"Be-Holde the First Acte of This Tragedy" : Generic Symbiosis And

Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette Dissertations (2009 -) Dissertations, Theses, and Professional Projects "Be-Holde the First Acte of this Tragedy" : Generic Symbiosis and Cross-Pollination in Jacobean Drama and the Early Modern Prose Novella Karen Ann Zyck Galbraith Marquette University Recommended Citation Galbraith, Karen Ann Zyck, ""Be-Holde the First Acte of this Tragedy" : Generic Symbiosis and Cross-Pollination in Jacobean Drama and the Early Modern Prose Novella" (2012). Dissertations (2009 -). Paper 228. http://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu/228 “BE-HOLDE THE FIRST ACTE OF THIS TRAGEDY”: GENERIC SYMBIOSIS AND CROSS-POLLINATION IN JACOBEAN DRAMA AND THE EARLY MODERN PROSE NOVELLA by Karen Zyck Galbraith A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Marquette University, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Milwaukee, Wisconsin December 2012 ABSTRACT “BE-HOLDE THE FIRST ACTE OF THIS TRAGEDY”: GENERIC SYMBIOSIS AND CROSS-POLLINATION IN JACOBEAN DRAMA AND THE EARLY MODERN PROSE NOVELLA Karen Zyck Galbraith Marquette University, 2012 The role of the early modern novella in the formation of Jacobean drama has been consistently understated in literary criticism. Source study and independent criticism of Elizabethan prose fiction, the two most common areas in which these novellas are discussed, are as quick to reference these works as they are to dismiss them. Using a primarily intertextual lens, it is the purpose of this dissertation to expose the rich relationship between early modern English, Italian, and Spanish novellas and their Jacobean dramatic counterparts. Specifically, my dissertation seeks to examine the deep thematic influences of the early modern novella on Jacobean drama, influences that go well beyond plot source contribution, focusing not strictly on the one-to-one relationship of novella X to play Y but on the interrelationships between the development of specific themes in both the novellas and the plays. By looking at the early modern novella and Jacobean drama in conjunction with one another, rather than in separate studies, as has been done previously, or in works of source criticism, where the novellas and plays have been looked at together but to different ends, this dissertation provides a clearer picture of exactly how these disparate but related genres speak to one another. The argument is built around three salient themes that seem to arise consistently within and crossing over between these two genres — interiority versus theatricality/performativity, passion versus reason, and marriage versus the single state — and is arranged, by chapters, around these specific themes. By dealing with a group of novellas and plays, rather than a single novella-play relationship, this dissertation seeks to reveal patterns within the larger interaction of the early modern prose novella and Jacobean drama, patterns which can only be located by looking at several different novella-drama relationships. These patterns reveal, in turn, a richness of interconnectivity that I believe single author- or text-focused intertextual research cannot reach. Ultimately, by arguing for the novellas’ significant contributions to Jacobean dramatic works beyond the superficial levels of “textual borrowing” and “plot source material,” this dissertation reveals the “complexity and sophistication” of the early modern novella in its own right. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Karen Zyck Galbraith In no particular order I would like to thank my director, committee members, the Marquette University Dissertation Boot Camp organizers, advisers, and attendees, the Marquette University Graduate School, the administration and professors of the Marquette University Department of English, my husband Byron, and all my family and friends who supported me during this endeavor. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . i INTRODUCTION . 1 CHAPTER ONE: INTERIORITY VERSUS PERFORMATIVITY/THEATRICALITY . 19 CHAPTER TWO: PASSION VERSUS REASON . 91 CHAPTER THREE: MARRIAGE VERSUS THE SINGLE STATE . 