UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title "Measures Meet for Every Sort" : the social dynamics of late-Elizabethan genre Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2kn348gv Author Bialo, Caralyn Alyssa Publication Date 2011 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO ―Measures Meet for Every Sort‖: The Social Dynamics of Late-Elizabethan Genre A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Literature by Caralyn Alyssa Bialo Committee in charge: Professor Louis A. Montrose, Chair Professor Lisa Lampert-Weissig Professor Kathryn Shevelow Professor Janet Smarr Professor Oumelbanine Zhiri 2011 Copyright Caralyn Alyssa Bialo, 2011 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Caralyn Alyssa Bialo is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Chair University of California, San Diego 2011 iii DEDICATION For my husband, Rich Nickla: spork. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page ……………………………………………………………………. iii Dedication ……………………………………………………………………….... iv Table of Contents ………………………………………………………………… v Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………. vii Vita ……………………………………………………………………………….. viii Abstract …………………………………………………………………………… xii Introduction ………………………………………………………………………. 1 I.1. Classical Decorum ……………………………………………………. 8 I.2. English Renaissance Decorum ……………………………………….. 14 I.3. The Social Contexts of Generic Practice …………………………….. 27 Chapter 1. Spenser and The Faerie Queene ..…………………………………….. 41 1.1. Imagining Courtesy through the Virgilian Progression ……………… 46 1.1.2. Courtly Romance and Pastoral ………………………………… 58 1.2. Spenser and Georgic ………………………………………………… 65 1.3. The Georgic Cosmology and the Decay of Nobility ………………... 79 1.4. Book VI‘s Georgic Romance ……………………………………….. 94 1.5. Pastoral Courtesy …………………………………………………… 110 1.6. Georgic Otium in the Work of Spenser‘s Contemporaries ………… 123 Chapter 2. Thomas Nashe and The Unfortunate Traveler ……………………… 130 2.1. The Learned Man in Print …………………………………………... 131 2.2. The ―Preface‖ and the Anatomy of Absurdity ……………………….148 v 2.3. Nashe and Martin Marprelate ………………………………………. 163 2.4. Pierce Penniless……………………………………………………... 174 2.5. The Unfortunate Traveler …………………………………………… 194 Chapter 3. Shakespeare and Hamlet ……………………………………………… 216 3.1. Early Elizabethan Theater …………………………………………… 223 3.2. The 1570s-1580s …………………………………………………….. 234 3.3. The 1590s ……………………………………………………………. 254 3.3.2. Early 1590s………………………………………………… 255 3.3.3. Late 1590s …………………………………………………. 263 3.4. Shakespeare, Clowning, and Genre …………………………………. 270 3.4.2. Ophelia …………………………………………………….. 281 References ………………………………………………………………………... 303 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my committee, especially my chair, Louis Montrose, whose patience and guidance made this project possible. I could not have come this far without the support of a handful of people who have not only sustained me but put up with me every step of the way, from the hungry years through the absent years to the working years. Thank you to my mother, Nancy Karagis, my father, Ken Bialo, my step-mother and step-father, Kate Bialo and Sylvester Karagis, and my brothers and sisters, Darren Bialo, Jacquelyn Bialo, Matthew Bialo, and Kelsey Bialo. Thank you also to my best friend, Michelle Bovin, and to the ladies without whom graduate school would have been unbearable, Viviana MacManus, Yumi Pak, Jodi Eisenberg, and Amanda Solomon. Chapter 4, in part, has been submitted for publication of the material as it may appear in Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 (Rice University Press). The dissertation author was the primary investigator and author of this paper. vii VITA EDUCATION Ph.D., Literatures in English, University of California, San Diego, 2011 B.A., English, University of Pennsylvania, 1998 Supplemental Development Courses Huntington Library Paleography Seminar, Winter 2008 Scuola Italiana, Middlebury University, Summer 2005 UPenn in Tours Program, Tours, France, Summer 1997 RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS Early modern British poetry, prose, and drama; genre theory; cultural studies; gender studies; performance; the early print market; poetics and rhetoric PUBLICATIONS ―The Broadside Ballad, Popular Performance, and Ophelia‘s Madness,‖ SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, forthcoming (accepted for publication). CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS ―Georgic Civility on Savage Soyl: Genre, Ireland, and Courtesy in Book VI of the Faerie Queene,‖ 46th International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, 2011 ―Measures Meet for Every Sort,‖ Shakespeare Association of America, Chicago, IL, 2010 ―Book I of the Faerie Queene: Apocalyptic Romance?