Treacherous Correspondence on the Renaissance Stage

"SEDITIOUS BILLES": TREACHEROUS CORRESPONDENCE ON THE RENAISSANCE STAGE JEAN JASPER A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Bimlingham City University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2009 The Faculty of Performance, Media and English Binningham City University ABSTRACT This study has two primary purposes; to examine the evolution of the concepts and statutes of Tudor treason legislation as reactions to unprecedented political, religious and social changes, and to develop the relationship between this thesis of treason and the Renaissance stage. An analysis of a broad and relatively un-researched body of historical and legal material accounts for the conditions in which writing, particularly the personal letter, aroused anxiety and suspicion. It is argued that this political and religious tension inspired the inclusion of writing as treason in the 1534 treason act, a statute drawing upon the concept of imagining the king's death of the Great Statute of Treason of Edward III. The letter is identified as the primary document of proof of "imagination" or intent in Tudor judicial opmIOn. A close study of treason trials of the period, in which the generic significance is the use of letters as evidence of intent against the alleged traitors, presages a substantive and novel reading of the chosen plays of this study, which foregrounds the discemable political and cultural anxieties of these judicial events. Differing, both in substance and approach, from traditional analyses, the treatment of each play (and other primary texts) evaluates and locates dramatic representations of treacherous correspondence within Tudor concepts of treason, while incorporating gender theory and post-structural reassessments of spoken and written language. In resituating Renaissance plays in the debate on treason, this study addresses the regulation of language, not merely within the Tudor law of treason by words, but also the play text, both complex, and, yet, mutable expressions of containment. It is, perhaps, the deliberate ambiguity of both statute and stage that allows continuing critique, such as that undertaken here. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis developed from a dissertation submitted at University College Worcester (now University of Worcester) for the Master of Arts degree. I would like to renew my thanks to Professor David Roberts for his kind and patient supervision of my work at Worcester and his sustained, erudite, support, encouragement and understanding ever since. I am indebted to Professor Fiona Robertson, who has been not only a dedicated supervisor but my "willing friend" whose generous and detailed attention has saved me from numerous inaccuracies. I am grateful to the School of English for its forbearance and tolerance in allowing periods of suspension during my ill health. Access to Binningham University'S Law Library has been invaluable to my research. I am faced with the difficulty of acknowledging, adequately, the time, SUppOlt and patience of all those friends and colleagues who have given their generous encouragelnent to this work and to whom lowe both personal and intellectual debts. I must thank Rosemary McNeil-Watson, of the Amnesty Bookshop, Malvern, who discovered the ancient law folio which has been an invaluable resource. I am especially indebted to Malcolm Hartill whose sustained friendship, emotional and technical support has been the mainstay of my etTort. Lastly, lowe thanks and appreciation to the members of my immediate family, who have always encouraged, and had faith in, me. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction .................................................. 1 Chapter 1. A Brief History of the Law of Treason ..................... 19 2. Reading and Control in Tudor England .................... 39 3. "A blank my lord": ViltuouS Illiteracy in Twelfth Night ....... 65 4. Writing and the Letter .................................. 83 5. Treason Trials ........................................ 115 6. Letters and the Negotiation of Treason in King Lear .......... 179 7. "But now I see that words have several works": The Spanish Tragedy ................................... 202 8. "My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical": Treason and Intent in Macbeth ........................... 222 Conclusion .................................................. 241 Bibliography ................................................. 249 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 1. The English Gentlewoman . .................................. 80 Frontispiece from Richard Braithwaite, The English Gentlewoman (London: 1633) (from Sanders, Eve Rachelle. Gender and Literacy on Stage in Early Modenl England. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. 5). 