ABSTRACT Title of Document: FROM THE AETHIOPICA TO THE RENAISSANCE: RECOVERING A STAGE TRADITION OF POSITIVE REPRESENTATIONS OF AFRICANS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND Margaret Sinclair, 2012 Directed by: Prof. Jane Donawerth, Department of English This dissertation looks at the connection between Heliodorus’s fifth-century prose romance, An Aethiopian History, certain Renaissance texts, and how these texts helped influence an alternate representation of Africans in the early modern world. Through their portrayals of Africans, early modern English playwrights frequently give the impression that Africans, especially black Africans, were people without accomplishments, without culture. Previously, however, this was not the case. Africans were depicted with dignity, as a tradition existed for this kind of representation--and Renaissance Europe had long been acquainted with the achievements of Africans, dating back to antiquity. As the source of several lost plays, the Aethiopica is instrumental in dramatizing Africans favorably, especially on the early modern stage, and helped shape a stage tradition that runs alongside the stereotyping of Africans. This Heliodoran tradition can be seen in works of Greene, Heywood, Jonson, Shakespeare, and others in the motifs of crosscultural and transracial romance, male and female chastity, racial metamorphosis, lost or abandoned babies, wandering heroes, and bold heroines. In Jonson’s Masque of Blackness and Masque of Beauty, I establish a connection between these two masques and Heliodorus’s Aethiopica and argue for a Heliodoran stage tradition implicit in both masques through the conceit of blanching. In The English Moore, I explore how Richard Brome uses the Heliodoran and Jonsonian materials to create a negative quality of blackness that participates in the dramatic tradition of the degenerate African on the English Renaissance stage. With Othello, I contend that it is a drama that can be seen in the Heliodoran tradition by stressing certain motifs found in the play that derives from the Aethiopica. Reading Othello this way provides us with a more layered and historicized interpretation of Shakespeare’s protagonists. Othello’s nationality and faith make his exalted position in Venice and the Venetian army credible and logical. His nobility and heroic status become more sharply defined, giving us a fuller understanding of the emphasis he places on chastity—both for himself and for Desdemona. Instead of a traditional, compliant, and submissive Desdemona, a courageous, resourceful, witty, and pure heroine emerges--one who lives by the dictates of her conscience than by the constraints of societal norms. Recovering the tradition of positive portrayal of Africans that originated from the Aethiopica necessitated an examination of eleven plays that I contend helped to frame the dramatic tradition under investigation. Six of these plays are continental dramas, and five are English. Although three of the English plays are lost and the other two are seventeenth-century dramas, their titles and names of their protagonists, like those of the six extant continental plays, share the names of Heliodorus’s hero and heroine, making an exploration of the continental plays imperative to facilitate their use as paradigms in reconstructing the three lost English plays. These continental dramas show that plays whose titles derive from the Aethiopica itself or reflect the names of its major characters follow Heliodorus’s text closely, enabling an investigation of the Heliodoran tradition on the early modern English stage. Recovering the Heliodoran tradition adds to the exploration of racial politics and the understanding of the dramatic tradition that constrained and enabled Renaissance playwrights’ representation of race and gender. FROM THE AETHIOPICA TO THE RENAISSANCE: RECOVERING A STAGE TRADITION OF POSITIVE REPRESENTATION OF AFRICANS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND By Margaret Sinclair Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2012 Advisory Committee: Prof. Jane Donawerth, Chair Prof. Emeritus Maynard Mack, Jr. Prof. Theresa Coletti Prof. Laura Rosenthal Prof. Judith Hallett © Copyright by Margaret Sinclair 2012 ii Acknowledgements Before I was a humbled dissertation writer, one of my professors told me that writing a dissertation will be the hardest thing I would ever do. Being ignorant and arrogant, I inwardly dismissed his idea. Many years have passed and I have walked the path of enlightenment and humility. Writing a dissertation is indeed the hardest thing I have ever done or anything I am ever likely to do. My path, made difficult with financial and other constraints, was at times impassable, except, of course, for encouragement and help from supporters. I have been fortunate to have Professor Jane Donawerth as my advisor. Her support has been unstinting at every level. When pecuniary matters forced me to interrupt my studies, Professor Donawerth spoke on my behalf, and she forbore with the difficulties I had in writing the dissertation. I am inclined to think that another advisor would have given up on me. I also thank Professor Maynard Mack for the challenges he posed and for making me work as hard as I did. I am also thankful for Prof. Hallett’s support and the time and contributions of the other members of my committee. Without the help of Patricia Herron, the librarian for the humanities at McKeldin library, I could not have written this dissertation. Perhaps I would have written another dissertation—but certainly not this one. It took the two of us, with Pat frequently in the vanguard, at least a year to track down and retrieve the six obsolete plays that are vital to my dissertation from some obscure and forsaken nook and cranny of the universe. Pat, generous and always understanding, was instrumental in procuring some of those plays from European libraries. The others we ferreted out from Internet caches. Frequently, I would turn up at McKeldin without an appointment and Pat’s help would be forthcoming. iii I am indebted to my niece, Professor T.K. Whittingham (the “Enforcer”). She held me accountable and provided financial and emotional support. Special thanks to Jim Berry for his unwavering kindness and to Joanne Desiato for her support. My friends Jodean Marks, Heather Archibald, Sophia Rutty, H. R. Clarke, Kevin Jordan, and James Ocita were Gibraltars. They tolerated my lamentations and idiosyncracies and were generous in their financial and intellectual support. When I was about 13, I conceived the impossible dream of having a Ph. D. This was literally an impossibility then. Throughout the years, however, my brother Lancelot Anthony Sinclair (affectionately, Gary) toiled to remove all obstacles in the way. Without Gary, my dream could never be a reality. He made this journey and the journeys of my other brothers and sisters a reality. I am privileged to be his sister, and I am a better person for knowing him. Others who helped my intellectual journey include my sister Beverly E. Whittingham (whose concern for my early education and summertime reading of the Romantics and Victorians instilled in me the love of literature) and the late Professor Sondra Godfrey (who inspired me). To all those who have had to endure my tenacity during these turbulent years, especially the staff at McKeldin, and in particular Charles Wright, I ask forgiveness. iv Table of Contents Table of Contents Page Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. ii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iv Introduction ........................................................................................................................1 Summary of the Aethiopica .................................................................................................6 Use and Influence of the Aethiopica during the Renaissance ..............................................8 A Lost Tradition .................................................................................................................22 Outline of Dissertation Chapters ........................................................................................36 Chapter 1 ..........................................................................................................................39 Plays Whose Titles Reflect Their Derivation and Help to Establish a Dramatic Tradition Stemming from the Aethiopica ..................................................46 The Aethiopica as Source for Popular Renaissance Plays ................................................74 Black Africans on the English Renaissance Stage .............................................................90 Chapter 2 ........................................................................................................................100 The Aethiopica as Template for Blackness and Beauty ...................................................102 The Ambi-valence of Blanching in Jonson’s Twin Masques and the Heliodoran Stage Tradition ...........................................................................................................108 The Intertextuality of the Aethiopica, Blackness, and The English Moore .....................132 Chapter 3 ........................................................................................................................149