Representation of Queen Elizabeth I in Cymbeline

Home , To the Queen

‘WHO IS’T CAN READ A ‘literature,’ but rather by taking into WOMAN?’: accounts political, social and cultural forces that were circulated during the time REPRESENTATION OF of composition and reception of the play QUEEN ELIZABETH I IN and with which it interacted. CYMBELINE Introduction Thanomnual Hiranyatheb1 ‘He was not of an age but for all time!,’ Abstract proclaims Ben Jonson in the poem prefixed to the first Folio of William

Shakespeare’s plays, published in 1623. This article is an attempt to read Since the eighteenth century, critical Cymbeline (1608-1610), one of acclaim of similar import has been Shakespeare’s so-called ‘final plays’ or established as more or less the standard ‘romances’ as a site of cultural responses reception of this sixteenth-century English to the remaining ‘presence’ of the late dramatist: that he was a literary genius Queen Elizabeth I and her cultural whose power lay in his ability, matched by associations in the context of the reign of almost none, to portray ‘universal truths’ her gender-different successor, King about human nature or human life, which James I. It argues that these responses can cut across time, place, and culture. This be seen in the play’s portrayal of two romantic view of the ‘author’ as an characters in the play, namely the Wicked autonomous thinking subject, whose work Queen and to a lesser extent, Imogen, in is an expression of his — or to a lesser which the figure of the late queen is played extent, her — wisdom and insights of out and marginalized, and proposes that his/her own, coupled with the humanistic these representations are ways in which conception of human nature as permanent, the Jacobean culture deals with and universal, and transhistorical, has led to exorcises its anxieties about the late critical models that attempt to locate the monarch’s sometimes contradictory (self- meanings of the Bard’s works, which are appointed) role as a militant, powerful nothing less than reflections of truths and inscrutable ‘woman-on-top’, which about human life and nature, within the disrupted ‘natural’ gender distinction in texts themselves, in most cases without the political climate of James I’s reign, taking into consideration immediate social during which pacifism, transparency and and cultural forces that might participate patriarchalism were highly advocated, in the productions and receptions of the especially by the king himself and other texts. Applications of these models, as writers. It is hoped that this article can shown by Terence Hawkes, can be found, offer a reading of the play, not by for example, in the critical works of interpreting it as a complete-in-itself and Samuel Johnson, Coleridge, and A. C. truth-reflecting work of art by a literary Bradley, and, we may add, works by many genius according to the romantic- New Critical practitioners. In some cases, humanistic conception of the ‘author’ and such as in the works of E. M. K. Tillyard,

even if historical contexts are taken into 1 Lecturer, Department of Comparative Literature, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn account, they serve only as remote and University, Bangkok, Thailand static ‘backgrounds’ to literary texts,

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities (Special Issue No.10 2005)

which are still the privileged sites from romances, Cymbeline, which can be dated which meanings should be extracted approximately to from 1608-1610 (Hawkes, 1996:2-7). (Bevington, 1997:1434). Viewed along the lines of the ‘Shakespeare myth,’ this play However, such humanistic-romantic is usually regarded as one of those that stances have been challenged by recent make up the final works of the Bard’s critical movements like New Historicism oeuvre, which, being composed in the and Cultural Materialism, which regard playwright’s more mature years as a literary texts as only one kind, among veteran artist nearing his retirement from others, of signifying practices that must be the profession but also a wise and read in relation to other material signifying experienced sage, reflect the logical practices in which they are embedded culmination of the playwright’s spiritual (Hawkes, 1996:7-8). In this light, the progression from the probing of life’s ‘author’ is no more the sole generator of mysteries in the ‘problem plays’, through the text’s meaning and literary texts the tempestuous and impassioned years of cannot be interpreted in isolation from the tragedies, to the final phase of the other social and cultural conditions in romances in which the major themes active interaction with which literary texts would move in the direction of spiritual are made and mediated. In terms of growth, and the serene and mythic Shakespearean criticism, as Graham dimension of life. This phase, according to Holderness explains, this amounts to the G. Wilson Knight, a major advocate of deconstruction of the ‘Shakespeare myth’ this stance, would conclude triumphantly — ‘the myth of Shakespeare as culture in The Tempest, the play formerly thought hero, as transcendent genius and to be Shakespeare’s last but now with omniscient seer’, ‘a universal individual evidence to the contrary, (Bevington, genius creating literary texts that remain a 1559:893) in which he has been assumed to permanently valuable repository of human give a farewell to his theatrical profession experience and wisdom’ — and in its in the character of Prospero (Knight, 1947: place, the uncovering of ‘a collaborative 9-31). cultural process in which plays were made by writers, theatrical entrepreneurs, Nevertheless, Knight seems to encounter architects and craftsmen, actors and some difficulties in explaining the play audience’, (Holderness, 1988:12-13) Cymbeline according to this outline. In which involved people from different attempting to accommodate the play into classes and their social practices. This this scheme, he appears to single out an demystification opens up his plays to element which would make the play become, in Stephen Greenblatt’s New ‘mystical’ or ‘transcendental’, the Vision Historicist conceptualization of literary of Jupiter descending on to the stage to works in general, ‘fields of force, places of pacify some discontented characters, and dissension and shifting interests, occasions translates it as the playwright’s for the jostling of orthodox and subversive presentation of the relationship between impulses’ (Greenblatt, 1982:6). human beings and providential and larger- than-life spirituality. By doing this, he It is in this critical context that I would could both present the play as ‘organic’ like now to turn to the reading of one of and defend it as Shakespearean against Shakespeare’s so-called ‘last plays’ or criticisms that view this deus ex machina

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

Representation of Queen Elizabeth I in Cymbeline

scene as crude and intrusive and thus not tribute to James’s strenuous peace-making belonging to Shakespeare. He dismisses policy’ (Jones, 1961:89). His localized those criticisms as a ‘purely personal reading has been seconded and developed reaction unaccompanied by the labours of by many critics. However, in considering exact investigation within the art-form the play as a rich allegory of James’s itself’ and counsels ‘purely literary peacemaking policies, critics have come considerations’ in judging whether the across difficulties in interpreting or passage was authentically written by locating within the Jacobean context the Shakespeare (Knight, 1947:202). character of the Queen who advocates militancy and isolation over Cymbeline’s In spite of that, Knight has to admit that politics of peace. Many attempts have Cymbeline is ‘indeed, to be regarded been made to explain the existence of the mainly as an historical play’ to which militant queen whose major crime, among Shakespeare’s interests in the historical others, is her political intervention, which Romans and British, ‘which meet here for results in the suspension of peace between the first time’, are central (Knight, 1947: Rome and Britain. 129, 130) and devotes a considerable portion of his analysis to the discussion of In my opinion, Leah S. Marcus’s these historical themes. Nevertheless, the observation in Puzzling Shakespeare: ‘historical’ connections he identifies in the Local Reading and Its Discontents that the play are those of the safe and distant past, Wicked Queen, in her domination over her which, according to Knight, show the husband and other men, her political playwright’s tribute to the ideals or virtue maneuvering involving dark secrets and of his two ‘national faiths’ and the her rhetoric of British insularity against ‘historic origins of the nation’. Knight Roman imperial control can be seen as a mentions as a possibility the interpretation demonized or marginalized version of of the play as containing ‘national Queen Elizabeth I (Marcus, 1988:128), allegory’ or immediate historical offers a plausible solution to that puzzle. localization such as a Tudor myth but While, in her topical reading of dismisses it right away as ‘enquiries into Cymbeline, Marcus focuses more on the secondary meanings’, which are Stuart referentiality of the play, I would ‘dangerous and of slight value’ (Knight, like to pursue this Elizabethan allusion 1947:166-67). However, despite the spell further. However, I will not limit my of the Shakespeare myth under which discussion only to finding correlations Knight’s analysis seems to be, the between the Wicked Queen and the real- topicality of the play has stood out to life Queen Elizabeth, but will consider the many other critics. Emrys Jones in ‘Stuart play as a site for cultural responses to the Cymbeline’ points out the importance of a remaining ‘presence’ of the late queen and specific localized reading which takes into her cultural associations in the context of account who the audience of the play was the reign of her gender-different successor. at the time of its composition, and the fact Those responses, seen in the play’s that the play contributes to the ‘Jacobean portrayal of both the characters of the line’ in the understanding of Cymbeline’s Wicked Queen and, to a lesser extent, logic and characterization. As Jones states, Imogen, in which the figure of the late the play ‘centers on the character and queen is played out and marginalized, are, foreign policy of James I’ and ‘pays it will be argued, ways in which the

