Republicanism, Tacitism and Style in English Drama: 1585–1608
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COPYRIGHT AND USE OF THIS THESIS This thesis must be used in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. Reproduction of material protected by copyright may be an infringement of copyright and copyright owners may be entitled to take legal action against persons who infringe their copyright. Section 51 (2) of the Copyright Act permits an authorized officer of a university library or archives to provide a copy (by communication or otherwise) of an unpublished thesis kept in the library or archives, to a person who satisfies the authorized officer that he or she requires the reproduction for the purposes of research or study. The Copyright Act grants the creator of a work a number of moral rights, specifically the right of attribution, the right against false attribution and the right of integrity. You may infringe the author’s moral rights if you: - fail to acknowledge the author of this thesis if you quote sections from the work - attribute this thesis to another author - subject this thesis to derogatory treatment which may prejudice the author’s reputation For further information contact the University’s Director of Copyright Services sydney.edu.au/copyright REPUBLICANISM, TACITISM AND STYLE IN ENGLISH DRAMA: 1585–1608 by Peter J. Gibbard A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (English) at the University of Sydney 2014 i To Jim Bell, Paul Gibbard, David Howie, Simon Morris and Nishi Shah ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would particularly like to thank my supervisor Huw Griffiths for his insights into early modern drama, his support and his patience. I would also like to thank Paul Gibbard, Liam Semler and Nishi Shah for their generosity in providing comments on my work. iii CONTENTS Dedication i Acknowledgements ii Introduction 1 PART A: REPUBLICANISM AND TACITISM 1. Republican liberty on the early Jacobean stage 16 1.1 Tracing back the English republic 20 1.2 Classical liberty in seventeenth-century England 24 1.3 The classical republican narrative and Essex’s circle 32 1.4 Essex’s faction, Jonson’s Germanicans and the virtue of magnanimity 37 1.5 Magnanimity and the classical republican narrative in Jonson’s Sejanus 49 1.6 Peace and liberty in Philotas and the Byron plays 54 1.7 The hazards of ‘free natures’ 69 2. Tacitean Stoicism in Jonson’s Sejanus 79 2.1 The middle way of Annals 1–6 83 2.2 Lipsius’s Tacitism and Sejanus 86 2.3 The middle way of Jonson’s Lepidus 89 2.4 Lepidus’s ‘arts’ and Arruntius’s ‘riddles’ 95 2.5 The Germanicans’ ‘defiant obstinacy’ 97 2.6 Tacitean Stoicism in Daniel’s Philotas 101 2.7 Lepidus, Chalisthenes and the Essex circle 104 2.8 Ducci’s Tacitean Stoicism in Jonson’s Sejanus 108 2.9 Conclusion 110 iv PART B: POLITICS AND STYLE 3. The politics of style: Sententious and Ciceronian rhetoric 115 3.1 The sententious style 120 3.2 ‘Moderation and temperance’ in early imperial rhetoric 132 3.3 Figured sententiae in imperial Rome 139 3.4 Tacitean Stoicism and figured sententiae in early modern Europe 151 3.5 Ben Jonson and figured sententiae 158 3.6 The formal character of the Ciceronian style 178 3.7 Cicero’s style and emotive force 184 3.8 The Ciceronian style in sixteenth-century England and Tamburlaine 194 3.9 The Ciceronian style in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama 200 3.10 Conclusion 203 4. Language and liberty in Richard II and Edward II 205 4.1 The classical republican narrative in Richard II 208 4.2 Shakespeare’s ‘silent king’ and Marlowe’s Mortimer 215 4.3 Bolingbroke’s rhetorical styles in Richard II 222 4.4 The Ciceronian and sententious styles in Edward II 228 4.5 Conclusion 234 5. ‘Ay, Cicero is dead’: Absolutism and lean language in Julius Caesar 236 5.1 Justifying tyrannicide in Julius Caesar: Reasons or rationalizations? 240 5.2 Classical liberty and competitive self-assertiveness 252 5.3 Roman and Elizabethan republicans 254 5.4 Sententious brevity and Ciceronian copia in Caesar’s Rome 258 5.5 Gender and rhetorical style 263 5.6 Conclusion 267 v 6. Tacitean Stoicism and the sententious style in Senecan drama 269 6.1 Stoicism in Senecan tragedy 271 6.2 Senecan revengers and Tacitean Stoicism 277 6.3 Tacitean Stoicism and the sententious style in Spanish Tragedy 287 6.4 The sententious speech of Machiavels 296 6.5 Conclusion 303 7. Breaking up the line: Prosody and rhetorical style 304 7.1 Line integrity in 1580s blank verse 307 7.2 Prosody and the sententious style in Misfortunes of Arthur 316 7.3 Marlowe’s ‘line for line’ translation of Pharsalia 322 7.4 Prosody and the Ciceronian style in Tamburlaine 330 7.5 Conclusion 336 Conclusion 340 Appendix Morris Croll and his critics: ‘The anti-Ciceronian movement’ 345 A.1 Morris Croll and ‘le mouvement anticicéronien’ 349 A.2 Croll’s critics 352 A.3 Salvaging the notion of an