The Absence of America on the Early Modern Stage by Gavin R. Hollis A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (English Language and Literature) in The University of Michigan 2008 Doctoral Committee: Professor Valerie J. Traub, Chair Professor Michael C. Schoenfeldt Associate Professor Susan M. Juster Associate Professor Susan Scott Parrish © Gavin Hollis 2008 To my parents ii Acknowledgements In an episode of The Simpsons, Marge urges Bart not to make fun of graduate students because “they’ve just made a terrible life choice.” This may be true, but one of the many advantages of this “life choice” is that I have met, been inspired by, and become firm friends with an array of people on both sides of the pond. The first debt I owe is to my advisors at the University of Michigan, who have seen this project through its many stages of confusion and incoherence. Mike Schoenfeldt, Scotti Parrish, and Sue Juster have been supportive, critical, rigorous, inventive, and excellent company. My biggest debt of gratitude is owed however to Valerie Traub, the chair of my dissertation committee, whose influence on this project and has been, and I hope will continue to be, immense. I’m also indebted to faculty at Trinity Hall, Cambridge and at The Shakespeare Institute who have shaped me as a scholar before I made it these shores. I am especially grateful to Peter Holland, who, it is no exaggeration to say, taught me how to read Shakespeare. Thank you also to John Jowett, Drew Milne, and John Lennard. Michigan had proved to be a great environment for me to develop my ideas. I have been lucky that my time here has coincided with a marvellous cast of early modern graduate students at the University of Michigan (that is, students who study early modern literature, not students from the early modern period…). In particular I am grateful to my immediate colleagues and friends, Kentston Bauman, David Lavinsky, Amy Rodgers, and Chad Thomas, who have read chapters and provided enormously useful feedback over a bottle of wine or a trip to the Ypsi-Arbor bowling alley. I also want to thank Laura Williamson Ambrose, Marjorie Rubright, Aaron McCollough, Holly Dugan, Stephanie Batkie, Ari Friedlander, Ori Weisberg, Sabiha Ahmed, and Jonathan Smith. I am especially grateful to my excellent friends Tamara Bhalla, Elspeth Healey, Emily Lutenski, Ji-Hyae Park, Korey Jackson, and Ben Stroud, for reading chapter snippets, for iii accompanying me on study-dates, for providing general solidarity, and for mocking my Britishness. Of the faculty and staff at the University of Michigan I have benefited from the wisdom of Gregg Crane (not least for some much-needed crisis management), Sidonie Smith, Barbara Hodgdon (for her hospitality, camaraderie, and pointing me towards Shakespeare in Love), Linda Gregerson, Steven Mullaney, Doug Trevor, Bill Ingram, Vivasvan Soni, Marjorie Levinson, Anne Herrmann, Anne Curzan, Adela Pinch, Susan Najita, Martha Vicinus, Joshua Miller, Richard Bailey, Terri Tinkle, John Whittier Ferguson, Sunil Agnani, Peter Ho Davies, Jan Burgess, Lori Scott, Bonnie Campbell, Senia Vasquez, Richard Able, Megan Holmes, Philip Deloria, and Michael McDonald. Outside of Michigan I am grateful for the support of a number of scholars, in particular Elly Lowe and Paul Prescott, old friends from my Shakespeare Institute days. Thank you also to Cristina Alfar, M.J. Kidnie, Jeff Masten, Jean Howard, Stephanie Elsky, Catherine Armstrong, Matthew Edney, Catherine Richardson, James Mardock, Ralph Alan Cohen, Alan Dessen, Daryl Palmer, Mary Floyd-Wilson, Martin Brückner, Andrea Stevens, Jim Ketchum, John Hébert, Stephen Orgel, Jonathan Burton, Andrew Fitzmaurice, and Carol Rutter. I am also grateful for the assistance of Karl Longstreth at the map library in the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library, Mary Pedley and Don Wilcox at the Clements’ Library, Peter Barber and Catherine Delano-Smith at the British Library, Penny Fussell at the Drapers’ Company, Pauline Sidell at the Grocers’ Company, Farah Kareem-Cooper at the Globe, Tom Sander at the Washington Map Society, and Jim Shaw and Kate Welch at the Shakespeare Institute Library. Thank you also to my good friends for all their support both academic and otherwise: Jamie Olson, David Ruderman, Jackie George, John Cords, Latha Reddy, Olivera Jokic, Joanna Paterson, Taryn Hakala, Jenny Sorensen, Christa Vogelius, Casie Legette, Angie Berkley, Dargie Anderson, Charlotte Boulay, Elizabeth Ames Staudt, Lowell Brower, Britta Ameel, Mike McGriff, Michael Shilling, Anna Barker, T. Hetzel, David West Brown, Ray McDaniel, Patrick O’Keffe, and Stashu Kybartas; and to non-Michiganders: Sophie Milton, Daniel Neill, Daisy Heath, Polly Hubner, Madge Worrall, Viv Stern, Kera McArthur and the