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities (Special Issue No.10 2005)

Jacobean culture deals with and exorcises embarked in a great and tedious its anxieties about the late monarch’s war, and only by my arrival here, sometimes contradictory role, assigned by and by the peace in my person, is both herself and others, as a militant, now amity kept where war was powerful and inscrutable ‘woman-on-top’ before (McIlwain, 1918:270). that disrupted ‘natural’ gender distinctions in the political climate of James I’s reign, James’s propensity for peace accounts for a during which pacifism, transparency and body of panegyrics during his reign, such patriarchalism were highly advocated, as Jonson’s Panegyre (1603), Dekker’s especially by the king himself and other Magnificent Entertainment (1603), and writers. Middleton’s The Peacemaker (1618). At the same time, there emerged plays which I concerned anti-war campaigns. To be gender-specific, as Linda Woodbridge As many critics point out, one of James’s points out, many Jacobean plays criticize favorite roles was that of Peacemaker. His women warriors as threats to society. In efforts can be seen on both international Bonduca, The Valiant Welshman, and and national levels. In his 1603 speech to Fuimus Troes, or the True Trojans, female Parliament, James declared that two of the characters who meddle with the action or blessings which God bestowed upon his military affairs of men are killed off to countrymen through his person were make way for the masculine British-Roman ‘outward Peace: that is, peace abroad with embraces. Similarly, in The Iron Age, the all forreine neighbours’ and ‘Peace within’, group of women warriors were killed at the resulting from the union of England and end whereas in The Brazen Age, a woman Scotland (McIlwain, 1918:270-1). Emerys hunter, a version of a female warrior, is Jones suggests that James employed the accorded outrage and contempt by male Tudor-British myth in supporting this role: characters (Woodbridge, 1984:164-67). he was the second Arthur like Henry VII and the second Brute who would unify It is very likely that Shakespeare, as well Britain under a single monarch. His motto as other members and shareholders who was Beati pacifici and he loved to be called made up the King’s Men theatrical the second Augustus, the pacific emperor company, which came under royal during whose reign Christ was born. He patronage in 1603 and performed at court also compared himself to King Solomon, a more than any of its rivals (McDonald, king of peace, who would establish peace 1996:52), should have paid attention to among all neighboring nations (Jones, one of his patron’s major concerns. 1961:90-91). In the 1603 speech, he Emerys Jones even speculates that the play contrasted the prospect of peace during his was presumably acted out before James reign with the state of war during the himself and points out that it was still previous monarch’s time: being acted at court in 1634 before Charles (Jones, 1961:96, 85). As Paul A. I have ever, I praise god, kept Jorgenson posits, traces of Jacobean peace and amity with all, which pacifism can be seen in the way in which hath been so far tied to my Shakespeare marginalizes militaristic person, as at my coming here you characters in his later plays. That is, a are witnesses I found the state philosophical argument for war, or against

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

Representation of Queen Elizabeth I in Cymbeline

peace, that might formerly be assigned to Jonson (Marcus, 1988:188-9). In the last heroic characters like Hamlet, is now scene, Cymbeline proclaims his peace, given to subordinated or problematic which as Jonathan Goldberg points out, is characters like Timon, Coriolanus, or the the last word of the play (Goldberg, 1983: Volscian servingmen (Jorgenson, 240): ‘Never was a war did cease, / Ere 1956:203). In Cymbeline, Shakespeare bloody hands were washed, with such a gives a more sustained mirroring of peace’ (5.5.475-84).2 Smith also contends James’s peace-making policy, apart from that, in favor of James’s policy, the play according with James’s interests generally also assigns the political role of such as by using Roman elements. As advocating war to Cloten, a character Warren D. Smith observes, ‘About the deliberately made totally contemptible. same time Shakespeare was preparing Cymbeline for performance at Blackfriars, What Smith and likewise Jorgenson do not James appears to have been bending every touch on, however, is the character of the effort to effect peace between Spain and Queen of Cymbeline, another character the Dutch Republic’ (Smith, 1952:188). who advocates war against the Anglo- Alluding to the king’s foreign and national Roman peace and who is also made peacemaking policies, the play ends in a grotesque. Her speech before the Roman peaceful alliance between Britain and dignitaries voices a strong patriotic Rome, the union of Caesar Augustus with position. Many critics try to explain why Britain’s king, Cymbeline, themselves two Shakespeare assigns this patriotic and versions of James. Imogen bears the name grandiose speech, ‘one of the great of Brute’s wife and her union with nationalist speeches in Shakespeare’, as Posthumus, a supposed representation of Jodi Mikalachki puts it (Mikalachki, the Scotsmen, is yet another allusion to the 1995:305), to a wicked character. Knight England-Scotland union. Moreover, the views the Queen as a ‘type’ of ‘cruelty scene most conspicuous — and deemed incarnate’, ‘a positive ogre’ who ‘[speaks] out-of-place and thus non-Shakespearean out of character’ and has to be rejected by by many scholars, — i.e. the Vision of Cymbeline (Knight, 1947:130, 132, 137). In Jupiter scene, in which Jupiter ‘descends a similar way, Emerys Jones sees the in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an Queen, together with Cloten, as a scapegoat eagle’, as the stage direction has it, to made grotesque after a fairytale fashion in ‘pacify’ the ghosts of Posthumus’s parents order to prevent the audience from finding and brothers in Act 5 has been interpreted a real-life analogue in Queen Anne, as a contemporary allusion to James’s James’s consort (Jones, 1961:97). In more several interventions in Parliament to rigorous attempts to identify the character chide its members for their sluggishness with a historical personage, David M. with his project of creating Great Britain Bergeron, in ‘Cymbeline: Shakespeare’s through the union of England and Scotland Last Roman Play’, suggests that she is a and to announce his continuing protection representation of Augustus’s wife Livia of his despised countrymen, the Scots. The image of James as Jove swooping down 2 with his thunder became a leitmotif of the All the quotations of Cymbeline follow the parliamentary session and the representation Arden Shakespeare Cymbeline, ed. by J. M. Nosworthy (London and New York: of James I as Jupiter also appeared in the Routledge, 1996) court masque Hymenaei (1606) by Ben

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities (Special Issue No.10 2005)

who interfered wickedly with the court of money and soldiers to the Netherlands to Augustus, whereas Mikalachki considers assist the Dutch in their fights with Spain. her as a type of ‘savage’ ancient British However, the event that would capture and queen to be exorcized by the early modern epitomize the characteristics and spirit of English nationalism which sought to the queen’s international policies was her recover respectable all-male English appearance among the English troops national origins (Bergeron, 1980:31-41 and gathered at Tilbury in 1588, just after the Mikalachki, 1995:31-41). Though varying defeat of the Spanish Armada, but while in degree, all critics note the queen’s England was still under threat of invasion political impact on Cymbeline, which is from the duke of Parma, where she is exemplified by the force of this speech. If popularly believed to have addressed the we situate the play in its Jacobean context, soldiers thus: against the backdrop of James’s peacemaking policy, the Wicked Queen’s I have always so behaved my patriotic speech, which mentions Britain’s self, that under God I have placed islanded integrity and isolation, the natural my chief strength, and safeguard defense, the celebrated conquest over in the loyal hearts and good will foreign troops by seas, the shame of of my subjects [...] I know I have invasion, brings to mind Queen Elizabeth’s the bodie, but of a weak and speech and her iconography associated with feeble woman, but I have the the 1588 Armada defeat, a point which is heart and Stomach of a King, and only hinted at by Knight and Mikalachki of a King of England too, and (Knight, 1947:135 and Mikalachki, think foul scorn that Parma or 1995:304). From this analogy, I would like Spain, or any Prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders to propose that the Wicked Queen can be of my Realm, to which rather seen as a version of Queen Elizabeth I, and than any dishonor should grow by her marginalized characterization, which me, I myself will take up arms, I goes in line with other instances of myself will be your General, marginalization of women warriors or Judge, and Rewarder of everie rulers in many plays from the same period, one of your virtues in the field.3 might then be said to signify traces of cultural anxieties or discontent surrounding This passage shares with the Wicked Queen Elizabeth, whose (self-) Queen’s speech a sense of patriotism, representation as an autonomous woman islanded isolation, and advocacy of ruler disrupted ‘natural’ and ‘immutable’

gender distinctions. 3 Leonel Sharp to the duke of Buckingham, Although Queen Elizabeth I’s tactics in quoted in Frye (1992:98). Although there have been disputes over the real origin of the speech dealing with internal conflicts such as those — whether the queen really said it and did that between Protestants and Catholics have been in this widely circulated form — I would like to described as ones of reconciliation or the via regard this as part of the cultural representations media, i.e. the middle way (McDonald, of the queen, which reflect the anxieties and 1996:309-12), her international dealings perplexities surrounding the figure of Queen involved wars with different European Elizabeth I. For an interesting discussion of the nations: she sought to regain control of the issue of Elizabeth’s supposedly wearing male French port town of Calais and dispatched attire at Tilbury, of which much evidence seems to point the other way, see Frye (1992).

