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The Sea in Early Modern Drama: Existential Affect, Imperative

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The Sea in Early Modern Drama: Existential Affect, Imperative THE SEA IN EARLY MODERN DRAMA: EXISTENTIAL AFFECT, IMPERATIVE CHOICE, AND EMBODIMENT OF TRANSFORMATION A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of Arts and Sciences Florida Gulf Coast University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Master of Arts in English By Susan Rojas 2017 APPROVAL SHEET This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English Susan Rojas Date Approved: December 2017 Rebecca Totaro, Ph.D. Committee Chair / Advisor Fiona Tolhurst, Ph.D. The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. Rojas 1 Introduction: Affect, Transformation, and the Early Modern Sea Images of the sea are not unusual in early modern drama, and references taken from Shakespeare’s texts are particularly well-known: Hamlet’s “sea of troubles” is ubiquitous, and “sea-change” is now part of our modern vocabulary. Although the terms “images” and “imagery” seem dated, they accurately represent the role this type of descriptor plays in early modern drama. The dramatists of the period chose these images for their ability to go beyond a simple description of the external landscape of sea and tides (the literal); they can also express the internal landscape of the character or situation in question (the figurative). In this way, their words are able to evoke the tangible while simultaneously suggesting human emotion and surrounding affect. In essence, these playwrights are layering and connecting the known, physical world with that intuited through the humoral body and evolving self, and the terms “images” and “imagery” reflect this building and blending without privileging either the physical or inner experience. A “sea of troubles,” for instance, at once brings to mind a physical, overwhelming body of water and the feeling of drowning in one’s problems, while “sea-change” evokes the transformative properties of water and brine as well as a complete shift from one thought system to another. In plays by Shakespeare’s contemporaries sea imagery is equally as important, and as in his works, its use varies from text to text. Words and verses associated with the sea can be mere descriptors of a physical landscape, or they can set the scene for a violent storm or wreck serving the plot. The incorporation of tides and waves might reflect a character’s emotions, passion, or mental unrest, as in Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy : “My heart, sweet friend, is like a ship at sea: / She wisheth port, where, riding all at ease, / She may repair what stormy times have worn” (2.2.7-9), or Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice : “Your mind is tossing on the ocean” (1.1.7). Rojas 2 The sea might help drive the plot, like the mercantile and military traffic found in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Beggar’s Bush (first performance c.1622) and Marlowe’s Jew of Malta (c.1589-90), or the playwright might associate tides and water with particular characters or situations, as found in Middleton and Dekker’s Roaring Girl (1607-10). At first glance, it appears the absolute flexibility of the imagery is its greatest attribute, yet one of the most interesting early modern uses of sea imagery is as descriptor of the instant at which a decision must be made or opportunity will be lost and the possibility of success non- existent. Lines such as “There is a tide in the affairs of men / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune” ( Julius Caesar 4.3.216-217) and “War’s rage, admits no anchor, since the billow / Is risen so high we may not hull” ( Sophonisba I.II.193-194), suggest this very type of moment, a pivot point at once ephemeral and transforming. Here, Shakespeare and Marston (respectively) rely on the physical action of the waves and sea to create a bodily sense of the situation, one moving beyond the text and into the mind of the audience. The action of the tides illustrates the anxiety and mounting pressure on the character facing an imperative choice while conveying their strength of purpose with beauty and elegance. The playwrights’ words become an almost physical experience, conveying the affect surrounding the character or situation and conjuring a vision of urgency, power, and mystery. Another fascinating use of the trope is found in several of Shakespeare’s plays (The Tempest, Pericles, and Richard III, among others) where he positions the sea as a locus of physical and mental transformation: a place of extreme change. In this equally important use, the text seems to draw on the entity’s mutable, random nature as the basis of its perceived ability to embody transformation or make the choice to act for or against human lives and endeavors. This attribution could relate to the observation of physical changes wrought on bodies and objects, as Rojas 3 well as the remnants of a belief in a sea or river god: a dramatic frame informed by a mix of experience and tradition. Speaking in general terms, the sea’s association with fortune and “occasion” was long established even in early modern times, and its association with ships a “commonplace” (Kiefer 195, 204). Keeping this tradition in mind, it is intriguing to consider what other elements led to the early modern playwrights’ use of descriptions of the sea, images non-representable on stage, to suggest that fleeting instant when a life-changing choice must be made. The passages recounting these pivot points of existence through sea imagery are sharper, more intense, and appeal in a more visceral way than those spoken by characters mulling over options in soliloquies or discussing a course of action with their peers. Their use implies an apparent connection, ancient and fundamental to being, existing between these particular moments and the sea. These observations are the foundation of my research, as are questions as to the trope’s frequency of use in the drama of the period and its possible representation of other crises or situations now deemed “existential.” In this paper, I argue that in early modern drama, the use of sea imagery as signifier of an imperative moment of decision relates to the desire to understand or control the sea, and by extension, fate or fortune. This reasoning extends to those seas described as possessing apparent agency, whether by participation in a character’s life change or serving as an actant. I suggest that the early modern playwrights’ selection of the sea for these purposes was in part due to its connection with the humoral body, a link allowing the imagery to act more fully on the experience of the audience. My research identifies several additional themes important to the success of the trope, observations noted in previous scholarship on the early modern experience of the self and the supernatural. I also posit that the growing importance and knowledge of the Rojas 4 sea during the period contributed to a fascination with the entity, an interest enhanced through its perceived bridging of the mythic and the modern. The Body, the Self, and the Sea Gail Kern Paster’s scholarship on the humoral body demonstrates the early modern belief in a connection between the sea and the porous body, especially the passions (2, 6). This connection, reminiscent of the traditional association between sea and fortune, indicates that the early modern individual saw in the waves and water visual clues about their own experience of emotion and anxiety. The Cartesian split still decades in the future, mind and body were considered one. Paster’s work makes clear that to comprehend this concept, which she calls “psychophysiology,” it is paramount to “see[] the passions and the body…in ecological terms— that is, in terms of that body’s reciprocal relation to the world” (12-13, 18). This, she states, helps situate the “emotional[ly] instabl[e] and volitil[e]” humoral body as one “‘characterized by corporeal fluidity, openness, and porous boundaries’” (19). Paster also notes the growing importance of knowing and understanding the passions, as well as how they might harm or benefit the individual (189). Ideas of the self and individual identity were evolving during the early modern period. They were believed more fluid than in recent times, with the self being less of a discrete entity and more of a connection to other beings and its own surroundings (Selleck 21). This fluidity is in line with humoral theory, indicating once more that the mind-body dualism so prized by today’s individuals was not a mainstay of Renaissance existence. It also expands the connection between the body and sea by way of the pre-Cartesian self’s porosity. The self’s interconnection with its environment works to “complicate the idea of a self’s agency or autonomy,” and this Rojas 5 agency is further complicated when the humors are brought into play. These factors “suggest a self not only permeated but changed, reconstituted, by what had been outside the self” (58). This, I posit, is one reason dramatists employed the sea as descriptor of weighty or transforming circumstances. The early modern persona, wracked with passions or faced with imperative decisions, envisioned and experienced the waves and sea with empathy. The very fibers of the pre-Cartesian body appeared to reflect the same ebbing, flowing, rising, and building; even the split-second cresting before a wave breaks on the shore felt familiar. Some might have felt that like Titus Andronicus, they were the sea: sometimes calm, sometimes volatile, habitually susceptible to change.
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