University of Alberta
"Nought unlike the Amazonian Queene": Early Modern Political Discourse, Amazon Women, and Elizabeth I
by
Laura May Schechter
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in English
Department of English & Film Studies
©Laura May Schechter Fall 2011 Edmonton, Alberta
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1+1 Canada For my family
"All this was done by a simple bird
from a green branch."
--Pablo Neruda, "Spring" Abstract
This dissertation examines discursive intersection and failure in representations of Elizabeth I as an Amazon or otherwise martial woman. While the Amazon shared with Elizabeth a public presentation of militaristic prowess, national leadership, beauty, and the regulated use of sexuality, the former could also signal the points at which discrete representational strategies for Elizabeth overlapped, collided, or otherwise became untenable. This project suggests that the Amazon woman marks a space for the subversion of conceptions of female power and authority, particularly when those conceptions appear to be naturalized, uncomplicated, or infallible. This study further maintains that early modern literary treatments of the Amazon woman contribute to larger discussions about and with Elizabeth, as various authors and courtiers attempted to engage with, work through, and reconfigure various aspects of female rule.
Chapter One focuses on Sir Walter Ralegh's Discoverie of Guiana (1596) and Ralegh's attempts to engage simultaneously with discursive expectations for male patronage and friendship, courtly love, and travel and exploration literature.
Chapter Two examines Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590 and 1596), as various literary depictions of Elizabeth suggest popular and courtly anxieties about the queen's political succession, and the ramifications of representational strategies that focused on Elizabeth's virginal chastity as a site of monarchical authority. Chapter Three investigates descriptions of female physical abnormality-
-the Amazon woman's monomasty and Elizabeth's rumoured extra, vaguely hymeneal membrane—and their connection to apparently naturalized conceptions of femininity, motherhood, women's (mis)use of authority, and sexuality. Chapter
Four considers the subversive possibilities for allusions to Boudicca and
Penthesilea in nationalist and encomiastic historiographies, texts that attempt to construct authoritative, honourable origins and histories for the English people.
The Coda examines Queen Anna's participation in English court masques.
Specifically, I suggest that The Masque of Blacknesse (1605) and The Masque of
Beauty (1608) become sites for critical analysis of the gendered implications for patronage and female authority in the masculinized Jacobean court. This dissertation contributes to academic work on Elizabethan and Jacobean court culture; monarchical representation and self-presentation; and conventional and subversive iterations of femininity, sexuality, female rule, and female authority. Acknowledgements
This project has required the help of so many, and I am grateful to all of you for your friendship, love, and support. My years at the University of Alberta have been full of laughter, camaraderie, and commiseration. Although I'm frequently accused of being entirely too independent, the completion of my dissertation is proof of my reliance on you.
My first thanks must go to my wonderful committee members. Thank you to Sylvia Brown, Patricia Demers, and Corrinne Harol for meetings that felt like conversations, not interrogations. Thank you for your encouragement and for providing such exceptional models for academic work. Yours are shadows in which I've been happy to walk.
Sylvia, thank you for being so certain that I would uncover the central aspects of each chapter. If you ever had doubts about my ability to finish, I was blissfully unaware. I was lucky to find a supportive mentor who allowed me such a productive blend of push and pull. Thank you also for showing me that a healthy, happy balance can be achieved between work and private life.
Patricia, thank you for always having a kind word in the hallway and for providing such an encyclopaedic knowledge of early modern women. My dissertation actually began when I was an MA student in your seminar on early modern women translators. I noticed the brief appearance of an Amazon woman in Margaret Tyler's The Mirrour of Princely Deeds, and I immediately thought of Britomart and Radigund in The Faerie Queene, and Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream. I wondered what work the Amazons were really doing in those texts, and I knew that I had a PhD project to pursue.
Corrinne, thank you for pushing me to find my own voice and to become more confident in my arguments. Your questions and comments undoubtedly made for stronger chapters. Thank you also for your willingness to read drafts while out of town and on sabbatical. Even with geographical distance, you were always the first reader to respond with suggestions.
Thank you to Ted Bishop, for chairing my defense, and to Rob Merrett, for participating as my departmental examiner. Dr. Merrett, you also provided thoughtful comments as a reader for my MA research project, completed in 2005, so I was pleased to share some of my more recent work with you. Thank you, Lesley Cormack, for generously taking time away from your work as Dean of Arts to act as my internal-external examiner. Thank you to Kathryn Schwarz, for agreeing to be my external examiner, and for quite literally writing the book on Amazon women in early modern English literature. Dr. Schwarz, your supportive, engaging comments will be invaluable as I begin to consider the alterations necessary for publishing my dissertation. Thank you as well to Carolyn Sale for chairing my candidacy exam; to Beverly Lemire, for your helpful questions during my candidacy exam, and to Rick Bowers, both for your participation in my candidacy exam, and for your general acts of goodwill and support throughout my time in the PhD. Lastly, thank you to MEMI participants John Considine, Michael Fox, David Gay, Isobel Grundy, and Stephen Reimer for providing less official contributions and support over the years.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the wonderful support staff in the Department of English & Film Studies. Kim Brown made the grad school paperwork seem easy, and Mary Marshall Durrell provided amazing help with teaching matters. Liz Kuiken was an invaluable resource for book ordering, and I appreciated her work in building up the Salter Reading Room as a resource for undergraduate and graduate students in the department. I'm saddened to see what's become of that room in recent years. My thanks go out to Kris Calhoun and the office staff- especially Marcie Whitecotton-Carroll, Carolyn Laverdiere, and Linda Thompson—for helping me with all of my administrative needs. Thank you all for sharing your gossip, baking, and laughter!