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

Representation of Queen Elizabeth I in Cymbeline

militancy in settling international conflicts. which will ‘insure his pre-eminence’ and Moreover, it also brings up another issue ‘enhance his authority’, whereas female related to our analysis, namely the virtue was conceptualized as primarily relationship — or as suggested by the passive in European culture. Kelso passage, the conflict — between the queen’s distinguishes two kinds of virtues for gender and her office as monarch, which she Renaissance women: those necessary in the seems to feel anxious to explain away. domestic sphere and those belonging outside the home. The first group, which is In order to understand the anxiety over the the more emphatic of the two, consists of gender of the monarch present in this ‘chastity, humility, obedience, constancy, passage, and also in other texts which will patience, piety, temperance, kindness, be discussed later, I would like first to prudence in household management, and inquire into the ideals and roles expected of fortitude under affliction’, the most women in general in early modern England. important of which is chastity, considered According to Ann Rosalind Jones in The by humanists such as Juan Luis Vives as Currency of Eros: Women’s Love Lyric in one of the only virtues necessary for a Europe, 1540-1620, in response to their woman, whereas the second includes increasing involvement in growing city- humanity, courtesy, liberality, courage, and states during the early modern period, justice. Although this second group European men in the bourgeois and contains virtues which converge with those aristocratic classes tried to justify their of men described above, Kelso explains neglect of Christian duties by appealing to that they ‘are not, as they were for the classical defenses of engagement in the gentleman, the basic stuff of her character’ polis and displacing the old virtues onto or are emphasized in terms of their women (Jones, 1990:11). Similarly, in domestic use, and many defenders of Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance, women do not mention them at all (Kelso, Ruth Kelso points out that ‘The moral ideal 1956:36). In line with this female ideal, the for the lady is essentially Christian [...] as roles set forth as suitable for women are that for the gentlemen is essentially pagan. those of daughters, wives, and mothers For him the ideal is self-expansion and under protection of and hence subjection to realization. [...] For the lady the direct male control. This idea is common in opposite is prescribed’ (Kelso, 1956:36). In humanist texts of the sixteenth century such a classical text such as Art of Rhetoric, for as Vives’s The Office and Duty of an example, ‘masculine’ virtue consists of Husband, which states that nature ‘hath ‘justice, courage, self-control, magnificence, geven unto man a noble, a high & a diligent magnanimity, liberality, gentleness, practical minde to be busye and occupied abroade, to and speculative wisdom’. The greatest gayne & to bring home to their wives & virtues, according to Aristotle, are those familie, to rule them and their children, and which are most useful to others, like justice also their household’ and to woman ‘a and courage (qtd. in Kelso, 1982:36). In The feareful, a covetous, & an humble mind to Education of a Christian Prince, Erasmus be subject unto man, & to kepe that he emphasizes virtue in the sense of ‘good doeth gayne.’ Thus, women ‘are so feble actions’ as the first kind of princely nobility and weke of nature, that thei nother in mind (qtd. in Kelso, 1968:36). The meaning of nor yet with the body can sustaine nor male virtue is thus active and converges beare that is heavy and grevious’ (qtd. in with ‘service’ and ‘courage’, the qualities Kelso, 1956:17-18).

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities (Special Issue No.10 2005)

Vives, then, clearly envisions two separate compromising circumstances, Elizabeth realms for men and women, the former came to develop strategies of self- belonging to the active world outside the representation which would redefine the home, the latter to the passive domestic patriarchal conception of femininity to suit sphere. Significantly, as Kelso points out, her monarchical status. Those strategies unlike men, class did not matter in these included the exploitation of the cult of the notions of expected female passive roles Blessed Virgin, the use of the notion of the and submission to male authority. That is, a ‘king’s two bodies,’ and the adaptation of woman’s place in the scheme of things, courtly discourses.4 whether that of a high-born or of one belonging to the lower class, was In order to free herself from the concepts of contingent upon her relation with her passive, wifely virtue and from demeaning father’s or her husband’s, so far as rank, situations like those occurring to her power, and influence were concerned, predecessor, but without denying that she whereas in a man’s case, his worth or was female, Elizabeth chose to represent nobility was assessed by comparison with herself as a Virgin Queen. In her 1559 one from another class. Thus, Kelso response to Parliament’s first concern that poignantly concludes, the Renaissance she marry, the queen declared that ‘in the lady, or in fact a woman from any class, end this shal be for me sufficient that a ‘turns out to be merely a wife’ (Kelso, marble stone shall declare that a Quene, 1956:1). In Elizabethan England, this having raigned such a time lyved and dyed sexual hierarchy within the family, the a virgin’ (qtd. in Frye, 1993:15). This authority-submission ideal of husband-wife strategy responded to her need to affirm her relations, was propounded by sermons and virtue, especially her ‘chastity’ in the conduct books and provided a model for all public’s opinions but at the same time relations between women and men (see relocate it in a realm void of the structures Fletcher and Stevenson, 1985:117, 196). of marriage, female procreative capability, and male control: a virgin queen had no With this prevalent idea of woman’s place male possessor and could be allied with in the scheme of things, the accession to traditional anomalous female figures such the throne of Queen Elizabeth I thus went as Diana, Astrea, the vestal virgins, and the against the passive roles generally held as Virgin Mary. The Virgin Queen model thus proper for women during the Renaissance gave Queen Elizabeth a large measure of period. As Susan Frye points out in her autonomy beyond that of ordinary women, Elizabeth I: The Competition for i.e. the ability to rule her own body and Representation, attacks on women rulers like John Knox’s The First Blast of 4 Trumpet against the monstrous regiment For the accounts of Elizabeth I’s life and the interpretation of her representations, I am of women (1558), which had already been indebted to Susan Frye’s accounts in Elizabeth launched in the reign of Mary Tudor I: The Competition for Representation (1993) served as a pretext for attacks on and in ‘The Myth of Elizabeth at Tilbury’ Elizabeth. Mary’s gender became the site (1992); Marcus, Puzzling Shakespeare (1988); of her vulnerability. In order to produce an and Louis A. Montrose, ‘A Midsummer Night’s heir to guarantee succession, Queen Dream and the Shaping Fantasies of Mary’s plunge into her Spanish marriage Elizabethan Culture: Gender, Power, Form’ caused public discontent. To avoid such (1986).

