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ENGLISH RENAISSANCE By the same author SHAKESPEARE AND DECORUM TRAGEDY

T. McAlindon

MALCOLM. Now we'll together; and the chance of goodness Be like our warranted quarrel! Why are you silent? MACDUFF. Such welcome and unwelcome things at once 'Tis hard to reconeile.

(, rv.iii.l36-9) © Thomas Edward McAlindon, 1986

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended), or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WCIE 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

First edition 1986 Reprinted (with alterations) 1988

Published by 1HE MACMILLAN PRESS LID Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG2l 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data McAlindon, T. English Renaissance tragedy l. English (Tragedy) - History and criticism 2. English drama - 17th century - History and criticism 3. English drama -Early modem and Elizabethan, 1500-1600 -History and criticism I. Title 822'.0512'09 PR658.T7 ISBN 978-0-333-46365-9 ISBN 978-1-349-10180-l (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-l-349-10180-l This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastboume ToM. A. MeA

•What I have done is yours, what I have to doe is yours.' Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgements X

List of Editions Used xi

List of Abbreviations Xlll

PART I

1 COMMON ELEMENTS 3

PART II

2 : 55

3 82

4 CYRIL TOURNEUR (?):The Revenger's Tragedy 135

5 153

6 193

Notes 236

Index 264

vii Preface

This study of English Renaissance tragedy differs from others of its kind in the degree of attention given to the seminal achievements of Kyd and Marlowe. Although I have not included a chapter on Shakespeare (it is difficult to see how justice could be done to him in a work of this scope), I do believe none the less that his and those of his contemporaries are mutually illuminating. I have tried to establish this point in my long opening chapter (Part I), an account of recurrent elements in Renaissance tragic tradition which draws on both Shakespearean and non­ Shakespearean texts.

A reprint gives me the opportunity to refer to an important study which appeared after the typescript of my own book was delivered to the publishers -Jonathan Dollimore's Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (1984). Fundamental to the interpretive method of this work-and to the (Marxist) New Historicism of which it is a pioneering representative - is the assumption that the contradictions and ambiguities of Renaissance tragedy are not linked by the dramatists in any meaningful way to the idea of a transhistorical human nature, or to the conception of pre-existent laws encoded in universal nature; rather they were generated by the socio­ political contingencies of a precise historical juncture (England poised between feudalism and capitalism, and on the verge of revolution) and are best understood in strict relation to that context. My own book indicates that this twin assumption is in need of serious modification. It shows that the dramatists' interpretation of tragic conflict and change was profoundly affected by ideas about nature derived from pre-modern cosmology: in particular, by the radically paradoxical notion of the world - both macrocosm and microcosm - as a dynamic system of interacting opposites in which all unity, order, and identity are intrinsically unstable. Ideas of this kind (whether entertained as truths or as reasonable working hypotheses) enabled the tragedians to suggest the universal in the local, the omnitemporal in the contemporary, and the symbolic in the literal, and so to realise a conception of themselves not only as abstracts and brief chronicles of their time but also as dramatic holding the mirror up to nature in all its acknowledged complexity. T.McA Hull, July 1987

ix Acknowledgements

For patient reading and helpful criticism I am indebted to three friends: Peter McClure, Robin Headlam Wells, and (especially) Rowland Wymer. My principal debt, of course, is to the many editors, scholars, and critics who have been in this field before me. The limits of space and the imperfections of memory mean that the extent of my dependence on their work is indicated in the endnotes less fully than true justice would require.

X List of Editions Used

Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, The Maid's Tragedy, ed. Howard B. Norland, Regents Renaissance Drama Series (London: Arnold, 1968). , Bussy D' Ambo is, ed. Nicholas Brooke, The Revels Plays (London: Methuen, 1964). --, The Plays and Poems, vol. I: The Tragedies, ed. Thomas Marc Parrott (London, Routledge, 1910). , The Broken Heart, ed. Donald K. Anderson, Regents Renaissance Drama Series (London: Arnold, 1968). --, The Chronicle History of Perkin Warbeck, ed. Peter Ure, The Revels Plays (London: Methuen, 1968). --,'Tis Pity She's a Whore, ed. N. W. Bawcutt, Regents Renaissance Drama Series (London: Arnold, 1966). , The Works, ed. C. H. Herford and P. and E. Simpson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925-52). Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, ed. Philip Edwards, The Revels Plays (London: Methuen, 1959). Christopher Marlowe, The Plays, ed. Roma Gill (London: Oxford University Press, 1971). , Antonio and Mel/ida, ed. G. K. Hunter, Regents Renaissance Drama Series (London: Arnold, 1965). --,Antonio's Revenge, ed. G. K. Hunter, Regents Renaissance Drama Series (London: Arnold, 1966). --, , ed. Martin L. Wine, Regents Renaissance Drama Series (London: Arnold 1965). Thomas Middleton, Women Beware Women, ed. J. R. Mulryne, The Revels Plays (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1975). --,and , , ed. N. W. Bawcutt, The Revels Plays (London: Methuen, 1961). , Complete Works, ed. Peter Alexander (London and Glasgow: Collins, 1951). Cyril Tourneur, The A theist's Tragedy, ed. Irving Ribner, The Revels Plays (London: Methuen, 1964).

xi xii List of Editions Used

--{?), The Revenger's Tragedy, ed. R. A. Foakes, The Revels Plays (London: Methuen, 1966). John Webster, The Duchess of Ma/fi, ed. John Russell Brown, The Revels Plays, 2nd edn (London: Methuen, 1964). --, , ed. John Russell Brown, The Revels Plays (London: Methuen, 1964). List of Abbreviations

CQ Critical Quarterly EIC Essays in Criticism E&S Essays and Studies Ell/ English Literary History ELN English Language Notes ESC in Canada ETh Elizabethan Theatre ILR Iowa Law Review JEGP Journal of English and Germanic Philology JWCI Journal of the Warburg and Courtau/d Institutes MLQ Modern Language Quarterly MLR Modern Language Review MP Modern Philology N&Q Notes and Queries OED Oxford English Dictionary PBA Proceedings of the British Academy PU Papers on Language and Literature PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association ofAmerica PQ Philological Quarterly REL Review of RenD· Renaissance Drama RES Review of English Studies s.d Stage direction SEL Studies in English Literature Shaks Shakespeare Studies ShS Shakespeare Survey SP Studies in Philology SUAS Stratford-upon-Avon Studies TDR Tulane Drama Review TLS Times Literary Supplement TSL Tennessee Studies in Literature TSU Texas Studies in Language and Literature YR Yale Review

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