Dramatic Form in the Early Modern English History Play

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THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of the Department of English School of Arts and Sciences Of The Catholic University of America In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

2017

Dramatic Form in the Early Modern English History Play Shaun Stiemsma, Ph.D. Director: Michael Mack, Ph.D. The early modern history play has been assumed to exist as an independent genre at least since Shakespeare’s first folio divided his plays into comedies, tragedies, and histories. However, history has never—neither during the period nor in literary criticism since—been satisfactorily defined as a distinct dramatic genre. I argue that this lack of definition obtains because early modern playwrights did not deliberately create a new genre. Instead, playwrights using history as a basis for drama recognized aspects of established genres in historical source material and incorporated them into plays about history. Thus, this study considers the ways in which playwrights dramatizing history use, manipulate, and invert the structures and conventions of the more clearly defined genres of morality, comedy, and tragedy. Each chapter examines examples to discover generic patterns present in historical plays and to assess the ways historical materials resist the conceptions of time suggested by established dramatic genres. John Bale’s King Johan and the anonymous Woodstock both use a morality structure on a loosely contrived history but cannot force history to conform to the apocalyptic resolution the genre demands. Marlowe’s Edward II takes many aspects of the same genre but inverts them to show a bitter and tragic historical perspective. Conversely, Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays engage in competing modes of comic time, as Falstaff’s saturnalian comedy succumbs to Prince Hal’s long-planned comic resolution to his own morality play. Another conventional comic resolution—marriage—is explored using the close of both Richard III and Henry V, and in both cases Shakespeare affirms and limits the unified resolution that marriage offers to historical events. As one of the last “histories,” John Ford’s Perkin Warbeck presents what its author calls “Chronicle History” as a tragedy that denies its audience the certainty that chronicles offer. Finally, Robert Greene’s ahistorical James IV is used to reconsider the parameters of the history play, finding that even a highly fictionalized account can create distinct effects between known history and generic conventions. Through the exploration of these plays, this study intends to suggest the simultaneous interdependence and incompatibility of history and dramatic form.

This dissertation by Shaun Stiemsma fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in English approved by Michael Mack, Ph.D., as Director, and by Tobias Gregory, Ph.D. and Jennifer Paxton, Ph.D., as Readers.

______Michael Mack, Ph.D., Director

______Tobias Gregory, Ph.D., Reader

______

Jennifer Paxton, Ph.D., Reader

ii Table of Contents

Introduction: History as a Dramatic Genre 1

Chapter 1: History as Allegory: Morality Form in Bale’s King Johan 56

Chapter 2: History as Moral Test: Woodstock and the Everyman King 89

Chapter 3: History as Amoral: Edward II and the Tragedy of a Moral Universe 125

Chapter 4: History as “Redeeming Time:” Saturnalia and Morality as Comic Modes in 1 and 2 Henry IV 166

Chapter 5: History as Unity: Marriage and Comic Closure in History 232

Chapter 6: History vs. Tragedy: Perkin Warbeck as Tragic Hero 265

Conclusion: Greene’s Accidental History and the Nature of Early Modern Historical Drama 314

iii Acknowledgements

Thanks to God, who directs history toward comedy but permits tragedy if we want it badly enough.

With grateful thanks to my wife, Sarah, without whom I would never have been able to start, and to my whole family, who have put up with this project for far too long.

Thanks also to Dr. Michael Mack, whose advice and guidance both allowed me to follow my own path through this project and pushed me not only to make this a better dissertation but also to become a better scholar and thinker.

Finally, thanks to Dr. Paxton, Dr. Gregory, Dr. Gibbons, and Dr. Ward, all of whom have provided invaluable advice and assistance through this project.

iv Introduction:

History as a Dramatic Genre

“a rude Notion of it; indeed rather a Description then a Definition” –Lisidius, John Dryden’s “An Essay of Dramatick Poesy”1

Although its existence has been assumed since at least the division of Shakespeare’s first folio into three distinct genres, the problem genre of the early modern history play is more surely a problem than it is a genre. Early modern literary critics have discussed and debated the definition of what was an apparently recognizable form in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but, despite many conceptualizations over the past four centuries, there is still no scholarly consensus on exactly what is meant by the genre “history play.” In the introduction to a 2008 collection of critical essays about history plays, Theresa Grant and

Barbara Ravelhofer acknowledge not only the lack of certainty about what they propose to discuss but also that the ongoing critical discussion of such plays “will probably never result in a satisfactory agreed answer to the question ‘What is a history play?’”2 Approaches to the definition have varied from considering the source, the form, the purpose, the subject, the characters involved, or even the location of the action as the key to identifying and understanding the form, but no approach has come close to the kind of clarity of definition typical of the classical genres of tragedy and comedy.

Nonetheless, in Shakespeare’s first folio, the familiar genres of comedy and tragedy are joined by history as if all three were equally certain and accepted as distinct and recognizable forms. Thus, a typical way of making sense of the genre of the early modern history play has

1 Dryden: Poetry, Prose, & Plays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP), 384. 2 “Introduction,” in English Historical Drama, 1500-1660: Forms Outside the Canon, ed. by Teresa Grant and Barbara Ravelhofer (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 1. 1 2 been to accept those included in Shakespeare’s folio as central examples, add other plays from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that seem most similar to Shakespeare’s, and then describe the set of plays included. Such attempts at definition also must be careful to exclude Shakespeare’s plays that the folio did not classify as tragedies, such as the Roman plays, as well as King Lear and Macbeth, all of which might seem, according to at least some of their attributes, to be history plays. With this basis for the genre of the history play, a clear definition of history as a distinct genre, particularly a definition using similar principles to those used to define the classical genres, has proved elusive to literary and dramatic critics for hundreds of years.

Rather than starting with the group included in the folio, a better way to understand the genre as it must have been understood in its own time is to explore the references to history plays in early modern publications. The genre has some apparent existence predating the folio’s classification system, as printed plays include the word “history” in titles as early as the middle of the sixteenth century,3 but these are hardly a dependable source of generic identity. Indeed, no part of Shakespeare’s first tetralogy of “history” plays included the word “history” or any form of it in any publication prior to the folio, and only Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry V, of all those plays of Shakespeare commonly considered “histories,” actually included “history” in any part of the title of an edition printed prior to the folio. Further, editions of the “histories” of Richard II,

Richard III, and Henry VI all include the word “tragedy” as a part of their titles. Not only are

3 The two earliest dramas including the word history in the title are John Pikering’s A newe enterlude of vice conteyninge, the historye of Horestes with the cruell reuengment of his fathers death, vpon his one naturill mother, published in 1567, and the anonymous play A nevve mery and vvittie comedie or enterlude, newely imprinted, treating vpon the historie of Iacob and Esau taken out of the xxvij. chap. of the first booke of Moses entituled Genesis, published in 1568. The length and descriptive nature of these titles, both also called enterludes, and one also referred to as a comedy, provide nearly sufficient argument against making too much of the published titles of plays as a dependable guide to genre. 3 “history” plays rarely called such in quartos, but many plays not based on history are called

“histories:” just from Shakespeare, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida and more had some form of the word in their printed titles.4 Beyond the scope of Shakespeare’s plays, even the more precise term “Chronicle History” is not particularly helpful—the anonymous King Leir, based on

Britain’s mythic past, is called such, but so is No-Body and Some-Body, an absurd play which features the entirely fictional “Elydure” as a thrice-crowned king of England.5 The use of

“history” for plays about mythic events or even entirely fictional narratives suggests not only that the term “history play” was not clearly defined and consistently used but also that the very term

“history” was ambiguous.

Thus, these titles indicate a further problem with using the term “history” as applicable to specific plays and representing a distinct genre: in early modern England, the word was often used as synonymous with “story,” without any special reference to the truth of the events involved. The notion of a play presenting “true” events of history—perhaps the easiest way to distinguish the plays from other types—thus turns out not to be a dependable application of the term. Again, published titles provide interesting evidence for the loose application of the term.

In titles of non-dramatic publications, the term was part of the title of works as varied as narratives of the past as a whole,6 chronicles,7 reports of recent events,8 legendary and mythic

4The tragicall historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke, and The famous historie of Troylus and Cresseid Excellently expressing the beginning of their loues, with the conceited wooing of Pandarus Prince of Licia, respectively, are the full titles of the initial quartos. 5 In fairness, the title appears to be deliberately ironic. 6Sir Walter Raleigh’s 1614 The History of the World is probably the best known example of what we would now consider the most common use of the term “history” in a s book title. 7 Heir beginnis the hystory and croniklis of Scotland, 1540, and A chronicle at large and meere history of the affayres of Englande and kinges of the same deduced from the Creation of the vvorlde, vnto the first habitation of thys islande: and so by contynuance vnto the first yere of the reigne of our most deere and souereigne Lady Queene Elizabeth: collected out of sundry aucthors, whose names are expressed in the next page of this leafe, 1569. 4 romances,9 and wholly imaginative tales.10 If anything, the application of the term to such a broad range of material —any series of events or elements, true or false, without respect to unity or purpose, can be considered a history—suggests the lack of specific form that is often at the center of debates over the proper understanding of what the term means as a dramatic genre.

John Florio’s 1611 World of Words, an early Italian/English dictionary,11 suggests that the term has two kinds of meanings, one indicating the recounting of the facts of past events and the other merely the telling of a story. His entries, however, do not indicate that he thought it particularly significant to differentiate the two possible meanings. He lists entries for eight Italian terms related to the word “history.” For historia itself he lists both “an historie” and “a storie,” and adds “a declaration of true things in others, set downe unto posteritie.” Related terms further the confusion between what we would call “history” and “story,” as historico is listed as “an

Historian” while historiografia is merely “a description of stories.” The lack of definition for the term “history” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries makes a definitive application of the term to a dramatic genre at the time nearly impossible.

These problems should not, however, suggest that generic distinctions did not matter to early modern audiences and playwrights, or that they did not have the ability to recognize

8 The true historie of the Christen departynge of the reuere[n]de ma[n] D. Martyne Luther, 1546, and The historie of Wyates rebellion with the order and maner of resisting the same, wherunto in the ende is added an earnest conference with the degenerate and sedicious rebelles for the serche of the cause of their daily disorder, 1554. 9 The veray trew history of the valiau[n]t knight Iaso[n] how he conquerd or wan the golden fles, by the counsel of Medea and of many othre victoryouse and wondrefull actis and dedys that he dyde by his prowesse and cheualrye in his tyme, 1495, and The hystorye, sege and dystruccyon of Troye, 1513. 10 This is the table of the historye of Reynart the Foxe, 1489, and The tragicall historye of Romeus and Iuliet, 1562. 11 English dictionaries are rare in the period. Thomas Elyot’s 1538 Latin-English dictionary defines “historia” and “historicus” as simply “a storye” and “a writer of stories,” respectively. The expanded version of 1552 gives four Latin terms, adding “historialis” and “historice” to those of the first edition, but all the terms use the English word “history” instead of “story” in their definitions, even altering the definitions of the original two. If any other contextual evidence—such as titles above—supported that a shift in the meaning of history had happened in these 15 years, it might be tempting to suggest that there is some significance to the switch. Robert Cawdrey’s English dictionary of 1604, usually considered the first English dictionary, does not include the word because it was only designed to define “hard words.” 5 attributes of genre or to distinguish between history as the recounting of past events and as the telling of a fictional story. Nonetheless, as Phyllis Rackin points out, even when early modern writers acknowledge the specialized meaning of history as recounting past events, the term history was as indefinite as it was ubiquitous: “Despite the widespread interest in history and the overwhelming chorus of praise for the benefits its study could confer, there was no clear consensus about its nature and purpose.”12 Unfortunately, early modern prose analyses of dramatic genres do not offer any more clarity about the meaning of history as a concept or as a dramatic type than do titles or dictionaries. The forms that are typically acknowledged in prose discussions of dramatic genres are only comedy and tragedy, or occasionally a third, tragicomedy, though this is often accompanied by complaints that it is no genre at all. In his

“Defence of Poesy,” Sir Philip Sidney discusses only the two classically differentiated forms, dismissing tragicomedy as a “mongrel.”13 However, Sidney’s “Defence” predates many of what are today the best-known examples of the history play, and he wrote it prior to the trend for plays about English history that apparently started in the late 1580s. Nonetheless, there are many plays based on historical sources—plays most critics today consider “histories”—that appeared prior to his composition, so he was not ignorant of the existence of plays about history. Indeed, Sidney offers many complaints against the plays put forth on the English stage, most of them grounded in the classical tradition of criticism regarding unity and decorum, and many of these complaints can be seen as reflective of a distaste for the very kinds of plays that we now consider

“histories.” However, Sidney singles out Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton’s Gorboduc, a

12 Stages of History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1990), 5. 13 The Major Works, edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002), 244. The essay was likely written in the late 1570s, so I have placed it prior to Puttenham, despite its being printed in 1595, nearly a decade after Sidney’s death. 6 play based on chronicle history, as an admirable tragedy.14 He criticizes the then-current trend to desire to tell a complete history rather than to begin at a proper point to establish unity, and he bemoans the lack of form produced by this shortcoming. He claims that playwrights ought to be

“tied to the laws of poesy, and not of history; not bound to follow the story;” instead, they must

“frame the history to the most tragical conveniency.”15 Sidney suggests that the failure of all historical playwrights except Sackville and Norton in Gorboduc to so frame their events has made “all their plays … neither right tragedies, nor right comedies, mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in the clown by head and shoulders to play a part in majestical matters, with neither decency nor discretion.”16 To Sidney, then, history is not a true genre but a source that must be shaped to a particular generic form.17 From this perspective, to call a play a “history” is essentially an insult—a play is called a “history” because it lacks proper form and intermixes elements proper only to comedy or tragedy, exclusively.

While Sidney is probably the best known English critic of dramatic genres from the early modern period, many of the other writers who commented on generic distinctions tend to echo similar sentiments. George Puttenham’s 1589 The Arte of English Poesie also suggests that there are only two primary dramatic genres, tragedy and comedy; he discusses “Poeticall hiſtories” and their usefulness to instruct, but he does not reference any dramatic examples of such, instead listing Homer and Thucydides as examples of the form.18 Florio’s 1591 Second Frutes makes a backhanded reference to the genre by complaining that English plays were “neither right

14 Ibid, 243. 15 Ibid, 244. 16 Ibid. 17 Indeed, Sidney sharply and purposefully distinguishes the historian from the poet to show the poet’s superiority in not being tied to the bare reporting of fact but being free to shape the plot of a play to suit higher purposes. 18 The Arte Of English Poesie, ed. Gladys Doidge Willock and Alice Walker (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1936), 39- 42. 7 comedies, nor right tragedies” but merely “[r]epreſentations of hiſtories, without any decorum.”19

Again, history seems not to be a genre at all but the lack of a genre: although Florio’s continental classicism and elitism may have led him to judge unfairly of English drama, he used the term

“history” not to complain about a genre of which he did not approve, but to suggest that plays had no genre at all.

In all the English works that discuss dramatic genres prior to the publication of the first folio, the work closest to acknowledging history as a genre and exploring what the definition of that genre might be is Thomas Heywood’s 1612 Apology for Actors. Heywood’s writing, from a man of the theater who is writing to defend his livelihood, is likely to be closer to the perspective of players, playwrights, and theatergoers than the arguably more elitist views of many earlier published sources.20 Heywood’s defense of the theater references historical drama consistently throughout, as the didactic usefulness of history proves to be one of the key appeals he uses to convince his audience of the value of drama. In particular, he commends historical plays for their ability to promote national pride and teach the facts of history,21 two elements that many

19 Florios second frutes to be gathered of twelue trees, of diuers but delightsome tastes to the tongues of Italians and Englishmen…. (London: Thomas Woodcock, 1591), accessed June 16, 2016, Early English Books Online, 23. 20 Nonetheless, Heywood is still writing an Apology, so his rhetorical purpose and context complicate our ability to take his claims as objective. His emphasis upon the didactic value—central to his defense of the theater—means that in the interest of showing how the stage instructs audiences in historical fact and teaches the lessons of history he almost eliminates the distinctions between history and poetry that Sidney’s “Defence” upholds. 21 Heywood emphasizes the sense of patriotism when he writes, “To turne to our domesticke hystories what English blood seeing the person of any bold English man presented and doth not hugge his fame and hunnye at his valor pursuing him in his enterprise with his best wishes and as beeing wrapt in contemplation offers to him in his hart all prosperous performance as if the personater were the man personated so bewitching a thing is lively and well spirited action that it hath power to new mold the harts of the spectators and fashion them to the shape of any noble and notable attempt. What coward to see his countryman valiant would not bee ashamed of his cowardise? What English prince should hee behold the true portrature of that amous King Edward the third, foraging France taking so great a king captiue in his owne country, quartering the English lyons with the French Flower-delyce, and would not bee suddenly inflamed with so royall a spectacle being made apt and fit for the like atchieuement. So of Henry the Fift: but not to be tedious in any thing.” He further defends plays for having “taught the unlearned the knowledge of many famous histories instructed such as cannot reade in the discovery of all our English chronicles: and what man 8 later critics who look to the “purposes of history” to understand the genre have argued are central to the definition of the genre. However, in specifying dramatic genres, Heywood also differentiates only tragedy and comedy, saying that they are inverse dramatic forms: “Comedies begin in trouble, and end in peace; Tragedies begin in calmes, and end in tempest.”22 He begins what promises to be a clear exposition of dramatic types by describing the types and characteristics of comedy, but his definition is incomplete, and he never even starts an orderly explanation of tragedy.23 As he goes on to recount the virtues of the theater, he creates another classification system entirely, one which he uses to list separately the positive aspects of each kind of drama. Here, he suggests there are five genres in addition to plays about native history,24 and these types are tragedy, “forreigne” history, morality, comedy, and pastoral, but his list is more suggestive of a defense of existing elements of plays than an effort to indicate distinct dramatic genres. Further, like most of his contemporaries, he uses the word “history” in discussing drama with the same ambiguity regarding the term’s relationship to fact—the core of most later understandings of the genre. He confidently lists “Brute” as the beginning of English history and includes the myth of King Midas as a “historical” example teaching audiences to avoid the excesses of greed.

By the time of Dryden’s 1668 “Of Dramatick Poesie, An Essay,” an early work of literary criticism in the form of a dialogue between four interlocutors, the genre of the history

have you now of that weake capacity that cannot discourse of any notable thing recorded even from William the Conquerour nay from the landing of Brute, untill this day.” 22 An Apology for Actors…(London: Nicolas Okes, 1612), accessed June 10, 2016, Early English Books Online, F2, left leaf. 23 Such disorderly prose is, of course, typical of early modern writing and is a good indication of why the kind of definitional clarity later literary critics—like myself—would like to find in these writings is not present. The point of Heywood’s work is not to classify definitionally, but to persuade opponents of the moral usefulness of drama. 24 He actually excludes English history from this listing, but only because he has already listed the moral usefulness of the genre, doubtless seeing it as the easiest to justify in this way. 9 play was well out of vogue, and the work specifically differentiates only the genres of comedy and tragedy, with occasional reference to tragicomedy. Lisideius, one of the most conservative and classical speakers in the conversation, makes reference to Shakespeare’s history plays:

On the other side, if you consider the Historical Plays of Shakespeare, they are rather so many Chronicles of Kings, or the business many times of thirty or forty years, crampt into a representation of two hours and a half, which is not to imitate or paint Nature, but rather to draw her in miniature, to take her in little; to look upon her through the wrong end of a Perspective, and receive her Images not only much less, but infinitely more imperfect than the life: this, instead of making a Play delightful, renders it ridiculous.25

Despite elsewhere claiming that he has only “a rude Notion of [what a play is]; indeed rather a

Description than a Definition,”26 Lisidius feels he has enough of an idea of what a drama ought to be to pass judgment on plays that fail to measure up, and Shakespeare’s histories provide clear examples for him. Although Lisideius’ views are not intended to be seen as authoritative in the dialogue, Dryden does not offer any suggestion that history is an independent genre anywhere in the dialogue, again suggesting that “history,” still interchangeable with the sense of “story,” is merely the source of a drama, not a type of drama unto itself. The commentary here echoes the same kind of criticisms that Sidney made about plays nearly a century earlier, suggesting that, if the editors of the folio allowed history a place as a third genre alongside comedy and tragedy, their views continued to be countered by rules of decorum and unity for many critics. Thus, the familiar and apparently obvious divisions of Shakespeare’s plays in the folio may have been far more a matter of editorial convenience—offering a tidy way to arrange the particular corpus of plays by Shakespeare—than a representation of a consensus regarding dramatic types.27

25 Dryden: Poetry, Prose & Plays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1963), 401. 26 Ibid, 384. 27 Such a division was not the only option available to Hemmings and Condell. Ford’s 1652 collection of plays was divided into dramatic genres—comedy, tragicomedy, and tragedy—without history as a category, despite his “chronicle history” Perkin Warbeck. Jonson’s 1616 Workes, on the other hand, was arranged by literary genre 10 If a survey of prose writings of the period on the topic of genres offers no clear indication that the three genres comprising the contents of the first folio were recognized as three clear and distinct types of play, better evidence to support this three-part division is available in the actual drama of the period. Outside of the folio itself, the clearest acknowledgement of these three distinct genres comes in the anonymous 1599 A Warning for Fair Women.28 In the play’s induction, personifications of History, Tragedy, and Comedy battle for control of the stage, suggesting that the playhouses had three options with which to entertain their audiences.

Interestingly, tragedy wins the day, despite the fact that the play is based on a historically true story—the murder of a London man by his unfaithful wife—indicating that a play’s basis in events perceived and presented as true is insufficient to make the play a history, at least to the theater-goers of the time.29

If the play thus suggests that the defining characteristic of the history play is not the truth of the actions dramatized, it provides some other apparent characteristics that may help us to see what original audiences and playwrights may have assumed to be the defining characteristics of the genre. The foremost characteristic seems to be neither the presence of monarchs nor the

(plays, poems, masques, etc.), with the plays included ordered by performance date. The plays in Jonson’s folio are called only comedies, tragedies, and satiric comedies. The division into dramatic types for Shakespeare’s plays— particularly considering some of the odd placements of some plays as tragedies or comedies—likely seemed the best way to arrange the plays based on the histories themselves, because the scheme allowed the histories made up of multiple parts to be grouped without reference to whether some other play might have been performed between those parts. Further, all of the histories included in the folio were ordered by historical, rather than performance, chronology, suggesting that the editors of the folio, at least, took the plays’ historical aspects seriously to put them into “correct” order. 28 The date is the publication date in quarto, so the actual play may be from an earlier date. 29 While the clear classification of the play as tragedy rather than history is itself merely anecdotal evidence about what makes a play a history, my own understanding of history play would not dismiss it from possible consideration as it evinces some of the effects that I claim are typical of the “family resemblances” of early modern histories, but the play as a whole is not particularly engaging to its audience as history. While the people and events involved in a relatively recent London murder might qualify as “known” history for its original audience, its incidents are not presented as part of the contingent and inevitable process of history, nor are they shown to have particular bearing on the audience’s historical moment. 11 portrayal of historical England, but the inclusion of military conflict. In the play, History is portrayed as a soldier, entering “with drum and ensign,”30 banging the drum to suggest a march to battle. Tragedy is quick to counter History, demanding, “peace with that drum,” (1) complaining that his “luggage” (3) and “fopperie” (3) pollute the stage. While “fopperie”— foolishness—is probably just cruelty from a character portrayed with a whip in hand, it could also suggest the less formal arrangement of the action in history, and the term “luggage” was frequently used to refer to the baggage of an army, furthering the notion of history as related to wars. Tragedy attempts to banish History by claiming “this brawling sheepeskin is intollerable”

(4), with brawling suggestive of both the noisiness of the drum and the likelihood of battles to come. History defends itself based on military prowess as well: the promise of “some doughtie stuffe” (8) from a history play is superior to the “common executioner” (6) Tragedy represents.

By offering bravery and battles instead of mere death, History attempts to assert its generic superiority and right to control the stage.

At this point in the action, Comedy enters, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Comedy and

Tragedy become more clearly defined as opposed kinds of drama, while History is left less clearly differentiated from the other two. Although certainly not intentional on the part of the unknown author, the induction to the play thus functions as a kind of commentary upon the clarity of the genres. Comedy, apparently before even noticing History, calls Tragedy

“Murther's Beadle, / The common hangman unto Tyrannie” (20-21), and Tragedy identifies

Comedy as made up of “some sparkes of wit, / Some odde ends of old jeasts scrap’t up togither /

To tickle shallow iniudiciall eares, / Perhaps some puling passion of a lover” (33-36). Comedy

30 Quotations from the play are from the 1599 edition reproduced on EEBO, (London: Valentine Sims, 1599), accessed June 8, 2016, Early English Books Online. The edition is not divided into acts or scenes, and so all references are simply to line numbers in the original printing. 12 reiterates Tragedy’s association with death, and Tragedy’s depreciative description of Comedy aligns readily to expectations we still hold for the genre: it is witty, less elevated in style than tragedy, and often presents a story involving love. Tragedy then offers a definitional picture of its own dramatic purpose:

I must haue passions that must moue the soule, Make the heart heauie, and throb within the bosome Extorting teares out of the strictest eyes, To racke a thought and straine it to his forme Untill I rap the sences from their course, This is my office. (38-43)

Tragedy defines itself by its effect upon the audience, its ability to “moue the soul,” and the description of its intended emotional effect is not far from Aristotle’s insistence upon tragedy as arousing “fear and pity”31 in its audience by its presentation of action.

Comedy offers a rebuttal of Tragedy’s high claims regarding its “office,” and the particulars of the response problematize our assumptions about the genre of the history play.

Mocking the pretentious nature of Tragedy’s self-styled purpose, Comedy offers a concrete example of an actual tragic plot:

How some damnd tyrant to obtaine a crowne Stabs, hangs, impoysons, smothers, cutteth throats, And then a Chorus too comes howling in, And tels vs of the worrying of a cat, Then of a filthie whining ghost, Lapt in some fowle sheete, or a leather pelch.

31 Though not available in English at the time, Aristotle’s Poetics had undeniable influence on thought about dramatic genres at the time: while a given playwright may not have had access or ability to read the work in Latin at the time, the writings of those who did have access to the work would still have an influence on generic assumptions. Sidney’s “Defence,” for instance, is often a paraphrase of ideas in Aristotle, and the general insistence upon the inferiority of episodic plots—or insufficiently formal arrangements of action—has at least part of its origin in Aristotle’s complaint: “Of simple plots and actions those that are episodic are the worst. By an episodic plot I mean one in which the sequence of the episodes is neither probable nor necessary. Plays of this kind are composed by bad poets because they cannot help it,” Aristotle, “Poetics” in Classical Literary Criticism, translated by Penelope Murray and T. S. Dorsch (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), 69. 13 Comes skreaming like a pigge halfe stickt, And cries Vindicta, reuenge, reuenge: With that a little Rosen flasheth forth. Like smoke out of a Tabacco pipe, or a boyes squib: Then comes in two or three, like to drouers, With taylers bodkins, stabbing one another. (44-55)

It is clear that the primary intention here, as appropriate for the more satirical side of Comedy, is to mock the simplistic theatrical means by which such “grand” intentions are accomplished, but the derisive outline a tragic plot and its conventions conforms as readily to plays we consider to be “histories” as those viewed as “tragedies.” Certainly the references to the ghost put in the mind an image of a Senecan tragedy,32 but the obtaining of a crown would seem to be the primary provenance of a history, based upon Shakespeare’s examples alone,33 while the reference to “two or three” fighting on stage could as readily be seen in a “history” as in a

“tragedy,” particularly given the induction’s emphasis on soldiers and battle as aspects of history.

Generic uncertainty regarding the nature of the history play only continues as the induction moves toward its close. When History notes that the stage is hung with black, indicating that the audience should expect a tragedy, History and Comedy realize that they must permit Tragedy to control the stage for the day. Comedy then allows Tragedy to “kil them to day with sorrow” (79) but promises, “Wee’l make them laugh with myrthfull jeasts to morrow” (80), again conforming to expectations of the genre of Comedy. While the plural “Wee” might

32 While these aspects certainly are traditional to the tragedy, the elements show up in plays considered histories almost as commonly: True Tragedy of Richard III begins with this motif, and Locrine and Woodstock also incorporate this motif. 33 While this sounds like an apt description of Shakespeare’s Macbeth—a play which, I would argue, falls within the descriptive range of the history, though it is usually considered a tragedy—Warning predates the Shakespearean play by several years, at least. It is, thus, rather a general reference to the kinds of actions that are portrayed in plays whose plots are tragic but whose source might be historical. 14 suggest that Comedy refers to both itself and History, the language about ruling the stage used throughout the debate suggests that a royal “we” is intended rather than a collective inclusion of

History. History offers its own last lines before retreating, echoing the speech of Comedy: “To morrow here Ile domineere againe” (82). Again, History comes out as less clearly defined: domineering could suggest battles or affairs of kings and lords, but, because the metaphor of ruling the stage has predominated throughout the end of the induction, the reference is not clearly suggestive of anything distinct about the genre of history.

Thus, a survey of various contemporary references gives us only the vaguest sense of history as a dramatic genre. By those who write about plays, the word is often used disdainfully, to suggest a lack of dramatic form, roughly synonymous with our term “story,” or approvingly, in reference to history as true events from the past put to dramatic use to instruct an audience.

The attribute most clear in the personification of history on stage is the inclusion of battles, an element that can hardly be said to be exclusive to history plays. Not only is the presence of battles not a sufficient condition for a play to be a history—many tragedies and even some comedies also feature battles—but it is also clearly not a necessary condition: not even all of

Shakespeare’s plays marked as histories in the folio include battles, as Henry VIII is almost devoid of any military aspect altogether and Shakespeare seems to have deliberately avoided directly presenting any form of combat in Richard II. Constructing a generic definition for the history play based on sources from the early modern period alone, thus, seems almost impossible.

But the four hundred years of criticism since the early modern period have been filled with efforts to gain clarity regarding the definition of the history play, with most efforts at least 15 somewhat related to those original conceptions. Although there have been almost as many approaches to defining history plays as there have been critics who have tried to define them, there are three general approaches that have dominated the discussion over the centuries. All three types have some grounding in the ideas present in the contemporary literature already reviewed, and each continues to have some currency in ongoing critical discussions about the genre. The first mode of approach is to base the definition of the genre upon the content of the plays—these approaches tend to emphasize either historical fact or chronicle sources for the content, and often conform to the expectation suggested in A Warning for Faire Women that they ought to be based on battles of kings. Some critics using these approaches also tend to differentiate the content of the history play as necessarily English, while others will place definitional boundaries based on how closely a given play adheres to “true” history. A second approach—tied to the contemporary suggestions of instilling patriotism and instructing by example—is to find the definition of the history play in the purposes of history at the time.

Following the work of Lily Campbell and Irving Ribner, these critics tend to find close ties between the intentions of historiographers and those of early modern playwrights, and often identify the purpose of history plays in the action’s relationship to the political affairs of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. A third approach is to attempt to define history plays by formal structure, as comedy and tragedy are traditionally defined. When the form of history is defined as a lack of form, such an approach is clearly tied to contemporary accusations regarding the formlessness of early modern history plays, but there have also been efforts to find some true

“formal” distinctions in the last century, though no such efforts—if they were made—remain from the early modern period itself. Each of these approaches offers insight and intriguing 16 possibilities regarding the interaction between history and drama on the early modern stage, but none has emerged as fully dominant, and none has produced an unproblematic definition for the genre of the history play. As Dermot Cavanaugh points out in his 2003 book on the genre,

“Conceiving of the history play as a consistent ‘kind’ of drama is problematic; all retrospective definitions will be subject to a degree of arbitrariness” because of the great variety among plays that might fit within the genre.34 Indeed, very little that is definite has been said about the genre as a whole at all: the definitions are necessarily ex post facto, and thus, rather than truly defining an independent genre, critics begin by admitting a set of plays within the category “history play” and then try to describe those plays included by characteristics that most seem to unify the enclosures and differentiate the exclusions.

The first approach seems the simplest and best, and it has been a consistent presence in the critical discussion about history plays from the period of their composition until today, but the self-apparent definition that a history play is a play about history is not without problems.

Early critics like Samuel Johnson and Samuel Taylor Coleridge emphasized the distinctive nature of the plays as their source in history. In his introduction to his 1765 “Preface to

Shakespeare,” Johnson pointed out that Shakespeare’s “English histories he took from English chronicles and English ballads,” 35 but he also acknowledged that the folio’s editors “seem not to have distinguished the three kinds, by any very exact or definite ideas,”36 and that the Roman plays in particular are not truly distinguishable from histories, as “the ancient writers … supplied him with new subjects; he dilated some of Plutarch’s lives into plays.”37 Coleridge emphasized

34 Language and Politics in the Sixteenth-Century History Play (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2003), 3. 35 In A Johnson Reader, ed. by E. L. McAdam, Jr. and George Milne (New York: Pantheon Books, 1964), 334. 36 Ibid, 322. 37 Ibid, 334. 17 the source as not merely the “chronicles” but “history” itself, as he claimed, in a history play, that “the reality is taken for granted,”38 because “[a]n historical drama is … a collection of events borrowed from history.”39 Most definitions up to the first half of the twentieth century tended to use source—whether construed as a chronicle source or as the factual events themselves—as the primary way of identifying the history play. Felix Schelling’s 1908 definition of “National Historical Drama” is an example of a definition based on sources: “A chronicle play is a drama based as to source on the chronicle history of Great Britain” and features “the presentation of historical personages in a sequence of events assumed to have a basis in fact.”40

This basic construction of what makes a history play continues into more recent criticism, as

Jean E. Howard defines the history play loosely in a 1999 article as “a drama about the monarchical history of England during the late medieval and early modern periods.”41 Recent criticism has also encouraged “a more catholic approach” to considering the source of a history play—Grant and Ravelhofer remind us that “chronicle play” is something of a misnomer: “an important historical event or a city teeming with people can be as much a source as chronicles or scripture.”42 Indeed, historical writings of all kinds—personal recollections, rudimentary biographies, ballads, and more—have been explored as sources for history plays, and we might add place-names and legend to the kinds of non-verbal or extra-textual sources Grant and

Ravelhofer identify. Thus, history plays might be defined as having content that comes from a historical source, but this mode of definition is not as clear as it might initially seem.

38 Shakespearean Criticism in Two Volumes, Volume 1, ed. by Thomas Middleton Raysor (New York: Everyman’s Library, 1964), 125. 39 Ibid, 126. 40 Elizabethan Drama: 1558-1642 (New York: Russell and Russell Inc, 1959), 251. 41 “Other Englands: The View from the Non-Shakespearean History Play,” in Other Voices, Other Views: Expanding the Canon in English Renaissance Studies, ed. Helen Ostovich, Mary V. Silcox, and Graham Roebuck, (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999), 135. 42 2,16. 18 Even a brief summary of this apparently straightforward mode of definition for the history play reveals one of its problems: is the history necessarily English history? Many critics have answered this question with an emphatic affirmative, perhaps led to do so by the exclusion from the genre of Shakespeare’s Roman plays in the folio. Although Johnson saw the Roman plays as indicative of a definitional problem for the early modern history play, Coleridge embraced the national distinction, claiming, “In order that a drama may be properly considered historical, it is necessary that it should be the history of the people to whom it is addressed.”43

Coleridge makes clear that he means by this distinction English history: he goes on to recommend that all of Shakespeare’s history plays be performed chronologically in England each

Christmas season, and that those reigns he did not cover be newly added or filled in by existing plays by other playwrights, placing great emphasis upon these particular plays as telling English history.44 While many critics have taken for granted the notion that a history play means an

English history play, some recent critics, such as Benjamin Griffin, have seen the geographical and national identification as central to the definition of a history play, as he claimed that

“subject matter from English history” is the core of what he finds to be distinct about the genre, and he claims contemporary endorsement for “the central importance of Englishness” in these plays.45 The deliberate emphasis upon “Englishness” as the key content to define a history play has also emerged as a way of seeing the group of plays included as formative of a cohesive national identity. To critics such as Griffin, the plays are defined by the fact that they indicate what it is to be English in historical terms.

43 Shakespearean Criticism in Two Volumes, Volume 1, 125. 44 Ibid, 125-26. Interestingly, Coleridge suggests that only some parts of Marlowe’s Edward II and the anonymous Edward III might also be included. 45 Playing the Past: Approaches to English Historical Drama 1385-1600 (Rochester, NY: D. S. Brewer, 2001), 17. 19 Benjamin Griffin’s identification of “Englishness” as central to many of the plays has since been challenged by Paulina Kewes, not in his assumption that the plays function as a part of the development of an identity, but in that “Englishness” itself was not a clear term at the time.46 Thus, Kewes suggests, these plays do not establish a specific national identity but variously explore the meaning of history as a part of an emerging identity.47 Further, the emphasis upon “Englishness” or even a more broad “Britishness” limits both the identity of the audience and the source of the play’s events in fairly arbitrary ways: Ribner claimed it was

“ridiculous to make generic distinctions on the basis of the national origin of the subject matter.”48 Even within Shakespeare’s plays, a definition based on Englishness or Britishness is problematic: not only is Macbeth broadly British—mostly set in Scotland—and medieval rather than ancient, it also actually features a named English king in scenes set in England. Thus, the folio’s exclusion of the play from the history genre seems to suggest that the original editors, at least, did not construe “Englishness” or “Britishness” as the defining element of the history play, and an interest in an emerging national identity could hardly be more clearly central in any play than it is in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. These kinds of elements are surely important to an understanding of many early modern plays about history, but they do not define a dramatic genre, as C. F. Tucker Brooke points out that “a grouping based on the locality of the play’s

46 Griffin himself acknowledges this difficulty, 18, but proceeds as if the problem did not matter much, and ends up including Macbeth and other more broadly British plays in his list of “English” history plays. 47 “The Elizabethan History Play: A True Genre?” in A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works, Volume II: The Histories, ed. Richard Dutton and Jean E. Howard (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 172-175. 48 The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1957), 7. This despite the book’s title. 20 action or the nationality of its hero” might be of “curious interest,”49 but it is not a unifying principle.

Expanding the discussion of history as a dramatic type beyond Shakespeare further complicates the notion of geographical and national boundaries as central to the definition of the history play. Even if one accepts Coleridge’s dictate that a true history play must present “the history of the people to whom it is addressed,” what that audience might consider to be “its own” history is not necessarily clear. While Shakespeare dramatized only British and classical history, which makes the distinction seem fairly simple, many other playwrights presented European or biblical histories, all of which might qualify as related to the audience as, in different ways, their own history. Some recent critics have emphasized the biblical cycle plays and the saints’ plays of the medieval tradition as serious precursors to the early modern history play,50 and George

Peele’s David and Bethsabe as well as the anonymous An Historie of Jacob and Esau continue this tradition into the Elizabethan age, and a “Christian” audience could hardly be said not to consider such biblical stories part of “their own” history. Further, plays presenting continental conflicts with religious significances felt by those in England at the time must also have been felt to be part of the original audience’s “own” history: Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris—a play that can be given no label other than history—is probably the most well-known example of such a play, but other examples abound, from the various plays about intrigues at the French court to the bombastically anti-Catholic Devil’s Charter by Barnabe Barnes. Perhaps the play most clearly indicating the blurring of what an audience might consider its own history is John Fletcher and

Philip Massinger’s Tragedy of Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt, a play that came under fire for its

49 The Tudor Drama: A History of English National Drama to the Retirement of Shakespeare (Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1939), 297-98. 50 Benjamin Griffin’s 2001 Playing the Past is perhaps the most notable and emphatic instance. 21 central character’s Arminianism, clearly showing the significance of the religious ideas in the play as related to England’s own history. Further, the play features a character identified only as an English gentlewoman in many scenes, suggesting the relevance of the action to its English audience directly in its staging. Even Turkish history cannot be completely separated from the history of people in London: Greene and Thomas Lodge’s Selimus, Peele’s Battle of Alcazar, and, most directly, the anonymous The Famous History of the Life and Death of Captain Thomas

Stukely—in which the central character begins as a London prodigal son in a romance plot and ends dying in battle in Morocco—all suggest an awareness of the connection between historical events well outside England and English people in sixteenth century London. Thus, an assumption that only English history could present materials that would qualify as “true” histories cannot really be borne out: the age of Shakespeare’s theater was an age when people could view English history, British history, European history, Christian history, and even

“world” history as aspects of their own history.

The same logical complaint against defining history plays in terms of geographical boundaries—that it is an arbitrary restriction rather than a definitional attribute—could be applied equally to attempts to use a temporal boundary to define the history play. Jean Howard’s definition already cited suggests that the plays had to be not only English but also “medieval and early modern,” and such qualifications are fairly typical. In his 1989 essay “Truth and Art in

History Plays,” G. K. Hunter, though interested in re-emphasizing the truth of the events portrayed as the genre’s central characteristic, defines the form as limited to England in “the feudal and immediately post-feudal period,”51 but in doing so he imposes chronology and geography as arbitrary boundaries for the genre. Some critics, who also see the genre as

51 “Truth and Art in History Plays” Shakespeare Survey 42 (Nov 2002), 15. 22 essentially defined by time period, view the genre in terms Georg Lukacs used to discuss historical novels—that early modern history plays “are interested in great historical transformation—specifically, Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare dramatize the collapse of feudalism and the rise of a centralized, absolutist state.”52 However, as Cavanaugh points out, these kinds of temporal definitions spring from the practical reality of criticism that almost “any substantive concept of the genre [of history play] originates with [Shakespeare’s] work,”53 so that these restrictions arise far more from an interest in including the plays that the folio lists as histories and excluding those not listed. King Lear and Cymbeline—as well as the Roman plays—could as readily be considered histories if not for the arbitrary temporal requirement that history plays not be ancient, but the folio did not categorize them as such, so many critics assume some objective attribute must be found to exclude them.

Another aspect of content that critics have used to define these plays, already suggested in many of the definitions previously quoted, is by the type of characters shown and the type of action represented. Again, these definitions tend to spring from a notion that Shakespeare’s plays are the definitive form of the genre, because they aptly describe the content of his plays labeled as histories in the folio. The bluntest such definition in relatively recent criticism is

Hunter’s: “a play about English dynastic politics … a play about barons.”54 Jean Howard specifies that this type of character and plot make history plays “an anxious and unstable genre

52 The quote is from Miles Taylor, “The End of the English History Play in Perkin Warbeck,” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 Vol 48, No 2 (Spring 2008), accessed February 26, 2016, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sel/summary/v048/48.2.taylor.html, 410, which discusses this notion in terms of John Ford’s Perkin Warbeck. 53 1. 54 “Truth and Art,” 16. Hunter’s essay is insightful and almost polemical in its interest in attempting to reorient the discussion away from the purpose-based model of the definition of the history play. He is also unapologetic in his simple acceptance of the plays classified as histories in the folio being the essence of the history, and so he embraces a mode of definition that proceeds by describing the key characteristics of an existing group of plays. 23 which at once insists that a strong and stable monarchy is essential to the health of the entire social order and simultaneously reveals the precariousness of monarchical power.”55 However, these definitions are applicable only to a relatively small subset of the totality of early modern plays about history—they are essentially a description of tendencies in Shakespeare’s history plays, but have no clear relationship to many other plays that can have no generic label other than history. Again, a definition is put forth merely as an effort to describe the members of a previously designated set.

Another content-based method of distinguishing the history play is to consider it to be a genre that is not about character—whether baron, king or commoner and English, British or foreign—but about political states as a whole. One version of this distinction is primarily intended to separate history from tragedy for those critics who insist, quite logically, that if there are two distinct genres, they must be distinguishable. Brooke, who subdivided history plays into five subgenres, shows this type of definitional distinction in the category he calls “[p]lays par excellence of national feeling or national philosophy,” which are distinct in that “the normal interest in dramatis personae is more or less absorbed either in the expression of patriotic sentiment or in the interpretation of problems of government and statecraft.”56 Campbell specifically sets history apart from tragedy by its focus on the political and social: “[I]t is to this distinction between private and public morals that we must look for the distinction between tragedy and history.”57 Harold E. Toliver makes a similar distinction: “If tragic ritual reconciles the audience to a higher destiny of some sort, perhaps to the power of the gods or to a world of

55 “‘Effeminately Dolent’: Gender and Legitimacy in Ford’s Perkin Warbeck,” in John Ford: Critical Re-Visions, ed. by Michael Neill (New York: Cambridge UP, 1988), 261. 56 The Tudor Drama, 303. 57 Shakespeare’s “Histories:” Mirrors of Elizabethan Policy (San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1968), 17. 24 suffering beyond the protagonist’s control, the ritual of the history play aims somewhat lower, at adjustment to political life—which may be thought to reveal destiny also, but destiny at least filtered through a social medium.”58 More recently, Phyllis Rackin in her Stages of History:

Shakespeare’s English Chronicles echoes ideas about the history play’s lack of emphasis upon the more universal aspects of tragedy to keep Macbeth and King Lear out of the scope of her study: “[Shakespeare’s] concerns in those plays center on the tragic errors and sufferings of his protagonists and their metaphysical implications rather than on the ambiguities of the historical process and the difficulties of historical representation.”59 A specific variation of the history play as essentially concerned with nation-state can be traced to H. B. Charlton, whose emphasis upon a patriotic political reading of history plays in his 1929 “Shakespeare, Politics, and Politicians” leads him to suggest the true history play is distinct from the mere chronicle play in that “the prevailing dramatic interest is in the fate of the nation.”60 This sort of definition of the history play frequently sees the plays as a socio-political morality play in which the state as a whole undergoes trial and emerges stronger. An individual person, even a king, might thus undergo a tragic outcome, but the state as a whole is the true hero of the plays, and its perseverance and well-being are the ultimate interest in the play.61

Although many history plays focus on aspects of nation and state in distinct ways—and a greater political emphasis in history than in tragedy often obtains—considering such a focus the defining attribute of a history play is problematic. One difficulty with seeing the essence of the

58 “Falstaff, the Prince, and the History Play,” Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Winter, 1965), accessed July 1, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2867737, 64-65. 59 Stages, 30. 60 “Shakespeare, Politics, and Politicians,” The English Association Pamphlet No. 72 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1929), 13. 61 The assumption, as far as historiography is concerned, is perhaps fair, but, at least in those plays as interested in drama as in “the purposes of history,” individual or universal human interest ought not to be assumed irrelevant relative to affairs of state. 25 history play in this way is that it often contradicts the real experience of the play, even in those plays in which the distinction between political and personal seems clearest: Can any audience following Falstaff through the two parts of Henry IV truly claim that their interest in him “is more or less absorbed” by political concerns? Or that Richard II does not invite us, at least in part, to care about the king’s downfall because it is individually tragic and not merely because of the prophecy that “future ages [will] groan” for it when the “blood of English shall manure the ground” (4.1.137,138)?62 Richard Helgerson points out a further complication with this definition by suggesting the definition of the English nation-state was not sufficiently clear during this period to allow it to shape a definition of the genre. He cites five kinds of English history—most focused on people lower than the barons and kings that occupy the central place in

Shakespeare’s plays—that non-Shakespearean “history” plays explore, but which Shakespeare’s plays, usually taken as the central examples of the genre, do not pursue.63

A final aspect of content often used to set apart histories from other plays is, perhaps, the most problematic but also one of the most significant: the degree to which what is presented in the play is true. The “true” or “factual” nature of the events in an early modern history play is referenced quite commonly, if not as the whole definition of the genre, at least as an important aspect of what defines the genre. The source of the play, when considered this way, is not merely the chronicle or ballad that recounts the events but the events themselves. Although most critics acknowledge that early modern notions of “truth” in history may not be completely

62 All quotes from Shakespeare’s plays, unless otherwise noted, are from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974). 63 “Shakespeare and Contemporary Dramatists of History,” in A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works, Volume II: The Histories, ed. Richard Dutton and Jean E. Howard (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003, 28, though I feel that he overstates the degree to which Shakespeare “neglects, marginalizes, or actively opposes” these kinds of history. Further, just as he rightly points out that one should not assume that all people in early modern England took the kind of history that Shakespeare seemed most interested in telling as the only meaning of history, it is difficult to be certain that audiences would necessarily see these kinds of history as truly “distinct.” 26 consistent with our own sense of synonymy between “truth” and “fact” when discussing the past, qualifying a play as a history play by its historicity is not uncommon. For instance, Mark Stavig explores John Ford’s Perkin Warbeck by starting from the definitional assumption that a history play should be “expected to follow the rough outline of historical fact,”64 and Amirthanayagam

P. David suggests that a successful history play must “tell the truth about history.”65 Hunter points out that “characters from history differ from those in the other genres in that they claim to belong to our real past,”66 but there are many plays that purport to portray historical figures but stray too far from “fact” for some critics. For instance, Brooke insists that history plays be based on “actual facts” and makes five categories for history plays, based in part on historical accuracy.

Plays that he describes as “[r]omanticized treatments of history, in which the admixture of fact possesses no real significance and deserves no special attention” are the least valid category of history play because they are not historical enough.67 Such dismissals of plays for failing to pass the test of historicity are not uncommon: Ribner denies the status of “true” history to plays he calls “historical romances” due to a lack of historicity,68 and many critics disqualify King Lear as history because of Shakespeare’s free divergence from the “facts” recorded in his chronicle sources about the conclusion of the story.

Although the history play’s distinct attribute of being based on actual past events is certainly central to what is unique about the way it functions as a dramatic type, using adherence

64 John Ford and the Traditional Moral Order (Madison: University of WI Press, 1968), 168. 65 “‘I Know Thee Not, Old Man’: The Renunciation of Falstaff,” in Literary Imagination, Ancient and Modern: Essays on Honor of David Grene, ed. Todd Breyfogle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 218. 66 “Notes on the Genre of the History Play,” in Shakespeare’s English Histories: A Quest for Form and Genre, ed. John W. Velz, (Binghampton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1996), 239. 67 The Tudor Drama, 303. 68 His list of plays, 319-327, includes plays marked with an asterisk to indicate the status of “historical romance” rather than true history play. His demoted plays include Fair Em, Shoemaker’s Holiday, James IV, Look About You, and Downfall and Death of Robert, Earl of Huntington, all of which I would argue possess significant family resemblances with history plays to make them worthy of study as such. 27 to historical truth as a way of qualifying a given play as a history is almost impossible. Plays such as King Lear and Cymbeline, though not considered histories, are drawn from some of the same sources that Shakespeare’s “true” histories are drawn from, and, as evidenced by

Heywood’s references mentioned earlier as well as in the furor caused by Polydor Vergil’s refusal to endorse as true the Troinovant origins of Britain under King Brutus, the distinction between what was considered “legendary” or “mythic” and what was “historical,” was not then what it is today, so we can hardly impose a retroactive definition of “historicity” upon the plays.

Looking at deviation from fact as a way of disqualifying a play as history might be useful if we wished only to correct historical misconceptions present in plays, but the primary interest in studying history plays is not to understand correctly the factual nature of past events, but to understand plays that purport to present the past as drama. Since we cannot know with precision what original audiences might have assumed or known to be true and what they might have viewed as merely “romanticized treatments of history,” let alone that all members of a given audience would see the same events and plays the same ways, it is worth considering the interaction between dramatic conventions and the purported portrayal of past events and people, regardless of whether modern standards find them to be sufficiently historical. For example, few critics are willing to analyze plays such as the anonymous Fair Em or Thomas Dekker’s The

Shoemaker’s Holiday as “true” histories, and yet each portrays known figures from England’s past and has at least some source in prose writings considered to be “true” histories. On the other hand, almost no critics have denied that Samuel Rowley’s 1604 play about Henry VIII,

When You See Me, You Know Me, is a history play, and yet it freely plays with historical details that at least some of the audience must have known were false. For example, Cardinal Wolsey, 28 who died before Henry married Anne Boleyn, remains Henry’s chancellor past Boleyn’s death.

Further, despite some anti-Catholic strains in the play, the king does not split with Rome at any time during the action of the play, which ends, based on which characters are dead and which are married by the end of the play, at least a decade after the split with Rome was made official.

Diversions from the facts of history in plays like these—especially for an audience that recognizes them as such—can be seen as a focus of attention for the interplay between the known past and dramatic structure rather than a reason not to consider a play a history.

Nonetheless, one cannot help but suspect that there is a line of historical fact—or at least what was assumed to be historical fact—that a playwright cannot cross in writing a play considered to be a history. However, just where that line is—apparently somewhere between Shakespeare’s tragic King Lear and Rowley’s anachronistic history When You See Me—is difficult to ascertain and thus not a dependable way to distinguish a play as a history.

A final objection to the close alliance of historical fact and historical drama must also be noted. While many critics have rightly responded to those who overemphasize the historicity of the plays by pointing out that the plays are first and foremost popular theatrical endeavors, the larger issue of historical representation is thus forced into a false dichotomy: the chronicle or the historiographer bears the unadultered events and persons of the past, while the drama is an inevitable fictionalization. Such a dichotomy is problematic, because history itself—particularly when we remember its synonymy with story in early modern England—is already a fictionalization. The notion of history as fictionalized is hardly restricted to early modern chronicles: Hayden White is probably the best-known modern historian to acknowledge and even emphasize the role of storytelling in historiography. White claims that historian engage in 29 “emplotment” in turning a “given set of events attested by the historical record,” which is never truly a story, into cause and effect relationships that make them “a story manifestly finished and complete.”69 Such “emplotment” is frequently found in the chronicles that serve as sources for early modern history plays, though many critics treat them with disdain. Ribner’s complains against calling history plays “chronicle plays” to set apart mere history from drama: “[t]he term

‘chronicle’ is used, moreover, to refer to a kind of formless, episodic drama,”70 suggesting that chronicles themselves are entirely formless and episodic. Tillyard clarifies the assumed connection between poorly constructed drama and mere recounting of the past in the chronicles when he describes the “English Chronicle Plays” as a “class, like Holinshed, [that] was practical and not very thoughtful.”71 It is true that Holinshed’s chronicles—even more than the purposefully oriented work of Hall—recount seeming random incidents largely in chronological order, so the work of connecting these events into a coherent narrative must be done by a historian or playwright with a strong sense of narrative structure. Nonetheless, as explored throughout this study, Holinshed makes summary comments about rulers at the beginning and end of their reigns and frequently construes lives of other historical figures into meaningful patterns as he records their significant contributions or deaths. Thus, while much of what is recorded may appear to be merely incident in which key figures appear in a few episodes across the years covered, even Holinshed cannot resist doing the work of narrativizing—adding the

“fictional” elements of moral reflection, imposed meanings, and beginnings, middles, and ends to shape the past into recognizable generic structures.

69 Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1978), 84, 90. 70 7. 71 Shakespeare’s History Plays (New York: Collier Books, 1962), 11. 30 While there is no unity to Holinshed’s work as a whole, no shape that is given to the overall movement of history in the many centuries and diverse locations covered, individual summaries of reigns, historical figures, and events show the prominence of dramatic structures as ways of making sense of history. This is just the kind of emplotment that White suggests historians engage in when relating history and that many literary critics claim is entirely imposed by playwrights dramatizing the chronicles. The terms “tragedy” and “tragic” are fairly common in the chronicles, and the theatrical metaphor is meant to carry with it all the meaning that an audience is to take into account in responding to “tragedy.” While more examples from chroniclers will be covered in much greater depth in later chapters, a single instance from the reign of Edward II will suffice:72

All these mischeefes and manie more happened not onlie to him, but also to the whole state of the realme, in that he wanted iudgement and prudent discretion to make choise of sage and discréet councellors, recei|uing those into his fauour, that abused the same to their priuate gaine and aduantage, not respecting the aduancement of the common-wealth, so they themselues might atteine to riches and honour, for which they onelie sought, in somuch that by their coue|tous rapine, spoile, and immoderate ambition, the hearts of the common people & nobilitie were quite estranged from the dutifull loue and obedience which they ought to haue shewed to their souereigne, going about by force to wrest him to follow their wils, and to seeke the destruction of them whome he common|lie fauoured, wherein suerlie they were worthie of blame, and to tast (as manie of them did) the deser|ued punishment for their disobedient and disloiall de|meanors. For it was not the waie which they tooke to helpe the disfigured state of the common-wealth, but rather the readie meane to ouerthrow all, as if Gods goodnesse had not béene the greater it must néeds haue come to passe, as to those that shall well consider the pitifull tragedie of this kings time it may well appeare.73

The tragic impulse—to see events as fated to bring about a negative outcome or as being produced by “tragic flaws,” whether in the sense of character flaws or of instances of

72 Marlowe recognized a tragic conclusion when he read one, and Holinshed’s clear use of dramatic metaphor made little question of the way in which the “audience” of his readers was to respond to the actions recorded. 73 Quotes from Holinshed are from The Holinshed Project, ed. Paulina Kewes, et al, accessed March 3, 2017, http://www.cems.ox.ac.uk/holinshed, unless otherwise noted. 31 misjudgment, or even both together, as Edward is guilty of both moral failings and poor judgment—is not uncommonly used to give meaning to events as Holinshed records them, and, as he does here, he even uses the theatrical nomenclature to describe the historical epoch.

Although Holinshed does not call events comedies or refer to “comic” outcomes of actions, he does create a comic shape to describe events in terms of their outcome as designed to bring unity and order: in particular, the alignment of political peace and unity as being established by marriage shows the imprint of a comic shape in the language Holinshed uses as much as in the enacting of the marriage as treaty itself. For example, under King Richard I,

Holinshed describes the resolution of the king’s conflict with Messina not only in terms recognizable as the close of a comedy but also in such a way as to suggest that the comic conclusion of peace and unity extends forward indefinitely from the moment of resolution:

But to returne now to the dissention betwixt the Englishmen and them of Messina: ye shall vnderstand that the tumult being once ceased … king Tancred shortlie after came thither, and sought to auoid all suspicion out of king Richards head, that he might conceiue of him for beeing in anie wise culpable in that which his subiects of Messina had attempted against him, and therefore hauing recouered monie of his freends, he restored vnto king Richard the dowrie of his sister queene Ioane, and further offered vnto him to ioine in new alliance with him, offering his daughter in mariage vnto Arthur duke of Britaine, the kings nephue, with a great summe of monie for hir dowrie, if it so should please him. King Richard accepted the offer, and so ioined in peace and affinitie with the king of Sicile, receiuing of him twentie thousand ounces of gold for the same mariage to be had, and an honourable dowrie assigned foorth of the lands that belonged to the said Arthur for the said ladie to inioy during hir life, in case she suruiued hir husband.

The comic impulse, too, is thus present in Holinshed, as even a “mere chronology” of past incidents evinces a desire to see an emergence of order and unity in the events of the historical record, as the peaceful resolution between two kings is described as beneficial both to the entirety of England and to the individuals involved in the marriage that solidifies the unity of the nations. 32 Regarding rulers—and other persons—of whom he approves, Holinshed frequently explains how their actions lead to “comic” conclusions, but such resolutions are also often imputed directly to God as a “primary cause” of history alongside the human actions and motives as “secondary causes,” such as when Richard I’s penitence is shown to be brought about by both

God and himself:

Also vpon a godlie repentance wherewith it did please the mercifull God to touch his hart, … he confessed the filthie life which he had in lecherous lust before that time led, and humblie receiued penance inioined him … and so became a new man, fearing God, and delighting to liue after his lawes.

Holinshed tells the history of Richard’s repentance as the story of Christian history: his confession and penance make him a “new man” because it pleased “the mercifull God to touch his hart.”

The presence of divine will in history—even if it is not the driving force of the history, as it may have been in some medieval historiography—suggests that there is an “author” to the narrative of history, and Holinshed consistently reveals a pattern of sin, punishment and redemption in his accounts. This, too, is recognizable as a dramatic genre: Holinshed makes many references to kings whose stories—especially as young rulers—are shaped as morality plays. Holinshed’s summaries of the reigns of many kings intermix the conventions of a dramatic genre and the Christian meta-narrative of history as fall and redemption. The conventions of the morality play are clearly visible in the descriptions Holinshed offers of a king and his advisors, as with Richard II:

He was of good disposition and towardnesse, but his age being readie to incline which way soeuer a man should bend it, those that were appointed to haue the gouerne|ment of his person, did what laie in them now at the first, to keepe him from all maner of light demeanor. But afterwards, when euerie one began to studie more for his owne priuate commoditie, than for the aduancement of the common-wealth, they set open the gates to 33 other, which being readie to corrupt his good nature, by little and little grew familiar with him, and dimming the brightnesse of true honour, with the counterfeit shine of the contrarie, so maske|red his vnderstanding, that in the end they brought him to tract the steps of lewd demeanor, and so were causers both of his and their owne destruction.

Holinshed’s engagement in the morality form is not limited to portrayals of kings and advisors, as barons, bishops and even the people as a whole all have their stories construed into moral patterns at different points in Holinshed’s history. Here, Holinshed records King John’s rebuke of his people’s faithlessness, which is framed as a morality as well, as John warns against corruption by

the euill disposed humors of the people concerning their dutifull obedience which they ought to haue borne to their naturall prince king Iohn, and therefore as a doctrine most necessarie in that dangerous time, he taught the people how they were by Gods lawes bound in dutie to obeie their lawfull prince, and not through any wicked persuasion of bu|sie heads and lewd discoursers, to be carried away to forget their loiall allegiance, and so to fall into the damnable sinke of rebellion.

The “busie heads” here are recognizable as morality Vices, and thus, in Holinshed, the political morality is not limited to the moral testing of a monarch, but is applicable to any and all. This dramatic genre, both in writing history and in the actual drama, does not impose a comic or tragic shape on events, but rather allows for a resolution of repentance and restoration or judgment and punishment. Both are expressive of the will of God as shaping history and giving meaning to the actions and choices of human agents in history, and Holinshed often frames outcomes of events and lives in terms that suggest an image of that ultimate catastrophe at the end of human history where those who fell to temptation without repenting are judged and those who repented and acted in faith are rewarded.

Although the various approaches to considering the content of the history play as its defining characteristic have not been able to produce an unambiguous definition of the early 34 modern history play, the relationship between dramatic form and historical source material is central to what is distinctive about the history play as a kind of drama. Whether we consider the source to be oral or written history or the events and people themselves, the interplay of the past with dramatic structures generates much of the interest in these plays, and the relationship between history and drama is not unilateral: “history” as written events of the past construed into

“story” is already using the fictionalizing elements of dramatic form in order to create meaning from past events, and, as Terry Eagleton points out, “Forms are historically determined by the kind of ‘content’ they have to embody.”74 The emergence of form from content and the construction of content back into form are significant aspects that make the history play distinct from those dramas in which the content is known to be entirely imaginative or purely mythical, and early modern playwrights used historical drama to explore the relationship between form and content. Further, the drama is itself distinct from narrative history—the emplotment that Hayden

White claims historians consistently engage in—in that drama becomes an opportunity for the dominant narrative of the chronicle to be contested in the action on the stage and for multiple possible emplotments to clash in the presentation of dramatic action. Drama, particularly in performance, thus stands apart from a mere text that constructs a narrative: it purports to present the very actions of history and allows engagement in multiple story forms and meanings at once.

The close kinship between historiography and historical drama has led many critics to a second significant way of distinguishing the genre of the history play: not by its essential content, but by its intention to fulfill, in the words of Irving Ribner, “what the Elizabethans considered the purposes of history.”75 The use of the phrase and the importance of purpose as

74 Marxism and Literary Criticism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 22. 75 14. 35 the key to the history play is usually tied to Ribner’s 1957 The English History Play in the Age of

Shakespeare, but both Campbell and Tillyard predate Ribner in taking an interest in

Shakespeare’s history plays as they fulfilled what they saw as the functions of historiography.

The basis for this mode of distinction has deep and clear roots in writings from early modern

England—the patriotic, moralistic and didactic usefulness of history plays was commonly cited by defenders of the theater as justification for their continued existence and social value. Ribner is perhaps best known for this approach to history plays because he is so thoroughgoing in his analysis of the purposes of history and how they are applicable to the dramatic works of the period. He identifies seven distinct purposes in which a given history play may engage:

“Those stemming from classical and humanist philosophies of history include (1) a nationalistic glorification of England; (2) an analysis of contemporary affairs, both national and foreign so as to make clear the virtues and the failings of contemporary statesmen; (3) a use of past events as a guide to political behavior in the present; (4) a use of history as documentation for political theory; and (5) a study of past political disaster as an aid to Stoical fortitude in the present. Those stemming from medieval Christian philosophy of history include: (6) illustration of the providence of God as the ruling force in human—and primarily political—affairs, and (7) exposition of a rational plan in human events which must affirm the wisdom and justice of God.”76

Having articulated these purposes, Ribner emphasizes that we must define the eclectic group of early modern plays about history by “the dramatist’s intention:”77 “We may then define history plays as those which use, for any combination of these [seven distinct historical] purposes, material drawn from national chronicles and assumed by the dramatist to be true, whether the light of our modern knowledge they be true or not.”78 Each of the purposes is apparent in at least some of the best-known history plays, and using these kinds of intentions to explore the

76 26. 77 9. 78 26. 36 genre of the history play has resulted in an explosion of interest in examining history plays over the last sixty years.

The first purpose that Ribner lists, a patriotic intention, has been less prominent in critical analyses of recent years, but it was among the foremost intentions of history plays discussed in actual early modern records of history plays, such as Thomas Nashe’s lauding the theater for reviving “our forefathers' valiant acts, that have lain long buried in rusty brass and worm-eaten books.”79 The patriotic usefulness of history plays has not been ignored by critics or audiences since: Coleridge stressed the usefulness of Shakespeare’s histories as inspiring patriotism,80 and his view that the plays should be performed in England both to instruct and to engender nationalistic feelings is still sometimes held today. Performances of Henry V, in particular, have often been put on in the twentieth century with a clear interest in promoting patriotic zeal, and, despite its critical re-examination by critics such as Stephen Greenblatt, the play continues to be perceived by a wider audience as a portrayal of the best of English monarchs and an ideal of

English virtue and strength. More recent critics like Ivo Kamps and Jean Howard, though not with the interest of endorsing the patriotic views implicit in the plays, continue to identify the patriotic tenor of many plays as indicative of their central purpose as history plays,81 but readings using Shakespeare’s plays to promote a patriotic view of England tend not to have much place in

79 The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (New York: Penguin, 1985), 113. 80 Shakespearean Criticism, Vol. 1, 125. Coleridge suggests the virtue of “Patriotism is equal to the sense of individuality from each individual,” and he saw the English history plays of Shakespeare as a needed antidote to the cosmopolitanism of his own time. 81 See Jean Howard, “Other Englands: The View from the Non-Shakespearean History Play,” in Other Voices, Other Views: Expanding the Canon in English Renaissance Studies, ed. Helen Ostovich, Mary V. Silcox, and Graham Roebuck (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999) which explores Edward IV as illustrative of her view of the tendency toward patriotic sentiment in history plays. Ivo Kamps, Historiography and Ideology in Stuart Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), is primarily interested in showing that the “death” of the history play is not a proper narrative of what happened in the early Stuart period, but that the earlier “patriotic” form of the Elizabethan history play could not be maintained as the understanding of historiography and history as relative to ideology and power grew, which made the form less conducive the simple patriotism of the earlier plays. 37 critical discussions of the plays in recent years, with such views typically relegated to popular audiences or political entities wishing to serve their own purposes.

While the first of Ribner’s stated “purposes of history” is not, thus, particularly current in the critical discussion of history plays, those purposes that are rooted in other kinds of political interests have held almost absolute sway over the critical discussion of history plays since the middle of the twentieth century. Both Tillyard and Campbell explored Shakespeare’s history plays in terms of Shakespeare’s political intentions but not at the same scale. Tillyard found the whole as a group to present an initial “picture … of disorder” but that “[b]ehind disorder is some sort of order or ‘degree’ on earth, and that order has its counterpart in heaven,”82 so that the entire series of plays serves as an illustration of what he elsewhere calls “the Elizabethan world- picture.” Campbell, on the other hand, is interested in exploring the political purposes of the plays, but in terms of how individual plays are “acting as a political mirror”83 for the Elizabethan and early Stuart world.

Although most more recent critics have tended to come to political conclusions fairly different from—and often directly opposed to—those of Campbell and Tillyard, approaching the plays as fulfilling the political functions of historiography has continued to be a widespread approach. New Historicist critics such as Stephen Greenblatt and cultural materialists such as

Alan Sinfield have looked closely into the political and cultural contexts of the history plays of

Shakespeare and others to question the firmness of traditional assumptions—such as those made by Tillyard—about political order and kingship, producing challenging and engaging readings of

82 16-17. 83 16. 38 many history plays in the process.84 Engagement with history plays and historiography—not as source comparison but as a function of political ideology—continues to be a significant thread of discussion for critics: Kamps explores material in his 1996 Historiography and Ideology in

Stuart Drama that is very similar to that of Campbell’s earlier work, but he focuses throughout on how history plays reflect the emphases of historical writing at the time, finding a more radical movement in the attitude toward history and historical writing found in those nearer the “death” of the genre under James. Miles Taylor makes a similar argument about the attitude toward historiography in John Ford’s Perkin Warbeck in his 2008 article “The End of the English

History Play in Perkin Warbeck.” Thus, the continued engagement in political analysis as a way to examine history plays affirms Ribner’s notion that playwrights of histories had “one fundamental intention: ‘to use the past for didactic purposes.’”85

Although the Christian medieval and ancient Stoic historical intentions Ribner identified as “purposes of history” have received less critical attention than even the patriotic intention in the last fifty years, more recent critical ideas about the “authentic purposes of renaissance historiography”86 beyond those Ribner identified have grown in prominence as “those purposes themselves continue to be debated and contested.”87 In particular, the notion that history plays engage in the historical purpose of contesting both the facts and meaning of the past has become a significant area of exploration for many critics. Phyllis Rackin’s 1990 Stages of History:

84 For examples, see Greenblatt’s chapter on Henry V “Invisible Bullets,” in Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), which offers an insightful and carefully contextualized reading of Prince Hal/Henry V, and Sinfield’s essay “Macbeth: History, Ideology and Intellectuals,” Critical Quarterly, 28: 63–77, which deconstructs “Jamesian” readings of the Scottish play. 85 Cavanaugh, 2. 86 Kamps, xiii. 87 Kewes, “The Elizabethan History Play,” in A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works, Volume II: The Histories, ed. Richard Dutton and Jean E. Howard (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 184. 39 Shakespeare’s English Chronicles is the foremost representative of this approach to history plays: Rackin identifies a purpose of history that plays can accomplish which chronicles cannot.