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

Representation of Queen Elizabeth I in Cymbeline

then to command her subjects (Frye, herself as ‘powerful, remote, divinely 1993:15). approved and magical’. To that end, the queen adapted the prevalent discourses Another strategy that Elizabeth used to addressed to her by her courtiers, namely construct herself as a powerful ruler was to Petrarchism and Neoplatonism. In both exploit the notion of the ‘king’s two bodies’, discourses, the courtiers used ‘love’, which a concept that ‘recognized both the split and was associated with magic, in defining their the connection between the physical and relationship to the queen as a means to political bodies of the monarch’. In claim a relation to the source of political employing this doctrine, Elizabeth admitted power. In response to them in her own that her natural body was inevitably female, writings, speeches, and self-representations, ‘constructed through cultural norms that Elizabeth adapted their codes to assert her placed her below men in the cosmic and own power and her divine and magical social hierarchies’. Nevertheless, her quality by stressing her God-approved political body was constructed within a chastity (Frye, 1993:111). In addition to masculinistic legal tradition and thus was that, Elizabeth’s tactic was characterized by often represented as male (Frye, 1993:12). the habit of playing one courtier against This can be seen in many of her speeches another in her management of power including the one at Tilbury quoted above. relations (McDonald, 1996:308). In that speech, which bears similarity in spirit to the Wicked Queen’s, Elizabeth As Montrose states, Elizabeth, as the admits the womanly frailty of her natural female ruler of a patriarchal society, body but asserts the masculine strength of ‘incarnated a contradiction at the very her body politic which is derived from the center of the Elizabethan sex/gender love of her people, the virtue of her lineage, system’ (Montrose, 1986:80). Elizabeth’s and the will of her God. More than once, she self-representations as self-sufficient, and refers to herself by her masculine body sometimes androgynous and militant, politic as ‘king’. Likewise, in her Golden created a sense of awe and reverence Speech of 1601, the queen mentions her among her subjects, but, at the same time, ‘sexly weakness’ but directs attention to her caused widespread unease among them ‘glorious name of a King or royal authority because these representations disrupted the of a Queen’ granted by God and her ‘heart society’s gender distinctions. As Lisa that yet never [fears] any foreign or home Jardine puts it, Elizabeth is a woman whose enemy’ (qtd. in Neale, 1957:385). As in her representation is ‘of national concern and Tilbury speech, Queen Elizabeth emphasizes betrays [...] uneasiness about the her body politic as the divine agent which instrumental power accorded to women in would be ruled only by God and thus lives the period’ (Jardine, 1989:169). Her self- beyond any mortal authority, not to mention representations ‘threatened male preserves, male control. ambitions, and essentialist definitions of the masculine and the feminine’ (Frye, Apart from giving representations of herself 1993:121) by vaunting ‘active’ masculine to the wider public, she had to manage the virtues like service, justice, courage, self- power relations between herself and the control, and subordinating passive feminine courtiers and among themselves as well. In virtues like piety, silence, and obedience. this regard, according to Frye, in the 1590s, Moreover, the virtue considered most the queen worked more and more to create necessary for women, chastity, was

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities (Special Issue No.10 2005)

redefined by the queen to give herself more featured in early modern Europe as the self-control. holiday overthrow of normal hierarchy. This festive inversion involved men taking on the I agree with Frye that representations of role or garb of the unruly woman or Elizabeth’s body served as allegories or grotesque female like Maid Marion, Robin ‘the most obvious of signs’ which base Hood disguised as an old hag, Bessy, or themselves on ‘the disruption of signifier ‘Lady Skimmington’ (Davis, 1975:124-51; and signified’. This gap between signified see also Marcus, 1988:61-62). The reverse and signifier is ‘a linguistic phenomenon also caused the same anxieties. As with profound social consequences’ Woodbridge notes, the phenomenal fashion because it results in instability of meaning, of masculine attire for women in which means that ‘no meaning is ever Elizabethan times aroused the same fears’ completely fixed or natural, however it may (Woodbridge, 1984:139-51). Phillip appear’ and thus it enables the struggle for Stubbes, a contemporary writer, meaning to take place (Frye, 1993:18). characterized the fashion as a threat to the While Elizabeth, as a ‘discursive agent’ immutability of sexual distinctions and engaged, both consciously and considered women who put on men’s attire unconsciously, in her own representation, as degenerating ‘from godly sober women, she could never own or stabilize the in wearing lewd kinde of attire, proper onely meanings assigned to her body. Hence, to man’ (qtd. in Woodbridge, 1984:139). poets, courtiers, and influential London Furthermore, sexual reversal such as female dignitaries could appropriate, re-encode, dominance in the Renaissance was and redefine her iconography to voice their sometimes closely associated with anxieties about her disruption of witchcraft or demonic possession since accustomed gender roles. witches were ‘sexually ambiguous creatures who [...] often used their occult powers to In her subjects’ eyes, Elizabeth was at prey upon male strength and sexual times a revered figure but many times she potency’. Queen Elizabeth, who at times was associated with danger and misrule. As discursively presented herself as both Marcus points out, in Protestant sixteenth- masculine and feminine, might be said to be century England, a multiform figure like associated with the danger and misrule that of Elizabeth, ‘either a young virgin or surrounding transvestism and sex-role an aging woman past menopause, who is inversion. She was also associated with set apart from the usual female functions witchcraft, especially in the aftermath of the and allowed access to otherwise Armada defeat, speculatively attributed to exclusively male activities, who is the queen’s ‘strange’ powers. Moreover, perceived as androgynous and given the queen was also associated with John hieratic status’, might partake of the sacred Dee, an astrologer and a ‘cunning man’ but at the same time lacked a defined (Marcus, 1988:81). cultural status and could be perceived as merely deviant. This anomalous image of a Significantly, it can be said that the queen’s ruler who dressed like a woman but acted Tilbury visit, together with her gender- like a man, with the force and leadership of composite self-representation exemplified a ‘woman-on-top’, was associated with in the speech attributed to her discussed riots, festival disorder, and witchcraft earlier, was an important occasion that (Marcus, 1988:61, 81). Sexual inversion prompted more intense cultural concerns

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

Representation of Queen Elizabeth I in Cymbeline

about the disruption of ‘natural’ gender John Knox’s prior view on the rule of distinction, expressed in many writings women: from the post-Armada years. James Aske’s Elizabetha Triumphans (1588), a text that A woman sitting in iudgement, or praises Elizabeth’s princely courage in the riding frome parliament in the Armada visit, is at the same time one of middest of men, hauing the royall those texts that show traces of disquietude crowne vpon her head, the sworde about the queen’s composite sexuality. and sceptre borne before her, in Inspired by the English troops’ ‘warlike’ signe that the administration of march and mock combat before her, she, iustice was in her power: I am adopting their prowess for herself, assuredlie persuaded, I say, that suche a sight shulde so astonishe Most bravely mounted on a stately them, that they shuld iudge the steede hole worlde to be transformed into With trunchion in her hand (not used Amazones, and that such a thereto) metamorphorsis and change was And with her none, except her made of all the men of that Liutenant, countrie, as poetes do feyn was Accompanied with the Lord made of the companyons of Chamberlaine, Vlisses, or at least, that albeit the Came marching towards this her outwarde form of men remained, marching fight. yet shuld they iudge that their In nought unlike the Amazonian hartes were changed frome the Queen, wisdome, vnderstanding, and Who beating amaine the bloodie courage of men, to the foolishe Greekes, fondnes and cowardise of women Thereby to grapple with Achillis (Knox, 1878:12-13). Stout, Even at the time when Troy was Apart from Aske’s poem, other popular sorebesieged (qtd. in Marcus, materials from the immediate post-Armada 1988:63). years also display ‘an upsurge of similar fascination with, and horror of,’ the As Marcus observes, in this passage, Amazonian gender confusion (Marcus, Elizabeth’s Amazonian gesture seems to 1988:66). In Spenser’s Fairie Queene, become a threat to the English troops Arthegall, hero of the Legend of Justice, themselves. Her androgynous power is a becomes enslaved to Radigund, ‘A ‘threatening, implacable force that Princesse of great powre, and greater pride, annihilates anything in its way’ (Marcus, / And Queene of Amazons, in Armes well 1988:63). The menacing overtones of tride, a version of Elizabeth’ (5.4.33). Aske’s description suggest suppressed Arthegall, after the defeat, must undergo anxiety over the anomalous androgynous degradation and effeminization. Marcus image of the queen and hint at the fear of cites Long Meg of Westminster as another male effeminacy under women’s control. example: ‘she dressed in male clothing, Aske’s androgynous representation of the fought men and bested them (particularly if queen may serve as a subdued echo of they were French or Spanish)’. Her transvestism and warlike character were