McArthur clan, Clare iv Wigfall, Ian Bartram, Catherine Mattison, Katherine Scott, Scott Anderson, and Nick Waywell (even if he always thought that the project about the north was more interesting). And, finally, thank you to my family for supporting me with this crazy scheme: to my grandmother Joan, to my brother Richard and my sister Patricia, and to my parents Andrea and Malcolm, to whom this dissertation is dedicated. v Table of Contents Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………… ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………….iii List of Figures …………………………………………………………………...........................viii Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………………….. ix Introduction: “What country friends is this?” I. “My story starts at sea…” ………………………………….....................1 II. America in English Consciousness …………………..……...…………. 4 III. The Literature of Empire? ……………………………………................7 IV. America and “the Critical Mass” …………………………....................13 V. The Absence of America on the Early Modern Stage; or Nell’s Nose …………………………………………………………………….........18 VI. The Work Ahead ………………………………………………….…....24 Notes ……………………………………………….............................. 26 Chapter One: America in Asides ……………………………………………………………... 32 I. “Of Virginia there are so many tractates”: Promotion by Print and Pulpit ………………………………………………….....................................34 II. “Ingenious Verbalists”: Rumour and Rebuttal in Jamestown and London …………………………………………………………………….........42 III. “Blowen abroad […] by players”: Eastward Ho! and anti-Americanism …………………………………………………….................................46 IV. “To suffer no Idle persons in Virginea”: Colonialist Anti-theatricalism …………………………….................................................................... 51 V. Virginia in the Atlantic World ……………………………................... 57 VI. “The Liscentious Vaine of Stage Poets” ……………………………… 62 1. Investors, Settlers, Savages …………………………..63 2. “I had rather send her to Virginia”……………………67 3. Commodities and Conversion ……………..................72 VII. The Anti-Colonial Stage? …………………………...............................77 Notes……………………………………………………………………78 Chapter Two: “Altogether estrangfull, and Indian like” I. Indian and Indian-like……………………………………...............…...86 II. Indian Conversion in The Memorable Maske ………………………… 92 III. Civic Indians …………………………………………………….........101 IV. Indians “singing and dancing wildly”: Four Plays, or Moral Interludes, in One ……………………………………………................................107 V. The Salvage and Deformed Slave ………………………………......... 114 VI. From Indian-like to Indian ………………………………………..…...126 VII. The Invention of the Indian ………………………………...…….........141 Notes……………………………………………………………………143 vi Chapter Three: Playing Indian I. The Naked Indian?...……………………………………………..........154 II. Clothing the Indian …………………………………….......................160 III. Orlando’s “Indian Shape” ……………………………………….........168 IV. “Christians imitating Saluages”: Becoming Indian in The Fatal Marriage ………………………………………...................................................180 V. “Enter […] as Indians”: The City Madam ……………………………190 VI. “This Wash’d Off”: Removing Disguise, Rooting out Indians ………198 VII. Playing Indian, Playing Christian ……………………………….........203 Notes…………………………………………………………………..205 Chapter Four: Staging America I. “You frequent Plays, Do you not?” ……………………………...…...217 II. “A true Mapp and face of the whole country”: Cartography and Colonialism …………………………………………………………...224 III. “Two or three hours travaile over a few leaves”: Reading and Writing the New World …………………………………........................................234 IV. “Or else the tale will not be conceived”: Imagining America ………..244 V. “You were e’en as good go to Virginia …”: Investing in America in Bartholomew Fair ……………………………..……………………...250 VI. The Two (or Three) Americas of The Sea Voyage ………………….. 259 Notes ……………………………………………….............................268 Conclusion: The Absence of The Tragedy of The Plantation of Virginia ……….................277 Notes …………………………………………………………….........287 Figures …………………………………………………………………..................................... 290 Appendix: Timeline of English Involvement in the Atlantic World ……………...................... 301 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………………... 323 vii List of Figures Figure 1. Inigo Jones, An Indian Torchbearer, for George Chapman and Inigo Jones, The Memorable Maske (1613) ……………………………...…………………….. 291 Figure 2. Cesare Vecellio, “Donzella Africana dell’Indie,” from Habiti Antichi et Moderni (1598) …………………………………………………………........................ 292 Figure 3. Inigo Jones, Indians, for Aurelian Townsend and Inigo Jones, Tempe Restord (1632) ………………………………………………………………………….293 Figure 4.