shepherdess was designed and they ceased playing at their theatre in March, I6O8 , however, it should be noted in passing that the work apparently had to have been written and performed early in I 6O8 ra th e r than, as Chambers suggests, during the

1608-1609 season. Inasmuch as The Faithful Shepherdess was a Elack- friars play written during our period, I have included it in this study.

I have placed it among the questionable dramas, however, because, as

Chambers n o tes, " It i s clear . . . from the verses th a t the play was damned ..." (Ibid.). and a work that failed is something less than a trustworthy grdde to the tradition at a theatre.

I have included in this study one peripheral Blackfriars play,

Jonson’s The Case Is Altered. It belongs in a highly questionable cate­ gory because, first of all, it was an old drama. Jonson apparently wrote it in its original form at least as early as 1598, because in

Lenten Stuff. entered in the Stationer’s Register on January 11, 1599.

Nashe mentioned "the merry coblers cutte in that witty play of the Case is altered" (Chambers, Elizabethan Stage. Ill, p. 357). Furthermore, it i s not a t a l l c e rta in vdiat company Jonson wrote i t fo r; Chambers even suggests the possibility that he designed it for a public theatre troupe,

Pembroke’s Men (Ibid. . p. 358). But, nevertheless, we should probably take the play into account. Jonson surely revised it at a later date—

Chambers n o tes, fo r in sta n c e , th a t in the play Antonio Balladino (in r e a lity the playw right Anthony Munday) "makes an o ffe r of ’one of the books' of his last pageant, and as far as is known, although Munday may have been arranging city pageants long before, the first which he printed 319 was th a t for I 605" (Ibid. ). Moreover, we know also from the title page of the first edition (I 6O9 ) that this revised version was "Acted the

Children of the HLacke-friers." Furthermore, since there were no less than three issues of the I609 edition (Ibid.. p. 357)» there is consider­ able reason to suppose that the revised form of The Case Is Altered was a quite popular play at ELackfriars, Under.these circumstances, I have decided that the drama should be given some consideration in a study of the 1604-1609 ELackfriars tradition. APPENDIX B

PERICLES; A POPULAR GLOBE ROMANTIC TRAGICOMEDY

In this study I have offered the observation that Pericles was a

firm part of the Globe tradition and that it is the same type of play as

Shakespeare's later romances. This is so central a matter that it merits

fu rth e r comment.

Narrated to a considerable extent bj' a chorus, Pericles, is an

episodic play that takes place over a great many years and in many loca­

tions and deals with events in the lives of Pericles (the ruler of Tyre),

his wife, and his daughter. In essence, the play is about the marriage

of Pericles and Thaisa, the birth of their daughter, the separation of

Pericles from his wife and then his daughter, and, many years afterward,

the reunion of the three. The story, however, is a complicated one, .

Pericles is forced to travel because he has learned of the incestuous

relations between King Antiochus and his daughter, and during a voyage he is shipwrecked and swims to the shore of a land ruled by Thaisa's father.

After winning a tournament and being subjected to the simulated objec­ tions of the father, he marries Thaisa, Some time later, however, while he and his wife are.on their way to Tyre, they are caught at sea in a tempest, Thaisa dies while giving birth to Marina, and because the sailors are superstitious, Thaisa is placed in a chest and thrown overboard. The

chest, however, drifts ashore at Ephesus, and, unknown to Pericles, a man with supernatural powers manages to bring Thaisa back to life . Grieving

320 321 over the loss of his wife, Pericles then leaves the infant Marina in

Tarsus, and she is raised by the ruler and his wife. In time, however,

Marina grows to be such an accomplished and lovely young lady that the ruler's wicked wife feels that Marina overshadows her own daughter, and she orders that Marina be killed. Luckily, though, pirates whisk Marina away before the murderer can act, and though it is reported to all that she is dead, the pirates take her to Mytilene and sell her to a brothel- keeper. When Pericles hears that Marina is dead, he, more grief-stricken than ever, sails for ïÿre. Another storm interrupts his plans, however, and blows his ship to Mytilene, and when Marina, who has remained unsullied even in a brothel, is brought to the ship to comfort the depressed Pericles with her singing, the two gradually realize that they are father and daughter. Appearing to Pericles in a vision, the goddess

Diana then directs him to go to her altar at Ephesus and comply with certain orders. Perid.es follows Diana's instructions, Thaisa recognizes him, and the family is reunited.