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities (Special Issue No.10 2005)

likened to the queen’s (Marcus, 1988:66). all of whom are however brought under the The prevalence of the Amazonian motif in control of husbands and lords at the end of most of these texts reveals cultural the play. In a similar way, according to anxieties over the rule of women, which Marcus, Shakespeare’s history plays, taken was conceptualized as potentially leading to in the order of their composition and gender/social confusion, male performance from Henry VI to Henry V, effeminization, and wanton bellicosity continually marginalize the dominant associated with women in power. woman, the figure of the woman-on-top, the travesty of Elizabeth (Marcus, On the other hand, in the court circles after 1988:96). Henry VI, for instance, offers the her death, some of the queen’s courtiers Amazonian image of Queen Elizabeth in reacted against her use of Neoplatonic love the figure of Joan of Arc, who, like the discourse to manipulate them. Harington queen, is associated with witchcraft and is cites Sir Christopher Hatton’s remark that killed off at the end to precipitate collective the queen fished for men’s souls with ‘so release from the Queen’s power over men. sweet a baite, that no one coude take delyghte in’ (Harington, 1804:358). As Elizabeth’s (self-)representation as an Goldberg comments, her baited words were autonomous woman ruler who was often reversed; her love was a ‘snare’ associated with war and islanded integrity (Goldberg, 1983:29). Harington also notes can be contrasted in many ways with the that ‘Few knew how to aim their shaft person and policies of her successor, James agaianst her cunninge. We did all love hir, I, apart from his (self-)authorized for she saide she loved us, and muche peacemaking role and policies, both wisdome she shewed in thys matter’ domestic and international. Although it is (Harington, 1930:123-25). A more true, as Marcus points out, that James extensive, though indirect, reaction against presented himself as similar to Elizabeth in Queen Elizabeth’s mystifying tactic would some aspects, such as imitating her tactics appear in her successor’s professed with Parliament, he more often chose to advocacy of the ‘plain style’ in political depart from his predecessor (Marcus, dealings and literary works, which will be 1988:111). As David M. Bergeron suggests discussed later. in Shakespeare’s Romances and the Royal Family, especially when viewed against Shakespeare’s plays of the 1590s, the time Elizabeth’s self-representation as a self- after the Armada defeat, might be said to sufficient, unmarried, childless monarch, voice these anxieties over female power what made James appear different in his and male effeminization. As Marilyn L. subjects’ eyes was the fact that he brought Williamson points out, the romantic with him a family, and he made the most comedies of the 1590s feature fantasies of out of that fact. His status as the father of the courtship of powerful women who his own family served as a metaphor that frustrate men’s desires (Williamson, was to prevail at least in the early part of 1986:20). A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for his reign, i.e. that he was ‘father’ of the example, contains elements associated with country (Bergeron, 1985:27). James’s the queen’s cultural presence: female pride arrival in London as patriarch of his family and power in Amazonian warriors, and country enhanced and was in turn possessive mothers, unruly wives, enhanced by the emerging patriarchal transvestite maidens, and willful daughters,

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

Representation of Queen Elizabeth I in Cymbeline

political theories both of the king himself he did not identify it with, the head of the and other theorists. family. In his best-known theoretical work, The Trew Law of Free Monarchies (1598), As Gordon J. Schochet explains, the family King James used the familial image to was an established and often employed demonstrate the duty that subjects owed to category in political philosophy even before their ruler, insisting that as children could the seventeenth century. The filial not rise up against their fathers, so the obedience due from the children to their subjects could not resist their rulers: parents required by the obligation to ‘Honour thy father and thy mother’ from [...] if the children may upon any the Fifth Commandment was extended to pretext that can be imagined, other hierarchical relationships such as lawfully rise up against their masters and servants, and subjects and Father, cut him off, & choose kings. Some writers also extended this idea any other whom they please in to include the legitimate authority of his roome; and if the body for husbands over wives epitomized in the the weale of it, may for any God-given superiority of Adam over Eve, infirmitie that can be in the head, which corresponded with the passive ideal strike it off, then I cannot deny for Renaissance women discussed above. A that the people may rebell, prime example of this notion of wives’ controll, and displace, or cut off submission to husbands can be found in their king at their owne pleasure, John Knox’s The First Blast. Knox and upon respects moving them proclaims that no woman could ever rule, (qtd. in Schochet, 1975:87). for ‘the immutable decree of God [...] hath subjected her to one member of the Although patriarchalism as such did not congregation, that is to her husband’ and appear in his own political writings, James for this reason ‘the holie ghost concludeth, was aware of the doctrine and was that she may never rule nor bear empire responsible for spreading the ideology above men. For she that is subject to one among his people. Many political tracts were may never be preferred to many [...]’ (qtd. issued upon his order or in his favor. As in Schochet, 1975:45). However, the family Schochet has shown, patriarchal tracts did not acquire an overtly important status written during James’s reign included nor was it seriously analyzed as the origin Coke’s Post Nati (1606), Richard Mocket’s of the state before the Stuart period, when it God and the King (1615), John Overall’s was incorporated in patriarchal political Convocation Book of 1606, Richard Field’s theory. According to Schochet, patriarchal Of the Church (1606), George Carleton’s theory did not develop in England until the Jurisdiction Regall, Episcopall, Papall reign of James I, with whom the theory and (1610), and John Selden’s Titles of Honour practice of absolutism appeared. For it was (1614) and Mare Clausum (1618). These only in defense of absolutism that tracts would culminate in Sir Robert patriarchalism took its full form (Schochet, Filmer’s Patriarcha (1680), the most 1975:54, 86). James contributed, though not complete work on patriarchal political directly, to the patriarchal movement in his theory, which contains citations from own writings. He used fatherly images in James’s The Trew Law of Free Monarchies, stating the nature of kingly power and James’s most explicit patriarchal treatise. compared the role of the father to, although Though differing in some details, all these

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities (Special Issue No.10 2005)

tracts identify the origin of kingship with from the sources5 in another attempt to paternal authority, sanctioned by the Fifth appropriate and redefine the late queen’s Commandment and Adam’s or Noah’s iconography to suit the patriarchal authority (Schochet, 1975:85-98). The ‘Jacobean line’ with which the audience, identification then demanded the subjects’ both at court and in public theaters, was obedience to the kings who had absolute directly connected or familiar. Apart from divine right and, in stressing the authority of her strongly patriotic speech, which bears the father, marginalized the power of women resemblance to the address attributed to as rulers, which had been long exemplified Queen Elizabeth at Tilbury, this character by Elizabeth I. might be said to be a travesty of Queen Elizabeth’s self-representation as an In Jacobean theater, the figure of autonomous, self-sufficient ruler, who androgynous heroine can be found in Moll subordinated passive feminine virtues. Like Cutpurse, in Thomas Middleton, and Elizabeth, Cymbeline’s Queen, who is Thomas Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, albeit curiously given the suggestive appellation in subdued form. In Shakespeare, however, — and no proper name — of ‘Queen’, the unruly image of the queen might be said meddles with the active worlds of men, that to appear in Lady Macbeth, who dominates of politics and militarism. It is obvious in male characters, obstructs orderly the play that Cymbeline is greatly succession, and nearly destroys a kingdom. dominated by his queen in terms of political As Marcus speculates, the figure of Lady decisions. In the scene of the visitation Macbeth in the stage performance at court from the tribute-demanding Roman general in 1605 or 1606, might be Caius Lucius, the Queen, followed by her son, is the first person to answer him on a symbolic cancellation of the behalf of Britain and even reminds female dominance which had Cymbeline of the dignity inherited from his haunted James throughout his ancestors and from past victories against early life, and which he foreign invasions. In that scene, Cymbeline particularly associated with seems to become the Queen’s obedient Queen Elizabeth, who had follower, receiving her instruction and presided over the execution of acting accordingly. Later in Act 4, Scene 3, his mother and had demonstrated upon hearing of the impending war and her superior political skills to without the Queen and her son, he is James’s humiliation on many confounded and at a loss as to how to act, occasions (Marcus, 1988:105). until the First Lord consoles him and assures him of Britain’s readiness for war. II Cymbeline’s dependency and inability to act without the driving force of his wife and Following Shakespeare’s tendency to her son, recall the effeminization of men as marginalize powerful female characters, we a result of women’s rule imagined by John might say that the Queen of Cymbeline is Knox and other writers mentioned earlier. yet another version of Queen Elizabeth, to the extent that she is an ‘anomalous’ woman-on-top, a character added apart