2. Secretary and Italic Hands (Henry VIII) ...................... 87 State Papers Henry VIII, 165, f. 1. (from Jenkinson, Hilary. "Elizabethan Handwritings". The Library 3 (1922): 1-48. Plate VI). 3. Text Hand and Secretary Hand (Edward VI) ................... 88 P. R. O. Ancient Deeds, D 10440. (from Jenkinson Plate VII). 4. Chancery Hand and Secretary (Elizabethan) ............ ...... 90 Chancery, Pettty bag, Books, Papers etc., 15. Cursitors Admission Roll, part 1 m. 5. (from Jenkinson Plate IV). 5. Legal Hands (Elizabethan) .. ................................ 93 C. P. 24. 91.17. (from Jenkinson Plate II). 6. Letter From Katherine Howard to Thomas Culpepper . .......... 200 05 Apr. 2009 <http://nationalarchives.gov.ukl museum/item id=13>. 7. Transcript of Katherine Howard's Letter ....... .............. 201 05 Apr. 2009 <http://nationalarchives.gov.ukl museum/item id=13>. 8. The Spanish Tragedy from the 1650 Quarto ... ................ 221 05 Apr. 2009 <http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/ Span5.htm>. Introduction 1 On February 13 \ 2008, five Muslim men, convicted of terrorism, were released by the Court of Appeal. Although they had been imprisoned for two years, their conviction was ruled to be unsound and the sentence was quashed on the basis that there was no proof of intent. The five appellants had downloaded Islamist ideological material from the internet and had communicated with each other by email and instant messaging. Their crime had originally been prosecuted under Section 57 of the 2001 Terrorism Act, which makes it an offence to possess books or items pertaining to acts of terrorism. The judgement was that: While [ ... ] the appellants had formed a plan to go to Pakistan to train and then go to Afghanistan to fight, there was nothing that evidenced expressly the use, or intention to use, the extremist literature to incite each other to do this. Later in the year, on July 15th, the three British men accused of the 2006 plot to cause explosions on aeroplanes admitted to the plot, but not the intent to kill. The crucial element in these two cases is the establishment of "intent". Never has one concept of crime caused so much controversy as proof of the offence of intent. The government was much embarrassed by a proposed amendment to the 2005 Terrorism Bill when an oppositional proposal aimed to make the encouragement and "glorification" of terrorism an offence, only if intent could be proved. The amendment was defeated by a single vote. The question of intent was the subj ect of further controversy in the drawing up of the 2006, and current, Terrorism Act. The legal concept of intent is not new. Under common law, criminal liability needs to be proved by two distinctions: actus reus, the crime committed; and mens rea, the guilty mind. Traditionally, both elements of the crime must be proved actus non fadt reum nisi mens sit rea ("the act does not make a person guilty unless the mind is also guilty"). Conversely, no conviction can be made if the actus reus is absent despite the presence of mens rea. It is this pursuance of what Mike Shea calls "thoughtcrime" that draws attention to the similarities between the present laws regarding terrorism and the Tudor Treason Laws which are the focus of this study.' The establishment of intent was as crucial, judicially, in the sixteenth century as it is in the twenty-first. It might be considered that the distinction of mens rea would be the relevant criterion in establishing culpability. However, it is the changing concept of the crimes of both modern terrorism and sixteenth-century treason that presents a political and legal problem. As Oliverio and Lauderdale suggest: A number of theoretical premises underlie an examination of the state's symbiotic relationship to terrorism. First, inherent in the definitions of terrorism is a latent structure of politicality that allows for practices that maintain, create, and change its definition; second, the definition of terrorism is a critical part of the production of hegemony, including specific conceptions of ideological and political boundaries and dominant historical narratives; [ ... ] terrorism as an analytical concept is most heuristic when it is examined as a relative rhetoric intrinsic to the process or art of statecraft, essential to the constitution of states and their continued sovereign stability [ ... ].2 Replacing the word "terrorism" with "treason" in this passage may lead us toward the examination of government policies behind the frequent changes in the legal definitions and the extended scope of treasonable offences in the Tudor period. Anxieties concerning the succession, rebellion, and the break with Rome impacted upon the concept of this crime. These political events, together with the emergence of certain social changes, meant that treason became a variable that

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