Tragedies of Blood The Significance of the Family in Five Renaissance Plays A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in English in the University of Canterbury by Hester M. M. Lees-Jeffries University of Canterbury 1998 p(, ", r I /(6/ n (, Contents Acknowledgements 1 Abstract 2 Introduction 3 The Historiographical Background 9 The Critical Frame 12 Part One: Natural and Unnatural 19 Part Two: Prison and Sanctuary 71 Conclusion 123 Bibliography 125 -6 1 Acknowled gemen ts I would like to thank David Gunby for being such an interested, supportive and sensible supervisor, and the occupants (and habitues) of 320A, past and present (especially Jane and Chanel) for their friendship, interest and energy. Outside the Department, I thank Emily, Liz, Brigitte and James for their support and friendship, and my own family, the idiosyncrasies of whom pale into insignificance beside those of the others that I have here made my study. 2 Abstract In this thesis, I examine the functions and significance of the family in five English tragedies from the period 1607-30. Drawing on Renaissance texts in which the family is employed as the fundamental analogue of social and moral order, I argue that the prominence of the family in these plays attests to an enduring belief in the need for order and structure in society, which their sensationalist depictions of depravities such as adultery, incest, bastardy and murder should not be allowed to obscure. In doing so, I reject criticism which regards these plays' view of human nature and society as 'progressive', modern and pessimistic, arguing instead that their ethos is implicitly conservative and, if at times cynical, nostalgic. 3 Introduction My aims III this study are two-fold, although they are inter-related and pursued simultaneously.· The first is to argue that the ways in which family groups and, more intangibly, the idea of the family, are employed in early modern tragedies is an extremely useful indicator of the 'world view' of those plays and, as such, that an understanding of the family, as it is presented in those plays, is important in appreciating their dimensions of social, political and moral commentary. My second objective is to argue against the critical position that tragedies of the early seventeenth century manifest some kind of ontological crisis, whereby a belief in the benign, divinely­ ordered universe has been overcome by a proto-Hobbesian (or even proto-Cartesian) view of human nature and society. I will argue, therefore, that a focus on the family is a legitimate tool in this project, the employment of which leads to a perspective on early modern tragedy that is at once more complex, more optimistic and less certain than that which is frequently proposed. This introductory section will expand these aims and establish some underlying principles for the more substantive arguments that will follow. I will discuss five plays: The Revenger's Tragedy, attributed to Thomas Middletonl (1607), The Duchess of Ma l/i , by John Webster (1614), Women Beware Women, also by Middleton (c1621), The Changeling, by Middleton and William Rowley (1622) and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, by John Ford ( c 1630/1633) .2 They are difficult to describe collectively, although they undoubtedly have much in common. 'Early modern tragedy', the term I will employ when such generalities seem unavoidable, does not make any distinction between these plays and others such as Hamlet, King Lear and 1 The traditional attribution of The Revenger's Tragedy to Cyril Tourneur, the author of The Atheist's Tragedy, has now been rejected in Thomas Middleton's favour. 2There is no specific historical connection between these five plays. It is, however, satisfying to note that Middleton, Rowley and Ford all contributed commendatory verses to the first edition of Webster's The Duchess of Mal/i. 4 o th e II 0, when many important distinctions certainly exist; 'Jacobean tragedy' is inconveniently inaccurate if 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (c.1630-33) is to be included. 'Revenge tragedy', while certainly applicable to aspects of all of these plays, fails to do justice to their complexities, and in some cases misrepresents them by over-emphasising one (often quite limited) aspect at the expense of a better understanding of the whole. A more useful term is 'city tragedy', coined by both Margot Heinemann and Verna Foster, and defined in Foster's 1988 article, "Tis Pity She's a Whore as City Tragedy'. In a later article (1994) Lisa Hopkins applies Foster's definition to her discussion of Romeo and Juliet, The Changeling and W ome 11 Beware Women. Foster's concepts and terminology are useful tools for considering the common ground between the five texts being discussed here. Early in her account, Foster describes 'Tis Pity She's a Whore as 'a social tragedy-more particularly, a city tragedy'. She continues: Early seventeenth-century tragedy is characterised by its emphasis on a whole social group-Webster's courts, for example-rather than on the tragic individual as in the Elizabethan era. In 'Tis Pity She's a Whore Ford carries this emphasis further than any of his contemporaries with the partial exception of Middleton. 