Representations of the Ocean in Early Modern English Drama
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Boston University OpenBU http://open.bu.edu Theses & Dissertations Boston University Theses & Dissertations 2020 Multitudinous seas: representations of the ocean in early modern English drama https://hdl.handle.net/2144/39858 Boston University BOSTON UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Dissertation MULTITUDINOUS SEAS: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE OCEAN IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH DRAMA by JULIA PORTIA MIX BARRINGTON B.A., Barnard College, Columbia University, 2012 M.A., Boston University, 2013 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2020 © 2020 by Julia Portia Mix Barrington All rights reserved Approved by First Reader James R. Siemon, Ph.D. Professor of English Second Reader William C. Carroll, Ph.D. Professor of English Third Reader Laurence A. Breiner, Ph.D. Professor of English On land, the tuggings of the moons can somewhat safely be ignored by men, and left to the more pliant senses of women and seeds and an occasional warlock. But at sea even males are victims of the rise and fall, the twice-daily surge of the waters they float on, and willy-nilly the planetary rhythm stirs them and all the other voyagers. M.F.K. Fisher, The Gastronomical Me (New York: North Point Press, 1943), 40. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project could not exist without the help and support of my graduate student colleagues in the Boston University Department of English, in particular the tireless guidance of Dr. Alex MacConochie and Dr. Emily Keck; the careful attention and feedback from Professors James Siemon and William Carroll, my primary and secondary readers; the inexhaustible encouragement of my partner, William Porter; and the generous financial support of the Alumnae Association of Barnard College, the Boston University Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Cultures, and the Shakespeare Association of America. I am deeply and eternally grateful. v MULTITUDINOUS SEAS: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE OCEAN IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH DRAMA JULIA PORTIA MIX BARRINGTON Boston University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2020 Major Professor: James R. Siemon, Professor of English ABSTRACT This dissertation argues that early modern English writers represent the sea and tides as offering multiple, often contradictory spaces of risk and possibility. On page and stage, the ocean appears threatening and protective, liberating and confining, barren and fecund. Merchant vessels set sail to return with precious cargo, or to sink; royal children cast adrift either perish, or return unlooked-for; pirate crews elect a captain who may lead them to freedom, or to the gibbet; sea-storms divide families for the rest of their lives, or until a miraculous reunion; coastlines fortify island nations, or leave them vulnerable to attacking fleets. The sea furnishes an objective correlative for tempestuous grief, bottomless love, utter confusion, and myriad other states. As plot element and metaphorical vehicle, the literary sea opens multiple possibilities. The first chapter argues that in history plays by Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Greene, the trope of England as an island fortified by the sea emphasizes not threatened British insularity, but rather hospitality, fortunate invasions, and continuity between Britain’s tidal rivers and its surrounding seas. The second chapter traces the security and vulnerability of maritime travelers from classical and medieval texts by Ovid, Virgil, vi Petrarch, Gower, and Chaucer to early modern romances by Greene, Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Sidney through three key images: the storm-tossed ship, the rudderless boat, and the symmetrical shipwreck. The third chapter considers pirates in plays by Heywood and Rowley, Dekker, Daborne, and Shakespeare as representations of oceanic risk and contradiction. The fourth chapter analyzes gendered depictions of mythical sea creatures and deities in works by Shakespeare, Spenser, Dekker, Marlowe, and Lyly, arguing that while these authors use sea imagery to complicate traditional representations of gender, when they ascribe gendered qualities to the embodied sea, it is within the bounds of traditional gender roles. The final chapter discusses riches from the sea in texts by Marlowe, Shakespeare, Munday, and Spenser, demonstrating that before maritime wealth can be circulated economically or socially, it must undergo a land-change—a process of re-integration that frequently demands reversing the effects of sea-change. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 Prevailing Currents: Critical Context ........................................................................... 7 All the Quarters in the Shipman’s Card: Chapter Summary........................................ 19 ONE: Brass Wall and Silver Sea: Security and Vulnerability of the Nation ................ 27 A Fortress Built by Nature? ....................................................................................... 27 Silver Currents: England’s Network of Rivers ........................................................... 49 TWO: “My Feeble Bark”: Security and Vulnerability of the Individual Traveler........ 60 Antecedents: The Storm-Tossed Ship and the Rudderless Boat .................................. 61 The Vulnerable Traveler in the Rudderless Boat ........................................................ 70 Symmetrical Shipwrecks and the Chaotic Sea ............................................................ 85 THREE: Rogue Waves: Piracy and Self-Determination on the English Stage .......... 114 Temporary and Career Pirates .................................................................................. 115 Patriots and Infidels ................................................................................................. 128 Thieves of Mercy ..................................................................................................... 134 FOUR: Watery Roles: Gendered Bodies in and Around the Sea ................................ 144 The Ebb and Flow of Gender ................................................................................... 146 Monstrosity and Gender Essentialism ...................................................................... 155 FIVE: The Takeaway: Venture, Salvage, and the Riches of the Sea .......................... 183 The Abundance of the Sea ....................................................................................... 183 Salvaging Sea-Women............................................................................................. 193 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................... 209 Primary Sources ...................................................................................................... 209 Secondary Sources................................................................................................... 214 CURRICULUM VITAE……………………………………………………………..... 230 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1……………………………………………………………………………… 155 Figure 1.2……………………………………………………………………………… 156 Figure 1.3……………………………………………………………………………… 157 Figure 1.4……………………………………………………………………………… 157 Figure 1.5……………………………………………………………………………… 158 Figure 1.6……………………………………………………………………………… 180 Figure 1.7……………………………………………………………………………… 181 ix 1 INTRODUCTION This dissertation argues that early modern English writers represent the sea and tides as offering multiple, often contradictory spaces of risk and possibility. Like their forerunners, early modern English authors made abundant use of the ocean, from staging storms at sea to using oceanic metaphors to convey the currents and depths of human experience. Merchant vessels set sail to return with precious cargo, or to sink; royal children cast adrift either perish, or return unlooked-for; pirate crews elect a captain who may lead them to freedom, or to the gibbet; sea-storms divide families for the rest of their lives, or until a miraculous reunion; coastlines fortify island nations, or leave them vulnerable to attacking fleets. The sea furnishes an objective correlative for tempestuous grief, bottomless love, utter confusion, and myriad other states. As plot element and metaphorical vehicle, the literary sea opens multiple possibilities. As one might expect, these representations of the sea are numerous, inconsistent, and conflicting across the range of years and genres; however, they are often contradictory within one author’s writings, or even within one work. Almost the only thing that representations of the sea in early modern literature have in common is that the sea is usually described as vast and wet—it can often seem that beyond that, no other qualities are consistent. Rather than attempting to explain away these contradictions, this dissertation locates in them the most essential quality of the sea in early modern English literature: its multiplicity. At a moment when England was beginning to increase drastically its number of military and merchant ships—a process culminating in the maritime mastery of the British Empire in the nineteenth century—and developing a new national relationship to 2 the global ocean, English writers found in the sea a potent and adaptable, and contradictory and polysemous, source of images. Earlier investigations of oceanic language and themes in the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries often downplay the contradictions and multiplicity in representations of the ocean in their quest for a thesis