According to Rackin, history plays present a “polyvalent discourse that resist[s] the imposition of one single meaning.” Whereas historiography, “[a]ddressed from a univocal narrator to a solitary reader,” tended to eliminate “contradictions,” “[t]he heterogeneity of theater audiences required them, and polyphonic form of playscripts projected them as dramatic conflicts.”88

Rackin’s analysis points to the distinction between a play as another kind of text and as a performance: if a reader could engage in a certain kind of analysis of play text akin to that engaged in by a reader of a chronicle, the play in performance offers elements that no text can match, creating layers of meaning between action and word, actor and audience, all contributing to an engagement with history distinct from that of any text. Nonetheless, she continues to emphasize the significance of the history play in its relation to the historiographical source: “The products of a time when changing conceptions of historiography made history a focus for conflict between ideologies in transition, Shakespeare’s English histories play out those conflicts in the form of dramatic action and dramatic structure.” Drama, based on conflict and tension, thus becomes a space for history—even a history known as if set in stone—to be contested.

Rackin’s approach, since followed by many other critics, is particularly insightful in that it considers the purposes of the drama as distinct from rather than a reproduction of those of historiography, and contestations over both the facts of history and the meaning of those facts are ubiquitous in early modern drama.

However, as productive as the approach based on “historical purposes” has been for the discussion of early modern history plays, this mode of definition also ultimately fails to define

88 Stages of History, 27. 40 the history play as a distinct and clear genre. Critics have challenged the approach based on its failure to emphasize that these plays are not history or even chronicle, but dramatic presentations intended for entertainment and popular consumption, not scholarly treatises on history and its significance. However, Ribner himself includes a caveat that his definition “does not mean that the historical intention was necessarily more important than the dramatic one; a dramatist’s primary concern is always to create drama.”89 But even if Ribner and those who analyze history plays using a similar approach do not claim that the historical intention is the only intention, they do suggest that they have access to the purpose of the playwright. David Scott Kastan points out that to use the “intention” of the author as definitional is circular: when we look at a play to find the historical purposes, we can see them, and therefore conclude that the author intended to fulfill those purposes.90 Further, if we situate the definition of a history play in the realm of authorial intention, we put ourselves in a situation where we must depend on the very few expressions that suggest that an author intended something as an historian. Kastan cites just two examples that suggest the opposite may be true: Marston, who claims that in Wonder of Women, he does not “relate anything as an historian but to inlarge everything as a Poet” and Dekker, who wrote “as a Poet, not as a Historian, and that the two doe not live under one law.”91 Further,

Ribner’s emphasis demands not only that we make assumptions about the author’s intention, but also about playwright’s background knowledge and integrity, as he claims that the intention is valid only when the play’s events are “assumed by the dramatist to be true” and presented as such. Beyond the difficulty of peering into authors’ minds lies another problem with using

89 14. 90 Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1982), 40-41. 91 Ibid, 41. In fairness, other indicators of authorial intent do not so readily negate Ribner’s claims: Ford’s Perkin Warbeck claims to present “A Historie couch’t in a Play,” (line 14) and many plays feature inductions that suggest the usefulness of the play to follow as relative to its source in history. 41 “purposes of history” to define the history play: these purposes—engagement in political theory, illustrations to instruct rulers in right actions, commentary upon contemporary situations—are hardly distinct to history plays. Shakespeare’s Hamlet announces that the players—who are about to perform a scene from a mythological rather than historical source—are the “abstract and brief chronicles of the time” (2.2.524-525) which is clearly one of the authentic purposes of history.

With approaches based on content and intention thus failing to offer a clear and distinct definition of the early modern history play, only the least likely mode of definition remains: form. Ribner bases his turn to authorial intent on the patent impossibility of finding a formal definition: “The history play cannot be defined on the basis of dramatic form, for the forms in which we find it are many.”92 In a recent overview of the genre, Kewes concurs: “It is well nigh impossible to devise a formal scheme that would accommodate all of [those plays listed in the folio as histories], let alone devise a scheme that would account for them and for history plays by others. What is, one might ask, the common formal principle of Richard III and Henry V?”93

The enormous variety of forms in which the history play appears has led most critics to reject a formal definition entirely, finding it impossible to be made exclusive of the other two genres in the folio. If exclusivity is the goal of a definition—literally laying down the boundaries of what is included and excluded—then the history play ought to be defined by principle as the other two genres are: its “shape.” Heywood suggests that the shape of tragedy is a movement from order to destruction and that of comedy is a progression from confusion to unity, but such a deliberate structure based on shape cannot be consistently found in history plays. The “shape” left to

92 9. 93 186. 42 history then, is shapelessness. This logical classification scheme for dramatic forms requires accepting a definition for history that is not tied to its source or its purpose, but merely to its formlessness, echoing the complaints made against early modern English drama by Sidney and

Florio. Embracing this view of the history play as formally formless—what Dr. Johnson called merely “a series of actions, with no other than chronological succession” and “no plan”94 to give it any form at all—seems to define the limits of the history play clearly and effectively sets it apart from tragedy and comedy. However, all the aspects that make early modern plays about history so worthy of study—not only for political and historical engagement but also for dramatic and broadly human interest—lose any significance for the sake of an orderly classification.

Although, as noted above, most critics despair of using “form” to define the early modern history play, a few critics have attempted a formal definition based on “shape.” Kastan, after dismissing all previously attempted modes of definition in his 1982 Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time, insists that since tragedy and comedy are defined by their shape, then “the history play can only be defined on the basis of dramatic form. The history plays, or more properly

Shakespeare’s history plays, have a unique and determinate shape that emerges organically from the playwright’s sense of the shape of history itself.”95 This shape, Kastan claims, is neither the comic movement from disorder to order nor the tragic movement from unity to chaos, but an ever-moving and contingent “open-endedness,” in which even “beginning and end demand to be considered only as arbitrary boundaries.”96 The emphasis, for Kastan, in the history play is its

94 “Preface to Shakespeare,” 322. 95 Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time, 41. 96 Ibid, 48. Kastan’s reference is, in particular, to Richard II, but he is using the play as an illustrative example of what he sees as the form of the history play. 43 contingent nature and its lack of closure, as the audience always knows that the end of the play is not the final close of its action, because history continues up to the moment of performance for the audience. Picking up on Kastan’s view, Griffin embraces formlessness as a formal principle, suggesting that, rather than evincing a formal incompetence, playwrights made an essential innovation in refusing to use tragedy or comedy to shape the event dramatized, “but to let it dictate its own dramatic form.”97 Griffin emphasizes “embeddedness” as the essence of history’s shape: it is always based on a known history both before and after what is on stage, so that the audience sees what is shown as relative to the whole of history.

Although Kastan and Griffin’s analyses of the “form” of the history play as essentially formlessness made formal are interesting attempts to define histories in the same terms that define comedy and tragedy, the continuity or “embeddedness” of history, which they rightly find in these plays, does not mean that formal conventions about beginnings and endings do not communicate meaningfully nor that a playwright who has shaped historical materials according to one or more generic patterns cannot still be writing a “true” history play.98 First, it is quite apparent that no play—as Griffin acknowledges—is truly free from being dependent upon actions prior to the start of the play and considerations of implicit action beyond the bounds of the play are also possible in comedy or tragedy, so at best this sense of a play as dependent upon a larger scope of time and space beyond the play is one of degree rather than an absolute marker of a unique genre. Further, Kastan’s view of the “shape” of history is itself an imposition on the early modern history play: he specifically excludes as histories Bale’s King Johan and medieval

97 Playing the Past, 69. 98 Indeed, Griffin’s chapter on “‘Formlessness’ and Historical Drama” (in Playing the Past) offers extended analysis on ways in which Sackville and Norton’s Gorboduc, a play which Sidney himself praised for its formal propriety, reveals “embeddedness” in larger history. 44 biblical and saints’ plays as not true history plays because they are based upon a view of history that is not arbitrary and contingent, but purposeful and directed, with a clear sense of ultimate closure. To claim that any early modern playwright dealing with historical materials in drama saw those events only as arbitrary and contingent rather than in any way directed or shaped would be a difficult claim to maintain: to claim that none saw them this way is surely not defensible. Further, even in Shakespeare’s plays, the beginnings and endings are not so much arbitrary or intermediate as they are, as I will explore in later chapters, interested in engaging the audience’s assumptions about comic openings and tragic conclusions and about the ways those structures and conventions interact with their knowledge of the history before and after the events dramatized.

With the primary approaches of content, purpose, and form failing to produce a clear definition that both makes history plays a genre distinct from comedy and tragedy and provides useful criteria for examining the plays, it seems a far better option to acknowledge that the “early modern history play” is, in fact, not a distinct genre at all, but rather a group of plays bearing a

“family resemblance,” as Ludwig Wittgenstein terms it,99 and that these resemblances are best considered as effects produced by the plays in performance and as texts,100 rather than as ultimately unknowable intentions of the author to engage in either the “purposes of history” or the politics of the day. Further, we do not have to draw a sharp distinction between tragedy and history, as some critics have attempted to do, because a tragedy can bear a significant “family

99 For a more complete explanation of Wittgenstein’s concept of “family resemblances,” see Philosophical Investigations: The German Text, with a Revised English Translation, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe and Clarke A. Nelson Fund (Blackwell: Malden, MA, 2001), 67-77. 100 There is certainly a significant difference between the effect of a play as a text and in performance: when possible, I will attempt to suggest distinct elements of plays as performance, but the records of performance during the period, particularly for specific plays, are minimal. 45 resemblance” to a history play in its use of historical materials. Nor do we have to be surprised or disturbed by the presence of comic elements—Grant and Ravelhofer rightly claim that

“[p]lays with historical subjects and comic shape are [as] common” as those with a tragic structure, but most of these plays have not received serious critical attention as histories due to a bias aligning history—with its noble characters and serious subjects—with tragedy. Nonetheless, we can still find characteristics that plays about history—whether light or serious, whether about kings or shoemakers—have in common. In order to do so, rather than trying to enclose the plays within a definitional boundary, one must identify those characteristics that create the “family resemblances” amongst early modern history plays, in order to describe this class of plays by those attributes that mark it. The plays’ formal variety, hybridity of generic convention, source in the known history of its audience, relationship to history and its purposes all become, thus, not stumbling blocks to evade in attempting to clearly define what mark the boundaries of a genre, but keys to understand the nature of plays about history in early modern England.

A more integrated approach to history plays, which, though not limited to the early modern English history play, points out certain key “resemblances” that early modern history plays share with later historical dramas, is Herbert Lindenberger’s 1975 Historical Drama: The

Relation of Literature and Reality. Lindenberger’s book remains an essential consideration of the mimetic and dramatic nature of the history play, and his work identifies several key attributes of these plays, particularly those focusing on the effects created by the dramatic presentation of events both true and known. He points out that, like myth, history draws on “what Horace called

‘publicly known matters,’” because the audience “already brings to the theater” information and 46 assumptions about the “familiar story or personage.”101 Lindenberger suggests that, due to previously conceived ideas about the events and characters presented, “our first notion in reflecting about a history play is not to view it as an imaginative structure in its own right but to ask how it deals with its historical materials.”102 With this in mind, one can see a history play need not present English history to be a history known to its audience: the effects of “familiar story or personage” might readily be attained by a biblical or continental history, and these familiar elements, unlike those drawn from what is known to be myth, are seen, thus, to be both related to the actual past and to have bearing on the actual present. Further, whether the “source” of those elements is a chronicle, a ballad, a legend, or even geography or current events,103 it is the knowledge—even the assumed but false knowledge—that the audience brings to the play, not the validity of the playwright’s apparent source or how much digression from these sources a playwright can be allowed, that is significant in considering the effects of a history play. It is hard to imagine that any early modern theater-goers brought their copies of Hall or Holinshed to the theater with them, though readers may have been able to engaged in the direct comparison of a source with a printed drama—the effect of the dramatic presentation of known history is not based on a precise knowledge of specific facts but on a general conception and expectation.104

Indeed, many contemporary sources suggest that, for much of the audience, the history play

101 Historical Drama: The Relation of Literature and Reality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 1-2. 102 3. 103 Geography is a considerable influence as a “source” of prior knowledge, and one not often explored or considered, as Shakespeare’s plays tend to draw upon it less. For instance, in the play Locrine even those with very limited knowledge of the mythic past of Britain can surely recognize the names Humber and Sabrina and tie both to the rivers that borrow their names and see their drownings in said rivers as “known” history drawn merely from knowledge of geography. 104 I would acknowledge, however, that different members of the diverse audience of an early modern play might have different expectations and levels of specific knowledge about specific historical events. These varying conceptions themselves create an additional level of meaning-making in drama in performance, as the playwright, the generic conventions engaged, the performers, and the assumed knowledge of different members of the audience all contribute to the meaning of events on stage. 47 might have served as a history lesson to engage them in consideration of the specifics of a past known only more broadly. Audience members or readers of a history play were surely making meaningful connections to their current situation and previous knowledge, but these might have been quite varied across the entire audience for a given play. Readers and audiences would assimilate and revise their own expectations and previous knowledge in confronting history as drama, but expectations based on such assumptions about history are only one type of expectation, reflecting one type of source for a play. Thus, instead of drama functioning a single narrative “emplotment” of history, it creates for various members of an audience competing possible constructions of events portrayed.

Although the essential source of a history play is, thus, “known fact” or “assumed truth,”

Lindenberger also suggests that form itself is another kind of source: “One could argue that the sources of many plays consist less of the historical materials on which they are purportedly based than on the theatrical conventions which give them their essential form.”105 This, too, is central to an audience’s experience of a history play—it is not that an audience does not perceive the play “as an imaginative structure” but that, with a preconceived “source” in the conventions and shape of a given genre, an audience experiences a history play as an interaction between the

“known” imaginative structure of dramatic genres and the “known” details of the events of history. It is in this interplay that the most interesting and distinctive effects of a history play take place. When an audience comes to a play assuming that Richard III is a villainous murderer, starting the play with the soon-to-be king claiming that the “winter of discontent” is now turned to “glorious summer” (1.1.1), they hear not only irony in the moment of his speech, but recognize the ordered opening proper to a tragedy—even if the speaker of the induction

105 4, emphasis mine. 48 disdains that order rather than being the one who will tragically fail to uphold it. The fact that the speech announcing the effective and peaceful ordering of the kingdom comes from one who not only reveals his intention to disrupt that order but also is historically known to have succeeded in doing so makes the relationship between dramatic convention and historical knowledge even more pronounced. Thus, the genre and the known history act here to produce a singular effect, but it is as often the case that the two kinds of sources create tension or even apparent contradiction.

A significant component of the interaction between generic conventions and known history is the presence of beginnings and endings. Although tragedy and comedy are marked by their openings and denouements, in a history, the audience has an awareness that the start of the play is not truly the start of the action and the conclusion of the play seems simultaneously inevitably foreordained and yet not truly conclusive. Kastan claims that audiences thus see beginnings and endings as necessarily arbitrary,106 but this is a denial of the power of the presence of the generic conventions of drama, which demand meaningful bookends. Rather, a playwright shapes history with these conventions in mind but is not fully bound by either history of generic convention. Lindenberger suggests that “continuity between past and present is a central assertion in history plays” and “a writer can achieve such a continuity” by activating “the audience’s knowledge of what has happened in history since the time of the play.”107 Many early modern history plays create such a continuity, but the effect works as readily by engaging the audience in considering what has come prior to the action of the play. The beginning and end of

Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Henry VIII provide clear examples of deliberate engagement with

106 Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time, 48. 107 Lindenberger, 6. 49 both knowledge of events prior to the action and knowledge of the continuity of history up to the moment of the performance of the play. The play begins not with the Field of the Cloth of Gold, an ostentatious display of apparent goodwill between England and France that must have been known to most of the audience,108 but with a biased report of it as an event that has just occurred.

Further, the negative tenor of the conversation about the meeting not only reminds the audience of a previous event but also shapes their understanding of its significance. The play closes with the baptism of the infant who would become Elizabeth I, and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who has overseen the baptism, ends the play with a rapturous prophecy of not only the greatness of

Elizabeth’s coming reign but also the greatness to follow in the rule of the Scottish James I. The audience may not have the prior knowledge sufficient to be aware that Henry was bitterly disappointed that Elizabeth was not a son, but audience members considering the scene as history enacted might have realized that Henry would not have been especially pleased to hear a

Scottish monarch lionized as the future possessor of his throne. Such moments, Lindenberger points out, break the reality of the presentation of history, because we become conscious of its anachronistic insight, which allows us to “sit like demigods presiding omnisciently over the action.”109

The effect on the audience in which present knowledge determines the truth and meaning of the past suggests another “family” trait of the early modern history play: the dramatic presentation of not only historical events but also contention over both the facts of the events themselves and their meanings. In most plays, the inevitability of the historical process up to the

108 It had taken place less than 100 years prior to the performance, so members of the audience could have had second or third hand knowledge of the event rather than just a general cultural awareness or a possible knowledge from a history book. 109 LIndenberger, 6. 50 audience’s moment in history serves to affirm the “right” reading of history, because the truth of the outcome of history is the ultimate proof. However, many history plays, even those that appear to confirm the “right” reading of history, offer moments in which the details of the past and the possibilities of the future—which is, of course, still the past to the audience—are under discussion and open to multiple interpretations. While such discourse is often brought up only to be undercut or disproven, there are also plays that allow these debates to open up the possibility of an alternative reading of the historical events presented, as when Queen Elinor in

Shakespeare’s King John interjects doubt into the strength of her own son’s claim to the throne by “strong possession” and “right” by echoing his claims in a qualified way: “Your strong possession much more than your right, / Or else it must go wrong with you and me” (1.1.39-

41).110 Indeed, it is this contention about historical meaning that is so often of principal interest in most history plays—even those which clearly assert a specific view. At the same time, artificial effects can be created both by treating history as its own proof to endorse certain characters’ claims or actions and by using history as negative evidence, creating dramatic irony with characters whose claims are proven inaccurate either in the action of the play or by later history known to the audience. For instance, in Locrine, the title character’s promise of fidelity to his new bride in the first act is “known” to be false, as both his affair with Estrild and the existence of their daughter, Sabrina, would be well known by those with any knowledge of

Britain’s legendary history, or even with a knowledge of the origins of the name of the River

110 The aside, while easily overlooked in reading and even in performance, is surely significant, as it is a suggestion that is present nowhere in Shakespeare’s dramatic source The Troublesome Reign of King John and one that gives doubt to every subsequent action that John takes, including the validity of both the anti-French and anti-Catholic elements that remain present from the play that Shakespeare reworked into his own play. 51 Severn.111 The “right” side of the entire civil conflict in the play is thus complicated by the certain knowledge of the guilt and faithlessness of Locrine even before he commits any wrongdoing, which tarnishes not only his own side in the conflict with his wife but also the entire “British” side in the conflict with Humber, as he will go on to woo Humber’s bereaved wife, Estrild. Thus, the audience’s knowledge of a broader history can be seen as the ultimate proof to resolve any contention about the facts or meaning of the history portrayed, but that very knowledge can also create tension and uncertainty.

While I cannot pretend to resolve the critical debate or to re-define the history play in an unproblematic way, I believe that the genre is more helpfully described by its effects than defined by its essence. Further, these key descriptors create a unique set of criteria for analysis and dramatic interpretation—the “family resemblances” that do not quite define a distinct genre but do describe characteristics that are distinct about the early modern history play. Foremost is the interplay between sources in “known” history and in dramatic form—often multiple dramatic forms interact within a single play, creating for the audience multiple possible narratives, commentaries upon the meaning and shape of past events, and sets of expectations to assimilate and interpret events presented. Second is the consideration that the play’s events, locales, and characters ought to be not only known to the audience but also seen as somehow relevant to the audience themselves—that the history is in some way “their own history.” Thus, the truth of

111 Still another effect—and one that some playwrights seem to have anticipated though they could hardly know with certainty the precise parameters of the effect—is that produced by the history from the moment of a play’s initial composition and a reader or audience today. Shakespeare’s Cassius in Julius Caesar gives the sense that he realizes that the performance itself becomes part of history when he wonders upon killing Caesar “How many ages hence / Shall this our lofty scene be acted over / In states unborn and accents yet unknown!” In other instances, Shakespeare seems less prescient in his histories: one of the most obvious examples in a “history” play is the moment in Macbeth when the witches give Macbeth a vision of future kings of Scotland and they extend indefinitely into the future by a figure suggesting King James VI/I holding a mirror. Knowing that very few generations of Stuarts would hold the throne—together with a general apathy Scottish monarchs in general—renders this scene almost meaningless to a modern audience. 52 events presented and the suggested meanings of those events are not merely an abstract consideration of what may or may not be fact, but a part of the consciousness and experience— whether religious, national, ethnic, or otherwise—of the members of the audience. In these plays, the events and their meanings matter to the audience in a way that a myth known to be false or a purely fictional creation—however true it may be in a poetic sense—cannot achieve.

Finally, because this history is known and the audience is personally invested in its truth and significance, the events of each play are simultaneously contingent and seemingly inevitable.

They are contingent on what comes before and after the play, making the choice of incident as well as the beginning and ending seem arbitrary in a historical sense if not in a dramatic sense, yet the action is apparently immutable and even predestined because it is already known and complete. Playwrights and audiences engage in a dialogue of form and meaning in producing and responding to a play about history, and these effects are quite distinct from those of non- historical plays, and it is this interplay that this study intends to explore.

Throughout the chapters that follow, I will explore the loose genre of the early modern history play through the lens of more clearly established genres, drawing primarily on definitions for morality, comedy, and tragedy specific to the early modern period. Although establishing clear definitions of genres, as this chapter provides abundant evidence, was not the foremost concern of early modern theatrical culture, there is plentiful evidence for the accepted conventions and structures of these genres in the extant plays of the period, and so I will also draw from both historical and non-historical plays of the period to consider the ways in which genre functions in plays about history. I am, thus, engaging in source comparison in looking at history plays, but considering both the ways in which historical sources for plays are already 53 shaped by generic thinking and the ways in which dramatic sources’ conventional modes are modified and complicated in presenting known history. A great deal of work has been done to show the political and historical purpose and significance of many of these plays: although I draw on much of this engaging and careful criticism in exploring plays, I am interested in considering how these plays function as dramas by considering the interaction between history and dramatic structures and conventions.

With the exception of the conclusion, I have structured the chapters on plays in loosely chronological order—the order of likely composition—as a matter of convenience, not as an argument that some particular generic development is present diachronically. I have chosen some plays because they are either typical or particularly refined examples of generic trends in historical drama and others because they deliberately flout typical engagements between genre and history. I have chosen to start with what is arguably the earliest example of a play about

English history, King Johan by John Bale, and to consider how Bale’s unique historical vision impacts his use of allegory and chronicle in the play. From there, I move on in Chapter 2 to

Woodstock, an anonymous play likely from the 1590s, which is perhaps the most straightforward and thorough-going of the many history plays that use a morality motif of counselors as good and ill angels surrounding a king, Richard II in this case, as the morality protagonist who must decide between these opposing forces. In Chapter 3, I explore Marlowe’s Edward II, a tragedy which uses similar morality motifs but overwrites them with tragedy in order to reveal their inapplicability to history. Chapter 4 explores Shakespeare’s use of Prince Hal as a kind of metatheatrical experiment, as the two parts of Henry IV evince two competing modes of comic time by combining contrived conventions of a moral interlude with a festive comedy of misrule. 54 Chapter 5 looks at two complex Shakespearean examples of one of the most common generic motifs in history plays, the marriage designed to bring about comic unity. Chapter 6 explores the ways in which John Ford uses traditional aspects of tragedy—aspects used even in very early examples of history plays like Gorboduc and True Tragedy of Richard III to bring dignity and decorum to fabula drawn from English chronicles—to challenge assumptions about known history. Finally, the conclusion turns to Greene’s James IV—a play which is patently ahistorical—to consider the ways in which an audience’s assumed knowledge about history and expectations regarding genre indicate both the boundaries of drama as a presentation of history and the recognition of what philosopher Michael Oakeshott called “the practical past”112 as a powerful shaper of historical meaning. By no means is this study intended to be exhaustive— throughout I reference many other plays of the period that deal with history, and similar study of the ways in which these plays and many more use and distort genre in presenting historical events would surely be fruitful.

I will note that each play I have included is a play traditionally considered an example of the early modern English history play. Indeed, amongst those to which I have dedicated a significant part of any chapter, only Bale’s King Johan and Greene’s James IV are ever challenged as “true” examples of the genre. Further, each play I have chosen presents English history—even James IV, the “Scottish History,” predominantly features English characters—but

I do not intend to suggest that the geographical boundary is necessary to the genre. Marlowe’s

Massacre at Paris, for example, was one of the plays that would be included in this study if space allowed, due to its unique combination of tragic action and gesture toward comic conclusion. Both plays on the fringes of historicity, such as the anonymous Fair Em and Thomas

112 On History (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), 14-44. 55 Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday, and those on the fringes of what could be considered the audience’s “own” history, such as George Peele’s David and Bethsabe and John Fletcher and

Philip Massinger’s Tragedy of Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt, are referenced in the course of this study, and each of these plays could profitably be explored using the same method of analysis I use here.

Ultimately, I intend neither to define history plays in this study nor to claim that this method of analysis ought to supersede those more focused on the plays as instances of political statement or historical argument, but to offer a complementary approach, one that attempts to understand the plays as drama for their original audience. Since political and historical messages are inevitably a part of what is conveyed in the dramatic action of these plays, I am not avoiding any such analysis or ignoring the very large body of critical material dedicated to these ends: I simply wish to place such messages within the context of their dramatic presentation. It is my hope that the concrete exploration of individual plays about specific historical events using particular dramatic conventions offers insight into both drama and history as understood in early modern England, as well as into what these abstract conceptions mean as a whole. Although these are even higher ends—and more unachievable—than simply defining a dramatic genre, like any “raid on the inarticulate,” as T. S. Eliot writes, “there is only the trying.”113

113 Four Quartets. “East Coker” Section V, lines 8 and 18, in Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1980). . Chapter 1

History as Allegory:

Morality Form and History in Bale’s King Johan

In an enlightening tour of alternative literary history, Benjamin Griffin examines the role of the saint’s play in the development of the early modern history play. His book Playing the

Past makes an engaging argument for the origin of the history play not in the typically assumed path of political morality turned from allegory to historical particulars but in the forms of medieval drama that themselves presented history in dramatic form. His argument is promising, but it is founded upon suppositions extrapolated from details of a few existing plays and assumptions regarding texts that are not extant, and thus, although an interesting addition to the genetic background inherited by the history plays of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the idea’s usefulness as a critical tool is limited. Although medieval dramatic forms that themselves purported to present historical events certainly had some influence on playwrights presenting history on the early modern stage, these plays do not correspond to any specific generic shape: they are themselves primarily intended to convey historical incident, either from the Bible or from a saint’s life, so different stories are shaped by the conventions that the writers chose to use to engage with the events of their stories, using a process similar to that of the writers of the later “history plays” that Griffin rightly claims they serve as precursors for.

The primary native form that shaped the development of the history play was the morality, which takes its shape from the totalizing historical and suprahistorical vision of

Christianity. It may be historical accident that John Bale’s King Johan, usually considered the

56 57 earliest extant English play about English history,1 is so clearly an adaptation of the morality; however, the form’s dominance is no accident. A morality is shaped by the meta-narrative of creation-fall-redemption, the central myth of Christian history. Because of the power of the

Christian historical view, many historical chroniclers in the early modern period construed history as a continuous and repeated process of creation-fall-redemption, with parallel incidents throughout the lives of individuals and the fates of nations all fitting into an over-arching pattern of the creation, fall, and redemption of all of history.

The influence of this kind of story—both as the general Christian story and as the particulars of the morality as a dramatic form—is clear in the histories from which dramatists drew their materials, so dramatists borrowed back what was already borrowed from drama in the chronicles. However, early modern playwrights borrowed not only the general shape of the morality for their plays, but also the dramatic methods associated with morality plays. Few critics would deny the influence of the morality on many history plays, but there is much to be learned from a more thorough exploration of the breadth of the engagement with and manipulation of the form as it shaped both the early modern understanding of history and its presentation on the stage. In particular, the use of a “universal” pattern to shape contingent historical incidents allowed dramatists to create historical meaning as much by the ways in which they manipulated the form as by those in which they followed it.

Part of the difficulty with exploring the influence of the morality is that the genre of the morality play seems to be clearly understood, but it is, perhaps, more easily recognized than it is defined. In the extant drama of England in the late medieval and early modern period, there are

1 This assumption seems to be one of the primary targets of Griffin’s Playing the Past. In his exploration of Bale’s play, he comes to the conclusion that “In King Johan we see not the birth of English historical drama but an advanced stage of it” (45). 58 quite a few plays that are widely acknowledged to be moralities. Plays from Mankind and

Everyman to Magnyfycence and Respublica are clear examples of the genre, but even these undisputed examples show the problem of definition. David Bevington provides a typical definition: he calls it “the dramatization of a spiritual crisis in the life of a representative mankind figure in which his spiritual struggle is portrayed as a conflict between personified abstractions representing good and evil.”2 However, the difficulties with Bevington’s definition are its emphases on not only the spiritual dimension but also the universality of the central figure as a generic Christian, particularly when we see its development through the Tudor period, in which political moralities and interludes of youth took the genre in new directions. Barry Adams provides a broader definition: the typical morality presents a conflict with “a neutral protagonist poised between the representatives of moral good and evil and aligning himself with each in turn.

The plot of these plays is thus defined by a series of reversals, each representing a moral choice by which the protagonist commits himself to Virtue or Vice.”3 In the later Tudor period, allegorical plays extend the moral conflict from a single central figure to one involving allegorical representatives of different classes or types of people, as in Wit and Science, The

Interlude of Youth, Enough Is As Good As a Feast, and others. The morality was thus not a static type: it grew and developed, and these changes in form show the versatility of the form to present didactically the conflict between good and evil. Thinking of the form more broadly not only incorporates the entire catalog of plays typically considered to represent this genre, but also allows us to see how the form is extended into history plays, where the interest is not foremost in

2 Medieval Drama, ed. David Bevington (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975), 792. 3 King Johan, ed. Barry B. Adams (San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1969), 61. All quotations from Bale’s King Johan, including line numbers and spellings, are from this edition. 59 conveying the pattern itself, but in how the particulars of a given historical moment conform to that pattern.

The conventions of this form prove very influential on later drama, as Bevington explores at length in Mankind to Marlowe, but the genre was particularly significant in plays recounting historical events. Although any allegorical suggestions in the dramatis personae may be seen as evidence of the imprint left by morality plays, and most critics recognize the “Vice” as a character type in certain history plays, often transformed into a Machiavel,4 there is much more to the morality play than symbolic names and corrupting villains. Although after Bale’s King

Johan most named abstractions are excised from most plays depicting historical events, the types of the good angel, often either in an honest, loyal advisor or a faithful queen, and the tempting bad angels, usually wanton courtiers or self-serving flatterers, persist in the minds of dramatists such that history plays are filled with them.

The presence of good and bad angels suggests that the central plot of the morality, shaped as it is by the protagonist or protagonists being surrounded by those struggling to hold his or her will, is also central to many later history plays. Following the pattern of Skelton’s Magnyfycence and the anonymous Respublica,5 many history plays present the idea that the king, some other historical figure, or even the people or country as a whole must be tempted, and that the result of that temptation, for better or for worse, influences the outcome of historical events. This shape

4 Again, this connection is expounded in David Bevington, From Mankind to Marlowe: Growth of Structure in the Popular Drama of Tudor England (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980). 5 John Skelton, Magnyfycence, in Four Morality Plays, ed. Peter Happé (New York: Penguin Books, 1979). Nicolas Udall, Respublica, A.D. 1553: A Play on the Social Condition of England at the Accession of Queen Mary, ed. Leonard Arthur Magnus (London: Early English Text Society, 1905). However, I would not argue that a genetic relationship is requisite: not that later plays were deliberately built on the form that these earlier playwrights developed, but that these earlier playwrights used the form as an allegory for their moment, and the later plays apply it to an earlier time, which still comments on the moment of performance, but is layered with complexity and meaning not present in those earlier plays that maintain allegorical distance from the concrete particulars of history. 60 of history is deeply imbedded in the early modern mind: its contours are frequently visible in the chronicles themselves,6 but the dramatic conventions of the form shape many plays much more directly.

Although the form is so ubiquitous in early modern historical drama that most plays have some trace of the morality, the form is not unproblematic for the dramatic representation of known history. While acknowledging the presence of its conventions, David Scott Kastan unequivocally rejects the form as suited to history plays, arguing “that the morality structure is not conducive to the development of a secular historical drama.”7 This is, according to Kastan, because of its status as a representation of the totalizing myth of Christian history, particularly in the strength of the analogy between the play’s resolution and the ultimate resolution of all history, so that “[n]o residue of a continuing historical process remains because the event is a precise analogue to the Final Judgment.”8 Although the widespread use of so many aspects of the form in the historical drama of the period tends to suggest that some playwrights may have found it better suited to their purposes than Kastan allows, he is right to identify the tension in a generic resolution that attempts to reflect eternal judgment within the scope of historical time.

The genre’s very dependence upon divine providence rewarding those who reject vice and embrace virtue and punishing those who make the opposite choice makes it ideally suited to express historical events when recognized as part of the pattern of the Christian story of salvation repeated again and again in history. G. K. Hunter points out that, whatever the structure of a

6 For instance, in Holinshed, as will be explored at length later, the portrayal of Prince Hal’s “wild youth” is marked by references not only to living by an “evil rule,” but also to his fellows as “such a traine as dailie followed the prince.” Such comments are common in summative explanations of the character and reign of kings in the chronicles, but the “moral trial” by Vice-flatterers contending with good angel wise advisors, borrowed both from the morality play and the Biblical histories of kings such as Rehoboam, is also prominent in recounting of the events of some monarch’s reigns. 7 Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time, 43. 8 Ibid, 44. 61 single play about history, a significant aspect of its “meaning” is contained in the way that these events relate to and reflect the Christian meta-narrative of creation-fall-redemption.9 Thus, the morality, structured to relate this exact narrative, significantly informs the structure of many history plays, a genre designed to dramatize historical events as ordered by divine Providence, even while the contingency and open-endedness of history complicate its use.

Although it is often considered the earliest extant early modern history play, John Bale’s

King Johan is so closely tied to the morality form that some critics consider it not a history play at all. It was never published during the early modern period: it existed only in manuscript form until it was discovered in the nineteenth century and published in 1838 by J. P. Collier.

Although the play presents King John as a historical English monarch and involves several other named historical figures, its plot is only loosely on based on English history, as Bale’s play presents John’s struggle with—and eventual capitulation to—the Roman Catholic Church and its various representatives, all of whom act as Vices in the morality tradition. So strong is the morality structure in Bale’s play that Honor McCusker calls it “strictly a morality” and claims that “Bale had no particular interest in King John,”10 and David Kastan uses the play as evidence that the morality is not suitable for any history play.11 Certainly, its closer kin are the political and humanist moralities closer to its own period, such as the afore-mentioned Magnyfycence and

Respublica, which are not based on any specific historical circumstance. Since King Johan predates the next extant history play by nearly half a century, even scholars who may grant that it

9 Hunter discusses the significance of the Christian meta-narrative in Shakespeare’s history plays in “Notes on the Genre of the History Play,” 233-36. 10 John Bale: Dramatist and Antiquary (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1942), 88-89. Although she allows, “except as he was victimized by the Pope,” she adds “obviously his historical judgment is here sadly awry” (88-89). 11 Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time, 43-44. 62 is an embryonic version of an early modern history play commonly cite its apparent total lack of influence on later history plays:12 even later history plays about King John show no clear evidence of any direct influence from Bale. However, despite its direct dependence upon the morality form and its ahistorical presentation of its events and figures,13 the play is overtly concerned with presenting its events as historical fact, and Bale’s play is a significant example illustrating the ways in which a playwright can make use of an existing form in order to present historical events on stage. In fact, what makes Bale’s play so interesting is the violence with which he imposes the form on the events and figures of known history he presents in the play: for all that the chronicles suggest a morality lurking in the accounts of many kings, there is no hint of such a narrative in any of the sources that Bale claims to have used for the play. Although

Bale cites multiple sources in the course of the play, and the incidents and views referenced in the play support his knowledge of them, the source for Bale’s perspective in the play is William

Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man. Although most sources of King John’s known history emphasize his vices and inability to rule, the early Reformer Tyndale cites John as a proto-

Protestant martyr as a way to give historical justification to the idea that the Roman Church has abused its political power in interfering with the right of English monarchs to rule.14

12 Kastan calls it a false “linchpin” for critics looking to understand the development of the early modern history play. 13 Not only does Bale boldly and ahistorically portray King John as a proto-Protestant, he also re-orders events to fit his agenda: in fairness, these distortions are not so significantly more egregious than those in many later history plays, although there the distortions often appear to be more closely tied to dramatic purposes than to propagandistic ones, which may account for the easier critical dismissal of Bale’s play as distinctly not a history play. In defense of Bale’s methods as at least intended history, he is overt in his citation of chronicle histories, more so than almost any later play, so he clearly means to communicate to his audience that the events are significant in part because they are to be understood as true, if not precisely fact. 14 It is a commonplace of criticism on Bale to suggest that this is his source: the point is that his source was concerned with establishing a historical precedent for the abuse of papal authority, and that Bale has the same historical concern in his play, so that the play matters as history. Bale borrowed the minimal traces of a morality from Tyndale as well: Tyndale’s account suggests a kind of morality seduction of the nobility by the Pope’s agents and a moral surrender of King John to the Pope’s legate, which must have given Bale the barest suggestion of a 63 The significance of Bale’s historical vision in understanding the play and the degree to which the play’s events as history matter to their meaning make the play unlike the political moralities with which it is often grouped. In his introduction to his 1969 edition of King Johan,

Barry B. Adams explains how Bale uses the “tradition of the native morality play,” in which a playwright develops the play’s “action according to predetermined homiletic purpose.”15 Bale certainly does this, violently wrenching historical details to make the fit his “predetermined homiletic purpose,” but that purpose is distinctly historical. Rather than engaging in a purely allegorical exercise, Bale borrowed from Tyndale in turning to English history to give validation to his Reformation views. Bale’s view of history combines an abstract pattern of repeated conflicts between the godly and the forces of the antichrist and concrete, particular historical incidents that usefully illumine the current historical moment. The desire to exclude King Johan from the genre of the early modern history does not come from a clear definition of the genre which the play fails to meet; it arises from a refusal to accept Bale’s conception of history as a legitimate conception of history, but Bale’s view is different from the view assumed by most other playwrights who wrote history plays after him not so much in kind as in its forcefulness and willingness to allow the abstract pattern to dominate the concrete particulars.16

Although the abstract pattern is certainly less prominent and less forcefully imposed in later history plays, the presence of concrete particulars in the play makes it no mere political morality: although his history may be questionable, Bale means to present it as historical. His main character introduces himself as “Iohn kyng of Ynglond þe conyclys doth me call” (9), and morality, which he then forcefully imposed on the play, making use of incidents he found in chronicles elsewhere as they conduced to that dramatic form and didactic purpose. 15 58. 16 Lily B. Campbell’s exploration of the views and uses of history in early modern England is dated now, but still one of the best articulations of these ideas. See Shakespeare’s Histories, chapters I-VI. 64 he actually names his historical sources near the end of the play, as Verity defends John as “both valeaunt and godlye” (2194) according to historians from “Nauclerus” (2201) to “Mathu Parys”

(2202) and “Hector Boethius” (2203).17 Part of Bale’s project as a playwright was to project his historical vision into his drama, a vision that was designed to give historical justification to the

Reformation as a whole and the policies and positions of the existing government in particular.18

Thus, Bale is, throughout this play, very deliberate in reminding his audience that what he is presenting should be seen as fact. Bale’s historical vision turns the “Catholic” morality on its head: clerical figures, central to redemption in both Mankind and Everyman,19 are here made the

Vices and given historical identities to validate their characterization as such.

In addition to the centrality of Bale’s historical vision, his extensive use of actual historical figures throughout the play sets it apart from the political moralities with which it is more contemporaneous. The intermixing of historical particulars with the allegorical genre of the morality play is the most notable aspect of the play, one which almost all critics mention. As often happens in critical evaluations of a text, this most interesting aspect of the play as a whole is more often merely taken for granted as a matter of fact than actually explored in depth.20

Many moralities allow for a blurring of the allegorical significance of a character, so that a character such as Liberty in Magnyfycence can appear at times to be an individual courtier who

17 None of the historians Bale lists were actually nearly as positive as Bale regarding John’s character and reign, but the point is not the accuracy of the history that Bale was referencing, but that he was clearly concerned to reference it as history. 18 There is considerable evidence that this play was part of a propaganda program put in place by Thomas Cromwell. See David Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics: A Critical Approach to Topical Meaning (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1968), 98, for more on this aspect of the play’s history. 19 Both plays from Medieval Drama, ed. David Bevington (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975). 20 Adams’ introduction to his edition of the play is probably the most complete analysis of Bale’s curious dramaturgical practice, but it is intended merely as an overview to allow more general readers to understand it, not a thorough consideration of Bale’s use of the characterization and plot of the English morality to instruct his audience about English history. 65 encourages his king to be free from restrictions and at others to represent the abstract concept of liberty, especially as it tends toward license. Bale’s characters have the same polysemy: in the scene where the Vices argue over their proper entry, we are to understand that Sedition, the abstract notion of rebellion against the proper authority, is able to enter a kingdom by the work of Usurped Power, Dissimulation, and Private Wealth as concepts. However, even without being a named historical figure, Sedition can represent not the abstraction “sedition” but a single individual who is seditious, as when he interjects himself in the initial conversation between

John and England in the play.

What Bale does with his characters that is truly distinct is not merely to give them fluid representational meanings but also to make them actual historical personages. This may seem insignificant, as W. Roy Mackenzie claims that the Vices merely “pose at times as well-known historical figures,” but that there is no reason to think of them as being those figures any more than “saying the Seven Deadly Sins are really seven dramatic Virtues because when they attempt to seduce Man they usually proclaim themselves to be Virtues.”21 This underrates the seriousness with which Bale took his history: the figures here are not lying about their identities to conceal the truth of their characters from either the audience or the other characters in the play; they are revealing the “true” nature of the historical figures they personate. Because the audience is meant to see them as actual persons, the dramatic convenience of characters being abstractions is unavailable to Bale, meaning that individual people are responsible for their own actions. By contrast, in Magnyfycence, Skelton is able to have an abstract Adversity, ultimately a positive influence that leads to redemption, attack his princely hero, whereas in Bale the

21 The English Moralities from the Point of View of Allegory (New York: Guardian Press, 1966), 218, emphasis mine. 66 adversity that comes to King John is personal, so that Simon of Swynsett, even if his actions are part of the plan of divine Providence, is still individually damnable for his choices. The particularity of the characters is not incidental to the abstract pattern of the play: its concrete history matters because it is historical, and the few known responses we have to the play indicate that its audiences understood the importance of the play as history: after an early performance at

Cranmer’s during the Christmas holiday, one viewer expressed that the play “was … nawghtely don, to put down the Pope and Saincte Thomas…” and another took from the play that John was

“as noble a prince as ever was in England … [and] he was the begynner of the puttyng down of the bisshop of Rome…”22 These responses certainly illustrate a range of opinion on the history presented in the play, but both make clear that the audience understood the historical persons as historical.

Whereas Mackenzie and others who also see the play as predominantly an abstract morality miss the significance of history to Bale, others have gone so far as to claim that the historical overtakes and replaces the abstractions of the morality, as if the play itself were enacting a movement of historical thought from static, eternal abstractions to dynamic, temporal, concrete particulars.23 But no such transformation takes place in the play: the play opens with the historically particular King John, and closes with the abstraction Imperial Majesty.24 Bale does not use the particulars of history to obliterate the abstract storytelling of the morality; rather

22 Adams, 6 and 20, citing J. P. Collier from the first edition published. 23 Bevington’s brief references to the play suggest such a reading, and Ivo Kamps offers an interesting speculation furthering these ideas, as he suggests that the transformation from allegorical to historical is “the slow and extraordinary birth of historiography in literature” (54). Although the ideas presented there are engaging and tempting to see as a moment of the inevitable development of English drama, such a view is necessarily hindsight only: this reading of the play is ultimately not accurate to the work itself. 24 Although the text of the play presents the character as an abstraction, it seems apparent that in the original production of the play the figure may have been presented as to suggest Henry VIII and the later production may have suggested Elizabeth I in the character, but even this double-particularity suggests that the abstract concept of the rightful ruler is key, whether that be Henry or Elizabeth, or any other figure. 67 he gives particular historical meaning to the eternal abstractions in his play. This relationship is far more complex than disguise, the term preferred by Adams, or replacement, as if the abstraction ceased to be when the historical personage takes over. A more recent critic, Eric

Sterling, mocks Bale for finding “it difficult to keep the allegorical and historical identities of the characters straight”25 because certain print editions have Sedition listed as the speaker of some of

Langton’s lines. This suggests a profound misapprehension of how these characters relate: the abstract allegory and its concrete corollary are so intertwined that Sedition speaks in the words of

Langton and Langton speaks the words of Sedition.

Some more recent critics have begun to appreciate the complexity of Bale’s technique:

Phillip Schwyzer explains, “The allegorical and historical personae are equally ‘real’; their relationship might be most fully and justly expressed by saying that, in the reign of King John,

Sedition took the specific form of Stephen Langton.”26 What Bale does with his characters is to suggest that the Vices, when they take on historical identities, are particular manifestations of that vice, who act as real characters in the historical world, and that their actions have real, historical consequences that bear on the audience viewing the play. This technique allows Bale to show that history is the enactment of the timeless struggle between the forces of the antichrist and the godly, but that it is acted out in very literal and particular instances of historical events, rather than relying fully on the abstract, allegorical mode. The particular historical identities are neither accident nor yet essence: they are an instance of the notions signified by their names.

25 The Movement Toward Subversion: The English History Play from Skelton to Shakespeare (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1996), 11 26 Schwyzer, “Paranoid History: John Bale’s King Johan,” in The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama, ed. Thomas Betteridge and Greg Walker (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012), 509, who elsewhere still calls Langton a “disguise” for Sedition, showing how difficult a time critics have precisely defining the relationship between these kinds of characters in the play. 68 Thus, even the death of Sedition at the end is left to be ambiguous: has Imperial Majesty actually destroyed Sedition, or merely killed a particular, historical embodiment of the trait? The ambiguity of the characters is part of the design of the play, so that the victory over Sedition can be declared while vigilance against the seditious effects of papal corruption must be maintained.

Leslie P. Fairfield points out that finding “historical precedents” was a “typical activity of the early Reformation,”27 but Bale’s use—or perhaps abuse—of John as a precedent is dynamic. By placing his “eternal struggle” in a specific, contingent historical context, Bale teaches his audience not only that the eternal struggle between clerical corruption and royal authority is enacted in English history, but also that the struggle continues to the historical moment of performance, so that the audience is learning its own temporal role in this eternal struggle. Both are equally important to Bale: the past, when an English monarch from centuries ago can be shown to be in the “same” struggle with Roman Catholicism, proves the validity of the

Reformation movement, and the present is the time when the battle must be finally, decisively won.

Even among critics who take both the historical and the abstract seriously in the play, the ambiguity of the allegorical and literal sense of the character “England” is one particularly fraught with difficulties, but a proper understanding of her character reveals Bale’s historical design clearly. Bale characterizes England as a desolate widow, but one who is also the

“mother” of the other characters, which gives her a multiplicity of meanings that has allowed many different readings of her significance, both as a specific woman and as an allegorical

27 John Bale: Mythmaker for the English Reformation (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP, 1976), 56. 69 representation of the nation.28 Much of this confusion could be simplified by conceiving of the figure not as representing the entire realm or the population thereof, but as a representation of the church in England. First, the identification of the character with the people as a group or an entity seems unlikely: Bale actually provides specific characters for each class: Clergy, Nobility,

Civil Order, and Commonalty, so a generic character for the whole population would seem both redundant and allegorically unserviceable. Second, seeing her as the church rather than the nation or the land itself effectively accounts for both her feminine nature, since the church is frequently figured biblically as the bride of Christ, and her claim to be married to God, whose banishment from the realm has left her a practical widow.29 Third, this identity accounts for her refusal to recognize many of the characters as her own children, since, in Bale’s version of history, most clerical figures are bastards, fathered by the Pope and born of the whore of

Babylon. When she complains of the abuses the clergy have done to her, John chides her for speaking so about her own children, but she makes their status clear: “Nay, bastardes they are, vnnatvrall” (69). Indeed, even Sedition himself exclaims, “I am not her child!” (179). It is, thus, not that she refuses to acknowledge her own children or is more a widow than a mother,30 but that she is mother of only true sons of the church in England. She acknowledges only

28 Ernst Gerhard, “‘Impoveryshyd and mad a beggar’: Poverty and Widowhood in John Bale’s King Johan,” Reformation 14 (2009): 49-74, gives perhaps the lengthiest exploration of the character’s multiple valences. Peter Womack, “Imagining Communities: Theatres and English Nation in Sixteenth Century,” in Culture and History 1350-1600: Essays on English Communities, Identities and Writing, ed. David Aers, 91-146 (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1992), also considers the social and allegorical significance of the England as a widow in “Imagining Communities: Theatres and English Nation in Sixteenth Century.” 29 This is not to deny her individual social significance as an impoverished widow, which Gerhard argues functions in the same way the Langton is the particular instance of Sedition, but to suggest a more precise allegorical significance for the figure. Further, as the next paragraph explores, her social and allegorical significances come together in her scene with John at her death. 30 Gerhard argues that her rejection signifies that England is more “widow” than “mother,” suggesting that “the play presents Ynglond’s rejection of maternity in favour of allegiance to her surrogate husband” (55), but this need not be so, if the rejected characters are meant to be shown as not her children. The point Bale makes in her characterization is actually that these two are not at odds: she is a true mother to her true children only when she shows “allegiance to her surrogate husband.” 70 Commonalty as her son, but he needs the word of God in English in order to be a true son of

England, which is why England insists to King John that he must make scripture available in the vernacular in order to have an obedient and loyal people under him. Because this is what Bale would suggest the “true church” needs, it makes perfect sense that the widow pleads for a vernacular Bible. This reading of the character also suggests the reason for her pleading with

John not to give in to the Pope, who threatens to continue to hurt her and her “sons,” as his submission keeps the church, which here may have had a chance to break free generations before it actually did, from the corrupting influence of the Pope.

Further, if Bale’s intention was to present England as representing the church in England rather than an abstract concept of the nation as a whole, then one of the most confusing aspects of this widow—who her husband is meant to be—becomes a clearer indication of Bale’s didactic purpose. Early in the play, the identity of England’s husband seems quite clear, as she answers

John’s query regarding her spouse, “God hym selfe, the spowse of euery sort / Þat seke hym in faythe” (109-110). Although her portrayal of herself as the bride of God strongly suggests that she is meant to represent the True Church, Bale cannot present a history in which God has actually been killed. Thus, when John asks, she explains that her husband has been “exyled”

(107), but John still pushes for a clearer understanding, so she explains: “Ye know he abydyth not where his word ys refusyd” (116). Thus, her “widowhood” is curious: not only is her husband not dead, he is not even truly exiled, as the clergy could never be given credit for actually banishing God himself from the realm. The lack of scripture in the vernacular is the entire content of her widowhood at the beginning of the play, which allows Bale to emphasize the importance of one of his key Reformation principles. By presenting a time of history when 71 the Bible was unavailable to the Commonalty, Bale’s allegorical representation of the church in

England accomplishes his didactic intention.

However, as some critics have pointed out, the “spowse” of this widow becomes less clear as the play continues, and the confusion is not a weakness in Bale’s alignment of the abstract with the historical but more evidence of his violent imposition of allegorical form and meaning on concrete history in the play. When John is in the midst of his struggle with the Pope, England speaks words to him that are strongly suggestive of the two being married:31 “Yf he be acurssed than are we a mete cuppell, / For I am interdyct: no salve that sore can suppell” (1618-19). In these lines, she identifies herself with the church because she says “I am interdyct,” but she suggests a different husband for herself in calling herself and John “a mete cuppell.” She continues, “I wyll not a waye from myn owne lawfull kyng, / Appoynted of God, tyll deth shall us departe” (1622). After John has submitted himself to Pandulphus and Langton, he is poisoned by Simon of Swynsett, and England, alone at his side as he dies, confirms the marriage vows hinted at in those lines. She says, “With the leaue of God I wyll not leaue ye thus, / But styll be with ye tyll he do take yow from vs, / And than wyll I kepe your bodye for a memoryall” (2181-

83). John’s response makes even more overt the overtones of a marriage between the two:

“Than plye it, Englande, and prouide for my buryall. / A wydowes office it is to burye the deade”

(2184-85). If she seems to have exchanged her husbands, from her widowhood based on the exile of scripture from England to its renewal in losing her king, perhaps that is because this exchange is precisely what Bale intended with the scene. At the moment of John’s submission to

Pandulphus and even more so at his death, England sees clearly what she did not see before: it is

31 Ernst Gerhard treats the idea in some depth in “‘Impoveryshyd and mad a beggar’: Poverty and Widowhood in John Bale’s King Johan.” 72 the king who should stand in the place of God for the church. He is the rightful head of the church, and her allegiance to him as ruler not only of the secular realm but also as the highest religious authority in the land is the point that Bale illustrates in the scene. With John’s death,

England comes to understand that the tragedy of the play’s historical moment could have been avoided if John had only had ecclesiastical authority comparable to his secular authority and if his estates had followed him as such. By quoting the words of the sacrament of marriage—“tyll deth shall us departe”—she suggests that God has divinely appointed the king not only as the head of the state (which John and others insist upon from the beginning of the play) but also as the head of His church in the realm. By characterizing England as a twice-widowed allegorical wife, Bale uses the flexibility of the genre of the morality play to convey his intended political message: the king is the proper head of the church, just as the husband is the proper head of the wife.

In addition to his idiosyncratic characterizations, Bale exploits the conventional plot of the morality to his own purposes. Critics are somewhat divided on exactly how the play represents the central conflict of temptation, fall, and redemption. Two ways of reading the play’s plot in terms of the moral structure obtain: The more common interpretation corresponds to the broader

“social” morality of the later Tudor period, in which the estates are seen as the “Everyman” characters who are tempted by the Vice figures to turn against their king, do so, and then are redeemed in the closing scene. The less common, or at least more greatly qualified, interpretation corresponds to the “political” morality, in which the king is tempted by Vies, falls, and then is redeemed or punished. This arrangement suggests John himself is the morality protagonist, as he is tempted to resign his crown, does so, and then is brought back to power in 73 the person of Imperial Majesty at the close of the play. In his forceful imposition of the morality form on his history, Bale deliberately maps both of these conflicts on the morality plot, although he manipulates the ways in which both conflicts develop and resolve in order to make his historical purpose clear.

The first of these views shows how Bale adapted the morality structure to instruct various members of his audience. The three figures representing estates—Nobility, Clergy and Civil

Order—or perhaps four, if we allow Commonalty to be a part of the picture as well—all start the play in a state somewhat fallen. The play begins with England in despair and poverty, and John calls each of the three primary estates to account for her condition. In a common opening for a morality, all three vow amendment, and John turns to pity, saying, “owr gracyovs pardone we grante yow vpon amendment” (l. 508), but still warning them to be on guard in case “this false thefe Sedycyon / Shuld cum to yow thre and call hym selfe Relygyon” (543-44).32 These characters are then put into conversations with Sedition and the other vices, and each, in turn, ends up giving allegiance to the Roman Church and its papal agents rather than the king. This wavering between allegiances is typical of a morality play, with the figures inevitably giving in to the Vices, at least for a time. In Mankind, for example, Mankind starts squarely on the side of the clerical figure of Mercy, who warns him “Beware of New-G[u]ise, Nowadays, and Nought”

(294) and most significantly “Beware of Titivillus” (301), the devil of the play. Soon, the Vices begin to tempt Mankind away from the teachings of the church, and, after Titivillus whispers in his ear, Mankind ultimately swears “I will, ser” (704 ff) to the temptation to commit every vice.

32 Not only do many traditional moralities begin with this initial swearing to be on the side of right and specific warnings against the exact temptations to follow, but Skelton’s Magnyfycence also follows this precise model, as both Magnificence himself and Liberty are originally following proper instruction and warned against giving reign to vice. 74 Mercy then enters, distraught to find the church’s teaching so thoroughly abandoned.

In his play, Bale nearly perfectly mimics this sort of scene, but inverts its values, as John depends on help from his estates in his struggle with the church, but finds that all have abandoned him. Bale thus uses his three estate figures as “everymen” who invert the expected pattern of the morality, as each falls into the temptation of following the church rather than falling away from its teachings. As if Bale were concerned that his message has been too subtle, when John turns to Nobility after Clergy and Civil Order have made clear that they will not support John against the Church, Nobility says, “I had moche rather do agaynst God veryly, /

Than to Holy Chyrche to do any injurye” (1455-56). Bale is clear in his intention to show that the estates have not only sided with the church but also to clarify that a turn to the church is a turn away from God. By inverting the expected allegiances of the morality, Bale gives each estate a picture of what their true duties are and anticipates objections each might give to following the king rather than the Church in Rome. In this way, Bale accomplishes what typical morality plays do: instructing their audiences how properly to follow God and receive salvation.

Essentially, the message is that each estate must support the king and perform its duties, or the corruption of the church will continue to have the upper hand in all areas of governance, and the truth of salvation—available, according to Bale, only in the scripture that the Roman church prohibits—is unknown and thus unachievable.33 Bale uses his history to instruct his audience through negative example: their moral failure to support the monarch is what causes the tragic historical outcomes in the play.

33 Bale emphasizes this in the play by having John have a discussion with Commonalty just before his capitulation to the Pope and Langton. In it, Commonalty claims that he would take the king’s part, but that he is blind, because he does not know the scriptures, and that he is poor, because the clergy “fyll þer bely / With my swett and labour for þer popych purgatory” (1566-67). 75 However, as readily as this seems to map on to the plot structure of a morality play, there are several odd elements. First, the estates themselves do not suffer in any way made apparent on stage, so their turn back to the king in the play’s closing scene is curiously unmotivated, as the typical morality shows that the losses and suffering of the central figures are instrumental in their turn. For instance, Mankind is ready to hang himself before Mercy succeeds in turning him back, and Magnificence is so afflicted that he, too, wishes to kill himself before he is saved.

Here, however, the turn back to the “right” at the end of the morality play seems forced by authority rather than chosen through suffering: Verity and Imperial Majesty demand that the estates submit to their authority, as John and England had before, but this time they do so. On the one hand, this could be seen as simply a fault in the writing of Bale, hardly the only flaw in the characterization and plotting of the play.34 However, what is interesting about these characters’ lack of these common elements of the morality plot is that these very elements are put forth in the play, but with John in the role of the morality protagonist.

Although the political morality with John as the central figure is clearly present in the play, some critics have dismissed the possibility of John as the central figure because he never commits any willfully sinful act.35 However, this fact, far from excluding the king from performing such a function in the play, actually shows how Bale has forcefully twisted the expectations of the morality play and known history to accomplish his own ends. King John

34 It is possible that he did not show the negative impact on the estates as what causes them to change because that is not what he expected to motivate his audience: many (the clergy in particular) may have seen their lives seem easier or better if they had not switched their allegiance to the king, since the only clear negative might be that the king himself punishes them, which would dramatically change the tone in terms of how the “estates” are addressed. If they are not supposed to change their mind because of the practical negative outgrowth of a bad action, they are left to be motivated only by what is “right,” which may be just what Bale wanted to emphasize. 35 The most complete argument that I am aware of for the rejection of the king as everyman is put forth by Adams in his introduction to the play. See especially pages 61-62, where he claims John’s “will is unchanging” (61) and that “[a]t no point does he embrace evil” (62). 76 cannot be shown as willfully sinful because such a portrayal would disrupt the clarity of Bale’s arguments about the divine authority of the king’s right to rule and activate the audience’s negative associations with John as king. Throughout the play, John spouts anachronistic scriptural arguments about the right of princes over church authority, and he asserts that God demands that he must serve and protect his people as their ruler. When Nobility directly asserts,

“To the church I trust ye wyll be obedient” (359), John coolly answers, “No mater to yow whether I be so or no” (360). Thus, not his sinful straying but his earnest desire to help England, even if in conflict with the church, leads to John’s downfall. England’s impoverished suffering, which she brings to King John at the play’s beginning, complaining, “Alas ! Yowr clergy hath done very sore amys / In mysvsyng me, ageynst all ryght and iustyce” (27-28), has two effects.

First, it causes the king to attempt to root out clerical corruption in his realm, so that the Church in Rome comes to see him as a powerful enemy. Second, it makes John the agent of England’s redemption in the play, comparable to the characters who aid Everyman in strengthening his poor and battered Good Deeds. The clerical Vices of the Roman Church use all the means at their disposal to heighten the suffering of the English Church so that the people will turn against

John, but they make no effort to corrupt John himself, who is presented as unassailable in his moral fiber. Thus, John may appear to be above the indecisive corruptibility of the central figure in a morality play. Nonetheless, after the Vices have manipulated the estate characters to turn against John, interdicted England, excommunicated John, and threatened foreign invasion, the clerical Vices directly confront the king. When Steven Langton and Cardinal Pandulphus actually negotiate with John in the play, the scene of the interaction between “everyman” King

John and the Vices precisely parallels the typical temptation scene in a morality, but with 77 emphatic differences that Bale means to highlight by their inversions of audience expectations.

When John is put into the conventional scene wherein the Vices tempt the protagonist to turn away from the right path, he is left with only England on his side, the other estates that he has tried to depend upon, particularly Nobility, having failed him. In the typical morality, the point of such failure might be to show that the protagonist has depended upon the wrong things, such as Kinrede or Goodes in Everyman. Here, however, this pattern is inverted: John is not to be faulted for having turned to the wrong things; rather, those estates are culpable for not having supported him in his struggle against the church, as their own morality arc reveals. When faced with the demand to “submit [him] sylfe to holye chyrch here” (1665), he tells Sedition that he wishes to confer with his clergy, his lawyers and his nobility. Sedition/Langton mocks John, saying the clergy are “at a poynt alreadye,” that his lawyers will speak only “as the clergye gyue them counsell,” and that he cannot depend on nobility because “We haue him so iugled he wyll not to yow agree” (1675-79). Because of his use of a parallel morality plot, Bale has already made clear that the estates have been tempted and fallen into error, so the fault is in them rather than John. Far from passing historical judgment on John for failing to have the charisma or strength to rally his estates behind him as the audience’s known history might construe it,36 the play intends to instruct the members of those estates in the audience to give their dutiful support to the ruler. Thus, by putting John in the position of the everyman figure, Bale emphasizes that even in the scene of his own “fall,” it is the guilt of others, not himself, that leaves him without support.

36 These weaknesses in the king are the far more common way of construing the historical events referenced in the play, and these emphases in the chronicles are just what Bale intends to argue against, as Nobility avers that “Yt is yowr fassyon soche kynges to dyscommend / As yowr abuses reforme or reprehend. / Yow pristes are Þe cawse Þat Chronycles doth defame / So many prynces and men of notable name, / For yow take vpon yow to wryte them euermore; / And therefor kyng Iohn ys lyke to rewe yt sore / Whan ye wriye his tyme, for vexcyng of Þe clargy.” 78 Even so, John is not alone in his moment of temptation. As noted above, he still has his widow England by his side, and England plays a curious role in the scene, one inconsistent with her dialogue elsewhere in the play, where she is more pathetic, needing John’s help and protection. As John is debating whether to accede to the papal demands before him, she cries out: “For the loue of God, yet take some better aduysement!” (1713). And just as he is about to turn over his crown, she still insists, “If ye loue me, sir, for Gods sake do neuer so” (1716). In these lines, especially when contrasted with her position shown elsewhere, England suddenly plays the good angel to John’s everyman. Her repeated warnings, as she fears the rise of the secular authority of the Pope in her land, give voice to what should happen in the scene. Since historical fact prohibits Bale portraying John overcoming the Vices of the Church, and the entire play is meant to be an endorsement of royal authority and a portrayal of a good prince, Bale’s morality and history come into conflict: he cannot present John as making a sinful decision in this moment, but he cannot deviate so from known history as to have a Protestant Church of

England emerging at this moment. Thus, John’s lines emphasize not his weakness or an error in judgment, but his compassion:

O Englande, Englande! showe now thyselfe a mother; Thy people wyll els be slayne here without nomber. As God shall iudge me, I do not thys of cowardnesse, But of compassion, in thys extreme heavynesse. Shall my people shedde their bloude in suche habundaunce? Naye, I shall rather gyue vpp my whole governaunce. (1717-22)

Lacking support from any estate within his kingdom, to protect the well-being of the very people who have failed him, he sees that he has no choice but to resign his crown to Pandulphus. Even in presenting the king in the position of the one responding to “temptation,” John’s fall is not a 79 lesson to a king on how to rule a realm, but a warning to the estates about what evil can befall the kingdom when they turn away from their monarch.

In a scene omitted from the earliest printings of the play and unknown for the first decades of contemporary critical discussion of the play, John actually gives his crown and scepter to

Pandulphus, is absolved for his actions, and is admitted back into the church. This essential scene for any morality, the repentance and redemption of the core figure, is one of Bale’s most intentionally ironic, as he turns Catholic sacrament and ritual on its head, even while giving a relatively straightforward portrayal of it.37 The passage proceeds with untranslated Latin, with

John confessing and submitting, and Langton acting as confessor, offering John absolution.

John, who has been asserting his royal authority in refusing to allow the Pope to make

Langton—Sedition, in the play—his archbishop, here puts himself in a clearly inferior position relative to Langton. Having completed the ceremony, John acknowledges Langton as

Archbishop of Canterbury and confesses to Pandulphus in English, “I am ryght sory that euer I yow offended” (1803). Here, Bale inverts the expected order by having the repentance of the core character, complete with Roman ritual, actually function as the fall of that character. The king, Bale has gone to great lengths to emphasize, has really done nothing wrong, and he says so himself. Thus, his repentance, which should be the turning point towards the comic conclusion of a morality, is a lie, the only blameworthy act the king commits in the entire play. Further, the dialogue between Langton and the king, replete with the ritualistic Latin of the church, inverts the pattern of Everyman, where church ceremonies are emphasized as necessary accessories to

37 Compare this to some of his more overtly mocking scenes, such as the list of relics when Langton offers absolution to Nobility in lines 1213-1231. See Edwin Shepard Miller, “The Roman Rite in Bale’s King John,” PMLA Vol. 64, No. 4 (Sep 1949): 802-822, accessed March 23, 2017, http://www.jstor.org/stable/459633. for a more complete analysis of Bale’s use of Catholic elements in the play. 80 salvation,38 so that these same ceremonies become the means of the tragic fall in the play rather than being instrumental in its ultimately comic resolution. Everything about the scene of John’s submission to Pandulphus and acceptance of Langton point out the distance between the sacraments enacted as submission to God’s will in traditional moralities and those sacraments enacted by the Church upon John in this play, which show submission only to a tyrannical and illegitimate earthly authority. This, to Bale, is the tragedy of his history, that a king should have had to submit to the Roman Church.

Another typical morality motif is a scene following the “fall” of the core character, which shows the depths of the depravity that the fall of the protagonist has allowed. The convention is followed by both the traditional moralities and the political moralities, and it is typically a device used to help the audience see the Vices turn from seeming mischievous and comical to figures who have brought about real desolation in the central figure. The depths of sinfulness in the central figure become repulsive and give way to despair: even in Magnyfycence, a “political” morality, it is not the kingdom that suffers for the sins of the ruler, but the prince himself. Bale delivers this key scene in the context of the plot regarding John himself, not the estate figures.

What sets Bale’s play apart, and what may well be the hallmark of the historical morality play in which the king is the central figure,39 is that the depth of the fall is experienced not as an individual’s spiritual despair, but in the suffering of the whole nation as a result of the mistaken judgment of the king. Immediately after John’s submission to the papal legate, he comes upon a character who identifies himself as Treason, a monk who is guilty of counterfeiting. John asserts

38 Although less overtly based on church ceremony, the clearly clerical Mercy in Mankind speaks lines of Latin familiar from the Mass in encouraging the repentance and redemption of the central figure as the play concludes. 39 As will be shown later, plays about Richard II and Edward II are particularly emphatic in showing the effect of the king’s moral fall on England. 81 his authority, assuring the braggart cleric that he will put him to death. Langton and Pandulphus, still watching over John and not fully trusting that his submission to them is complete, interject themselves into John’s handling of the situation. Although John had in mind to hang the aptly named Treason, the Church protects its own, as Pandulphus says, “In the popes behalfe I wyll sumwhat take vpon me. / Here I delyuer hym by the churches lyberte” (1912-13). John, having given authority to the church, must submit and permit Treason to flourish: “I am pleased, I saye, because he ys a pryste” (1915). This scene is taken directly from Tyndale, not from a chronicle source, as it is Tyndale’s key evidence of the corruption and abuse of church authority, so Bale inserts this scene immediately after John’s fall to show the fallout from that decision. John’s authority over churchmen is now non-existent, limiting his authority over treason such that crimes can freely be committed, provided they are committed under the protection of the Pope.

This nation-wide extension of the scene of hardship and despair caused by the fall of the central character becomes a commonplace in those plays structured with the king as everyman.

This is the depth to which England has fallen when John failed, out of his sympathy for the sufferings of his people, to resist papal authority. John’s fall, presented as a type of Christ who divests himself of authority for the good of others, makes his action seem noble even though its consequences are both dire and tragic. Bale resolves the problem of what to do with his heroically futile king by turning away from the genre of the morality. The history known by his audience allows Bale to claim that King John has a bad reputation because of his conflicts with the clergy, who, in their role as historians, characterize him in such a way as to “soche kynges dyscommend / As [the clergy’s] abuses reforme or reprehend" (583-84). If Bale manages to explain away John’s known history in this way, that same history will not permit John to be 82 redeemed from his submission to the Church, as his reign actually increased the yoke of papal control when he needed the church’s aid to halt foreign invasion. Thus, Bale presents the only victory known history will permit: the death of his proto-Protestant monarch as heroic martyrdom. The play suggests that John’s death is a direct result of his conflict with the church, and Bale makes the Church guilty not only of ordering his murder by a monk but also of exonerating the clerical culprit, both temporally and eternally, by masses said for the ascension of his soul through purgatory. Some critics complain that, because the play does not conclude with this scene of the death of John, it is not a history play:40 the historical action of a king necessarily concludes with that king’s death and, at most, the immediate re-establishing of order by the new sitting monarch.41

Such an expectation is not to be met by Bale’s idiosyncratic historical morality: after John dies, there are fully five hundred lines, almost twenty percent of the whole play. Because the manuscript of the play is imperfect and shows clear evidence of later revision, it is difficult to know if Bale’s original version of the play corresponded to this curious distribution of lines.