'Tis Pity belongs to a small group of plays anticipated by Romeo and Juliet and including Women Beware Women (from both of which Ford borrows) in which the failings of a specifically urban community provoke the tragedy of the protagonists; their tragedy, in turn, disrupts or even destroys the community by bringing to crisis point its own vice and folly (181-182). Foster takes her term, obviously, from the analogy with city comedy, a genre in which Thomas Middleton, at least, was a leading exponent. 'City tragedy', of course, cannot be applied to Webster's The Duchess of Malfi yet, still taking into account Foster's definitions, the label of 'social' or perhaps even more pointedly, 'societal tragedy' is applicable to all these plays. For in all of them, the consideration of fundamental human questions, such as the nature of free will, destiny, good and evil, presented in other tragedies through an exhaustive encounter with an exceptional individual (as in Hamlet or King 5 Lear) is instead mediated through (or even overshadowed by) a consideration of the nature of human society, and of people as social animals. The place of the individual in the universe, as a dramatic or tragic subject, gives way (in some respects) to the function and employment of the citizen or courtier in his or her immediate surroundings. The stage is no longer the whole world, but a corner of \ it very similar to that outside the theatre: the macrocosm has been replaced by the microcosm. The macrocosm/microcosm relationship is of course important in the political, social and moral theory of the time, and the analogy constructed between family and society is especially significant. In his introduction to the Worn en Beware Women, I. R. Mulryne describes the play thus: Women Beware Women analyses what happens when marriage, the representative social and moral bond, is undermined by moral blindness or lack of scruple. And it does so in the context of a whole network of family relationships that ought to guarantee social and moral order ... Middleton shows ... how social order cannot survive the acceptance of such [material] views of human relations (lv-Ivi), If marriage is 'the representative social and moral bond', then the family can equally be described as the representative social and moral unit. My argument is that the five plays being considered here use the family unit, in a variety of permutations, to explore issues of order and disorder in society, morality and government. I will set the ways in which they do so In a contemporary context through comparis(;m with Elizabethan texts, such as the Prayerbook3, the Homilies4 and 3The Prayerbook referred to throughout is that of 1559, known as the Elizabethan Prayerbook, as opposed to the better-known Book of Common Prayer of 1662, to which it is similar, but not identical. All quotations are taken from Church of England, The Book of Common Prayer 1559: The Elizabethan Prayerbook. Ed. John E, Booty, Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1976. (The Folger Shakespeare Library). For ease of reference I will refer to it as the Prayerbook, 4The Homilies are properly known as Certaine Sermons or Homilies, Appointed to be Read in Churches In the Time of Queen Elizabeth I, but are generally referred to as the Homilies, or the Elizabethan Homilies. All quotations are taken from Church of England. Certaine Sermons or Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches In the Time of Queen Elizabeth I: A Facsimile Reproduction of the Edition of 1623. Ed. Mary 6 Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, in which the motif of the family, and its employment as an analogue of society, are particularly prominent.5 The idea of a 'representative social and moral bond', identified by Mulryne, and modified here to 'representative social and moral unit' suggests that the family and matters related to it (such as marriage) are ideal indicators of the nature and condition of a community or society, city, court or state. In Renaissance terms the family is a society in miniature; in the context suggested by both Foster and Mulryne, it is an apt forum for demonstrating the influences of social mores, preoccupations and problems on individuals and their close personal relationships. As a representative social and moral unit, the family can be employed to present both ideas of order (for example, those concerned with the maintenance of hierarchy, degree and patriarchal control) and disorder (for example, incest and adultery) on a basic and universally applicable level.