5 Concerning the possible ‘sources’ of Cymbeline see Nosworthy (1996:xvii-xxviii).

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

Representation of Queen Elizabeth I in Cymbeline

Although her advice, given to Cymbeline, Can make good use of either. She of resistance to Rome, suggests traces of being down, masculine virtues, those of ‘courage’ and I have the placing of the British ‘good service’, which were oftentimes crown. (3.5.63-66) mentioned in the late Queen Elizabeth’s speeches, these virtues are marginalized as When she learns that Cymbeline is enraged being destructive and hampering the vision by the disappearance of his daughter, the of peaceful male unity. As Mikalachki Queen also reveals her wish for his death: rightly suggests, the ‘Wicked Queen’ might ‘All the better: may / This night forestall have done many evil deeds to earn this him of the coming day!’ (3.5.69-70). It epithet, but she is accorded it by Cymbeline seems that she is so consumed with her in the context of her opposition to the ambitious desire of having her son, Roman tribute and her disruption of the generally portrayed in the play as her ‘masculine kinship, promises, and honor extension in terms of political advocacy, that bind Cymbeline to Rome’ (Mikalachki, obtain the crown, that when her plan is 1995:305). Her instigation is in line with thwarted by his absence, she is seized by a the military and political involvements of ‘fever’ and ‘madness’ (4.3.2; 4.3.3) and those ‘female savages’, ‘Amazonian meets her end grotesquely, ‘[w]ith horror, warriors’ in peace-oriented Jacobean plays. madly dying, like her life / which (being Hence all the blame given to her by cruel to the world) concluded / most cruel Cymbeline: to herself’ (5.5.31-33).

My peace we will begin: and Caius It is interesting to compare here Lucius, Cymbeline’s and the play’s reaction to the Although the victor, we submit to Wicked Queen’s qualities in theses two Caesar, aspects, i.e. her patriotism or courage in And to the Roman empire; dealing with the Romans and her political promising ambition with that given to male characters, To pay our wonted tribute, from the who, it might be said, possess the same which attributes, or in their cases, virtues. While We were dissuaded by our wicked the queen’s action toward the Romans is queen (5.5.460-64) condemned as peace-destroying, that of the male characters, who fight the Romans out Moreover, like Lady Macbeth and other of similar patriotic sentiment is praised as ‘anomalous’ female characters, the heroic. Likewise, the queen’s desire for the Wicked Queen is characterized as a woman control of the crown is portrayed as an obsessed with ambition, a quality befitting illegitimate and immoral ambition whereas male self-expansion but in this case with a the princes’ wish to expand themselves negative motive. She makes explicit her beyond the confines of the mountains is coveted goal of controlling the right to commented by Belarius as manifestations succession after knowing of the of their princely ‘sparks of nature’ (3.3.79). disappearance of Imogen: This difference in reactions testifies to the way in which the early modern culture [...] gone she is, conceptualized separate sets of virtues and To death, or to dishonour, and my roles for men and women, and rendered end condemnable, or at least disconcerting, a

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities (Special Issue No.10 2005)

person with ‘misplaced’ virtues, like the In deliberate attempts to contrast his style Wicked Queen, and by extension, her real- of political and literary practices with that life counterpart. of his predecessor, James made determined efforts to make his public policies and The character of Cymbeline’s queen, writings, many of which were ‘authored’ moreover, might serve as another critique of by himself, ‘clear’, ‘void of ambiguity’ and Elizabeth’s late tactic of mystifying political hence indicative of ‘sincerity’. This intent to manipulate and frustrate male accounted for the much energy and care he courtiers, a tactic which was much in gave to the acts of giving explanations of contrast to James’s early advocated style. As and editing the texts in his cherished role as Marcus points out, early in his reign, James a learned ‘Author’, who had the duty of consciously cultivated a ‘plain style’ in his educating his subjects. His predilection for writings in implicit contrast to Elizabeth’s being an ‘authoritative’ scholar received late self-representation as powerful and much criticism and ridicule from his impenetrable (Marcus, 1988:111). In his contemporaries as his works were regarded 1604 speech before Parliament, James as belonging to a pedant or a clerk and not declared that ‘[becoming for] a Prince’ (Marcus, 1988:106-16). [...] it becometh a King, in my opinion, to vse no other Nevertheless, in the official and authorized Eloquence then plainnesse and entertainment such as in court masques, sinceritie. By plainenesse I attempts at observing the monarch’s meane, that his Speeches should advocated ‘plain style’ still existed be so cleare and voyd of all (Marcus, 1988:112). In Cymbeline, which ambiguitie, that they may not be partakes of some of the elements of the throwne, nor rent asunder in court masque and was possibly performed contrary scenes like the old at court, the issues of ‘plain style’, Oracles of the Pagan gods. And ‘unambiguity’ and ‘sincerity’ seem to be by sinceritie, I vnderstand the noticeably invoked in the play, especially in vprightnesse and honestie which the various acts of ‘reading’ or ought to be in a Kings whole ‘interpreting’. Cymbeline can be said to be Speeches and actions: That as a play about reading or interpreting. farre as a King is in Honour Characters ‘read’ or speculate about the erected aboue any of his true characteristics of one another and other Subjects, so farre should he ‘signs’ almost throughout the play. Jupiter, striue in sinceritie to be aboue an allusion to James himself, descends them all, and that his tongue among the discontented ghosts to give should be euer the trew ‘explanations’ for the fortunes of Messenger of his heart: and this Posthumus. Echoing the advocated practice sort of Eloquence may you euer of King James, Cymbeline demands assuredly looke for at my hands ‘explanations’ and elaboration of what has [...] (qtd. in McIlwain, happened saying that: ‘[this] fierce 1918:280)6

opaque way to create Arcana Imperii or states 6 However, as Goldberg points out, later on secrets. See Goldberg (1983). James would turn to present himself in a more

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

Representation of Queen Elizabeth I in Cymbeline

abridgement / Hath to it circumstantial observed, the queen managed the power branches, which / Distinction should be rich relations at court by using ‘love’ in the in’ (5.5.383-385) and orders that peace be Petrachan and Neoplatonic fashion, in ‘[published]’ (5.5.479). The most obvious which each courtier attempts to vie for her and concrete reading/interpreting attention, which would be a source for his performance is the almost word-by-word political power and which, after the queen’s interpretation of the ‘tablet’ or ‘book’ death, received much criticism. In (5.4.109, 133) left by Jupiter on Cymbeline, the Wicked Queen tries to Posthumus’s chest and connected with that manage various characters with her of the soothsayer Philarmonus’s dream by dissembling. She acts as a good, caring the latter himself, even with the explanation wife and stepmother toward Cymbeline and of the Latin word, which is reminiscent of Imogen, an innocent experimenter with King James’s practice of teaching Latin to medicinal drugs toward Cornelius, and a his court favorites (Marcus, 1988:115-16). well-wisher to Pisanio in an attempt to draw him to her side. Apart from her own It is true that, as Marcus has shown in the asides, which reveal her real intent of case of the Vision of Jupiter scene, these manipulating other characters for her own allusions to King James’s practice of ‘plain purpose, analyses of the Wicked Queen, style’ can be interpreted ironically as given by several characters, seem to serve parodying the monarch’s tactics, depending as comments on Elizabeth’s use of on the direction taken by each production Petrarchan and Neoplatonic love discourses and the ‘reading’ of the audience (Marcus, to create a magical aura and to bewilder her 1988:137-48). Nevertheless, these subjects. Imogen speaks of the Queen’s subversive possibilities, in my view, are ‘dissembling courtesy’, commenting: ‘How still much contained in the play, and one of fine this tyrant / Can tickle where she the elements that may contribute to that wounds!’ (1.2.15-16). Later, the Second containment is the marginalization of King Lord remarks that she is ‘a crafty devil’, ‘a James’s predecessor’s style of self- woman that / Bears all down with her representation among her courtiers, namely brain’, ‘a mother hourly coining plots’ the use of Petrarchan and Neoplatonic love (2.1.51-53, 58). In the last scene, the court discourses, the act of self-mystification and doctor, Cornelius, narrates the Queen’s the habit of playing courtiers against one dying confession that: another, which the king professed as in contrast to his own practice. [...] she never lov’d you: only Affected greatness got by you: not In Cymbeline, the Wicked Queen, as you: discussed earlier, is presented as an Married your royalty, was wife to ambitious woman coveting the control of your place: the crown for her son. Her strategies in Abhorr’d your person. (5.5.37-40) achieving her goal, however, are not the use of direct force, as in the case of her tragic This prompts Cymbeline, echoing counterpart, Lady Macbeth, but mostly by Harington’s and Hatton’s observations political maneuvering, affectation, and the about the late Queen Elizabeth mentioned use of poison, all of which to different earlier, to reflect on her deceptiveness and degrees bring to mind Queen’s Elizabeth’s inscrutability: ‘O most delicate fiend! / tactics with her courtiers. As earlier