However, since no critics debate that the long concluding scene is Bale’s own work, it seems clear that he intentionally designed his drama to have such a large part of the play take place after his protagonist’s death.42 With this curiously non-dramatic and ahistorical conclusion to an

English chronicle play, we may well be tempted to see only Bale’s polemic desire to force his political and religious ideals on his audience, but the lengthy scene actually effectively concludes

40 Mackenzie, 218, who argues that the historical “thread” could be removed from the play and it “would remain, in texture, exactly as it is now” (218). Emphasis mine: I am not sure exactly what this curiously mixed metaphor is meant to imply, but I know I don’t agree. 41 Later history plays often support this assumption: Shakespeare’s Richard II and Richard III are clear examples, as is Marlowe’s Edward II, and Heywood’s Edward IV. 42 For the long and complex saga of the manuscript, the hands apparent in it, and the suggested timeline for and relevance of it, see Adams or Peter Happé, John Bale (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996). 83 the requisite structure of the morality play and makes clear the precise shape of history Bale puts forth.

Bale’s history is, as his allegorical/historical characterizations suggest, neither precisely concrete nor abstract: historical fact is neither accident nor essence, it is the manifestation of a deeper pattern of history. The conclusion of the play is not the only evidence the play gives of this view of history: half-way through the play,43 Bale introduces a character, his Interpreter, who is neither allegorical nor historical, but a tool for the playwright to use to address his audience directly. This omniscient narrator seems to stand at the same historical moment as his audience and is almost certainly speaking directly for Bale.44 The character sums up the action of Act I and predicts that of Act II, but he also addresses the purpose of the play, to present “As in a myrrour” (1088) the actions of a king who lived when “Satan the Deuyll… / Had so great a swaye that he coulde not” uphold “the true faythe and relygyon” (1090-92). In concluding his address to the audience, he calls John “a faythfull Moyses” (1107) for his attempts to stand up to the Roman Church, but “That hys poore people ded styll in the desart dwell, / Tyll that duke

Iosue, whych was our late kynge Henrye, / Clearly brought us in to the lande of mylke and honye” (1111-13). Despite his use of historical particulars, Bale is still telling a universal history: each historical particular is situated in a larger narrative and is both a sign of things to come and a type of a figure from the biblical past. King John’s historical narrative is not limited to the immediate context of the years of his life: as the biblical Adam’s story does not reach

43 Another inconsistency in the manuscript evidence and Bale’s own record of his plays is whether the play is meant to be two parts or merely two acts: since the structure of the play clearly corresponds to its overall unity, and there is no clear and distinct unity to either of the two parts, I am treating it exclusively as one play. The lines referenced here, then, are to be seen as directed at an audience immediately before an intermission, not a promised conclusion to a story that is not yet completed, as Shakespeare’s closing lines of Henry IV, Part 2. 44 Bale was himself an actor in his own troupe, and many critics suggest that he likely played this role himself. 84 completion until the redemption of the last human being, so King John’s story is incomplete until

“Satan the Deuyll” is utterly removed from power in England and the world, as the morality play ends only with the final triumph of redemption and grace, in the individual as a microcosm of the whole universe. Although some suggest that Bale’s play ceases to be a history play in the actions following John’s death,45 doing so only imposes a view of history on the play other than that which Bale designed. Bale’s view of history as repeated cycles of the struggle between

Christ and antichrist not only makes this scene fit in his history but also demands that it be included.

Thus, the last scene is the appropriate conclusion to both the morality plot and the play’s contingent historical argument. In this scene, the final and strongest clash between the universal, eternal nature of the genre of the morality and the open-ended contingency of the play’s historical content takes place. First, very much in the moral mode, the character of Verity steps out and pronounces the meaning and resolution of the play. This reckoning seems apocalyptic:

Verity’s words are absolute and immutable, and the estate characters have no choice but to accept their truth. Thus, their repentance and redemption are not so much given and received as demanded and enforced. In a morality play, this would be final: the tempted everyman who fell is now redeemed, and his history is complete even as salvation is complete. If history allowed

Bale to suggest that the case here was the same, this concluding scene might have been able to be much shorter indeed, but in the realm of contingent history the conflict is still alive for his audience. Thus, the scene is not intended to portray the ultimate resolution of the end of time, but the very moment at which the audience finds themselves, and the audience is to identify themselves appropriately with whatever estate they are represented by. Indeed, the length of the

45 Mackenzie, 218. 85 last scene is not so much evidence that the play is not truly historical as it is an indication that

Bale is very interested in the historical and contingent nature of the events he presents. If the victory implied in the conclusion of the play were final, Bale would not need to write his play: the truth of the historical moment represented is that Clergy, Nobility and Civil Order all still waver in their moment of temptation. Thus, Imperial Majesty, assumed to be attired to suggest

Henry VIII in the original production though perhaps presented as Elizabeth I in a later production,46 is still suspicious and inquisitive of his estates after they have confessed their wrong to Verity. Indeed, although Verity appears to have absolute sway over the stage when he appears with the estates, Imperial Majesty is able to command even Verity: “Abyde, Veryte; ye shall not depart so sone. / Have ye done all thynges as we commanded yow?” (2318-19) The character of Imperial Majesty, however costumed for theatrical effect, must have suggested either an eternal monarch or the sitting monarch: the ambiguity we are left with based on the play's manuscript is appropriate to Bale's shaping of history: despite the contingent historical change through time, the monarch's authority is absolute and eternal.

Although the possibility of altering the costuming to allow Imperial Majesty to represent the sitting monarch suggests the ongoing significance of historical particulars in the play, the fact that Sedition, the primary Vice in the play, returns in the concluding scene reminds the audience that the victory represented in the conclusion is not yet final. Indeed, Sedition enters uttering the line, “The worlde is not yet as some men woulde it haue” (2462). The comic conclusion of the play, thus, is not yet final, as in a purely allegorical morality, but contingent as historical

46 Although there is some evidence, cited earlier, that the play was produced under Henry VIII, leading to the assumption that Imperial Majesty would have been attired to suggest the Tudor king, the fact that revisions from the 1560s, including references to events specific to Elizabeth's reign, are apparent on the extant MS, has led critics to assume an updated production under Elizabeth would have presented the same figure as a representation of the new queen. 86 outcomes are contingent, because the particulars of history are still in the process of being shaped. If the age of the antichrist unleashed under papal authority is passing away under the reigns of Henry and Elizabeth, it is still a clear and present danger for the church in England.

Indeed, the reign of Mary, between the two monarchs under which the play was performed, saw

Bale exiled, and so his reminder in the conclusion of the play that clerical Roman Catholic

Sedition had “bene abroade, and… playde þe knaue” (2463) would certainly echo with the suggestion of his actions in England by the time of Elizabeth as well. Although Bale has shown the repentance and political redemption of the estate figures, this reminder that the ultimate comic conclusion to the story has not been achieved serves as a warning: in Bale’s view shown at the end of the play, if the people do not follow scripture and their monarch, the current moment of proper order could revert to tragedy again. The same warning must be applied to all the estates: each needs to show proper obedience to God and king, as the lines of Sedition about specifically sixteenth-century politics and religion make clear:

In your parlement, commaunde yow what ye wyll, The popes ceremonyes shall drowne the Gospell styll. Some of the byshoppes at your iniunctyons slepe, Some laugh and go bye and some can playe boo pepe. (2522-25)

The clergymen must keep themselves aligned with the ruler, or those prelates and bishops will backslide and drive the country to ruin. The nobility must prove itself true or they will run to ruin. The lawmakers in Parliament must maintain the civil order that the monarch puts in place, or the tragedy of John will be repeated. If the antichrist of papal authority and the Roman

Church are to be defeated, they can only be overcome by the cooperation of the ruler and all estates, with each fulfilling their duties. The downfall of John in the play is meant to show what 87 wrong has been allowed in the past, and its specter hangs over the contemporary scene, threatening to undo what has been accomplished. Bale ends the action of the play with the three estate figures saying in unison: “By the helpe of God, yche shall do hys functyon” (2649), reminding the audience of their role in maintaining proper order.

After Imperial Majesty leaves the stage, the three estate figures are left to speak directly to the audience, and they do so in two Rime Royal stanzas each: these are the clearest ties to the current historical moment in the entire play, and they show Bale’s view of the certainty of the eternal, biblical scope of history combined with his anxiety over the maintenance of the victory over the forces of political sedition and religious antichrists. These speeches directly reference

England’s current queen, suggesting she is a biblical “Angell” (2675) who imprints God’s words on the hearts of her people, that she is a “Danyel” (2678) who has defeated “Antichristes”

(2679), and that she has established “The dayes of Nestor to our sowles consolacyon” (2686) for her people. Bale intends to imply that her actions have guaranteed the spiritual health of England to be as sound and long-lasting as the life of Nestor, but even this suggests impermanence: if the antichrist has been put down for this generation, it can always rise again in the next.

This last image suggests that Bale struggled to find an image to suggest the kind of stability that the comic resolution of a morality play should guarantee; however, that very failure is illustrative of the nature of the history play. As violent and ahistorical as Bale’s imposition of the morality structure is upon the known history he presents in the play, his historical purposes cannot be perfectly resolved in a way consistent with that form. History’s conclusions are always open, and if the past events cannot truly change, their meaning and permanence is always contingent upon the intervening accidents of history between the time the play dramatizes and 88 that of the audience that views it. Indeed, as Bale takes pains to point out in the conclusion of his only extant history play, those conclusions and their meanings are often contingent on the very actions and beliefs of the audience themselves. The idea of contingency is central to history plays, and even a historical perspective as dogmatic as Bale’s cannot avoid the contingent nature of his own conclusion. This is what makes this play a history play, and the interaction of contingent historical details with relatively static forms is what makes the history play what it is, and Bale’s struggle to resolve the problems of dramatic form and historical particulars are reflected in later more universally acknowledged examples of the genre. Chapter 2

History as Moral Test:

Woodstock and the Everyman King

Whereas Bale’s use of the morality is, in many ways, innovative and forcefully imposed to suit his complex view of history, it is also not likely to have been particularly influential; although there are contemporary references to the play, it was unpublished, and no later playwright so overtly used all the aspects expected of a morality in a history play. However, various playwrights exploited aspects of the morality to shape their dramatizations of known history. These later plays that use a morality motif often follow the pattern of the monarch as everyman, with his various advisors representing good and bad angels. Plays about Edward II,

Edward III, Richard II, Henry V, and Edward IV all continue to use aspects of the tradition of the

English morality play. Many of these are variations on the idea of a “weak king” play,1 but none is so clearly patterned on the tradition of the morality play as the anonymous late Elizabethan2 play Thomas of Woodstock, which clearly draws from both the religious and political moralities that preceded it.

1 Ribner was the first to use the term as applicable to a type of plays. Although not the only form of “weak king” play, as King John plays and Henry VI plays are centered on “weak” kings who are not subject to a courtly Vice characters, Michael Manheim, “The Weak King History Plays of the Early 1590s,” Renaissance Drama 2 (1969): 71-80, accessed July 10, 2015, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41917038, examined “morality” patterned plays primarily in terms of how audience sympathies are manipulated by the use of the form. 2 Because the play exists only in manuscript form, which allows for the possibility that the MS and the composition of the play are at some chronological distance, and because no record exists of performance during the sixteenth or seventeenth century, there is some debate regarding the precise dating of the play. See MacDonald Jackson, “Shakespeare’s Richard II and the Anonymous Thomas of Woodstock,” in Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England: Volume 14, ed. John Pitcher, 17-65 (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2001), and Thomas Merriam, "More and Woodstock," Notes and Queries 50.1 (2003): 27-31, accessed September 11, 2015, http://nq.oxfordjournals.org, for the two strongest proponents of a Jacobean date for the play. Their arguments are primarily linguistic, following trends in line endings, spellings, and contractions. Despite the emphatic nature of their claims (Merriam says the play is “decidedly not from 1590-1600”), it seems unlikely that a definitive answer to its dating will emerge. The point is not essential to my reading of the play, although the relationship of the play to Shakespeare’s Richard II makes, it seems to me, some version of this play likely to be the earlier one. 89 90 Like Bale’s King Johan, Woodstock was not printed during the early modern period, existing only in a single manuscript until the twentieth century. Because of the play’s close relationship to Shakespeare’s King Richard II—it has sometimes been referred to as King

Richard II, Part 1—critical interest in the play has been great since its discovery, and it has been released in three additional editions after its initial edition in 1929. The play covers part of the reign of Richard II, from the moment of his taking full authority as king after being under the protectorate of his uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, the Duke of Gloucester, to the execution of

Woodstock and uprising of his other uncles. The relationship to Shakespeare’s play is not straightforward: although the execution of Woodstock, called Gloucester in Shakespeare’s play, is perhaps the most significant event that precedes the opening action of Shakespeare’s Richard

II, characters who are killed in Woodstock appear in Shakespeare’s play, so any claims to a purposeful continuity between the two plays are dubious at best.3 The play portrays the young king under the influence of a troupe of Vices, with his uncles presented primarily as good angels attempting to bring the king to a better path. Although some critics have found the play to be radical in its politics, citing its apparent support of Richard’s uncles’ rise against him in open rebellion near the end of the play, the manuscript is incomplete, with the conclusion of the play missing. Thus, the playwright’s intention regarding the justification for rebellion against a rightful king should be held tentatively at best, and the playwright’s clear dependence upon the morality structure somewhat mitigates the more radical political readings of some critics.

The anonymous playwright was hardly innovative in seeing the morality pattern in the story of Richard II. Holinshed summarizes the reasons for his eventual deposition: “because he

3 The current doubt among critics as to the proper dating of the two plays relative to each other only further complicates any claim to a purposeful two-part structure. 91 was so given to follow evill counsell, and used such inconvenient waies and meanes, through insolent misgovernance, and youthfull outrage, though… of nature good inough, if the wickednesse and naughtie demeanor of such as were about him had not altered it.”4 Holinshed shows the nature of the king as essentially good rather than blameworthy, and the influence of his misleaders is suggestive of morality Vices without the dramatic humor that made them popular. Further, Holinshed reports that the king “was prodigal, ambitious, and much given to the pleasure of the bodie,” and he details many of the king’s excesses that the playwright chose to include in the play, particularly in fashion: “everie daie there was devising of new fashions, to the great hindrance and decaie of the common-welth.”5 Although Holinshed is no orderly dramatist, any playwright familiar with the native morality could see how to use the pattern of its dramatic action to present this reign on stage.

So clear is the pattern of the morality in the play that A. P. Rossiter, who published the first edition of the play in 1946, titled it Woodstock: A Moral History. In the play, King Richard

II is surrounded by flattering courtiers who lead him to make poor decisions that have deleterious effects on both the king himself and the kingdom as a whole. So precise is the imposition of the pattern of the political morality in the style of Magnyfycence that Rossiter claims that

“Holinshed-history has been patterned according to something which is outside the chronicle” so that the “chronicle [is] patterned on an abstract design.”6 Nonetheless, the notion that a king might undergo a morality temptation is not wholly imposition, as Rossiter also acknowledges

“that the Morality habit-of-mind persisted in both Chroniclers and History-playwrights—as

4 Corbin and Sedge, Thomas of Woodstock, Or, Richard the Second, Part One (New York; Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2002), 209. 5 Ibid, 210. 6 Woodstock: A Moral History (London: Chatto and Windus, 1946), 7-8. 92 anyone can see by studying Halle or Holinshed beside the plays.”7 Whereas Rossiter explores various aspects of the native morality in his introduction,8 many later critics have tended to minimize these aspects, usually with the notion that it offers too “simple” an understanding of the play. For example, in their 2002 edition, Peter Corbin and Douglas Sedge insist that the play is “not a narrow moral homily,”9 while acknowledging that “At a basic level we may explore

Thomas of Woodstock as a moral history, drawing on the structures and conventions of the Tudor

Interlude and earlier dramas such as Skelton's Magnyfycence and the medieval Everyman.”10

Rather than serving as mere scaffolding and offering interest only at a basic level, the clear presence of the morality in the structure of the play provides useful insights into the play at its profoundest level, as this generic form dramatizes the known history of a young king led astray in a way that agitates against more radical readings of the play.

What has proven more interesting than the play’s generic shape for most critics is the apparently radical political position espoused by the play, but the political messages of the play are significantly mitigated by aspects of the morality form. The tradition of seeing the play as radical, like the view of the play as a morality, stems from Rossiter, who says the play “seems to verge on controversial ground” by choosing to portray “a revolt succeeding, against a king who is himself in arms, all without a line of condemnation.”11 Although Rossiter carefully balances this with an acknowledgment of the orthodox views presented by the play’s protagonist, later critics have not always been so cautious: Corbin and Sedge call it “remarkably critical of

7 Ibid, 10. 8 His primary interest, however, is not in how the conventions of the form were exploited and altered, nor in how they interact with historical particulars, but in how they reflect the abstract “Moral order in the state” (11), so that the king matters more to Rossiter in his abstract role as king than in his particular manifestation in the character of Richard and the development of English history. 9 12 10 35, emphasis mine. 11 14. 93 kingship amongst Elizabethan history plays,” and Janet C. Stavropoulos sees in it an

“unorthodox political statement: subjects oppressed by tyrannical rule may understandably rebel against their king.”12 In a review of a staged reading of the play, Jami Rogers goes so far as to call the play “no doubt seditious.”13 Although the play is certainly notable for its political implications, the fact that it lacks a conclusion should make all of these claims somewhat more provisional, and, when considered in terms of the play’s use of the morality form, the political positions implicit in the play become clearer and less radical than some critics who desire to find evidence of progressive thought in the play assume it to be.

From the very beginning of the play, it seems readily apparent that King Richard is corrupt. The play “expresses its focus, as in the traditional morality play, in the struggle between the forces of good and evil,”14 and the forces are clearly defined by the two opposed groups in the play: good is to be found in Richard’s uncles, primarily “plain” Thomas of Woodstock, and evil is represented by the Vices in the play, Richard’s court “minions” and “that sly machiavel,

Tresilian” (1.1.63), his chief justice. In the first scene in which both sides appear together on stage with Richard, he allows his young, upstart followers to rise to the level of his own throne, while demanding that his uncles remain at a lower level on the stage of his court. Due to this scene, Stavropolous concludes that Richard is “[u]nlike the traditional morality protagonist, who begins as a psychologically neutral character but then becomes the strategic objective of the forces contending for his soul.”15 In her view, he thus “instantly allies himself with the evil

12 "'A Masque is Treason's License': The Design of Woodstock," South Central Review 5.2 (1988): 1-14, accessed July 10, 2015, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3189566, 1. 13 "Antony and Cleopatra/Richard II/Thomas of Woodstock," Shakespeare Bulletin 32.2 (2014): 310-319, accessed July 10, 2015, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/shb/summary/v032/32.2.rogers.html, 319. 14 Stavropolous, 1. 15 3. 94 faction.”16 Her claim that the play is unlike a morality in this way is problematic in two ways.

First, her notion of what is expected in a morality play is too limited, as plays like William

Wager’s morality The Longer Thou Livest make clear.17 In Wager’s play, the young lord Moros, his “everyman,” has no interest in the wisdom of his good counselors and almost “instantly allies himself” with the Vices of Wrath, Incontinence, and Idleness when they appear. We might assume the same thing is happening in this play, but her claim is flawed in another way: it does not accurately reflect what is presented in the play. Her view that he “immediately allies himself with the evil faction” suggests either that he is incredibly easy to corrupt or that his character was already inclined toward evil.18 However, neither of these options must be true if we simply accept that the testing and initial falling into temptation has, for Richard, happened long before the action of the play began, as the play offers no depiction of him making a moral choice in the scene Stavropoulos references. Instead, the play suggests his alignment with the flattering young courtiers is already accomplished before the play starts, based on the words of his uncles in the play’s opening scene. The audience is prepared for his placing of his courtiers above his wise uncles and thus does not see the scene in question as his making the wrong choice, but as evidence that his uncles are correct that his flatterers have already corrupted him. By this means, the implicit and overtly presented morality structure of the play serves to soften the message of the play, lessening the “radical” nature of its political statement. First, this view shows that the responsibility for what has gone wrong with the kingdom lies primarily with Richard’s flattering

16 3. 17 William Wager, The Longer Thou Livest and Enough Is as Good as a Feast, ed. Mark R. Benbow (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1967). 18 The second is quite clearly the intention in Wager’s play, whose Reformed sense of total depravity makes a morally neutral protagonist theologically impossible. Moros, as his name suggests, falls quickly to the Vices and is never recovered, ending the play carried off to hell. 95 minions, a clear method of minimizing the blame assigned to God’s appointed deputy, and, second, that the king is not himself evil, but corrupted and in need of conversion, not deposition or rebellion.

It is, nonetheless, a fair observation that the play does not open with a “morally neutral” protagonist: it does not open with the protagonist at all, but with a scene that prepares for how to view his moral state. The first scene shows York and Lancaster, the sons of Richard’s grandfather Edward III, brothers to his father Edward the Black Prince, alarmed that they are being poisoned as they sit down to eat. The opening must have been a striking bit of drama, both an utterly chaotic opening to a play, with cries and hasty entrances from multiple doors, and a perverse display combining feasting and battle, as half of those on stage bear swords and the other half are “armed” with dinner knives. This unnatural opening certainly is an indicator of the state of the nation under King Richard, but it does not present us with an evil monarch, at least according to those who were to be the victims in the scene. York first asks if their “cousin king”

(1.1.8) could be responsible, and Lancaster—whose different reaction from that of his brothers is notable—assumes that the king is responsible, calling him “so wild a prince, / So far degenerate from his noble father” (1.1.28-29) and expressing outrage that the king could “[p]oison his subjects, / His royal uncles!” (50-51) However, York, knowing that the guilty party is uncertain, is careful to note, “We may do wrong unto our cousin king: / I fear his flattering minions more than him” (1.1. 47-48). Cheney, whom their brother Woodstock, Lord Protector of the realm in the play, sent to stop the plotted slaughter, assures the king’s uncles “[t]hat not King Richard but his flatterers, / … / Had all great hands this conspiracy” (1.1.61-65). Lancaster ultimately accepts this version of the story, although he remains hot for revenge on Richard’s flatterers. 96 Thus, from the very beginning, those who might seem to have the most reason to consider

Richard evil claim that those who surround the king, not the king himself, are to blame.

This deflection is certainly politically convenient: it allows the king to be seen as a poor ruler, without placing the blame directly upon the king himself. God’s appointed ruler could hardly be seen to be himself the cause of the wrong that occurred under the king, so putting as much as possible on to the “advisor” figures makes the king somewhat less culpable. Corbin and

Sedge point out that play ensures that "the focus of the audience's criticism is partially deflected from the King toward his minions and supporters.” Further, they argue that “the dramatist emphasises the manipulation of the… King by the flatterers,” presenting the “corruption and villainy of Richard's supporters rather than the personal failings of the misled King.”19 Although

Corbin and Sedge attempt to minimize the morality aspect of the play in their explanations, the fact that they call the king “misled” is exactly correct: the playwright uses the morality structure to deflect blame from the king to his retinue, which is as dramatically convenient as it is politically expedient.

The notion that the king is misled is made most clear in the first scene by Woodstock himself, who is the strongest proponent of the “morality” narrative for the king throughout the entire play: he assures his brothers, “I swear / King Richard loves you all; and, credit me, / The princely gentleman is innocent / Of this black deed, and base conspiracy” (1.1.133-136), but adds, “I have found out the disease: /… / King Richard’s wounded with a wanton humour, /

Lulled and secured by flattering sycophants” (1.1.142-45). Although he makes the same point in deflecting blame, he also clearly gives the role of a morality protagonist to Richard: he is not guilty of this outrage, but he is being “misled,” suggesting that he has already gone from a

19 12-14. 97 morally neutral state into his descent into depravity. The image of disease, referenced in

Woodstock’s first account of Richard’s position relative to his courtly associates, suggests an attack or disorder of an initially sound body—an image consistent with that moral state of the everyman of a traditional morality as well. The image is prevalent in the uncles’ explanations of the state under the king, further arguing for his initial goodness: Woodstock calls them “cankers”

(1.3.155) that are now stealing honor from more deserving subjects, eating the “fruit / That planting and good husbandry hath nourished” (155-56). The idea that the king has received good service and has appointed his leaders well in the past is as plain in Woodstock’s metaphor as the idea that the “cankers” are responsible for the fact that he has not continued to do well. The image of his natural development being diseased by these “cankers” is also implicit in

Woodstock’s summary of his nephew’s character to his new bride, Queen Anne: in a carefully balanced speech, he mentions the king’s “unsettled youth,” but assures her “he’s but a blossom, /

But his maturity I hope you’ll find / True English bred, a king loving and kind (1.3.25-32).

Although he disapproves of those the king surrounds himself with, he finds the flowering of his character yet unsettled, believing that he can yet become a good king, despite these “cankers.”

Although there is little doubt that Richard’s uncles, most particularly Woodstock himself, construe Richard’s story as a morality play that is already half-way through the descent into depravity, the playwright is not necessarily presenting that as the authoritative truth about his history. History is meaningful because of how it is constructed into narratives, and those constructions are frequently contested within the plays themselves, so we cannot assume that dialogue from characters who construe the events around them as a morality means that the audience must understand the play in that way. Indeed, in response to Woodstock’s “canker” 98 narrative, in which the innocent Richard is overcome by diseased Vices, Richard himself claims,

“We shall ere long be past Protectorship, / Then will we rule ourself and even till then / We let ye know those gifts are given to them. / We did it, Woodstock” (1.3.162-65). Richard’s version of the story, maintained by his “flatterers” when they are around him, is that of a young man unfairly ruled and held back by “greybeards” (2.2.171). Although these two competing narratives could be seen to be equally plausible, the playwright’s very use of the conventions of the morality affirms that his uncle’s construction of Richard’s history is true, at least in the world of the play. Even his speech asserting his autonomy echoes the conventional boast of a morality protagonist in the clutches of the Vices: Wager’s Moros asserts, “Let them be sure I will do what

I may; / I will be known in authority, that I will” (1363-64).

The playwright is consistent, perhaps even insistent, upon presenting those who surround the king as Vices directly lifted from a morality play. Rossiter identifies Greene as the

“Flatterer—the Vice of Kings,” and he refers to Nimble and Tresillian as “legal Vices,” seeing

Nimble in “comic” scenes especially as “[c]lose …to the traditional Vice.”20 Corbin and Sedge further acknowledge the similarity between Tresilian and a Vice, tying him particularly to Crafty

Conveyance from Skelton’s Magnyfycence.21 These are certainly valid impressions, but the playwright is not incidentally connecting the characters to these morality elements, but rather deliberately presenting them in this way as the cornerstone of the structure of his history.

Immediately after Woodstock’s “moral” construction of the story of the young king, the scene shifts to reveal those he holds responsible for Richard’s decline, and, without the need to disguise their true nature for a more public audience, they immediately behave as Vices.

20 32-36. 21 35. 99 First, Tresilian, Bagot, and Greene all reveal that they have plotted the downfall of the king’s uncles, confirming what was claimed in 1.1. Further, their language is Vice-like, both in its harshness and in its inversion of traditional categories of right and wrong, as they curse the friar who revealed their conspiracy to kill the king’s uncles, calling him a “traitor” (7), “false slave” (11), and “fainting villain” (10), and cursing him to “[e]ternal torments” (8) and “a deeper hell than Limbo Patrum” (9) and calling for “[c]onfusion [to] crush his soul” (10) and

“[m]ischief [to] devour him” (12). In a perfect imitation of a Vice greedily seeking rule over a human soul, Greene complains, “Had they been dead, we’d ruled the realm and him” (19). In this line, Greene makes clear not only that they are themselves violent and treacherous but also that they seek to “rule” the king. Such rule by the Vices not only dramatically fulfills the typical goal of the Vice in a morality play but also, because the play is intended to portray actual history, inverts the proper order of their relations, as subjects would then rule the king, as well as the kingdom. Thus, the stakes are different for the Vices in the contingent world of history. Bagot assures Greene and the others that they shall yet prevail, and brags of their success, “we have so wrought / With kingly Richard that by his consent / You are already mounted on your footcloth /

Your scarlet or your purple, which ye please, / And shortly are to underprop the name— / Mark me, Tresilian—of Lord Chief Justice of England” (1.2.23-28). Woodstock has just claimed that these men are corruptors of the wild young king, and here they clearly affirm his story, showing how they have “wrought” him and that their ultimate goal is to “rule” him. The playwright has designed the play such that Woodstock constructs the known history of Richard II for the audience, and the following scenes confirm that construction, making history its own best evidence. 100 It is not until the next scene that we actually see the two opposed sides together, and their interaction with the king only serves to reinforce further that the way that Woodstock has construed history is correct. Although it is true that the scene begins with Richard elevating his minions to “high places by King Richard’s side” (1.3.2) while keeping his uncles below, the audiences sees this as Woodstock construes it: one more step in the descent into misrule down which the Vices are dragging the young king. One of the key elements of the history play is its dependence upon an assumed story before and beyond what is presented on stage, so that all portrayed events are necessarily contingent upon what has gone before and their meaning is colored by events that follow. Because the playwright has done so much work to be sure that his audience will recognize the dramatic structure of the morality in the way he has presented his history thus far, the audience does not assume that we are seeing a king who is intrinsically allied with evil in his very nature. Instead, the audience recognizes that the young king is like a morality protagonist who is already on his path toward being ruled by the Vices that seek to control him. The elevation of the Vices is particularly notable in the moral tradition: in The

Castle of Perseverance, each Vice has his own elevated throne, and when Humanum Genus, the everyman of the play, ascends to their dais, the Vices have him in their grip. Although she does not connect it to the morality tradition, Janet Stravopolous also sees this scene as key: “In so positioning the upstarts, the dramatist clarifies the precise nature of Richard’s affiliation with evil: the parasites become extensions of Richard himself, collocated with the king” (4). What

Stravopolous misses is how this staging, in relation to the morality tradition, shows that they are not truly extensions of Richard’s power, but that he is under theirs. As such, although Richard 101 claims that he makes his own decisions, as Magnificence and Mankind do, his authority is no longer his own.

Also borrowed from the traditional morality is the construction of a counter-narrative, supplied by the Vices themselves, to the correct, eternally true perspective, represented in this play through Woodstock. Richard’s claim to make his own decisions in promoting his friends to undeserved positions actually only reveals how thoroughly in their grip he is. The lie of self- sufficiency is one of the most potent lies of Vices in morality plays, and this is the exact flattery that these court minions put into the king’s head. In Act II, scene 1, the playwright confirms that his history corresponds with a morality in this way as well. Here, Bushy and Scroop are added to

Greene, Bagot and Tresilian as the sum of his flatterers, and Bushy expresses most plainly the

“lie” of the Vices, that counter-narrative to “truth” that appeals to pride and flatters the sinner into trusting himself and the Vice. “Your uncles seek to overturn your state, / To awe ye like a child, that they alone / May at their pleasures thrust you from the throne” (11-13). Greene,

Scroop, and Bagot finish the story, calling the king “the sun” (14) and a youthful “lion” (18), encouraging him to “let them know the power of majesty” (17), and Greene more overtly advises, “Hale them to th’block and cut off all their heads” (40) in order that he might fully claim authority for himself. The idea of autonomy is a profound temptation of the morality, and these advisors make clear that this is the ultimate temptation for the king. Shortly thereafter, the king

“discovers” that he is of age when Bushy reads from a chronicle. This is a carefully constructed instance of the “corrupting” influence of these figures as Vices, as Bushy’s reading first inspires

Richard to think well of himself, comparing himself to his father and grandfather and desiring to accomplish such “virtuous deeds” as they do, but, as soon as the birthdate is brought up, all his 102 grand ambition is forgotten, so that the only real point of the history reading, to free Richard and themselves from the influence of his uncles, is all that remains. Though Woodstock does not object when challenged with this claim, it is not insignificant that the date Bushy claims to find in the chronicle is inaccurate, making Richard’s belief in his own independence literally a lie.

Just as Vices gain increasing authority over the protagonist in a morality play, the flatterers in the play gain greater power over Richard as the play goes on. Since the play is both a history and a morality, the playwright shows the growth of power in the “flattering minions” by paralleling the depth of depravity to which they drag the young king, as in a traditional morality, with the increase of their own political authority and its impact on the realm. This alignment is typical of seeing history as a political morality: the moral degradation of the ruler is punished in suffering for the nation as a whole. The growth of the influence of the Vices over the king increases their power over the kingdom, which in turn leads to great suffering in the kingdom as a whole, showing a cohesive chain of Providential causality, endorsed in the play by no less an authority than Woodstock himself, who, as the play heads toward its conclusion, asserts, “What’s now amiss / Our sins have caused, and we must bide Heaven’s will” (4.2.50-52).

Very much like a traditional morality, the play reveals the moral degradation of the king as the influence of Vice-upstarts increases. When Richard is alone with his minions, freed from the influence of his uncles through the lie of his autocracy, they engage in an ostentatious display of greed, vanity, slothfulness, and gluttony. In 2.2, the king reveals a gluttonous emphasis on feasting: “The hall at Westminster shall be enlarged / And only serve us for a dining-room, /

Wherein I’ll daily feast ten thousand men” (195-97); an insatiable avarice appears in Scroop’s plan to “first fetch their money and bid them to dinner afterwards” (201-202); and an obsession 103 with vain attire obtains in Scroop’s demand to “have money to buy new suits, my lord; / The fashions that we wear are gross and stale” (206-07). Richard follows his counselors vicious advice, soon affirming his plan to “[r]ide through London only to be gazed at” (3.1.81). That

Richard himself is as guilty of all these vices as his flatters is made clear by Cheney’s report of him to Anne, which also adds slothfulness, as the men have together accomplished nothing for the kingdom, having only convened a “council to devise strange fashions / And suit themselves in wild and antic habits” (2.3.88-89). A final vice is attached to the king as well: lust. We find that the Duchess of Ireland’s husband has died, but that she lost his love long before and that

“King Richard was the cause he left my bed” (2.3.12). The homoerotic bent of the king, implicit in his ongoing relationship with Greene and the regular use of the term “minion” to refer to his flatterers,22 thus adds sodomitic lust to the list of vices to which the king has been misled by his chosen company.

These minions influence over the king’s moral state is indicative of their control of the king’s policies and, thus, the kingdom. The king’s infamous “blank charters,” used in the play to demand taxes in any amount to fulfill any desire of the king, are directly from Tresilian, as reported to Anne by Cheney: “Tresilian with King Richard likewise sits, / Devising taxes and strange shifts for money” (2.3.96-97). The playwright is not satisfied to leave the relationship as reported, but directly shows us, including the stage direction in 3.1 that Tresilian enters

“whispering with the king,” an action Alan Dessen reminds us is typical of the morality Vice, the

22 Derived from the French word for “pretty,” “minion” has, according to the OED, multiple uses current in the 1590s-1600s, many of which are overtly sexual, so the implication of sexual relationship is at least hinted in the term. "minion, n.1 and adj." OED Online. March 2017. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/118859?rskey=ywgGNz&result=1&isAdvanced=false (accessed March 24, 2017). 104 poison entering through the ear.23 The playwright consistently employs a pattern in which the morality play others perceive in the king and his entourage is revealed in their actual interactions.

The straightforward, insistent characterization of Tresilian, Greene, and the others as Vice characters lifted directly from a morality play, particularly in ways which must have been readily recognizable to the original audience, confirms that these characters are the true villains, not the king. The king’s policies and his decisions, no less than his degraded character, have their clear origin in his “minions,” so the king himself is responsible only for having a “wanton humour”

(1.1.144) that allows him to be too easily manipulated.

As the play continues, the Vice-minions come to take more and more direct control of the kingdom, rather than simply taking moral control of the king, as in a typical political morality.

As their power grows, the “minions” become kings. This is first reflected in their appearance, as their attire changes, so that their entry in Act 3 calls for them to be “very richly attired in new fashions.” The use of costuming to reflect changes in character is deep in the morality tradition: in Mankind, the protagonist loses more of his jacket as he descends further into the clutches of the Vices, and they assure him that he is becoming increasingly fashionable as he becomes more and more depraved. In Skelton’s Magnyfycence, the prince’s appearance, as well as that of the

Vices, changes to reflect their changing condition.24 Woodstock complains of the “fantastic suits” Richard and his cohort wear (3.2.37), but Lancaster sees the problem as one indicative of a problem more serious than over-indulgence in strange and foreign fashion: “We could allow his

23 Alan C. Dessen, "Allegorical Action and Elizabethan Staging," Studies in English Literature, 1500 - 1900 55.2 (2015): 391, accessed June 26 2015, Literature Resource Center.

24 For more complete analyses of the use of clothing in the play, see Karen Newman, Essaying Shakespeare (Minneapolis: University of MN Press, 2009), and Lea Luecking Frost, “The Historiography of Texts and Textiles in Thomas of Woodstock,” English Literary Renaissance 45.1 (2015): 120-45, accessed January 29, 2015, Academic Search Complete 105 clothing, brother Woodstock, / But we have four kings more are equalled with him. / There’s

Bagot, Bushy, wanton Greene and Scroop, / In state and fashion without difference” (3.2.39-42).

Karen Newman points out that “putting on clothes…was constitutive,”25 and York’s claim, linking “state and fashion,” confirms the significance of what the change in attire indicates: if clothing allows them to appear the same as the king, the king has made them essentially the same as he is. Once the king allows his followers to be seen as his equals, he loses his ability to rule over them at all. That the playwright intends to assert this inversion of the king and his minions is confirmed both by Lancaster, always the harshest critic of the king and his cronies, and the continuing action of the play. Lancaster replies to York that, whereas their clothing makes them appear equal to the king, “they’re more than kings, for they rule him” (3.2.43).

There can be little doubt that we are meant to see Lancaster’s assertion as correct, but it is actually premature: it is not until the fourth act that we actually see the king turn to a mere

“landlord” to four kings, and it is this scene that reveals how thoroughly the followers of the king have overpowered him. As Act 4 opens, the primary Vice, Tresilian, brags of the tricks he has employed to make money for the king and of the income it has guaranteed him. When the other

Vices enter, he assures them that he has not only brought in money for Richard, but that he now has “set a trick afoot for ye” such that they will “all be kings by it” (4.1.38-40). The five together are remarkably like the group of Vices in a traditional morality: they brag to each other of their plan and power. Bagot tells the others, “On with your soothest faces, ye wenching rascals. Humour him finely and you’re all made by it” (4.1.62-63), and Scroop villainously concurs, “[W]e must all flatter if we mean to live by it” (4.1.66-67). When Richard enters,

25 135: she cites Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (New York: Cambridge UP, 2000), as central to her understanding of the costuming in the play. 106 troubled by his uncle Woodstock’s refusal to respond to his summons but unwilling to take direct action against him because “he’s so well beloved” (81), Tresilian has a plan to deal with

Woodstock as well, which is to put on a masque at his house and take him prisoner through the action of the performance. Richard agrees to the plan, and, if the “beloved” Woodstock’s capture causes a rebellion, he expresses his willingness to sacrifice land in France and “send unto the King of France for aid” (122). This is the clear nadir for the king, as he is not only willing to attack and imprison his own uncle, but he is even willing to take losses in France in order to do it, the ultimate capitulation that an English monarch can make. The playwright has carefully made clear that the king has been led to this disastrous state by his five “Vices,” as he even asserts, “Let crown and kingdom waste, yea, life and all, / Before King Richard see his true friends fall!” (125-26) So complete is their control over the king that he expresses his willingness both to be no king at all and to have no kingdom at all, as long as he has his minions.

The Vices take the king at his word and proceed to take his “crown and kingdom.”

Greene, seeing his opportunity, bluntly pushes the king to finalize his plan to “farm out the kingdom to” the four of them and allow them to “govern the land most rarely” (135-138).

Richard, responding to the bluntness of the request which is almost a demand, suddenly becomes reflective and seems to have a moment of moral indecision.

So, sir, the love of thee and these, my dearest Greene, Hath won King Richard to consent to that For which all foreign kings will point at us. And of the meanest subjects of our land We shall be censured strangely when they tell How our great father toiled his royal person, Spending his blood to purchase towns in France; And we his son, to ease our wanton youth, Become a landlord to this warlike realm, Rent out our kingdom, like a pelting farm, 107 That erst was held as fair as Babylon, The maiden conqueress of all the world. (4.1.139-50)

Richard seems to be wavering in moral uncertainty, seeing clearly what his attachment to his

“minions” has cost him and how he will be viewed because of his willingness to be led by those who should be his followers. He sees that he is lowering his own status, in the eyes of foreign rulers, his own subjects, and historians who will compare him to his father. Further, and more significantly for the audience, he reveals that, because he is an actual English king—not just an allegorical ruler in a political morality—he is lowering the status of his entire kingdom, turning his “warlike realm,” “the maiden conqueress of all the world,” into a mere “pelting farm.” This moment of indecision, however, is quickly overcome by the response of Greene. He first tries to assuage the king, as his role of “flatterer” would indicate he should, but, when the king responds that he will have only the four of them for supporters if he does this, Greene turns from flattery to threatening, warning him, “’Sfoot! and thou dost not, and I do not join with thine uncles and turn traitor, would I might be turn’d to a toadstool!” (157-60) By threatening the king in this way, Greene fulfills Lancaster’s direly prophetic claim that the king is ruled by his courtiers.

This same turn happens in many moralities, as the Vices go from being manipulative to being directly cruel, showing how the abstract vices they represent overtake a person.

Although the playwright has thus insistently incorporated so much of the morality into the plot, the historical significance of the actions taken is distinct from the abstract fall of the central figure in an abstract morality, in which the consequences of the fall are only visited on the spiritual and physical person of the central figure.26 However, here, the entire kingdom as

26 Although it is considered a political morality, even Magnyfycence restricts its scope to showing the effect on the prince himself. Interestingly, William Wager’s The Longer Thou Livest, the More Fool Thou Art actually goes out 108 well as all the individuals within it are negatively impacted by the actions of the king and his minions. The playwright goes to great lengths to show this suffering, as well: there are two scenes of Vice-comedy in which Tresilian and his assistant Nimble are shown abusing the broader population through their “blank charters” and accusations of treason toward anyone who questions their policies. Whereas the first, 3.3, which features a bailiff assisting Nimble who is appropriately called Ignorance, is fairly light comedy, the second, 4.3, takes place just after

Richard has committed his two most egregious acts in the play, “farming out” his kingdom in 4.2 and abducting his uncle from his own castle in 4.3, which makes it a deliberate indication of how his actions as king are affecting the rest of his kingdom. In the scene, two shrieves complain to

Tresilian and Nimble on behalf of those they represent, and, although the Vices behave as if they are in a scene of Vice-comedy, the view of the commons is almost tragic in its dignity:

We are freeborn, my lord, yet do confess Our lives and goods are at the King’s dispose. But how, my lord? –like to a gentle prince To take or borrow what we best may spare, And not, like bondslaves, force it from our hands!” (4.3.34-38)

Although the deliberate display of the perspective of the commons might seem to be inciting rebellion against a monarch, the underlying emphasis upon submission—“Our lives and goods are at the King’s dispose”—is no less clear than the overt complaint. Even in the midst of showing how the king’s poor decisions have hurt the entire realm, the playwright is careful to remind us of who is truly responsible, as the Shrieve of the North, so vehement in his argument against the king above, turns to Tresilian as the ultimate responsible party: “Your hard oppressions have undone the state / And made all England poor and desolate” (44). The people, of its way to show this aspect. After having fallen victim to the Vices, Moros lives in indulgent luxury, but he is visited by “People,” who complains of the heavy burden put on those who have Moros as their lord. 109 as much as they might suffer, are not ready to rise up against their sovereign in rebellion: even they understand that the tricks of the “sly Machiavel” Tresilian and the influence of the

“flattering minions” are responsible for the poor conditions they find themselves in.

Thus, it is quite clear that the playwright shifts blame from the king to the king’s advisors, the young flatterers manipulating the “wanton humour” of the king so that they are the ones who are responsible for the ruin of the kingdom. However, in a morality play, the wavering, the fall, and the suffering are all ultimately salvific, part of a “felix culpa” of redemption, the design of the Christian God, and, in a political morality, the same God who established that pattern in the abstract is responsible for leading kingdoms, no less than people, with a similar redemptive purpose. Therefore, in addition to Vices who mislead the king to his downfall, the political morality demands good angels who are there to be the agents of his redemption. The anonymous playwright of Woodstock has also incorporated these characters into the play, although historical details intrude on completing the morality structure with the comic resolution of redemption for either the kingdom or the king. The play’s concluding scene or scenes are lost, but the use of the structure of the morality, together with the unavoidable known history of the king, gives a strong indication of the likely resolution to the play, and this also tends to minimize its “radical” content.

The playwright provides the monarch with two primary “good angels” to act toward his redemption: Queen Anne, who is foremost in the role, and Woodstock himself, who, though earnest and unswerving in both his loyalty to the king and his efforts to guide the king toward moral rectitude, is less able to function in that capacity, because of the king’s distrust of him.

Whereas Woodstock, as protector when the play begins and as an older, wiser advisor 110 throughout, has frequently been seen as the primary representative of goodness in the play,27

Anne’s role as the significant positive influence on the king is somewhat minimized by Rossiter, who says of her, “Apart from the practical demonstration of her charitableness and the invariable qualification ‘good’, Queen Anne is a charming reply to a speech of courtly welcome, a gesture of restrained disapprobation of Richard’s extravagance, a moment of courageous intervention in political affairs and no more … too good a wife for royalty.”28 However, the playwright is deliberate in making Anne’s character correspond to this key feature of a morality play, even altering his historical sources to do so. In a play where foreign luxury and strange fashions are indicators of moral decay in the court, the addition of a Bohemian queen should be seen as just another aspect of the problem. In fact, the historical sources the playwright used make clear that

Anne and her Bohemian retinue are responsible for the most infamous style in the play, the piked shoes which “so toeify the knee and so kneeify the toe” (3.2.224) by having a chain from the knee to the toe of the shoe.29 In the play, however, the shoes are entirely the invention of

Richard and his fashion-obsessed courtiers. In fact, the only foreign custom that Anne introduces is riding horses side-saddle, which, due to the sexual suggestion implicit in a woman riding a horse between her legs, is clearly selected because it only more thoroughly emphasizes her chaste morality and modesty. The playwright’s insistence upon Anne’s upright character and de-emphasis of her foreignness make her the ideal counter to the influence of Richard’s Vices.

Before she even appears in the play, Anne is introduced to the audience with the specific idea that she might function in exactly that role for the king. In the opening scene of the play,

27 Rossiter calls Woodstock “at once the centre of the Right group and of the play: for all the qualities of Rightness focus in him” (26). 28 40. 29 Frost, 140, points out the reference in Stowe. 111 Woodstock speaks to his brothers regarding his nephew’s wedding:

Tomorrow is the solemn nuptial day Betwixt the King and virtuous Anne O’ Beame, The Emperor’s daughter, a right gracious lady That’s come to England for King Richard’s love. … Afore my God, I have good hope this happy marriage, brothers, Of this so noble and religious princess, Will mildly calm his headstrong youth to see And shun those stains that blurs his majesty. (1.1.177-180, 183-187)

Woodstock, who consistently views his nephew as the central figure in a morality, here makes clear that he is bringing in a “good angel” to compete with the influence of the Vices who currently dominate the king. She is to function like Measure in Magnyfycence or Discipline in

The Longer Thou Livest, keeping the king from over-indulging. Her role as wife is to draw the king away from his “minions” by both her femininity and her purity of soul.

The role that Woodstock—and, thus, the playwright—has thrust on Anne seems to be one she is only too willing to fulfill. In her first scene, she tries to make peace between Woodstock and Richard when the two argue, first holding back Greene from throwing “more fuel on” their feud, and then advising restraint to her new husband: “Be patient, kingly Richard; quench this ire. / Would I had tears of force to stint this fire” (196-97). Significantly, the playwright has made both her efforts at keeping the peace directed toward the king and his companions, suggesting that they are the ones who need correction, not the sage advisor with whom they find themselves at odds. However, although Richard emphatically keeps Anne close to him as he departs, she does not meet with much success in her role here or throughout the rest of the play.

Her failure as a “good angel” is not due to a lack of moral strength but, despite his initial desire to keep her close, due to her separation from her husband. In 2.3, a scene in which Anne is 112 central but her husband is absent, she depends upon reports from various other people to know her husband’s actions. The moral distance between the king and his wife is as clear in every report she receives as their physical distance is in her need to learn of her husband through the reports of others. She begins by asking Woodstock’s wife if the king’s treatment of his uncles is as bad as she suspects it is. The duchess quickly affirms the truth, that Richard has dismissed his uncles and his other older, wiser advisors. After a brief suggestion of her husband’s past sodomitic affair with the Duchess of Ireland’s husband, Anne acknowledges what the playwright has made manifest throughout the scene, “[t]hough [she is]…England’s Queen,” her husband is distant from her. She “meet[s] sad hours and wake[s] when others sleep” (15-16), but her husband “meets content” while “care with [her] must keep” (17). Anne’s character is restrained in offering her complaints against her husband, but she knows that his people suffer under his rule, so she engages in charity to try to atone for the abuses under her husband to minimize the people’s “grudge against their sovereign” (37). She tries to act as a good angel on his behalf, but

Woodstock’s notion of her as the good angel who can turn the king away from his dalliances with his minions is mere wishful thinking.

Still later in the scene, when she gets yet another report of her husband’s actions, this time from Cheney, she persists in seeing him as abused by his flatterers and desires to protect him, saying,

Oh certain ruin of this famous kingdom. Fond Richard, thou build’st a hall to feast in And starvest thy wretched subjects to erect it. Woe to those men that thus incline thy soul To these remorseless acts and deeds so foul. (2.3.101-105)

113 Her husband is merely foolish, “fond,” whereas those who “incline [his] soul” toward “deeds so foul” are truly to blame. Her response to the misrule of her husband is primarily despair, rather than a resolve to change her husband, as would be expected from a good angel. Because her character is not an abstraction, her own emotions and self-image are engaged in her response to his actions. Although the duchess points out that her tears do no good, she realizes that she can do nothing more, because she does not have access to her husband. She closes the scene emphatically resigned: “Queen Anne alone [emphasis mine] / For Richard’s follies must still sigh and groan” (111-12). Anne’s failure as a moral influence is due to Richard’s sexual attachment to his minions, which leaves her alone, with no access to alter him for the better.

Although Anne is never able to be the positive influence on Richard that Woodstock hoped she would be, her role as a good angel in Richard’s life is not an utter failure. She succeeds most as a positive influence on Richard by doing the one thing that the good angel cannot do in a morality play: she dies. Her death gives Richard the single moment that most seems to indicate that his redemption is possible. Upon her death, he reveals how much she meant to him, despite his mistreatment of her throughout the play. Upon hearing of the death of his queen, the King enters, grieving, and Scroop tells him to “forsake these sad laments”

(4.3.141), because they cannot bring her back. The attempt to turn the king’s attention away fails, seeming to indicate that he may be finally turning away from his minions, using her tragic death to move toward the moral turn that the protagonist must make to bring about a comic resolution:

She was too virtuous to remain with me, And Heaven hath given her higher dignity. O God, I fear even here begins our woe! Her death’s but chorus to some tragic scene 114 That shortly will confound our state and realm. Such sad events black mischief will attend And bloody acts I fear must crown the end. (4.3.147-53)

Here, Richard initially sees that he has not been worthy of his wife’s love, and that God has taken her as a result. In losing his wife, the king’s own suffering, unlike that of his people, seems to have an effect on his moral state. However, his sense of drama sees this as an opening to a greater tragedy that will be his ultimate downfall rather than an opportunity for change. His sense of responsibility for his own actions seems to have evaporated already. He goes on to excess, again complaining more than confessing and awakened to overwhelming sorrow and acts of devastating grief rather than repentance, saying:

Despair and madness seize me. Oh dear friends, What loss can be compared to such a queen? Down with this house of Sheen! Go ruin all! Pull down her buildings, let her turrets fall; Forever lay it waste and desolate That English king may never here keep court, But to all ages leave a sad report When men shall see these ruined walls of Sheen And sighing say, “Here died King Richard’s queen”, For which we’ll have it wasted, lime and stone, To keep a monument of Richard’s moan. Oh, torturing grief! (4.3.157-68)

If Richard becomes more sympathetic here, as both Corbin and Sedge and Manheim suggest,30 he does not here fully accomplish the moral about face needed to bring about the comic conclusion of the play, but seems to, through his own experience of suffering, be heading toward an understanding that may turn him that way.

30 35 and 75, respectively. 115 His Vices, however, fear that he may be doing just that. As such, they are anxious to keep him from relenting in his anger with Woodstock and hurry to enact his execution.

Woodstock, despite his intention to make Anne Richard’s good angel, has taken on the same role to a lesser degree himself, and the Vice-minions know that he must be removed to ensure their power over the king. Woodstock, even more than his brother Lancaster, who agitates for direct action against the king from early in the play, has tried to turn Richard away from his descent into depravity. Indeed, he initially calls Richard to Parliament to “make King Richard leave their

[his flatterers’] companies,” (2.1.261), and only when that fails does he turn to a desire to see them executed. Woodstock’s role is the key to the entire play, as his views are consistently confirmed by the action of the play, and so his perspective is presented as the proper one. This, too, agitates against a radical endorsement of rebellion against the monarch, as, even late in the play when the negative effects of Richard’s reign are fully known, he refuses to endorse any action against the king. When he sees the masque at his own castle—designed to entrap him— he views the theme of the action as consistent with his own view of the kingdom, that the wild boar hunted down in the play represents Richard and his flatterers in their destructive impact on

England: “So many wild boars roots and spoils our lands / That England almost is destroyed by them” (4.2.140-41); however, he still desires only “all good, high Heaven can tell,” for the king, who “is led by flatterers much astray” (143-45). He imposes his own view of the state of the kingdom on the masque, but his reading of its purpose, that he is encouraged through the masque to rebel against his nephew, he rejects utterly: “But he’s our king, and God’s great deputy, / And if ye hunt to have me second ye / In any rash attempt against his state, / Afore my God, I’ll ne’er consent unto it” (146-49). 116 When it turns out that the boar in the masque is himself, and his nephew and his cronies have taken him prisoner, Woodstock would seem well-motivated to change his mind, but even at the cost of his own suffering and likely death, he does not seek rebellion against the king. When he has been put away at Calais, he is visited by his own “good angels”31 in the form of the ghosts of Edward III and Edward the Black Prince, both of whom warn him of his impending murder.

First, the Black Prince tells Woodstock he has come “[t]o stay King Richard’s rage,” but he shows concern for both his brother and his son, as he fears Woodstock’s death in part because his

“blood upon my son will surely come,” and he desires as much to “[p]revent his ruin” as

Woodstock’s “tragedy” (5.1.60-75). Next, Woodstock’s own father visits him, and he is less even-handed in his presentation of king’s character, calling him “accursed grandchild,” suggesting that he came to the crown illegitimately, preventing his own, more deserving children from ruling, and even directly claiming that Richard “[m]urders his grandsire’s sons” (85-88).

He closes by directly calling upon Woodstock to “[h]aste… to England” because his “brothers

York and Gaunt are up in arms” and he should “join with them” (98-100). The visions leave

Woodstock desiring more, and he calls them “good angels” and asks their “blessed spirits” to

“stay” (103). However, as upset as he is, he does not fully accept his ghostly father’s version of the story. He still will not rebel against his nephew, but he wishes to speak to him, not as a flatterer to avoid his own execution but as a good angel, intending

to admonish him That he forsake his foolish ways in time And learn to govern like a virtuous prince, Call home his wise and reverend counselors, Thrust from his court those cursed flatterers That hourly works the realm’s confusion.

31 Corbin and Sedge suggest the ghostly vistitation “secularises the Morality device of the Good Angel who attempts to save the hero from his fate in Dr Faustus" (35). 117 (5.1.185-90)

Even with a supernatural warning suggesting that the king is evil and desires to kill him,

Woodstock, the character whom the entire play has taught the audience to trust, still is only concerned with bringing about the redemption of his nephew the king and, with it, the restoration of proper order to the kingdom.

It could be argued, however, that this very fact most argues for the radical nature of the play, that these scenes are “rather a challenge to orthodoxy than a confirmation of it”32 and that audience is led to see that “the possibility of deposition hardly seems unwelcome.”33 This reading of the play, however, ignores the fact that, prior to the scene of Woodstock’s death,

Richard did actually repent of his treatment of his uncle, and, as noted above, seems to have the beginnings of the understanding appropriate for him to make the turn that will bring about a comic conclusion to the morality presented in the play. He ends the fourth act of the play clearly expressing what his minions feared he would: “bid Lapoole forbear / On pain of life to act our sad decree. / For heaven’s love, go prevent the tragedy” (4.3. 172-74). The appeal to “heaven’s love,” the first sincere invocation of heaven by Richard throughout the play, suggests a turn in his way of thinking. However, the king is not merely wishing something undone which might be seen as politically unadvisable: “We have too much provoked the powers divine / And here repent thy wrongs, good Uncle Woodstock, / The thought whereof confounds my memory” (175-

77). He concludes the scene complaining, like Skelton’s Magnificence when Despayre has fallen upon him with the suffering that will prove to lead to his redemption: “My wounds are inward, inward burn my woe” (184). Richard, by the close of the scene in which he learns of the

32 William A. Armstrong, Elizabethan History Plays (London: Oxford UP, 1965), xi. 33 Manheim, 73. 118 death of his wife, his “good angel,” has turned from desiring to kill his uncle in order that his licentious reign might continue unabated to seeing that his own actions have caused his own suffering, as well as that of others, as he claims to have “provoked the powers divine,” and he desires to undo at least some of that which he has done.

The death of Anne is, thus, a central moment in the play’s morality structure, as it leads toward the change of heart that should produce a happy resolution. She did not change her husband by her positive influence as a physical presence, as would be typical in a traditional morality, because we know that she has been alone for most of her time since marrying him.

However, her spiritual influence, together with that of his uncle Woodstock, who is also kept away from Richard and thus prevented from turning his nephew away from his riotous friends, has had an impact and brought about the change of heart needed in a morality protagonist. Why then does the play not then proceed a comic conclusion? First, because the play is also a history play, Richard lives in a contingent reality, and his change of heart has come too late. Morally, he may have expressed a desire to reform, but the damage has been done, and the events he set in motion cannot be undone as easily as God can forgive and accept the morality hero upon conversion. Historical kings, unlike monarchs in political moralities, have very real consequences for their actions. Further, as he is writing a history play, the playwright, knowing his audience’s historical awareness, cannot conclude the play with Richard seeming to have been fully redeemed. Although he does not appear in the play, Bolingbroke is in Richard’s future, and the audience knows he is coming. The remaining lost pages almost certainly do not include

Bolingbroke, but the known “conclusion” of story of Richard II limits the playwright’s options for closing his political morality. Thus, it is unlikely that the play could end with Richard 119 deposed, but it is even less likely that it could end with Richard redeemed and the kingdom restored to proper order.

Although the pressures of historical knowledge and moral consequences are significant, providing an interesting glimpse into the ways that abstract moralities differ from historical plays, the play’s missing last pages make any assumptions about the play’s resolution mere conjecture. In what does remain of the play, the focus is not on the eventual end of Richard’s reign and its causes, but it does provide its own reason for the failure of Richard to complete his moral turn in the historical moment portrayed. Woodstock’s brothers have already begun their rebellion, interrupting the moral progress of the youthful monarch with the uprising against the king that some critics see the play as intending to justify. After the king’s change of heart at the close of Act 4, he is not seen again until 5.3, when he is fully outraged by his uncles, whom he accuses of drawing their “swords again our sacred person, / The highest God’s anointed deputy, /

Breaking your holy oaths to Heaven and us” (56-59). Richard’s words here echo those of

Woodstock in response to what he thought was an invitation to the very kind of rebellion Gaunt and York have now put in motion. Even so, Richard’s response to their action is not to try to kill them, but with “princely clemency” to “be made partaker of the cause / That moved [them] in this rebellious sort” (60-63). York and Gaunt, still being ignorant that Woodstock is actually dead, express their desire to know what has happened to him and demand that Richard expel his flattering minions who “like dark clouds obscure the sparkling stars / Of [his] great birth and true nobility” (84-85). The king will not consent, and the battle ensues. Richard’s uncles wish to remove from his presence those riotous youths they see as Vices corrupting their king. However, the play has shown us that proximity is not central to moral influence, and the key to the comic 120 conclusion of a morality is not the executing of the Vices, but the protagonist’s decision to turn away from those Vices. Based on the morality structure that informs the entire play, Richard’s uncles are not justified in their rebellion, but actually stunt his moral development by trying to use violence to bring about their ends rather than using the moral persuasion that Woodstock endorsed, even to his death.

The following scene shows us the first of the king’s Vices being physically removed from him, as Arundel slays Greene, the one member of the four who has been most overtly presented as sexually linked to the king. Corbin and Sedge see this death as another indication of the king’s being sympathetic, linking it with the similar scene of Richard’s passionate response to the death of Queen Anne.34 However, to look at this death that way is to ignore what roles each has played in the morality play the playwright has made of his history, and to ignore the way in which the two parallel scenes actually diverge. The death of Queen Anne, Richard’s long- suffering good angel, brought about repentance in the king, but the death of Greene brings about only promises for revenge. Anne’s death was offstage, so the audience experiences it through those who feel for her loss. Greene’s death, at the hands of Arundel, comes after Greene swears to defeat Cheney and all of Richard’s uncles “by King Richard’s love” (5.4.3), a vow which reminds the audience of not only his lustful relationship with the king but also of this exploitation of their relationship. If York and Gaunt are guilty of desiring the deaths of Greene and company, Greene surely is no less guilty for wanting to kill them. Once he is dead, his body is left on the stage to be found by the king. With their illicit homoerotic relationship already

34 Corbin and Sedge, in suggesting that the king becomes more sympathetic as the play ends, point out that his "distress at Anne's death and his repentance for his treatment of Woodstock (4.1), together with his grief for Greene's death (5.4), draw the audience's sympathy towards his personal suffering if not his political acumen" (35). 121 suggested, the king’s response to Greene’s body is thoroughly drenched in language of physicality, unlike his lament at the death of his wife. Richard complains:

Hard-hearted uncles, unrelenting churls, That here have murdered all my earthly joys. O my dear Greene, wert thou alive to see How I’ll revenge thy timeless tragedy On all their heads that did but lift a hand To hurt this body that I held so dear. Even by this kiss, and by my crown I swear— (5.4.31-35, italics mine)

What emerges, perhaps even more than his sorrow, is the physicality of his relationship with

Greene. The playwright has elsewhere been fairly subtle about the king’s homosexual relationships with his “minion,” but, in portraying Greene’s death, the playwright chooses to make the bodily aspects of Richard’s grief so apparent that the audience cannot help but be reminded of the inappropriately “earthly joys” the two have enjoyed. Further, the king is cut off before he can complete his intended vow, the dignity of his intended soliloquy undercut by the insistent practicality of Bagot’s interrupting warning, “Away, my lord. Stand not to wail his death” (36). The scene concludes with the “body” of Greene being carried away, the king referring to it as a “load of woe / That erst King Richard loved and tendered so” (54-55). The emphatic physicality of the scene, together with the king’s extensive use of intimate, even romantic, language to describe the body, should put the audience more in mind of the abused lust between them, rather than of a sympathetic loss of a dear friend, as we cannot help but feel when the king speaks of the loss of Queen Anne. This scene depicts, then, not an additional sympathetic moment, but a turn back toward the wrong side, an instance of the wavering between right and wrong, between God and the Vices, typical in a morality play. 122 Further, the scene draws directly on another aspect of the moral tradition: the Vice being carried away to hell.35 As such, the Vice here is Greene, but it is much more interesting to consider that Richard and all his followers are the ones to carry the body to hell. This death only pushes Richard further away from the right path, as it inverts the expected movement at the close of a morality play. Rather than being carried away by the devil, the king here is dragging the body of his own “Vice” off the stage. Richard seems to understand the religious significance of the scene himself, seeing that he, too, must be carried off and is beyond redemption: “the fearful wrath of Heaven / Sits heavy on our heads for Woodstock’s death. / Blood cries for blood, and that almighty hand / Permits not murder unrevenged to stand…Heaven will find us out and strike at length” (47-52). The uncles’ intention in their rebellion, less radical than the overthrowing of the king, was to remove his flatterers from him. This scene seems designed to show us that their plan, less radical as it is, is actually still wrong-headed. The king’s words here echo the desperate sinner of a morality, who believes himself incapable of redemption, and so only desires to escape the punishment due to him. The king, like a morality protagonist, must be turned toward redemption, since eliminating his primary minion has only led him further on the path toward his own destruction and the degradation of the kingdom, but his uncles’ rebellion is designed only to excise the Vices not to redeem the king himself, inverting the proper role of the good angels they see themselves as.

The final scene, although unfinished, suggests that the other minions will be executed, together with Tresilian, who is brought in by his own assistant, Nimble. The lack of a conclusion beyond this moment has left many critics with the opportunity to speculate about

35 Dessen, “Allegorical Action,” mentions the tradition, suggesting that it continued into the 1590s, but does not cite this example. 123 what must have happened. The historical problem of Richard’s deposition in the future problematizes any guesses at the play’s ending, and may be part of what makes critics conclude that the play radically endorses rebellion against the king, since they, like the initial audience, know he will not be able to maintain his power. However, if the play presents an abortive morality, one in which the king had begun, too late, his turn toward redemption and was interrupted by the rebellion of his uncles, intent upon their desire to kill off the king’s Vices rather than to try to draw the king toward his own salvation and the country’s benefit, then the playwright has effectively minimized the “radical” nature of the play.

In Woodstock, the playwright uses morality conventions, more overtly present here than in any other play of the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, to present a fairly straightforward political morality. The use of such a traditional structure must have been part of his design to make what might seem to be a radical questioning of kingship fit into a more acceptable mold. The “tragedy” of the play is not that the king was so corrupt that he had to be justly overthrown, but that those who rebelled against him, most notably Lancaster, desired merely to kill off those followers with whom they disagreed, and not, ultimately, to redeem him.

The play uses its morality structure to deflect guilt from the king to his flatterers, suggesting that they are a greater source of England’s problems than the king himself. Although the play lacks a conclusion, it at least implies that the rebellion against Richard near the end of the play pursues the wrong moral purpose: redemption, not removal, is the comic conclusion of a morality. Thus, the playwright may well have intended to characterize the uprising against the king as the cause not only of the eventual deposition of Richard but also of the ongoing civil strife that followed upon it. 124 The Woodstock playwright takes almost all of the commonplaces of a political morality and uses them to map the events of the reign of the king whose rule would begin decades of struggle over the rightful ruler of the kingdom, making it difficult to see his presentation of the uprising that prefigures all those struggles as a radical endorsement of the right to rebel against the power of the sitting monarch. The play reflects common patterns of historical thought that appear in the chronicles and in the dramas based upon them, but these same patterns could also serve, in the hands of subtler or more truly radical playwrights, as the tools to interrogate or overturn the applicability of the ideas of the moral structure for historical events.

Chapter 3

History as Amoral:

Edward II and the Tragedy of a Moral Universe

“The gentle heavens have not to do in this” (Edward II, 4.7.75)

Although in some ways, the development of the history play is tied to the morality plays of the sixteenth century, another way of considering the development of historical drama in the period is to see it as emerging from tragedy. Grant and Ravelhofer point out, “The style and characterization of Senecan tragedy was transposed wholeheartedly into English humanist plays which sought to grasp history, native and non-native, with classical means.”1 The assumption that tragedy can effectively convey historical material is widespread in extant early modern publications, and many of the assumptions about the two genres naturally cross over. The titles under which plays now considered histories were originally published suggests that the genres were not sharply distinguished: “tragicall historie” is an enormously common epithet for many early modern plays, and some of the earliest history plays, such as the anonymous True Tragedy of Richard III, make the primary genre tragedy rather than history.

If the Elizabethans appear to be ambivalent about the difference between tragedy and history, some critics have been quite concerned with distinguishing the differences between the two. The primary way of differentiating the two has been to suggest that tragedy is, essentially, more universal and personal and history is particular and social. If Brooke’s claim that “the normal interest in dramatic personae is more or less absorbed either in the expression of patriotic sentiment or in the interpretation of problems of government and statecraft”2 seems an

1 16-17. 2 103. 125 126 oversimplification, later efforts do not necessarily capture the essential any better. Campbell claims that the “distinction between private and public morals” is “the distinction between tragedy and history,”3 and Hunter presents a similar idea, seeing the history as seeking something more “tangible:” “the ideal of the good society,” which makes it unlike tragedy, because it

“cannot be incorporated into our sense of self as can the idealisms of tragedy.”4 These distinctions are not absolute, and many critics have not seen differentiating the two as essential at all. Ribner, for instance, rejects the notion that history and tragedy are “mutually exclusive categories,” which he calls “both unrealistic and unnecessary, and no definition of the history play which is based upon it will stand the test of close examination.”5 Ribner’s common sense approach is probably correct, but the efforts by those who have attempted to differentiate the two reveal that there are elements that make tragic plays that present events from known history distinct, and the addition of a stronger social ideal and a greater interest in the nation in addition to—rather than instead of—the interest in individuals provide an appropriate way to examine history in tragic form.

Some of what are usually noted as essential elements of tragedy are also typical elements of most histories, and some elements of tragedy create special problems for conveying history.

First, most history plays feature kings and other noble personages, which Puttenham emphasizes as the domain of tragedy: the “great fortunes of Princes, and the notable accidēts of time, as the greateſt affaires of war & peace,” and “thoſe [failings] of/great Princes [are presented] by

Tragedie in eſpeciall,”6 The decorum of a tragedy, “written in the high stile,”7 as Puttenham

3 17. 4 “Notes of the Genre of the History Play,” 239. 5 12. 6 Arte of English Poesie, 152 and 35, respectively. 127 insists, was recognized as the mark of a worthy history according to Sidney, who argued that the duty of the poet was “to frame the history to the most tragical conveniency” and that tragedy must be “maintained in a well raised admiration.”8 Although the insertion of comic scenes in histories continued throughout the period, some playwrights maintained both the higher style and the higher rank of society in their histories, often importing other elements of tragedy as they framed their “history to the most tragical conveniency.”