In short, Pericles is a rambling play dealing with the separation of members of a family and their subsequent reunion after a series of tribulations and fortunate but rather far-fetched events. The tribula­ tions consist of such matters as an incestuous and vengeful king, tumultuous seas, a wicked foster mother, and a trial of virtue in a brothel. The adversities, however, are all ultimately offset by a number of providential events which include the revival of a dead person, timely winds, and the intervention of a goddess. Although, as we can see from this summary, Pericles is a kind of play likely to have been lampooned at 322

SLackfriars (for example, in The Knieht of the Burning Pestle), it was obviously intended to be taken seriously by its audience.

How Pericles evolved into this form has long been a matter of dispute. For our purposes here, the most important problem is that, given the evidence we have, two propositions are tenable; that Shakespeare revised an old play which had already been performed, or that, in essence, he wrote the last three acts of an uncompleted play (see Chambers, William

Shakespeare. I, pp, 521-527, and especially Hoeniger, Pericles, pp, xl- xlix). If there was an old play that Shakespeare revised, we can fairly safely say that it belonged to his company and that its performance would therefore have been at the company’s theatre, the Globe, Furthermore, we can probably agree with Chambers that since Laurence Twine's The Patterns of Pavnfull Adventures was printed in 1607, the performance would perhaps have been about that year and that the drama apparently "proved suffi­ ciently popular in topic to justify a rewriting" (William Shakespeare. I, pp. 526- 527 ), If there was an earlier, complete version of Pericles, then, we can probably conclude that it was performed at the Globe fairly successfully in about I 606 or I 607 , and thus we can quite firmly associ­ ate the play with the Globe during our period, I 604-1609,

Furthermore, if Pericles was simply in essence a play that was completed ty Shakespeare, we would also have to associate it with the

Globe tradition. It would then be this play that was seen by the

Venetian ambassador Giustinian sometime between January 5, I 606, and

November 23, I 6O8 , this play that was entered in the Stationers' Register on May 20, I 6O8 (Ibid.. p. 522), and this play whose title page (Ql, I 6O9) 323 reads, "As it hath been diners and sundry times acted by his Maiesties

Seruants, at the Globe on the Banck-side," (Ibid. . p, 518)» Moreover, at the Globe Shakespeare's version was quite obviously popular. In a dis­ cussion of the evidence of its "early stage success," Hoeniger observes not only th a t i t "was p rin ted twice during I 609" but th a t

In Pitnlvco or Runne Red-cap. I 609, an anonymous pamphlet largely in Skeltonics, we read: Amazde I stood, to see a Crowd of Ciuill Throats stretched out so lowd;,.. So that I truly thought all These Came to see Shore or Pericles. (P e ric le s , p. Ix v i)

Making all possible allowances, it would thus appear that

Pericles, in one form and perhaps two, was part of the tradition at the

Globe between l604 and I 609; that Shakespeare, for some reason, was sufficiently interested in the play to revise or complete it; and that

Pericles, as we. know it, was clearly a success at the Globe,

Furthermore, Pericles was not only a firm part of the Globe tradi­ tion; it would seem beyond question to be one of Shakespeare's late romances. On this matter, at least as far as I have been able to dis­ cover, scholars are in unanimous agreement. There are many reasons that have led them to this conclusion, but probably the major ones are those that follow,

Pericles, first of all, seems clearly to be a dramatic romance,

E, C, Pettet in Shakespeare and the Romance Tradition has stated that

"the term 'romances' can be applied to Pericles. Cvmbeline. The WinterJs

Tale, and The Tempest in the restricted and historical sense of the 324

word" (p, 1?4), and, among other things, he cites as support that

VELth the exception of The Tempest, whose plot cannot be ascribed to any known source, all the so-called "romances" derive directly from one branch or another of romantic literature. ... the story of Pericles is taken partly from Chaucer*s contemporary Gower and partly from an Elizabethan novel by Twine adapted from Gower's Confessio Amantis. (pp. 161-162).