Thank you to the lovely staff at the Folger Shakespeare Library, especially Erik Castillo, who made my research trip both pleasant and productive. I only wish that I could have spent more time taking advantage of your remarkable collection. Thank you also to the many people who made my research trip to England and Scotland so informative and useful, especially the employees and volunteer guides at Hampton Court Palace, Hatfield House, Woburn Abbey, Windsor Castle, the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh Castle, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, and the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
Thank you to my amazing, gorgeous friends who have kept me afloat through coursework, candidacy exams, and dissertation writing. I've been lucky to know those of you who played soccer on the Kicking Balls, sang Rock Band and karaoke, hung out at the Garneau, ate potluck dinners, knitted, shared your work, laughed, or cried with me. You know who you are, but special thanks to Jenn Bell, Dave Briggs, Mary Chan, Allison Fieldberg, Kristine Kowalchuk, Shama Rangwala, Matt Rea, Lisa Ann Robertson, Jen Sheckter, Amie Shirkie, and Margrit Talpalaru. Pam Astbury, Lydia Guerra, Julie Jensen, Carly Mens, Renee Wears Robertson, Jacqui Stephens, Jackie Wong, Tali Yousif, Karine Hopper, Vickie Miernicki, Kevin Spencer, and Ellen Sweeney all provided much needed long-distance love and support. When things got tough, I carried you all in my heart's back pocket.
Finally, a heartfelt thank you to all the branches of my Bruneau-Ross-Kollman- Schechter family tree. Your emotional, intellectual, and financial support made this dissertation possible. Thank you to my brother, Sam, for summer road trips, long-distance phone calls, movie nights, correct spelling ("Red Book!"), and, most importantly, for love. Thank you to my parents, Neil and Catherine, who raised me to value education, hard work, and happiness over wealth. Thank you for keeping me in music lessons, even when money was impossibly tight. Thanks for sticking by such a stubborn, independent, and secretive child, and for making me think that intellect and kindness could be my best assets. Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter One 24 "all that glistered": Relationships of Obligation and Exchange in Ralegh's Discoverie of Guiana
Chapter Two 74 "a Poet [and a Queen] historical": National Origins and Dynastic Failings in Spenser's The Faerie Queene
Chapter Three 135 "a membrana on her": Embodied Otherness, Sexual Difference, and Female Authority in Early Modern England
Chapter Four 170 "As liuing now, equald theyr vertues then": Elizabethan Allusions and Amazonian Histories in Literary Treatments of Penthesilea and Boudicca
Coda 223 "the blackest nation of the world": Female Authority and Patronage in The Masque of Blacknesse
Works Cited 248 1
Introduction With the 1558 accession of Elizabeth I, concerns about female rule and gender inversion were perhaps inevitable. The reign of Elizabeth, although preceded by that of her half-sister, Mary I (who was also unmarried when she assumed control of the monarchy), demanded that the English citizenry find new methods to approach the gendered body politic. Furthermore, while the longevity of her reign allowed for the development and promotion of stable policy and long- term strategies for national, economical, and political improvement, her decades on the throne also required multiple, occasionally conflicting representational and discursive strategies to meet political demands and concerns as they changed over time. The length and success of Elizabeth's rule were both, in part, results of this complex, constantly shifting set of representations and discourses, yet, with each alteration, addition, or reconfiguration, Elizabethan representation became more unwieldy and subject to collapse. Elizabeth's representation and self-presentation increasingly had to answer to and satisfy a broad group of often irreconcilable demands. Indeed, Elizabeth's sex and unmarried state caused considerable consternation for some who were anxious about issues of national security and succession, yet others in the kingdom preferred to see the queen remain single rather than risk the dangers of her choosing a foreign, likely Catholic partner in marriage. Even as she and court insiders developed the courtly love system in order to lessen anxieties about her prolonged virginity, Elizabeth's emphasis on physical purity and integrity drew a renewed attention to her body natural as a site of both authority and accountability. The queen's religious inclinations also provoked some to worry that England was continuing to isolate itself from Catholic rulers on the European continent, even as Elizabeth faced pressure from committed Protestants, who demanded further separation from Rome and asked for increased military and financial support for activities in the Netherlands. Elizabeth was of course only too aware of these various public concerns, and she also had to negotiate the demands and machinations of political factions at court. As a result, she and her advisors were forced to create and disseminate various representations of the 2 queen that would cohere with the desires of the English court and public while simultaneously assuaging various anxieties. Representing Elizabeth became a two-way street of sorts, one in which the queen was both agent and object of representation, as various courtiers and more popular writers made use of her image in their political negotiations and manoeuvrings. Images and textual descriptions of Elizabeth relied on a bevy of tropes. She was both mother to the nation and virgin, placid woman and martial goddess. She was also associated with several important female biblical figures—Deborah, Judith, and Esther, specifically. These biblical depictions were especially popular among Protestant authors who propagandized Elizabeth's role as a