These elements include a set structure, a specific purpose and many other conventions, all of which create dynamic effects when imposed upon a known history. The structure of a tragedy is from order to chaos, or as Heywood termed it, “Tragedies begin in calmes, and end in tempest,”9 but such a structure applied to history is typically mitigated by a need to affirm both a providential order to history and the continuity of the state, meaning that the “tempest” of tragedy is often calmed by the end of the play, even if only in a closing speech. Further, the order at the beginning of a tragic history is often itself known to be false, as when Shakespeare opens Richard III by asserting that the “winter of discontent” is now “glorious summer,” (1.1.1-

2), contradicting the audience’s knowledge that the violence of the Wars of the Roses is far from ended.

The structure of a tragic play is further informed by elements Aristotle articulated regarding tragedy, such as an anagnorisis, or recognition, in which characters achieve both insight and understanding, and peripeteia, or reversal, which Aristotle claimed was “from prosperity to misery, and will be due, not to depravity, but to some great error.”10 Placed in the

7 Arte of English Poesie, 153. 8 244. 9 F2, left leaf. 10 Poetics, 73. 128 context of a known history, these elements often take on new meaning, as playwrights can create cause and effect relationships not in their sources in order to fit this structure, whereas other plays leave out or alter these expected elements to suit the tragedy to the history, despite

Sidney’s warning. Marlowe’s Edward II, for example, experiences a reversal of fortunes which arouses a historical recognition in the audience itself, as the conventional historical narrative of a morality play is devastatingly torn down in the play’s catastrophe.

As Christopher Marlowe’s only play about British history, Edward II has had a history of dramatic performance and critical commentary that alone amongst early modern English history plays can compete with any of Shakespeare’s history plays. Its reception by both audiences and critics has not been consistent, but the play has always drawn interest—sometimes scorning interest—at least in part from its portrayal of the monarch’s apparently sexual relationship with his “favorite” Gaveston. In recent years, this has sometimes led critics, as well as producers, to see Edward as a victim of “homophobia,”11 a term that is as anachronistic as it is inappropriate to the play as Marlowe develops its action. The view that the play presents a moral universe in which Edward receives the just punishment due to a sodomite and Mortimer and Isabella receive the punishment due to traitors has been largely eclipsed in recent criticism; however, the persistent reading of the play as centered on a “sympathy swing” from the barons and Isabella to

11 The 1991 film version by Derek Jarman (London: British Screen Peoductions, 1991) is the most overt performance of the play in this way, but performances closer to the mainstream as The Shakespeare Company’s 2007 production continued to portray the characters in such a way as to suggest this reading based on more modern conceptions of sexuality. I do not deny the power of or interest in construing the play in such a way, but I am more concerned with making sense of the play in its original context. Thus, through my discussion of this aspect of the play, I will use the sixteenth century term “sodomy” and its related forms rather than our own term “homosexual,” which did not exist until the late nineteenth century, and attempt to consider these aspects based on the predominant views current in the sixteenth century. 129 the king himself continues to be generally accepted.12 According to this view, the audience starts the play repulsed by Edward and sides with the barons’ apparently righteous efforts to restrain the king, but later the audience turns on them, rejecting Isabella as she turns traitor and adulterer and young Mortimer as he gains power through his increasingly Machiavellian machinations.

Meanwhile, according to this view of audiences’ response to the play, audiences turn with sympathy toward the deposed king, being drawn to Edward by his extreme suffering as the play continues. Although most audiences and critics seem to feel sympathy for the king by the close of the play, the interpretations of the king’s grisly—and possibly ironic—death and of his son’s reestablishment of order following that death have continued to be disputed by many critics, with some finding the play’s conclusion essentially just, with the failed king too brutally punished, but with his murderers also punished and betrayers removed and replaced by a stronger king now on the throne. Others have seen the play’s close as a brutal instance of Marlowe’s assertion of the realpolitik theme of might making right, with Edward’s dehumanizing death providing the opportunity for his son’s rise and the execution of Mortimer and imprisonment of his own mother. Despite Marlowe’s emphasis upon secular politics, viewing the play through the lens of

Marlowe’s tragic inversion of the implicitly religious morality structure and its conventions sheds light on these critical questions, and reveals even more strongly the bleakly brutal world of political history that Marlowe exposes in his play.

Edward II has often been considered essentially a tragedy, and the play has nearly as long a history of critical association with the morality, but it is best understood as showing the incompatibility of the two genres. Although Bevington suggested it evinces less “indebtedness

12 Stephen Guy-Bray, “Introduction,” in Edward II, ed. Martin Wiggins, vii-xxviii (London: Methuen Drama, 2014), states, “The consensus among critics writing on Edward II has been that the audience sides with Isabella and, to a lesser extent, with the nobles for the first half of the play, and then with Edward for the second half” (xix). 130 to the morality drama”13 than Marlowe’s Faustus or Jew of Malta, an almost universal identification of Gaveston with the morality Vice has been a critical commonplace in discussions of the play, and some recent scholarship has begun to look again at ways in which the play’s tragic history is shaped by the morality structure and its conventions.14 Marlowe confronts audiences with two genres to make sense of the known history of Edward, but the meanings implicit in the form of both genres cannot be maintained.

At this point, thus, there is not likely to be much controversy in the suggestion that

Marlowe was deliberate in echoing elements of the morality in his history play, but what

Marlowe intended with these echoes in such a bleakly tragic play is less clear. Bevington’s brief analysis of the play in terms of the conventions and structure of the morality is probably still the finest exploration of Marlowe’s use of the genre in Edward II. Bevington oversimplifies somewhat in accepting that the play’s conclusion seen in terms of moral structure “thus appears to be morally unambiguous” because the eradication of evil and the reestablishment of order are

“still present in the inherited structure of the play,” but he concludes that placing the play’s historical details into a moral structure “engenders a dichotomy in the characters between moral absolutes and psychological complexities.”15 This dichotomy creates a tension between the known history Marlowe construes as tragic and the assumed ethical oppositions of the morality

13 From “Mankind” to Marlowe, 234. 14 Alan C. Dessen, “Edward II and Residual Allegory,” in Christopher Marlowe the Craftsman: Lives, Stage and Page, ed. Sarah Scott and M. L. Stapleton, 52-62 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2010), is likely the most thorough-going, but, in exploring connections to passion plays, both Patrick Ryan, “Marlowe’s Edward II and the Medieval Passion Play,” Comparative Drama 32.4 (1998): 465-95, accessed July 19, 2015, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41153944, and Mathew Martin, “Plays of Passion,” in The Sacred and Profane in English Renaissance Literature, ed. Mary Arshagouni Papazian, 84-107 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008) also point to connections with the conventions and structure of morality plays in the work. 15 From “Mankind” to Marlowe, 244. 131 structure, and it is just this tension, ultimately irreconcilable, that Marlowe emphasizes in his dramatization of “the troublesome raign and lamentable death of”16 King Edward II.

The distance between the assumptions of the morality myth and the tragic facts of British history as Marlowe wished to construe them is fairly clear in another of the commonplaces of the criticism regarding Edward II: its emphatically secular viewpoint, especially as compared to what many see as a more overt endorsement of, or at least engagement with, a providential view of English history in Shakespeare’s early history plays, especially those that almost undoubtedly precede Marlowe’s own effort, the first tetralogy. Suggestions of an imposition of divine meaning, or a providential purpose guiding historical events, are fairly common in Shakespeare’s early plays, but they are not absent in Marlowe’s play, either.17 Indeed, when war between the king and his barons is apparent, the barons cry out with typical nationalistic assumptions about divine will, “Saint George for England, and the barons’ right!” (3.3.35), which is immediately echoed by Edward, “Saint George for England, and King Edward’s right!” (3.3.36). Although

Marlowe is here most clear in suggesting that appeals to divine providence are little more than an assumption of the righteousness of the speaker’s own cause, the other direct references to divine providence are sufficiently suspect to allow most audiences to agree with Patrick Ryan that there are “no creditable appeals to divine providence.”18 Perhaps the most glaring example that these appeals present are not creditable is when Isabella, upon the victory she and Mortimer accomplish over Edward, declaims, “Successful battles gives the God of kings / To them that

16 From the full title—The troublesome raigne and lamentable death of Edward the second, King of England with the tragicall fall of proud Mortimer: and also the life and death of Peirs Gaueston, the great Earle of Cornewall, and mighty fauorite of king Edward the second—of the second print edition in quarto. 17 Stephen J. Lynch, “Introduction to Edward II,” in Edward II with Related Texts, ed. Stephen J. Lynch, xv-xxxi (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2015), points out that “many scholars have noted [that] providential themes are muted” in the play, but they are not absent. All references to the play are to this edition. 18 465, emphasis mine. 132 fight in right and fear his wrath. / … / Thanks be to heaven’s great architect” (4.6.19-22). Even if this is not intentional irony from the mouth of the queen who has conspired with her lover against the king, her actions make it quite impossible to hear them as evidence of divine endorsement of the success she and Mortimer have found. When Spencer suggests that the turn of events against them is the “will [of] the angry heavens” (4.7.73), Edward quickly contradicts him, arguing that “[t]he gentle heavens have not to do in this” (4.7.75), and Edward’s words here seem to echo throughout the events of the entire play, since earthly designs, rather than heavenly, shape the course of the play. In the world of Marlowe’s play, references to divine providence directing history to ordered conclusions, as it does in both moralities and comedic conceptions of history, are suspect at best, so the ordered close of the play itself must also come under suspicion.

However, Edward’s claim that heaven is not behind his undoing suggests a belief that some form of providence directs the course of his life, and the king himself refers to providence often enough that we cannot fully dismiss the presence of some genuine faith in him that events are ordered by divine will, even if the play as a whole does not endorse his belief. Edward, in his deposition scene, first suggests that he is losing his “kingdom and crown without cause,” but later allows that “what the heavens appoint I must obey” (5.1.52-56). This, too, might be dismissed as sardonic, but Edward persists in seeing things through a lens of divine will: perhaps his clearest expression of his view of his position is his claim that “heavens and earth conspire /

To make me miserable” (5.1.96-97). Edward’s combination of “heavens and earth” suggests his understanding that, if providence is somehow responsible for his plight, the very earthly force of

Mortimer is no less involved in producing his suffering. Marlowe’s combination of these two 133 forces in these lines, the will of heaven and the conspiracy of the political Machiavel Mortimer, is emblematic of the relationship between the forces of human history and the providential design implied in the morality structure, and apprehending Marlowe’s merciless manipulation of the morality play illumines the ways in which political history is definitively not a morality play but as bleak a tragedy as can be written. Marlowe uses the king himself, the one character who makes “creditable appeals to divine providence,” to ultimately come to a place that emphatically denies the reality of any genuine role of such providence in human affairs.

If Marlowe intended to suggest the incompatibility of the morality scheme as an imposition on known history, and so many aspects of the play fail to reflect the morality structure, why should we look to see any evidence of the “providential design” implicit in the morality form in this “emphatically secular” play? We can look for it, in short, because Marlowe is so forceful in presenting it, and because critics’ and audiences’ responses to the structure of the play, seeing it as a series of reverses of audience sympathy and almost inexplicable changes of character, suggest that they have been influenced by the dichotomies implicit in the morality myth of history. The power of the myth that Marlowe manipulates in telling the story of Edward

II is so great that many seem to accept the moral construction as genuine, rather than a falsehood perpetuated by those who stand to benefit from its apparent presence, Isabella and the barons.

Perhaps the most common connection critics make with the morality in evaluating the play is the identification of Gaveston with the Vice,19 an identification that Marlowe must have readily made in reading Holinshed on Edward’s favorite. Holinshed calls Gaveston “a man of

19 Bevington, From “Mankind” to Marlowe, 243, makes the connection in his study of the play’s relationship with the morality, but the identification is almost always mentioned in introductions (Lynch, xvii, for example), and such a commonplace that Rossiter, in his introduction to Woodstock, takes for granted that Gaveston as the Vice is the otherwise “classically tragic” play’s one connection to the native morality tradition. 134 such a corrupt humor” that his “company and society… so corrupted [the king] that he burst out into most heinous vices.”20 The king is said to be “addicted” to Gaveston, and Holinshed provides vivid details of his effects on the monarch, who “gave himself to wantonness, passing his time in voluptuous pleasure and riotous excess” due to the influence of his minion. Further,

Gaveston “furnished his court with companies of jesters, ruffians, flattering parasites, musicians, and other vile and naughty ribald, that the king might spend both his days and nights in jesting, playing, banqueting, and in such other filthy and dishonorable exercises.”21 Surely, Marlowe recognized a stage Vice when he saw one: Holinshed characterizes Gaveston as corrupting the youthful monarch, exactly in the manner of the Vice in a political morality. The young king is corrupted and the kingdom suffers, the political morality of Magnyfycence repeated again in

English history.

Marlowe, with his familiarity with the native morality, thus surely recognized the type of the Vice in Holinshed’s description of Gaveston, and he encourages his audience to see the same type from the very opening of the play. One of the conventions of the Vice in the morality play is to make a boasting speech early in the play, before actually interacting with the characters to whom he will act as Vice.22 In this way, the Vice not only establishes a direct connection with the audience but also makes clear his moral state and intentions, so that the audience knows how to interpret his later actions and words to those he seeks to manipulate. Marlowe opens his play

20 Lynch, 102-103. 21 Ibid, 102. 22 For example, The Castle of Perseverance, in Four Morality Plays, ed. Peter Happé (New York: Penguin Books, 1979), opens with each Vice and his under-Vices explaining themselves and their intentions before Human Genus enters the stage, and Mankind begins with both Mercy and Mischeefe disputing over Mankind before the character appears. Political moralities maintain this element: Counterfeit Countenance divulges his plan to corrupt Magnificence to Fancy in his first appearance on the stage in Skelton’s Magnyfycence, and in Wager’s The Longer Thou Livest, the Vice team of Idleness, Incontinence, and Wrath overtly discuss their designs on the protagonist Moros while he is offstage under the instruction of his good angels. 135 with a scene in which Gaveston delivers just such a speech, but Marlowe, in the very scene in which he establishes the Vice in the play, already complicates the view of Gaveston as truly

Vice-like.

Before delivering this set “Vice” speech, Gaveston receives a letter from the king, and his initial introduction is a curious combination of what we might expect from a Vice and what we might expect from a lover. Gaveston reads the letter from Edward that recalls him to England, but Gaveston makes clear that it is not the land that he longs to return to, but only “him I hold so dear” (1.1.13). The intimacy of a lover is hardly appropriate for a Vice, a character who has no true investment in his targets but only wishes to set them up to fall. However, Gaveston seems more Vice-like as his interests in both his personal pleasure and the power associated with being close to the king contrast with his expressions of love. Continuing to fulfill the role of the flattering Vice, Gaveston ends this first speech with a reference that seems merely to suggest that he considers himself above all but the king but is expressed in terms of flattery: he will “bow to none but the king” and no longer have to engage in “base stooping to the lordly peers,” let alone flatter common people, of whom he says he will “fawn first on the wind” (1.1.18-22). What is notable about Gaveston’s claims here is not merely that he shows his ambitious intentions, but that he also suggests his mode of accomplishing his ambitions: flattery, the primary tool of the

Vice of kings. Although Dessen claims that the play is better understood in terms of those sixteenth-century moralities that present Vices warring for the souls of various members representing a cross-section of society,23 Gaveston makes clear that he has but one target: the

23 “Edward II and Residual Allegory,” 55. The point he is making is that these plays are based upon moral oppositions, which is true, but, as Bevington explored decades before in From “Mankind” to Marlowe, the two sides are no less present in the traditional morality, with the target being exclusively one central figure. 136 king himself. Thus, Marlowe introduces Gaveston by making him a complex human character: he is not only a flattering, opportunistic Vice but also a lover longing for his beloved.

However, once alone on stage, Gaveston speaks directly to the audience and provides his boasting Vice speech. Whereas much has been made of the homoeroticism, theatrical implications, and classical allusion of the speech,24 the aspect that makes his words most Vice- like is not Gaveston’s elaborate design for the king’s masque, but his motivation for planning the performance. Gaveston claims, “I must have wanton poets, pleasant wits, / Musicians, that with the touching of a string / May draw the pliant king which way I please” (1.1.50-52, emphasis mine). Gaveston’s goal is the manipulation of the king for his own benefit: indulgence in aesthetic—even sodomitic—pleasure is merely the most effective route to do so. Marlowe thus sets up Gaveston from the start as a fairly standard type of the Vice, who entraps his prey through manipulation of carnal desires and indulgence in pleasure, tempting the audience to forget the complexity of a historical personage motivated by tragic love as much as vicious pleasure.

Despite Gaveston’s initial appearance as a boasting Vice, the play never delivers any scene resembling Gaveston’s promised masque, or much evidence of his manipulation of the king at all. Indeed, although some have claimed that “it is Gaveston who dominates the king, rather than the other way around,”25 Marlowe does not confirm the morality narrative by presenting any scene in which Gaveston asserts his will over the king. Throughout the play,

24 The references are nearly too many to count. For a particularly interesting reading of the Actaeon-Diana myth, see Mathew Martin, who contrasts the pornographic voyeuristic elements present in the myth in general and Gaveston’s imagined presentation of it in particular that point to, when considered with the martyrdom narrative of his death, two ways of making sense of Edward’s eventual death. See Guy-Pierce for a reading suggesting that Gaveston’s speech establishes that homosexual desire is normative. 25 Guy-Bray, xxi, although he offers no specific references to back up the claim. 137 Marlowe’s primary use of the morality narrative is to set up particular expectations based on it, and then refuse to fulfill those expectations, ultimately replacing the morality as a valid type of historical narrative with tragedy. There are only two scenes in which Gaveston could be said to be shown actually directly influencing Edward. First, when Gaveston encounters the Bishop of

Coventry, whom he blames for his exile, after his return to England, Edward and Gaveston abuse the prelate in a scene that some members of the audience might consider to be evidence of

Edward’s depraved behavior under the sway of Gaveston. However, the play’s occasional glances toward a post-Reformation anti-clerical bias26 indicate that much of the audience may have been at most ambivalent about their actions in the scene. Even if their actions are considered evidence of corruption, Edward is presented as more responsible for the fate of the bishop than his supposed Vice. Although Gaveston initiates the confrontation, Edward himself orders Gaveston to “Throw off his golden mitre, rend his stole, / And in the channel christen him anew” (1.1.186-87), seeming to need no Vice to inspire him toward such sacrilege. A second scene in which Gaveston can be seen attempting to “rule” the king is in Act 2, scene 2. Here

Marlowe provides us with a single instance of Gaveston actually behaving like a Vice, as he whispers in Edward’s ear when he addresses Isabella harshly, “My lord, dissemble with her, speak her fair” (2.2.228), which Edward immediately does. However, when Edward responds by complaining that Mortimer has “grown so brave” that “he threatens civil wars” (2.2.231-232),

Gaveston attempts to influence the king to get rid of Mortimer. Indeed, from the first time

Gaveston saw Mortimer in 1.1, he threatened to “be his death” (80), an early example of his

26 In another instance of Marlowe destabilizing any narrative based on moral dichotomy, Edward rails against the Pope and his clergy in 1.4, using language that echoes common Protestant complaints against Catholicism, but seems to carry his zeal too far when his excessive anger moves from complaints against “Proud Rome” with its “superstitious taper-lights” in “antichristian churches” to a threat to “make Tiber’s channel swell” with the bodies of “slaughtered priests” (1.4. 97-102). 138 Vice-boasting. However, Edward does not follow Gaveston’s suggestion, not only refusing to kill him secretly but also claiming that he cannot imprison him because the people favor him.

Although Marlowe clearly initially establishes Gaveston as related to the flattering Vice, he chooses not to show him corrupting the character of the king or even directly influencing his policies, despite the barons’ claims to the contrary.

This is not to say that Gaveston has no influence over Edward, but merely to suggest that the ways in which we see him influencing Edward conform neither to the traditional model of the influence of a Vice on the morality protagonist nor to the claims that Gaveston made in his initial boast. For all of the claims that Gaveston made regarding his ability to manipulate the “pliant king,” Marlowe shows only two clear instances of Gaveston’s influence on Edward. First,

Edward gives titles to Gaveston, which inspires jealousy in the barons, but is not shown to lead to broader corruption in the kingdom. Second, Gaveston influences the king in the desire to enjoy Gaveston’s company, which allows the barons to manipulate Edward more than Gaveston does. The play reveals that Edward is undeniably excessively infatuated with Gaveston, to such a degree that he has no interest in his wife and little interest in ruling his kingdom: Edward so dotes on Gaveston that he is willing to “[m]ake several kingdoms of this monarchy” to satisfy each of the barons, provided that they allow him “some nook or corner left / To frolic with [his] dearest Gaveston” (1.4.70-73). Prior to the action of the play, Edward’s weakness for Gaveston was already well established, and his proximity was hardly required for that weakness to be the strongest aspect of Edward’s character. The play opens with Gaveston in exile, and Edward calls him back against his just-deceased father’s will, and later in the play, when Gaveston is again in exile, Edward’s character does not alter, suggesting that Edward’s character is not shaped by 139 Gaveston but is tragically disposed to excess. Although Gaveston certainly benefits from his association with Edward, he is hardly presented as responsible for Edward’s moral condition let alone the state of the kingdom as a whole.

Nonetheless, the morality view obtains, both in characters in the play and in the minds of audiences and critics. Marlowe, by introducing the Vice clearly if not unambiguously before this arrival, sets up in the audience an expectation that the story should follow the arc of the political morality, telling the story of a young king manipulated by his young flatterer—the morality

Vice—to make poor decisions, while his good angels—wiser, older advisors—do all they can to restrain the young monarch and redeem him so that he can rule effectively. Marlowe, as shown above, does not present his history to support this suggestion, but the play does present this view of history, almost exactly as Marlowe found it articulated in Holinshed. Although Holinshed does not portray the barons as faultless in their actions toward the king, they are generally construed as “good angels” to the king: they attempt to remove Gaveston “in hope that the king’s mind might happily be altered into a better purpose, being not altogether converted into a venomous disposition, but so that it might be cured.”27 Later, after having executed Gaveston and separated the king from the Spencers, his new flattering corrupters, Holinshed suggests a brief victory for the good angel barons, so that “the state of the realm [was] newly restored and new counselors placed about the king.”28 Surely Marlowe recognized in this narrative the alignment of a moral protagonist shifting from one group to another, but he also seems to have seen the falsehood of this construction, because he chose not to offer a single scene to support it.

27 Lynch, 103. 28 Ibid, 106. 140 The only representation of the barons in this way, despite an ambiguous sense of sympathy critics claim audiences are meant to feel early in the play, is articulated by the barons themselves, whom the audience is given little reason to trust. The barons, by portraying

Gaveston as the corrupting Vice who runs the king and the kingdom to ruin, make themselves, seemingly by default, the good angels trying to preserve the kingdom and redeem the king, to make him more fit to rule. The story as they tell it is evident from the beginning of the play:

Mortimer Sr. refers to the king as “bewitched” (1.2.55) by Gaveston, Isabella accuses Gaveston directly—“[T]hou corrupts my lord” (1.4.150)—and Lancaster affirms (against all evidence to the contrary) when the barons initially exile Gaveston, “[N]ow his minion’s gone, / His wanton humor will be quickly left” (1.4.198-99). Lancaster broadens the accusations against Gaveston from merely distracting the king to corrupting the king’s policies when Edward refuses to pay for the release of Mortimer Sr. He tells Edward, “Your minion Gaveston hath taught you this”

(2.2.148), although Marlowe provides no direct evidence to affirm his view. When the barons finally confront Gaveston in their effort to eliminate him, it is Mortimer who speaks the morality narrative on behalf of all the barons: “Thou proud disturber of thy country’s peace, / Corrupter of thy king, cause of these broils, / Base flatterer, yield!” (2.5.9-11, emphasis mine) The historical narrative to justify the baron’s action is a morality play, in which they are the wise counselors acting in their “country’s cause” (2.5.22) in all their actions. The power of this narrative construction is evidenced in the great numbers of critics who at least provisionally accept their view, assuming the barons’ righteous justification despite Marlowe’s refusal to stage any support for it other than their own words. 141 Although Marlowe may have simply chosen, for the sake of compression, to allow the misrule and widespread corruption to which Edward was led by Gaveston to be presented only through the words of the barons, the construction of the play as a whole warns us against taking their word for the truth of the situation. Although many readers, audiences, and critics have sympathized with Isabella and Mortimer, accepting them and the nobles as good angels in opposition to Gaveston’s Vice, this effect, if we follow the way in which Marlowe de-constructs the morality myth, is based on an acceptance of the very myth that the play discredits. In their initial interaction, Gaveston continues to act more or less Vice-like in his reactions to the lords who disdain him, but his self-interested nature does not make the opposed party disinterested and righteous. Mortimer, Sr., is the first to speak the will of the barons, and he frames the contrast between the two groups exactly as Marlowe will continuously reveal it to be throughout the remainder of the play: not a question of right vs. wrong, but a question of a power struggle for authority under the king: “If you love us, my lord, hate Gaveston” (1.1.79). Although Mortimer

Junior’s response frames their motivation as one of loyalty to Edward’s father, Lancaster reveals again that their motivation is tied up in their personal power and their disdain for the elevation of an upstart member of the gentry who takes away from their own influence, asking, “[W]hy do you thus incense your peers, / That naturally would love and honor you, / But for that base and obscure Gaveston?” (1.1.98-100) It is not any apparent actual wrong that Gaveston has led the king into that angers the earls, it is simply that they see themselves as “naturally” deserving authority next under the king, and the king has given that authority to Gaveston. Lancaster’s very suggestion that the lords can choose to withhold their “natural” duty to the king when he displeases them belies that there is any natural order to uphold. When the king refuses to accede 142 to them, the nobles immediately turn to threats, hardly the action of loyal subjects or good angels trying to reclaim the wandering soul of their king: Lancaster aggressively threatens Edward,

“[L]ook to see the throne, where you should sit, / To float in blood, and at thy wanton head / The glozing head of thy base minion thrown” (1.1.132). It is difficult to imagine the audience member who was intended to sympathize with barons who utter such vicious threats at the king in the very first scene of the play.

Although all of the lords seem at best questionable in their interactions with their king,29 the younger Mortimer is particularly suspect from the very beginning. Not all critics have seen that Marlowe’s portrayal of Mortimer, as Bevington suggests of the Queen, is “a gradual unmasking” of Mortimer’s depraved character rather than a genuine change through the action of the play:30 in fact, Michael Manheim calls him “an energetic and admirable spokesman for responsible lords”31 and many others have likewise seen young Mortimer as starting out as a positive character. To accept this view of Mortimer, however, is to believe his construing of his motives and Edward’s becoming corrupted under Gaveston at the expense of attending to his actual words and actions. Within the first two scenes of the play, he goes from being willing to

“parley with… naked sword” (1.1.125) in order to bring about Gaveston’s certain banishment to suggesting that Gaveston’s banishment will happen or “The king shall lose his crown, for we have power, / And courage too, to be revenged at full” (1.2.59-60). That the demand for

29 Edmund, who is the Earl of Kent and Edward’s brother, is the character in the play who best sees this. As many critics have pointed out, he functions in an almost “choric” role (Lynch, xxii), helping the audience to see how inappropriate their positions are early in the play when he warns them against being too “proud” and questions their allegiance. That he later joins them is also significant, as I will explore later. 30 Bevington, From “Mankind” to Marlowe, 241, suggests this in reference to the queen. He seems ambivalent about Mortimer’s character, allowing that he first at least seems to have “laudable motives” at the start of the play although ultimately seeing both Isabella and Mortimer as slowly unveiled Vice characters rather than dynamic characters responding to the forces of history in psychologically believable ways. 31 74. 143 Gaveston’s exile is merely an excuse for Mortimer is clear in his thinly masked desire to

“lawfully revolt from him” (1.2.73) when the king refuses to comply with their wishes. Marlowe reveals Mortimer’s true colors even more when he encourages Edward’s excommunication, which would enable the nobles to “[d]epose him and elect a new king” (1.4.55). When Isabella whispers to him her plan to keep Gaveston from exile in order to bring about his death, Mortimer seems to grasp that this will provide him “with some color to rise up in arms” (1.4.279) against the king, for otherwise the people would be against them because he knows they will see it as

“treason to be up against a king” (281). The word “color” suggests an excuse,32 but, particularly preceded by the indefinite “some,” the implication seems to be that any specious excuse will suit

Mortimer. Although Mortimer does not reveal the depth of his Machiavellian depravity until later in the play, even in the opening scenes of the play—all of these within the first act—

Marlowe makes clear that his interest is not for the good of the king or kingdom, but for his own benefit.33

Indeed, if there were any truth to the notion that the lords who surround Edward were to be seen as benevolent toward him, we should expect to see some effort on their part to positively influence the king. However, their only interest is, ultimately, in killing Gaveston in order to secure greater power for themselves. Although Edward’s relationship with Gaveston clearly limits the effectiveness of his rule—even his attention to his duties—as a king, the barons’ cries

32 The OED lists many “figurative senses” current in the period, including “Fair or reasonable excuse; good reason; justification,” but this is the last sense listed, with “A specious reason, ground, or argument; a pretext,” “Outward appearance; show, aspect, or semblance of something, esp. as justifying a particular judgment, course of action, etc.” and “A plausible but in reality false plea” all given priority. "colour | color, n.1". OED Online. March 2017. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/36596?rskey=eewhAC&result=2&isAdvanced=false (accessed March 24, 2017). 33 To be fair to Holinshed, he is more ambivalent in his presentation of the barons’ motives and actions than some critics seem to be. Although he does suggest the view of the barons as “good angels” as noted above, he also makes clear that they had personal grudges that led many of them to be “determined to be revenged upon him” (Lynch, 104). 144 to rid the realm of the “canker” Gaveston are no sooner realized than they are echoed by renewed cries to exile Spencer. Although Marlowe provides the lesser figures Spencer and Baldock an opening scene parallel to Gaveston’s, in which they are revealed to be opportunistic and self- interested flatterers, Marlowe offers no hint of the same kind of obsessive, consuming love in

Edward that he showed for Gaveston, nor do we see them influencing the king in anything more than granting them titles. Nonetheless, the demand to rid the king of the Spencers takes the place of their demands regarding Gaveston almost immediately upon his removal, and the evident hollowness of their rage against Spencer, accusing him of being a “base upstart” (3.3.21) and

“flatterer” (3.3.12) in a perfect echo of their complaints against Gaveston, serves not only to reveal that they are simply looking for an excuse to rebel against the king, but also, retroactively, to suggest that the same complaints against Gaveston are merely excuses for their actions.

Although critics have often seen the barons as somewhat justified in the beginning of the play, just what justifies their actions, particularly based on the ways in which Marlowe undercuts their supposed reasons for their actions, is ambiguous. The charge of sodomy, both formerly by critics whose “homophobic” assumption was that the barons were justified in rebelling against the king for his sodomy and more recently by critics who construe Edward and Gaveston as essentially victims of homophobia,34 is probably the most commonly discussed accusation

34 Most evident in the Derek Jarman film version Edward II, the view of Edward as a victim of homophobia is becoming more common. Although I argue that such a reading is not supported based on the discussion cited between the elder and younger Mortimers, the notion of “sodomy” in the sixteenth century was certainly a complicated one, and has become the focus of most critical attention paid to the play in recent years. For brief discussions of these elements and their significance in the play, see Lynch (xix-xxi) and Guy-Bray (xii-xviii), and for more thorough analyses see Alan Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England (London: Gay Men's Press, 1982), Amanda Bailey, Flaunting: Style and the Subversive Male Body in Renaissance England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), Jonathan Crewe, “Disorderly Love: Sodomy Revisited in Marlowe’s Edward II,” Criticism 51 (3): 385-99, accessed June 15, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23131521, and David Stymeist, “Status, Sodomy, and the Theater in Marlowe’s Edward II,” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 44 (2): 459, accessed August 13, 2015, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3844628. 145 against the king. Although Isabella complains throughout the first half of the play that she has lost her husband’s love to Gaveston, thus suggesting her husband’s sodomitical relationship is a significant part of her motivation, her concern is personal,35 particularly since she and Edward have already produced an heir in the prince Edward. For the rest of the lords, although their complaints against the king are never directly expressed in terms of “sodomy,” the complex of behaviors and attitudes surrounding sodomy in the sixteenth century suggests that their reasons are not entirely removed from the problem created by the king’s “unnatural” relationship with

Gaveston.

Although, as noted above, the concerns suggested by sodomy would have been enormously complex, Marlowe provides a conversation in which Mortimer both directly addresses the issue and offers the clearest indication of the motivation behind the lords’ actions against their king. Since it is central to one of the most discussed aspects of the play, as well as to an understanding of Marlowe’s use of the morality, it is worth presenting the entire conversation between the younger and elder Mortimer here:

Mort. Senior. Nephew, I must to Scotland; thou stay'st here. Leave now to oppose thyself against the king: Thou seest by nature he is mild and calm; And, seeing his mind so dotes on Gaveston, Let him without controlment have his will. The mightiest kings have had their minions: Great Alexander loved Hephæstion, The conquering Hercules for Hylas wept, And for Patroclus stern Achilles drooped And not kings only, but the wisest men: The Roman Tully loved Octavius, Grave Socrates wild Alcibiades.

35 The view of Isabella as a sympathetic suffering wife is fairly common, and the play supports, through her soliloquies in particular, when there is no reason for posturing, that she is hurt by the abandonment she has suffered and jealous of Gaveston. Although I would not deny that these make her sympathetic, they do not make her noble, since her reasons are essentially self-interested. 146 Then let his grace, whose youth is flexible, And promiseth as much as we can wish, Freely enjoy that vain light-headed earl, For riper years will wean him from such toys. Mortimer. Uncle, his wanton humor grieves not me; But this I scorn, that one so basely-born Should by his sovereign's favor grow so pert, And riot it with the treasure of the realm, While soldiers mutiny for want of pay. He wears a lord's revenue on his back, And, Midas-like, he jets it in the court, With base outlandish cullions at his heels, Whose proud fantastic liveries make such show As if that Proteus, god of shapes, appeared. I have not seen a dapper jack so brisk. He wears a short Italian hooded cloak, Larded with pearl, and in his Tuscan cap A jewel of more value than the crown. While others walk below, the king and he, From out a window, laugh at such as we, And flout our train, and jest at our attire. Uncle, 'tis this that makes me impatient. (1.4.386-419, emphasis mine)

Here, Marlowe, in a private conversation between the two Mortimers in which they have no reason to deceive or grandstand, provides the clearest picture of what is wrong with Edward as king according to those who oppose him. Mortimer begins by using a word of enormous significance throughout the play, referencing the “nature” of the king. Because the nature of the king is gentle, Mortimer sees no reason not to simply let the king “freely enjoy” Gaveston’s company. Essentially, his argument is that there is nothing wrong with sodomitic relations between men, and he even cites many classical examples to defend his view, choosing those seen as both powerful kings and wise men. Although the king may be a bit excessive in his regard for

Gaveston, there is no reference to anything unnatural or immoral in Mortimer Senior’s analysis of the relationship. In fact, he seems to recommend allowing the king free rein with Gaveston in 147 order to help him mature past the point of interest in him, suggesting that they have no reason to correct this “flaw” in the king’s character, but rather that the king’s nature will mature in time, if

“nature” is allowed to run its course.

The younger Mortimer, interestingly, does not contradict his uncle at all in his assessment of the relationship itself, acknowledging that the king’s “wanton humor,”36 ostensibly including his sexual relationship with Gaveston, does not bother him, dismissing his sodomitic relationship in less than a line. The act of sodomy is not the problem, according to Mortimer, but its

“sodomitical” implications in the kingdom are the problem, resulting in what he sees as a disordered world, one in which, particularly offensively, those he sees as lower than himself are more powerful and more esteemed. Because Gaveston is a male favorite rather than a mistress, his status has changed significantly due to his special relationship with the king. Mortimer’s disdain for one he sees as belonging to a lower class is clear in the rest of his speech, but his particular concern is how his promotion has inverted what he sees as the “natural” order:

Gaveston himself spends the treasury on his own desires rather than those funds being dedicated to the service of war, and, as if Gaveston’s own clothing, particularly with its emphasis upon its foreignness, were not excessive and indulgent enough, Gaveston attires his servants so richly that the effect is Protean. The Proteus image, central to the speech, is the essence of Mortimer’s complaint with the king’s “sodomitic” regime: the “natural” forms of the world are no longer dependable. He and the barons must “walk below” the king and his “base” minion, their forms worthy of note only for the sake of derision. It is this that makes Mortimer “impatient” for the

36 Although wanton had many uses current in the late sixteenth century, many of them have sexual connotations, and the term used in response to male-male love seems a fairly clear indication of Mortimer’s meaning. See "wanton, adj. and n.". OED Online. March 2017. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/225544?rskey=rg1n0F&result=1&isAdvanced=false (accessed March 24, 2017). 148 king to mature past his “wanton humor:” the king and Gaveston’s sodomy is Protean, and the dependable “natural” shapes of the political world may be so changed by the time that the king no longer dotes on Gaveston that proper order, as Mortimer sees it, may never be reestablished.

It is this that Mortimer cannot abide, and its continuation under Spencer is equally unable to be brooked, and so the complaints against Gaveston are readily transferred to the king’s new “base” followers. Some in the audience who share some of his biases might sympathize with

Mortimer’s perspective, but it is clearly motivated by self-interest and class bias, hardly the

“admirable” or “responsible” character some critics have construed him as. Further, in the world of Marlowe’s tragic history, there is no such thing as “natural” in the sense of a proper social and moral order, and it is just this order that a political morality depends upon for its dichotomies to have meaning.

If Marlowe had intended us to see the barons who surround the king as at all noble in their intentions as his sources suggested they were, rather than merely as motivated by their desire to maintain a “natural” status quo in which they have power, he might have given us even one scene in which they actually try to turn the king away from those aspects of his character that they see as unnatural. However, no such scene is ever offered: the king himself sees their lack of concern with him, pointing out, “How fast they run to banish him I love. / They would not stir, were it to do me good” (1.4.94-95), and Marlowe gives us nothing to suggest that Edward’s assessment is wrong.

The only character who seems concerned for Edward’s well-being is the Earl of Kent,

Edward’s brother Edmund, who starts and ends the play staunchly opposed to the barons, but is turned to their side briefly in the middle of the play, when he tells Edward, “I see your love to 149 Gaveston / Will be the ruin of the realm and you” (2.2.207-208). He then advises, rather than threatens, his brother to “banish [Gaveston] forever” (210), because he sees his brother’s addiction to Gaveston as unavoidably leading “the wrathful nobles to threaten wars” (209).

Edmund here attempts to lead Edward to make, of his own will, the moral choice that will benefit himself and the kingdom, but the king rejects his advice and sends him away, unable to differentiate between traitorous barons and well-intentioned advisors. This rejection, together with Edward’s continuing executions of any lords who rebel, ultimately leads to Edmund’s freeing Mortimer and joining the barons and the queen in their effort against the king and

Gaveston. The closest character that Marlowe gives to a truly “good counselor” in the play turns against the king, but, after the barons have succeeded, he says, “Edward, alas, my heart relents for thee. / … / Vile wretch, and why hast thou, of all unkind, / Borne arms against thy brother and thy king?” (4.6.2-6) Lines such as these lend a tragic dignity to Edmund that is denied to

Isabella and Mortimer, as he gains insight and undergoes an anagnorisis which brings about a moral change. In the character of Edmund, whom many see as the moral center of the play,

Marlowe makes clear that the moral center is not the stable center implicit in a political morality, but a shifting center that makes the morality version that the barons construct impossible.

Whereas Marlowe is careful to show that the morality narrative constructed by the barons is false or, at best, a useful device to serve their own less than noble purposes, the play as a whole still presents a kind of psychomachia for his young king, but it is bitterly tragic, denying not only the comic conclusion of redemption but also the just resolution of vice punished. The king, at the start of the play and throughout most of it, is undeniably presented as a character with clear moral failings. Although he does not directly present a scene of homoerotic passion 150 between the king and Gaveston, he makes clear the nature of their relationship, both in the conversation of the Mortimers above and in the many comments of the queen and the lords that suggest their intimacy. The disgusted tone with which these are given is likely meant to guide the audience’s reaction to their relationship, but that does not necessarily mean that Marlowe is presenting the charge of sodomy as worthy of the rebellion in the play. Marlowe seems to have intended to activate the audience’s judgment of the king as sodomite, but more by emphasizing the excessive and absolute sway Edward’s affection for Gaveston holds over the king than by its mere presence. By activating a moralistic response to the king’s relationship with Gaveston in his audience and then having both Mortimers suggest that the king’s sexuality is not directly relevant to his fitness to rule, Marlowe gives a clear indication of the distance between traditional morality and political reality. As a sin, sodomy indicated an entire world of inverted, unnatural relationships for the audience,37 and Marlowe’s refusal to make the core sodomitic act a real transgression in the play—it is never called “unnatural” throughout the play, although relationships less connected to “nature,” as those between king and barons, husband and wife, ruler and subject are all referenced as unnatural throughout the course of the play—suggests that all those other implicitly “natural” orders are even less “naturally” ordained. Although the average early modern audience may have accepted the natural order implicit in all of these relationships, Marlowe seems to be going out of his way to show that they are not; rather, they are mere constructions of political convenience, allowing authority to claim its own justification without the need to account for it in any way—“nature” puts man over woman, lord over

37As noted earlier, many critics of the play as well as cultural analysts have written on the topic of sodomy and its implications for an early modern English audience. Evidence of the view as distinct from our own understanding is clear from sources as various as Dante’s placement of sodomites as sinners against nature, associated with crimes of usury and blasphemy and Calvin’s commentary on the destruction of Sodom, whose sin implied that “all care of honesty was abolished and the order of nature was perverted.” 151 peasant, baron over gentry, and king over baron. Known history is assimilated into “natural” patterns, such as the morality, and these patterns are as self-validating as the notion that “nature” creates the social order.

Whereas Marlowe does not present male-male sexual desire as in itself wrong, the excessive nature of it in the king is clearly shown to be problematic.38 A king who would divide his kingdom to satisfy his barons, as long as they let him keep his lover, is clearly a king who is in need of being “reclaimed” (4.2.57) in order to be a proper ruler.39 The ways in which

Marlowe maps the story of Edward on to that of the wavering soul undergoing a psychomachia further reveal the ways in which the realm of Marlowe’s tragic political history is incompatible with the implications of the Christian myth expressed in the morality play.

Marlowe arranges the development of the soul of the king in three scenes that specifically parallel the struggle of opposed forces implicit in a morality, but each is delivered ironically, and the king’s development through the scenes parallels the development of the protagonist in a morality but leads to a tragic deconstruction of that forms assumed meaning. The first is in 1.4, when the king “sides” with the barons who have been trying to banish or kill Gaveston. The second is the deposition scene in 5.1, when Edward submits himself to the authority of the barons and the church. The final action is Edward’s death, spread over several scenes, which in its resolution implies a kind of redemption for the king, but one that tragically has no eternal or temporal value.

38 A fine explication of Edward’s excessive “humoral” imbalance is presented in Thomas Cartelli, “Edward II,” in The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe, ed. Patrick Cheney, 158-173 (New York: Cambridge UP, 2004). 39 Few critics debate that we are meant to see Edward as a problematic ruler. Guy-Bray attempts such a claim as a rebuttal to the “weak king” accusation often leveled at Edward, suggesting that his priority of aesthetic pleasure over warfare could be seen as positive, but the argument is unlikely to have occurred to many members of its original audience, and one can imagine that even Guy-Bray might bristle somewhat under political rulers so willing to sacrifice the good of the populace for the benefit of their lovers. 152 From the beginning of the play, Edward is already clearly well along the wrong path on which Magnificence wanders, enjoying his indulgent dalliance with his Vice Gaveston, but the first major turn for the king comes in 1.4. Early in the scene, the king is made to submit to the nobles and banish Gaveston. Although he has no desire to do so, Edward submits to them because “The legate of the Pope will be obeyed” (1.4.134); thus, there is no actual character change present in the king. He merely aligns himself with the “right side” because he is forced to. The action that conforms to the generic pattern is performed but its meaning is absent.

Once Gaveston has been forced to leave, Isabella puts in place a plot to win the barons over to allow Gaveston back. Many critics have noted that Isabella’s conversation with

Mortimer is kept from the audience,40 but none have noted how this corresponds with the action of the Vice, whispering in the ear to spread his poison.41 However, the original production almost certainly would have staged this in a way to make apparent that Isabella’s “buzzing in the ear” of Mortimer then spreads through Mortimer to the rest of the barons.42 Thus, those characters who have set themselves up to be the wise counselors of the king are shown in the staging to be under the control of the Vices of Isabella and Mortimer as the infection spreads through them. Both sides of the conflict evince that pattern of the Vice, removing any moral distinction between them.

40 See Lynch, et al. A particularly interesting examination of the significance of Marlowe’s disallowing access to the particulars of this conversation is in Sarah Munson Deats, Sex, Gender, and Desire in the Plays of Christopher Marlowe (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997), who argues for a more complex view of Isabella than is typically proposed. 41 Dessen, “Allegorical Action and Elizabethan Staging,” notes the pattern, and Respublica is just one example of a play that specifically shows the Vices conversing with their target but without allowing the audience access to their specific words. 42 It is noteworthy, also, that Isabella, not Mortimer, acts as the first Vice. Critics who observe her as “under the sway” of Mortimer miss the ways in which she manipulates him. 153 This leads to the resolution of the scene, which Matha Hester Fleischer calls “the image of a perfectly functioning government,”43 a scene in which Ruth Lunney argues, audiences are encouraged to “forget, for the moment, [Isabella’s] recent deceits and conspiracies” because the scenes are “only indirectly relevant.”44 Although this is the only scene in which government appears to function as it “naturally” should, it is actually part of the same scene as Isabella’s entirely unnatural “deceits and conspiracies,” and is part of the same dramatic movement of the king’s alignment with the opposed forces of a traditional morality. If he has just aligned himself with the “right” side—the barons—and banished the Vice, he should now be free to administer his “perfectly functioning government.” However, even for the brief moment that the king is aligned with the lords, this alignment is accomplished by the lords determining that their best path to their desired outcome is not to help the king, but to follow the advice of their own Vices,

Isabella and Mortimer. Thus, they deliver Edward’s Vice back to him, in order to be able to have him eliminated more conveniently. Edward has suspected that “They would not stir, were it to do me good,” but he seems to have forgotten his own words, as he accepts the barons as good and loyal subjects when they offer to have Gaveston returned after all. Their plan, to offer him what he desires in order to trap him, is precisely the design of the Vice in a morality, and

Edward falls into their trap. Their submission to him, so soon after his apparent submission to them, is utterly false, suggesting that the “perfectly functioning government” designed to make

Edward believe he is “rich and strong, / Having the love of his renownèd peers” (1.4.366-67) as

Isabella puts it, is actually mere political maneuvering. These apparent shifts of loyalty are mere

43 Martha Hester Fleischer, The Iconography of the English History Play. Vol. 10. (Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, Universität Salzburg, 1974), 33. 44 Marlowe and the Popular Tradition: Innovation in the English Drama before 1595 (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2002), 80. 154 pretense, and Edward condemns himself to further loss in his alignment with the “right” side. He has been forced and then tricked—with no moral choice on his part in either instance—into aligning himself with the barons, and the only picture of “natural” political order in the play in one designed to entrap and ultimately overthrow the king who should be the apex of that political order. In the tragic world that Edward attempts to navigate, Marlowe has made clear that both sides of the supposed moral opposition are vicious.

The second scene that is significant for Edward’s psychomachia comes much later in the play, after he has suffered loss after loss, with Gaveston being killed, his barons having rebelled against him, and his authority being stripped from him. As Mathew Martin explores at length, the Christian conception of pain gives purpose—eternal significance—to suffering, and this concept of suffering, as well as its usefulness to bring about eternal reward, is central to the morality conception. It is through suffering that the central figure, whether a commoner or a king, comes to redemption. If Edward’s weaknesses are an over-indulgence in the pleasures of the flesh and an inability to temper his affections, there is little evidence that he has reformed these aspects of his character throughout the play, until he comes to the abbey where he will be deposed in Act 5.

Leading up to the scene of his deposition, we see that suffering seems already to have made Edward more reflective, intimating the possible start of a moral turn. Upon his arrival at the abbey, he looks back at his life:

Stately and proud in riches and in train, Whilom I was, powerful and full of pomp; But what is he whom rule and empery Have not in life or death made miserable? Come, Spencer, come, Baldock, come, sit down by me; Make trial now of that philosophy 155 That in our famous nurseries of arts Thou sucked’st from Plato and from Aristotle. Father, this life contemplative is heaven; O that I might this life in quiet lead! (4.7.12-21)

He commends the value of a life of contemplation, the ascetic existence of an abbey, almost the direct opposite of his aesthetic excesses from his days of great power. Ryan argues that this renunciation prepares the audience to see Edward as a saint, encouraging viewers to consider the death of Edward relative to medieval passion plays. Mathew Martin, however, rightly problematizes Ryan’s claim for Edward’s sainthood, suggesting, “Only if we accept Edward’s renunciation of the world, the realm of secular history, as fundamentally meaningless can we begin to consider him as a saint.”45 Whereas it is not fair to assume that Edward’s words here make him a saint, it is equally unfair to assume that Edward’s words here demand an absolute rejection of all meaning in the political realm. First, Edward shows no indication in these words or in the rest of the play that he sees all mortal events as empty: he continues to express concern for his kingdom and his family and to feel acutely what he has lost. In fact, what he is doing here is looking for meaning in the arc of his life from “rule and empery” to his current state, and reflecting upon philosophy is the way to do it. The physical world, before such a source of indulgent pleasure for the monarch, is now no less significant, but it is something that he sees he must be more reflective about. Particularly, within the tradition of the political morality, the ruler must turn to a reflective existence in order to turn away from his excesses and luxuries:

Adversity warns rulers in Magnyfycence, “[F]or all thy pomp and pryde / Thy pleasure now with payne and trouble shalbe tryde,” a warning that Edward’s words echo, indicating that he is

45 90. 156 himself learning this lesson, so essential to the moral process of a ruler who “was wont to boste, brage, and to brace” when he “trusted in golde” (1880-1894).

Having made at least a gesture toward desiring a more contemplative life, struggling with thoughts of depression, and expressing concern for others, the king seems to be set by

Marlowe in an ideal position to be redeemed, but for the audience the known history of his tragic end hangs over that promised end. In the scene that follows, the king is again surrounded by the group, on the side of Mortimer, that has put itself in the position of the moral right, and more emphatically so than the earlier scene with the barons, because these are primarily clerical figures. He shows the wavering typical of a morality protagonist, but his wavering is not between right and wrong, but merely, as before his acceptance of and by the nobles, between giving in and holding out. The king sees that all that he has assumed to be “natural” in the order of the world is false, and he capitulates, not with a sense that it is right to do so but, once again, with the sure knowledge that he has no choice but to do so. Nonetheless, Edward speaks like a morality hero who is coming to the proper perspective about worldly glory when he prays at his deposition: “Now, sweet God of Heaven, / Make me despise this transitory pomp, / And sit for aye enthronized in heaven” (5.1.107-109). Edward has not quite fully accomplished the moral turn—he is still praying that it will be accomplished in him—but his words certainly sound similar to those of Magnificence, who, just before he is redeemed by Good Hope, complains of his own addiction to the external benefits of rule: “Where is nowe my welthe, and my noble estate / … / Where is nowe my pleasure and my worldly good? / Alasse, my foly, alasse me wanton wyll” (2055-62). These echoes of Magnificence surely suggest that Edward is struggling to make the proper moral choice; however, once he realizes the vanity of his excessive liberty 157 and love of wealth, Magnificence has his kingdom restored to him, but in the political world of

Marlowe, the proper moral choice does not bear the reward of proper rule and a well-ordered kingdom. There can be no comic close to a political morality according to Marlowe, because the impetus of morality and the requisites of politics are tragically irreconcilable. Edward could be a fitter king as the man he is when he ceases being king than he was during his rule, and yet, of course, this action makes him no king at all. Further, the king ultimately decides to give up his crown to preserve the rule (and likely the life) of his own son. Thus, again, Marlowe has his king make the proper moral decision, the responsible and right decision as a ruler, and it is this that makes him no ruler at all.

The scenes leading up to and showing Edward’s death are, perhaps, the most overtly allegorical in the entire play. First, in a motif borrowed directly from the morality,46 the king and his followers encounter death personified as they approach the Abbey. Spencer, when the

Abbott assures the king that he need not fear for his safety, replies that he spied a figure with a scythe on their way in, and he suggests that he need not fear any “one alive; but shrewdly I suspect / A gloomy fellow in the mead below.” Because their approach to the abbey was not on stage, the audience has no real way of knowing whether his words should be heard as literal— complicated by the fact that Spencer suggests that the “gloomy fellow in the mead below” is not alive—or metaphorical, as a picture of Death personified. When the mower later does appear on stage, Marlowe’s presentation of literal and figurative ideas simultaneously could not be more clear: the “mower” enters as a perfect symbolic picture of Death with his scythe in hand, and he identifies the king and his associates, actions that lead—inevitably, for an audience familiar with

46 Death appears as a character in many moralities, such as The Death of Herod, in Medieval Drama, ed. David Bevington (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975), Everyman, The Castle of Perseverance, and The Longer Thou Livest, suggesting the perseverance of the figure from the earliest examples to those of the later Tudor period. 158 the image—to Edward’s death.47 The symbolic and historical realms briefly align in the play, but only in order to bring about the horrific death of the king.

The symbolism in Edward’s death is apparent on multiple levels as well. Ryan has made a thorough exploration of the ties to the death of Edward and the medieval passion play, but the allegorical suggestions of the scene make the resonances with the morality no less relevant. All those who tend on the king before his death, Matrevis and Gurney as well as his killer Lightborn, function as perversions of the clerical roles that bring about redemption in the traditional morality. On his way to Killingworth, Matrevis and Gurney shave Edward—an episode lifted directly from the chronicles—ostensibly to keep him from being recognized, but also to humiliate him. However, the way that Marlowe has written the action, it could also function as a perverse baptism for the king.48 Edward asks his keepers for water to “clear [his] body from foul excrements” (5.3.26), suggesting the moral cleansing implicit in baptism, but the action the two take is apparently to dunk his head in the puddle of water to prepare him to shave his beard, hardly the clearing of foulness he requested, except as a parody of the dousing of the head implicit in baptism. His foulness is washed away with more foulness, and he loses his identity, a

“new man” after his baptism. After being visited by death at the Abbey, all that remains is to be taken by the devil: at Killingworth, the king is visited by Lightborn, whose name clearly links him to Lucifer and is likely inspired by the devil of the Chester mystery cycles. Once he arrives at Killingworth, Lightborn continues this inversion of the clerical image and the perversion of

47 Ryan, 467, makes an interesting argument that the soldiers with him, who are specifically described as carrying Welsh hooks, further the allegorical representation of the scene, as the pruning scythe of the mower is paired with the inverted cross pikes that the soldiers carry, suggested both sacrilege and “political pruning.” 48 Lynch make a note of it in his edition, but without providing any citation in terms of its critical source or any explanation of its meaning or any rationale for finding it to be so. 159 sacraments. When Lightborn is sent by Mortimer49 to kill the king, Edward wavers between trusting and doubting the new arrival in his dungeon prison. Although he suspects that he has come to murder him, he also treats him as confessor: he sees his own “tragedy” written in the eyes of his visitor, and asks,

Yet stay a while; forbear thy bloody hand, And let me see the stroke before it comes, That even then when I shall lose my life, My mind may be more steadfast on my God. (5.5.75-78)

Edward speaks, not as king, but as any poor man dying in fear of God’s wrath. This seems undeniably to be a more “moral” Edward than the one we saw flaunting his excessive love with

Gaveston and apparently running his kingdom into debt and upheaval. Marlowe’s history turns the morality tragic as the king’s moral turn does not earn him his kingdom back, as a political morality would suggest: it earns him only death, and a most brutal death.

Before his death, however, Marlowe gives one more reminder of his use of the allegorical moral tradition: Edward hears “[s]omething still buzzeth in [his] ears” warning him of his impending death. The good angel warning of moral or mortal danger is a standard motif in the allegorical tradition and moralities in particular, but, again, Marlowe undercuts the possibility of the triumph of the “good” in the scene: his good angel speaks indistinctly, and exists only in

Edward’s mind—no stage direction or line indicates that anything noticeable to the audience has taken place. However, the devil Lightborn leers over him and speaks distinctly and answers

Edward’s concern at the buzzing in his ears with his intention: “To rid thee of thy life” (5.5.107).

49 Again, Ryan, 467, points out the allegorical suggestion in the false etymology of Mortimer’s name (Death), suggesting that Death sends the Devil to gather to gather the soul of the king. A morality play might more typically invert that order, that the Devil (or God) sends Death to the morality protagonist, but the allegorical implications are certainly present, in either case. 160 Whether Marlowe intended his audience to see the manner of the murder of Edward as symbolic has been a discussion for many critics of the play,50 but all critics accept that, even if it was shown to be such, it was hardly Marlowe’s invention. Killing a sodomitic king by sodomizing him with a hot poker may feels like a “Dantesque contrapasso,”51 but if Marlowe’s original staging emphasized the irony, his play script does not. Rather, Lightborn explains his motivation for his method of murder as based on its inability to be detected, so that the human agency of the death, at least, has no deliberate design as a just punishment for a sodomite. Although the question of whether there is deliberate irony in the method of the king’s death remains, Marlowe provides no support for viewing the death as divine punishment: what Marlowe makes clear is that it is brutal, horrifically painful, and purposeless. Edward has been shown attempting to achieve spiritual growth through his suffering, but he is killed not as punishment for his sins, as a morality might suggest, but as a sacrifice to the power of another.

Certain choices drawn from the traditional morality that Marlowe makes in presenting these last moments of Edward’s life seems to suggest rather the opposite: although Edward has lost everything, Marlowe gives clues that allows us to see him not as receiving just punishment, but as being redeemed. In a clear connection to the death of Christ,52 Edward’s last words are

“Assist me, sweet God, and receive my soul!” (5.5.109) The echoes of Christ’s death cry are undeniable—and seem to suggest rather the opposite of a deserved death—but these words also echo those of a morality protagonist’s comic conclusion. Although many morality protagonists’ last lines echo these sentiments, Everyman’s last lines before his death are the most clear

50Lynch, xxx-xxxi, discusses various readings. 51 Ibid, xxx. 52 Again, Ryan uses this quote to further his argument for a connection between the death and Edward and Christ’s crucifixion, and it seems difficult to doubt that Marlowe did not intend these lines to echo Christ’s well-known last words on the cross in Luke 23:46—“Father into thine hands I commend my spirit.” 161 instance: “Into thy hands, Lorde, my soule I commende. / Receive it, Lorde, that it be not lost”

(880-881). If a playwright intends to suggest a death acceptable to God, a variation of these last words of Christ seems an ideal way to communicate it. After this utterance, Everyman goes to the grave, and an Angel—surely the most trustworthy of messengers—assures the audience that he ascends from there to heaven, and other moralities even show the soul of the character actually joining with God or the heavenly hosts. Marlowe chooses not to show us anything about the soul of Edward at all, but his body is dragged away, almost certainly slung over the back of

Matrevis or Gurney—they cannot carry him together, because the other must carry Lightborn, whom they kill upon completion of his task—a close that echoes the dragging away to hell of either the Vice of the play or the failed protagonist. Thus, whereas Edward’s soul may have gone to heaven in the comic conclusion of a spiritual morality, Marlowe has chosen only to show us the earthly effect of his death: he is merely a body to be dragged off.

What is most clear in considering Marlowe’s adaptation of his historical materials in presenting the death of the king is not what he included, but what he left out. In Stowe, both religious and worldly significance is given to his death by actually suggesting that miraculous signs ensued upon his dying. “The fame went that by this Edward the Second, after his death, many miracles were wrought.”53 A political morality suggests that the suffering of the central figure can produce a change of heart that improves not only the moral condition of the ruler but also the state of the kingdom as a whole, and a traditional morality suggests that the suffering and turn of the protagonist bears spiritual fruit for eternity, but Marlowe’s Edward II pointedly denies any such consequence. The end of his everyman king is painful, hideous death; no miracles occur, no soul is saved, and no benefits accrue to the kingdom as a result of his death—

53 Lynch, 117. 162 it is presented as a tragedy to inspire fear and even revulsion in the audience. Edward experiences anagnorisis similarly to a morality hero as he starts to recognize his sin, but his peripeteia, the expected tragic reversal from fortune to misery rather than its morality inverse, as he sought to make himself right with God indicates only a lack of a moral order.

Some have argued, however, that the final scene of the play suggests a re-assertion of the proper order, that there is a kind of “comic” resolution for the kingdom, if not for the king. The close is certainly ordered, but, in terms of Marlowe’s deliberate perversions of the traditional morality structure, it is hardly comic. At the close of the play, Edward III, now fully and unquestionably king because his father is dead, suddenly has power enough to have Mortimer executed and his mother imprisoned. Before that same death, the young king was so weak that he could do nothing to prevent Mortimer from attaining power and taking the life of his father.

What has happened to allow Edward to so suddenly be such a capable ruler? As Dessen points out, the only evidence that the play gives is in Edward’s entry: he comes to Mortimer with lords in attendance.54 Dessen interprets this show of authority in terms of the morality tradition: he sees it as a triumph that “corresponds to the two-phased movement of many moral plays … wherein the dominance of the Vice is superseded in the final movement by the emergence of figures with names such as Authority, Correction, and Justice who arrest or otherwise corral the previously unstoppable force.”55 Although Dessen is right to detect the themes of movement between sides and dominance as borrowed from the morality, he seems to forget that the lords who make up this “right group” are decidedly not “Authority, Correction, and Justice.” These are the same barons who before sided with Mortimer to grant him power and turned against Edward

54 “Edward II and Residual Allegory,” 60. 55 Ibid, 60. 163 II. By his father’s suffering sacrifice, Edward III was able to consolidate his own power, and he used the same people who led to his father’s deposition and death to do it. As such, the final scene is not so much a re-assertion of the proper political order, but a new central figure surrounded by the alleged “right group” in the kingdom—a return to the unnatural “natural order” that is established through force and duplicity. Young Edward’s orders that Mortimer be beheaded and his head placed on his father’s coffin are utterly ahistorical and also clearly echo the close of a morality: the dead are carried away as the Vice is carried off to hell, but both

Edward II and Mortimer are carried away together, allowing Edward III to be absolute in his power. I do not intend to claim that Marlowe suggests that Edward III desired the death of his father—the character is consistently portrayed as sympathetically respectful and loving towards his father—but merely that both deaths are instrumental to the supposed “proper order” at the end, and the “sacrifice” of Edward II is not so much a noble and purposeful act as a politically convenient necessity. Marlowe has been careful to deny any spiritual blessing arising from

Edward II’s suffering, and its earthly usefulness is only established retroactively by those to whom it is useful.

Because the play is a history, meaning that its “story” continues beyond the scope of the play itself because history continues past that moment and the audience knows that history, the conclusion might seem essentially comic because Edward III was known to the audience as a

“good” king. He was a powerful militaristic ruler, and he led England to victories in France, the kinds of kingly behavior early modern English audiences likely approved. However, Marlowe has not chosen to close his play with any suggestion of coming glory; instead, the close of the play is a funeral procession, and a king not presented as powerful or looking toward future glory, 164 but a mourning child. “And let these tears…” the young new king closes the play, “Be witness of my grief and innocency” (5.6.101-102). The close of the play, thus, serves as a reminder that

Edward III’s “innocency” puts him in the position of a moral protagonist, and he is now in the grip of the very lords who were instrumental in the downfall—and eventual death—of the father he mourns. The play ends as it begins—the tragic death of a father can now begin the son’s own tragic history.

Marlowe was a playwright who took English drama from its native traditions to its

Elizabethan heights, but he worked deliberately in those traditions. In his one foray into English history, Marlowe found that the native tradition of the political morality was an ideal vehicle for revealing the tragic reality historical events, by suggesting the incompatibility of the two. In so much of his work, Marlowe emphasized the secular and the political—the relationship of power to language and action is the core of his dramatic practice, but he did not ignore the religious dimension, as some have argued, in Edward II. The religious dimension, with its certainties of right and wrong and purposefully arranged universe, is tragically inaccessible in Marlowe’s reckoning of the history of Edward II, present only as a perverted image of the morality structure that should affirm the truth of the religious view. The key dramatic elements shared by tragedy and morality—anagnorisis and peripeteia—are inverted, as the tragic sense of these terms is imposed on a morality structure. Edward gains tragic insight that the supposed natural realm of the social order—together with the sense of right and wrong that affirm that order—are nothing more than the unnatural construction of a falsely imposed historical narrative. By consistently and even perversely engaging with the morality, the genre most formally linked with a divinely 165 ordered and purposeful view of the world, Marlowe reveals how tragically inapplicable its assumptions are in the real world of history.

Chapter 4:

History as “Redeeming Time”:

Saturnalia and Morality as Comic Modes in 1 and 2 Henry IV

Since histories are often assumed to have emerged from the tradition of the political morality and are most commonly associated with tragedy, comedy is the genre generally assumed to be least useful for understanding the forms of early modern historical drama. The overall structure of comedy—from chaos to order, from misery to fortune—seems a less genuine shape for history to many critics. Further, the conventions of comedy—from the focus on characters lower in the social hierarchy to plots more romantic than militaristic, from the less elevated poetic style to the inclusion of jokes—all seem to violate the sense of decorum, if not the entire purpose, of the early modern history play. The inclusion of comic elements in serious history plays was disdained by both Florio and Sidney, and Griffin points out that to this day

“critics dismiss as too comical” certain early modern plays about history.1

Nonetheless, since the corpus of early modern drama about history actually includes many plays that are “too comical,” literary critics have begun to recognize the significance of the genre of comedy in historical plays from the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. Grant and

Ravelhofer may exaggerate slightly in suggesting that “Plays with historical subjects and comic shape are equally common” as those that are tragic,2 but the embedding of known history into comic structure creates unique effects worthy of critical attention. The structure of a comedy as defined by Heywood actually sounds ideal for a play about national history: “Comedies begin in

1 Playing the Past, 26. 2 3. 166 167 trouble, and end in peace.”3 The superstructure of comedy, thus, is actually quite conducive to known history, particularly when that history is conceived of as purposefully directed by providence to good ends. Marriage, as explored in a later chapter, is the classical close of a comedy, and its use to conclude histories comedically is common, but its use is as often presented in such a way as to question the unity and order implicit in it as it is to affirm the happy resolution of the historical conflicts presented in a play. Grant and Ravelhofer remind us that we need not “always look for a closing marriage in the comical histories of the period” to recognize a comedic shape: order and unity established or reestablished take many forms in history plays, from redemption to baptism, from peace settlements to coronations.

The other major aspect of comedy of interest is its exploration of people of lower social status. Although most histories are predominantly about barons and kings—though not all historical playwrights were as elitist as Shakespeare’s histories might seem to suggest he was–4 many history plays also include at least a few scenes that feature more common people.

Puttenham suggests that comedy is appropriate for “meane matters … those that concerne meane men their life and business … which found neither to matters of state nor of warre, nor leagues, nor great alliances, but smatch all the common conuersation,” so such scenes are unlikely to make up the totality of a play most would recognize as a history, but the tradition of inserting scenes of comic distraction from the serious historical plot is present from the earliest extant plays about English history. These scenes usually also evince another aspect associated with comedy: humor. Sidney suggests that comedies should be completely “full of delight,” and, in

3 Apology for Actors, F2, left leaf. 4 See Helgerson’s “Shakespeare and Contemporary Dramatists of History” for an overview of five kinds of histories that Shakespeare did not choose to write, four of which are exclusively focused on people below the level of kings and barons. 168 giving up the stage to tragedy for the day, Comedy announces in Warning for Faire Women that he will “make them laugh with myrthfull jeasts to morrow” (80). Such levity may seem inappropriate for serious historical drama—the often disdained tendency of early modern playwrights to “intermingle with the graue and weightie matters” anything “mery & light.”5

Nonetheless, the hybridity of the history play actually allowed such mingling to produce unique effects in its presentation of different classes of people and differing modes of historical understanding.

As explored in the previous chapters, many early modern playwrights found the morality structure and its conventions convenient to dramatize history. Although the motif of a central figure—or multiple central figures—torn between moral opposites makes for an easy way to construct a didactic history play, such a simplistic construction of history rarely makes for a satisfactory dramatization of historical events. Nonetheless, the comic vision implicit in a political morality—a Christian vision in which sound moral judgment leads to providential order in the entire kingdom—is a central concern in even the most complex treatments of history in early modern drama.

Having written a tetralogy that moved from chaotic disorder in the three more loosely structured Henry VI plays to order and unity at the end of the moral tragedy Richard III,

Shakespeare revisited English history with even more generic experimentation in his later history plays. King John primarily uses genre to satirize the action and figures in the play, and Richard

II begins the second tetralogy with a tragedy that contrasts a weak and inefficient but rightful

5 Puttenham, Arte of English Poesie. 153. 169 ruler with a stronger and more effective politician whose right to rule is dubious at best.6

Following these plays, Shakespeare turned in 1597-15997 to dramatize the “unquiet time” (2

Henry IV 1.2.150)8 of the reign of Henry IV leading to the famous victory of Henry V at

Agincourt, and Shakespeare saw in these events an opportunity to explore comedy as a mode of history. Throughout this series of plays, Shakespeare gives his most complete engagement with comedy in any of his history plays, both in terms of the specific conventions used and the overall shape given to this period of history. Although critics have commonly thought of tragedy as the closer kin of history,9 these plays, usually considered to be the greatest examples of the early modern history, are most notable for their relationship to comic rather than tragic generic conventions, as Shakespeare recognized in his historiographical and dramatic sources a known history that was constructed as a comedy of redemption for the prince.