‖ Sixteenth-Century Society Conference, Geneva, Switzerland, 2009 ―The Paradox of Puttenham‘s Genre,‖ Shakespeare Association of America, Washington, DC, 2009 ―Ophelia‘s Ballads and Popular Discourse in Hamlet,‖ Pacific Ancient and Modern Languages Association, Pomona, CA, 2008 ―Genre and Social Mobility in Book VI of the Faerie Queene,‖ Sixteenth-Century Society Conference, St. Louis, MO, 2008 TEACHING EXPERIENCE LECTURER, English and Comparative Literature Department, San Diego State University Courses Designed and Taught: The English Renaissance in Global View; Spring 2012 This course builds upon recent critical work in ―Global Shakespeare‖ by applying the global lens to early modern English literature beyond Shakespeare. Focusing on trade, tourism, and colonialism, we examine England‘s relationship with four geographical areas—Ireland, the Americas, the Ottoman Empire, and Turkey. We pay special attention to the effect of England‘s global encounters on the Renaissance literary imagination and literary form. viii Introduction to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales and Social Critique; Spring 2012 This course provides a general introduction to Chaucer but focuses primarily on the Canterbury Tales. Romance, Heroism, and the English Nation; Fall 2011 This course addresses the intersections of martial heroism and romantic love in literary representations of the nation before 1660. We begin with Virgil and Ovid, move on to Petrarch and Chaucer, and spend most of our time on sixteenth-century writers, including Wyatt, Surrey, Gascoigne, Greene, Raleigh, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Marlowe. Introduction to Shakespeare: Text in Performance; Fall 2011 Covering the breadth of Shakespeare‘s corpus, this course explores how Shakespearean texts were shaped by the conditions of the early modern theater, including performance practices, the emergence of a commercial market for entertainment, and the printing of play texts. Introduction to Shakespeare: Shakespeare’s Genres; Fall 2009, Spring 2011 Beginning with the study of Renaissance poetics and anti-theatrical tracts, this course introduces students to early modern theories of genre and then examines how Shakespeare expands, revises, and builds upon generic models. ASSOCIATE-IN-LITERATURE, Literature Department, University of California, San Diego Courses Designed and Taught: Jacobean Shakespeare; Winter 2011; Spring 2012 This class provides an introduction to Shakespeare‘s work from 1603 to his retirement from the theater in 1612, focusing on how the cultural and political milieu of Jacobean England informed Shakespeare‘s work. Elizabethan Shakespeare; Winter 2010 This class covers Shakespeare‘s work from approximately 1590 to 1603. We pay special attention to issues of gender and power in the plays produced under Elizabeth‘s reign. Monstrous Women in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries; Fall 2009 This is an upper-division course exploring how the image of the monstrous woman in non-elite and elite texts constituted a response to the ―woman question.‖ We look specifically at Renaissance theories of sex and gender, madness, witchcraft, and unruly female sexuality. LECTURER, Revelle College Humanities Writing Program, University of California, San Diego Courses Designed and Taught ix Renaissance, Reformation, and Early-Modern Europe; Summer 2009, 2011 This is an interdisciplinary class covering philosophy, history, and literature in the Italian and northern Renaissance between 1300 and 1660. TEACHING ASSISTANT, University of California, San Diego Literature Department Introduction to the Literature of the British Isles, 1832-Present; Spring 2009 Introduction to the Literature of the British Isles, 1660–1832; 2Winter 2009 Introduction to the Literature of the British Isles to 1660; Fall 2008 Introduction to Fiction Writing; Fall 2008 Revelle College Humanities Writing Program Foundations of Western Civilization: Greece and Israel; Winter 2005, 2007, 2009 Rome, Christianity, and the Middle Ages; Spring 2005, 2007, 2010, 2011 Renaissance, Reformation, and Early-Modern Europe; Fall 2005, 2010, 2011, Summer 2008, 2010 Enlightenment, Romanticism, Revolution; Winter 2006 Modern Culture (1848-Present); Spring 2011, 2006 READER, University of California, San Diego Jacobean Shakespeare; Spring 2009 Shakespeare, Text, and Film; Summer 2007, 2008 Elizabethan Shakespeare; Winter 2008 Poetry and Prose of the English Revolution; Fall 2007 Milton; Spring 2007 Reformation Europe; Winter 2005 GUEST LECTURER, University of California, San Diego ―Church as Community: Paul‘s Letters to the Corinthians,‖ guest lecture for Rome, Christianity, and the Middle Ages; Spring 2010 ―Chaucer: ‗The General Prologue‘ and the ‗Miller‘s Tale,‘ ‖ guest lecture for