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities (Special Issue No.10 2005)

Who is’t can read a woman?’ (5.5.46-47) behauiour,’ ‘so froward, so waspish, and so and on the irresistibility of her strategies: stubborne’ (qtd. in Woodbridge, 1984:86). Thus, from the beginning, we know that, Mine eyes except for Cymbeline, who seems to be the Were not in fault, for she was only character in the play who cannot beautiful: ‘read’ her, no one at the court thinks highly Mine ears that heard her flattery, nor of her and her son.7 From the first scene, my heart almost all the other characters see through That thought her like her seeming. It her colors and never trust her. The only had been vicious scene in which her voice is heard as To have mistrusted her. (5.5.62-66) potentially noble and courageous, i.e. the scene of the meeting with the Roman general, seems, however, to be embedded The Queen’s beauty and flattery, her ‘sweet in other scenes and characters which baits’ are impenetrable for Cymbeline and support the concerns to promote the make him powerless, like Elizabeth’s ‘Jacobean line’ and to exorcise the spell of courtiers who were frustrated by her the previous monarch, Queen Elizabeth I, ambiguous manipulations, which were and is thus rendered out-of-place. much different, at least on the surface, from the concepts of ‘plainnesse’, ‘sinceritie’, III and ‘honestie’ upheld by King James.

Moreover, the Wicked Queen’s use of As a final note, if we consider the Wicked drugs and poison also allies her with Queen as a marginalized or demonized witchcraft, which is also associated with version of Queen Elizabeth I, Imogen then Elizabeth’s ‘strange wonders’ and magic. might be said to be that ‘evil’ character’s

corrective double. As Marcus points out, However, unlike Elizabeth whose Imogen too can be considered a kind of representations kindled both horror and Elizabethan figure: she is heir presumptive reverence in her subjects, the Wicked to the throne, is associated with Phoenix, Queen’s character is marginalized as the ‘Arabian Bird’, the emblem much demonic from the start. This is because, as employed by Elizabeth, and uses male Marcus observes, like the character of Joan attire in disguise (Marcus, 1988: 128). Janet of Arc in 1 Henry VI, Cymbeline’s Queen Adelman observes in Suffocating Mothers: lacks an ‘essential element of the queen’s Fantasies of Maternal Origin in [Elizabeth’s] self-representation, the sacred Shakespeare’s Plays that Imogen is ‘immortal body’ of kingship’ (76). characterized as a willful woman: ‘a Furthermore, unlike the real-life Elizabeth, wonderfully vivid presence, shrewd, who, by representing herself as a virgin, impetuous, passionate, and very much the could redefine the notion of chastity to suit her purpose, the Wicked Queen is 7 ambiguously assigned the role, in the This might possibly be another instance of dramatis personae, as ‘Wife to Cymbeline’, parodying King James’s uninspiring strategy of who yet has a son by ‘a former Husband’, ‘plain style’. As one commentator has it: ‘Despite his learning and his philosophical and is called by the First Gentleman in the ambitions, it has become permissible and even opening scene as ‘a widow’ (1.1.5), which customary to think of the first Stuart king as was regarded in some writings of the period something of a fool’. See MacDonald as subject to ‘corrupt and disordered (1996:304).

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

Representation of Queen Elizabeth I in Cymbeline

proprietress of her own will’ (Adelman, feminine virtues and characteristics are 1992:209). Like Elizabeth, she demanded. However, we do not see any demonstrates the qualities of self- dilemma in her character in the play at all, sufficiency which to a certain extent as she has already decided when the play challenge the roles expected of women in opens that she will choose the latter, and is the early modern times: her determination willing to give away the former. So, the to choose a mate of her own against her audience is informed in the first scene that father’s will, her contempt for Cloten’s ‘[she]’s wedded’ to ‘a poor but worthy assaults, her easy penetration of Iachimo’s gentleman’ (1.1.7) and hears her comment seduction and her initial anger at that: ‘Would I were / A neat-herd’s Posthumus’s charges against her. However, daughter, and my Leonatus / Our Imogen is not so much a subversive force neighbour-shepherd’s son!’ (1.2.79-81). against traditional feminine virtues as one Indeed, as Ann Thompson points out in who fulfils them. She is chaste, loyal to her ‘Person and Office: The Case of Imogen, husband, constant, patient, and self- Princess of Britain,’ the play insists on ‘the sacrificing. In response to Posthumus’s rightness, even the desirability, of her accusation, Imogen comes to submit dispossession’ (Thompson, 1991:79). Since herself, telling Pisanio: ‘When thou see’st it constantly presents the concerns or him, / A little witness my obedience. Look, uneasiness about this ‘unequal’ marriage in / I draw the sword myself’ (3.4.66-68) and the words of several characters from the proclaims herself ‘obedient as the scabbard’ beginning of the play, such as the First (3.4.81). Even when she is in male disguise, Gentleman (1.1.50-54), Posthumus (1.2.50- Imogen, far more than any of 52; 5.1.2-5.4.22-23), Cymbeline (1.2.72- Shakespeare’s other transvestite women, 73), Iachimo (1.5.12-15), Cloten (2.3.112- who are allowed some extent of 23), Pisanio (3.2.9-11) and Imogen herself, independence and freedom, will feel her who, apart from voicing the pastoral own inadequacy as a man, and remains in fantasy already mentioned, says in an aside the feminine role of ‘housewife’ (4.2.45) when meeting with her real brothers, toward Belarius and her brothers, or is unknown to her then: described with feminine attributes by the Roman general Lucius (5.5.86-88). At the would it had been so, that they end of the play, she is, more than before, Had been my father’s sons, then had under male authority within the patriarchal my prize structure, accepting her roles as daughter, Been less, and so more equal wife and sister toward her all-male ballasting relations. To thee, Posthumus. (3.7.48-51)

In fact, we might say that Imogen’s Imogen’s political office of heiress, which problem is that she is faced with the accounts for the fact that ‘she is ‘worth situation in which she has to choose more’ than her husband’, (Thompson, between her office as an heiress and future 1991:81) is thus presented as a problem to sovereign, for which the adoption, in some her and other characters, and has to be set way or another, of masculine virtues and right through her dispossession. Apart from attributes would be expected from her, as presenting the concerns or uneasiness about we have seen in the case of Queen the ‘unequal’ union and Imogen’s own Elizabeth, and her role as a wife in which willingness to be displaced in her

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities (Special Issue No.10 2005)