Shakespeare’s engagement with genre in most of his more mature histories evinces generic complexity, but the deliberate interplay of genres in the Henry IV plays—particularly in the alternation of serious historical scenes with comic tavern scenes early in 1 Henry IV—strikes almost all readers and audiences. Rather than presenting history as chronicle without generic shape or fully conforming to a set of generic expectations, Shakespeare shows generic playfulness in having characters in the plays themselves consistently recognize the events around

6 This play can be read as an updated and intensified, as well as more complex, version of what Marlowe accomplished in Edward II, and analysis of its engagement with tragedy and morality could be productively analyzed along similar lines to my exploration of Marlowe’s play in the preceding chapter. 7 Both plays, as well as Henry V, were first published in quarto in 1600. 8 The quote here is from the Chief Justice but is itself drawn from Hall’s Union, which refers to the reign of Henry IV as an “vnquiet tyme.” 9 The critical emphasis upon “serious” history plays as the most worthy of the form partly shows this assumption, but titles from the period bear out the close relationship, and for György Lukacs, The Historical Novel (New York: Humanities Press, 1965), as Miles Taylor points out, “historical drama is by definition tragedy, never comedy” (401). For more on these assumptions, see the introduction and bibliography for a more complete discussion of history as a form of drama relative to comedy. 170 them as a narrative, a deliberate structuring of known history rather than merely a series of events. Thus, when Henry IV recognizes in Hal’s riotous behavior Richard II’s “skipping” about

“[w]ith shallow jesters” and “cap’ring fools” (1 Henry IV, 3.2.60-64), he and many other observers “forethink [Hal’s] fall” (3.2.38) because they have recognized the same morality pattern in both. However, the central figures in the comic scenes—the future Henry V and

Falstaff—not only recognize genres in the events around them, they are actually attempting both to live and even to write different kinds of histories. Both design their lives as comedies, but, although their respective comic narratives track together almost perfectly through 1 Henry IV,

Shakespeare makes clear that by the close of 2 Henry IV their comic conclusions are incompatible with one another. The young prince’s life forms an observable—and repeatedly observed—comic morality, a linear history that progresses from fall to redemption, from youthful folly to wise maturity. However, Falstaff desires to extend a cyclical sense of time—a celebration of youthful riot and festivity—into the linear progression of history, establishing misrule as ongoing rule. In the development of these two plays, Shakespeare problematizes both of these modes of comic time as applicable to history and reveals two of the most complex and engaging characters in all of drama in doing so. In using conventions of comedy to contrast these comic visions of history, Shakespeare simultaneously gives a comic shape to history and indicates the limitations of a comic vision of history.

Although the morality is commonly associated with history plays, as explored at length in the previous chapter, festivity and comic misrule has been less overtly considered as a mode of historical drama, although it was very much a part of the Elizabethan sense of time. C. L. Barber claims that “‘Merry England’ was merry chiefly by virtue of its community observances of 171 periodic sports and feast days.”10 These holidays, then, provide a time of comic release, but they also imply their own sense of time. François Laroque explains that to an Elizabethan “Festivity is a social manifestation linked with natural and seasonal cycles and rooted in a so-called archaic vision of time and the cosmos,”11 seemingly placing them outside a traditional historical sense of time as linear and progressive. Although the sense of time suggested by these “religious and popular festivals of the calendar … does appear to be fundamentally cyclical,”12 these observances are often used to mark time, even in the chronicles, and so they create their own sense of history. Together with a distinct conception of time, festivity also served an important social function: saturnalia. Borrowed from the pagan tradition, saturnalian festivity gave release to energies of disorder, allowing for “inversion, statement and counterstatement,” in the tradition of the Lord of Misrule.13 Although such a cyclical view implies a stable, almost timeless quality of time, Barber points out that only “in a static, monolithic society, a Lord of Misrule can be put back in his place after the revel with relative ease,”14 but in the plays, Falstaff’s inversions reveal the ways in which England is not such a society, and so he also constitutes “a radical challenge to received ideas”15 about honor, appetite, age, and more. Indeed, since festivity is linked to religion, an area of Elizabethan life emphatically not static, saturnalia created a credible threat for some, such as pamphleteer Philip Stubbes, who complained of “the ‘satanism’ of the festivals

10 Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and its Relation to Social Custom (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1972), 5. 11 Shakespeare’s Festive World: Elizabethan Seasonal Entertainment and the Professional Stage, trans. Janet Lloyd (New York: Cambridge UP, 1991), 3. 12 Ibid, 14. 13 Barber, 4. 14 Ibid, 213. 15 Ibid, 199. 172 of May and those of the Lord of Misrule.”16 Michael Hattaway suggests that “[i]t has become a commonplace to call Falstaff a ‘lord of misrule,’”17 but Falstaff’s saturnalia is not merely an inversion of established order, it is also an alternative conception of time and a way of life separate from the kings and dukes that populate most history plays.

However, the inclusion of comic scenes in serious historical action, the “mingling of kings and clowns”18 that Sir Philip Sidney complained of, has a long if not honored tradition.

Many earlier English history plays, as well as tragedies, included comic scenes that seemed to be stolen from an interlude and forced into the play in order to amuse the audience lest the historical action become too tedious to follow. Most modern readers will be inclined to agree with Sidney that these inclusions represent a kind of artistic failure, though even these more primitive efforts suggest a possible exploration for the relationship between the common people presented in comic scenes and the actions of the shapers of history in the serious scenes. Viewed in this way, the scenes import a kind of timeless comic action in the midst of a serious historical or tragic action constructed as a deliberate linear progression, much as Saturnalian holiday inserted a cycle of festivity into Elizabethan life.19 For example, in the midst of The Lamentable Tragedie of Locrine,20 the clown Strumbo greedily eats on stage in 4.2 while the beleaguered villain

16 The quote is from Laroque, 6, and such complaints are registered in Stubbes Anatomy of Abuses, which, as Laroque points out, ironically has become an important source to understand Elizabethan festive traditions. 17 Michael Hattaway, “Superfluous Falstaff: Morality and Structure,” Actes des congress de la Société française Shakespeare. 25 (2007), 75-87, accessed February 24,2017, http://shakespeare.revues.org/1033, 82. 18 “The Defence of Poesy,” 244. 19 Richard Helgerson, “Shakespeare and Contemporary Dramatists of History,” 42, suggests that in comic scenes set as an image of life in London for everyday Londoners, the arrival of a monarch of other shaper of history is an unwelcome intrusion, usually leading to suffering. Although it is certainly not true in all cases, such a reading is compelling and worthy of investigation in the many similar scenes in early modern historical drama. 20 The play is usually dated 1580-92, though the earliest reference to it is its entry in the Stationer’s Register in 1594. The early date is in part because of the suggestion of George Buck that the play was written by Charles Tilney, who died in 1586. The earliest likely date, however, puts it after the likely date of composition for Sidney’s “Defence,” so I am not intending to suggest that Sidney had this play in mind, but that it is participating in a typical way in a tradition that Sidney criticized. All references to the play are to The Shakespeare Apocrypha: Being a Collection of 173 Humber is starving to death. When Humber attempts to force Strumbo to share his food, the ghost of King Albanact, slain by Humber earlier in the play, chases him from the stage. Although this action may provide comic relief, the insertion of the scene is fairly typical of many such scenes in that it does little to comment upon the larger action, limiting the audience’s ability to take seriously the plight of the characters in the tragic storyline rather than offering new insight into them.

But other uses offer glimpses of the dramatic possibilities Shakespeare exploited in mingling his prince with clowns. Earlier in the same play, when Strumbo is drafted to fight for

King Albanact in 2.2, the scene creates an interesting juxtaposition, emphatically showing how war invades the simple life of the common people. It opens with singing and drinking, a scene of overt festivity as the cobblers celebrate their “merie life / … / Void of all enuie and of strife”

(2.2.1-3). Then, a captain of Albanact’s army enters and reflects to himself that “The poorest state is farthest from annoy” (2.2.37) before informing the merry band of cobblers, “I come not to buy any shooes, but to buy your selfe; come, sir, you must be a souldier in the kings cause”

(2.2.48-50). Strumbo initially resists, though his resistance to historical powers beyond his control is comically couched in malapropisms: “King Nactaball [Albanact]! I crie God mercy! what haue we to doo with him, or he with us?” (2.2.60-62) His reluctance to leave the simple merriment of his life as a cobbler is thus somewhat made absurd, but the scene offers a brief counter-narrative to the dominant historical drama of kings. He leaves, moaning to his wife but no longer resisting, “If I had bene quiet, I had not bene prest, and therefore well may I wayment

[mourn]. But come, sirrha, shut vp, for we must to the warres” (2.2.88-91). The sense that comic

Fourteen Plays Which Have Been Ascribed to Shakespeare, ed. C. F. Tucker Brooke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908). This edition is based on the 1595 quarto. 174 time has been interrupted by linear, historical time is clear, and this conflict of modes of time is what Shakespeare draws out over the length of the two Henry IV plays.

Another relevant example of this interaction is presented in The Famous Victories of

Henry the Fifth, an anonymous play first published in 1598, though sometimes dated as early as the 1580s, which serves as an important dramatic source for Shakespeare’s Henry IV and Henry

V plays. In the anonymous play, as Henry V prepares to go to war in France, several common people, including John Cobler, Derick, who is the clown in the play, and an unnamed thief, are all pressed into military service. The scene grants an opportunity for domestic humor between

Cobler and his wife, for word-play from Derick, and for physical comedy in Derick being beaten by Cobler’s wife, all providing the kind of comic relief for which such scenes were presumably included. However, if taken seriously in the larger context of the play, the scene tends to call into question the decision to make war on France in the first place, a question that all the rest of the play seems designed not to ask. None of the three recruits the Captain enforces into service in the scene are particularly willing to fight, and Derick and Cobler both refuse to fight during the scene, though all are eventually conscripted. Their lack of a desire to fight on behalf of the king is left at an individual rather than a political level, and clearly is meant to be laughed at rather than considered in the larger context of the historical action. Cobler complains to his wife,

Oh, wife, and you had beene a louing wife to me, This had not bene, for I haue said many times, That I would go away, and now I must go Against my will. He weepeth. (10.15-18)21

21 This, and all references to Famous Victories, refer to the 1598 edition. The famous victories of Henry the fifth containing the honourable Battell ofAgin-court. As it was plaide by the Queenes Maiesties Players. (London: Thomas Creede, 1598), accessed February 17,2017, EEBO. 175 The humor is in the familiar relationship represented, and, though it is clear that historical time has invaded the domestic and trade life of Cobler, the dialogue itself prompts no question about that larger historical action. Derick’s indifference to military service is even less questioning of the king, as he absurdly claims he will not serve with the thief, who he fears will steal his shirt.

Despite these excuses, by the close of the scene, all are headed to France to battle, with Derick getting in a parting shot at the French, suggesting they have nothing to fear in fighting because they are not “so base / Minded to die amongst Frenchmen” (10.62-63). By the close of the play, both Derick and Cobler are shown to have benefited from the king’s actions as they return to their old lives, Derick with a “girdle full of shooes” (20.stage direction) taken from dead

Frenchmen, and Cobler has also “beene robbing the Frenchmen” as he returns with “some reparrell [apparel] / To carry home” to his wife (20.36-38). The play restricts the scope of interaction between these scenes and the historical movement of the play, so that the kings never actually “mingle” with clowns on stage, and all resolved happily for both the historical plot and the “timeless” domestic comic scenes.

As in many other plays of the period, such comic scenes recur throughout Famous

Victories, often with a tenuous connection to the historical plot, but typically seeming to exist primarily for the diversion they offer, a comedy out of time in the midst of a narrative dramatizing historical time. In the most interesting later uses of such scenes, as in the discussion of the guards in Thomas Heywood’s If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part One or the unfortunate Ralph in Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday, they seem to offer a sort of counter-narrative to the larger historical narrative. Such scenes provide a view of history from the perspective of those who do not shape history as central actors, but those who are more 176 interested in keeping their jobs and their heads than in who has the right to rule, more motivated by living peacefully with their spouses than fighting a foreign power for English glory.

It is in part this tradition that Shakespeare draws on in his scenes with Falstaff and Hal, but his use of such comic scenes is quite different from even these later examples in at least two important ways. First, and most significantly, Shakespeare includes the character of greatest historical and dramatic interest into these scenes rather than treating them as a sideline to the main plot. There were some scenes of comedy in Famous Victories involving the young prince and his riotous friends, but most of these emphasize the depravity of the prince more than they celebrate any joy in his misspent youth. In the anonymous play, young Hal’s robberies involve no particular cleverness, but they do include such lines as “We are all fellowes, I tell you sirs, and [if] the King / My father were dead, we would be all Kings, / Therefore come away” (1.99-

101). If such lines had been in Shakespeare’s play, much of the doubt about how to construe the young prince’s madcap days would be gone—there is no room for comedy in his lines, there is only room for judgment. Thus, the truly comic scenes in the play are not those with youthful prince, even in his wild and riotous days, but with Derick and Cobler, as cited above, and the core characters are kept out of these scenes entirely.

Without moral judgment hanging over the tavern scenes, as it does in the anonymous play, Shakespeare engages in conventions of another sort: the comic scenes engage in carnivalesque misrule, or saturnalia, as Barber points out. “In creating Falstaff, Shakespeare fused the clown’s part with that of a festive celebrant, a Lord of Misrule, and worked out the saturnalian implications of both traditions.”22 It is this festive element that most critics and audiences who love Falstaff identify with in these scenes, and, for many, the cyclical time

22 Barber, 13. 177 implicit in them supersedes the linear progression of historical time. Harold Bloom, for example, rhapsodizes about the philosophical and religious aspects of Falstaff in these scenes, as he “bears the Blessing, in the original Yawhistic sense of more life. Falstaff, in himself, is one of the enlargements of life, one of the intimations of a time without boundaries.”23 For Shakespeare, the festivity of an inverted moral order becomes a site to explore the assumptions and constructions of progressive linear history, particularly by placing one of the central figures of the dominant historical narrative directly into scenes dominated not by the simple clown that played the comic figure in most earlier such scenes but by a figure of comic misrule who is nearly his equal.

Falstaff, especially throughout 1 Henry IV, is presented as just such a figure of inversion, as Barber explores in his Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy. He contrasts the serious world of King

Henry IV from his first appearance, indicating a sense of time set apart from history. In the first scene of the play, Westmorland speaks of the king’s “haste” (1.1.34), and Blunt travels so quickly he arrives “Stain’d with the variation of each soil” (1.1.64) along his way, and the king himself closes the scene by calling upon Westmorland to return “with speed to us again”

(1.1.105). This emphasis upon the importance of time and haste is lampooned when Falstaff asks the time to open 1.2, and Hal points out that his regimen of “drinking of old sack, and unbuttoning … after supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon” makes it utterly “superfluous to demand the time of day” (1.2.2-12). Throughout the first half of the play, these scenes offer a consistent counterpoint not only to the sense of time of the scenes involving the king and the rebels but also to their values. Falstaff inverts Hotspur’s insistent desire “To pluck bright honor from the pale-fac’d moon” (1.3.202) by first wondering “if honor prick [him] off” (5.1.130)

23 “Introduction” to Falstaff, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1992), 4. 178 rather than stirring him to fight and finally concluding that “honor is a mere scutcheon” as he completes his “catechism” (5.1.140-410). At every turn, Falstaff stands the ordered and purposeful world of history on its head, and he engages Hal in discussion and consideration of his distinct sense of time and value.

If Shakespeare’s primary innovation in his handling of comic scenes in 1 Henry IV was the inclusion of the prince in these scenes, his second is almost as important to understand

Shakespeare’s complex use of comic conventions and known history in these plays. A view of these scenes as indulging in the holiday delight of comic misrule is only one way of viewing the kind of comedy that Shakespeare creates, and the theatrical conventions upon which they are based also have an alternative construction in the tradition of Vice comedy. In most traditional moralities and political moralities, the Vice is a comic role central to the plot—often reserved for the main performer in a troupe, rather than being merely a clown occasionally paraded on stage for comic relief. The Vice and his cadre of lesser Vices, as explored in previous chapters, continued largely intact through the political moralities and even into many early history plays, as the narrative of a king misled by bad counselors, whether “Cloaked Collusion” as an abstraction in Magnyfycence or Tresilian as a specific and historical Machiavel in Woodstock, served as a ready construction of what was perceived as historical and political reality. In dramatic form, however, although the audience is encouraged to laugh at the Vices—their physical comedy, lewd word-play, and ironic inversions of traditional morality—the audience also knows undoubtedly throughout the entire play that they are evil and are not truly acceptable at all. The laughter they are meant to inspire is not to be seen as truly tempting to the audience, but something to be rejected even as it is laughed at. 179 It is this construction that most historical observers see in Hal, and the prevalence of such a construction is evident throughout both parts of Shakespeare’s Henry IV and even continues into Henry V. Throughout all the plays, Shakespeare consistently shows not merely his own construction of historical action into a meaningful narrative, but the ways in which the historical figures in the plays themselves construct the events around them into recognizable dramatic genres. In doing so, Shakespeare provides at least three primary narratives regarding the tavern scenes and the known history of the prince’s “young age and wanton pastime & riotous misorder:”24 first, the primary narrative drawn from the chronicles, an observed morality voiced by most outside observers; second, a saturnalian celebration of misrule from Falstaff himself; and finally, the complex conception of Prince Hal himself that both acknowledges these constructions and metatheatrically uses them to construct his own experience as a drama.

These constructions are also validated in the critical response to the play, with most critics convinced by either the morality construction observed by most outsiders or swayed to see things Falstaff’s way by taking delight in his inversion of the values of the dominant political culture. Although often not considered as a conscious response to conceptions of historical time presented, many critical perspectives regarding the relationship of Hal and Falstaff, as well as how Shakespeare intended the audience to see it, are essentially a matter of choosing one of these two comic modes of time. For instance, in the twentieth century, critics including E. M. W.

Tillyard and J. Dover Wilson put forth a view that Hal must “choose, Morality-fashion, between

Sloth or Vanity, to which he is drawn by his companions, and Chivalry, to which he is drawn by

24 Hall’s Union, in Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Vol. IV (New York: Columbia UP, 1966), 286. All references to Hall, Holinshed, and Stowe throughout the chapter are to this source unless otherwise noted. 180 his father.”25 Once he chooses, he must simply reject his Vice, Falstaff, completing

“Shakespeare’s great morality play”26 that tells “the growing-up of a madcap prince into the ideal king.”27 Although these views are sometimes treated as a “traditional” view, they were themselves a reaction to “Romantic” critics, led by William Hazlitt, who declared that Falstaff was “the better man of the two,”28 finding in his “perpetual holiday”29 “[t]he true spirit of humanity, the thorough knowledge of the stuff we are made of.”30 So great was his affection for

Falstaff that he “never could forgive the Prince’s treatment of Falstaff.”31 Much of the criticism in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond has shared Hazlitt’s sympathies, but often been even harsher on young prince: many embrace Harold Bloom’s view of Hal as a “cold opportunist”32 and Stephen Greenblatt’s seeing in him “a conniving hypocrite.”33

Either extreme, whether accepting Hal unambiguously as “the mirror of Christian kings” and Falstaff as a Vice or celebrating Falstaff as truly “all the world” and Hal as a Machiavel, misses both the complexity of their interaction and the comic modes of time Shakespeare represents in the plays. Critics including Greenblatt and Bloom struggle to minimize the very real problems with Falstaff, while Wilson and those who see the play similarly sweep aside all aspects of the play that suggest that Hal is not developing into the ideal prince. This tendency to

25 Tillyard, 301. 26 Fortunes of Falstaff (Cambridge UP: New York, 1944), 14 27 Ibid, 22. 28 Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays (London: Oxford UP, 1916) 167, Hazlitt acknowledges that “perhaps Shakespeare knew what was best, according to the history, the nature of the times, and of the man,” but claims that as a dramatic critic, rather than a patriotic Englishman of Shakespeare’s day, he asserts that “Falstaff is the better man of the two.” 29 Ibid, 157. 30 Ibid, 165. 31 Ibid, 167. 32 3. 33 Shakespearean Negotiations, 41. 181 see in Hal only the duck or the rabbit, according to Norman Rabkin,34 is the deliberate design of this sequence of plays, as “it points in two opposite directions, virtually daring us to choose one of the two opposed interpretations it requires of us.”35 To Rabkin, most readers and audiences will fall into this trap, but “Shakespeare’s best audience … knew terrifyingly that they did not know what to think.”36 Although such a reading makes Shakespeare almost hopelessly inscrutable,37 Rabkin’s view accounts more successfully for the reality presented in the plays than either of the views he claims are in constant flux throughout them. Simply accepting that both characters are complex and neither ideal nor purely villainous is an option too few critics seem willing to embrace; though many of the play’s earliest recorded crtics, such as Coleridge and Johnson, took just such a view. William Empson, in an essay primarily concerned with celebrating Falstaff’s “wonderful inventiveness,” nonetheless acknowledges that “Shakespeare meant us to love [Hal], though in an open-eyed manner.”38 David Bevington, although generally embracing a view of Hal as “redeeming time” in the two plays, claims that Falstaff has

“embodied the mythology of the cycle of the year and its ever-returning fertility.”39 The irreconcilable ambivalence of the experience of the whole of the two plays in which the two interact suggests that Shakespeare’s portrayal of the development of the prince into the king is as complex as any he created in any of his works. Thus, any simple construction of the relationship

34 Rabkin, “Ducks, Rabbits, and Henry V,” Shakespeare Quarterly Vol. 28, No. 3 (Summer, 1977): 279-296, accessed July 30, 2017, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2869079, 280, introduced the image in to discuss King Henry V, and it has since been a fairly common reference to make sense of the character of the Prince throughout the second tetralogy. 35 Ibid, 279. 36 Ibid, 285. 37 Rabkin himself embraces such a difficulty, concluding that “[t]he inscrutability of Henry V is the inscrutability of history” (296). 38 Essays on Shakespeare (New York: Cambridge UP, 1988), 37, which he acknowledges despite his obvious affection for and preference of Falstaff. 39 Bevington, “Introduction,” In Henry IV, Part 1, ed. David Bevington (New York: Oxford UP, 1987), who tends to see the Prince’s rejection of Falstaff as necessary, 25 and 65. 182 may resolve the ambivalence and ambiguity of the experience of the progression of the two plays, but it will be at the cost of the real experience of the plays and the richness of

Shakespeare’s experimentation with comic time in the historical narrative.

In order to trace the roots of Shakespeare’s complex handling of comedy in dramatizing

Prince Hal’s known history, it is useful to start with Shakespeare’s sources. The primary sources for the historical details of Shakespeare’s play are Holinshed’s Chronicle, Hall’s Union and Stowe’s Chronicles of England, as well as its dramatic predecessor The Famous Victories of

Henry the Fifth. Reading through these, Shakespeare must have suspected that a morality play brought to a comic close was lurking in the minds of the chroniclers: the prince is presented as wavering between riotous behavior surrounded by poor company and bursts of dedication and good service to his father. The dramatic structure of the morality implicit in these sources suggests a way of shaping the misspent youth of Prince Hal into a historically acceptable narrative: it draws on both the morality play and the Christian myth of redemption in the parable of the Prodigal Son. In doing so, these accounts create a narrative that grants comic closure to both the life of Henry IV and the prince’s bad reputation as a youth, and suggest that this redemption enables the triumphs of Henry V in France after he takes the throne.

In particular, Stowe’s summary of the youth of the prince most distinctly reveals the pattern of a political morality brought to a comic conclusion: he describes the prince’s career as a feigned “highwayman,” taking money from his father’s receivers, but returning it with interest for the trouble that he caused each time. Stowe is careful, however, to close by assuring his readers that “after the decease of his father, was never any youth, or wildness, that might have 183 place in him, but all his actes were sodainely chaunged into gravitie and discreation.”40 Stowe emphasizes the “sodaine” nature of the change, as well as its absolute perfection, at the death of

Henry IV. Stowe also reveals Prince’s need for guidance, and his father actively plays the role of good angel, warning him against “the perswasion of flatterers” and “many other admonishments,”41 so that the resolution cited above allows a comic conclusion not only for

Henry V as king, but also for Henry IV as father. Thus, in Stowe the morality shape is presented in a fairly straightforward way, with the prince overcoming a wild youth in the sobering reality of the death of his good angel, his own father. The desire to bring about a comic close to the reign of Henry IV is, thus, accomplished by his death, which somehow redeems his wayward son and inaugurates a period of triumph for the English, as the reign of Henry V is marked by less domestic strife and his famous victories over the French.

Holinshed’s Hal, on the whole, is a bit more upright, but the morality pattern is still present in the references to the prince’s poor company and excesses. Both Stowe and Holinshed recount similarly an incident that is prominent in the anonymous play Famous Victories of King

Henry V and presented with some alterations in Shakespeare’s version of the life of the young prince. Both chroniclers explain that dissension has arisen between father and son, and the prince comes to repent and reconnect with his father. In Holinshed’s account, he makes clear that the troubles between father and son are caused not by any wrongdoing in the prince, but by “certeine of his father’s servants” who “put into his father’s head not onelie what evill rule (according to the course of youth) the prince kept to the offense of manie: but also what great resort of people

40 Bullough, Vol. IV, 219. Note that Stowe’s arrangement puts the “scandal” of the prince’s youth in the grave with his father, echoed in the desire of Gaunt in Richard II, as explored above, and in the newly crowned Henry V at the close of 2 Henry IV. 41 Ibid, 218-219. 184 came to his house.”42 While Holinshed does not directly falsify these claims, he seems at pains to emphasize the prince’s innocence of these accusations, calling them “slanderous reports” intended to “spot his good name,” and pointing out “lord Henrie” spread letters in his own defense “to reproove all such slanderous devices.”43 Thus, Holinshed emphasizes the prince’s response in defense of his own reputation much more than what he might have done to earn that reputation. That the rumors of the youthful rebellion of the prince are apparently false but effective in creating dissension between father and son suggests that the false construction of an historical narrative can have impacts no less momentous than the facts of the events behind such a narrative. Shakespeare seems to have noticed this aspect: narrative constructions of historical events are used consistently throughout the Henry IV plays, and they shape the action even as they are shaped by it. The early modern blurring of the terms “history” and “story” seems, in light of such accounts, no mere linguistic curiosity, but a conceptual link, suggesting that history must be understood as a story, so that history, to be comprehensible as history, is assembled into recognizable genres of narrative action.

Both chroniclers are similar in presenting the scene of the prince’s repentance, as the prince arrives in strange garb, a disguise according to Stowe, and holds his train of followers back as he approaches his father. His ailing father is brought before him, and he

kneeling downe before his father said: Most redoubted and sovereigne lord and father, I am at this time come to your presence as your liege man, and as your naturall sonne, in all things to be at your commandement. And where I understand you have in suspicion my demeanor against your grace, you know verie well, that if I knew any man within this realme, of whome you should stand in feare, my duetie were to punish that person, thereby to remoove that greefe from your heart. Then how much more ought I to suffer death, to ease your grace of that greefe which you have of me, being your naturall sonne and liege man: and to that end I have this daie made my selfe readie by confession and

42 Ibid, 193. 43 Ibid, 193. 185 receiving of the sacrament. And therefore I beseech you most redoubted lord and deare father, for the honour of God, to ease your heart of all such suspicion as you have of me, and to dispatch me here before your knees, with this same dagger, (and withall he delivered unto the king his dagger, in all humble reverence; adding further, that his life was not so deare to him, that he wished to live one daie with his displeasure) and therefore in thus ridding me out of life, and your selfe from all suspicion, here in presence of these lords, and before God at the daie of generall judgement, I faithfullie protest clearlie to forgive you.44

Holinshed, clearly admiring this dramatic speech, congratulates the “great wisdom” of this reconciliation by which “the wrongfull suspicion which his father had conceived”45 was eliminated.

Although Holinshed does not appear deliberately to present the prince as manipulative, the prince masterfully uses the rumors that have been spread about him to his own benefit. He uses accusations of disloyalty to his father to show his loyalty, composing a speech in which he never apologizes for anything he has done—the references to confession and taking of the sacrament are merely to reinforce the seriousness of his claim to be ready to die—and he puts himself in a position where he looks like the gracious party in his reunion with his father.

Although Holinshed presents this story—a story of the use that the prince makes of his own history as “certeine of his father’s servants” construed it and as his father has understood it—as a positive instance of the character of the future King Henry V, the close of the story adds a small caveat, one which Shakespeare seems to have made much of in presenting the development of the prince: he mentions that, in addition to the rumors that the prince had been gathering a large retinue to claim the crown from his father, rumors spread of his “riot and other civil misdemeanor unseemlie for a prince.”46 Although Shakespeare certainly presented Hal’s

44 Ibid, 194. 45 Ibid, 195. 46 Ibid. 186 “riot and civil misdemeanor” in these plays, he gives no evidence to support the claims regarding his attempt—or even desire—to rebel against his father and take the throne by force and numbers. Holinshed essentially denies claims regarding the prince’s rebellion, and even in the prince’s acknowledged misdeeds, he makes clear that he did nothing so bad as “that he deserved in such a vehement manner to be suspected” as he was by his father,47 creating a clear narrative of a morality brought to a happy end. It leads to a comic conclusion in which the future king redeems himself and proves to be foremost among “valorous Englishmen,”48 suggesting quite effectively the design of the historical narrative of the plays: not the plays Shakespeare wrote as a whole, but the narrative repeatedly observed by those in the plays and used within them by Hal, who understands the power of good historical myth and construes his life to fit what he sees as the demands of history and the expectations of observers.

Although the chroniclers clearly favor the more expected historical narrative of a morality with a comic conclusion in construing the history of Prince Hal, even Stowe’s and

Holinshed’s accounts grant some room for a cyclical, even festive, sense of time. Both chroniclers acknowledge youth as, if not completely excusing behavior “unseemlie for a prince,” a time in life in which such behavior is to be expected—the prince is simply “youthfullie given.”49 As a cycle repeated in every life, youth does not justify sin, but does suggest that each life passes through a period of greater freedom and even license when young. Hence, Hal’s choosing “companions agreeable to his age” and engaging in “recreations, exercises, and delights as he fancied”50 is acceptable in a historical narrative, but such holiday festivity must be kept in

47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 187 its place. As he limited these activities in his youth, “his behavior was not offensive or at least tending to the damage of anie body,”51 whereas those who allowed such frivolity with youthful companions to continue into their time as king, such as both Richard II and Edward II,52 are to be judged much more harshly, as their misrule plunged the nation into chaos and strife. Hall’s

Union overtly references such a problem in summarizing the moral reformation of Henry V, pointing out that nothing “can bee more shame or reporoche to a prince,” than to rule “by cowardnes, slouth, and ignorance as a pupille not of. viii. or. x yeres of age.” Hall goes on to suggests that “such a governour was kyng Richarde the seconde,”53 perhaps prompting

Shakespeare to compose Henry IV’s speech comparing the two in 1 Henry IV. Even in the chronicles, then, history allows for some festive riot, but it must be kept within the bounds of youth and not be allowed to affect the ruling of the kingdom.

Though surely most of his audience knew the accepted history of Prince Hal’s riotous youth giving way to wise rule as King Henry V, Shakespeare makes clear through Hal’s soliloquy in 1 Henry IV 1.2 that Hal does not intend to allow his time of misrule to affect his reign when he becomes king. Much of the debate regarding the proper way to construe the relationship between Falstaff and Hal centers on this speech, which is at the close of the pair’s first scene together, and his rejection of Falstaff at the end of the second play, usually seen as completing the promise made in the first speech. Even when focusing on these two speeches and the connection they have to the morality motif, contemporary critics still come to directly opposed conclusions. Amirthanayagam David claims that in the close of the play “the morality

51 Ibid. 52 See Chapter 2 for more on Richard in the chronicles and in Woodstock and Chapter 3 for more on Edward II. 53 Bullough, Vol. IV, 287. 188 play is subverted,”54 so that the audience should invert its response to the morality and see

Falstaff’s rejection as immoral. Conversely, Marc Grossman finds that the young prince is actually led astray by Falstaff and company and experiences a genuine moral testing.55

However, these two speeches of Hal alone are only part of the complex design of Shakespeare’s engagement with the morality structure in these plays. Indeed, too often it has been assumed that an acceptance of a “morality version” of the play demands a reading that rejects Falstaff as vicious and embraces Hal’s growth as a prince. This assumption is an oversimplification:

Shakespeare does not straightforwardly present the Prince’s wayward youth as a morality, but he does consistently engage with the form to place it in juxtaposition with the comic world of festivity.

Shakespeare’s interest in exploring the ubiquity of the morality myth and how it impacts an understanding of both history and festivity is present throughout both parts of Henry IV.

Westmorland, when he hears of the rebellious actions of Hotspur, immediately sees a Vice

Worcester whispering in his ear, finding in Hotspur’s obstinacy “his uncle’s teaching,” which turns his youthful passion to jealousy and sedition by “bristl[ing] up / The crest of youth against your dignity” (1.1.97-98). Although Hotspur is clearly not given to the festive riot of Hal, his story is also told in terms that excuse his rebellion based on his youth. Shakespeare provides only very limited evidence that this is true—if anything, Hotspur is often too anxious to attack, so that

Worcester’s whisperings are more often encouraging political restraint and subtlety than stirring up rebellion. Nonetheless, the notion persists in observers throughout the play. Even at the close

54 214. 55 Grossman, “The Adolescent and the Strangest Fellow: Comic and Morally Serious Perspectives in 1 Henry IV,” Essays in Literature 22.2 (Fall 1995): 170, accessed June 25, 2015, ProQuest, uses aspects of the morality to suggest that the play is composed to reveal that Hal must reject the Vice Falstaff. 189 of the play, Worcester himself realizes that Hotspur’s rebellion may be forgiven if they accept the king’s “liberal and kind offer” (5.2.2), but the narrative of an interlude of youth prohibits any grace for himself:

My nephew's trespass may be well forgot; it hath the excuse of youth … …………………………………. All his offences live upon my head And on his father's; we did train him on, And, his corruption being ta'en from us, We, as the spring of all, shall pay for all. (5.2.16-23)

Worcester’s words—though somewhat ambiguous regarding whether he intends to indicate that this is the truth of the matter or just the way in which it will be seen—suggest that he recognizes the morality play others will see in Hotspur’s actions, but the same narrative casts himself as the

Vice, “the spring of all” his nephew’s “corruption,” and so he will take all the blame. The imprint of the morality is similarly visible throughout the two parts of the play, not necessarily as the truth of the situation but certainly as the way that history will be viewed and construed by others.

Although the persistence of a perceived morality play in political events is present from the beginning of the play, it is in the Falstaff scenes—in which we should see morality taking place, if Shakespeare followed his source in Famous Victories—that this construction of events is specifically countered by Falstaffian misrule. Barber points out that one of the defining features of saturnalia is “statement and counterstatement,”56 and this structure dominates most of

Falstaff’s scenes. In the very first scene shared by Falstaff and Hal, the notion of a political morality is immediately present, but only as it is perceived by outside observers and as a ripe

56 4. 190 source for Falstaff’s comedy of misrule. Falstaff ironically reports the corrupting influence of a

Vice—not his own impact on Hal, but Hal’s influence on him. Falstaff returns to this idea throughout both plays, reminding the audience that he is thoroughly cognizant of the kind of story others see in his relationship with young Hal, and he sees it as a shared joke between the two of them. Falstaff tells Hal of “an old lord of the Council” who “talked very wisely” (1.2.80-

83) and took him to task for his connection to the young prince. Falstaff ironically complains to

Hal:

O, thou … art indeed able to corrupt a saint: thou hast done much harm upon me, Hal, God forgive thee for it: before I knew thee, Hal, I knew nothing, and now am I, if a man should speak truly, little better than one of the wicked. I must give over this life, and I will give it over: by the Lord, and I do not I am a villain, I’ll be damned for never a king’s son in Christendom. (1.2.88-95)

These lines are a comic counter-narrative to the morality, given voice by Falstaff in opposition to the dominant narrative presented by the “old lord.” Presumably, the audience is to understand that the “old lord” has berated Falstaff for the ways in which he has corrupted the prince, but

Falstaff inverts the myth of the morality play, suggesting that it is the prince who is the Vice, and he the corrupted Everyman youth who fails to heed the wisdom of the good angel that cries out in the street. From the first comic scene in the play, then, Shakespeare does not indicate that this history is a morality but suggests that others see it as one and that Hal and Falstaff see it as a shared joke. Justified by no less a source than Proverbs, the old lords who watch the young prince read his actions as clear evidence of his being corrupted, and both Falstaff and the prince understand the power of their construing the story of the prince in this way and see it as apparently worthy only of comic inversion. 191 In the first scene of Hal and Falstaff’s interaction, which Wilson correctly points out

“fixes for us the relationship between them,”57 Shakespeare seems to be going out of his way not only to put the audience in mind of a morality but also to make clear that the young prince is not being corrupted by Falstaff, anymore than Falstaff’s own claim that the prince is corrupting him is meant to be accepted as true.58 A close reading of these earliest interactions makes the view that Shakespeare presents Hal’s story as a morality untenable—the dominant narrative of the

“old lord” is voiced only as an echo and only to be ridiculed by Falstaff’s comic inversion, an inversion Hal seems to delight in. The audience, too, is invited to delight in the inversion. The known history of Hal’s “riot and civil misdemeanor” turned to “gravitie and sobernes”59 is presented ironically, itself the subject of misrule. In a scene thus so “full of delight,”60 it is almost impossible to conceive how a performance of the play could effectively convey this inversion as moral corruption without turning all of the alternating comic scenes in the play into something by which audiences are meant to be repulsed, having no room for the pleasure which many audiences take from them and which Hal himself seems to take from them.

Nonetheless, Grossman and others who wish to view the young prince this way claim that

Hal is offended at the very idea of robbery and must be convinced of it when it is suggested later in the scene.61 Such a view ignores the fact that, in response to Falstaff’s claim that Hal has destroyed his good character, the prince asks, “Where shall we take a purse tomorrow, Jack?”

57 3, though Wilson intends to suggest that this scene fixes the relationship in a way more aligned with a traditional morality. 58 Harry Berger, Harrying: Skills of Offense in Shakespeare’s Henriad (New York: Fordham UP, 2015), goes so far as to suggest that we are should simply assume that we put in Falstaff’s name wherever Hal’s name appears, showing that Falstaff “willingly collaborates” (68) in his role of Vice and actively contributing to it. This seems an oversimplification: I would suggest that Falstaff is aware of the construction and feels that he is in on the joke with Hal, a belief he will continue to take with him even after Hal has unequivocally rejected him. 59 Hall’s Union, Bullough, Vol IV, 286. 60 Sidney’s qualification for comedy, 244. 61 175. 192 (1.2.98-99) As such, there is an irony that those who want to see the prince as above such things are deaf to when Hal responds to Poins’ (not Falstaff’s, it is worth noting) suggestion of robbery with false indignation, “Who, I rob? I a thief? Not I, by my faith” (1.2.138), which even

Bevington accepts as evidence that Hal “has never robbed before.”62 It might be possible to construe Poins as corrupting the prince, since it is his initial idea to commit the theft, but, as

Poins speaks to Hal in private, he reveals that his real purpose is not to steal but to play a humiliating joke on Falstaff. Again, though Hal does not immediately agree to it, Poins is not trying to convince Hal to act against his conscience: he merely needs to convince him that the theft is practicable, as the prince’s only objections are about means rather than morals. He needs only to be satisfied that they can keep their identities hid from Falstaff and assure themselves of success in their joke. From the beginning of the play, then, the prince appears to do as he wishes with clear eyes—not through any temptation by any Vice. Scenes like these are scenes of delight, not of temptation to moral depravity by “companions agreeable to [Hal’s] age.” To accept a version of Hal as undergoing a straightforward political morality in these plays, these scenes must be a temptation to viciousness rather than the “recreations, exercises, and delights as he fancied,” as Holinshed put it. Instead, these scenes effectively introduce the audience to the world of comic misrule, in which the vibrant life of a saturnalian atmosphere is on display and the serious historical narrative implicit in a morality is merely a subject for sport.

In the same scene, not only does the observed narrative of a morality come under scrutiny, but Falstaff is also already attempting to enforce his own mode—comic misrule— beyond the scope of the tavern and into the time of the rule of the future king. After Hal mocks him for asking the time, he reveals his true interest in time: the time when Hal is king, an interest

62 “Introduction” to 1 Henry IV, 22. 193 that runs throughout almost every scene the two share. From their first interaction, Falstaff is consistently focused on his own status when the prince becomes king: “Marry, then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let not us that are squires of the night's body be called thieves of the day's beauty,” Falstaff implores, and he affirms that they are “men of good government, being govern’d, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal” (1.2.27-29). Falstaff asserts a mode of time-keeping that is cyclical and thus tied not to the linear progression of time but to the calendar and its cycles and holidays. The waxing and waning of the moon can be called “good government” for the sea and the calendar, but Falstaff’s vision of the future king’s reign in which his actions can be called “good government,” from a historiographical perspective, takes a step beyond an acceptable time of delight to calling misrule

“good government.”

However, at the close of this scene, the prince goes into his best-known soliloquy, a speech that is central to any understanding of the prince’s character, and central to the entire

Henry IV-Henry V sequence of plays. Although Bevington argues that this speech is an innocuous “announce[ment of] his intention of amending life” and offered by Shakespeare as a

“chorus-like explanation directed” at the audience,63 given the audience’s certain knowledge of the prince’s history, such assurance seems unnecessary. Indeed, most scholars have rejected the notion that it is intended to function as a choral element, instead seeing it as a version of the kinds of soliloquies that would follow in the later tragedies, offering insight into the private world of the speaker.64 The most predominant reading of the speech in criticism in recent

63 Ibid, 22, 60, respectively. 64 Interestingly, Joseph A. Porter, The Drama Of Speech Acts: Shakespeare's Lancastrian Tetralogy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 76-77, offers a linguistic analysis of the speech which finds that, taken as a 194 decades is probably most famously exposited by Harold Bloom, who sees Hal as revealing himself to be “a hypocritical and ambitious politician,”65 and Stephen Greenblatt, who argues that the speech “cannot have been written without bitterness against the prince,” allowing only that Shakespeare may have an “ironic acceptance” of the accuracy of his claims.66 What Hal is suggesting here is not necessarily so cold and calculating, nor so flimsy a political plan,67 as to pretend to indulge in the revelry of the pub in order to later pretend to reform gloriously. If that is what he is saying, it must be a considerable dramatic jolt at this point in the play, after seeing the prince take pleasure in what he has been doing, and audiences must choose to forget it immediately after in order to enjoy such scenes later. This soliloquy as an almost Machiavellian revelation of low character has, despite its general discord with the play as a whole, found surprisingly wide acceptance, but a more consistent picture of the prince emerges in Harry

Berger’s assessment that the prince “should be in earnest about the importance of being Hal and of enjoying his idleness as genuinely, perhaps ingenuously, as he can.”68 Indeed, within the speech itself, Hal suggests that holidays—festivity and pleasure—have their place, but they have a limited scope, as they delight only when they “seldom come” (1.2.201).

Taken at his word, the prince here is neither an innocent who has been corrupted by bad fellowship nor a Machiavel who is merely using his fellows for his own political advancement.

Since his specific words are so central to making sense of the narrative as Hal constructs it—and

statement of intention rather than a promise of future action, the prince’s speech amounts to a fairly despicable expression of an immoral and deceptive young man. 65 3. 66 Shakespearean Negotiations, 42. 67 Grossman points out the “speciousness of its reasoning” based on the political foolhardiness of this plan as well as its psychological absurdity, though his arguments for the psychological difficulty depend on seeing Hal as different than the more Machiavellian readings of the speech assume him to be. 68 79. 195 its ambiguous relationship to the morality structure and the types of comic time explored in the play—it is worth presenting the speech in its entirety:

I know you all, and will awhile uphold The unyok’d humour of your idleness. Yet herein will I imitate the sun, Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world, That, when he please again to be himself, Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at, By breaking through the foul and ugly mists Of vapours that did seem to strangle him. If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work; But when they seldom come, they wish'd for come, And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents. So, when this loose behavior I throw off And pay the debt I never promised, By how much better than my word I am, By so much shall I falsify men's hopes; And like bright metal on a sullen ground, My reformation, glittering o'er my fault, Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes Than that which hath no foil to set it off. I'll so offend, to make offence a skill; Redeeming time when men think least I will. (1.2.190-212)

Hal’s first lines, rather than being read as a detached judgment of or even an expression of disdain for those with whom he has been consorting, ought to be heard as his true view of those about him, and his choice to “awhile uphold / The unyok’d humour of [their] idleness” is an affirmation that, while he is young, he will enjoy the company of those he chooses. If the speech is Machiavellian, the verb “uphold” must be spoken ironically or, more likely, as meaning “put up with,” a definition that the positive implications of the word “uphold” do not really permit. It is not necessarily that he is planning, with Machiavellian forethought, to 196 “endure” time with this company in order to use these tavern-dwellers to his political benefit,69 and then turn and blame them for his entire plot. Instead, he suggests that he realizes he cannot continue this life of misrule more than “awhile,” but he will “uphold”—literally support— idleness as long as he feels he can. Further, he suggests that he will cease to support their idleness, not necessarily that he will reject them, let alone deliberately fault them for their role in his idleness. Since he cannot be king in this company, according to his dramatic models of either a political morality or an interlude of youth, he will enjoy an idle life while he can get away with it. This sense supports the notion of a cyclical time of festivity, but one that must be kept within the bounds of youth.

From the remainder of the speech, there are two key emphases that emerge: first, that the speech is much more about the perception of others than Hal’s deliberate action or intended treatment of those around him; second, that the actions the prince ascribes to himself are grounded in a moral myth of redemption—literally a transaction in which the sinner is “bought back” to pay for his past wrongs or “debt.” Here, Hal reveals himself as a “princely playwright” in James Calderwood’s words, knowing how an audience will view him, but, as Calderwood points out, these lines also show his “plot as interior dramatist,”70 rather than simply a show for others to see. His own conscience is engaged, as he makes clear the “metaphor of financial liability”71 that will dominate his statements regarding his own moral condition throughout the

Henry IV plays. Both images—the perceived morality and the idea of redemption as a financial transaction—are predominant among those that “persist like ghosts that haunt and complicate

69 Grossman rightfully points out the “psychological absurdity,” as well as the political foolhardiness, of viewing Hal’s speech as a deliberate design. 70 Metadrama in Shakespeare’s Henriad. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 117 and 116, respectively. 71 Bevington, “Introduction” to 1 Henry IV, 62. 197 later moments,” as Berger expresses it,72 throughout not this play but also 2 Henry IV and Henry

V. These elements, thus, continue to dominate the moral comedy that Hal promises to enact for both the audience of the play and his audience of ill-wishers whose hopes he will “falsify” in his own historical moment.

The first emphasis in the speech is on the perception of a morality in observers rather than the true presence of a morality or the deliberate creation of one. The images the prince uses to describe his “reformation” are surprisingly passive, based on perceived difference rather than actual action. Though he certainly takes an active role in his description of his own moral turning, saying he will “imitate the sun” and “throw off” his current behavior, his focus throughout the speech is not as often on what he will do as it is on how it will be seen by others.

The sun does not actually actively do anything in his analogy: the entire point of the image is that men “wonder” at its apparent change in appearance. Further, his reference to “holidays” is not suggestive of any conscious choice on the part of holidays, but that holidays are perceived as special because they are rare. Hal’s words suggest that he believes he can enjoy his life as a holiday while he is still a young prince, and that he will only look better later when he proves himself to be a more mature and better monarch than anyone expected, especially those whom he later describes as “smiling pick-thanks and base news-mongers” (3.2.25) when speaking of his reputation to his father in 3.2. Essentially, Hal knows how people will shape his history into an interlude of a prodigal or a political morality when he turns out to be more able than he seemed he would be, so he feels free to enjoy his time while he is hidden by “foul and ugly mists / And

72 56. 198 vapors.” Further, he speaks of “men’s hopes”73 and “attracting eyes,” emphasizing how he is perceived, how the story of his youth will be seen and told, not necessarily what it actually is.

He knows that he will appear better to others because of his current riotous behavior, and if they choose to see him that way, he is guilty primarily of being savvy enough to see its usefulness.

The sun does not actually change in his analogy, the gold does not suddenly choose to glitter, the holidays never choose when or how often to come—all are marked as significant merely because of how they are viewed—the appearance of change is in the perception of the viewer.

The view of Hal as a Machiavel and hypocrite is usually best supported by his last lines—what Bloom called his “despicable couplet,”74 but these lines, no less than the rest of his speech, emphasize perception and the response of others more than deliberate action on his part.

In his last lines, Hal seems to assert that he is plotting specifically to “so offend, to make offense a skill,” which certainly seems to be an assertion of practiced and deliberate rebellious behavior for his eventual benefit. The idea Hal expresses here could be read in line with Warwick’s assertion that Hal’s companions are like words learned only “to be learned and hated” (2 Henry

IV, 4.4.73), but this view cannot really hold up for the character across the entire series of plays.

Warwick moralizes the prince’s intentions far beyond what the play itself will allow: based on the pleasure Hal takes in his companions and their escapades, it does not seem that he has come to know them only as “gross terms” (4.4.73). Prince Hal seems clearly to be enjoying himself, especially throughout 1 Henry IV, and the audience is invited to take delight in these tavern

73 Hal claims that he will “falsify men’s hopes,” which many critics suggest is evidence of his deliberate design, because he is creating the hopes (read as the expectations of those who see him as a dissolute youth on the path to destruction) that he intends to prove false (see Greenblatt, Berger, et al). However, based on what we know about Shakespeare’s use of Stowe and Holinshed, it is more likely that these false hopes are intended to refer to the rumors stirred up by those who wish to spread dissension between himself and his father. The language that Hal uses to describe to his father his own behavior relative to that which is ascribed to him by others supports such a view. 74 3. 199 scenes as well. Hal does not say he desires to offend; rather, knowing that his behavior will offend, he sees that the expected offense taken to his youthful wildness can neatly conform to the pattern of a morality in the eyes of the world. Even his choice of the word “offend,” which can mean either to cause offense in others or actually to transgress an objective standard,75 is as suggestive of others’ perceptions of his actions and motives as it is of his actual deeds and intentions. He will “redeem the time,” a biblical image, but only “when men think least [he] will,” framing his own comic moral resolution in Aristotelian terms as a dramatic anagnorisis for others rather than as a peripeteia for himself.

His beliefs about the views of others regarding his “idleness” are borne out not only throughout this play, but also in 2 Henry IV and Henry V. Although Hal claims that his reputation for offense is largely due to the rumors spread by “pick-thanks and base newsmongers” (3.2.25), his own father speaks of his behavior in terms of how it is perceived when he calls him to account later in the play, pointing out that “the soul of everyman /

Prophetically do forethink thy fall” (3.2.37-38), a claim the king hopes will disturb his son and influence his behavior. However, the king’s perception of “men’s hopes” in terms of his son’s future is perfectly in line with what Hal himself already asserted.76 Hal’s assumptions about

“men’s hopes” based on his actions are thus confirmed in his own father’s view of him, but

75 The OED gives the dominant intransitive form as meaning “To make a false step or stumble morally,” and the transitive “to sin against” both of which are possible readings here, but the uses more common to modern use were also all present at the time of the play: “to feel personally upset or hurt” or “to vex, annoy, displease, anger.” Shakespeare uses many different senses of the word in his plays, and even in 1 Henry IV plays there are variant uses, as when Hal ambiguously tells Henry IV he wishes he could acquit himself of all “offenses” against his father (3.2.19), while Falstaff uses “offend” in the sense of an observer taking offense when he says the rebels “offend none but the virtuous” (3.3.191). "offend, v." OED Online. March 2017. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/130604?redirectedFrom=offend (accessed March 24, 2017). 76 That Hal is truly his father’s son is nowhere clearer than that the king goes on from his claim about how his son is seen to describe the great care he took to control his own public image as he rose to the throne—Hal is no less aware of the perception of his own image, he simply has a different intention with the image he cultivates. 200 others are only more ready to see in him a prodigal suffering under a Vice. At the beginning of 2

Henry IV, as if to remind the audience that others’ views of him as a prodigal also require a Vice, the chief justice upbraids Falstaff for having “misled the youthful prince” (1.2.143), and Falstaff plays along, repeating the morality inversion with which he opened the first play. Even years later, at the beginning of Henry V, fully two plays after this speech in dramatic time, the dauphin maintains much the same perspective in claiming he has nothing to hear from “a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth” (2.4.28). Hal’s choice to “awhile uphold” the indulgences of youth casts a long shadow, influencing others’ perceptions of him continuing all the way into his own reign as king.

But he is not only right about the perspective that others will judge him based on the

“base contagious clouds” and “sullen ground” with which he surrounds himself—whether those images are viewed as Falstaff and his cohort or his own behavior—he is also right about the perception he will create when he chooses to take his responsibilities seriously and perform his royal role in earnest. Again, Shakespeare provides multiple occasions to validate Hal’s belief that some observers wish to perceive a moral recovery as much as others seem to enjoy predicting his fall based on his low company and riotous behavior. His changing relationship to his father—the character who most represents to him the “right” party to which he must align himself as a morality protagonist—clearly affirms the belief in the prodigal’s eventual return. He is “reconciled” to his father once in each part, and his father expresses his profound belief in his son’s reformation each time. In 1 Henry IV, he affirms Hal by saying, “Thou shalt have charge and sovereign trust herein” (3.3.161), with Hal’s mere promise of his allegiance to him and his expression of willingness to fight and die to defend his father’s throne. Responses such as this 201 one provide perhaps the most direct evidence of the accuracy of Hal’s claim regarding his ability to “so offend to make offense a skill” as the initial offense his father takes at his riotous behavior makes the prince’s mere promise of better service sufficient to gain “sovereign trust.”

Reminiscent of the reconciliation scene in Holinshed and Stowe, the prince consistently makes the most of the “sullen ground” others see in him to set off the “glittering” of his reformation.

His father’s perception of wrong in his actions—and his assumption about his selfish and even cruel motives for those actions—actually make his father love him more when he is able to buy back his father’s good will with his glittering words. The consistent construction that others make of Hal’s life shows the power of the morality and the desire to turn history into a comic

“redemption” history.

Hal’s recognition of the usefulness of this desire in those who observe him is borne out by many characters throughout the series of plays, as many are particularly impressed by his

“glittering” because it is so unexpected due to his past faults. At the battle of Shrewsbury,

Vernon relays to Hotspur how Hal “chid his truant youth with such a grace / As if he master'd there a double spirit. / Of teaching and of learning instantly,” and he concludes of the prince that

“England did never owe so sweet a hope, / So much misconstrued in his wantonness” (5.2.62-

68). However, his own explanation makes clear that Vernon himself must have “misconstrued”

Hal’s past behavior, as his enthusiastic response to Hal grows from having made exactly such an assumption about the young Prince of Wales. While Hotspur, recognizing this contradiction, mocks Vernon for being “enamored / On his follies” (5.2.69-70), such a response is precisely what Hal predicted in his soliloquy, and one that he repeatedly arouses in observers. Once he is 202 king, the prediction that Hal makes in his initial soliloquy proves no less true, as Henry V opens with Canterbury expressing his amazement at the change in the formerly “wild” prodigal prince:

The courses of his youth promised it not. The breath no sooner left his father's body, But that his wildness, mortified in him, Seem'd to die too; yea, at that very moment Consideration, like an angel, came And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him” (1.1.24-29).77

Audience members who recollect that this sudden change—“no sooner” and “at that very moment” says the Archbishop—is exactly what he promised to effect when he was still in “[t]he courses of his youth” may view the change differently, but the young prince knows the power of changing his behavior “when men least think [he] will.” Thus, though many critics have found something “despicable” in the prince’s claim that he will “offend, to make offense a skill,” he is quite perceptive of the kinds of narratives into which people construe history, and he sees that these perceptions can be useful to him, a perceived felix culpa. Shaped by the Christian myth of redemption, the comic version of the morality is no less wished-for than the cautionary tale of wasted youth that the “pick-thanks” and “newsmongers” hoped to see in him, whose hopes Hal intends to falsify.

Although the soliloquy’s emphasis upon the perception of his actions is likely what has led so many to see these actions as false, Hal’s words also promise deliberate, genuine actions, which reveal the prince’s intended action as transactional, a motif strongly grounded in the same morality tradition others perceive in him. His stated intention to redeem—literally to buy back—

77 The Archbishop’s point of view suggests another aspect of the ways in which Shakespeare indicates that his characters construct histories into stories: self-interest. Just as Henry IV wants to see his prodigal son return in order to hand the crown to him in “better quiet,” the Archbishop sees the change as an opportunity to exploit the newly religious king for his own benefit. 203 the time of his “loose behavior” is, thus, an acknowledgement that he knows he cannot continue it indefinitely. Combined with the claim he makes that he will “pay the debt [he] never promised,” Hal’s intention to redeem time shows his emphatic belief that he can use future actions to pay back for his idleness, the idea of redemption central to the morality. He desires to enjoy his current “continual followers” (2 Henry IV, 4.4.53) and participate in their “loose behavior” but believes that he must leave them and all that their life of carefree joy represents when he becomes king, and he assures himself that the world will accept his redemption as genuine, because it conforms to an expected generic pattern. Too often critics, sympathetic to

Falstaff and knowing his blunt rejection is coming at the close of 2 Henry IV find in this speech a deliberate and callous intention to betray all of his current company, but his claims about his future action are not about his rejection of them, but about his own actions.78 It is his own “loose behavior” he will “throw off” like a cloak, and his “reformation” glitters over his own “fault,” not those of his companions. The debt he has “never promised” is still his own debt to pay, not something that he suggests he will put off on others when the time comes to “falsify men’s hopes.” After his initial reference in this speech, Hal repeatedly shows that he believes that his current misrule can and must be paid back, and the language of a transactional morality continues to dominate his later references to his own change in character—he is not faking his initial pleasure in his tavern experience, but he realizes that he must make up for it later, burying his past life with his father when he becomes king himself.

78 This seems to me a particularly striking instance of what Wilson, 3, complains of as interpretation of the plays from the perspective of an “omniscient critic,” as opposed to allowing the dramatic action and characters to reveal themselves as drama, straying from keeping the focus on the plays as plays. While the textual culture of Shakesepeare’s day, in which plays were printed regularly and purchased to be read privately and repeatedly, suggests that playwrights might well have such an “omniscient” reader in the back of their minds as they write, a knowledge of later actions—not from history, but from the plays themselves—should not be allowed to intrude into the reading of a given dramatic moment to such a degree that the text becomes read only in terms of what is coming rather than what is directly in the text itself. 204 Hal’s earnest desire to pay his “debt” continues to “haunt and complicate” his conscience in later speeches, so that his “redemption is not something toward which the action moves but … is happening at every moment of the theatrical representation,” as Greenblatt argues.79 Hal uses the notion of a moral transaction in speaking to his father in 3.2, and he frames that transaction in terms of an exchange between himself and Hotspur. He intends to bring about a comic conclusion by trading his past “fault” for future success, accomplishing deeds that balance in his own conscience the wrongs and improprieties he has committed.80 He assures his father after the king’s “good thoughts” are “swayed” by what others have said about him that he “will redeem all this on Percy's head” (3.2.130-32, italics mine). “[A]ll this” apparently refers grammatically only to rumors about him that have “swayed” his father, but the fact that he again uses the word

“redeem” suggests that he believes that he does have to buy back his glory from Percy to compensate for his past behavior. Picking up on his earlier claim that he will “throw off” his riotous actions, he says he will now instead “wear a garment all of blood / … / Which, wash'd away, shall scour my shame with it” (3.2.135-37), reiterating his sense that he can exchange his past “shame” for honor. Even more than just a change of garment, Hal emphasizes that he will trade “every honor sitting on [Hotspur’s] helm” for his own “shames” (3.2.142-44), even rather absurdly wishing that both were greater so that his victory would be even more impressive. He continues to push the metaphor of a financial transaction between himself and Hotspur:

That I shall make this northern youth exchange His glorious deeds for my indignities. Percy is but my factor, good my lord,

79 Shakespearean Negotiations, 43. 80 Berger, 58 and 79, explains the problem of making moral sense of the character throughout the entire series, with particular emphasis upon Henry V, as the process of understanding not one’s own moral response to his actions but Hal’s own struggle to justify his actions and satisfy his conscience, and this approach seems to me entirely more interesting than simply engaging in moral judgment for oneself. 205 To engross up glorious deeds on my behalf; And I will call him to so strict account, That he shall render every glory up, Yea, even the slightest worship of his time, Or I will tear the reckoning from his heart. This, in the name of God, I promise here. (3.2.145-53, italics mine)

Here the prince delivers a promise to enact immediately just what he has promised in his famous soliloquy: he will falsify the hopes of those who have “swayed” the king, but also falsify the very predictions that his father has just made himself. He claims he will “redeem” time now, and use

Hotspur’s honor and glory to buy back his own good name. The language of transaction dominates the entire speech, suggesting that the “debt [he] never promised” is a debt he, nonetheless, cannot quite help feeling he does owe, particularly before his father, who is, as his few expressions of genuine guilt in any matter suggest, the person to whom he feels he owes that debt. His language is most overtly that of a financial transaction as he explains his intention, calling Hotspur his “factor” who has invested in honor to “engross”81 on behalf of Hal, who will now call to “account,” making him “render” his “reckoning” back to him. All of this financial language, spilling forth from a prodigal son who has earlier claimed that he had little to apologize for, suggests that he feels enough guilt about the “wounds” his “intemperance” has caused to acknowledge his need to balance his moral scales by exchanging glory for shame in defeating Hotspur.

81 Though the word can simply mean “make large,” the OED also gives “To gain or keep exclusive possession of; to concentrate (property, trade, privileges, functions) in one's own possession (often with the notion of unfairness or injury to others),” and references this very line to illustrate the financial implications in the term. "engross, v.". OED Online. March 2017. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/62325?redirectedFrom=engross (accessed March 24, 2017).

206 However, Shakespeare arranges his drama such that Hal actually gets the opportunity to

“redeem time” as he has promised before he ever confronts Percy. On the field of battle at

Shrewsbury, the king is attacked by Douglas, and Hal has the opportunity to prove his promises to his father, and he enters using language of economic exchange yet again, identifying himself to Douglas as one “Who never promiseth but he means to pay” (5.4.43). Hal defeats Douglas, who flees, and turns to head into further danger in defense of his father’s title, but his father asks him to stay and speaks to him in language that reflects Hal’s own image of monetary exchange but also implies the comic conclusion of a morality: redemption, the same term Hal used to explain his design in 1.2. “Thou hast redeem’d thy lost opinion, / And show’d thou makest some tender of my life, / In this fair rescue thou hast brought me” (5.4.47-50). Hal’s promise to redeem himself to his father has been fully enacted, but Hal’s response shows a complex psychology: rather than simply accepting his father’s gracious words, he emphasizes the fact that his actions here “prove” the truth of the narrative he had told his father:

O God! they did me too much injury That ever said I hearken'd for your death. If it were so, I might have let alone The insulting hand of Douglas over you, Which would have been as speedy in your end As all the poisonous potions in the world And saved the treacherous labor of your son. (5.4.51-57)

The prince’s words here are gratuitous—he announces the narrative of the known past as it was construed by “pickthanks and …” as evidence of his “falsifying men’s hopes” now that he has heroically saved his father. But the words seem a curious excess—he has already proved himself to his father, who was convinced by his mere words of promise to defend him and has just articulated directly that he has “redeem’d” himself in his eyes. Further, there are no other 207 observers present on stage to manipulate into seeing his past offenses as useful for his own

Machivellian purposes. What Hal shows here, as awkward as the implicit suggestion of poisoning his father is, affirms Berger’s observation that, as much as others—both in the play and the audience—may judge the prince’s actions, his own ethical status “may pose a serious problem for [Henry] him[self].82 His father’s claim to see Hal’s redemption in his actions reminds the prince that this is evidence that he was right, that he could “make offense a skill” and redeem his wasted time, and so affirms to himself that this is just what he has done.

Thus, as Hal’s meandering prodigality leads to his eventual crowning as the “mirror of

Christian kings,” he sees his relationship with his father as another exchange, and his father sees their relationship in much the same way, desiring to balance his own moral scales in the reign of his son. As he is nearing death in 2 Henry IV, Henry IV tells the next king, “God knows, my son, / By what by-paths and indirect crook'd ways / I met this crown” (4.5.183-85), acknowledging his own faults if not quite confessing to be a usurper. However, he goes on to suggest that in his son his own shortcomings can be balanced. He assures his son,

To thee [the crown] shall descend with better quiet, Better opinion, better confirmation; For all the soil of the achievement goes With me into the earth (4.5.187-90)

The king sees his own reign as another kind of “sullen ground” with which his son’s reign can

“glitter” in comparison. He, too, uses a financial image to express an exchange of his faults for his son’s good, saying that “what in me was purchased, / Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort; /

So thou the garland wear'st successively” (4.5.199-201). By the close of the second play, the new king himself expresses much the same image, but he sees his own shame being buried with

82 146. 208 his father, rather than his father’s shame purchasing his new honors: “My father is gone wild into his grave, / For in his tomb lie my affections; / And with his spirits sadly I survive” (5.2.123-25).

Both men wish to see a comic conclusion in the death of Henry IV. The dying king sees his own questionable actions as purchasing for his son a kingship in which he can buy back those deeds which “soiled” his own rule with actions which “borne out / May waste the memory of former days” (4.2.214-15). Meanwhile, the new king sees his kingship as his opportunity to make his own misspent youth pay off, as he pays “the debt he never owed.”

If this is how Hal ultimately redeems the “unyok’d … idleness” of his own youth, what of his transactional claims regarding Hotspur and his later rejection of Falstaff? Although

Shakespeare’s “doubling” of Hal’s “redemption” could be explained as a decision forced when the popularity of the first play seemed to demand a second play in the same vein, the conclusion of the first play, considered in the tradition of the morality, suggests that Shakespeare seems to have intended to defer his prodigal’s ultimate redemption and the nation’s restoration to order in the design of the first play. When Hal arrives at the battle at Shrewsbury, he persists in seeing his actions as a personal exchange with Percy, as he had promised his father. He challenges Percy to single combat, acknowledging the past “shame” in his “account:” “For my part, I may speak it to my shame, / I have a truant been to chivalry; / And so I hear he doth account me too” (5.1.93-95, emphasis mine). He suggests that Hotspur should be willing to risk “his great name and estimation … in a single fight” (98-100) with such a dishonored head as his. While this exchange is refused, when he comes face-to-face with his “factor” in the battle, he speaks to

Percy in terms of his intended transaction: “I'll make it [my name in arms] greater ere I part from thee; / And all the budding honors on thy crest / I'll crop, to make a garland for my head” 209 (5.4.70-72). Though Hotspur refuses to see the Prince of Wales’ words as anything but “vanities”

(73), Hal is quite in earnest, and, as Percy soon lies dying at his feet, he acknowledges both the fact that the prince has succeeded in making his desired exchange and that the loss of honor is harder to him than the loss of life, saying, “I better brook the loss of brittle life / Than those proud titles thou has won of me” (5.4.77-78). Interestingly, in his response, Hal seems to change the exchange that he has planned, as his concluding words on Hotspur indicate that it is not his own “indignities” that are carried into the grave—a traditional image of the destiny of either the

Vice or the sinner from the comic close of a morality play—but Hotspur’s own: “Adieu, and take thy praise with thee to heaven! / Thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave, / But not remember'd in thy epitaph!” (5.4.98-100) He has succeeded in making his intended exchange, and yet he seems to have sent the wrong “ignominy” to the grave.

However, this transaction becomes even more complicated when he makes what must be one of the most bewildering decisions in the play: willingly allowing Falstaff to take the “glory” of killing Hotspur for himself. Upon completing his elegy for Hotspur, Hal finds an apparently dead Falstaff—the audience must also suspect him dead, based on stage directions—and utters a considerably less kind obituary on his friend. As soon as he leaves, however, Falstaff is

“miraculously” restored to life, and discovers the body of Hotspur, which he stabs in the thigh,83 and claims victory over him for himself. Alan C. Dessen reminds us that the next action Falstaff takes is tied to the “allegorical staging” of the morality: the stage directions indicate that Falstaff

“takes up Hotspur on his back” (5.4.128). In this action, Dessen suggests, “Shakespeare is

83 Grossman claims that stabbing in the thigh is traditional for the Vice, though he offers no support for the claim and I have not found a play that directly supports the claim. 210 invoking here one of the best-remembered images of moral drama,”84 and he claims that the audience is meant to see irony in it, because neither the Vice himself (Falstaff) nor the prodigal

(Hal) is dragged away to “hell,” but rather Hotspur, so that his “limited and limiting definition of honor” is overcome by the prodigal and his Vice.85 Although Dessen is certainly correct in his identification of the scene as a borrowing from the morality tradition, his reading of the meaning of what is happening suggests that Falstaff and Hal together triumph over Hotspur, while the play itself makes clear that their “victories” are distinct and have distinct meanings. Bevington cites this moment as “providing a fitting structural climax to a drama of choice,”86 as Falstaff and

Hotspur present morality-like alternatives to Hal, but his choice to give what he has won in his intended transaction to his “Vice” Falstaff suggests something other than a moral triumph is taking place here.

Hal’s victory over Hotspur—based on his own intended transaction—should solidify his place in his father’s heart and set him on the right path toward a reign as a redeemed hero of a morality. However, upon achieving this victory, Hal chooses to continue to “awhile uphold / The unyok’d humor of [the] idleness” of his earlier life and companions, so that Shakespeare makes clear at the conclusion of the play that the final comic resolution he promised the audience, his father, and himself has not yet arrived.87 Upon discovering Falstaff dragging the body of slain

Hotspur from the field, he overcomes disbelief that Falstaff lives, but he is not so credulous as to

84 “Allegorical Action and Elizabethan Staging,” 394. 85 Ibid, 394. 86 “Introduction” to 1 Henry IV, 26. 87 Interestingly, the conclusion of the first play as a whole upholds this notion of an “already/not yet” comic conclusion for the kingdom as a whole: the king’s last words in 1 Henry IV, “Rebellion in this land shall lose his sway, / Meeting the cheque of such another day: / And since this business so fair is done, / Let us not leave till all our own be won” (V.5.41-44), imply a future comic resolution to the historical plot concerning the state of England, even as Hal’s choices at the conclusion of the play indicate the future comic resolution of his own story, but put off the accomplishing of his redemption until the future. 211 accept his Vice’s rendition of his own valor in overcoming Percy. It is not, thus, as if Falstaff has tempted him back to his old lifestyle or tricked him into believing a lie; on the contrary, Hal has shown his mastery of time throughout the battle at Shrewsbury, even upbraiding Falstaff for failing to recognize that this is not “a time to jest and dally now” (5.3.56). Nonetheless,

Shakespeare shows that his prodigal Prince knowingly endorses a lie, as he says, “Come, bring your luggage nobly on your back: / For my part, if a lie may do thee grace, / I'll gild it with the happiest terms I have” (5.4.156-58). In so doing, Hal affirms his choice to return to “a time to jest and dally now,” and he orders his own supposed Vice to carry off his victim as “luggage” on his “back” not as a representation of a collective defeat of a view of honor but as a foreshadowing that it will be Falstaff who must bear the burden of the “ignominy” of Hal’s own

“unyok’d idleness.” As the devil in a morality, Falstaff bears away the shame which Hal transferred to the head of Percy, while the prince himself has gathered the “glorious deeds” and honor from him.