J. H. P. Pafford has added that these plays

are often called romances and they are romantic in true Elizabethan senses of the word, dealing with love in people of high estate, events controlled by supernatural agency and by chance, and heroic adventure in both courtly and arcadian settings. (The Winter's Tale, p. xxxviii)

Furthermore Pericles appears also to be a tragicomedy. Pafford notes

that all of the romances "at times ... come near tragedy" (Ibid. ). and in

Pericles, as well as in Cvmbeline and The Winter's Tale, important char­

acters not only face serious danger, some of them even die (in Pericles,

e.g., Antiochus and his daughter; in Cvmbeline. Cloten and the Queen; and

in The Winter's Tale.. Mamillius and Antigonus). Pericles ?,%:uld thus be

classified as a romantic tragicomedy, and Shakespeare's later romances,

of course, belong to this same genre. In addition, Pericles is a romantic

tragicomedy that is written predominantly in Shakespeare's later style.

J. C. Maxwell, for instance, has stated the current view of scholars;

"it is clear from the style that the indubitably Shakespearian portions are to be linked with the 'Last Plays' " (Pericles, p. ix; see also, e.g.. Chambers, William Shakespeare. I, p. 521 and,Nosworthy, Cvmbeline. p. I x v ii) ,

Broadly speaking, Pericles is thus a romantic tragicomedy in which Shakespeare employed his distinctive later style, and, on a lesser scale, there are a great many further sim ilarities between this romance 325 and Shakespeare's later ones. For example, Pafford has deftly called

Pericles and the other romances (except Ihe Tempest) "roomy plays" (The mnter's_ Tale, p. xxxviii). Like gymbeline and The_Winter's Tale.

Pericles is set in more than one country, and, like "Die lÆnter's Tale, it covers a long period of time (in both, about sixteen years). In fact, at precisely the same point in Pericles and The Vftnter's Tale (IV, i) a chorus appears and announces that a great many years have elapsed, and in both plays the interval gives a baby girl time to become a young lady.

Moreover, various characters in Pericles and the later plays are. strikingly similar in certain respects. Dionyza, Marina's wicked foster mother in Pericles, parallels Imogen's wicked stepmother in Cvmbeline.

Marina herself belongs with the delightful group of lovely young romantic heroines that includes Imogen (vdiose virtue is likewise threatened),

Perdita, and Miranda. Furthermore, Cerimon, like Prospero in The Tempest, is a benevolent man who has managed to acquire supernatural powers through diligent study (III, ii), and, like Prospero, too, Simonides is a con­ cerned father who pretends to impede a match he approves (II, v).

Among the stage effects in Pericles, one of the most notable is the scene on board a ship at sea in a storm (III, i), and The Tempest opens with a similar but even more exciting scene. A more awesome sight is the appearance of the goddess Diana in Pericles (V, i), and this is paralleled by the still more astonishing sight of the descent of Jupiter in Cvmbeline.

As Pettet has noted, in these plays the gods care ("the gods ... are directly on the side of justice and moral order" fRomance Traditions. 326 p . 170 ]), Diana manifests herself in order to make possible the happy

reunion of the hapless Pericles with the wife he has so tragically lost

(V, i and iii), and Jupiter announces that the sorrowful Posthumus will

be reunited with Imogen (V, iv, IO 7 ), Agonizing loss and joyful recovery

lie at the heart of Pericles as well as of Cvmbeline. The Winter's Tale.

and The Tempest. For example, in Pericles, as in The,Venter's Tale, the

loss is a wife and daughter. In Peri des and both Cvmbeline and The

Winter's Tale, a lost daughter narrowly escapes death, and her subsequent

reunion with her father is preceded by his feeling that there is a bond

between them. And Pericles, as well as all of the other three plays,

ends with a joyful reunion. Although Pericles and the three later plays

are connected in many ways (and I have cited merely some of the more

important ones), the pattern of loss and recovery would seem to be the

link that most firmly demonstrates that these plays form a group apart and

th a t one of th e members of the group i s P e rid e s . Given th is evidence,

it is hardly surprising to find that F. D. Hoeniger, in the New Arden

edition of Pericles (I 963), was able to state;