anti-Ciceronian style 360 A.4 Classifying the Latin styles 362 A.5 The sententious style and native ‘scriptualism’ 369 Bibliography 374 1 INTRODUCTION Lancaster All stomach him [Gaveston], but none dare speak a word. Mortimer Junior Ah, that bewrays their baseness Lancaster. Were all the earls and barons of my mind, We’d hale him from the bosom of the king, And at the court gate hang the peasant up, Who, swol’n with venom of ambitious pride, Will be the ruin of the realm and us. (Edward II, 1.2.28–32)1 Sejanus He that, with such a wrong moved, can bear it through With patience, and an even mind, knows how To turn it back. Wrath, covered, carries fate: Revenge is lost, if I profess my hate. What was my practice late I’ll now pursue As my fell justice. This has styled it new. (Sejanus, 1.576–81)2 In sixteenth-century England, Cicero’s rhetoric served as a pre-eminent model for style, influencing not only the development of prose during this period but also the style of 1Christopher Marlowe, Edward the Second, ed. Charles Forker (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994). 2Ben Jonson, Sejanus His Fall in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, ed. David Bevington, Martin Butler and Ian Donaldson, 7 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 2. Unless otherwise stated, quotations of Jonson are taken from this edition. 2 dramatic verse. In the passage above from Marlowe’s Edward II, Mortimer’s five-line sentence can be classified as a Ciceronian period, on account of its suspended syntax and balanced clauses. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, however, reacting against the veneration for Cicero’s rhetoric, late Elizabethan authors experimented with an ‘anti- Ciceronian’ style modelled on the writings of Seneca and Tacitus rather than Cicero. In contrast to the expansive, flowing style of Cicero, the anti-Ciceronian style was brief and epigrammatic, characterized by an abrupt, choppy movement. This anti-Ciceronian style is exemplified by Sejanus’s speech, which, it turns out, is a loose translation of a passage from Seneca’s Medea.3 The late Elizabethan vogue for the imitation of Tacitus and Seneca was part of a broader European movement, and was associated with a surge of interest in Tacitean politics and Senecan Stoicism. Consequently, the anti-Ciceronian style was laden with political connotations, and could be used to express the political attitudes of Tacitean Stoicism. The Ciceronian style also carried significant political connotations, being associated with the republicanism of its namesake. This dissertation examines how early modern authors – and playwrights in particular – exploited the political connotations of the two rhetorical styles, using the Ciceronian style to express republican sentiments and the anti-Ciceronian style to convey Tacitean-Stoic political attitudes. In order to explore these relationships between style and politics, I examine the attitudes towards speech implied by republicanism and Tacitean Stoicism. Late Elizabethan republicanism emphasized the value of outspokenness, calling for statesmen to speak their minds boldly and passionately. In contrast, advocates of Tacitean Stoicism, such as Justus 3See lines 150–54 of Seneca’s Medea in Seneca: Tragedies, ed. John Fitch, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library 62 and 78 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002–4). Unless otherwise stated, references to Seneca’s tragedies are from this edition. 3 Lipsius, recommended that under oppressive monarchs, statesman should conceal their minds, and adopt a circumspect and restrained mode of speech. These two opposing attitudes towards language are illustrated by the speeches of Mortimer and Sejanus. In the passage from Edward II, Lancaster observes that, while the court ‘all stomach’ Gaveston (that is, everyone resents him), his influence on the king is so strong that ‘none dare speak a word’ against him. In reply, Mortimer judges that their restraint of speech and their failure to speak their minds display their ‘baseness’. Whereas Mortimer derides linguistic restraint, Sejanus insists that emotions should be concealed and speech restrained: ‘Wrath, covered, carries fate: / Revenge is lost, if I profess my hate’. Sejanus is articulating a Tacitean-Stoic attitude towards speech, whereas Mortimer’s call for bold outspokenness articulates a principal tenet of Elizabethan republicanism. I will show that Sejanus and Mortimer communicate these contrasting attitudes not just by the content of their speech but also by exploiting the political connotations of the anti-Ciceronian and Ciceronian styles. Sejanus’s brief, abrupt anti-Ciceronian style, with its broken, halting movement, conveys a Tacitean-Stoic attitude of linguistic restraint. By way of contrast, Mortimer expansive and flowing Ciceronian period expresses his republican outspokenness.