Once the transaction has been made with Falstaff88—a transaction enacted just according to morality tradition of being dragged off on the back of the Vice—there remains only to rid himself of Falstaff, a final exchange of his misbegotten youth for his coming rule. And yet, Hal chooses not to do so at the close of the first play; indeed, his decision to allow Falstaff to claim to have slain Hotspur is just the kind of comic inversion that Falstaff himself endorses throughout the play. Thus, Shakespeare permits the first play to end with both comic worlds in

88 One of the most fascinating aspects of this “lie” in 2 Henry IV is that it is both ignored and acknowledged, believed and doubted. The report comes to Westmoreland that Harry Percy has been slain by Hal, with no mention of the involvement of Falstaff, and yet Falstaff lives on his reputation for valor at Shrewsbury throughout the play, a valor that we know is not based on his actual actions in the play and must thus be based on the “glory” that Hal’s report of his bravery has earned him. Historically, of course, it is not possible for both versions to coexist happily, but dramatically, it is fully possible and even fruitful. 212 balance: the prince has redeemed himself in the eyes of his father and the world, and Falstaff’s festive misrule continues unabated. From the end of this play, it seems that the prince merely has a mastery of timeliness—knowing when to indulge his youthful riot and when to be the true prince and heir apparent. This apparently unproblematic resolution of the comic time of redemption and the comic time of festivity is likely what makes 1 Henry IV a more popular play than its sequel—Shakespeare seems to suggest that in the person of the prince the linear progression of history and the cyclical mode of festivity can be happily balanced. Rabkin observes that this conclusion “puts us in a comic universe in which Hal need never reject Falstaff in order to reach his father’s side in the nick of time; it entices us with the hope of a political world transformed by the life of comedy.”89 However, the tension between “the life of comedy” and “a political world” is already more complicated in 1 Henry IV than Rabkin’s thesis suggests.90

The clearest instance of the opposition of Falstaff’s and Hal’s visions of a comic future in

1 Henry IV is in 2.4, when the two enact an imagined scene of reunion between the prince and his father. First, Hal plays himself and Falstaff, who has taken on the role of surrogate father together with his role of Lord of Misrule, appropriately takes the role of Henry IV. Falstaff does not hide the fact that the king sees a troupe of Vices around his son, as he develops the metaphor of “pitch” to describe the moral staining of the prince by his company:

There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast often heard of and it is known to many in our land by the name of pitch: this pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile; so doth the company thou keepest: for, Harry, now I do not speak to thee in drink but in tears, not in pleasure but in passion, not in words only, but in woes also. (2.4.410-17)

89 282. 90 Rabkin suggests that 1 Henry IV presents a consistent “rabbit” or positive view of Hal and that 2 Henry IV presents a “duck,” a bitter satire of this view, and then Henry V puts these two versions in constant tension. 213 Falstaff not only acknowledges that Hal’s father sees his son’s company as damaging, he also cites the precedence of such a construction in “ancient writers,” reminding the audience of the ubiquity of the morality narrative implicit in his metaphor. Nonetheless, when it comes to

Falstaff’s description of himself, his role as comic jester comes forth: he acknowledges his corpulence and old age, but insists that there is “virtue in that Falstaff” (2.4.430). After all of these comic inversions, Falstaff ends with yet another attempt to push the prince to permit his comic misrule to continue into the future; thus, the “king” recommends that Hal “keep with

[Falstaff], the rest banish” (2.4.430-31).

However, Hal, dissatisfied with Falstaff’s inability to “speak like a king” (2.4.433), switches their roles, and the comic close each envisions becomes much more clear, a nearly perfect foreshadowing of the actual conclusion of their relationship in 2 Henry IV. As King

Henry IV, Hal describes his elder companion in terms that are drawn straight from the traditional morality Vice: he claims “a devil haunts thee in the likeness of an old fat man” and directly calls him “reverend Vice,” and “villainous abominable misleader of youth, / Falstaff, that old white- bearded Satan” (2.4.447-63). In Hal’s version, Falstaff is not merely the staining “pitch” of bad company, he is an active and responsible individual, a tempter taking advantage of a naïve youth.

Thus, the construction of a moral interlude of youth is clear in the observations that Hal attributes to his father, but Falstaff defends himself in the voice of Hal, as he undoubtedly hopes that Hal will defend him, characterizing himself as “sweet,” “kind,” “true,” and even “valiant,” while acknowledging only the characterization of himself as “old” and “plump” (2.4.475-79) and turning all his claimed vices to virtues, using no less an authority than the Bible to defend his fatness. Such is an expected response of a Lord of Misrule, and his jovial claim to be “all the 214 world” as he begs not to be banished has carried enough weight for some critics to conclude that the newly crowned Henry V truly has banished “all the world” when he banishes “plump Jack.”91

Such a view, however, misses the fact that the narratives Falstaff and Hal enact are based on conflicting concepts of comic time. Falstaff’s primary concern from both sides is to see his free reign of misrule continue, and Hal’s response to the question of Falstaff’s banishment—both

“I do” in his father’s voice and “I will” in his own voice—makes clear that he believes his own comic conclusion depends on Falstaff’s banishment as the banishing of the Vice completes the happy close of a morality. Falstaff’s acknowledgement of his old age indicates a problem with his conception of time—he has let his own youthful riot continue well beyond his youth, so that he continues to act as a youth despite the witness of his “white hairs.” Falstaff has permitted his carnival of youth to extend into his old age—recall his exclamation at the robbery “they hate us youth” (2.2.85)—and he desires to extend his life of comic misrule forward linearly into the reign of the young prince and beyond, but Hal intends to move forward from his time of riot to a time of order and virtue. In this brief scene of play-acting, then, these two characters’ different narratives of their own histories and their opposed concepts of time are both on clear display, and the impossibility of a comic close for both—particularly for Falstaff—is already clear.

If Hal has the sense of drama and myth sufficient to see the ways in which his own actions will be viewed, Shakespeare is the ultimate playwright of this history, and Hal’s writing of his own history is always subject to Shakespeare’s juxtaposition of alternative ways of viewing his experience. After hinting at such problems in 1 Henry IV, most of 2 Henry IV more clearly reveals the problems with Hal’s desire to construct his life’s narrative as a morality for others to see. In 2 Henry IV, as many critics have noted, the riotous prince has almost entirely

91 See David, 222, for example. 215 transformed into Erich Auerbach’s “weary prince,” bored by the intermixing of his elevated destiny with the lowly, common concerns of his riotous fellows.92 He seems to have found his own words regarding the tediousness of “all the year … playing holidays” to be quite true. He has cast Falstaff in the role of Vice, but he has also cast himself as the wastrel youth, the prince who will amaze all doubters by his sudden about face at his assumption of the throne. Although it is inappropriate to see him as anxiously anticipating his father’s death—Shakespeare seems to have included Hal’s dialogue with Poins regarding his father’s illness specifically as a comic counterstatement to this claim—he plainly seems tired of his own self-imposed role, no longer taking the same pleasure in the saturnalian riot of his younger days. He reveals this ennui primarily in his conversation with Poins, the member of the tavern crew whom he before seemed closest to, but to whom he now complains that he finds himself in “such vile company as thou art” (2.2.47). Hal offers a fair summary of his current status that sounds more weary than pleasant: “[T]hus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us” (2.2.134-35). His plan to enjoy himself, and even to enjoy the wise mocking him from on high, while he is young has turned into an almost interminable boredom in which he has trapped himself as he “the purpose must weigh with the folly” in all he does (2.2.168-69).

Indeed, he has almost no interactions with Falstaff—sharing the stage with him only twice in the entire play—so much of the sense of festivity from the first play is absent here, as Shakespeare reverts to the traditional mode of separating the comic action from the significant actors of history. Even when Hal pretends to be a drawer in order to overhear Falstaff speak disgracefully of him, the joke appears to have worn thin, and Falstaff’s ability to be the cause of wit in Hal, at

92 Mimesis, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1974), 312; this is, of course, the very intermixing of styles that Auerbach found so praiseworthy in Shakespeare, suggesting that Hal and his playwright may have had rather different tastes. 216 least, has faded. Although Shakespeare has presented comic scenes from Falstaff and Hal throughout the two plays, there is no comic resolution possible to the play as long as Hal stays here: there is only the timeless misrule of Falstaff, a comedy Hal has already grown weary of, even while Falstaff himself attempts to extend his own misspent youth through his entire life.

Hal himself realizes this division throughout both plays, initially enjoying the timeless quality of the comic scenes, but knowing that he not only intends to exchange them but also feels he must exchange them for the seriousness of his involvement in the linear progression of contingent history. Comedy—in its festive, timeless quality, presenting common people with everyday concerns—cannot continue for Hal if he is to have “comic” resolution to his own political and moral development. Instead, he has bound himself into a generic structure which he now finds tiresome rather than satisfying, but he continues to wait to complete his intended exchange, even as Falstaff plots to make his comic misrule a lasting kingship, or at least as close as he can get to kingship as among the “greatest men in this realm” (2 Henry IV 5.3.87-88).

It is a mistake, however, to consider that Shakespeare abandons the comic mode in the second play, even if Hal no longer seems to take genuine joy from these tavern scenes as Berger suggests he does in 1 Henry IV. Falstaff is as large a presence here as he has ever been; indeed, he may be more present and more insistent upon his future vision of misrule when Hal becomes king. From his first appearance, Falstaff shows he is unchanged: after repeating his inverted morality from 1 Henry IV 1.2 and assuring the Chief Justice that he cannot understand “the capacities of us that are young” (1.2.174), he shows that he still intends to put his misrule in future effect, as he closes the scene by claiming he “will turn diseases to commodity” (1.2.248).

Though the prince is largely absent in the comic scenes, Falstaff is joined by Pistol and Doll 217 Tearsheet, whose ahistorical and allegorical names suggest the timeless realm of comedy more than any character names in 1 Henry IV. If anything, the comic excess of the earlier play is now made more manifest: Falstaff does not merely speak of recruiting his “food for powder” (1

Henry IV 4.2.66) we see him actively and perversely recruiting in 3.2. Finally, Falstaff continues to speak in the future tense more and more often, as he sees the day of his misrule approaching.

For many critics, 2 Henry IV is essentially a failure, or at least a lesser version of what came before. Almost all of the dissatisfaction with the play comes from the rejection of Falstaff that concludes the play, as the historical and saturnalian plots are brought together only to be forcefully rent asunder by the new king’s words, and most critics find the failure to be that of

Shakespeare rather than his characters. A. C. Bradley complains that “the dramatist has missed what he aimed at” in making Falstaff so complete a character, because he cannot imagine that

Shakespeare “intended us to feel resentment against Henry” when he so forcefully rejects

Falstaff.93 Even Barber, who so thoroughly probed the comic figure of Falstaff throughout the two plays, concludes, “Although the final scenes are fascinating … it seems to me that they partly fail.”94 Barber situates this failure in the fact Shakespeare “himself uses ritual, not ironically transformed into drama, but magically”95 in expelling the scapegoat Falstaff to enable

Henry V’s future greatness, an expulsion he emphatically calls “a retreat into magic by the dramatist, as distinct from his characters.”96 Both Bradley and Barber are sensitive to a palpable failure of drama, but, when considered in the light of the way Shakespeare structures these final

93 Oxford Lectures on Poetry, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1909), 259. 94 217. 95 Ibid. 96 219. 218 scenes to reveal comic modes of time, it is not the failure of Shakespeare as a dramatist but of his characters as historical dramatists.

As the second part of Shakespeare’s dramatization of the life of Henry IV heads to its conclusion, the comic modes of time explored throughout the play reach their greatest intensity and reveal both their mutual incompatibility in the ways that Hal and Falstaff have construed them. Despite Hal’s impressive defense of his father in the previous play, his decision to keep with his “continual followers” (4.4.53) has kept them at odds, and when he visits his ailing father, he takes away the crown, prompting the strongest rebuke he receives in either play. In it,

Henry IV presents a vision of the future of the kingdom under Henry V:

Pluck down my officers, break my decrees; For now a time is come to mock at form: Harry the Fifth is crown'd: up, vanity! Down, royal state! all you sage counsellors, hence! And to the English court assemble now, From every region, apes of idleness! Now, neighbour confines, purge you of your scum: Have you a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance, Revel the night, rob, murder, and commit The oldest sins the newest kind of ways? Be happy, he will trouble you no more; England shall double gild his treble guilt, England shall give him office, honour, might; For the fifth Harry from curb'd licence plucks The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog Shall flesh his tooth on every innocent. O my poor kingdom, sick with civil blows! When that my care could not withhold thy riots, What wilt thou do when riot is thy care? O, thou wilt be a wilderness again, Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants! (4.5.117-37)

This graphic depiction, uttered more from despair than from a desire to change his son, provides

Hal with a vivid picture of misrule. His father extends the riot of his youth into his future reign in 219 images not so different from the continual requests of Falstaff—not to hang thieves, to permit his own appetites to go unchecked, and to disregard the demands of the moment for any opportunity

“to jest and dally.” This image of the chaos of a ruler still in the throes of youthful riot and advised only by “apes of idleness” reflects the historical narrative of the chronicles’ depictions of weak kings: when festive misrule, given free reign to “mock at form,” is carried forth into linear historical time, according to the dying Henry IV, the only outcome can be chaos, “a wilderness

… / Peopled with wolves.” The king conjures from the past and present of his son a prophecy of his future, and his words cut the prince to the quick. Hal, not Shakespeare, begins a “retreat into magic” as he mystically aligns the death of his father and the death of his wildness. Unlike their reconciliation in 1 Henry IV, in which the prince emphasized his innocence of the worst offences he was accused of, he acknowledges his “present wildness,” even desiring that his father “let

[him] in [his] present wildness die / And never live to show the incredulous world / The noble change that [he has] purposed!” (4.5.152-54) He accounts for his taking of the crown due to having thought his father was dead, and feeling himself “dead almost … to think” his father was dead (4.5.156). Hal’s language here suggests another kind of exchange: a mystical exchange in which his father’s death means the death of his old—ironically young—self.

From this intense scene, Shakespeare opens the fifth act with a comic scene centered on

Falstaff. In it, Falstaff observes “the semblable coherence of [Shallow’s] men's spirits and his: they, by observing of him, do bear themselves like foolish justices; he, by conversing with them, is turned into a justice-like serving-man” (5.1.65-68) At this late point in the play, Falstaff suddenly observes the effect of company: Shallow and his men so influence each other “that they flock together in consent, like so many wild-geese” (5.1.70-71). From this observation, Falstaff 220 generalizes, apparently without noticing his claim’s possible relation to the “pitch” of his own experience: “It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, one of another: therefore let men take heed of their company” (5.1.75-77). After all of the ironic inversions of the morality narrative over the course of the preceding action, Falstaff here acknowledges, though finding it merely a matter for laughter, that men ought to “take heed of their company.” Falstaff finds his own observation so witty, that he immediately plans to share them with Hal and believes “you shall see him laugh till his face be like wet cloak ill laid up!” (5.1.84-85) Shakespeare, here, seems to have accomplished an inversion through Falstaff, rather than Falstaff deliberately inverting the morality narrative. He still finds the idea that “wise bearing of ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases,” laughable, and he suspects that the prince will as well, but the echoes of his claim to turn his own disease to commodity rebounds back against him, as Henry IV has just painted such a vivid picture of what the realm might look like if his son takes diseases from Falstaff.

Shakespeare shifts from this absurd and superfluous comic scene back to the serious historical action, which opens with Warwick informing the Chief Justice, as well as the audience, that Henry IV’s “cares are now all ended” (5.2.3). The Chief Justice and Warwick, as well as the rest of the council, fear that they will now see the vision of disorder and wildness predicted by the late king come to pass, but Henry reassures them in words that continue to reflect his mystical notion that his father’s death means his own redemption:

I'll be your father and your brother too; Let me but bear your love, I 'll bear your cares: Yet weep that Harry's dead; and so will I; But Harry lives, that shall convert those tears By number into hours of happiness. (5.2.57-61) 221 The new king parallels his father’s death with his new life, suggesting that his appropriation of his father’s role as both king and father will have the mystical power to “convert … tears / By number into hours of happiness,” providing an ideal comic conclusion not only of his own redemption but also for each of them and even the realm as a whole. Henry V chooses to ally himself with the very Chief Justice who so sharply rebuked him in his wildness, enacting for all observers the morality critics including Tillyard see as a choice “between Sloth or Vanity … and

Chivalry.” The new king’s words upon unambiguously choosing Chivalry show his most ritualistic construction of the comedy of his own redemption:

And, princes all, believe me, I beseech you; My father is gone wild into his grave, For in his tomb lie my affections; And with his spirit sadly I survive, To mock the expectation of the world, To frustrate prophecies and to raze out Rotten opinion, who hath writ me down After my seeming. The tide of blood in me Hath proudly flow'd in vanity till now: Now doth it turn and ebb back to the sea, Where it shall mingle with the state of floods And flow henceforth in formal majesty. (5.2.122-33)

These words suggest the death of the old self, gone “wild into his grave” with his father, exchanging a flood of vanity for one of “formal majesty.” Despite these powerful images,

Shakespeare includes deliberate echoes of earlier speeches that, though the king himself may believe that the ritual he claims to enact is precisely what has happened, remind the audience that the comic morality is an imposed narrative that has been observed and constructed throughout the plays. In the middle of his powerful language of redemption, he reminds his hearers that this change will “mock the expectation of the world,” or “falsify men’s hopes,” hopes and 222 expectations he created in his riot. He will “frustrate prophecies” that his younger self knew he was cultivating when his father warned him that “the soul of everyman / Prophetically do forethink thy fall.” He will “raze out / Rotten opinion” that he himself knew the “base contagious clouds” of his former behavior would create. If his audience in council is not privy to this information, the audience in the theater is, as his construction of his known history into this pattern has been his intention all along. Rather than these words proving his Machiavellian nature, they remind the audience of his pointing out after rescuing his father that he had now disproved those who said he sought his death. Henry V says these words to remind himself and the audience in the theater that he said that he would do this, and now he is proving that he can actually do it, that he mystically has accomplished “redeeming time.”

After presenting the newly crowned Henry V assuring his council of his change following the death of his father in 5.2, Shakespeare returns to Falstaff, and presents perhaps the most idyllic and timeless scene in the entire play; that is, until it is interrupted by linear history.

It takes place in Shallow’s orchard, and in Silence’s song of the ideal comic life of festivity, it contains clear echoes of scenes like those of the cobblers in Locrine:

Do nothing but eat, and make good cheer, Singing And praise God for the merry year; When flesh is cheap and females dear, And lusty lads roam here and there So merrily, And ever among so merrily. (5.3.16-22)

As the song continues, he makes an even more overt evocation of the spirit of festivity by referencing the liturgical calendar, as he sings of welcoming “merry Shrove-tide” (5.3.35), the season before Lent intended for shriving, or confession, but more commonly known as Fat 223 Tuesday, or the last moment of festivity before Ash Wednesday, when Lenten mourning and fasting ensue. It is into this idyllic festivity that Pistol arrives, bringing the known history of the linear progression of time and revealing that Falstaff’s intention to bring festivity into the realm when the prince becomes king will not bring forth the ideal comic world figured in the beginning of the scene, but a world of disorder based on his own excesses.

Pistol announces the death of the king—just spoken of by the new king and his council in such heavy and serious terms—as the announcement of “lucky joys / And golden times and happy news of price” (5.3.95-96) that Falstaff is “now one of the greatest men in this realm”

(5.3.87-88). As soon as Falstaff hears the news, he makes plans to move his reign of comic misrule from the circle of festivity in Shallow’s orchard to the entire kingdom, and his words reflect the very picture that Henry IV foresaw in his son’s reign as well as the chronicle descriptions of kings led astray by favorites. He promises, “Master Robert Shallow, choose what office thou wilt in the land, 'tis thine. Pistol, I will double-charge thee with dignities” (5.3.122-

125). His vision goes from being a mere opportunity to benefit his personal friends to a design is to undo the stable moral and political system that festive misrule is supposed to ironically reinforce:

Come, Pistol, utter more to me; and withal devise something to do thyself good. Boot, boot, Master Shallow: I know the young king is sick for me. Let us take any man's horses; the laws of England are at my commandment. Blessed are they that have been my friends; and woe to my lord chief-justice! (5.3.133-38)

Falstaff believes his opportunity to upend order—not merely in sport or in words, but in fact— has come. To the ears of the audience, this must sound like a vision of a moral Vice projected into historical action, and it is only the certain knowledge of Henry V’s successful redemption upon taking the throne, already indicated in the previous scenes of the play, that prevents readers 224 and audiences from taking his words more seriously. Audiences can safely find irony and humor in Pistol’s excited desire to “welcome these pleasant days” for misrule, because known history assures them that the vision of “pleasant days” articulated in the close of this scene will not come to pass.

It would seem that Shakespeare has set everything in place to present a final scene, the separation of Falstaff and Henry V, in order to distinguish between the two concepts of comic time presented in the play and to allow Henry V a triumphantly final victory in the accomplishment of his own redemption. And yet, there is one brief scene—entirely unnecessary for the historical plot or even the tavern plot—before the play’s catastrophe. In it, Mistress

Quickly and Doll Tearsheet are taken and held by two beadles because of “a man or two kill’d”

(5.4.6). The justice of the beadles is apparently rough—Quickly complains that they have

“drawn [her] shoulder out of joint” (5.4.3), and they plan to provide her with “whipping-cheer”

(5.4.5) because “the man is dead” (5.4.16) that Pistol beat while in their company. As the two women are violently taken away, Quickly’s lines reveal their hope in the authority of Falstaff— she cries her wish that he would come, for “he would make this a bloody day to somebody”

(5.4.12). Her appeal to Falstaff for justice is particularly poignant, given that he closed the previous scene claiming the “laws of England are at [his] command.” But the irony cuts both ways: though Falstaff possibly could protect these not exactly innocent but hardly murderous women from the excessive force of justice under which they suffer, one can hardly imagine him establishing any justice for the man or men who died in their presence. The justice of the world of order is excessive and misdirected at these female scapegoats, but the misrule of the tavern has a real cost, as well, and neither the comedy of order nor misrule can be fully realized. 225 The vision of linear time leading to the comic redemption for Henry V and order for the realm and the vision of timeless comic merriment and misrule that Falstaff desires to project into linear history collide in the final scene of the play—the rejection of Falstaff. As Henry V approaches, Falstaff has just been called upon to protect Doll and, despite his immediate claim,

“I will deliver her,” he forgets his desire to aid her as soon as he sees his own opportunity for advancement. Although many critics focus on the excessive cruelty of the new king’s treatment of Falstaff in the scene—and it is indeed excessive—his cruelty is born of his own misconception of the kind of comic conclusion that he intends to bring about, and Falstaff is no less guilty of misconstruing his own comic conclusion. Falstaff’s desire to turn misrule and festivity to serve his own appetites and please only himself is as badly misconstrued a version of the comic vision of festivity as is the king’s version of a comic vision of Christian redemption.

Critics rightly see this last scene as completing what was started by Hal’s soliloquy in

1.2, but, although the morality is neither fully “subverted,” as David claims, nor truly fulfilled, as

Wilson and Tillyard suggest, the new king does not truly succeed in “redeeming time.” To those who have loved Falstaff well this may seem obvious, as the close of the play for them is “a happy ending [turned] into a revolting conclusion,”97 but such an understanding misses the necessity of Hal’s assumption of responsibility as King Henry V. Conversely, those who desire to see the development of an ideal prince in Hal find here a satisfactory choice of “Order” over

“comic Riot,”98 accepting the king’s own claims about his successful redemption of time, when

Shakespeare deliberately exceeds known history to question those claims. Thus, just as the final scene makes clear that Falstaff’s comic vision is neither fully consistent with comic festivity nor

97 H. B. Charlton, Shakespearian Comedy (London: Methuen, 1966), 171. 98 Harold E. Toliver, 77. 226 truly comic if enacted in historical time, Henry V’s last speech reveals that his own comic vision depends on two aspects that reveal his own misconception of time.

The first misconception in the king’s rejection of Falstaff is based on redefining as vicious and without value or true pleasure the festive comic sense of time, which Hal appeared to have balanced almost ideally with his responsibilities in 1 Henry IV. In this aspect, Shakespeare borrows fairly straightforwardly from the morality construction of the prince’s dramatic change into the king as it is shown in both Hall’s Union and the anonymous Famous Victories. Hall outdoes the other chronicles in emphasizing the suddenness and totality of the change undergone by Henry V upon taking the throne, contrasting his former life as evil. He claims the prince

“determined with himself to put on the shape of a new man … turning insolencie and wildnes into gravitie and sobernes, and waveryng vice into constant vertue.99 Hall also directly refers to the dismissing of the prince’s “familier compaignons,” in order that he not “bee allured” to his former “wanton pastime & riotous misorder.”100 The new king “therfore banished and separated from hym all his old flatterers and familier compagnions (not unrewarded nor yet unpreferred) inhibityng them … to approche … within ten miles of his courte or mansion.”101 The kernel of the rejection as it is in Shakespeare’s play is clearly here, but the emphasis in Hall is still far more on the king’s magnanimity than his sternness.

Shakespeare’s dramatic source, Famous Victories, presents this scene almost verbatim from the chronicles. After the death of his father, the new king is approached by Ned, Tom, and

Jockey, his companions in his riotous youth. Ned instructs Henry V to “put away these dumpes,

/ You are a king, and all the realm is yours” (9.40-41). Ned observes that the king appears

99 Hall, Union. Bullough, Vol IV, 286. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid. 227 very much changed, And tis but with a litle sorrowing, to make folkes beleeue The death of your father greeues you (9.44-47).

The king assures him his “vnfeined greefe is not to be ruled by thy flattering” (9.51) and that he is indeed changed. He goes on to inform his associates that their “former life greeues [him]”

(9.58), and he abolishes them from his “company for euer” (9.59), though with the caveat that they can still receive advancement from him if they, like him, change their former ways. In these lines, the new king makes clear that his former associates and their lifestyle are to be rejected utterly, and that their only hope is to reject their wicked ways, completing their own moral transformation as he has done.

The sense that the festivity of the past is incompatible with the present is even more emphatically present in Shakespeare’s version of these lines. The new king feels he must dismiss his Vice in order to perfectly realize the morality he has made of his youth, but to do so, he can no longer conceive of his youth as a “holiday” that had to be kept within “reasonable compass.”

Instead, his words show that he has turned his past into something to be rejected absolutely, something experienced by someone who was not even truly himself:

I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers; How ill white hairs become a fool and jester! I have long dream'd of such a kind of man, So surfeit-swell'd, so old and so profane; But, being awaked, I do despise my dream. Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace; Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape For thee thrice wider than for other men. Reply not to me with a fool-born jest: Presume not that I am the thing I was; For God doth know, so shall the world perceive, That I have turn'd away my former self; So will I those that kept me company. 228 When thou dost hear I am as I have been, Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast, The tutor and the feeder of my riots: Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death, As I have done the rest of my misleaders, Not to come near our person by ten mile. For competence of life I will allow you, That lack of means enforce you not to evil: And, as we hear you do reform yourselves, We will, according to your strengths and qualities, Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord, To see perform'd the tenor of our word. Set on. (5.5.47-520)

His need to prove that he has redeemed time turns his past into a mere “dream” to be despised.

He affirms that God knows, and reminds the audience of the importance of those who observe his moral turn by adding that “the world” will also perceive, that he has “turn’d away [his] former self,” and is no longer “the thing [he] was.” In these lines, he denies his own past, making his younger self not even human, but merely a “thing” who committed misdeeds in a dream. The balanced sense of time younger Hal actually managed in 1 Henry IV by engaging in the festivity of the tavern scenes and then proving his merit on the fields of Shrewsbury is now thrown away, all made merely a dream to serve the narrative of his own redemption.

Such a loss of comic time would be sufficient to take away from the close of the play, but

Shakespeare’s Henry exceeds the words of his past models, seemingly buying into an idea that he can redeem time by completing a mystic ritual of the scapegoat, transferring the guilt of his now-shameful past on to Falstaff. Not only is Henry V unkind to Falstaff in mocking his weight and cutting off his comic misrule by pre-empting any “fool-born jest,” but he also falsifies his own past by calling him the “tutor and feeder of my riots” and banishing him along with the rest of his “misleaders.” Since Shakespeare has made clear in his dramatization of the prince’s “riots” 229 that neither did he need a misleader nor did Falstaff in any way truly function as one, this speech violates the known history that has been presented onstage, and invalidates the king’s version of his own history. Rather than redeeming the time of his youth, Henry V places the blame for all of his bad reputation on the head of Falstaff, and, although he does not issue an order to have him sent to the Fleet, that the Chief Justice does so completes the “usual punishments for the

Vice.”102 However, the completion of the generic form, when not accompanied by genuine presentation of it leading up to the completion, only reiterates the ways in which the sense of time implicit in the dramatic form is inapplicable. Henry is not simply allowing men to observe the “wished for” bright glittering of his newly founded reign, but he is actively blaming the

“sullen ground” of Falstaff and his followers for keeping him from having shone earlier in his youth, holding that soil accountable for his choice to bury himself in it. Even in his attempts at magnanimity in suggesting that Falstaff and his cohorts can also “reform” themselves and gain advancement under his rule—offering them the opportunity to create their own comic moral conclusions, he seems to ring hollow. He has not been fair in his construction of his own narrative, but he knows that it is a narrative that will be believed because it construes history according to a recognizable genre that only has a comic conclusion when it ends by having the

Vice carried off stage. The new king stoops to a dishonest construction of their relationship, as he seems to feel he must, in order to fulfill both the history he knows will be observed in him and the ritual expulsion of the scapegoat. The limitation of the comic close is that Falstaff is sacrificed to Henry V’s need to complete his designated narrative, not truly the need to assert order and redeem himself.

102 Bevington, “Introduction” to 1 Henry IV, 25. 230 As a whole, Shakespeare explores the possibility of comedy as mode of historical time across the two Henry IV plays, but the experiment suggests that comedy and history are not quite compatible. The circle of Christian comedy as represented in the morality play involves exclusion, the expulsion of a scapegoat, in Rene Girard’s terming of it,103 and the comedy of saturnalian misrule, extended beyond youth into historical time, becomes a tragic political morality in the chronicles, no longer any form of comedy at all. While in the comedies a balance of festivity and serious action seems to be possible to achieve, Hal in becoming King Henry V fails to find such a resolution. Rather than seeing holiday as something precious because of its rarity as he suggests in his soliloquy, the new king feels he must disown the genuine joy he took in his past and pursue a course that fits the narrative others have seen in him. Thus, the sense of frustration most audiences feel in the rejection that closes 2 Henry IV and opens the career of the

“mirror of Christian kings” is not, perhaps, a failure on Shakespeare’s part to bring together his dramatic and historical materials to their finest effect. It may be, in fact, much more a reflection of our own frustration with history, as, stepping into historical time, for good this time, Henry V both amazes his observers, as “bright metal on a sullen ground,” but also diminishes himself, divesting responsibility by fictionalizing his own past to fit the narrative he wishes others to observe in him.

Thus, each construction of history as comedy fails by the close of the second play due to the failure of both Falstaff and Hal to redeem time. Falstaff’s sense of festivity is “out of all compass, out of all reasonable compass” (1 Henry IV 3.3.22-23), revealing that cyclical time

103 Rene Girard, The Scapegoat, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989), suggests that the story of Christ is the ultimate undoing of the scapegoat myth found in so many religions, so I do not intend to suggest that Christianity is the force motivating the king to act as he is, but rather that the Christian myth of redemption as presented in a morality play requires a scapegoat, whether the devil, an abstract vice, or an old friend who desires to establish misrule in England. 231 cannot be made into linear time without ceasing to be comedy. His vision of misrule as “one of the greatest men in all this realm” ends up looking rather like the tragedy of depraved disorder envisioned by Henry IV before his death. Hal, after seeming to have balanced the cyclical time of “playing holiday” within the linear progression of time, in his closing words to Falstaff, shows that even he cannot maintain such a balance, falsifying time rather than redeeming it.

Shakespeare’s handling of these modes of time throughout these two plays both affirms and denies the applicability of each comic vision, leaving the known history of the young prince redeemed to be the “mirror of Christian kings” as a not quite a successful comedy, but the failure of comedy is neither truly history’s nor Shakespeare’s, but the failure of the conceptions of time as emplotted by two of Shakespeare’s simultaneously most beloved and most reviled characters.

The play invites us not to “choose the better of the two” as Hazlitt suggests but to see the limitations of both of their conceptions of history as a narrative. That the play does not give either the characters or the audience an easy resolution to these conceptions is a more honest conception of history—and life—than either can offer on its own. Chapter 5

History As Unity:

Marriage and Comic Closure in History

In early modern plays about history, playwrights frequently use a motif of marriage as a personal and political solution to the conflicts—whether civil strife or foreign entanglements—at the core of many history plays. Although references to unity and amity produced through politically useful marriages are common in the chronicles as well, this motif takes on a special sense in drama, due to the classical convention of marriage as the close of a comic play, symbolizing the unity and order achieved in the resolution of the action of the play. Although awareness of the use of comic conventions and comic shapes for history plays has increased in some recent criticism, as Grant and Ravelhofer attest,1 the interaction between the dramatic convention of marriage as a comic conclusion and the known history of marriage as a political resolution has not yet been thoroughly explored. Indeed, Grant and Ravelhofer’s only additional comment on the relationship between an emerging critical emphasis upon comic histories actually tends to disconnect historical marriage and comic histories: “perhaps we will be disappointed if we always look for a closing marriage in the comical histories of the period.”2

Linda Gregerson offers an engaging reading of one type of marriage in English history plays— the French marriage—and examines the political valences and cultural suggestions in the plays’

1 3. 2 ibid, 3. Their assertion is true enough, if we define comic histories as those which are lighter and more humorous rather than those which effect an overall comic movement from disorder to unity. Heywood’s If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part 2, and Rowley’s When You See Me, You Know Me as well as Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Henry VIII all could be examples they have in mind; however, Fair Em and The Shoemaker’s Holiday are both plays that deal with British history in a comic form and do end in the unity of marriage. 232 233 original context, but Gregerson does not consider it as an aspect of genre, instead focusing on the complex relationship between England and France.3 Many critics note the common close of marriage in history plays, but do not consider it as an aspect of the generic interaction between comedy and history: E. M. W Tillyard views the marriages as reinforcing the “Elizabethan world picture” by offering closure to each tetralogy,4 Lily B. Campbell and the flood of New Historicist critics who came later focus on what these marriages communicate in terms of Elizabethan politics, particularly near the end of the reign of the “virgin queen,”5 and Phyllis Rackin acknowledges the pattern of history in both tetralogies but specifically focuses on how these conclusions represent Shakespeare’s effort “to incorporate and transvalue the feminine,” rather than considering them as aspects of genre.6 This lack of critical attention to the marriage resolutions in history plays as both a generic convention of comedy and a historical “fact” is surprising—considered as a whole, both of Shakespeare’s historical tetralogies could be said to be shaped as comedies that end in order asserted, confirmed and maintained by marriages, and many other plays dealing with English history also frequently explore political marriages as

3 “French Marriages and the Protestant Nation in Shakespeare’s History Plays,” in A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works, Volume II: The Histories, ed. Richard Dutton and Jean E. Howard (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 246-262. Gregerson’s article recognizes the political and historical interest in marriage in history plays, but does not broaden the scope beyond France and England and does not deal extensively with the drama as drama. 4 Tillyard claims that the close of Richard III is such a triumph of the Tudor view of history that “An Elizabethan audience would take the dramatist’s amen [the last word in the play] with a transport of affirmation,” 232. Tillyard is hardly alone in seeing the importance of the Tudor myth in these conclusions—even among recent critics who in no way accept Tillyard’s view of the plays or of history continue to assume that the conclusions of these plays must exist primarily to reinforce that view of history. For example, Ronald Knowles, Shakespeare’s Arguments with History (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 49, calls the end of the play a celebration of “Tudor unification,” encapsulating the ‘Tudor myth’ of Hall’s chronicle,” and assumes widespread if not total “endorsement of the contemporary audience” at the close of the play. 5 Campbell concludes her classic Mirrors of Elizabethan Policy by reflecting on the significance of Richmond’s announcement of his imminent marriage to Elizabeth York at the close of Richard III for an audience who is again fearful regarding the line of succession for the throne of England, 334. 6 “Anti-Historians: Women’s Roles in Shakespeare’s Histories,” Theatre Journal, 37 (3), accessed July 16, 2016 http://www.jstor.org/stable/32068523, 37.

234 possible comic resolutions. It is this experimentation with form and fact, the deliberate raising of expectations through generic conventions and the intentional activating of known history, that make marriage such a powerful shaping influence in history plays, and this chapter considers

Shakespeare’s and other playwrights’ use of political marriage as a motif in history plays that speaks to both the ultimate desire for and the possibility of a comic outcome to history and the inevitable reality of historical contingency.

Considered as aspects of both historical relevance and generic meaning, marriages in history plays take on a special suggestion, as the accepted conventions of comedy—a unified and peaceful circle represented by the vows of unity expressed in marriage—either reinforce or agitate against the known history of the marriage. Marriages in history plays, thus, engage with comedy in suggesting a particular kind of resolution to the affairs of both persons and states, thus gesturing toward an ultimate resolution to the historical conflicts of a play or—as often—a doomed attempt at such a resolution. In the Christian sense, marriage is two becoming “one flesh,” and thus marriage suggests that nations can become unified and enemies brought into amity through a wedding. While there is certainly power brokering happening in these marriages—mere “commodity” driving a relationship intended for love, as Falconbridge complains in King John—many history plays that present such alliance marriages suggest a sense of a genuine resolution through love and unity rather than a problematic image of force and submission or a Machiavellian contrivance of political convenience. These marriages tend to fall into those that are indicative of an accomplished unity after the close of conflict, those that are themselves intended to resolve a conflict, and those which are designed to bring about some other good end—such as greater esteem for the nation, greater power for a given ruler, or even a 235 positive moral outcome as a result of the influence of a virtuous spouse.7 Known history—either of the outcome of the treaty sealed by the marriage or of the effect of the marriage upon the individuals involved or the nation as a whole—tends to either undercut or reinforce the bonds of the marriage involved, such that playwrights create deliberate effects in the juxtaposition of the comic closure of marriage and the known outcomes of history.

While the conflation of political treaty and personal marriage may seem to be necessarily forced or false to many modern readers and critics, the idea that personal love and social unity can be simultaneously achieved in marriage is at the core of the idea of a comic conclusion, and the alignment of love and social order is also the key to understanding the ideal of duty in the feudal system represented many history plays. Thus, although such scenes can be intended to investigate the conflicts and inconsistencies in that system, marriages are often presented as quite genuine expressions of social unity and personal happiness. The best examples of marriage in history plays—as those that close Shakespeare’s tetralogies—manage to simultaneously question and reinforce the unity suggested in the comic close promised in marriage.

Shakespeare’s first tetralogy concludes with perhaps the most significant known marriage of this kind: the marriage of Henry VII to Elizabeth of York. This union cements the claim of the Tudors to the throne of England and is a significant part of the “Tudor myth” version of

English history. The chronicles of Hall and Holinshed, as well as the histories of Bacon and

More, present the marriage of Henry Tudor and Elizabeth York as an accomplished peace and unity for the nation through the union of husband and wife. Even Holinshed, who is much less clearly directed by the need to convey a pro-Tudor version of history than Hall, portrays the

7 Beyond those discussed in this chapter, Fair Em is an example of the first type, Edward IV’s intended French marriage in Henry VI, Part 3 and Richard’s marriage to Lady Anne and attempt to marry Elizabeth are examples of the second type, and Woodstock and Henry VIII both show different intended outcomes of the third type. 236 marriage as a rescue followed by an accomplishment of order in the realm. First, after defeating

Richard, Holinshed suggests that Henry liberated Elizabeth, “whome Kyng Rycharde, as yee haue hearde, meant to haue marryed, but God otherwyſe ordeyned for hir, and preſerued hir from that vnlawfull copulation and inceſtuous bedde.”8 God himself is given credit for keeping the daughter of the York family from marrying her own uncle, and Holinshed shortly makes clear that she was preserved for the specific purpose of bringing about order and even joy to the realm:

Anon after, he aſſembled togither ye ſage counſellors of the realme, in which counſel lyke a Prince of iuſt fayth and true of promiſe, to a[u]oyde all ciuile diſcorde, he apointed a day to ioyne in mariage with the Lady Elizabeth, heire of the houſe of York, with his noble perſonage, heire to the li[n]e of Lancaſter, whiche thing not onely reioyced the heartes of the nobles and Gentlemen of the realme, but alſo gayned the fauours and good willes of all the commons.9

The marriage—though it might have been portrayed as a means to justify Henry’s questionable right to rule—is instead presented as the union of the two houses that had contested over the throne throughout the Wars of the Roses. The marriage is given both causal impetus and immediate effect in Holinshed’s description: it is designed “to a[v]oyde all ciuile discorde,” and it is shown to be completely effective at all social levels, from the “nobles and Gentelmen of the realme” to “the commons.” Such effects are magnified in Hall’s account in his Union of the

Famelies of Lacastre and Yorke, which adds to Holinshed’s account that “peace was thought to discende oute of heaven into England, considering that the lynes of Lancastre & Yorke… were now brought into one knot.”10 With the foresight afforded only by hindsight, Hall also

8 The Holinshed Project, accessed July 16, 2016, http://english.nsms.ox.ac.uk/holinshed/texts.php?text1=1577_5328#p15652. 9 Ibid. 10 Bullough, Vol III, 301. 237 confidently casts the blessings of this union into the future, suggesting that their heirs “after their tyme should peaceably rule and enjoye the whole monarchy and realme of England.”11

The two best-known history plays that present Henry VII, Shakespeare’s Richard III and

John Ford’s Perkin Warbeck, reference this marriage and its accomplishment of comic order in

England after the Wars of the Roses. Although some critics have questioned the certainty of the closure offered in Richard III, critics in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond have continued to see the marriage conclusion as an iteration of the Tudor myth.12 For example,

Eamon Grennan calls the marriage “the blessed union of the red rose and the white,” and suggests that in the union “the four plays achieve an end in sight from the beginning for anyone who looked at English history through the spectacles of Tudor orthodoxy,”13 and Rackin points out that “the marriage of Richmond and Elizabeth… finally resolves the problems of the past and enables the prosperity of the future.”14 Indeed, Shakespeare famously ends Richard III, in spite of the fact that the scene is still set on the field of battle at which Richard has just been slain, with the union of Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York as the focal point of the play’s closing speech:

We will unite the White Rose and the Red. Smile heaven upon this fair conjunction, That long have frown'd upon their enmity! What traitor hears me, and says not amen? England hath long been mad, and scarr'd herself: The brother blindly shed the brother's blood, The father rashly slaughter'd his own son, The son, compell'd, been butcher to the sire.

11 Ibid. 12 In addition to those already cited, even Jacques Lezra, “Phares, or Divisible Sovereignty,” Religion and Literature, Vol. 38, No. 3 (2006), 13-39, accessed February 8, 2017, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40060024, partially arguing against such closure refers to the close of Richard III as “the least equivocal assertion of the so-called Tudor myth of history to be found in Shakespeare’s work,” 21. 13 “Shakespeare's Satirical History: A Reading of King John,” Shakespeare Studies (Columbia, SC) 11 (1978), 22. 14 “Anti-Historians,” 337. 238 All this divided York and Lancaster, Divided in their dire division, O now let Richmond and Elizabeth, The true succeeders of each royal house, By God's fair ordinance conjoin together! And let their heirs (God, if thy will be so) Enrich the time to come with smooth-fac’d peace, With smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days! Abate the edge of traitors, gracious Lord, That would reduce these bloody days again, And make poor England weep in streams of blood! Let them not live to taste this land's increase That would with treason wound this fair land's peace! Now civil wounds are stopp'd, peace lives again: That she may long live here, God say amen! (5.5.19-41)

What is clear in these last words is that the marriage is intended by Henry as a comic conclusion to the historical strife of the Wars of the Roses. The violence of the past—the civil strife that has split families apart and spilled so much blood—was a tragedy, but the marriage, ordained by

God, is the comedic end to all that has gone wrong. Marriage concludes a classical comedy by unifying all within the marriage circle, and the marriage here is intended to accomplish the same ends, but for all of England, as the blocking figure of Richard III—“determined to prove a villain” (1.1.30) by the demands of history as much as by his own will—has been removed and the warring sides are now united.

Nowhere is this idea more forcefully—or more anxiously—expressed than in the sentence at the center of the whole speech, as Shakespeare rhetorically arranges Henry’s lines to show the intended movement, as he speaks an awkward chiast in lines 27 and 28, claiming that the past violence has “divided York and Lancaster, / Divided,” leaving York and Lancaster 239 together in the midst of their “dire division.”15 From this “dire division,” Henry goes on to make a new pair, himself and Elizabeth, “conjoin together” these two houses. The rhetorical movement of the speech is clear, as two balanced and unified lines relating past division are

“undone” by three lines announcing unity, but these lines lack the rhetorical force of the arrangement and repetition of the first two. Further, they are necessarily subjunctive, because the marriage has not even happened yet. The movement from “dire division” to “fair conjunction” is presented as not yet accomplished, but the audience’s knowledge of coming history—that the Tudors reigned for generations up to the moment of the play’s performance— makes what might seem uncertain in the world of the play certain from their historical view.

Although this concluding speech is thus meant to convey comic closure, the movement of time is still present: even in his moment of triumph, Henry speaks of violence not only as a past reality overcome but also as a future possibility to defend against, and the whole speech appears almost obsessed with past division and possible future treason, rather than the assured present peace that the historical view ought to allow.16 After placing his own victory and intended marriage within the sure context of God’s will, Henry moves to consider the future. He begins

15 Lezra offers an interesting Lacanian/Derridean analysis of the speech, focusing on this part of the speech in particular, given its awkward syntax and odd repetition. He also points out the textual difficulty with the passage: Q1 read “dire deuision,” as if a form of devise or device rather than divide. The Folio and later quartos all give “diuision,” so I do not think there is much reason to make too much of the textual distinction beyond Lezra’s note that it creates a “nice play” on words, 22. 16 An interesting comparison is available in looking at the way anonymous The True Tragedy of Richard III, (London: Thomas Creede, 1594), accessed June 19, 2016, Early English Books Online, concludes, which includes none of the anxiety about the future that the last speech here contains, and actually directly includes an articulation of the history beyond the end of the play. Richmond has the last speech in the action of the play, and he quickly asserts the posthumous punishment due to Richard III and announces his intention to wed Elizabeth, but with no emphasis upon his need to do so to unite the warring factions. Such assertions are left to “messengers” who speak an epilogue to the play: they first declare the unity that Henry created, and then summarize the success of the Tudors as rulers up to the audience’s current moment. Interestingly, while a good deal is said of the successes of Henry VII, Henry VIII, and Edward VI, Mary I is quickly glossed over, and Elizabeth herself is spoken of at length in the most laudatory language. The play’s last lines, however, seem a clear statement of contemporary concern, as it declares an ominous warning in the form of an apparent compliment: “For if her Grace’s dayes be brought to an end, / Your hope is gone, on whom did peace depend.” 240 with confidence, though with the necessary qualification “if thy will be so,” in the “fair prosperous days” ahead, but then seems compelled to add a vision of the future that seems a reflection of the past, a negation of the very unity that his marriage should secure. The threat of seeing “these bloody days again” with their “streams of blood” looms over the close of the play, leaving the audience with a reminder that the future, despite the apparent unity and peace, continues to depend on future actions.

This threatening future takes away the strength and certainty of the play’s emphatic return to the present at the end of the speech: “Now civil wounds are stopp’d, peace lives again” suddenly sounds less like the powerful and certain unity that his earlier words implied and more like a temporary respite, with the presence of traitors making the resolution contingent upon whatever machinations the enemies of order may plot. Further, the subjunctive mood of the concluding line—asserted as a desire that peace “may live long here” rather than an assured proclamation that peace shall endure—feels even less certain, more a plea to God and the audience than a declaration of a conflict definitively resolved. At the conclusion of a history play that is intended to show the “Tudor myth,” there is still a strong undercurrent of doubt, even in the earthly architect of the Tudor design of history: Henry emphasizes the possibility of human action—treasonous attempts by traitors—to undo what God, in authorizing his marriage and rule, has put together. Raime Targoff asserts the open-ended nature of a speech that ends in an unanswered “amen” as indicative of an opportunity for the audience to participate in confirming the order presented on stage,17 but the desire to create such a connection speaks to the contingency of that order. The audience’s refusal to say “amen” suggests the possibility of a

17 “‘Dirty’ Amens: Devotion, Applause, and Consent in Richard III,” Renaissance Drama, New Series, Vol. 31, Performing Affect (2002), 78, suggests that the implicit response from the audience suggests the desire “to effect closure through liturgical reflexes.” 241 return of those “bloody days,” and the presence of a “traitor” who can upset the ideal order portrayed. In the contingent world of history, even the most complete comic resolution is always left with the possibility of its own undoing: this does not demand that the ending is arbitrarily chosen or a mere imposition, as the fact that the ending of Shakespeare’s play becomes the de facto beginning of Ford’s might suggest,18 but that Shakespeare has molded historical events into a generic resolution to suggest a particular kind of meaning. The full force of Henry’s last speech is one of contingent closure—the peace established by his victory and marriage should be the comic conclusion of the historical action, as long as God wills it and no traitors agitate against it. As Maurice Hunt acknowledges, “vestiges of disorder cannot be completely eradicated from human experience,” because history allows only a vision of true closure, not the true closure of the end of history. Hunt asserts, “The peace that Richmond describes properly belongs to the world after Doomsday,” as a kind of picture of the ultimate comic conclusion of history. Hunt concludes, “Richmond’s speech of peace provides orderly closure for Richard III, closure so strongly ordered that, when coupled with memory of certain troubling facts of Tudor history, it prompts awareness that the possibility of such perfect closure remains remote until

‘the general all-ending day.’”19 Picturing this ideal is the function of marriage as comic closure in history—marriage is itself a symbol of unending unity, and many plays use this conventional close to point to the peace and unity promised as the close of human history, even if it cannot be achieved in human history.

18 David Scott Kastan, Shakespeare and the Shape of Time, 93-94, argues that all endings of history plays are arbitrary—in fact, he suggests it is one of the defining attributes of the history play, and yet even he allows that the close of Richard III “succeeds as romance” and that “the tragic past has been redeemed.” 19 “Ordering Disorder in Richard III,” South Central Review, Vol. 6, No. 4 (1989), 26. 242 Although Hunt’s reading is an effort to acknowledge both history and genre, the interaction of known history and genre in this scene has led to various ways of construing the speech—some critics focus on the speech as the audience’s opportunity to affirm the Tudor version of history,20 while others focus on the ways in which Shakespeare makes the conclusion of the play merely one moment in progression from what has gone before in the play to the present-day for its audience.21 Looking at the play as an instance of the audience’s known history—both the common knowledge of the Tudor line’s success in maintaining power well into the future without the country again plunging into the kind of civil strife that preceded Henry VII and the knowledge of the various uprisings and counter claims against Henry VII, the reversals of the reigns of Henry VIII’s children, and the uncertain line of succession after Elizabeth— allows the closure of the play to suggest either a true comic close in which Henry’s words are mere warning about the continuing importance in his great-grandchildren’s age of protecting the country against traitors or a contingent close that failed to establish perfect peace immediately, but functions, nonetheless, as a picture of the peace and unity idealized in the close of comedy.

Attempting to read the play as negating or undercutting the promised comic resolution in the play, while it may make Shakespeare seem subtly further from the Tudor establishment, tends to

20 Targoff and James Siemon, “‘The power of hope?’ An Early Modern Reader of Richard III,” in A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works: The Histories, ed. Richard Dutton and Jean E. Howard, 361-378, (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), both discuss the significance of the closing “Amen” in the play as inviting the audience to offer their own approval to the new king on stage, but the idea that the close demands a response has long been assumed. Since silent assent could be construed as no assent at all, some editors have included notes to the effect that “amens” should be voiced by other performers on stage, but the lack of such a note in the original text has led to speculation that the audience would have orally responded to the words on stage. 21 Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary (London: Methuen, 1967), 46, for instance, sees the closing speech as connecting the new king with the now-defeated and beheaded usurper, claiming, Richmond “suddenly gives a crowing sound like Richard’s.” Jacques Lezra, 26, gives a subtler reading to illustrate the problem of closure in these last lines, as he points out that ‘the strange, reflexive repetitiousness of Richmond’s lines” reveals the tension within the new monarch as he divides himself from the division of former times while trying to show himself as a continuation of what should be an uninterrupted line of kingship. 243 strain both the generic conclusion and the known history.22 If anything, the intervening history tends to make Henry a kind of prescient monarch in his words here—even the version of known history which acknowledges the ongoing strife and unrest in the Tudor period made every agitator against the Tudor establishment a treasonous traitor, so that Henry’s claims make him seem to have the historical long-view that his audience over a century later has, and his comic promise at the close of the play becomes their comic promise, known and realized in history.

The version of history in which the marriage fails to guarantee a lasting peace—though still with the emphasis that it should do so except for the subversive actions of traitors—is also present in the opening of John Ford’s Perkin Warbeck. Here, the same marriage is referenced not as the last event of a play that turns a tragedy to comedy, but at the opening of a tragedy, suggesting that the marriage is part of the initial order that will descend into chaos in the tragic pattern of the play. However, when the marriage is briefly referenced by Dawbney, one of Henry

VII’s court of counselors, the same tensions that appear at the close of Shakespeare’s play appear again. Dawbney recounts known history for his king and the audience of the play:

Edward the Fourth, after a doubtful fortune, Yielded to nature, leaving to his sons Edward and Richard the inheritance Of a most bloody purchase; these young princes, Richard the tyrant, their unnatural uncle, Forc’d to a violent grave, so just is heaven. Him hath your majesty by your own arm, Divinely strengthen’d, pull’d from his boar's sty And struck the black usurper to a carcass. Nor doth the house of York decay in honors, Though Lancaster doth repossess his right. For Edward's daughter is King Henry's queen: A blessed union, and a lasting blessing For this poor panting island, if some shreds, Some useless remnant of the house of York

22 For example, Kott’s claim that Henry in the close of the play is merely another Richard attempts to do just this. 244 Grudge not at this content. (1.1.27-42)23

The pattern of a divinely-sanctioned comedy rising from the tragedy of civil war is here repeated, and the marriage again is made to be the union of the opposed sides of the strife, so that the comic circle encloses both sides in a “blessed union, and a lasting blessing” of peace and prosperity. Speaking after the fact, as Dawbney does, the conditional subjunctive addition of the possibility that some of the house of York might agitate against “this content” is not merely a possibility, but a known fact. Those in both the play and the audience are aware that there are those of the “useless remnant of the house of York” who already have fought against the establishment of Henry VII as king and the threat continues and provides the basis of the action of the play. The idea of a comic close represented in the marriage, despite its failure to guarantee perfectly the peace that it was designed to bring about, is still compelling, still used to frame this history, to suggest that a comic resolution should prevail despite the knowledge that it has failed to do so. Henry’s own lines in the opening of the play suggest that the power of the Tudor myth is as active upon him as on any—he expresses his own disbelief that the comic resolution of his kingdom’s woes that he has engineered in his victory, his marriage, and his maintenance of the state by his able statesmanship since has not resulted in the security it ought to, for England or for himself: “And yet, for all this glorious work of peace, / Ourselves is scarce secure” (1.1.13-

14). The power of the myth of perfect closure promised in comedy is enduring, even when contingent history can never actually bring it about, and the failure of the promised peace is thus presented as a surprise to the very historical personages on stage, who have accepted the comic closure of history promised in the marriage—the known history of their current experience

23 This, and all references to the play, are from John Ford, Perkin Warbeck, ed. Donald K. Anderson, Jr. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965). 245 creates tension in the known generic shape of the history that precedes it, and the audience experiences this effect in engaging with almost any comic presentation of history.

These references to Henry’s marriage to Elizabeth suggest another problem with comic resolutions in history—whether in actual marriage or in some other form of ritualized union and peace. While the conclusion is comic for those in the marriage and is meant to incorporate all those who were in conflict into a unified circle, history is a narrative that can be recounted from many perspectives and dramatizing this contestation is at the core of even a comic conclusion.

One side’s victory is, of course, another side’s loss, and one cause’s martyr is another cause’s traitor, as the ambiguities of the remainder of Perkin Warbeck make clear.24 The almost insistent claim—in both plays’ references to Henry VII’s marriage—that it is victory for both sides and no loss of glory for either is made suspect by the very need to claim that it is so, and in the qualification there are those “traitors” who do not accept the comic union accomplished as truly a happy ending.

In both of these plays, then, the tension created between the generic resolution of marriage and the historical reality of a world that does not allow total closure generates the central dramatic interest, both in complicating a comic conclusion in Richard III and in allowing a tragic disruption of the comic order in Perkin Warbeck. Each play suggests that the marriage should guarantee order—the narrative demands a happy ending after the sides of the conflict are unified, and both the audience and the supposed historical figures on the stage are aware of the significance of the dramatic convention as a proper close to the narrative of their own history.

Nonetheless, both plays, Shakespeare’s conclusion no less than Ford’s introduction, also assert the impossibility of that order actually being maintained in a world intended to represent known

24 I discuss this play and its ambiguous perspective on both King Henry VII and Warbeck further in chapter 6. 246 history and to correspond to the reality of the audience. Traitors and counterclaimants are an inevitable part of the contingent world of history, and vigilance in maintaining order is necessary in history in a way that it need not be in a fictive comic world. The pictured ideal of the generic convention of marriage as offering comic closure thus stands, but it stands anxiously under the possibility of disruption.

Perhaps the most perfect comic resolution to a history play ever written is the close of

Shakespeare’s Henry V, in which Shakespeare ends a military history play with a scene drawn out of one of his earlier romantic comedies. Like interpretations of its title character, the critical discussion of the scene is complex and sharply divided:25 historically, many critics who have viewed the king very positively saw this scene as rather insipid,26 but more recent critics such as

Jean Howard and Phyllis Rackin see the scene as a “kind of rape” of Katherine,27 while others, such as Megan C. Andrews, see the scene as possibly effeminizing the king himself.28 Critics vary even in terms of what the scene suggests historically: whether we are meant to see the wooing of Katherine as essential to the King’s accomplishment of peace and order—as well as essential to legitimizing his claim to the thrones of both England and France—or as a mere

25 Although some critics still construct a discussion that suggests a movement from a long tradition of seeing the play as unproblematically patriotic to a more recent critical dissection of the character as oppressive and Machiavellian, negative readings of the character date back at least as far as William Hazlitt, who called Henry “an amiable monster,” and critics attempting to “redeem” the king as a character, though usually not without acknowledging his complexity, are still common, as in Harry Berger, Harrying: Skills of Offense in Shakespeare’s Henriad. 26 Samuel Johnson, Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare, ed. W. K. Wimsatt, Jr. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1960), 92, for example, was frustrated with the entire close of the play, complaining that “the poet’s matter failed him in the fifth act, and he was glad to fill it up with whatever he could get.” 27 Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare’s English Histories (New York: Routledge, 1997), 196. 28 “Gender, Genre, and Elizabeth’s Princely Surrogates in Henry IV and Henry V,” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 54, No 2 (Spring 2014), accessed July 16, 2016. http://muse.jhu.edu/article/545164, 384. She also argues that this scene predominantly displays “the female power at the heart of Hal’s endeavor” (383), making it another reminder of Henry V’s dependence upon women to legitimate his own claims. 247 afterthought to an accomplished conquest.29 The excess of interpretations is hardly surprising:

Norman Rabkin’s likening the play and its central figure to a gestaltist image of a duck/rabbit, although still debated,30 remains a classic way of understanding the play as intended neither to present an idealized monarch nor to undercut a false ideal, but to do both at the same, at least for

“Shakespeare’s best audience.”31 Rabkin’s “both/and” mode of thinking, though not his exact construction of the two ways of seeing the play,32 is a helpful way to construe this scene: in it,

Shakespeare activates the generic lens of seeing by using comic conventions to close his history, but, in fulfilling these very generic conventions, he reminds his audience of the known history that runs contrary to the ideal suggested by the close of comedy.

Although the audience may possess knowledge that Henry V’s claim to the throne of

France—like his father’s claim to the English throne—was tenuous and that his marriage to the

French princess Katherine would solidify his authority in both England and France, the last scene

29 Complaints like those of Johnson’s are indicative of having seen the action as anticlimactically unnecessary, and critics, such as Marilyn L. Williamson, “The Courtship of Katherine and the Second Tetralogy,” Criticism, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Fall 1975), accessed February 13, 2017, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23099571, 328, continue to find the scene frustrating as an instance of mere “play-acting or role-playing about a settled issue.” On the other hand, others, such as Corrine S. Abate, “‘Once more unto the breach’: Katharine’s Victory in Henry V,” Early Theatre Vol 4, (2001), accessed July 7, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43500451, 73, emphasize the significance of the scene as evidence that Henry “requires [Katherine’s] willing participation.” Howard and Rackin, Engendering, 214, split the difference, claiming both that in the scene “the successful courtship of Katherine is presented as the culminating event of Henry’s triumphant reign,” and yet finding that the scene presents Henry’s dependence upon Katherine in that, due to “lacking a legitimate patrimonial title to the name of king, Henry secures it by matrimonial conquest.” 30 The introduction to the Arden Shakespeare edition, King Henry V, ed. T. W. Craik (London: Arden Shakespeare, 1995), 75, calls such a reading into question, claiming that seeing Henry V “as a problematic play full of ambiguities and ironies surely does not make it a better one,” and Joanne Altieri, “Romance in Henry V,” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 Vol. 21, No. 2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (Spring, 1981), accessed July 30, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/450146, 227, directly rejects Rabkin’s thesis specifically because it insists “upon a coherent intentional role for these ‘subversive’ elements,” and that it ignores “this play’s structure.” 31 285. 32 Rabkin’s thesis suggests that Shakespeare consistently desires to force his audience to vacillate constantly between a view of the play as a celebratory and straightforward comic history and one which satirically undercuts its main character and entire historical structure leaving the audience knowing “terrifyingly that they did not know what to think,” 285. I suggest that, in this scene at least, the very things that Shakespeare does to call forth the image of a “rabbit,” or a positive view, also reveal the markers of a “duck,” though not necessarily only in terms of Henry himself, but in terms of the structure of the close of the play as a whole. It is not, thus, a matter of which details are attended to that creates a gestalt that totalizes one view and excludes the other, but that the details, though perhaps not “terrifyingly,” suggest both the powerful historical myth and remind the audience of its falsehood. 248 of Shakespeare’s play does not provide much material to encourage his audience to call such knowledge to mind. Instead, the play presents the intended marriage not as the contingent means to establish peace or to legitimate a questionable claim but as the completion of the king’s conquest of France. Shakespeare’s choice to show Henry courting Katherine—creating a scene that Joanne Altieri points out has all its “explanatory parallels … in the romantic comedies”33 rather than the histories—suggests the union is no mere political convenience nor a

Machiavellian contrivance born of self-preservation and necessity, but a comic “vision of unity and harmony realized dramatically in the ultimate union of the whole.”34 Further, unlike the parallels in Shakespeare’s comedies which typically bring unity to a single social circle, Henry and Katherine’s “union is made to embrace not just the disparate social and national elements of

Henry’s army, but France and England themselves in the concluding marriage:”35 Henry’s rough

English wooing wins over the sophisticated French Katherine and draws the French into the unity of a comic circle created through love rather than force, the dominant means of much of the play, and most of the histories as a whole. Although many history plays present marriages as solutions to political problems, only this play actually makes an effort to present generic scenes of courtship between the man and woman involved.36 The scene may seem, particularly in the context of its engagement with comic conventions, a simple patriotic portrayal of Henry’s final victory in France, as his stumbling French gives way to his clear and direct English, celebrating the triumph of English plainness over French sophistication, already mocked in the extended

33 230. 34 Ibid, 229. 35 Ibid. 36 Even those on the fringe of such a description, such as the comic “history” Fair Em, which centers on marriage in its traditional comic form, resist presenting the monarch himself as courting, instead focusing on second tier characters in romantic scenes that reflect the significance of the marriage of the monarch. 249 blazon of the Dauphin’s horse in 3.7. Marriage, the traditional close of comedy, creates perfect closure for the play and the chapter of English history Henry V represents in the known history of the English audience.

However, the additional context of that known history complicates a union some critics have been tempted to view “with optimism as a cure for dynastic feuds.”37 As Rabkin points out,

Midsummer Night’s Dream closes with a similar marriage, but the audience is not invited to reflect on the later life of Athens or Theseus and Hippolyta nor do they have any particular knowledge of what follows the play,38 but in this play, the audience cannot avoid certain knowledge of future history, and, more than anything else, it is this “specific contextualizing of romance in this case makes it problematic.”39 Further, as Gregerson points out, French marriage for an English monarch is not something that English audiences would naturally embrace as a comic conclusion—Shakespeare, thus, would have to work carefully if he desires to present the marriage as “a romance worthy of the early comedies.”40

Nonetheless, if he wished to, his partial model in Famous Victories of King Henry V, the anonymous play that Shakespeare is commonly assumed to have drawn from and certainly at least knew of in writing his version of the history of the “mirror of Christian kings” (3.Chorus.6), would have provided an ideal version. After defeating the French by military conquest, the marriage arrangements are such an afterthought—just the finalizing of a conquest—that the entirety of the courtship lasts merely thirty lines, from Henry’s asking, “But tell me sweete Kate,

37 Charles Frey, “Marriage and the Family in Shakespeare: Some Problems and Some Themes,” Shakespeare Newsletter 28 (1978), 19. Frey assumes a positive portrayal here as a point of contrast with later plays, which he finds to be more skeptical. 38 288-89. 39 Altieri, 230, acknowledges the contextualizing of the scene as problematic, but not specifically the audience’s knowledge of extra-textual events. 40 Lance Wilcox, “Katherine of France as Victim and Bride,” Shakespeare Studies, 17, (1985), accessed February 13, 2017, Humanities International Complete, 67. 250 canst thou tell how to loue?” (1510) to Katherine’s answering, “I may thinke my selfe the happiest in the world, / That is beloued of the mightie king of England” (1539-40).41 In this short exchange, the play does little to engage in any comic conventions, instead favoring a presentation of English strength, even bluntness, and willing French capitulation. The arrangement of the marriage only furthers these emphases:

Hen.5. … There is one thing more I must needs require of you. Fr.King. Wherein is it that we may satisfie your Maiestie? Hen. 5. A trifle my good brother of France. I meane to make your daughter Queene of England, If she be willing, and you therewith content: How saist thou Kate, canst thou loue the King of England? Kate. How should I loue thee, which is my fathers enemy? Hen.5. Tut, stand not vpon these points, Tis you must make vs friends: I know Kate, thou are not a litle proud that I loue thee: ... What, wench, the King of England? Fr.King. Daughter, let nothing stand betwixt the King of England and thee, agree to it. Kate. I had best whilst he is willing, Least when I would, he will not: I rest at your Maiesties commaund. Hen.5. Welcome sweet Kate, but my brother of France, What say you to it? Fr.King. With al my heart I like it, But when shall be your wedding day? ... Hen.5. The first Sunday of the next moneth, God willing. (1682-1703)

Requiring just twenty lines from the marriage as a final request in the peace accord to the agreement of all parties involved upon even the date of the event, the playwright makes clear that the marriage is just the final “famous victory” of the king. The king is blunt—much more truly a rough English soldier without the ability or inclination to speak in the flattering language of love

41 All references to Famous Victories are from the 1598 Quarto, adapted only by changing ſ to the modern standard s. The famous victories of Henry the fifth… (London: Thomas Creede, 1598), accessed February 17, 2017, EEBO. 251 than he is in Shakespeare’s play in which he makes such protestations42—and he makes clear who is being transformed by whom—he makes her the “Queene of England,” he does not become in any way French by marrying her, downplaying his desire for her as for a mere “trifle.”

His arrogance—or simple English confidence, as the original audience was probably intended to construe it—is no less clear: once Henry makes the request, it is merely a matter of assent from both King and Princess, but his own attitude makes plain that he has no doubt of their capitulation. Their assent to his will is merely a matter of formality, and he is ready to set the date for the marriage.

Shakespeare, however, is unwilling to present the final comic resolution of his play so simplistically; he uses the comic convention of misunderstanding between lovers in order to both create levity in the scene and to problematize the resolution even as it develops. Rather than shying away from French as his model in the Famous Victories did, Shakespeare conducts the scene in such a way so that much of the dialogue is actually in French, and Henry, for all his protestations to the contrary, shows proficiency in speaking and understanding French as does his Queen-to-be in English. If in this scene “Shakespeare has contrived to present the king and princess as possessed of almost identical degrees of competence in each other’s language,”43 his audience in the theater is likely to have less French than the king claims to in the scene, effectively “excluding … his English-speaking audience”44 from the circle of unity the two are supposed to be creating. Katherine’s occasional stumbles in English would be perfectly plain, as

42 See Andrews, 375-385, for an exploration of how his rhetorical prowess is itself effeminizing; thus, perhaps another way in which he becomes “French” in a contemporary English view. 43 Wilcox, 70. 44 Howard and Rackin, 172. Howard and Rackin here refer to the “language-learning” scene, though I would argue most of the humor, if not all the language, of that scene would be quite accessible to most members of the audience. Here, however, the language, particularly the mistakes (intentional by Shakespeare or not) in French would be almost impossible to construe without a strong knowledge of French. 252 when she says, “I cannot tell wat is ‘like me’” (5.2.108), and Henry deliberately misunderstands in order to turn her misunderstanding into a compliment. However, the errors and even the comedy coded into French would be lost on most of the audience, both Henry’s mistakes when he offers his own translations of his English and the content of any untranslated line from the princess.45 A comic scene that ought to suggest unity, thus, actually places members of the

English audience outside the very comic circle the scene is designed to inscribe. To those members of the audience, Henry, in Shakespeare’s version of a scene that the anonymous play handled entirely in plain English, must appear to be in the process of becoming somewhat more

French than they can be comfortable with.