176 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 247 1 INTRODUCTION At an early modern studies conference I attended at the University of Toronto back in 2009, the overarching theme was “Beg, Borrow, and Steal: Acquisition in Early Modern England.” One of my colleagues, as a follow-up to my presentation on the use of source material in John Webster’s Duchess of Malfi (a precursor to the Duchess section in the first chapter of this dissertation), pointed out the potential difficulties of using the terms suggested by the conference’s title to describe the multiple ways pre-existing literary materials were used by early modern authors. Begging, of course, implied the act of actively requesting something. Borrowing, he stated, suggested that one used something and then simply returned it, while stealing suggested that the original was not left intact. Plagiarism, while the word did first arise in the early modern period, suggested — at least to our twenty-first-century ears — that the authors had somehow acted maliciously in their appropriation and use of prior texts. His thoughtful observations sparked a lively debate among conference-goers that stayed with me long after I had returned home: just how did early modern authors — and primarily Jacobean dramatists — utilize the texts that are now commonly considered as merely “plot source material”? I was convinced, then as I am now, that there remained significant research to be done on such “plot source material” and its relationship to these plays. Moving from critical works that delineate specific plot sources, such as those on Shakespeare by Geoffrey Bullough, Kenneth Muir, and others, to texts that investigate more detailed textual and thematic borrowings such as R. W. Dent’s John Webster’s Borrowings and myriad shorter articles and notes, to the current trend on intertextuality (see authors such as Robert S. Miola, Michele Marrapodi, and others), I proceeded to explore the history of 2 source study and intertextual studies in hopes of learning more about exactly how early modern authors utilized, and entered into conversation with, the preceding texts on which their later works were based. Through this research I gradually learned more about what had already been a topic of interest for me — the prose novellas of early modern Europe. While I knew that they had been discussed for years as a part of plot source study, it soon became apparent that the English versions in particular of this widely popular Italian form had been largely neglected as literary works in and of themselves. Like the source critics, I was interested in learning more about the relationships between these novellas, their predecessors, and the plays that succeeded them; however, unlike most source critics, I was particularly interested in exploring these relationships beyond the superficial levels of “textual borrowing” and “plot source material.” In order to explore the rich relationship between early modern novellas and their dramatic counterparts, I felt that I had to look not only at the plays as coherent, complex literary texts, but also at the novellas as distinctly literary texts that provided more than just plot source material for the subsequent plays. Intertextual critic Michele Marrapodi, in his introduction to his collection of essays on intertextuality, recognizes “the circular negotiations between theatre and prose” that are so crucial to my work (5). Lorna Hutson, in turn, notes the current lack of critical examination of the “formal and thematic concerns” of the early modern novella: For while specific novelle have been examined as sources for specific plays, there has never seemed to be any question about what the novelle themselves, as a cultural form, were saying to contemporary readers. It may well be that, once the formal and thematic concerns of these novelle begin to emerge as central to the culture of sixteenth-century humanism, it will not be hard to see ways in which a number of Shakespeare’s plays dramatize concerns which are very similar. (Hutson, Usurer’s Daughter 88-89) 3 Caroline Lucas agrees that there is a current critical lack regarding the early modern novella, arguing that “it is indeed high time to reappraise Elizabethan fiction and to recognize its complexity and sophistication” (38). This dissertation, therefore, is the result of my coexisting desires both to pursue a detailed study of the intertextual relationship of the early modern novella and Jacobean drama and, through this study, to expose the “complexity and sophistication” of the early modern novella in its own right. As of the writing of this dissertation, there had been no study that looked at the various narrative and dramatic elements of the early modern novella and Jacobean drama and how these interrelated genres shed light on one another, and certainly very few critical works that attribute to this group of novellas any real literary credence. Novellas are, of course, well known as the scouring grounds for many early modern dramatists: authors, from the more obscure, such as Markham or Machin (co-authors of The Dumb Knight, a play whose plot is based on William Painter’s [originally Bandello’s] novella entitled “The Lord of Virle”), to Shakespeare, are acknowledged to have used these novellas as a fruitful source of plot material for their dramatic works. However, the fact that these short, diverse tales were also popular in their own right during the early modern period and enjoyed a significant

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