Renaissance Queenship in William Shakespeare’s English History Plays Yu-Chun Chiang UCL Ph. D. Chiang 2 Declaration I, Yu-Chun Chiang confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Chiang 3 Acknowledgments For the completion of this thesis, I am obliged to my supervisors, Professor Helen Hackett and Professor René Weis. Helen’s professionalism and guide, René’s advice and trust, and their care, patience, and kind support are the key to the accomplishment of my Ph.D. study. Gratitude are due to my examiners, Professor Alison Findlay and Professor Alison Shell, whose insightful comment, attentive scrutiny, friendliness, and useful guidance offer inspiring conversations and academic exchange, especially at the viva, assist me to amend and supplement arguments in the thesis, and illuminate the development of my future research. I am also grateful to Professor John Russell Brown, Dr. Eric Langley, and Professor Susan Irvine for their advice in English Graduate Seminar at UCL and at my upgrade. Professor Francis So, Dr. Vivienne Westbrook, Professor Carole Levin, and our beloved friend and mentor, Professor Marshall Grossman have given me incredible support and counsel in many aspects of my doctoral career. Without the sponsorship of the Ministry of Education in Taiwan, I would not be able to conduct my research in the U.K. Also the generous funding from the Graduate School and assistance from the Departments of English and of History enabled me to refine my knowledge and learn different methodologies of early modern studies. The support from the Cultural Division of the Taipei Representative Office in the U.K. UCL English Department, RSA, SAA, BSA, SCSC, the Shakespeare’s Globe, and the Medieval and Renaissance Program in University of Nebraska-Lincoln allowed me to expand my vision and network in academia. I would like to thank my Ph.D. classmates – Lesley Moss, Nick Shepley, Anna Smaill, and Helena Langford – and many other colleagues in the study of English literature, Dr. Shun-Liang Chao, Dr. Miranda El-Rayess, Dr. Andy Kesson, Dr. Tehan Yeh, Dr. Ruei- Yin Yang, Shan-Yun Huang, Han-Hsi Cheng, Vivian Liu, Dr. Mulan Wang, Liang-Tsu Chen, Yi-Hsin Hsu, Ruen-Chuan Ma, and Robin Lin, for their encouragement, support, and sharing. How fortunate I am to have so many loving and understanding friends and family members, who offer me intellectual, spiritual, and emotional support through my Ph.D. study: Michelle Shiau, Mickey Shan, Yu-Chin Yu, Si-Chin Chen, Yi-Chih Yang, Tommy Yang, Tracy Pillai, Gerry Gilchrist, Hui-Chun Wu, Eileen Sun, Dr. Peiying Lin, Claudia Sima, Dr. Aiduan Li, Yang-Chang Chao, Pauline Kao, Li-Wen Tsai, and Chris Mathews to name a few. The love from my parents, sister, and brother is the power supporting me to keep sailing on the ocean of knowledge. Chiang 4 Abstract This thesis explores how queens in Shakespeare’s English history plays manipulate virtues, space, and memory to embody a specific demeanour in the contexts of early modern England. In the late 1990s, Jean E. Howard’s and Phyllis Rackin’s Engendering a Nation established a feminist study of Shakespeare’s English history plays, focusing on how women support or undermine patriarchal authorities. Yet analysing women’s words and actions in the light of nationalism, New Historicism, and women’s traditional roles as daughters, wives, and mothers within feminism restricts potential readings of women in early modern English literature. This thesis then studies the most powerful women, the queens, to see how they establish themselves as models or counterexamples for women. It first distinguishes between queens regnant, regent, and consort, and investigates the relationship between queenship and kingship. It then traces the three stages of the queens’ ‘career’: the pursuit, practice, and residue of queenship. The ‘pursuit’ analyses how queens-to-be implement their virtues in accepting and rejecting kings’ favours. The queenly virtues parallel and contrast to Machiavelli’s idea of ‘virtú’ and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of ‘cultural capital’. Entitled to exceptional royal status, queens transgress the boundaries of gender and space divisions, while their subversive behaviours are often endorsed by patriarchs. Finally, when queens are widowed, deposed, or divorced, they engage themselves in writing histories; they become monuments presenting alternative memories and insubordinate voices against patriarchal grand narratives. Shakespeare’s queens create iconographical paradigms, which are so recognisable and iconic that their queenship is reiteratively reproduced and appropriated in arts and real practices of later periods. Using early modern arguments and modern theories, this thesis provides a synthesised reading of queens in Shakespeare’s English histories, shedding new light on the position of women in early modern England. Chiang 5 Table of Contents Abstract 