A lack of knowledge of French might partially problematize this scene for much of the audience: a certain knowledge of later history complicates the conventional purpose of the comic conclusion to a much greater extent. As Rabkin points out, “The point of the stock ending of romantic comedy is, of course, its guarantee of the future: marriage secures and reinvigorates society while promising an extension of its happiness into a generation to come.”46 However, all members of the audience carry into the theater with them the knowledge that Henry V’s great victories in France were followed soon after by his death and the ruinous reign of Henry VI.

Indeed, if a comic resolution of marriage is intended to guarantee the future, Shakespeare would

45 Interestingly, the longest such line, in 253-256, Katherine speaks in perhaps the most deferential language she ever uses toward Henry. Henry asks to kiss her hand, and she refuses, suggesting he would lower his dignity as her “très puissant seigneur [most mighty lord]” by kissing the hand of such an “indigne serviteur [unworthy servant].” Not only is this language that an English audience might enjoy if the scene is intended as entirely patriotic, but it also is the single instance that most clearly indicates Henry’s true facility in French, as it is never translated, and yet Henry responds without missing a beat (in English, naturally), “Then I will kiss your lips, Kate” (257). Allison Walls and other critics have pointed out that it is difficult to see how Henry’s “feigning a greater degree of linguistic ineptitude than is really the case” could be construed as a positive characteristic, but such feigning would be accessible to the members of audience who command of French is equal to or greater than that of the king as presented in the play, as much of the audience would likely be too distracted by the use of French to be anything but relieved when Henry quickly replies in English. 46 288. 253 seem to have an almost insurmountable problem in essaying to turn the close of his history to a comedy, since “the half-French fruit of Henry and Katherine’s union, Henry VI, will drastically fail to live up to his age’s masculine ideals”47 and practically allow that was gained in the action of the play to be lost. Again, Shakespeare’s handling shows a desire not to ignore or minimize this problem, but to use this conventional aspect of a comic conclusion to place it prominently on display.48

Again, Famous Victories creates a ready contrast to illustrate the deliberate generic choices Shakespeare makes in his version of the close of the play. The only mention in Famous

Victories of the next generation is also at the close of that play, and its presentation is designed to suggest subtly that the later losses in France are due to French treachery rather than English weakness—Henry V demands the Duke of Burgundy and the Dauphin “Sweare to Henry King of

England, / To be true to him, and to become his league-man” (1671-72), and to prepare not only to permit Henry to rule in all the lands he has conquered but also to “ aide him with all the power

[they] can make” (1676)—in the midst of this oath Henry includes the qualification that it refers to both “the said Henry or his heires” (1674). This only reference to the future past beyond the close of the play, thus, places any later loss of land in France on the lack of fealty in the French aristocracy, not in any shortcoming of Henry himself, who later died in France trying to maintain his claims there, or “his heires.” If Shakespeare had the text of this play before him as he wrote the ending of his own version of Henry V’s story, he certainly seems to have desired to force the

47 Andrews, 384. 48 Abate, “‘Once more unto the breech,’” 77-80, argues that these elements are placed so prominently for historical reasons rather than any recourse to generic convention. Based on her research into the contemporary understanding of procreation, Abate argues that a wife had to be a willing and even active participant to produce an ideal mate, and so Henry is shown to be wooing his wife, rather than simply taking her as the spoils of victory, for the purpose of procreation. If Abate is correct and the audience sees the scene in these terms, it only strengthens the connection between this traditional aspect of comedy and the historical dramatic irony that Henry seems to successfully win his wife and yet produces such an heir. 254 known history of what follows the end of the story upon his audience, and to have chosen to foreground the purpose of both marriage and comic resolution as creating future prosperity.

Shakespeare’s postscript to the play is the best-known and oft-commented upon means by which he reminds his audience of the lack of long-term prosperity and peace created, but he actually activates the audience’s known history of the heir produced by the union of Henry and

Katherine directly into the comic scene in which they establish their union. As part of his wooing efforts, Henry directly references the ultimate purpose of their marriage, to produce an ideal heir for the thrones of both England and France:

If ever thou beest mine, Kate, as I have a saving faith within me tells me thou shalt, I get thee with scambling, and thou must therefore needs prove a good soldier-breeder. Shall not thou and I, between Saint Denis and Saint George, compound a boy, half French, half English, that shall go to Constantinople and take the Turk by the beard? Shall we not? What say’st thou, my fair flower-de-luce? (5.2.203-10)

Henry’s words here emphasize the child they will produce as a child of two nations, two cultures, and even two religious traditions in his reference to their patron saints, and he presents this in his speech as a hope not merely for himself or England, but for all of Europe, all of Christendom.

To an English audience, the dramatic irony in the king’s hopeful words is all too evident: the reminder that their next king would be half-French is hardly as comic an outcome as Henry intends to suggest it would be to his intended bride. Shakespeare forces upon his audience that the next king will be French on the female side—particularly significant in a play in which

Henry has acknowledged that the justice of his own claim to the throne of France comes from the female line. Further, that son, in losing his lands and permitting England to fall into civil wars for years to follow, is known to the audience to be a weak king, so that Henry’s encouragement that Katherine “endeavour for [her] / French part of such a boy” (5.2.213-214) must make the 255 audience wish that Henry, in the midst of a comic and romantic wooing scene, had not so endeavored to guarantee that his heir would have a “French part” at all. Nonetheless, the comic unity produced by not merely marriage but also future children who will literally unify France and England within themselves is perfectly within the tradition of marriage as a comic resolution, and certainly an effective mode of wooing to offer to a princess concerned that she may be marrying “de enemie of France” (5.2.169-170)

A final convention reminiscent of his earlier comedies that Shakespeare includes in the last scene of the play to problematize the idealized comic conclusion of the marriage is the use of sexual punning. In the dialogue that follows the scene of the king’s “rough” (5.2.286) English wooing, Henry and Burgundy engage in a side conversation before the business of finalizing and solemnizing the marriage officially with the consent of Katherine and her father—throughout their conversation the two speak almost exclusively in sexual innuendo, reminding the audience that the idealized courtship just shown is also in service of sexual desire. In the words of

Andrews, the “conquest to win France in the form of Katherine’s body”49 is an overtly sexual act. Just as Henry showed himself to be rhetorically capable in English and French earlier in the scene, he here shows himself as linguistically nimble in double entendre. After Henry disingenuously claims that he has “neither the voice nor the heart of flattery” required to succeed in “conjur[ing] up the spirit of love” (5.2.287-89) in his intended wife, Burgundy engages in deliberate wordplay that suggests the sexual desire that undergirds Henry’s attempt to woo

Katherine, and Henry shows his quick wit by responding in kind, increasingly complicating the romantic comedy he and Katherine have just played.

49 385. 256 Burgundy’s response suggests both sexuality and magic, but it also plays with the idea of the unity accomplished in marriage. He jestingly advises the English king: “If you would conjure in her, you must make a circle” (5.2.292-93). The image of a circle is most overtly suggestive of a magic circle for conjuring—though with obvious but winking reference to female genitalia—but it also suggests the closed, unified circle of a comic conclusion. The two continue their banter, playing with images of fairly traditional in sexual joking in comedies, such as appetite and desire, blindness and nakedness. But another thread runs through their dialogue, one that most overtly contradicts the comic unity the previous scene was meant to enact: force.

Henry claims that love “enforces” (5.2.301) itself upon a maid whose only role is to “yield”

(5.2.300). Henry suggests that Burgundy should teach to Katherine to “consent” to his will

(5.2.305), and the language of passive subjection as the female role is repeated no less than six times in their short exchange of thirty lines of prose.50 As the scene progresses, the language moves from the circle of unity that Henry’s “rough” but chivalrous courting is intended to create to a sexualized double entendre for the vagina, from the king pleading “his love suit to her gentle heart” to clear language of sex as essentially about force and will for the male and yielding consent for the female. Although it may be overstatement to call the wooing scene a “symbolic rape,” as Lance Wilcox suggests it may be,51 Henry’s joking language after his wooing suggests that force and submission are nonetheless the intended roles for king and princess, England and

France, respectively.

50 As already noted, “yield” in line 300, “consent” in line 305 (and 306), are clear instances of Katherine’s position of subjection, but Burgundy suggests a maid must “consign” herself to the force of male sexuality (299), must “endure handling” (310), and must accept what they could “not abide looking on” (310-311). 51 67. 257 As the scene heads to its conclusion, the language of sexual consent turns into the language of conquest through war, as the French king is forced to acknowledge that he has

“consented” (5.2.329) to Henry’s “will” (5.2.328). Even before King Charles unknowingly echoes the language of feminine sexual submission from earlier in the scene, Shakespeare prepares us for the conflation of conquest and courtship, as Henry himself claims that the French ought to be grateful for his interest in Katherine, since he “cannot see many a fair French city for one fair French maid that stands in my way” (5.2.317-19). Thus, Henry himself, who referred to Katherine before his attempt to court her as his “capital demand” (5.2.96), initially connects his conquest of France to his courting of Katherine. King Charles, despite his role as both father and ruler, apparently finds this conflation apt, as he acknowledges: “Yes, my lord, you see them perspectively: the cities turned into a maid; for they are all girdled with maiden walls that war hath [never] ent’red” (5.2.320-23). While it may be merely a typographical error, the editorial “never” that makes the walls logically “maiden” also belies the threat that Henry has brought to France, for he has indeed breached its “virgin” soil with conquest, and that conquest he now attempts to turn into a chivalrous wedding gift, as he responds that he accepts Katherine as his wife, “so the maiden cities you talk of may wait on her: so the maid that stood in the way for my wish shall show me the way to my will” (5.2.326-28). Since “will” suggests his sexual desire as much as his personal desire for power in France, the opportunity to unify his lust and his desire for power in a single action of marriage is an ideal completion to Henry’s conquest, even while it is a disturbing image for a comic conclusion meant to ensure peace and unity between France and England. 258 Such doublespeak—typically bawdy jokes and winking innuendo—is common, of course, in romantic comedies, as the desire for the unity of marriage—and in this case the unity of entire kingdoms—is doubled in sexual desire. However, given the historical nature of the play, such comedy seems out of place. Burgundy, King Charles and Henry himself all suggest that Henry’s sexual appetite motivates both his courting and his conquest. Certainly the audience recognizes the comic convention of such wordplay, but it must create tension with the known history: the laughs are either intensified by the audience’s pride in the English conquest or cheapened by calling into question the justification—both legal and moral, even spiritual—that

Henry has sought throughout the play. Further, the sexualized language problematizes not only his marriage but also the entirety of the wedding as a unified comic resolution to the political problems of the play, as the lower impulses of both love and conquest are doubled in their language. Wilcox complains of Shakespeare’s handling of the scene, calling the effort at comedy “a near miss,”52 and argues, “Managed with even a little tact, this might have added a comic, earthy, even romantic touch to what is otherwise a rather chilly political union. As it is, however, the exchange, particularly coming from Henry, is too crass and demeaning to produce this effect.”53 While it is hard to argue that Henry is tactful in many of his words throughout this exchange, it is not thus “a near miss,” but a deliberate tension Shakespeare creates between history and comedy.

These double-edged conventions, simultaneously fulfilling and frustrating expectations for comedy, should not be construed as suggesting that Shakespeare intends only to undercut the comic resolution his last act has gestured toward. Indeed, the play grants that all seems to come

52 74. 53 72. 259 together ideally in the close of the play, and the image of love and duty aligned, of the personal and the political unified, is put forth no less clearly than it is undercut. When Katherine resists

Henry’s advances because she cannot love “the enemy of France,” he replies with words that might be performed as mere bluster from a soldier trying to woo a maiden, but his response outlines the ideal of the feudal system perfectly, that love motivates all authority and bonds of love tie all political and social relationships together:

No; it is not possible you should love the enemy of France, Kate; but, in loving me, you should love the friend of France; for I love France so well that I will not part with a village of it; I will have it all mine. And, Kate, when France is mine and I am yours, then yours is France and you are mine. (5.2.171-76)

Although some critics see in these words merely a ruler maintaining “the necessary fiction of his love” for one under his power,54 Henry’s word play is based on the notion that love ought to motivate the authority of the ruler in the feudal system, offering a reminder that love is supposed to be at the core of political relationships. If Henry’s comments are too glib to be taken seriously as an expression of his true motivation, they are hardly a lie intended to be taken seriously as an attempt to enforce a necessary fiction upon either Katherine or the audience of the play.

Katherine implicitly suggests that her love is to be enforced as a consequence of conquest, but

Henry’s jesting response is a reminder that love, not force, should motivate their relationship, and the entire scene, clearly drawn from the conventions of comedy, is structured as an effort by

Henry to enact the necessity of love rather than force. His actions in conquering France, as when he suggests that his men might “Defile the locks of [the] shrill-shrieking daughters” (3.3.35) of

Harfleur, do not reflect an ideal of love, but the close of the play deliberately evokes this image of love as a resolution to the conflicts of the play, and a picture of the ultimate resolution of all

54 Williamson, 330. 260 conflicts at the close of history. Although Henry does not act throughout all of the play as “the mirror of Christian kings,” he understands that victory in love, not war, will make for a comic conclusion to his excursions into France, and Shakespeare deliberately shapes the close of the play to put Henry’s own comic conclusion into tension rather than to undermine or affirm it.

Truly, Henry “see[s] perspectively” in viewing the conquest of France as a maiden and a maiden as the final consummation of his conquest: the unity between man and woman reflects the unity between people and king, and between France and England, each a picture of the final unity promised in the final comic conclusion of history. The last scene of the play does not close with the extended double-entendres of Burgundy and Henry, but with clear declarations— marked by an abrupt change to formal verse after the rough and even bawdy prose of the rest of the scene—of the hoped-for unity and comic closure from all monarchs present. Upon granting

Henry permission to wed his daughter, King Charles expresses his wish that this union might allow their “contending kingdoms” (5.2.349) to “cease their hatred, and this dear conjunction /

Plant neighborhood and Christian-like accord / In their sweet bosoms” (5.2.352-54). The earnest hope of peace is, thus, held out as an ideal, even if the audience’s certain knowledge of history adds tragic irony to the king’s wish “that never war advance / His bleeding sword ‘twixt England and fair France” (5.2.354-55).

An even stronger and more vivid picture of the ideal of peace and unity offered in marriage comes from Isabel, Queen of France, as Shakespeare allows his history-writing monarch a moment—as well as his audience—to believe the words his soon-to-be mother-in-law announces, in full sincerity, at the close of the play:

God, the best maker of all marriages, Combine your hearts in one, your realms in one! 261 As man and wife, being two, are one in love, So be there 'twixt your kingdoms such a spousal, That never may ill office, or fell jealousy, Which troubles oft the bed of blessed marriage, Thrust in between the [paction] of these kingdoms, To make divorce of their incorporate league; That English may as French, French Englishmen, Receive each other. God speak this Amen! (5.2.359-68)

There may be no clearer expression of the ideal of political marriage in the entire corpus of early modern history plays: from the asyndeton in the hope that the marriage will “combine your hearts in one, your realms in one” to the opening and ending emphasis upon God as the origin and maintainer of both marriage and peace, the Queen’s words epitomize the comic conclusion promised in a historical wedding. The comparison between the promise of Christian marriage, in which two become one, and the peace between kingdoms is thoroughly worked through, but, even in this strongest affirmation of the ideal of unity and love, her language is cut through with the impending tragedy of known history. While she initially emphasizes oneness, she quickly moves on to problems of marriage, as “ill office” and “fell jealousy” can undo “blessed marriage” and might “make divorce” between the French and English if comparable issues in the peace accord—just the kinds of issues the audience knows are coming—are permitted to arise.

The words affirm a hope their author—if not their speaker—knows is false, and the audience is no less conscious of their falsehood, but they stand, nonetheless, as a testament to an ideal to which history can aspire but not attain. Even more than the close of Richard III, this speech simultaneously evokes the perfect peace of the final comic resolution of all history, even while it 262 “prompts awareness that the possibility of such perfect closure remains remote until ‘the general all-ending day.’”55

Thus, even before audiences hear Shakespeare’s chorus close the play with a reminder of the tragic events that follow shortly thereafter, the audience knows that the alliance and the victory implied in the marriage is only temporary, and Shakespeare’s portrayal of their brief romantic comedy includes reminders to the audience that the play cannot deliver the final comic resolution suggested by the generic conventions that Shakespeare engages. T. W. Craik suggests that “Shakespeare’s Epilogue, sometimes regarded as derogating of Henry’s achievements, actually sets the seal on them.”56 The knowledge that Shakespeare’s audience brings to the play necessarily undercuts any notion of permanence that the scene might suggest, so the Epilogue, by being separate from the play itself and functioning primarily as an advertisement for

Shakespeare’s first tetralogy, reminds the audience that the play, like the serial plays that cover the action that follows these events, is itself a dramatic product, an image of history rather than history itself. Rather than simply ignoring the audience’s knowledge, as the playwright of

Famous Victories seems to have tried to do, Shakespeare’s choices throughout the close of the play keep both the hope and ideal picture of a comic close to history and the reality that in the continuous and contingent world of history, no such close is ultimately possible.

In terms of history, then, the chorus’ final words are unnecessary—the audience certainly knows that the comic unity implied in the marriage will not last and, even more, that England itself will not be unified as a long-term consequence of the marriage. Shakespeare’s reference to the falling apart of the English people and the loss of all they gained in France is thus present

55 Hunt, 26. 56 35. 263 only as an overt reminder of what was already known. In this way, rather than being the ultimate undoing or undercutting of the comedy he has just closed, Shakespeare actually suggests that the picture of peace and unity presented—though temporary—stands as just that: a picture of the ultimate comedy, in which love and duty are aligned, in which people are at peace with one another, even across national boundaries, and in which God’s designs are worked out fully, if not irrevocably. The reminder of future history thus serves not to inform that audience that the order established will fall but to remind the audience how temporary such moments are without denying that such moments exist and that such peace and hope might be possible. Too often, critics consider comedy inappropriate for history not merely because of its tone or low characters but because the shape of comic time is not a valid shape of history.57 However, Shakespeare’s histories themselves—and his English histories tend to be more “tragic” than most of those of his fellow playwrights in early modern England—do not deny that such a shape is appropriate but rather suggest that these resolutions bring meaningful close to historical events as a picture of the ultimate comic close of history. The insistence of the providential language allows us to see that these moments of comic resolution are not so arbitrary as they are “embedded” as a pattern in history, just as de casibus tragedy is repeatedly embedded as a pattern in history. The ultimate finality of death may make a tragic close seem more truly final and absolute, but a desolate kingdom as a result of a debauched ruler no more means that people as a whole have a tragic ending nor that God’s will to bring about a comic resolution to all of history is completely defeated than a comic conclusion means that unity and peace will prevail eternally from that

57 Kastan, Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time, 7, directly makes this claim in his Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time, but the notion of a play as “too comical” to be a history, which I discuss at greater length in my introduction, is common both in surveys of early modern history plays and in introductions to plays that have been denied the status of “true histories” because of their inclusion of comic elements. 264 point. Such a “super-historical” conclusion, which Kastan overtly claims and most other critics tacitly assume to be outside the province of a history play, is not directly shown in these “comic” histories, but the suggestion that history can provide an image of the peace and unity of the comic ending of all history is nonetheless present in many such resolutions. Chapter 6:

History vs Tragedy:

Perkin Warbeck as Tragic Hero

As the form most closely related to history, tragedy is a genre that is, perhaps, most often used by early modern dramatists to convey known history in dramatic form. However, it is often not the strict conformity to the structure, decorum and rules of tragedy insisted on by some early modern writers that makes the genre so useful for history, but the tensions created between the known events and assumed meanings of history and the conventions and shape of tragedy. For instance, the requirement that only “thoſe [failings] of/great Princes” are the concern of

“Tragedie in eſpeciall,”1 is frequently flouted in histories, as characters from many states of life are often presented together, and the tribulations of a character as low as Londoner Thomas

Stukely or Henry VIII’s chief minister Thomas Cromwell can serve as the basis for a tragedy as well as the actions of kings and rulers. John Ford’s Perkin Warbeck seems to take deliberate aim at this convention of tragedy, as it does not present the failings or even the struggles of King

Henry VII in its tragic structure, but instead making its title character the center of tragic interest, despite his being known to history as a mere pretender of lowly origin.

The purpose of tragedy according to Aristotle is catharsis, the purgation of emotions, and this intention is clear in Tragedy’s description of its “office” in A Warning for Faire Women:

1 Puttenham, Arte of English Poesie, 35. 265 266 This engaging of the soul and releasing of emotions—“Extorting teares” and pulling “the sences from their course”—takes on a different sense in conveying known history, as assumptions about the meaning of historical events can be questioned or confirmed by placing them in a tragic context. Displacing the release of emotions from those of sympathy with the king to those of sympathy and fear for his title character is just what Ford does in Perkin Warbeck. By investing audience sympathies in a character known to history as an imposter and a traitor, Ford reveals that history is itself a purgation—his central character’s downfall is both historically known and necessary for order, but he presents it as tragic nonetheless. Rather than history reducing audience interest in the persons on the stage, the playwright’s ability to “moue the soul” through tragedy encourages the audience to reexamine its assumptions about history.

Of all the plays most commonly considered to fit the genre of the early modern history play, none is more overt in announcing itself as an example of the genre than what may be the last: The chronicle historie of Perkin VVarbeck: A strange truth was the title given to the initial

1634 publication of John Ford’s play covering the uprising of a “pretender” from the house of

York against Henry VII. Although hardly the only play to include the phrase “chronicle history” in its title—and, as explored in chapter 1, titles are certainly only to be provisionally trusted as guides to the genre of a given play—playwright John Ford, writing in the 1630s, nearly thirty years after the history play began to fade from the public stage, was making a deliberate generic decision in choosing his title. He felt the need to account for his decision in the prologue to the play,2 which acknowledges, “Studyes haue, of this Nature, been of late / So out of fashion” (1-2)

2 The third person is used for the poet in the prologue, which some have taken to be cause to doubt that Ford himself wrote it. Although I do not feel the need to develop an argument for Ford’s authorship, the use of third person in the prologue is no reason to exclude Ford from having written it: assuming that the prologue was part of the performance (though typeset separately in the first edition) the use of the third person is readily accounted for by the 267 that some explanation of the resurrection of an apparently dead genre was in order. Rather than apologizing for being out of fashion, Ford’s prologue gives the value to the play because it meets the expectation for a history play: its source in the true historical events from chronicles relating the audience’s own past.

Hee shew’s a Historie, couch’t in a Play: A Historie of noble mention, knowne, Famous, and true: most noble, 'cause our owne; Not forg’d from Italie, from Fraunce, from Spaine, But Chronicled at Home; as rich in strayne Of brave Attempts, as ever, fertile rage In Action, could beget to grace the stage. (14-20)

The play’s prologue stresses its source in English chronicles, the familiarity of the audience with the events presented, and the dignity of its action as represented in a play. If Ford was being deliberately nostalgic in writing a history play, he was also concerned with the significance of history as history in the play, another mark of the traditionally Elizabethan form: “on these two, rest’s the Fate / Of worthy expectation; Trvth and State” (25-26). Throughout the prologue, forms of the word “truth” are mentioned three times; in the dedicatory epistle, Ford further claims that he writes “Ovt of the darknesse of a former Age” and acknowledges a chronicle source from a “both learn’d, and an honourable pen;”3 and the bulk of the dedicatory verses that precede the play emphasize the historicity of the central figure and the play’s action.

fact that an actor, not the playwright himself, would perform the lines on stage. All quotes from the play are based on the first edition of 1634 with silent emendation of ſ to s; line numbers reference Donald K. Anderson, Jr.’s 1965 edition of the play for convenience. 3 This is commonly assumed to be Francis Bacon, History of the Reign of King Henry VII, with notes, ed. J. Rawson Lumby (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1902), originally published in 1622, although Ford also seems to have used Thomas Gainsford, True and Wonderfull History of Perkin Warbeck, accessed January 18, 2016. Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A01405.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext, originally published in 1618. 268 Thus, it would seem that there can be little doubt about the intended genre of the play; nonetheless, critics since have been split on whether to include the play in the genre of the early modern history play. Ribner calls it the last history play, whereas Willy Maley says Ford is

“parodying the genre of the history play.”4 Many critics point out—though often using different bases for the claim—the ways in which the play does not conform to the expectations of the

Elizabethan history play.5 Some of these critics consider the play more a tragedy than a history: when entered into the Stationer’s Register, the play was called a tragedy,6 and subsequent critics have often looked at the play in this way, as well. Clifford Leech called it an example of

“Ford’s special kind of tragedy,”7 and Dorothy M. Farr considered it “more than a chronicle history as such,” seeing it instead as “a first step towards the heroic tragedy of the Restoration theatre.”8 Tucker Orbison concludes that a “considerable body of critical opinion … has judged the play as essentially a tragedy with a historical setting,” suggesting that the true genre is tragedy and that history is essentially incidental.9 It might seem abstruse to bother with identifying exactly what kind of a play Perkin Warbeck is, but, as Mario DiGangi points out,

4 299, though Ribner also calls it a tragedy, and “The Incorporation of Identities in Perkin Warbeck: A Response to Lisa Hopkins,” Connotations Vol 7, No 1 (1997/98), accessed March 12, 2016, Literature Resource Center, 106, respectively. 5 See Clifford Leech, John Ford and the Drama of his Time (London: Chatto & Windus, 1957), Dorothy M. Farr, John Ford and the Caroline Theatre, (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1979), Jean Howard, “‘Effeminately Dolent’: Gender and Legitimacy in Ford’s Perkin Warbeck,” in John Ford: Critical Re-Visions, ed. Michael Neill, 261-279 (New York: Cambridge UP, 1988), and Ronald Huebert, John Ford: Baroque English Dramatist (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1977), for some examples of the play’s differences from the “typical chronicle history” play. These critiques, however, take Shakespeare’s plays as normative and, thus, do not necessarily reflect the totality of what might have been considered “history plays” in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. 6 Mario DiGangi, “John Ford,” in A Companion to Renaissance Drama, ed. Arthur Kinney (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 578, and Tucker Orbison, The Tragic Vision of John Ford (Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1974), 150, both contain the reference. 7 John Ford and the Drama of his Time, 37. 8 123-124. 9 150; he himself, however, rejects the notion that the play is a proper tragedy based on his more exclusive definition of tragedy as requiring that the central figure undergo a crisis which leads to insight. His definition is fair, and certainly aptly describes a popular notion of what made tragedy distinct. 269 “Interpretations of Perkin will be influenced by the generic expectations an audience brings to his tale of an exiled prince returned to claim his throne.”10 DiGangi’s assessment is precisely correct, and Ford manipulates the expectations of genre by initially insisting to his audience that his play is a “Chronicle Historie” in the Elizabethan tradition but patterning his central action as a tragedy. It is in the interplay of these genres that we can best understand the apparent ambiguities that have divided critics on the central figures of Henry VII and Warbeck himself.

Scholarly disputes regarding how to interpret the two central figures of the play have a long history. Many critics from the early to mid twentieth century side emphatically with Henry

VII—Mark Stavig, for example, accepts all of Henry’s claims about both himself and God’s certain provision for his rule and claims conclusively that “only when wisdom and honesty are combined as they are in Henry can there be good government and an ordered society.”11 Donald

K. Anderson, Jr.’s introduction to his edition of the play is nearly as insistent, calling Henry VII

“the leading exponent of [the play’s] political doctrine” and looking to his speeches for confirmation of the historical and political views that Ford wishes to affirm through the play.12

Elsewhere, Anderson calls Henry the play’s “dominant figure” and insists that Ford goes to pains to present Henry “quite favorably.”13 Somewhat more recently, in response to seeing a twentieth-century production of the play, Verna Ann Foster has found Henry to be the dramatically superior figure who “knows what a good king is supposed to do, and … makes a great show of doing it.”14 Some more recent critics have tended to push in the other direction,

10 578. 11 173. 12 Perkin Warbeck, xv. 13 “Kingship in Ford’s Perkin Warbeck,” ELH Vol 27, No 3 (Sep 1960), accessed February 26, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2871878, 178. 14 “Perkin without the Pretender: Reexamining the Dramatic Center of Ford’s Play,” Renaissance Drama, New Series Vol 16 (1985), accessed February 26, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41920161, 152. 270 most forcefully Lisa Hopkins, who goes so far as to suggest not only that Ford presents Warbeck more sympathetically than Henry VII but also that Ford actually intended to present Warbeck’s claims as true.15 Although a movement away from a reading of the play as reinforcing the

“Tudor myth” seems apparent in much of the scholarship on the play in the last thirty years, there is no consensus of opinion regarding the two central characters.16 Indeed, Mario DiGangi’s 2002 article offering an overview of critical interpretations of the play closes by referencing two relatively recent scholars using the same evidence in the play to come to precisely opposed readings.17 Although much of the criticism on the play is an effort to find clarity in the play’s ambiguity, others celebrate it for the “breadth of interpretation” Ford offers to audiences in a play in which the “controversial subject Perkin Warbeck remains … an enigma.”18 Considering the implications of the genre of the play—both as tragedy and history—makes Warbeck clearly an enigma, but his very enigmatic status is itself a powerful historical commentary.

Ford’s insistence on presenting “truth” in his “Chronicle Historie” requires us to take

Perkin Warbeck seriously as a play about history. As such, he reminds his audience—both readers and spectators—that the history he is presenting to them is both their “owne” and

“knowne” to them. He alludes to one of his chronicle sources—Bacon’s History of the Reign of

King Henry VII—in his dedication, and the prologue emphasizes not only the chronicle origin of his material, but also that it is “knowne” by the audience. This central aspect of the history play,

15 John Ford’s Political Theatre (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1994), 61. She builds the argument through inferences about Ford’s personal connections and political views, although she acknowledges that such an interpretation would not be apparent even to most of Ford’s original audience. 16 For example, Jean Howard, “‘Effeminately Dolent,’” suggests that Warbeck is meant to be seen as negatively feminine, a weak attempt to undercut the patriarchal authority implicit in Henry VII. 17 582. The scholars are Jean Howard, referenced elsewhere, and Anne Barton, “He that plays the king: Ford’s Perkin Warbeck and the Stuart History Play,” in English Drama: Forms and Development: Essays in Honor of Muriel Clara Bradbrook, ed. M. Axton and R. Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1977). 18 Farr, 124. 271 a preconceived knowledge not only of the events presented but also of the events that precede and follow them, shapes an audience’s interaction with any play that presents familiar historical material, but Ford takes the core assumptions of the “knowne” nature of the historical events he presents and exposes them as the tools of historical interpretation that they are. The primary

“knowne” facts of history are three: first, that Henry VII was the savior of his country, rescuing it from the monstrous usurper Richard III; second, that Henry VII established the line of the

Tudors and joined the Tudor and Stuart lines through his daughter’s marriage to James IV, thus serving as the originator of all monarchical authority in England for all the time from the period covered in the play to that of its performance; and, finally, that Perkin Warbeck was an impostor, a lowly if remarkable foreigner who was trained by his “aunt,” Edward IV’s sister, as an actor to play the role of the supposed Richard IV. These “givens of history”19 are almost certainly what

Ford would have expected any reader or theater-goer to have “knowne,” either from familiarity with Ford’s sources in Bacon and Gainsford’s prose chronicle Perkin Warbeck or from the

“Tudor myth” that permeated the culture, according to Tillyard.20 What Ford’s play offers in its balancing of the genres of history and tragedy is a thorough investigation into these assumptions and, ultimately, an exposure of them as assumptions rather than “knowne” fact.

From the start of the action of the play—even if we discount the possibly extra-dramatic evidence of the title and prologue to the play—Ford establishes a recognizable genre of the

19 The phrase in reference to Perkin Warbeck is from Ronald Huebert, 105, although he uses it to suggest that such concerns are not central to the play. 20 I am not suggesting that Tillyard is correct and that all the audience had unified views of history and monarchical authority, but merely that they would have known of these “facts” as the dominant narrative of the history of Henry VII’s reign. Lisa Hopkins, again, has done considerable work in examining the ways in which doubt about these “certainties” may have been present particularly among those members of the aristocracy with which Ford was most closely associated. Similarly, a current film-maker might create a film that exposes Abraham Lincoln’s attitudes as racist but would still build the narrative based on the assumptions of racial integration that continue to shape the dominant historical narrative of Lincoln. 272 history play. Hopkins has pointed out the connection between Henry VII’s opening speech and the opening speech of Henry IV in Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV,21 but the speech is not merely linked linguistically to this single example; it is linked thematically to a larger, common motif of many history plays, the element that many more traditional definitions of the history play see as its defining conflict: “the epic struggle to establish and maintain monarchical authority.”22

Although not all plays that conform to this more limited definition of the genre provide such a speech from the sitting monarch early in the play, almost all monarch-centered plays offer a scene or a speech early in the play to indicate the degree to which order is presently established and the obstacles which exist that threaten or limit that order.23 When this conflict is viewed as the central action of the history play, the resolution of that conflict is a settling of state affairs in a way that must support the continuation and stability of the state, either as under the providence of divine will or the guidance of an able monarch or—often—a combination of the two.24

In Ford’s play, the king’s opening speech seems rather more fraught with anxiety than the assumptions that his audience would bring to the theater could account for, creating a tension

21 "John Ford's Perkin Warbeck and Henry IV Part One," Notes and Queries 42.3 (1995): 380, accessed February 26, 2016, Literature Resource Center, 380. Hopkins also suggests reasons that Ford may have wanted to connect the two monarchs, which are themselves compelling and grounded in the kind of historical assumptions that I think are key to understanding Ford’s design for the play: “he does so to stress the insecurity of Henry VII's position by drawing an indirect comparison between it and that of Henry IV. Henry IV, known primarily as an usurper, had a notoriously difficult time as king. Henry VII, accepted as legitimate and founder of the successful Tudor dynasty, may well have enjoyed a rather more positive image.” 22 DiGangi, 579. 23 In addition to the clear example in 1 Henry IV, a similar speech is given in 2 Henry IV and Henry V. The entire opening scenes of King John and Richard II fulfill this function, as does the first scene in Marlowe’s Edward II, though through the combination of the king’s own words and those of his anxious barons. Even Macbeth, which I would argue ought to be recognized as being as much an example of the form of history as tragedy, starts with a quick summation of the “already/not yet” of order within Duncan’s realm. Further examples could be cited—all of these suggest a kind of crisis in the central authority of the state, and the play is, at least in part, about the resolution of these questions of authority for the state as a whole. 24This resolution, however, is not always in the same play; because some plays (Shakespeare’s among others) have a serial nature, the resolution is often delayed until the last part of the more-or-less unified action that the series is centered on is complete. Even those plays about monarchical power that most seem to question the political assumptions at the core of such a resolution—Marlowe’s Edward II and Shakespeare’s Richard II—tend to offer some version of such a conclusion. 273 between expectation and presentation from the play’s very beginning. Henry opens the play thus:

Still to be haunted; still to be pursued, Still to be frightened with false apparitions Of pageant Majestie, and new-coynd greatnesse, As if wee were a mockery King in state, Onely ordaind to lauish sweat and blo[u]d, In scorne and laughter, to the ghosts of Yorke, Is all below our merits; yet (my Lords, My friends and Counsailers) yet we sit fast In our owne royall birth-right. The rent face And bleeding wounds of England's slaughterd people, Have been by vs (as by the best Physitian) At last both throughly Cur’d, and set in safetie; And yet, for all this glorious worke of peace, Ourself is scarce secure. (1.1.1-14)

Although Hopkins suggests that the connection between the play’s opening speech and that of 1

Henry IV might tend to make Henry VII seem less strong by connecting him with the monarch whose rule was remembered as an “unquiet time,” the speech here actually depicts a monarch less secure than does the opening of Shakespeare’s play. Although the play to follow deals extensively and almost exclusively with internal strife, Henry IV tries to suggest that the

“trenching war” and “hostile paces” of civil unrest are behind him now and he can therefore afford to “breathe short-winded accents of new broils / To be commenced in strands afar remote”

(1.1.3-9).25 By contrast, Henry VII begins not by suggesting that strife is concluded and now there is hope for domestic order, but by expressing unrest in the kingdom and himself.

25 Although Shakespeare is here, I would argue, also playing with his audience’s assumptions about the monarch central to his own play. By having a king whom his audience would know as, if not an usurper, at least one whose rule was “unquiet” and filled with civil unrest begin the play announcing that his kingdom is ordered domestically, Shakespeare creates an expectation that the king’s claims will be undercut as they are, even before the king’s initial speech is complete, by the hurried arrival of Westmoreland with news of Mortimer’s rebellion. 274 The entire speech is restless: Henry’s repeated use of the word “still” suggests the insistence with which his “ghosts” haunt him even as his words affirm the in medias res opening of a history play, as the ongoing action of the Yorkish threat not only persists beyond what

Henry VII expected but also necessarily stretches back to a time before the play opened. Further, his image of the threat as a ghost, though intended to suggest that it is merely a “false apparition,” also gives the kingdom’s unsettled state a suggestion of a spiritual dimension, with perhaps an echo of Macbeth in the king’s inability to escape “the ghosts of Yorke” despite his great expenditure of “sweat and blo[u]d” and his “merits” as the “best Physitian” in curing his nation’s ills and all but completing his “glorious worke of peace.” The king’s opening refrain of

“still” is paired with his insistent repetition of “yet” in the middle of the speech. If “Still” opened the speech by suggesting a problem from the past continuing to the current moment and beyond, the strong “yet” ought to serve as a hinge in the speech, pushing the king to assert confidently his imposition of order and security in his reign. “Yet” in the first instance is meant to do just this, suggesting contrast and resolve: “however,” or “despite all this,” he affirms that he sits “fast”—firmly—in his “owne royall birth-right.” Throughout the rest of the speech,

Henry speaks of his actions as king and asserts that these actions as de facto ruler should be sufficient to make him secure in his rule. The single mention of his de jure kingship thus is meant to assure himself of the security that all his efficient ruling has not been able to grant him.

His immediate return to insistence upon his actions having earned him the right to rule in peace belies the strength of his de jure claim and suggests he is merely trying to convince himself of his own right. Although even those critics who are strong supporters of Henry VII would have a hard time suggesting that the king could truly claim to be the rightful king from birth—and 275 Henry himself will not speak of his right again as from “birth”—Ford actually has Henry undercut his own claim of confidence.26 As he concludes the speech, he says “yet” once more, but this time it is synonymous with his earlier “still” rather than in contrast to it. “Yet” suggests an ongoing action that started in the past and continues to the present—rather than sitting “fast” on his throne, he reveals that he has been and remains “scarce secure,” and his earlier repetition of “yet” seems more like an effort to convince himself than a true turn to what is certain. His initial anxiety makes his subjunctive “As if wee were a mockery King in state” move from an implicit contradiction of the facts to an expression of fear that he is truly “a mockery King in state.” Unlike Henry IV, who opens his eponymous play speaking of his establishment of domestic order as an accomplished fact when the audience knows that it is not, Henry VII speaks of his “glorious work” as insufficient to create the order and security—in the realm or in himself—that he was “knowne” by his audience to have established. Thus, from the very beginning of the play, Ford suggests that history is only retrospectively certain, and in dramatizing a given historical moment the players themselves must lack the certainty the audience feels about events.

From the perspective of the genre of a history play, then, the play should fairly straightforwardly proceed from this initial imperfect order to a more orderly realm, granting the comic resolution that the nation knows is coming in the firm establishment of the Tudor dynasty.

Interestingly, when this opening speech is paired with the speech that Henry VII offers at the close of the play, it should be quite apparent that Ford has fulfilled the obligatory “social rebirth

26 Not only by Henry losing the security he seems to be trying to convince himself he feels but also by the reminder that it is his marriage, not his birth, that grants him the “right” to rule from both the Lancastrian and Yorkist perspectives (1.1.36-40). 276 at the end of the action,”27 giving the audience the expected “comic” close of a history play about the state of the nation, confirming the expected resolution of “a contest for political power between an admirable king and an impudent impostor.”28 Henry’s final speech clearly parallels his opening one:

Perkin, wee are inform’d, is arm’d to dye: In that weele honuor him. Our Lords shall followe To see the execution; and from hence Wee gather this fit vse: that publicke States, “As our particular bodyes, taste most good “In health, when purged of corrupted bloud. (5.3.214-19)

The king affirms that the last “ghost of Yorke” is now about to die and even allows that he can

“honour him” in his firm commitment to accept his own death. The platitude he gives as the “fit vse” to be drawn from the instance picks up on the image he opened the play with: himself as the

“best Physitian” for his nation. As the king, he has now secured the state, and his own throne in the process, by purging “corrupted bloud,” and his role as physician to the public state, as to his particular body, is now perfected. In this way, the dominant historical narrative is confirmed by the arc of the play as history, and Ford ends the play with what Hopkins calls “the facts of history” and the fulfillment of his obligation “in a history play” to present them “with reasonable accuracy.”29

Although Ford constructs the play to permit those initial assumptions about history to be borne out, to rest comfortably in those assumptions is to miss all that comes between them.

27 Huebert, 106, who uses the lack of such a rebirth, which he suggests “is what occurs in the typically closed form of the renaissance history play,” thus making an assertion about both the play and the form of the history play in general with which I cannot agree. 28 Orbison, 172, points out both the expected nature of the resolution but does not see it as conditionally confirmed in the close of the play. 29 John Ford’s Political Theatre, 60-61. 277 Between Henry’s initial concern to establish security in his throne and his realm and his apparent attainment of it—with neither great cost to himself nor real military struggle—Ford presents the story of the “knowne” impostor, Perkin Warbeck, and his handling of the figure, granting him the dignity of a tragic downfall, agitates against the easy acceptance of the narrative that Henry and his followers propose.

Going into the play, the audience is meant to assume that Perkin Warbeck is an impostor, and this assumption has led many critics to accept that Ford affirms the fact in the course of the play. Barish calls this the “argument from authority,” in which “the history to which critics appeal [allows them to] presuppose Perkin’s fraudulence.”30 Perhaps the most orderly articulation of how the play confirms these presuppositions is put forth in Anderson’s introduction to his edition of the play. Although he allows that Ford presents Warbeck

“sympathetically,” Anderson argues that Ford “leaves no doubt that he is an impostor.”31 He suggests that political necessity requires that Ford show Warbeck as an impostor32 and explains

Ford’s dramatic method for revealing him as such as threefold. Anderson first points out that

Ford initially presents Warbeck by having Henry VII and his court describe his imposture before he is allowed to speak for himself. Second, Anderson explains, Ford makes all the admirable

Scottish characters except for King James IV himself reject Warbeck from his first appearance on stage. Finally, Anderson and those who concur with his reading reference Ford’s portrayal of

Warbeck’s advisers “as comical, inept opportunists” in order to undermine Warbeck himself.33

30 151-152. 31 Perkin Warbeck, xiv. 32 Even Hopkins, who argues the exact opposite—that Ford intended not only to present Warbeck as heroic but also to reveal him as the true rightful possessor of the throne—acknowledges the political awkwardness of such a position and explains her remarkable hypothesis by suggesting that those in authority were meant to miss this “secret” meaning. 33 Perkin Warbeck, xiv. 278 With these three pieces of evidence, Anderson conclusively declares, “Ford unquestionably presents him” as a counterfeit,34 and many critics have maintained essentially the same view.

Although others have built arguments against his claims,35 it is worth examining each of his pillars of support in terms of the action of the play.

First, it is undeniably true in the play that Warbeck does not appear until after his opponents have thoroughly expressed their disdain for him in an effort to discredit him: what is not so clear is that Ford’s own view is expressed in their claims. All of those who speak negatively of him do so from personal interest in seeing him as an impostor, and Ford is hardly subtle about showing their biases in their summations of his character and history. Jonas Barish aptly describes the effect Ford gains by taking the words of condemnation from the voice of an authoritative historiographer and putting them in the mouths of Henry and his court in the opening of his play: “These no longer represent a dispassionate judgment on the story, but bitterly partisan words spoken by participants in the story.”36 The leader of the negative portrayal in the play is Henry VII himself, who has the most interest in portraying Warbeck as counterfeit, although he is also persistently anxious about his claims and his intentions. Before discussing Warbeck, he mentions Lambert Simnel, another “pretender” to the throne, and one the audience of the play surely also takes as “knowne” to be false. After his failed uprising, Simnel confessed his imposture, and the king reminds his lords and the audience that now “Lambert … is in our service” (1.1.64); his willingness to deny his claim and take a position as a servant in the king’s house, according to the king, “shewes the difference betweene noble natures / And the base borne” (1.1.67-68). Henry moves on to Warbeck himself, calling him “the upstart Duke”

34 Perking Warbeck, xv. 35 Jonas Barish and Hopkins, most notably. 36 “Perkin Warbeck as Anti-History,” Essays in Criticism Vol 20, No 2 (1970), 158. 279 (1.1.68) and “Duke Perkin” (1.1.78),37 but he again brings back the image of being haunted by something supernatural, as he calls him “new reviv’d Yorke, Edwards second sonne, / Murder’d long since ‘ith Towre; he liues againe / And vowes to be your King” (1.1.69-71). The lords rehearse Warbeck’s history as well as Henry’s own, finding “a new soule, new birth” in Henry’s

“Sacred person” (1.1.26) and seeing him as “Divinely strengthen’d” (1.1.34) by “just powers aboue” (1.1.22), while characterizing Warbeck as trained in “Devilish policies” (1.1.51) by the

“Woman-Monster” (1.149), his alleged aunt Margaret of Burgundy. Throughout the scene, as

Anderson suggests, Henry himself and every lord present seem to affirm Henry as right at every point and Warbeck as a “Counterfeit”38 (1.3.56).

In addition to failing to consider that these comments are not chronicle history but biased interpretation, what Anderson’s confident acceptance of this narrative as authoritative fails to take into account is how this scene is undercut in many ways before we even meet Warbeck himself in Act 2. In scene 3, after discovering that Clifford, one of Henry’s trusted lords, was traitorously aligned with Warbeck but now wishes to betray his former comrades, Henry gives another speech explaining the background of the “pretender,” but this is narratively unnecessary, as we have already heard his background. He goes on to describe him again as something supernatural—“a wilde Comet” (1.3.40)—which would typically be construed as a supernatural

37 Henry has the curious habit of always referring to his opponent by first name—he calls Simnel “Lambert” in every reference to him, and Warbeck “Perkin,” as a way, it seems, both to establish that their given names are not what they claim them to be, but also as a sign of disrespect, as he refers to all his lords and other monarchs by title. An interesting note is how many critics do the same thing: in the play, his lines are all ascribed to “War.” I use Warbeck throughout, as the name that Ford seems to have chosen for his character. 38 The word “counterfeit” is used eleven times throughout the play—almost all are references to Warbeck, as might be expected, coming from those who oppose him, often even using almost as a title for him. Interestingly, Warbeck himself uses the term twice, as well as the term “impostor” once, as will be explored later. The insistent repetition of the term by his enemies is one of the strategies of those who wish to discredit him, giving dominant voice to the dominant narrative that Ford wishes to lay bare. 280 sign.39 His intention in the image is to suggest that he is merely an “ayrie apparition” (1.3.36) only of note to the “superstitious Irish” (1.3.39), but his choice of a marvel such as a meteor or a comet, together with his acknowledgement that he puts forth “his firie blaze for adoration”

(1.3.38), indicates that Warbeck is more notable than Henry intends to suggest he is. Although he claims that he merely “Sparkled in antick flames in Charles his Court” (1.3.41), literally crazy and uncontrolled in his brightness, Warbeck was seen as enough of a sign to be accepted initially as legitimate by the French king. Throughout the scene, we are consistently reminded that, despite the certainty expressed in scene 1 that he is false, many people have found him convincing. This includes not only Clifford, who is presented as ignoble both in his turning against Henry and later turning on his fellow conspirators, but also Stanley, who is one of the lords present affirming Henry’s version of the historical narrative presented in scene 1 but now is implicated as part of Warbeck’s party.40 Clifford reveals Stanley has been his “secret enemy”

(1.3.102), and Henry VII, whose foresight Anderson praises regularly, is so blindsided by the revelation that he claims Clifford has “stabb’d” him, because Stanley was not only the one who literally put the crown on his head at Bosworth Field but also his “Counsellor” (1.3.105),

“bosome friend” (1.3.106), and the one who held “the keyes and secrets of [his] treasurie”

(1.3.108). Knowledge of Stanley’s apparent betrayal causes great pain to Henry, but it should cause those reading the play to reexamine his lines in scene 1, as well, considering the revelation.

Even in the apparently choric account of Warbeck offered in scene 1, then, Ford inserts doubt, as at least one member is less than honest in his show of support. Although Henry appears to be

39 Ford almost certainly borrowed this image from Bacon, History of the Reign, 108, who describes him as a “blazing star” and a “meteor” in his appearance in Ireland. Again, shifting this from Bacon’s authoritative irony to Henry’s anxious assertion creates an effect quite different from mere chronicle. 40 The chronicles are ambiguous about what caused the split between Henry and Stanley, but in the play, Clifford’s (apparently ahistorical) accusation of his association with Warbeck is never denied by Stanley. 281 utterly affirmed by all those around him, we find that, when Henry complains that Warbeck is trying for his throne, Stanley merely claims, “The throne is filld Sir” (1.1.71), whereas it is

Henry himself who completes the thought by adding, “True, Stanlie, and the lawfull heire sitts on it” (1.1.72). The king continues to show his total confidence, claiming

A guard of Angells, and the holy prayers Of loyall Subjects are a sure defence Against all force and Counsaile of Intrusion. (1.1.73-75)

However, despite such certainty on his side, he doubts his security, concerned that “some of our

Nobles, / Our GREAT ONES, should giue Countenance and Courage / To trim Duke Perkin”

(1.1.76-78). Whereas we are mired in our assumptions about Henry’s right and Warbeck’s falsehood when we first read or see this scene, upon reflection the dramatic irony of the king simultaneously expressing to a lord who has cast his lot with Warbeck both his total confidence in his right to rule from providence and his anxiety about his closest lords giving their support to

“Duke Perkin” could not be clearer. Stanley’s response, too, upon revisiting is telling:

Sir, if no other abler reasons else Of dutie or alegiance could divert A head-strong resolution, yet the dangers So lately past by men of bloud and fortunes In Lambert Simnells partie, must Command More than a feare, a terror to Conspiracie, ...... (Most specatacles of ruine, some of mercy;) Are presidents sufficient to forewarne The present times, or any that liue in them, What follie, nay, what madnesse twere to lift A finger vp in all defence but yours, Which can be but impostorous in a title. (1.1.85-100)

282 Upon reexamination, these words tell a considerably different story than one which “leaves no doubt that [Warbeck] is an impostor,” as Anderson claims they do. Rather, the first lines are subjunctive, contrary to fact, so that Stanley actually says that if reasons of duty and allegiance did not compel all lords to follow Henry (as they apparently do not for him), then Henry has surely given compelling reason not to support Warbeck by his defeat of Simnel and his treatment of those lords who colluded with him, whom Henry has either ruined41 or granted mercy to, both as displays of his power. What Stanley is saying, then, is that Henry’s power cannot be doubted, his de facto kingship made perfectly apparent in his victorious past actions, but only Henry asserted his de jure authority by calling himself the “lawfull heire.” As such, Stanley suggests merely that it would be foolish, even “madnesse” to go against Henry. Finally, the close of the speech actually specifically negates the very de jure claim that Henry has just made, as, given the way it is punctuated, Stanley suggests to Henry that it would be foolish to defend any claim to the throne “but yours, / Which can be but impostorous in a title.” Although early modern punctuation is not standardized and one cannot assume that the choices were all Ford’s and not those of an editor or compositor, the single comma after the phrase “but yours,” rather than one on either side, prevents it from being a parenthetical interruption in the midst of the clause, leaving “which” a relative pronoun referring to “yours,” so that the relative clause actually negates the very claim that it seems to assert. Based on Ford’s use of parentheses elsewhere in the first edition, the line should be printed “in all defense (but yours) / Which can be but impostorous in a title,” if he wished to make clear that all others’ claims were imposturous,

41 Historically speaking, most of the lords Stanley mentions were killed or disappeared. One was granted mercy (Anderson, footnote, 12). 283 whereas this version leaves open, in fact more strongly suggests, that the phrase modifies

Henry’s own claim.

Thus, although Anderson’s claim that the narrative constructed by Henry and his lords suggests unequivocally that Warbeck is an impostor is not quite accurate. His claim regarding the lack of acceptance he finds in Scotland is a fair observation—Daliell, Huntley, and Crawford, who form a kind of “choric” response to the action of the play, all refuse to accept Warbeck’s claims about himself and attempt to counsel the king away from pursuing his alliance with the newly arrived youth. Although what Anderson says about his reception in Scotland is initially true, his suggestion that it demands that Ford presents Warbeck as an impostor is not necessitated by his reception. First, Lady Katherine Gordon, whose loyalty to Warbeck as his wife becomes one of the central pillars upon which Ford raises Warbeck to tragic status, and the Countess of

Crawford move from doubt to faith in encountering him. They open the scene of Warbeck’s arrival expressing their own doubts, as the Countess mentions the coming of “this English

Prince” (2.1.2) and King James’ apparent intention to embrace him with “grace more then ordinarie” (2.1.3), but frames his plan as something almost feared, saying, “Twere pittie now, if a’ should proue a Counterfeit” (2.1.4). Although she expresses this as only a possibility, the suggestion of it before his actual arrival could certainly be seen as foreshadowing a revelation.

Katherine responds in kind, saying, “Blesse the young man, our Nation would be laughd at / For honest soules through Christendome” (2.1.5-6). The women express not so much the suspicion that he is a pretender, but the fear of what might become of their national esteem if they support him and he turns out not to be what he claims. However, both women end up expressing admiration for him after he arrives, with the Countess commenting not only that she has never 284 “seene a Gentleman / Of a more braue aspect, or goodlier carriage” (2.1.116) but also that she admires his stoic self-composure when he tells his sad history but “His fortunes moue not him”

(2.1.117). Katherine finds that “his words haue touchd [her] home, / As if his cause concernd

[her]” (2.1.117-18). While the Scottish lords remain dubious of the new arrival due to their reservations about the political wisdom of endorsing him, these women find in him a nobility equal to none that they have seen.

Thus, Warbeck’s arrival in Scotland is not so entirely poorly received; indeed, although

James warmly accepts him over the objections of his lords, the interaction between Warbeck and

James reveals not so much that Warbeck is a pretender as that James is either a shallow opportunist whose acceptance of Warbeck does not depend on his belief in the truth of the claims of his ally the “Duke” or a foolish ruler who judges by appearance and acts without forethought.

The first option may be primarily what Ford intends, but the second may also be suggested as all of James’ comments of approbation for the prince express a belief in his appearance as royal rather than in the truth of his claims. After listening to Warbeck tell only part of his story, James declares:

Hee must bee more then subject, who can vtter The language of a King, and such is thine. Take this for answer, bee what ere thou art, Thou never shalt repent that thou hast put Thy cause, and person, into my protection. (2.1.103-107, italics mine)

James reveals himself as either a fool or one who has already made up his mind independent of the veracity of Warbeck’s claims: he responds only to his appearance of dignity, and even specifically states that he will support him “what ere” he actually is. The only two ways to interpret his words are that he is choosing to believe appearance over substance or that the 285 substance of his claims is irrelevant to his purposes for him. Even later, when the two are invested in invading England together, James turns to Warbeck in a moment of frustration and refers to him as “Duke of Yorke, (for such thou sayest thou art,)” (3.4.97), suggesting his own doubt in the claim of his ally. Although Ford provides no soliloquy to reveal James’ intentions at this point, after he has met with Henry’s Spanish ambassador Hialas and been offered the opportunity to wed Henry’s daughter Margaret in exchange for abandoning Warbeck, he is left alone on stage and speaks briefly of his political success:

A league with Ferdinand? a marriage With English Margaret? a free release From restitution for the late affronts? Cessation from hostilitie? and all For Warbeck not delivered, but dismist? Wee could not wish it better. (4.3.56-61)

Though Ford does not make explicit that James himself does not actually believe in Warbeck’s claim, he does make it clear that his brief alliance with him and eventual dismissing of him turn out to be politically beneficial to the Scottish monarch. Combined with the great grace and dignity with which Warbeck accepts the king’s abandonment of him, still calling him the “best of

Kings” (4.3.95), Ford’s portrayal of James’ doubts of Warbeck’s claims and blatant self-interest in their relationship shows that their interactions reflect far more negatively on James than on

Warbeck himself.

If Anderson’s claims regarding the certainty of Ford’s intention to show Warbeck’s claims as false are not as strongly supported as he suggests they are by the responses of the kings and courts in England and Scotland, he is on stronger ground in suggesting that Warbeck’s portrayal as a true king is undercut by his own “court” of followers. Although Anderson and 286 others who concur with his claim have not, to my knowledge, built a comparative argument for this claim, the genre of the history play into which Ford has deliberately placed his play provides ample evidence of the same strategy. Perhaps best known is Shakespeare’s presentation in 2

King Henry VI of Jack Cade’s rebellion and the characterization of the rebel and his “court” of followers. Shakespeare’s portrayal is an unambiguous undercutting of his rebel, removing any possible nobility in the character before he can gather it:

Cade. My father was a Mortimer— Dick. [Aside.] He was an honest man, and a good bricklayer. Cade. My mother a Plantagenet— Dick. [Aside] I knew her well, she was a midwife. (2 Henry VI 4.2.39-43)

Every claim Cade makes is immediately contradicted by every aside from Dick, who acts as his follower and promoter in his public speech during this scene. Although Warbeck’s followers are hardly more sophisticated, they do not suggest that he is not who he says he is. Another slightly subtler example can be found in the anonymous history play Jack Straw,42 in which the eponymous rebel begins inspired by the clerical figure Ball to set up a “better … communitie, /

Then to haue this difference in degrees” (1.85-86) that permits lords and kings to rule over common people. Straw responds to the words of Ball by offering to make him “Archbishop of

Caunterberie” (1.117), and his followers assert “Wele be Lords my Maisters euery one” (1.128).

The rebels’ ignorance and self-contradiction serve immediately and clearly to undercut both their characters and their causes. The pattern of undercutting a leader by those he surrounds himself with is apparent even in kings who are legitimate: Richard II, in both Shakespeare’s play and the anonymous Thomas of Woodstock, is surrounded by greedy courtiers who pursue their own

42 Quotes and line numbers are from The Life and Death of Jack Straw: 1594 (Oxford: Printed for the Malone Society by C. Batey at the University Press, 1957). . 287 benefit. In Richard II, after the king has exiled Bolingbroke and Mowbray, an emotional scene of bitter separation for Bolingbroke and his father, John of Gaunt, in which Richard has acted nobly and even compassionately as king, he and his court of followers mock “high Herford” (1.4.2, 3) in his departure, and Richard crassly reveals his pleasure to be rid of one who made “courtship to the common people” (1.4.24) and even suggests he may not welcome back the exile from whose banishment he has just “[p]luck'd four [years] away” (1.3.211) with feigned generosity and sympathy.

What each of these has in common, and what Ford refuses to provide in the play, despite the obvious foolishness of Warbeck’s “court” of advisors, is that the leader undercuts his own claims about himself and his presentation of his own cause in scenes with his “lowly” followers.

If Heron, Sketon, Astley, and John a Water prove themselves to be “a confused rabble of

Banquerouts” (1.3.57), as Clifford calls them, Ford never shows a scene in which we see

Warbeck actually “harken to” their will, as Clifford suggests he always does. They first appear with Warbeck in 2.1, but have no lines at all. They next appear with him in 2.3, but Warbeck exits with Katherine and James before they speak any lines. They appear in 3.4, but speak no lines. Warbeck’s followers arrive and he greets them again in 4.2, but he exits before a single word of dialogue is spoken by any of them. After James has dismissed him, Warbeck is left with his followers, and in 4.3 and 4.5, Ford finally presents two brief interactions between the would- be king and his “rabble” of counselors; in both, it is they who follow him, as he first asks for confirmation of his plan to seek allies in Cornwall and is immediately confirmed and is then hailed by them, together with all others on stage, as “A Prince, a Prince, a Prince” (4.3.120). In

4.5, Sketon and Astley serve Warbeck by making declaration that he is king, and they are fairly 288 absurd in their role, as Astley declares Warbeck Richard IV boldly in Latin, and then undercuts himself by muttering, “Al’s cocke sure” (4.5.42). They appear as a group just once more, led past Warbeck by the authorities who have arrested them, ostensibly to their death. If the absurdity of these characters does not heighten the legitimacy of Warbeck’s claims, as it surely does not, the way that Ford has crafted their scenes also neither negates his claims nor places him in a position of hypocrisy by revealing a different side to his personality when he is alone with his followers.

If these other followers function primarily as comic relief in the play, Frion is the one counselor that Ford presents Warbeck actually conferring with and taking advice from. Frion, who was “Secretarie / In the French tongue unto [Henry’s] sacred Excellence” (1.3.49-50), is another respectable character that, like Katherine, Stanley, James, and even Charles, king of

France, has allied himself with Warbeck. In a scene between Frion and Warbeck, Frion tries to restrain Warbeck in his emotional overflow, warning him, “If you will / Appeare a prince indeede, confine your will / To moderation” (4.2.20-22). Warbeck takes offense—whether Frion said it with deliberate meaning and irony or not would be up to the performer—with the choice of the word “appeare,” saying “If, if I will appeare? / Appeare, a Prince?” (4.2.23-24) Warbeck is clearly quite outraged at the very idea, although an actor might perform the lines as mere bluster in response to the apparent suggestion that he is not what he seems to be. However, if we as an audience are meant to assume that Frion speaks from certain knowledge that his leader is not who he claims to be, then his strong reaction makes no sense: he is alone on stage with Frion when he says this, and so would have no one to fool. Unafraid to take on the accusation he hears in Frion’s words, he leans into the insult: 289 twere best (it seemes) That I should turne Imposter to my selfe, Be mine owne counterfeite, belie the truth Of my deare mothers wombe, the sacred bed Of a Prince murthered, and a living baffeld. (4.2.26-30)

Knowing that he is thought by many to be a counterfeit, he turns the notion on its head, suggesting that the only way he could be counterfeit would be if he were not true to himself.

Interestingly, among the eleven uses of the word “counterfeit” in the play, this is actually the second that Warbeck himself uses. The first is no less bold: Warbeck tells his newly betrothed fiancée, Katherine, “But we will live / … / … to let the Counterfeite / Be knowne the worlds contempt” (3.2.69-72). Here, he implies that the truth of their love and life together can itself reveal that Henry VII is the actual counterfeit. Katherine recognizes the boldness in his suggestion that Henry VII is the counterfeit to his truth, and asks him not to use the word, because “it carries fate in't” (3.2.173). Not only does Ford not provide a scene in which

Warbeck betrays himself as false in private conference with those whom he is closest to, he actually has him directly and fearlessly address the issue and boldly deny it.

Thus, it would seem that a close look at the evidence typically used to suggest that the play affirms the audience’s assumptions regarding Henry VII and Warbeck proves more ambiguous than it might at first seem. Such examinations have led some to carry the case further, suggesting that Ford intended to present Warbeck as the true heir to the throne.43

Although these claims certainly make the play more radical and interesting, the text itself does not offer much support for them, and they are not necessary for Ford’s method of resurrecting

43 Jonas Barish, “Perkin Warbeck as Anti-History,” first did so using primarily means intrinsic to the play, whereas Lisa Hopkins’ claim, in John Ford’s Political Theatre, is built much more on extra-textual evidence that supports the likelihood that Ford could have believed such a thing and that his political connections might make it useful for him to have purposefully presented the claimant as genuine in the play. 290 the history genre in the play. What Ford does accomplish through his presentation of the action in his play is to suggest the ambiguity and indeterminate nature implicit in historical events themselves. He does this first by negation, activating his audience’s assumed knowledge about the historical events in question but refusing to confirm their construction of the events. Second, he develops this ambiguity through his dramatic method, “couching” his history in a play that conforms to most expectations of a tragedy.

As we have seen, based on the bare outline of historical events, there should be no room for a tragedy of state in the history that Ford presents; a tragedy centered on the individual should be even less possible. Traditionally, the demands of a tragedy require the downfall of a person above the average, typically princes themselves, a movement from order to chaos, and the reversal of fortune—peripeteia—and tragic insight—anagnorisis. It is through his engagement with these traditional aspects of tragedy that Ford develops a history play that presents the

“truths” of history as he wishes to reveal them. The force of the entire play is to unsettle the initial expectations that an audience takes to this “knowne” history and leave them profoundly uncertain of knowing with confidence matters of “TRVTH and STATE.”

Ford’s first obstacle to writing a tragedy is his central figure. If Warbeck is presented as a mere merchant’s son from Flanders, then the genres he can work in would seem to be limited to satire and comedy. However, he invests his central character with a clear belief in his own nobility and dignity throughout the entire play, and Warbeck reveals his greatness of character, even kingly character by the close of the play, in all he does, particularly when viewed relative to the presumably “true” kings in the play. 291 First and foremost, Warbeck is raised above his presumptive social level by his love for

Katherine Gordon and her love for him. The centrality of their love has been noted by almost all critics of the play, but its function in elevating the character of Warbeck has not been as commonly noted. Ford actually introduces us to Katherine Gordon before Warbeck, in a scene that seems to have little to do with the larger political themes of the play. The scene is sandwiched between two scenes of Henry’s court in England, scenes which first express Henry

VII’s odd mixture of anxiety and confidence in his rule and then confirm both his anxiety and confidence by revealing and containing seditious lords within his closest circle. Between these,

Ford presents an ahistorical scene of a young woman who is earnestly courted by a noble young suitor, Daliell. Her father appears with Daliell and suggests that he may move forward with his pursuit of her, although he comes short of endorsing the pair. In his suit to Katherine, however,

Daliell does not succeed. Huntley, Katherine’s father, reminds her that she is a princess, but that she may choose for herself. Her choice to reject Daliell’s suit shows both her willingness to submit to her father’s implicit wishes and her valuing of her own person as royal. That she later is willing to wed Warbeck when King James offers her to him confirms her sense of duty; that she stays with Warbeck despite his change in fortunes and political pressure from Henry VII to submit herself to his “protection” confirms even more strongly her belief that her “troth” with her husband is a part of her personal worth. Although part of Ford’s dramatic method is to deny us access to the private lives and personal conversations of his central characters, her willingness to support her husband up to his death—and implicitly beyond, at least in the world of the play44—must indicate that he maintains the same noble character and dignified presence in their private moments that Ford presents him as having in the public scenes of the play. Surely, a

44 The historical Katherine Guerdon went on to two later marriages. 292 woman whom Ford has gone out of his way to show as both dutiful and conscious of the value and significance of her own social class would not be willing to suffer for someone whom she knew to be false, a pretender who could never be her equal.

Further, their marriage may begin as one of political convenience, but both choose to continue in it with love and dedication when it ceases to be so. Their marriage thus creates a direct contrast to the presentation of marriage in the other monarchs. As discussed in chapter five, marriage, as a union of two into one, is the typical close of a comedy and, in history plays as well as in the chronicles, is often the path to unifying political entities. Most marriages through the play conform to this pattern; indeed, it is fair to say that political marriages guarantee the downfall of Warbeck. Henry’s marriage to Elizabeth before the action of the play unified the

Yorkist and Lancastrian lines and sealed the throne for Henry, and Hialas’ interference in

English affairs set in motion the political marriages of both King James to Margaret Tudor and

Prince Arthur to Katherine of Aragon, both indicating a further consolidation of Henry’s power.

Katherine Gordon stays true to Warbeck, even when there is no reason to do so other than her belief in his personal nobility—but Ford purposefully presents her as coming short of affirming her support for his claim to the throne as the reason for her maintaining her “troth.”

Ford furthers the distinction between Warbeck’s “true” marriage and those of political convenience through Henry’s own marriage as well. Although this marriage is prior to the action of the play and is never directly before the audience, as his wife Elizabeth does not appear, it is referenced in 1.1. It is presented by Dawbney as unifying the competing claims for the throne, as a picture of the ultimate triumph of Henry’s victory:

Nor doth the house of Yorke decay in Honors, Tho Lancaster doth repossesse his right. 293 For Edwards daughter is King Henrys Queene, A blessed Vnion, and a lasting blessing For this poore panting Iland. (1.1.36-40)

This creates the desired image of “Vnion,” with its emphasis not only on the bringing together of the two sides of the civil wars England endured, but also on its divine sanction as a “blessed” marriage and one that promises “lasting” effects. Ford, by utterly ignoring Elizabeth as a character and making just one reference to her after this explanation of the “knowne” historical fact of the marriage and its assumed meaning, suggests that this marriage exists merely for its political convenience. Indeed, although Henry VII is not known in any chronicles as particularly given to lust or extramarital affairs, Ford includes a scene in which the king offers “protection” to Katherine Gordon, and his overtures to her are underscored with sexual threat: Henry offers, apparently out of noble clemency, his “armes” to “circle” her fortune and honor and protect

“them from malice” (5.2.151-52), but he seems suddenly overcome with desire, as he says, “’A sweete Ladie? / Beautie incomparable? Here liues Majestie / At league with Love” (5.2.152-54).

These lines might not necessarily be said in lust on his part, but Katherine’s response, “O Sir, I haue a husband” (5.2.154), makes clear that she hears his words as an expression of illicit desire.

Henry only furthers this impression as he calls himself her “father, husband, friend, and servant,” and offers to make his wife her “chiefe companion, [his] owne Court [her] Home” (5.2.155,

160), ostensibly with the purpose of keeping her nearby as a mistress. He again marvels at her physical appearance, claiming that “a goodlier beautie / [His] eyes yet neere incountred”

(5.2.169-170). Katherine, ever true to her husband Warbeck, responds to his leering with only,

“Cruell misery / Of fate, what rests to hope for?” (5.2.17-171) To Henry, it seems, marriage is 294 for political convenience and love is merely lust for physical beauty; Warbeck and Katherine view marriage and love otherwise, and they are nobler for the difference.