preference for love as mentioned above, the Roman Empire led by a patriarchal figure, play also points toward the dispossession of Caesar Augustus. The two princes gain the heroine through its portrayal of the ‘true their royal positions and rights to inherit the heirs’, her lost brothers, as possessing the crown, and their ‘issue’, according to the ‘natural, princely qualities’ of ambition and soothsayer, will bring Britain ‘peace and courage, asserted by their foster-father plenty’ (5.5.458-9). Posthumus becomes Belarius, proved by their heroic deeds in ‘an exemplar of heroic masculinity, the battle scene and supported by Jupiter’s upholder of the kingdom, rescuer of the prediction of their restoration to their king’ (Adelman, 1992:209) while Belarius proper position in the ‘tablet’ left with is restored to his political rank. At the same Posthumus. This portrayal is in contrast to time, Imogen is reunited with her husband, that of Imogen, who seems to belong more father, and brothers and happily embraces comfortably in the role of wife or the roles of wife, daughter and sister. Her housewife, such as in the cave scene in Act character, then, might be said to be another 4, than in her political role as princess and instance of the appropriation of Queen heiress at court, from which she is missing Elizabeth’s iconography. In the character of when pressing national concerns arise, such Imogen, who represents some traits of the as during the Roman visitation (3.1) and Queen, the notion of female virtues — upon the news of the impending war (4.3) which was exploited by Elizabeth in a way (Thompson, 1991:79-81). Therefore, in the that enhanced her power over male control last scene, in response to Cymbeline’s — is ‘redressed’ and brought back into remark that she has ‘lost by this a containment within a patriarchal structure. kingdom’, Imogen is depicted as answering While the character of the Wicked Queen is contentedly that ‘I have got two worlds a site in which the traits associated with the by’t’ (5.5.374-375) and with this, displays late Queen Elizabeth are marginalized and her feminine virtue of selflessness, which is exorcised, the character of Imogen provides so much a contrast to the Wicked Queen’s a space in which the possibility of a — and, probably, to Queen Elizabeth’s — woman’s rule is put forward only to be political ambition, which must have been rejected in favor of male authority. In these familiar still to Jacobean theatergoers. two characters, it can be said, responses to the cultural presence of the late Queen are After the Queen, the anomalous figure of voiced, and they point in a direction that, as powerful womanhood has died, the male Thompson succinctly puts, ‘[defines] royal characters who have been dependent in power as male’ (Thompson, 1991:86). some ways on women like Cymbeline or Posthumus, or who have been put in a state ‘I am Richard II. Know ye not that?’ Queen of political inactivity like Belarius and the Elizabeth I famously asked about the play two princes, are restored to prominence and which featured the dethronement of a king, power. Cymbeline becomes again the self- in the wake of the Essex coup d’ etat which sufficient ‘head’ of his family, a father who was immediately put down (Greenblatt, usurps the role of ‘a mother to the birth of 1982:3). What the Queen said attests to the three’, more than whom ‘Ne’er mother / power — and threat — of signification and Rejoic’d deliverance’ (5.5.370-371), and a interpretation. This power, however, resides real ‘head’ of his country. Without female not so much in the ‘meanings’ already political intervention, he can now make his fixed in the play by the author, waiting to own decision to unite his country with the be decoded by the reader, as in the fluid

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

Representation of Queen Elizabeth I in Cymbeline

nature of texts which are subject to Amussen, S. D. 1985. Gender, Family and appropriation and interpretation. In the Social Order, 1560-1725. In Cymbeline, this can be seen in the way the Order and Disorder in Early play text served as a space open to the Modern England, ed. by Anthony energy, anxieties and power struggles Fletcher, and John Stevenson, circulated in the culture in which it was pp.196-217. Cambridge: composed, performed and received — Cambridge University Press. specifically to this article, the anxieties over the cultural presence of the late queen, and, Bergeron, David M. 1980. Cymbeline: also, the living king. Nevertheless, attention Shakespeare’s Last Roman Play. to power relations in the interaction Shakespeare Quarterly 31: 31-41. between Shakespeare text such as Cymbeline and its context, that of Jacobean Bergeron, David M. 1985. Shakespeare’s England, should not obscure us from the Romances and the Royal Family. rhythm of power relations in our own Lawrence, Kansas: University present process of interpretation. Although Press of Kansas. as a reader of Shakespeare’s texts from another culture, I think it is very much Bevington, David (ed.). 1997. The relevant to approach the plays as a Complete Works of Shakespeare. repository of ‘universally shared human 4th ed. New York: Longman. traits’ in order to establish a kind of cross- cultural communication of meanings and Davis, Natalie Zemon. 1975. Society and more importantly, human understanding Culture in Early Modern France. and love, taking into account the interaction Stanford: Stanford University between the Cymbeline text and its context Press. has the advantage of reminding me to attend to the process of reading Fletcher, Anthony and John Stevenson, Shakespeare’s works in my own cultural eds. 1985. Order and Disorder in and social contexts. What kinds of Early Modern England. ‘meanings’ does ‘Shakespeare’ connote in Cambridge: Cambridge University Thai social and cultural interpretive Press. contexts and what are the power relations involved in the processes of theatrical Frye, Susan. 1993. Elizabeth I: The productions and critical evaluations of his Competition for Representation. plays in Thailand? To answer such New York and Oxford: Oxford questions requires a space beyond this University Press. present article and must be left to a future project as I end this one. Frye, Susan. 1992. The Myth of Elizabeth at Tilbury. Sixteenth Century References Journal 23.1: 95-114.

Adelman, Janet. 1992. Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare’s Plays Hamlet to The Tempest. New York and London: Routledge.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities (Special Issue No.10 2005)

Goldberg, Jonathan. 1983. James I and Jones, Ann Rosalind. 1990. The Currency the Politics of Literature: Jonson, of Eros: Women’s Love Lyric in Shakespeare, Donne, and Their Europe, 1540-1620. Bloomington Contemporaries. Baltimore and and Indianapolis: Indiana London: Johns Hopkins University Press. University Press. Jones, Emerys. 1961. Stuart Cymbeline. Greenblatt, Stephen (ed.). 1982. Genre Essays in Criticism 11:84-99. 15:1-242. Jorgenson, Paul A. 1956. Shakespeare’s Greenblatt, Stephen. 1981. Invisible Military World. Berkeley and Los Bullets: Renaissance Authority and Angeles: University of California Its Subversion. Glyph 8:40-61. Press.

Harington, John. 1930. The Letters and Kelso, Ruth. 1956. Doctrine for the Lady Epigrams of Sir John Harington, of the Renaissance. Urbana: ed. by N. E. McCure. University of Illinois Press. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Knight, G. Wilson. 1947. The Crown of Life: Essays in Interpretation of Harington, John. 1804. Nugae Antiquae, Shakespeare’s Final Plays. ed. by Henry Harington and London: Oxford University Press. Thomas Park. 2 vols. London: J. Wright. Knox, John. 1878. The First Blast of Trumpet against the monstrous Hawkes, Terence (ed.). 1996. Alternative regiment of Women (1588), ed. by Shakespeares Vol. 2. London and Edward Arber. London: English New York: Routledge. Scholar’s Library.

Holderness, Graham. 1988. Bardolatry: McDonald, Russ. 1996. The Bedford or, the Cultural Materialist’s Companion to Shakespeare: An Guide to Stratford-upon-Avon. In Introduction with Documents. The Shakespeare Myth, ed. by Boston: Bedford. Graham Holderness, pp.2-15. New York: Manchester University McIlwain, Charles Howard, ed. 1918. The Press. Political Works of James I. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Jardine, Lisa. 1989. Still Harping on Harvard University Press. Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare. New Marcus, Leah S. 1988. Puzzling York: Columbia University Press. Shakespeare: Local Reading and Its Discontents. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access

Representation of Queen Elizabeth I in Cymbeline

Mikalachki, Jodi. 1995. The Masculine Underdown, D. E. The Taming of the Romance of Roman Britain: Scold: The Enforcement of Cymbeline and Early Modern Patriarchal Authority in Early English Nationalism. Modern England. In Order and Shakespeare Quarterly 46.3:301- Disorder in Early Modern 22. England, ed. by Anthony Fletcher, and John Stevenson, pp. 116-36. Montrose, Louis A. 1986. A Midsummer Cambridge: Cambridge University Night’s Dream and the Shaping Press. Fantasies of Elizabethan Culture: Gender, Power, Form. In Williamson, Marilyn L. 1986. The Rewriting the Renaissance: The Patriarchy of Shakespeare’s Discourses of Sexual Difference in Comedies. Detroit: Wayne State Early Modern Europe, ed. by University Press. Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers, Woodbridge, Linda. 1984. Women and the pp. 65-87. Chicago and London: English Renaissance: Literature University of Chicago Press. and the Nature of Womankind, 1540-1620. Urbana and Chicago: Neale, J. E. 1957. Elizabeth I and Her University of California Press. Parliament, 1559-1581. London: Jonathan Cape.

Nosworthy, J. M. (ed.). 1996. The Arden Shakespeare Cymbeline. London and New York: Routledge.

Schochet, Gordon J. 1975. Patriarchalism in Political Thought: The Authoritarian Family and Political Speculation and Attitudes Especially in Seventeenth-Century England. New York: Basic Books.

Smith, Warren D. 1952. Cloten with Caius Lucius Studies in Philology 4:185- 94.

Thompson, Ann. 1991. Person and Office: The Case of Imogen, Princess of Britain. In Literature and Nationalism, ed. by Vincent Newey and Ann Thompson, pp. 76-87. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/05/2021 02:50:31PM via free access