It seems that already when at work on Pericles. Shakespeare's mind was occupied with certain areas of experience which were to be crucial to his final plays. Pericles anticipates Cvmbeline. The Winter's Tale, and also, though less obviously. The Tempest in a number of c h a ra c te ris tic s which ju s tif y one in speaking of these plays as a group different from the earlier comedies, tragedies, and histories, (p. Ixxi)

We can therefore probably conclude that Pericles was a solid

part of the Globe tradition, that it was a play with which we can firmly

associate Shakespeare, that it was a popular play at the Globe, and that

it is one of Shakespeare's late romances. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Editions of Plays Used

Globe

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The Malcontent. John Fiarston, The Plavs. ed, H, Harvey Wood, Vol. I, London, 1934,

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The Revenger's Tragedy. Cyril Tourneur, Works. ed, Allardyce Nicoll, London, 1930.

Volpone. Ben Jonson, Dramatic Works, eds, C, H, Herford and Percy Simpson, Vol. V, Oxford, 1937.

A Yorkshire Tragedy. The Shakespeare Apocrypha, ed, G, F, Tucker Brooke, Oxford, 1918,

All Fools, George Chapman, The Comedies, ed, Thomas Marc Parrott, London, 1914.

Byron I . George Chapmn, The Tragedies, ed, Thoms Marc P a rro tt, London, 1910,

327 328

Bvron I I . George Chapman, The.. Tragedies. ed, Thomas Marc Parrott, London, 1910,

The Case Is Altered. Ben Jonson, Dramatic.Works, eds, C, H, Herford and Percy Simpson, Vol, III, Oxford, 1927,

Cupid*s Revenge. Francis Beaumont and John F letch er, Works, eds, Arnold Glover and A, R, Waller, Vol, IX. Cambridge, 1910,

The Dutch Courtesan. John Marstpn, The Plavs. ed, H, Harvey Wood, Vol, He London, 1938,

Eastward Ho. George Chapman, The Comedies.. ed. Thomas Marc Parrott, London, 1914,

The F a ith fu l Shepherdess. F rancis Beaumont and John F le tc h e r, Works. eds, Arnold Glover and A, fi. W aller, Vol. II, Cambridge, I 9O6 .

The Fawn. John Marston, The Plavs. ed. H, Harvey Wood, Vol, II, London, 1938,

The Fleire. Materialien zur Kunde des alteren enelischen Dramas, ed, Hunold Nibbe, Vol. XXXVI, 1912,

The I s le of G ulls. John Day, The Works, ed. A, H, Bull en ^ Vol, I , London, I 88 I,

The Knight of the B urning.P estle. Francis Beaumont and John F letch er, Works. eds, Arnold Glover and'A, R, Waller, Vol, VI, Cambridge, I 9O8 ,

Law T rick s. John Day, The Works, ed. A. H, Bullen, Vol, I I , London, 1881,

Thfl Malcontent. John Marston, The Plavs. ed, H, Harvey Wood, Vol, I, London, 1934,

May Day. George Chapman, The Comedies, ed. Thomas Marc P a rro tt, London, 1914,

Monsieur D*Olive. George Chapman, The Comedies, ed, Thomas Marc Parrott, London, 1914,

Philotas. Samuel Daniel, Complete Works, ed, Alexander B, Grosart, Vol, III, London, I 885 ,

Sophonisba. John Marston, The Plavs. ed, H, Harvey Wood, Vol, II. London, 1938.

A Trick to Catch the Old One. 'Thomas Middleton, The Works, ed. A, H, Bullen, Vol, II, London, I 885 , 329 The Mldow's Tears. George Chapman, The Comedies, ed. Thomas Marc Parrott, London, 1914,

Your Five Gallants. Thomas Middleton, The Works, ed. A, H, Bullen, Vol. III. London, 1885.

Shakespeare«S Last Plavs

Cvmbelina. The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. Hardin Craig. Chicago, 1951.

Henry VIII. Craig edition.

The Tempest. Craig edition.

The Two Noble Kinsmen. The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. George Lyman Kittredge. Boston, 1935.

The Winter's Tale. Craig edition.

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