The significance of Katherine’s keeping of her “troth” to Warbeck, despite its clear damage to her likely reputation and physical circumstances is commonly noted as part of what gives dignity to Warbeck, but the fact that Warbeck is also true to her when she is no longer politically useful to him is less commonly noted. If the marriage was first desirable to him because of the connection it provided him to the Scottish throne, when James cuts that connection, Warbeck might be expected to lose his desire to maintain a relationship that can no longer provide any political benefit to him. However, Ford not only has the two stay together but also gives Warbeck a speech in which he specifically asserts his desire to keep his wife, asking James as his “last suite” that he not take away “this chast Ladie, / resolv’d on all extremes” (4.3.100-101). The last phrase is ambiguously placed, but it is most sensibly attached to Warbeck himself, who is then resolved to keep his wife no matter what extremity he might face. Thus, Ford dignifies Warbeck by his own commitment to his marriage—no longer a political convenience—as much as by the “Great miracle of Constancie” (5.3.89) of Katherine’s steadfast love, which Warbeck claims is enough to rob “Harrie Richmond” (5.3.101) of his own

“fame of triumph” (5.3.102).

By contrasting the marriages of political convenience with the true marriage between

Warbeck and Katherine, Ford reveals, far from supporting Stavig’s claim that the contrasts in marriages reveal that the others “unlike Perkin’s, will bring peace rather than war,”45 that the

45 177. It is worth noting that one of the marriages he references, Katherine of Aragon to Prince Arthur and later to Henry VIII, will hardly bring “peace” to England. Indeed, the “knowne” history of the outcome of the marriage link between Spanish and English royalty may be one of the ways in which Ford undercuts the implicit “unity” of these matches, as the events in history plays cast long shadows between their historical moment and that of their audience. 295 keeping of a marriage “troth” grants dignity to the character of those in the marriage. One of the common conceptions of the sub-title of the play, “a Strange Truth,” is that it refers not only to factual truth of the story that it relays, but also to a “deeper” truth of being consistent in character and one’s “troth.”46 By this measure, the “Strange Truth” is that Warbeck is a better man than he appears in the chronicles that tell the “true” facts of his story, and it is by this superiority that

Ford elevates him to the dignity of the central figure of a tragedy.

Although the strongest evidence for Warbeck’s personal dignity—the possibility of his being raised to the level of the “tragic”—is certainly in his relationship with his wife, Ford offers other aspects of the character that elevate his character, even if they do not make his claim true or his cause stronger. His attractiveness of appearance and personal bearing are presented as remarkable, in which Ford is quite consistent with his sources. King James bases his entire approval of Warbeck and his cause, apparently, on these external suggestions of nobility, and even King Henry, when he finally comes face to face with his enemy at the end of the play, acknowledges that he is “An ornament of nature, fine, and pollisht” (5.2.38) but will admit that he finds in him “no wonder” (5.2.37). All of this, however, makes him only an actor, an image that is used throughout the play by his detractors and might suggest that he is merely a “mockery king in state,” as Henry fears he himself is as the play opens.

However, Warbeck is not kingly merely in his appearance and bearing: Ford also shows him as exhibiting a kingly concern for his “own” people—a direct contrast to Henry, who complains of the ingratitude of his subjects in their unwillingness to accept his authority when

“they are but owners” of their own lives “by [his] guift” (4.4.62). The scene in which Warbeck shows his sympathy for his people has split critics; some accept James’ harsh response to it as

46 Orbison, 170. 296 normative, but others find Warbeck’s compassion nobler than James’ kingly indifference and angry brutality. Upon invading England with the Scottish monarch, Warbeck finds himself at odds with the strategies of his ally, who recommends that the soldiers “spare no prey of life, or goods” (3.4.55). He replies:

I had never sought The truth of mine inheritance with rapes Of women, or of infants murthered; Virgins Defloured; olde men butchered; dwellings fir’d; My Land depopulated; and my people Afflicted with a Kingdomes devastation. Shew more remorse great King, or I shall never Endure to see such havocke with drie eyes: Spare, spare, my deare deare England. (3.4.57-67)

James’ reply is bitter, even “angrie” as Daliell terms it (3.4.75), as he complains of his disappointment that his ally has gained “not a Villager” (3.4.72) since his arrival in England, and that this lack of support is what “should make [him] whine, / And not [his] Countreys sufferance” (3.4.73-74). Whereas James’ angry words are often readily excused as his own whining at the apparent failure to find support for their invasion, critics tend to see Warbeck’s words as unkingly. Many critics note that they are convinced to see Warbeck’s response here as beneath the dignity of a king because of Crawford’s observation in an aside that Warbeck is

“[e]ffeminately dolent” (3.4.76).47 If this criticism by a lord that we are meant to respect is a fair observation of an overly emotional response to the suffering of his people, Warbeck responds to the king’s sharp rebuke not by explaining his compassionate response to the suffering of others but rather by accounting for his stoic refusal to “whine” about his own difficulties:

The experience

47Jean Howard, “‘Effiminately Dolent,’” is among the critics who use this line and scene to suggest that Warbeck is to be viewed as unkingly and effeminate. 297 In former tryalls (Sir) both of mine owne Or other Princes, cast out of their thrones, Haue so acquainted mee, how misery Is destitute of friends, or of reliefe, That I can easily submit to taste Lowest reproof, without contempt or words. (3.4.54-82)

King James’ disdainful response—“An humble minded man” (3.4.83)—confirms the difference between them. If Warbeck is overly emotional about the sufferings of others, he is not as easily shaken from his resolve as King James is in his bitter response to their apparent change of fortune. Stoic indifference to reversals—to peripeteia—is one of the central aspects of a tragic hero, and Warbeck not only claims to have such stoic resolve but also reveals it as his fortunes continue to decline from this moment on.

A second scene in which Warbeck shows these same two characteristics—kingly compassion for those under him and stoic indifference to his own fortune—is also met with a very different response in Crawford and Huntley, the two “choric” figures who expressed criticism of him in 3.4. After he is captured and condemned to die, he ends his exchange with

Henry still refusing to ask for mercy or to deny his previous claims, but he does ask for mercy for his followers, that same “rabble” who have served as his comical “court” of advisors throughout the play:

but if there can be mercie In a protested enemie, then may it Descend to these poore creatures, whose engagements To th’bettering of their fortunes, have incur’d A losse of all; to them, if any charitie Flowe from some noble Orator, in death I owe the fee of thankfulnesse. (5.2.93-99)

298 Again, despite his own interest in gaining mercy from the king who holds him, his concern is only for those under him.

Ultimately, nothing in the play more grants dignity to Warbeck—and ambiguity to the

“truth” behind the events of the play—than Warbeck’s refusal to accept mercy and admit guilt,

Ford’s most significant alteration to his sources. Both Thomas Gainsford’s 1618 True and

Wonderfull History of Perkin Warbeck and Bacon’s 1622 History of the Reign of King Henry VII make clear that Warbeck did confess his imposture. However, in examining his sources, Ford would have found that Gainsford includes a complete confession, detailing not only the humble origins of Warbeck but also his deception and connection with the duchess of Burgundy.48

Conversely, Bacon mentions that Warbeck had his “confession taken” and it was published, but that “the King did himself no right: for as there was laboured tale of the particulars, of Perkin’s father and mother… there was little or nothing to the purpose of anything concerning his designs, or any practices that had been held with him; nor the duchess of Burgundy herself…”49 This discrepancy in the chronicle sources must have struck Ford with the uncertainty of historical events, and it may have even been this inconsistency in his sources that led him to leave the confession out entirely. Thus, this element that is normally seen as Ford’s great departure from his sources may not be such an ahistorical element of his play, after all.

What Ford certainly does take from his source in Bacon is the importance of such a confession. Bacon reveals, after Warbeck was thoroughly defeated and had taken sanctuary, that

Henry’s advisors were divided among themselves about the best way to handle the failed claimant. Some advised taking him by force, others recommended simply letting him be as now

48 107-108. 49 170. 299 harmless, and a third group suggested promising him life and mercy in order to “satisfy the world well touching the imposture.”50 Henry chose the third route, and Warbeck, according to

Bacon, “did gladly accept of the condition,”51 whereas in the play, Ford shows Dawbney taking

Warbeck from sanctuary and delivering him to the king. Rather than showing Warbeck readily capitulating, Ford reveals Henry’s increasing attempts to force a confession.

A common critical conception of the play is to separate the tragic dignity of Warbeck’s character from the question of the historical validity of his claims, but to do so is to ignore the content of his speeches as he faces his tragic fall.52 Henry’s first attempt to get the desired confession from Warbeck comes in an encounter that Bacon specifically claims did not happen53—a face to face meeting of the king and Warbeck. In 5.2, Henry begins triumphant but

Warbeck ends up emerging as the nobler figure of the two. Henry orders Warbeck, “[T]urne now thine eyes, / (Young man) upon thy selfe, and thy past actions” (5.2.48-49). The condescending tone is just the first of Henry’s strategies to show his superiority to the defeated claimant, and he continues in it, accusing him of “revells in combustion” as an “aspiring youth” whose antic dancing has ended as his “feete of pride haue slipt / To breake [his] necke” (5.2.50-

53). Warbeck responds, “But not my heart” (5.2.53), delivering the appropriately tragic answer to the gloating of the victorious king, and he maintains an unbroken heart until the conclusion of the play.

50 History of the Reign, 168. 51 Ibid,169. 52 For example, Stavig, 169, says, “Sympathy for Perkin as an individual is never allowed to become respect for his cause,” and Anderson, xiv, says, “Warbeck is to be admired for his personal relationships but condemned for his politics.” 53 History of the Reign, 169; Bacon explains that he was brought to the court, but that Henry only ever viewed through windows or across corridors. 300 Having established Warbeck as a tragic figure, Ford is then able to use him to cast doubt on all the certainties of “knowne” history that his audience has brought to the play. Ordered to turn his eyes on himself and his own “past actions,” Warbeck instead rehearses the king’s own past. Finding himself in the darkness of “an eclipse / Lasting, and vniversall” (5.2.57-58),

Warbeck orders the king to consider his own rise to power:

Sir, remember There was a shooting in of light when Richmond (Not ayming at a crowne) retyr’d, and gladly, For comfort, to the Duke of Bretaines Court. Richard who swayed the Scepter, was reputed A tyrant then; yet then, a dawning glimmer’d To some few wandring remnants, promising day When first they ventur’d, on a frightfull shore, At Milford Haven. (5.2.58-66)

Warbeck’s image of light breaking in is fully ironic, not only in his belittling of Henry’s

“shooting in of light” after his initial failure but also in his suggesting that the assumed darkness prior to Henry’s victory is itself questionable, as he only allows that Richard III “was reputed / A tyrant.” As Warbeck dismantles the certainty of Henry’s own legitimacy and the path by which he came to the throne, suffering setbacks similar to that which Warbeck himself now encounters,

Dawbney interjects, desiring that Henry cut off the “boldnesse” of Warbeck’s “rude tongue”

(5.2.66-67). The king himself, however, seems amused and begins the second strategy he will use to undermine Warbeck’s claims, “The player’s on the stage still, ‘tis his part; / A’ does but act” (5.2.68-69). The accusation is one that Bacon seems to have concurred with: he initially describes Warbeck as like an actor in having “such a crafty and bewitching fashion, both to move pity, and to induce belief,”54 and later explains that after his capture Warbeck was put

54 Ibid, 105. 301 before all men “in his new person of a sycophant, or juggler, instead of his former person of a prince,”55 suggesting that Henry himself made use of Warbeck’s “acting.” Ford essentially takes what Bacon has declared as the truth of the situation and turned it into a blustering explanation from a gloating king.

Granted the freedom to finish telling his opponent’s story for himself—the privilege that history has granted only to Henry VII—he carries on, an actor on the stage re-telling history:

Bosworth feild, Where at an instant, to the worlds amazement, A morne to Richmond and a night to Richard Appear’d at once: the tale is soone applyde: Fate which crown’d these attempts when lest assur’d, Might have befriended others like resolv’d. (5.2.69-74)

Warbeck suggests that a single “instant” shows directly opposed historical meanings—“morne” to one is “night” to another, and, once history records the event, its meaning is put in place, as he says “the tale is soone applyde.” Many critics have complained that Warbeck lacks tragic insight in believing that only “Fate” has granted Henry the victory, but, if we read his words as historical commentary, he seems to suggest that the chance victory, coming “when lest assur’d,” only seems to be “Fate” when the historical interpretation is “applyde” to it retrospectively.

Warbeck’s version of history is not different in its facts, only in its suggestion of what those

“facts” mean.

King Henry responds to Warbeck’s historical arguments with an ad hominem attack and his own historical reconstruction. He calls Warbeck “A prettie gallant,” and claims that he has learned his history from his “Aunt of Burgundie,” a “lesson … molded / Into familiar dialogue, oft rehearsed / Till, learnt by heart, 'tis now receiv’d for truth” (5.2.75-79).

55 Ibid, 169. 302 The king continues to put forth his own version of “truth,” that Warbeck is a mere actor performing his role, with the bitter old aunt of the house of York as the playwright and director of Warbeck’s great skill in impersonation. Although some critics, and Henry’s own lords, are surprised at his willingness to let Warbeck continue, Henry, from his superior position, is confidently able to allow Warbeck to speak, because he controls the way in which the significance of this history is “applyde.”

Warbeck’s response is typical of his willingness to take the accusations against him and turn them back on his accusers. While Henry has accused him of believing the lies he has been taught are “truth,” Warbeck distinguishes truth from performance, saying, “Truth in her pure simplicitie wants art / To put a fayned blush on” (5.2.80-81). Warbeck holds to his own claims about truth and even claims to lack the art—the acting ability—to pretend to be other than he is.

He attacks Henry’s treatment of him as unkingly:

scorne weares onely Such fashion, as commends to gazers eyes Sad vlcerated Noveltie; farre beneath The spheare of Maiestie; in such a Court, Wisedome, and gravitie, are proper robes, By which the soveraigne is best distinguisht’, From Zanyes to his Greatnesse. (5.2.81-87)

He accuses Henry, in short, of failing to act like a king. His “scorne” for Warbeck is a mere show, enacted to impress “gazers eyes,” and the way to truly distinguish “Maiestie” from mere performance is by the “Wisedome, and gravitie” of his decorum. Warbeck’s suggestion is double-bladed: he does not merely accuse Henry of failing to act the proper part of a king, he also suggests that being a king means acting with dignity: it is the “proper robes”—external costuming—of these attributes that reveal the truth of character. Further, his curious comparison 303 of the true king to “Zanyes to his Greatnesse” also suggests that true kingship is a performance.

A “Zany” can merely be any poor mimic of someone more dignified, but according to the OED the most specific meaning is that of one who poorly mimics a primary performer, such as an acrobat or mountebank.56 In this meaning, the zany is deliberately part of the act, a buffoonish performer who is kept nearby to show the mastery of the true performer. The true king is simply a more masterful performer than the false, according to Warbeck’s claims, and the test of that performance is the dignity with which one comports oneself.

It seems that Warbeck’s last words may have hit Henry too near, as he no longer encourages Warbeck to carry forward with his own version of “truth” but switches into threats, which are his third strategy to finalize his victory over Warbeck. He continues to accuse him of mere acting, but now attempts to control his performance:

Sirra, shift Your anticke Pageantrie, and now appeare In your owne nature, or y’oule taste the daunger Of fooling out of season. (5.2.87-90)

Warbeck’s words have finally pushed the king to move from self-satisfied scorn, which Warbeck claims marks him as less than a true king, to open threats, thereby moving from a position of apparent indifference to an acknowledgement that Warbeck represents a threat to his own power.

Warbeck responds to the demand that he drop his “pretense” of being the heir of York with indifference: “I expect / No lesse, then what severitie calls Iustice, / And Politicians, safetie”

(5.2.90-92). He is already suggesting the way in which history will read his impending death,

56 "zany, n. and adj.". OED Online. March 2016. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com.proxycu.wrlc.org/view/Entry/232693?rskey=hjEcPE&result=1&isAdvanced=false (accessed March 13, 2016).

304 that Henry was just to execute him, but offers a second explanation from the perspective of his view of Henry: as a politician, not as a king, the sitting monarch must execute him in order to achieve the very safety that he has been looking for since his opening speech of the play. He goes on to ask mercy, but only for his followers, those “poore creatures, whose engagements / To th’bettering of their fortunes, have incur’d / A losse of all” (5.2.95-97). Whereas his followers may be lowly and foolish, Warbeck takes seriously his role of king over those very few who still acknowledge him such, and looks to protect their lives rather than to preserve his own. Perhaps the most foolish of Warbeck’s followers, the Mayor of Cork, acts as speaker for the group and shows a fool’s dignity in refusing to disown Warbeck, saying euphuistically, “I beleeue it is true, if I be not deceived, that Kings must be Kings, and Subjects, Subjects. But which is which; you shall pardon me for that” (5.2.114-116). The simultaneous request for pardon and implicit denial of Henry’s rightful kingship are typical of Cork’s mode of speech, but they also point out the fact that, as he claims earlier, history’s meaning is only “knowne” retrospectively: “If things and things may fall out, as who tell what or how—but the end will show it” (4.2.86-87).

Having failed to bring about the needed confession through his initial threats to Warbeck and his followers, Henry moves on to a new strategy in a scene that is also of Ford’s invention and again shows Warbeck favorably. From the beginning of the play—and from the opening of discussion of him in its chronicle sources—Warbeck has been linked with Lambert Simnel,

Warbeck’s “predecessor in daungerous uproar” (5.3.32) who has found mercy at the hands of

Henry VII. In presenting this scene, Ford offers to Warbeck an alternative to the threat of death—the temptation of life without dignity. Henry’s keeping of Simnel seems to affirm

Warbeck’s claim regarding a king being known by “Zanyes to his Greatnesse;” Henry keeps 305 Simnel as his own zany, but he proves to function in this role for Warbeck as much as for Henry himself. The scene is truly only understood as a completion of the king’s earliest reference to

Simnel, in which he claimed that Simnel’s confession of imposture and acceptance of the position of falconer in Henry’s own service “shewes the difference betweene noble natures / And the base borne” (1.1.67-68). Based on Henry’s own explanation of the “strange example”

(1.1.66) of Simnel, the same strategy should reveal the “base borne” nature of Warbeck. When he is publicly held in the stocks in 5.3, Simnel is brought in to convince him to confess his deception and accept mercy. Simnel tells his own story of confessed falsehood, calling Henry

VII “A prince compos’d of sweetness, heaven protect him” (5.3.40) and admonishes Warbeck,

“Let my example lead thee. Be no longer / A counterfeit; confess, and hope for pardon” (5.3.51-

52). Warbeck responds to this “base mans fowle language” in words that echo Henry’s own assessment of the meaning of Simnel’s story:

thou poor vermin! How darst thou creepe so neere me? thou an Earle? Why thou enjoyst as much of happinesse, As all the swinge of sleight ambition flew at. A dunghill was thy Cradle. So a puddle By virtue of the sun-beames, breathes a vapour To infect the purer ayre, which drops againe Into the muddie wombe that first exhal’d it. Bread, and a slavish ease, with some assurance From the base Beadles whipp, crownd all thy hopes. But (Sirra) ran there in thy veynes, one dropp Of such a royall bloud, as flowes in mine, Thou wouldst not change condition, to be second In Englands State without the crown it selfe! Course creatures are incapable of excellence. But let the world, as all, to whom I am This day a spectacle, to time, deliver, And by tradition fixe posteritie Without another Chronicle then truth, 306 How constantly, my resolution suffer’d A martyrdome of Maiestie! (5.3.55-75)

Warbeck sees Simnel the same way Henry VII does, and he knows that the baseness of nature clear in his decision will “fixe” the view of him for all” posteritie,” but, even according to

Henry’s own standard, refusing the same easy life that Simnel so readily accepted means that he is himself no mere “Course creature” but a “spectacle” in his suffering “A martyrdome of

Maiestie.” Again, Warbeck’s insistence upon the historical view of events suggests a challenge to the audience’s assumptions about the truths of history, as he acknowledges that he will have no other “Chronicle then truth,” but lacking the foresight to see that his “spectacle”—a word clearly indicative of performance and theater—may be insufficient to “fixe posteritie” as he hopes. If he continues to perform like a king until the end, he believes that he will be remembered as such, but Simnel’s response—“a Bedlam cannot cure him” (5.3.76)—already suggests an alternative way to perceive Warbeck’s refusal to confess his imposture.

As the play heads into its conclusion, Henry’s attempts to persuade Warbeck to confess become increasingly desperate and even Machiavellian. In the initial arrangement between

Spain and England established in Act 3, Hialas placed a single condition on the proposed marriage arrangement: the king will not offer Lady Katherine to Arthur as long as there is a question about his right to rule, specifically that the marriage could not move forward “as long /

As any Earle of Warwicke liv’d in England, / Except by newe Creation” (3.3.56-58). This stipulation is only mentioned in this scene, and, despite Henry’s infuriated response to the suggestion that any “sonne to Clarence, younger brother / To Edward” (3.3.65-66), whose daughter he has married, could have as good a claim to the throne as his own son, the character 307 of the Earl of Warwick might be forgotten if he did not come up again later in the play. As

Warbeck is placed in the stocks at the opening of 5.3, Urswick rehearses Warbeck’s history since the end of scene 2, mentioned that he has twice attempted to escape, and that he has involved

“Young Edward, Earle of Warwicke, sonne to Clarence” (5.3.16), clearly echoing the description of him Henry gave him in his earlier anger. Due to his involvement, Urswick claims, his “head must pay the price of that attempt” (5.3.17). Urswick plays at pathos in clarifying the new threat to induce Warbeck to confess, calling him a “Poore Gentleman—unhappie in his fate”

(5.3.18), and reminding Warbeck that he was “ruin’d by [Warbeck’s] cunning” (5.3.19), before unsubtly suggesting, “yet, yet, confesse / Thy parentage; for yet the King ha’s mercy” (5.3.20-

21). The clear implication in Urswick’s words is that his confession at this point could save not only Warbeck himself but also his “relative” who faces execution after him, but Warbeck does not respond to him at all, thus neither confirming nor denying Warwick’s involvement. As

Warbeck makes his last speech in the play, he continues firm in his resolution but also reminds the audience of Warwick’s death, a political convenience if not a necessity for Henry VII’s continued security in his power, follows quickly on his own.

our ends, and Warwick's head, Innocent Warwick's head, (for we are Prologue But to his tragedie) conclude the wonder Of Henries feares; and then the glorious race Of fourteene Kings, PLANTAGINETTS, determines In this last issue male. Heaven be obeyd.

Although he did not respond to the earlier accusation that his “cunning” was responsible for the downfall of Warwick, here he calls him “Innocent,” and emphasizes his own tragic downfall as merely “Prologue” to the final end of “the wonder / Of Henries feares”—those fears that have been the motivating factor of all of Henry’s actions from the opening of the play. Here, again, 308 Warbeck not only refuses to confess imposture but also insists upon refiguring the meaning of history: he and his “cozen” Warwick die not as traitors but as sacrifices to Henry’s need to hold him “selfe …. secure.” Because the play ends only with the promise that Warbeck’s execution is about to be enacted, Ford technically concludes the play not only without the security Henry so sought accomplished but also with the possibility that Warbeck may yet confess, in order to prevent the death to which his own tragedy is but “Prologue.”

After mourning the impending death of not only Warwick but also the entirety of “his own” line, Warbeck concludes his last speech in the play in the precise mode of tragic hero.

Ford does not allow these words to be the last spoken in the play, a privilege that must be reserved for the sitting monarch, Henry VII, but the power of the rhetoric and the images he chooses to express his final determination echoes louder than all that follows them. He says:

Death? Pish, 'tis but a sound, a name of air, A minute's storm, or not so much. To tumble From bed to bed, be massacred alive By some physicians, for a month or two, In hope of freedom from a fever's torments, Might stagger manhood; here the pain is past Ere sensibly 'tis felt. Be men of spirit! Spurn coward passion! So illustrious mention Shall blaze our names, and style us kings o'er death. (5.3.186-207)

After this speech, Dawbney still accuses him as “Impostor” but acknowledges that he is

“beyond president” and that “No Chronicle records his fellow” (5.3.208-09), an implicit confession that he is not like Simnel. The king’s own final words are a mere platitude endorsing his own political acumen, but one that fails as poetry, despite referencing the very image with which he opened the play, that of himself as “Physitian.” He claims the historical lesson to be drawn is “that ‘publicke States, / As our particular bodyes, taste most good / In health, when 309 purged of corrupted bloud” (5.3.217-219). In such close proximity to Warbeck’s last words, disdaining to live a half life under the care of a physician, Henry’s attempt to bring unity and closure rings hollow. The king is permitted to say that he has “purged” England of “corrupted bloud” only because he has succeeded in maintaining his power by having done so. Warbeck’s superior poetry and dignity diminish not only Henry’s dramatic power but also his type of kingship and the realm over which he holds sway—he is a mere physician, in both Warbeck’s assessment and his own.

Not only are the threats and strategies against Warbeck increasing in both intensity and desperation as the play heads to its conclusion, but the explanations offered for his refusal to confess also change. Whereas much of the language used by those who wish to discredit

Warbeck and his continuing performance as rightful heir to the throne suggests that he is a mere actor, alternative explanations are put forth, both by characters in the play and by critics and chroniclers, necessitated by his stubborn refusal to confess, a position difficult to accept in one who knows he is merely pretending. Simnel suggests, as noted earlier, that Warbeck is mad, and, despite Simnel’s clearly ignoble nature, many critics have accepted his explanation.57 The king after being somewhat baffled by him during his interview, draws a similar conclusion, claiming, “The custome sure of being stil’d a King / Hath fastend in his thought that HE IS SVCH”

(5.2.131-32). These explanations of madness, suggestive of an actor so deep in his role that he can no longer distinguish fact from fiction, are commonly referenced by critics who wish to see

Ford making Warbeck clearly a pretender because they not only account for the consistent use of theatrical language surrounding Warbeck but also offer a reasonable explanation of his refusal to

57 For example, see Oliver, H. J., The Problem of John Ford (Philadelphia: R. West, 1978), 103. . 310 confess when he has nothing to gain by continuing with his act. An explanation that does not gain much attention from critics is what actually predominates over either insanity or mere performance as the play heads to its close: demonic possession. When Warbeck is free to sow discord through the land early in the play, this way of construing his threat initially appears, as

Henry’s lords refer to him as the latest of the “spirits” which the “spells of Yorke” have conjured

(1.1.15) to practice “Devilish policies” (1.1.51) and Henry himself speaks of Warbeck as having

“bound” King James by his “Watch-craft” (3.1.34). Once his threat is contained, the language employed moves from demonic to dramatic, as he is belittled as an actor and pretender when he is caught, but it shifts back to demonic when he persists in his refusal to confess his treasonous lie. His words are hushed by Oxford as due to a “devil that ranges in your tongue” (104) and

Urswick suggests witchcraft (already referenced in Warbeck’s escape in line 15) is behind his delusions, concurring that “The enemy of mankind / Is powerful, but false, and falsehood confident” (5.3.109-10). In order to account for Warbeck’s persistent refusal to confess his lie, the suggestion that he is a mere actor seems insufficient to those who observe him, as surely a man who knows he is lying would confess his lie before dying for it, and the need for an alternative explanation forces characters—and critics—who need to maintain that his words are, in fact, a lie to turn to insanity or demonic possession to account for his apparent strength of character.

If Ford is thoroughgoing in creating doubt about the orthodox version of history from his sources, he is not necessarily endorsing Warbeck’s version of history either. Ford’s intention is merely to destabilize the established story, not to rewrite it, as some have suggested. The uncertainty of history is the point, not the radical revision of it. He specifically comes short of 311 endorsing Warbeck’s claims in the close of the play. First, Katherine Gordon, whose love so dignifies Warbeck, swears only that their marriage is true, not his claims to the throne, as she allows, “Be what these people terme Thee, I am certaine / Thou art my husband” (5.3.116-17).

Further, Huntley, the play’s most choric figure,58 finally gives his approval to his daughter’s marriage but still maintains that “in such cases / Just Lawes ought to proceed” (5.3.210-11). By having his two most respected characters, and those least likely to be biased against Warbeck, neither fully endorse nor fully deny his claims, Ford carefully preserves the ambiguity he has so endeavored to establish.

The lack of clarity on the truth of Warbeck’s claims is just what makes Ford’s play such a compelling history play, but some critics have pointed out that this same ambiguity prevents

Warbeck from being a true tragic hero, because there is no room for anagnorisis in a character who cannot be shown to have personal insight without revealing the truth of his inner state.59

Ford carefully denies us any soliloquy from Warbeck precisely to maintain the audience’s uncertainty about how to understand the historical personage of Warbeck: the inner thoughts and motivations behind the bare facts of history are just what cannot ever be ascertained. Since these aspects of history are necessarily unknown, the play presents only actions and public speeches, leaving the audience to draw its own conclusions about what deeper truths and motives lie beneath the accessible actions of the play. If we see this at the core of Ford’s historical purposes in the play, the central question that the play has begged—the legitimacy of Warbeck’s claims— is not only unanswerable, it is ultimately irrelevant, because his claims were not supported by the

58 Sharon Hamilton, “Huntly as Tragic Chorus in Ford’s Perkin Warbeck,” Papers on Language & Literature 16 (3): 250-259, accessed March 2, 2016, EBSCO, explores the role of Huntley as a choric figure at length. 59 Orbison, 175, makes the observation, but without acknowledging the possibility that Ford has denied his central figure this aspect of a tragic hero precisely to keep his historical purposes in place. 312 realities of the historical process. Whether Warbeck came to have insight about the nature of fate, chance, and human agency might have told us more about whether Ford celebrated the efficient politician Henry VII or lamented the failure of the dignified nobility of Warbeck, but this, too, is a matter of mere speculation: what Ford leaves us with by denying access to

Warbeck’s—or anyone’s—private thoughts is the troubling notion that “knowne” facts of history are not enough to tell us the “truth” at a national or personal level.

This lack of anagnorisis leads Orbison to conclude that the play is not truly tragic because Perkin lacks any great human insight: he “realizes little of the great paradoxes of human life … this means he has not the capability of achieving tragic knowledge” (175). Instead of gaining self-insight, Perkin closes “his eyes to the limitations of his own nature and can avoid shame or guilt for his fall” (175). This lack of insight is necessary, as it would require granting access to the private life of Warbeck to accomplish it and granting that access would destroy the very ambiguity than Ford has worked so hard to create. If we saw into his mind to gain insight about his anagnorisis achieved through his tragic downfall, we would then know whether to judge him mad, dishonest, or genuine, and Ford wants to force us to judge that only by what is publicly known. He leaves us instead with a tragic imbalance: the power of Warbeck’s last words still ringing in the audience’s ears, they must judge for themselves regarding Henry’s platitudinous claim to being his country’s “best Physitian” in purging Warbeck for the better taste of the health of the whole.

The conclusion is open both in its being permissive of various interpretations and in the specific historical details which follow the end presented—despite seeming to be a clear ending to Warbeck’s story, the fact that he is not yet dead both suggests that Henry remains yet with a 313 “self … scarce secure” and leaves open the possibility that Warbeck’s confession of his treason could be yet to come, as a last effort to prevent the total destruction of the Yorkist line and claim, the last Plantagenet in the Earl of Warwick. At the same time, there is nothing indeterminate in the close of the play, because of the “knowne” facts of history—no Plantagenet will ever again take the throne, Warbeck died a pretender and Warwick a traitor in his cause, and Henry VII established in perfect security the Tudor and Stuart lines, which continue in that security up to the moment of the first performance and beyond. Thus, Ford has taken what should have been simple conflict between a pretender and a rightful king and left his audience confirmed in the certainties about the facts of history but with only ambiguity about the meaning of those facts.

Warbeck’s claims do not need to be true—their veracity is presented as unknowable in the play—in order for them to trouble the confident claims of a “knowne” history, and Ford’s presentation of a “pretender” as a tragic hero effectively reveals assumptions about “TRVTH and

STATE” to be more assumption than truth.

Conclusion:

Greene’s Accidental History and the Nature of Early Modern Historical Drama

It is likely true that an ideal definition of the early modern history play will never be achieved, or at least, if such an ideal generic definition were possible, that it would be unlikely to find universal acceptance among literary critics who analyze them. Nonetheless, this study has attempted to put forth at least a description of the “family resemblances” that make these plays a distinct group and to use these aspects to create a distinct mode of analysis. Most significantly, the interaction between an audience’s known history and the structures and conventions of established genres makes these plays of simultaneous dramatic and historical interest. Since the interplay of recognizable form and assumed fact is central to the form, the deviations from both fact and form create tensions for the audience as they make meaning of both the play and the history it purports to dramatize. Although the primary focus of this study has been the use of and deviation from existing genres in plays about history, the question of the use of and deviation from the assumed facts of history is no less central to the experience of this interplay in early modern historical drama. The history play’s key “family resemblance” of dramatizing events drawn from history both known and relevant to the audience is one that many critics use to determine which plays ought to be included in the genre. However, the line dividing those plays that bear this “family resemblance” from those that do not is not as clear as it might seem to be, and the deviation from the expected details of historical narrative can itself be a useful tool of analysis.

Of all the plays most commonly disdained by those seeking to identify the “pure” or

“ideal” form of the history play, perhaps the easiest exclusion to make is Robert Greene’s The

314 315 Scottish Historie of Iames the fourth, slaine at Flodden. Entermixed with a pleasant Comedie, presented by Oboram King of Fayeries.1 The play was probably written around 1590 but was not entered in the Stationer’s Register until 1594, and the earliest known published edition is a quarto of 1598. Despite the overtly historical nature of the gratuitously long title of the play, almost all critics of the work are quick to dismiss it as “mere romance” and deride it as utterly ahistorical.2 Early twentieth century critics such as C. F. Tucker Brooke appear to have an almost angry response to the play’s “deceitful” claims to historicity, and later critics have generally continued to deny that the play has any real relevance as a history play, except in its usefulness as a possible “mirror” of contemporary politics for critics seeking such analogues, who find in the play a parallel to the court of King James VI of Scotland3 rather than any reference to the time period of his great-grandfather, whom the play purports to depict. Such a refusal to consider the play as a play about history is hardly surprising: the evidence excluding the play from consideration as a history play is solid, even overwhelming. However, the very strength of this evidence actually shows how pervasive the “family resemblances” of the history play are; regardless of whether Greene “intended” to fulfill “the purposes of history” in his play, the play clearly evinces the effects of the interplay of known history and generic expectation. Its relationship to the details of the audience’s known history—its few consistencies as well as its many deviations—creates the distinct effects of historical drama, and an analysis of the play in

1 The title and all subsequent references to the play are from the 1598 edition, The Scottish Historie of Iames the fourth, slaine at Flodden…. (London: Thomas Creede, 1598), accessed July 22, 2016, EEBO. Line number references are added for convenience, from Robert Greene's The Scottish History of James IV: A Critical, Old- spelling Edition, ed. Charles Happy Stein (Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, Universität Salzburg, 1977). 2 Ribner includes it in his list of history plays, but with an asterisk that indicates its ahistorical status. 3 For more on the play in these terms see especially Ruth Hudson, “Greene's James IV and Contemporary Allusions to Scotland,” PMLA 47, No 3 (1932): 652-67, accessed August 30, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/457943.

316 terms of its resemblance to undeniable examples of the form suggests a broader conception of the genre is appropriate.

Many critics have pointed out the abundant evidence for the ahistorical nature of the play.

First, the play opens with an angry Scot named Bohan, who promises to show the fairy king

Oboram (Oberon) a play. This frame narrative makes the “historical” action of the play actually a play within a play that is clearly designated as fantasy. This romantic, comic and fantastic setting almost immediately negates the intended historicity suggested by the title as the play is thus made a light entertainment to please a supernatural being. Second, and more significantly, the specific events and even the specific names of characters do not line up correctly with actual history: the kings, ostensibly James IV and Henry VII, are not ever referred to by name except in one scene in which “King of England” is replaced—in stage directions only never in dialogue— with the name Arius.4 Although the reference may be Greene’s own error or that of the printer who used the manuscript to prepare the print edition rather than a name Greene intended to give to a purely fictional king,5 there is no avoiding the inaccuracy of the name of the character who is the daughter of the English king and the wife of the Scottish one. She is called Dorothea throughout, in both stage directions and dialogue, when the name of the historical personage was actually Margaret Tudor—a fact that certainly must have been known to Greene, who drew on far more obscure historical material in fashioning his farcical history Friar Bacon and Friar

Bungay. The name must also have been known to at least some members of the audience, and

4 Theories about the name typically group it with the reference to Oboram as “Adam” in one of the stage directions as an error. The “Adam” error is usually thought to refer to an actor’s first or last name, but, to my knowledge, no one has found any record of a performer’s name approximating “Arius” anymore than anyone has found a Scottish or English monarch’s that does so. 5 Since there is no historical king of England named Arius, if Greene intended the character to be Arius, King of England, as some critics have assumed, then it is almost inconceivable that Greene intended the play to be about James IV in any way, and the “historical” title must be an addition after the fact by someone other than Greene himself. 317 the choice to change it must have seemed inscrutable to those who knew it and expected to find the history of James IV in the play. The plot, too—in which the king is overwhelmed both before and after his marriage to the English princess by his lust for Ida, a Scottish noblewoman already betrothed to another—is not based on any known history of James IV. He was not particularly given to lust according to the chronicles, and the notion that the various struggles between

England and Scotland during the period were caused by James’ marital unfaithfulness has no basis in the various chronicles of the period. Indeed, when the match is made between the

English princess and the Scottish king, Holinshed discusses it as a hopeful peace initiated by

James himself, rather than a source of strife between the two kings. James, angered by the death of many Scots at the hands of the English at Norham, requested the hand of Henry VII’s daughter “to séeke amitie with the king of England: which now he desired much more to haue confirmed, for further maintenance & increase thereof.”6 In the play, however, the Scottish king despairs at the moment of the marriage pact, knowing that his love for another will break the concord intended by the marriage.

Thus, it would seem simple to discard the play as irrelevant to the “true” genre of the history play, but these very curiosities about the nature of the play actually suggest how deeply felt the effects of historical drama were at the time, and that the audience recognized and responded to the play as historical. Although many critics suggest that the lack of historical fact in the specifics of the play indicates that “the historical elements in the play are of minimal importance dramatically,”7 the alleged historical references actually have a profound impact on the structure and sense of the play. First and foremost, there is the title, which makes the play

6 The Holinshed Project, accessed August 31, 2016, http://www.cems.ox.ac.uk/holinshed. 7 Sanders, Norman. “Introduction to The Scottish History of James the Fourth,” ed. Norman Sanders (London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1970), xxxvii. 318 sound so much like a history play—and then goes on to include Oberon. The title is actually the only reference in the entire play—including all stage directions and dialogue—to “James” as the name of the titular character. The title is further inconsistent with the play itself, as one could read in vain all day and never find the Scottish monarch’s death at Flodden Field anywhere even hinted at in the play, let alone actually enacted in the play. And yet, for a reader, the presence of the known history of his later death impacts the play. The curious inaccuracy of the title has already caused some critics to question its authenticity: in his edition of the play, Norman

Sanders suggests that the title Greene gave the play may have been merely The Scottish History,8 without any direct reference to the name of the king, let alone the misleading reference to his death at Flodden Field in 1513. Although the evidence for the specific alternative title Sanders proposes is not clear, the evidence that the title is not entirely appropriate is quite plain.

Further, the chronology of the action of the play and the dating of the play itself both create problems for considering the play a history. Many critics have noted that dating the play’s composition and first performance is difficult, because it is unknown in any print record prior to

1594 and Greene is known to have died in 1592. History plays were on the rise by the time of

Greene’s death but were much more prominent by the time of the play’s publication. Further, there is no record of performance for the play at all. It is not an uncommon conjecture to suggest that the play may have been essentially a failure—lasting perhaps just one performance—and therefore did not leave a record of performance.9 The conjecture seems more one of convenience than actual likelihood, however, as it is certainly not an inferior play as Greene’s catalog goes, and it has been noted as an almost perfect precursor to the tragicomedies that became popular in

8 Sanders, xxxvi. 9 Stein, 10. 319 the early seventeenth century.10 Furthermore, it does seem a curious choice, then, to have published this grossly unsuccessful play so many years after its failure in the theater with no living author to push for its publication and without the form it predicted having yet risen to prominence. Finally, there is the chronology within the play itself. Only one reference throughout the entire play puts the action in a specific historical period: Bohan promises Oberon in the induction to the play

I will shew thee whay I hate the world by demonstration, in the yeare 1520. was in Scotland, a king so ouerruled with parasites, misled by lust, & many circumstances, too long to trattle on now, much like our court of Scotland this day. (121-26)

This single speech has carried a lot of weight in the discussion of the play: not only is it the only clear reference within the body of the play that provides any specific historical context, but it also offers a reason for the play’s existence—to show the wicked nature of the people of the world—and a clear suggestion of how to look into this history as a “mirror,” due to the clear reference to Scottish rulers of Greene’s day. However, this reference is not unproblematic: the description of the court—despite its apparent applicability to the court of James VI—is not particularly applicable to James IV. More significantly, James IV died in 1513, so whatever the

Scottish court was like in 1520 would have nothing to do with him. It is not necessary that all the members of the audience know this date and recognize that it was anachronistic; however, if

Greene intended to indicate a specific historical context for the action of his play, he did a very poor job of it.

10 See Frank Humphrey Ristine, English Tragicomedy: Its Origin and History, (New York: Russell & Russell, 1963), 80, for more on the play’s significance in the development of the tragicomedy as a genre. . 320 Thus, the simplest conclusion is that Greene did not intend the play as a history of James

IV at all. If the play was not originally intended as a history specifically of James IV, most of the idiosyncrasies about the play’s text and history make more sense, and the perception of the play as shaped by known—or perhaps assumed would be a better word—history becomes clear.

The play is not accurate in its historical details, but it does present a sort of history, when considered as what Michael Oakeshott called “the practical past,” the notions of the past that people carry around with them and use to navigate their practical present. This notion of history is less concerned with historical accuracy than it is with the usefulness of assumed knowledge about the past.11 Whether it was by Greene himself or the publisher, a recognition of useful approximation of the past is clearly present in the play. Indeed, it is likely that the average audience member’s “known” history of King James IV was limited to an awareness that he married the daughter of Henry VII and that Scotland and England were not infrequently in military conflict during the previous century, which conforms to the action of the play. Even the approximate nature of the date 1520 might fit in with the average London audience member’s understanding of history, considering the period to be generally in the early sixteenth century rather than having a specific date and timeline in mind when considering past monarchs of other

British states. If the reference was included in performances, it is hard to imagine audience members catching on to the error in its date, although the date is easy enough to check for a reader of the play. Greene himself may have recognized that his story of a Scottish king who wandered from his marriage vows to an English princess was close enough to the history of

James IV to force such a connection on the play, or an unscrupulous promoter who found the manuscript after Greene’s death may have used the loose connection to historical details to sell

11 On History (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), 14-44. 321 the play, or it may have even been the response and assumption of its initial audience, but the attempt to construe the play as a history shows that the recognition of a “known” history creates particular kinds of resonances in a dramatic performance. Although Sidney claims that a poet must shape history to generic form, here the emerging form of tragicomedy gives shape to the history between England and Scotland. If Greene had intended to make clear from the beginning that he was telling the story of James IV, it would seem hard to believe that he would choose to change the name of the English princess in the story, and it would seem odd also to include just one reference to a historical date, a date after his central character had already died. In fact, if it was not Greene at all who gave the play its name but a later bookseller who wanted to make money from a dead author and a trend for historical plays, the lack of performance history and the inconsistencies in the title and the stage directions are all more or less accounted for—the title might have been any of a number of plays assumed to be no longer extant. We might be tempted to feel that the lack of specificity in some aspects could be accounted for by a fear of the great-grandson of James IV, James VI, who was then on the throne in Scotland and would soon be on the throne in England as well, but the great specificity of the title, which would surely be the most noticeable aspect of the printed text, would seem to undermine any claim to subtlety or evasiveness as a motivation for the lack of specific and accurate names in the text of the play.

Further, if anything, the one direct reference to the current historical moment seems to go out of its way to insult James VI, gratuitously taking a shot at “our court of Scotland this day.”

The length of the title and the breadth of incident it suggests, in particular, indicate that the play was intended to be sold as a history, and anecdotal evidence provided in the form of a reproduction of an original quarto cover page suggests that at least one early reader took that 322 intention seriously, as the words “or rather fiction of English and Scottish matters comicall”12 are scrawled over the title. Although clearly indicative of a rejection of the play as history, the book owner’s addition suggests the play had been read as a history. Thus, despite the clearly ahistorical aspects that so many critics have readily recognized and used to dismiss it from serious consideration as a history play, it seems clear that the play provided just enough allusion to “known” history to be recognized as a possible history of James IV, even if that history had to be imported into a play in which it was not intended to be present. It is the recognition of a known history, then, not the intentional writing of an accurate history, that allows the play to be considered as a history, and even if audiences and readers ultimately deem it ahistorical, they do so by considering the interaction between their assumed knowledge about the past the form the play takes.

When viewed through the definition of a history play as recognizable dramatic forms imposed on a series of “known” events and figures, the play’s relevance as a history becomes apparent and its specious historicity impacts its dramatic structure and meaning considerably.

First, it allows for what is one of the most common critical claims about the text, that it is a commentary upon the sitting monarch of Scotland, James VI, whose lust and indulgence might endanger himself and his relationship with England, to gain greater relevance and urgency, as it becomes part of a historical pattern that functions as a “mirror” of the current historical moment.

It is not that this “purpose of history” makes the play a history, but that it becomes a recognizable instance of a historical pattern that the Elizabethans seemed to take quite seriously: that the sins of previous kings would be paid for—if not in their own lives then in the lives of their grandchildren. Thus, as we find the usurpation of Henry IV paid for in the reign of Henry

12 Sanders, 2. 323 VI, the lusts of James IV might be punished in the life of James VI. Second, the play’s overall dramatic structure, a political morality in which a Machiavel Vice leads a monarch into cruelty, faithlessness and lust, becomes a conventional warning against such corruptions and weaknesses, now with the force of true history behind it. Indeed, Bohan indicates that he is presenting the history of the Scottish court to prove the depravity of the actual world he finds around him.

Third, it provides a comic conclusion that suggests a comic resolution to the historical conflicts presented in the play. It is accurately considered a “romance” in the Shakespearean sense or a

“tragicomedy” in the Beaumont and Fletcher sense, as the play allows for attempted murder, planned seduction—intended rape, even—and near-battles, but ends with the happy resolution of both the personal and the political conflicts in the play. The personal conflict is resolved in the gracious and forgiving actions of Dorothea, the heroine, who pretends to have been killed by

James’ machinations, and the political conflict is simultaneously concluded in the peaceful accord between England and Scotland enabled by Dorothea’s actions and James’ repentance.

This conclusion reinforces the links between the two British nation-states and also places

England in the clear position of superiority, suggesting a historical meaning provided by an exemplum, one of the core uses of history in early modern England. As a whole, the play’s generic playfulness—shaped by multiple genres but not conforming fully to any—is thus another way in which the play functions as a history, as the incidents are allowed at times to conform partly to one mode and at others to indicate a different generic construction of the events on stage.

The play, thus, draws on each of the three best-established and most well-known dramatic forms in England at the time, and considering these generic markers in a historical 324 context suggests the kinds of effects that the interplay of history and drama create—even if the author did not specifically intend them. If anything, the ahistorical aspects of the play create more interesting kinds of tension for the experience of the play as a whole: “known” history activates certain assumptions based on recognizable uses of generic convention throughout the play, but the play’s frustrating—for an audience or reader desiring historical accuracy—refusal to follow history strictly adds another dimension to the interplay.

First, although the play has a comic resolution, it opens in the mode of a tragedy, and this dramatic genre must have shaped the audience’s assumptions about the action of the play based on “known” aspects of history—even when those aspects may not be true and when the play may not ultimately deliver them. According to Jenny Sager, “Purporting to be a history play, James

IV toys with the audience’s generic assumptions. The sight of the tomb on stage at the beginning of the play” indicates a tragedy will unfold and the suggestion that a funeral will open the play might even connect the play in readers’ minds with the opening of Shakespeare’s Henry VI.13

After the induction promises to tell a story justifying Bohan’s deep hatred of the world, which also suggests a tragedy should follow, the action of the play itself starts with the establishment of peace between Scotland and England by the marriage of the daughter of the English king to the

Scottish king. This opening in “calmes” also promises a tragedy to follow,14 particularly for readers of the play, who know the title describes the title character as “slaine at Flodden.” The activation of assumptions about tragedy thus shape the opening of the play, as both genre and the play’s “known” history indicate that a tragedy should follow. The shape of the whole tragic history can be glimpsed even in the opening of the play: First, the arranged marriage starts the

13 Jenny Sager, "'When dead ones are revived': The Aesthetics of Spectacle in Robert Greene's James IV (c. 1590)." Early Modern Literary Studies 16, no. 2 (2012), accessed July 17, 2016, http://purl.org/emls/16-2/sagejame.htm. 14 Heywood, Apology for Actors, F2, left leaf. 325 play rather than concludes it, suggesting that it is a false union destined to crumble, both personally and politically. Second, the lines of the unnamed Scottish king indicate that he will be a tragic figure who already knows his tragic misstep, as he knows from the beginning that he will fail to keep his faith with his new wife, and thus will fail to keep peace with England. Upon completion of the opening marriage ceremony, the King of the Scots declares:

So let them tryumph that haue cause to joy, But wretched King, thy nuptiall knot is death: Thy Bride the breeder of thy Countries ill, For thy false heart dissenting from thy hand, Misled by loue, hast made another choyce, Another choyce, even when thou vowdst thy soule To Dorithea, Englands choycest pride, O, then thy wandering eyes bewitcht thy heart. (1.1.73-80)

This clear consciousness in the central figure of his story as a tragedy and himself as tragically flawed suggests the genre of the play from its opening, especially when combined with the idea that this is not just any Scottish king but James IV, who was known to be “slaine at Flodden,” a field in northern England. Thus, James’ claim that his “nuptiall knot is death,” a death the audience knows is at the hands of the English in battle, seems an ideal foreshadowing of the tragic outcome of his life: the generic conventions of the opening of the play seem to align perfectly with the expectations of the historical narrative, even if the character of James IV presented on stage does not conform to the details of the historical figure in the chronicles.

The play continues to suggest a tragic shape, as Greene draws on a second genre— morality—in telling his “history.” Although it is apparent that the Scottish king is already snared in the trap of his own lust, the induction suggests a political morality as much as it suggests a tragedy is to follow: Bohan’s induction warned that the king was “ouerruled with parasites” and 326 “misled by lust,” an apt description of an “everyman” king overcome by the counsel of Vices.

The play delivers a Machiavel-Vice in the character of Ateukin, a social climber who rises to be the key advisor to the king and sets up the proposed murder of Dorothea and the intended seduction of Ida. His first lines—spoken directly to the audience in an aside akin to the boasting typical of the Vice—make his character and role in the morality clear: “And now is my time by wiles and words to rise, / Greater than those that think themselves more wise” (1.1.167-68).

Throughout the play, Ateukin pours corruption into the ears of the king, such as when using sophistic Machiavellianism to convince the king to do away with Dorothea in order to be able to wed Ida:

Why, prince, it is no murther in a king, To end an-others life to saue his owne, For you are not as common people bee, Who die and perish with a fewe mens tears; But, if you faile, the state doth whole default: The realme is rent in twaine in such a losse. And Aristotle holdeth this for true: Of euills needs we must chuse the least. Then better were it that a woman died Than all the helpe of Scotland should be blent. Tis pollicie, my liege, in euerie state To cut off members that disturbe the head. And by corruption generation grows; And contraries maintaine the world and state. (4.5.35-48)

Ateukin here is a typical Vice, as he appeals to the vanity of the king by assuring him that he is

“not as common people bee,” and he uses his lust to manipulate him, as the entire premise of the intended action is to serve his carnal pleasure. At the same time, Ateukin’s words here go beyond the traditional morality Vice in his appealing to Aristotle and his disguising evil in a mask of “pollicie,” calling immoral action good government, an action typical of bad counselors 327 in the chronicles. Elsewhere, Ateukin also twists the theology of total depravity into license to sin in his effort to compel the Scottish Ida to fornicate with her king. He argues that “man at first was born to erre” (2.1.139) to convince her that her fault in giving in to the king would be venial.

The double-talking Machiavellianism of Ateukin takes on a new urgency when the play is viewed as telling the history of James IV. Viewed as history, the threat of turning the duty of the head of state into an excuse to put personal lust above morality has consequences for the whole state, England no less than Scotland. Perverted theological notions that become justifications for any desired action take on a new urgency in seeing their consequences enacted in the “history” on stage or page. Further, making Ateukin not only reflective of the corrupted policy of continental Machiavellianism but also making his agents French in national origin only reiterates a historical warning the infiltration of foreign influence upon a British court.

The morality motif is not limited to the use of a Vice figure: the elder Scots lords and

Dorothea herself function as the wise counselors and good angels that mark the oppositional drama of the morality. The bishop of St. Andrews warns the king of his impending fall early in the play, narrating the familiar story of the young king corrupted:

O king, canst thou indure to see thy court Of finest wits and judgements dispossesst, Whilst cloking craft with soothing climbes so high As each bewailes ambition is so bad? Thy father left thee, with estate and crowne, A learned councell to direct thy court, These careleslie, O king, thou casteth off, To entertain a traine of sicophants.” (2.2.119-126)

Considered as a history play, the complaints the bishop makes against the king’s corruption become a confirmation of a historical pattern, recognizable and “known” to be true because of its 328 conformity to the expected pattern. The bishop even mentions the good king his father who ruled before him, and how the youthful monarch has abandoned both his father’s ways and his gift of able counselors. The shape the morality imposes on these events is readily accepted as a known history—without reference to any chronicle source to show the events themselves— because it corresponds to the expected pattern of a young king headed into ruinous decisions for both himself and the nation as a whole. The history of kings from the biblical Rehoboam to the

English Edward II is thus understood as repeated in the life of James IV of Scotland.

Interestingly, Greene chooses to invert one of the traditional patterns of the morality, revealing a contradiction in the bishop’s claim above. Although the story of rejected counselors is the typical morality motif, Greene does not quite present it this way: the lords of the counsel all actually abandon the king due to their disappointment in him, revealing their own failure.

Before addressing his words above to the king himself, the bishop tells his fellow counselors:

since we cannot drawe His eye or judgement to discerne his faults, Since we haue spake and counsaile is not heard, I, for my part, —let others as the list, — Will leaue the court, and leaue him to his will, Least with a ruthfull eye I should behold His overthrow, which, sore I feare, is nye. (2.2.44-56)

The bishop reveals a double failure in his words: the one he sees, which he situates in the king himself as a failure to heed the warnings he and others have given, and the one his own actions indicate, which is to leave king and court, holding his own well-being above that of the nation as a whole. Such a failure breaks the expected pattern of the morality, in which the good counselors should remain true to the king, even as the abstractions of the medieval morality— typically virtues personified—must remain true to the everyman at the center of the action. 329 Considered as history, the play reveals James’ counselors’ abandonment of him to his Vices as a historical warning against such disloyalty in the court.

Greene’s inversion of the moral pattern creates further “historical” significances: the one counselor who maintains the position of a true “good angel” is his forlorn wife, the English

Dorothea. She not only keeps faith with her husband and stays by his side—even though his inability to “discerne his faults” hurts her personally in a way it does not hurt the lords of the counsel—but also rebukes the lords who plan to leave: “Wil you not stay? Then, lordings, fare you well! / Tho you forsake your king, the Heauens, I hope, / Will fauour him through mine incessant prayer” (2.2.101-103). Dorothea, thus, becomes not only an abstract ideal of both wifely duty to her husband and moral strength in an advisor to a king but also a historical manifestation of the superiority of the English: the “historical” English wife of the corrupted

Scottish king is the only “good angel” left to defend the monarch besieged by his own lust and the “cloking craft” of Ateukin. When considered as a history, the play thus reinforces a nationalistic view of England’s position of moral—not merely political or military—superiority in the British Isles.

Dorothea herself, in her dedication to her husband and her strong mind, is not merely able to keep herself morally above reproach but is also able to bring the entire play to a comic close.

The morality play begins to agitate against the tragic shape of the play as the play heads toward its conclusion. Although moralities, as explored in chapter 2 and 3, can end with either the salvation or the condemnation of the central figure, the shape is meant to suggest a purposeful ordering of history in which right prevails. The hints at a specifically comic resolution are apparent as the morality heads into its conclusion: Dorothea is able not only to foil the plot to kill 330 her but also to make it seem as if it had succeeded. Such tricks—especially when revealed directly on stage, making the audience privy to the means designed to bring about a happy resolution—are the marks of comedy, as her “plot” is designed to bring the conflict to a head in such a way that the truly guilty will be judged and punished, the wayward will be called back to the right path, marriage unity will be re-affirmed, and the kingdoms will be unified. After she escapes death, Nano, her dwarf servant, advises her in terms that suggest the means to bring a comedy out of her near tragedy: “Couer these sorrowes with the vaile of ioy, / And hope the best, for-why this warre will cause / A great repentance in your husbands minde” (5.2.72-74). In response, Dorothea confirms her plan is for reconciliation, not revenge: “for my husbands care /

Consumeth mee and wounds mee to the heart” (5.2.89-90). The notion of her suffering as instrumental in bringing about the happy resolution of the problems of the play is an affirmation of the Christian view of history, giving purpose to suffering in its ability to bring about a greater historical outcome. Having thus escaped death, she must be seen as almost certain to succeed in her intention to bring about political unity and her husband’s redemption. However, particularly for a reader of the play, its status as a history creates a special tension regarding these generic markers of comedy, because the near-certainty of a promised comic resolution is starkly contradicted by the title of the play, which promises to show the king “slaine at Flodden.”

Doubtless to the surprise of many early modern readers, the conclusion of the play nonetheless delivers on the promise of Dorothea’s designs perfectly: the morality play resolution presents an ideal Christian comic conclusion and a perfectly unified classical comedy: the guilty

Ateukin is punished and the sinning king is redeemed; the marriages of the play are happily unified and the kingdoms are peacefully united. Ateukin, considered as a real-life Machiavel, is 331 thus historical confirmation of the pattern of God’s earthly justice administered in history as well as a picture of God’s final judgment at the close of time. Indeed, Ateukin, once his machinations are known and his fall is certain, gives his own account of his fall almost perfectly echoing the language of chroniclers in choosing a figure as an illustration of de casibus tragedy:

“Where shall I hide my head? I knowe the Heauens Are iust, and will reuenge; I know my sinnes Exceede compare. (5.2.17-19)

Ateukin’s words affirm his own guilt but might be construed as repentance, if not for his suggested solution to his problem: not confession but murder to eliminate those with knowledge of his misdeeds. His dying words make the historical lesson of his own life both clear and applicable to others: “Thus God doth worke with those that purchase fame / By flattery, and make their prince their game” (5.2.39-40). For an audience responding to the story of the

Scottish King James IV, Ateukin’s downfall is framed as a historical instance of the principle of

God’s “iust … reuenge,” a picture of the final judgment of sinners and a political warning to those who rise by the same means that Ateukin does. Historically speaking, God’s providence, as much as the dramatic genre, brings about the desired resolution between husband and wife, nation and nation, while punishing the truly wicked.

The conclusion of the play is comic, however, and so judgment of sinners cannot be the only resolution—there must also be redemption of repentant sinners. The Christian picture of redemption is accomplished in the Scottish king himself. The king echoes a king in a political morality when he begins to see the outcome of his poor judgment, lust, and rash decisions:

“flattering tongues by whom I was misled / Haue laid a snare to spoyle my state and me” (5.6.29-

30). Dorothea herself, upon confronting her husband, construes his actions in much the same 332 way: “Youth hath misled; tut, but a little fault! / ‘Tis kingly to amend what is amisse” (5.6.160-

161).15 Once his wife is “miraculously” raised from the dead and restored to him, the Scottish king himself apologizes for his past wrongs:

Thou English king, pardon my former youth And pardon, courteous queen, my great misdeed, And, for assurance of my after-life, I take religious vowes before my God To honour thee for father, her for wife” (5.6.186-189).

Although the king’s words here seem unequal to the gravity of his offence, they at least complete the expected form of a Christian picture of repentance, framed in the language of religion. James echoes marriage vows in his repentance, concluding this history in the mode of classical comedy.

Further, he not only asks pardon for past sins, he also suggests genuine repentance in making a change in his life going forward. The implication of the scene as a version of the final redemption could not be clearer, as he even indicates that he makes the change in his behavior

“for assurance of [his] after-life,” which simultaneously suggests the rest of his earthly life beyond this historical moment and his eternal destination.

The comic resolution of the play is thus a picture of the culmination of Christian history in a single “historical” instance, but it is also suggestive of a comic resolution to the political conflict presented. Before Dorothea reveals herself, an English lord observes the opposing armies of the British Isles with words that echo throughout the charged history of Scotland and

England, saying, “How many swordes, deere princes, see I drawne! / A desperate diuision in those lands / Which if they ioyne in one commaund the world” (5.6.100-103). Amidst the

15 The ease with which she continues to excuse her lustful, murderous husband and king is one of the more unsettling aspects of the close of the play. She knows not only that he desired another woman but also that he was willing to see her killed in order to be able to fulfill his lust. 333 despair over the impending conflict is the hope of a possible version of future history—if these kingdoms could be united within a comic circle of peace, amity, and unity, they would be the greatest power on the whole earth. The play also offers a picture of this ultimate resolution:

Dorothea appears at the battle site and commands that the strife cease, saying, “since you kings your warres began by me, / Since I am safe, returne, —surcease your fight” (5.6.150-51).

Dorothea places this new-found peace and unity in a religious context as the historical restoration of the right as God’s will:

Ah royall husband, see what God hath wrought: Thy foe is now thy friend! ……………………………. …………….… these nations if the[y] ioyne, What monarch with his liegemen in this world Dare but encounter you in open fielde? (5.6.178-82)

To an audience or reader near the end of Elizabeth’s reign who views this as the story of James

IV, these words are charged with historical significance. As Ruth Hudson points out, taken as history, the play seems to be “taking part in the widespread discussion of the English succession,” and these lines in particular “point out the desirability of harmony, and perhaps of eventual unity, between the two kingdoms.”16 The conclusion of the play, both in its portrayal of individual judgment and redemption and in its portrayal of the course of political history between these two nations, frames its “historical” outcomes as completed and perfect actions accomplished by the will of God, but Dorothea’s lines look forward to a future history of unity, as well, situated within the contingent historical moment of the audience. The conclusion is, thus, by no means arbitrary—it completes the expected comic resolution of all the conflicts

16 667. Hudson does not suggest that this is merely the imposition of the audience if considered a history play. In fact, she is fairly insistent upon the idea that Greene himself designed the play as about James IV, primarily because it strengthens her argument that the links to his great-grandson James VI are entirely intentional. 334 according to generic conventions and presents them as taking place in the “true” history of

Scotland and England, making them applicable to the historical moment of the audience.

Thus, for the reader or playgoer that takes the play seriously as a history, the

“embeddedness” that Griffin speaks of or the “contingency” that Kastan claims as central to the form of the history play complicates this conclusion. If the conclusion is a recognizable version of the ultimate end of Christian history, it is not the end of the story of the Scottish monarch

King James IV, who, the title reminds us, is to be “slaine at Flodden” by the English, which also means that it is not truly the end of the story of Scottish–English relations either. Warned by the title, the audience—or at least the reader—that “knows” James’ history and expects a tragedy ending with the king’s death at Flodden Field cannot help but see this “ultimate” conclusion as contingent, embedded in the midst of a chain of historical events in which the comic close presented soon falls apart. However, the end of the play remains—perhaps even more insistently when seen as a history though Greene may have never intended it to be seen as such—a “true” picture of the close of history, but the view of history as continuous creates tension with the view of history as purposefully directed to bring about unity and redemption. It is as much a mistake to ignore the “truth” of the play’s conclusion as genuine as it is to dismiss the effect that knowledge of the history beyond the scope of the play has on that conclusion: it is the tension created between the two that makes the play—despite its patently ahistorical elements—worthy of consideration as a “true” history. Rather than dismissing the play as violating some line of historicity, audiences and readers can consider the deviations from both known history and generic form as part of the process of responding to the play as both history and drama. Thus, perhaps, rather than seeking to find a line of historical deviation that is allowable in a history 335 play, critics might consider that the dynamic process of considering that line is itself part of the effect of historical drama.

It is this kind of interplay between genre and history, in which genre shapes history and manipulates historical expectations and history is made both to conform to and to invert generic forms and conventions, that gives the history play its unique place in the early modern dramatic canon. In this sense, no play that touches on historical figures and events can be excluded from this kind of consideration, and no history can be free from dramatic conventions and expectations. The very chronicles themselves—often seen as the formless source that playwrights drew from to shape events into drama—evince an understanding of dramatic form that gives meaning to events that might otherwise be seen as merely lists of events. As explored in the earlier chapters, Holinshed frequently narrativizes according to generic conventions within his history, seeing a providential hand in the unity of marriages, drawing a moral lesson from a dissolute king like Richard II, and even directly labeling events as tragic. However, plays transcend mere narrative, as they become a space in which these kinds of “emplotments,” as

White calls them, can be both enacted and contested.

The early modern blurring of the use of “story” and “history,” although certainly something distinguished between in some early modern uses, helps us to consider the ways in which history is necessarily a story. Rather than seeing the interchangeability of these terms as a problem for defining a genre based on the titles of plays, the confusion of these terms helps us to consider that history does not exist as history without genre, or at least not without “those retrospective and prospective emplotments that impose generic form upon the past.”17 Early

17 Marsha Robinson, “The Historiographic Methodology of King John,” in King John: New Perspectives. (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), 30. 336 modern writers of history—in chronicles as well as plays—understood this themselves.

Nonetheless, Thomas Blundeville opens his True Order and Methode of Wryting and Reading

Hystories by defining the task of the writer of history as if it were a mere matter of maintaining a record of events: “An Hystorye ought to declare the thynges in suche order, as they were done.”18 However, the very next sentence makes clear that this task involves constructing a narrative, immediately moving to a purposeful cause and effect structure: “And bycause euery thing hath hys beginning, augmentacion, state, declination, and ende: The writer ought therfore to tell the things, so as therby a man may perceive and discerne” this development in all aspects of history.19 An imposition of a narrative structure may not, according to Blundeville, be the first duty of an historian, but it is a necessary task if he desires his readers to “perceive and discerne.” Thus, it is not so much that playwrights composing historical dramas were imposing form on something formless, let alone that the drama itself is truly formless, but that varying levels of sophistication, compression, and dramatic unity create different kinds of tension in exploring the interplay between dramatic genres and known history, turning a story into a representation of action in which the audience itself is engaged in the making of meaning, able to

“perceive and discerne” on multiple levels at once.

If it is true that history cannot exist without some notion that it is a story, it is equally true that the most interesting history plays never seem to conform perfectly to generic expectations implicit in their forms, and this tension between form and the facts—or assumed knowledge—of history creates unique effects in the drama. For example, most critics consider Richard III a moral tragedy, and yet I discuss it in a chapter on comic form in history, and many critics note its

18 Thomas Blundeville, The True Order and Methode of Wryting and Reading Hystories… (London: William Seres, 1574), accessed June 18, 2015, EEBO. 19 Ibid. 337 “comedic” resolution. Genres bend to the needs of history every bit as much as history is wrenched to conform to generic norms. For instance, Shakespeare’s most tragic histories—not only Richard III, but also King John, Richard II, and Macbeth—all conform to an apparently self-imposed restriction to suggest order rather than chaos in their conclusions. Macbeth concludes with the new king Malcolm announcing the undoing of all the wrong that Macbeth has done, from establishing his own rightful rule to calling back home those Macbeth banished, and

Richard II mitigates its elegiac tone in Henry IV’s last speech by his announcement of his intention to go “to the Holy Land, / To wash this blood off” (5.6.49-50).20 Even King John, surely the bitterest history Shakespeare wrote, ends with the restoration of order and the hopeful promise that “Nought shall make us rue,/ If England to itself do rest but true” (5.7.117-18). The fact that any history is embedded into the larger story of the nation necessarily limits the kind of tragic conclusion possible. Further, the notion of a providential will guiding history, an assumption shared by the larger society, if not by every playwright of historical drama, complicates conclusions, as God’s will is often claimed—though not necessarily endorsed by the playwright—as shaping historical action to deliberate ends. Beginnings, too, are complicated by the genre of history, as recognizable generic openings—such as Henry VII’s or Henry IV’s declarations of order in the realm at the start of Perkin Warbeck and 1 Henry IV, respectively— are challenged and revised by both the audience’s knowledge of preceding history and the dialogue of the play itself filling in the back story more completely. These tensions create an opportunity for playwrights and their audiences to explore both drama and history, and for critics

20 That the audience knows Henry IV will not actually do so further complicates the close of the play: Henry wishes to turn the tragedy of Richard II into his own comedy by redeeming himself but will fail to do so. 338 to consider these plays in a way distinct from simply the “purposes of history” or as “mirrors” of political thought and action in their original contexts.

If a playwright such as Shakespeare would be expected to create a sophisticated interaction between genre and history, it is worth noting that even a playwright as didactic and unsophisticated as John Bale also found that his formal impositions on historical events were unequal to the history he presented. His need to replace his fallen—but not truly sinful—King

John with the abstraction Imperial Majesty in the close of the play is a tacit acknowledgement that his notion of the absolute authority of the monarch must be allegorized to be applicable to the historical world it purports to portray. Further, after banishing the Vices in morality fashion,

Sedition returns and must be vigilantly guarded against, because contingent history does not grant permanent comic conclusions—they must be forcefully maintained. As noted in every chapter, no history play offers a final conclusion to history, and every genre offers both shapes and conventions to dramatize an event straightforwardly or to subvert those conventions, creating distinct historical meanings by the ways in which events deviate from the generic pattern.

This pattern of near-conformity to generic norms and use of and alterations to the known history of an audience was seized upon by early modern playwrights, and they created a new kind of drama—if not necessarily a completely separate third genre of drama—through this generic playfulness. Exploring this relationship between form and history offers ample opportunity for further study to critics, as the enormous corpus of criticism on the contingent and contextual aspects of historical meaning generated in the past fifty years can be placed in conversation with the expectations and formal structures of early modern drama. History plays 339 have their sources both in the historical record—in forms from ballad to landmarks and place names to chronicles—and in the conventions and shapes of dramatic genres. However, both kinds of sources are also already interrelated, as historical actions give shape to genres and imposing genres on those actions turns them from incident to history and gives meaning to histories as entire stories, which are then turned back to actions in drama. The interplay between historical events and genres produces unique effects and layers of meaning for audiences and readers of early modern plays about history and exploring these relationships helps us to understand not only the genre of the early modern history play but also the natures of both history and drama themselves. It is in this same interplay that we make our own meanings of the past and shape dramas of our own histories.

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