Problem Children: Troping Early Modern
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PROBLEM CHILDREN: TROPING EARLY MODERN REPRODUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT By Bethany Packard Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in English August, 2010 Nashville, Tennessee Approved Professor Leah S. Marcus Professor Kathryn Schwarz Professor Lynn Enterline Professor Katherine Crawford Professor Carol Chillington Rutter Copyright © 2010 by Bethany Packard All Rights Reserved ii To Mary Frances iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work would not have been possible without generous financial support from multiple sources. The 2009 – 2010 Scholar Award from the Philanthropic Educational Organization has enabled me to focus on writing during my final year of graduate school. A Mellon Visiting Research Fellowship in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at the University of Warwick for the summer of 2009 provided the opportunity to write and research while also engaging a new campus and new colleagues. Two Folger Institute seminars have served as bookends for the conception and completion of this dissertation project, and I thank fellow participants and leaders of these seminars, and the always-helpful librarians and staff at the Folger Shakespeare Library. The Vanderbilt University Graduate School has enabled international research through a Dissertation Enhancement Grant for Spring 2009 and a College of Arts and Sciences Summer Research Award for 2008. I would like to thank all those I have had the pleasure to work with over the course of this project. Each member of my Dissertation Committee has provided invaluable insights into my dissertation writing process and into the profession itself. I would especially like to thank Professor Leah Marcus, the chair of my committee, both for all she has taught me and for her support and guidance as I worked to find my own voice. Particular thanks also to Professor Kathryn Schwarz, who as both committee member and director of graduate studies helped me to attend to the questions my project was implicitly asking and pressed me to answer them. I also benefitted from the support of fellow graduate students, especially those in my writing group. Sarah Kersh and Rachel Nisselson read many chapters at many stages of revision and always provided helpful comments. iv Finally, I am very grateful for the support of my family throughout my graduate school experience. My parents have been, as always, unfailingly supportive, and I am at a loss to describe the importance of their love and encouragement. Despite my grandmother’s concerns, I have managed not to get lost in a library. v LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Arthur Dent, A pastime for parents, STC 6624.2, A3r.............................................2 2. From the prompt book for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1996 White Devil..............................................................................................................84 vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................... iv LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... vi Chapter INTRODUCTION: CHILD FIGURES AND CULTURAL REPRODUCTION i. Sweet Nothings.....................................................................................................1 ii. Repetitive and Hybrid Reproduction...................................................................9 iii. Betwixt, Between, and Bordering: Child Agency ............................................16 iv. Sweetings and Runnets: Recursive Temporality ..............................................23 v. Chapter Summaries............................................................................................32 I. LACK: CHILDREN AND GHOSTS i. Walking through Walls.......................................................................................36 ii. A Tattletale Postmortum: Antonio’s Revenge....................................................43 iii. Burial Rites and Reversals: Jonson’s Paternal Epigrams.................................57 iv. Coda: Sleeping with Ghosts..............................................................................72 II. EXCESS: WEBSTER’S PRODIGIOUS CHILDREN i. Child Prodigies ...................................................................................................76 ii. Precocity in The White Devil .............................................................................80 iii. Giovanni Dismounts: Rejection of Adult Models ............................................91 iv. Monstrosity in The Duchess of Malfi................................................................97 v. Tops: Child Figures Set Adults Spinning ........................................................104 III. MISAPPROPRIATION: RICHARD III’S BABY TEETH i. Perils of the Parlous ..........................................................................................116 ii. Teething: Richard’s Contradictory Versions of Childhood.............................124 iii. Weeds and Herbs: Richard Pruned By His Nephews.....................................132 iv. Perilous and Unrespective Boys .....................................................................142 v. Henry VII: Crowning Heads and Lost Childhoods..........................................149 vii IV. CIRCULATION: FOUNDLINGS AND FOSTERING IN SPENSER i. Encircling Infants..............................................................................................154 ii. Belphoebe and Amoret: Circulation as Division.............................................161 iii. Ruddymane: The Circulation of Revenge ......................................................172 iv. Bruin Baby: Nature, Nurture, and Inheritance................................................183 AFTERWARD: CHILDHOOD IS HEALTH .................................................................195 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................200 viii INTRODUCTION CHILD FIGURES AND CULTURAL REPRODUCTION I. Sweet Nothings In the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library is a much handled copy of Arthur Dent’s A pastime for parents that bears witness to the reading, and often the boredom, of at least eight 17th century boys.1 Among the scribbles, signatures, blots, handwriting practice, and fantastical doodles that fill this catechism, one child copies the questions and answers into the margins. He is likely the John Lawford who signs his full name on the previous page. As is visible in Figure 1, John copies the Father’s question, “Can these essentiall attributes of god encrease or decrease,” skips the Child’s negative response, and then writes his own name. Perhaps later, possibly pausing for fresh pen or ink, given the change in color, John begins to write out the Father’s next question, “what may wee learne out of this” but then goes back to transcribe the Child’s earlier answer. The full response is: “Nothing that is in GOD can be augmented or diminished, or any way altered: for as hee is once at any time, so is hee alwaies at all times.” John only gets through “nothing that is in god.” Another child picks up, in a way, from where he left off and trails “nothings” down the page: “nothing, nothing, nothing.” “Nothing” becomes the answer to “what may be learned of this,” putting a full stop to the series of questions that in a catechism necessarily follow from one answer to the next. John Lawford and his unknown collaborator call a halt to repetition, the text’s linear progression, and the 1 Arthur Dent, A pastime for parents: or A recreation, to passe away the time; containing the most principall grounds of Christian religion. (London: Felix Kyngston, for Thomas Man, 1612), esp. A3r. STC 6624.2. There are eight names signed throughout, although there may be more hands. The approximate time period of the hands was verified with Heather Wolfe through private communication, December 17, 2009. 1 Figure 1: Dent, A pastime for parents, A3r. 2 process of their own instruction. They also, likely accidentally, suggest that “nothing” is in God. The boys’ writing implies that though God may be unchangeable, this text, the information it imparts, and the authority that demands they read it, all are not. They turn a dutiful recapitulation into evidence of resistance to the formative child development work of the catechism. Their scribblings suggest that they may be learning nothing, doing nothing, and wanting nothing to do with any of this. While this is only one example of children altering as they copy, it is a powerful, anxiety-inducing one. My reading of this variation on Dent is necessarily speculative. Still, this marginalia highlights the limitations of rhetorical attempts to train children. The catechism performs an idealized transmission of knowledge between adults and children. The boys’ slight textual alterations and their problematic interpretations are a single example of the ways early modern children might avoid reproducing their elders’ ideas, an avoidance that induces substantial anxiety in period authors. This combination of marginalia and text also figures interaction between two early modern models of cultural reproduction. Cultural reproduction is a process of sharing, adopting, and potentially modifying