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TALES OF EROTIC SUFFERING: ROMANCE IN SIDNEY AND SHAKESPEARE by DARLENE CIRAULO (Under the Direction of Christy Desmet) ABSTRACT This study argues that the Greek romances of late antiquity were an important source in the works of William Shakespeare and Sir Philip Sidney. I specifically address how the chaste marriage plot of Greek romance reflected the social and religious ethics of the Jacobean and Elizabethan era. The renewed interest in Hellenistic romance coincided with an emerging Protestant sexual ethic of mutual love in marriage and wedded chastity. The genre of Greek romance also imparted the theme of erotic suffering. This theme manifests itself in the ideal romance plot pattern of love-leading-to-marriage. The young hero and heroine triumph over adversity in their quest to remain faithful to the principle of true love. I discuss Sidney’s use of the Greek romance model in the New Arcadia, particularly his interest in the model of erotic suffering as a paradigm of female virtue. Sidney explicitly invokes a Heliodorian model of ideal love. I also discuss Shakespeare’s use of the Greek romance paradigm of sexual love in his romance plays, Pericles, Cymbeline, and The Winter’s Tale. In these late plays, Shakespeare draws on source material that is rooted in the Greek romance tradition of ideal marriage and erotic suffering. The heroes in Shakespearean romance often find psychological or spiritual redemption in affliction. The heroine in Shakespearean romance is often made to suffer for love on account of patriarchal abuse. It is the heroine’s virtuous fortitude in adversity that gives the play its regenerative closure. INDEX WORDS: Sir Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare, Greek romance, erotic suffering, adventure novel, Heliodorus, Longus, Achilles Tatius, New Arcadia, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, Robert Greene, Laurence Twine, Gower, George Wilkins, Boccaccio. TALES OF EROTIC SUFFERING: ROMANCE IN SIDNEY AND SHAKESPEARE by DARLENE CIRAULO B.A., The University of California at Berkeley, 1990 M.A., The University of Georgia, 1994 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2003 © 2003 Darlene Ciraulo All Rights Reserved TALES OF EROTIC SUFFERING: ROMANCE IN SIDNEY AND SHAKESPEARE by DARLENE CIRAULO Major Professor: Christy Desmet Committee: Coburn Freer Frances Teague Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia August 2003 iv DEDICATION For my mother and father Mary Janelle Melvin And Donald Joesph Ciraulo v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Like the romance heroes and heroines who are the subject of this study, this dissertation has been a journey of discovery, adversity, adventure, and finally, triumph. Along the perilous way, there have been many people who have made the long-awaited end possible. First, I would like to thank with affection my dissertation director, Dr. Christy Desmet, for her guidance and support during these many years of research and writing. She has successfully navigated me through Scylla and Charybdis. I would also like to extend this gratitude to committee members Dr. Frances Teague and Dr. Coburn Freer, whose knowledge and scholarship have been an inspiration. Finally, I wish to thank Dr. Emma Smith for her kindness and intellectual stimulus throughout this project. I have encountered a huge network of assistance and encouragement during this writing adventure: Dr. Elizabeth Kraft, Dr Judith Shaw, the UGA at Oxford staff-- especially Christine Albright--Sylvia Henneberg, Kyanh Tonnu, Greg Timmons, Tricia McElroy, Nicole Reynolds, Bill Cole, Andrew Burke, Leigh-Anne Marcellin, and Marisa Pagnattaro have all seen me through difficult times. Matt Kozusko and Kalpen Trivedi have been instrumental friends in helping me format the dissertation. Angelico, Michelle, Blue, Barns, and Sammy have been with me in spirit. My mom, dad, and sister Dina have been my foundation of unconditional understanding and love. My extended family has provided much needed support as well. I want to thank, most of all, my husband Andrew for his companionship and belief that this project would come to fruition. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................v CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Tales of Erotic Suffering..............................................................1 2 Love, Chastity and Woman’s Erotic Power: Greek Romance in Elizabethan and Jacobean Context ..................................................................................20 3 Sir Philip Sidney and Female Heroism: Erotic Suffering in the New Arcadia................................................................................................68 4 Romantic Symmetry in Shakespeare’s Pericles ............................................110 5 “The casting forth to crows thy baby daughter”: Female Suffering and Child Abandonment in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale...................................159 6 The Comedy of Romantic Suffering: Imogen in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline..................................................................................................206 7 Conclusion.....................................................................................................251 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................258 1 CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Tales of Erotic Suffering Not only was the influence of romance deep; it was wide and intricate too, for romance literature was a diverse and complex stream of verse and prose, the product of five changing centuries and of half a dozen European countries of varying culture and civilisation. (E. C. Pettet, Shakespeare and the Romance Tradition) E. C. Pettet’s account of romance literature in Elizabethan England points to the difficulty of isolating any one romance tradition in the early modern period. Despite the confluence of influence, the many rivulets that make up the stream, Pettet narrows the scope of interest down to four categories: medieval chivalric, Italian epic, Petrarchan poetry, and Continental novels and novella. Although the subgroups of romance are distinct in their own right, they can all be categorized under the over-arching umbrella of sexual love: As Pettet succinctly states, “Above all else romance literature was a literature of love and love-making.”1 The Renaissance found the literature of sexual love in different modes of romance writing. In particular, a vital reserve of stock material and romantic focus came from a specific genre of romance, the Greek prose romances of the Roman Imperial period. While Pettet does not include the Greek genre as a subgroup of romance, these ancient stories of erotic suffering lie at the heart of Sidney’s New Arcadia and Shakespearean romance. More than any other Elizabethan or Jacobean writers, these authors engaged vigorously with the Greek romance paradigm. 2 Why did Renaissance writers such as Sidney and Shakespeare look specifically to the Greek romance model of sexual love? The romances of the Hellenistic era brought to the early-Christian world a heterosexual paradigm of amatory relations. According to Michel Foucault, this paradigm shift created “a new erotics”: unlike the old ideal, one that glorified love between men and boys, the new ideal extolled erotic passion between a man and woman.2 This “new erotics” carried with it an ethic of chastity. The passion between the young romance hero and heroine is fulfilled in matrimony, and this marital joining is based on the necessary factor of parental consent. The Greek romances are often referred to as “ideal” by modern critics because the protagonists usually uphold the virtues of fidelity and chastity.3 As such, these stories of mutual love enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in the Renaissance when humanist scholars began to translate the Greek texts into Latin and the vernacular. In the Elizabethan and Jacobean period, the newly-translated stories provided an ideal model of erotic desire: there is a hero and heroine who meet and fall in love; they suffer ordeals of separation and loyalty; through their trials, the lovers remain true and are finally brought together often in celebration or in marriage. One of the divergent forms that Greek romance took in the Middle Ages was the genre of hagiography, or saints’ lives.4 These popular stories often describe the various forms of torture and torment that medieval martyrs endured for religious faith: their allegiance to the suffering body of Christ. The hagiographical narratives usually depict men and women who view suffering as a condition of devotion to religious piety. As Judith Perkins states, “to be a Christian was to suffer.”5 Like the Greek romance heroine, the virgin martyr is subjected to near rapes, but is always able to defend her chastity and 3 defy enemies. For instance, the story of Paul and Thecla recalls the Greek romance pattern of separation, adventure, and reunion. The legend tells of Thecla’s dedication to Paul’s preaching, her separation from him, attempted assaults on her virginity, and physical punishment for her fidelity to Christ. We see that the chaste heroine of Hellenistic romance evolves into the menaced virgin of the saints’ lives, an aesthetic vision of Christian piety and humility.6 While there are similarities between the ancient romance genre and the literature of hagiography,