4 General Introduction 7 Part One: The Pursuit of Queenship 60 Introduction 62 Chapter One: To Be a Queen 69 I. Passive Acceptance 69 II. Active Pursuit 82 Chapter Two: Not to Be a Queen 108 III. Disobedient Rejection 108 IV. False Attempt 122 Conclusion 136 Part Two: The Practice of Queenship 139 Introduction 141 Chapter Three: Queens in Court 151 I. Queens in Royal Spectacles 151 II. Queens in the English Courts 156 III. Queens Abroad in Foreign Courts 177 Chapter Four: Queens Away from Court 185 IV. Queens in the Court on Their Own or in Their Own Courts 185 V. Queens on the Battlefields 196 VI. Space in Relation to the Theory of the Queen’s Two Bodies 207 Conclusion 211 Part Three: The Residue of Queenship 213 Introduction 213 Chapter Five: Queens and Memorialisation 218 I. Queens Memorialising 218 II. Queens Memorialised 240 Conclusion 251 Conclusion 253 Works Cited 258 Chiang 6 Prefatory Notes on the Text All the Shakespeare text used in this thesis are quoted from The Norton Shakespeare, edited by Steven Greenblatt, et al. (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1997), except passages from Edward III, which are from The New Cambridge Shakespeare, edited. by Giorgio Melchiori (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). General Introduction O now let Richmond and Elizabeth, The true succeeders of each royal house, By God’s fair ordinance conjoin together, And let their heirs – God, if his will be so – Enrich the time to come with smooth-faced peace, With smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days. (Richard III 5.8.29-34) Shakespeare comments on the first marriage of the Tudor dynasty with an emphasis on the union of the two dominant aristocratic families of Lancaster and York and Elizabeth’s role as a mother of the future heirs to the English throne. Jacqueline Johnson argues that the emphasis on Elizabeth of York’s maternal image suggests pro-Yorkist propaganda, which not only claims that the Queen is of ‘equal status’ to Henry VII in the union, but also empowers her as a parent of the next monarch.1 Despite the fact that she does not have any lines in the play, her marriage to Henry VII is central to the plot: the perfect ending to the Wars of the Roses. Shakespeare shows his interest in English history and the representations of its queens. The union of the Lancastrian and Yorkist families through the marriage of Elizabeth and Henry VII was configured as the start of the Tudor myth by early modern chroniclers such as Edward Hall, Raphael Holinshed, and John Foxe. Decades after the marriages, divorces, and executions of Henry VIII’s queens and the reigns of Mary I and Elizabeth I, Shakespeare’s adaptations and dramatisations of historical chronicles feature a panorama of English queenship. This thesis consists of surveys of historical contexts based on the work of historians of society and culture, followed by close readings of Shakespeare’s English history plays. This is the first analytical study of queens as a group in Shakespeare’s history plays. The scarcity of teaching manuals or tracts about how to be a queen consort in early modern England parallels the shortage of studies of queens consort as portrayed in early modern literature. To overcome this inadequacy of feminist studies, this thesis focuses on the queenship of queens consort in Shakespeare’s English history plays. In 1 Jacqueline Johnson, ‘Elizabeth of York: Mother of the Tudor Dynasty’, in Rituals and Rhetoric of Queenship: Medieval to Early Modern, ed. by Liz Oakley-Brown and Louise J. Wilkinson (Dublin: Four Courts Press Ltd, 2009), pp. 47-58 (p. 54). Chiang 8 contrast to the ruling monarchs, queens consort play the role of helpmate, wife, and mother not only quite literally in their royal households, but also metaphorically for the whole of England. As the most powerful woman in a patriarchal society, a queen consort might attract more attention and be written about in history than other women in early modern England. Drawing on extant historical documents for comparison, this study of Shakespeare’s history plays may reveal to us the playwright’s specific view on queens in the written history, his attitude towards English Renaissance historiography, and his own adapted version of English history. It is important to see what Shakespeare chose to emphasise, to recreate, and to amplify from the chronicles. Shakespeare was not the only playwright who dramatised British history, but he is the most significant one. For instance, Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II (?1593), Samuel Rowley’s When You See Me You Know Me (1605), and Thomas Heywood’s If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody (1605) were history plays written about the same time as Shakespeare’s. However, none of these Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights engaged as deeply with portraying English history as Shakespeare did.