militant defender of the faith. Just as Judith trusted in God and defended her people from Holofernes and his forces, for example, Elizabeth stood unwavering in the face of international Catholic antagonism. She was elsewhere figured as leader of the nation with her hand on the globe (George Gower's Armada portrait, painted c. 1588), or as the nation itself, when in anonymous cartographic prints the land was depicted as her body. The first of these geographical images was published in Sebastian Munster's Cosmographia (1588), and the second was given wide public circulation in 1598 (see Montrose, Subject 154-55). The Ditchley portrait, painted by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (c. 1592), offers another conflation, collapsing even, of Elizabeth and the land, as the queen is depicted standing on a map of England. Her wide white skirts cover the nation, suggesting that Elizabeth's virginal chastity can protect borders both corporeal and geographical, personal and national. As Roy Strong suggests, the Ditchley portrait allows "woman and kingdom [to be] interchangeable" (Gloriana 136): important for any sense of post-Armada national security, both queen and realm are resolute and remain unbroken. All of these images and descriptors were used by various factions at court and by members of society for different political ends; Elizabeth also manipulated several of these representations for her own political needs. Despite all the questions of gender inversion, queendom, and female autonomy that were concomitant with Elizabeth's reign, one female representation is (at first glance) 3 often lacking in the panoply of positive tropes explicitly associated with her. The Amazon woman, with her long history in the classical literary and mythological tradition, is a popular figure in early modern texts, and it would be reasonable to expect a conflation of the figure—positively associated with chastity, beauty, autonomous rule, and martial skill—with Elizabeth. In fact, Elizabeth was in several texts either implicitly or explicitly connected to the militant Amazons, but these depictions and conflations were not simply encomiastic. Indeed, the positive connotations of the figure did not outweigh the negative, and connecting the ruling monarch to an Amazon could just as easily have suggested savagery, sexual inversion, unnatural rule, and gynocentrism. A popular figure in Greek mythology and other classical sources, the Amazon woman was a frequent if occasionally undeveloped figure in early modern texts. The Amazon was a popular (if minor) literary trope throughout the medieval and early modern periods, particularly in continental romances, imaginative travel and exploration texts, and dramas. She often suggested something that was not overly political: a sense of the exotic; the possibility of domesticating unruly women; the promise of riches to be found in a remote Amazon territory; or a titillating level of sexual danger or female disobedience. During the reign of Elizabeth, however, the Amazon woman's presence in literature took on a unique resonance. Several pieces in praise (or putatively in praise) of the queen make brief allusions to Amazon women, or other famously martial females such as Athena, Semiramis, and Boudicca, while different texts go further still and actively attempt to represent or at least discuss Elizabeth through amazonian characters: Cynthia in John Lyly's Endymion (1591); Belphoebe, Britomart, and Radigund in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590 and 1596); or Hippolyta and Titania in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1594), for example. Elizabeth did not like to connect her reign to martial or amazonian activity, preferring instead that her reign connote peace and stability, and that she be considered "an androgynous, or doubly gendered being" (Curbet 157) rather than overly masculine, but the queen was conflated with Amazons nonetheless. 4
Classical understandings of the Amazon could have had any number of distant historical roots—the echoes of a past matriarchal culture or martial priestess-led cult—or the figure could explain and justify the need for a society that favoured men's dominance over women. Page duBois notes that in Greek mythology, Amazon women—along with centaurs—inhabited a liminal site of difference, marking off conceptions of sexuality, but also racial or ethnic designations, and the separation of animal and human (27). Amazon culture also operated as a tidy opposite against which classical society could define itself (35- 6): for a society obsessed with cultural and gendered boundaries, the martial figures became a useful way to understand the barbarianism outside of the polis (38-9). Amazon women were frequently tied to Scythian origins, for example, since, for the Greek mind, Scythians marked the edges of civility (Wright 449).l Other popular myths go further and claim that the Amazons actually killed off their Scythian mates in order to develop a women's community, once the women realized that they had the ability to live autonomously and defend themselves without help (Heywood, Exemplary Lives 100; Heywood, Gynaikeion 220; Boccaccio, Theseus 20). Under these conditions, Amazon women signal appropriate and inappropriate ethnic, political, female, and ethical behaviours. As the figures successfully live outside of the polis, however, they simultaneously suggest the possibility of subverting or creating alternatives to traditional standards. The classical conception of the Amazons was quite well developed: the reclusive, fierce women were believed to be devoted to both Ares/Mars and Artemis/Diana; they were also thought to be talented equestrians and eager for war. Like descriptions and understandings of Elizabeth, rumours about the Amazon women made them somewhat compendious: at various junctures they were associated with beauty and with terrifying force, with virginity and with sexual voraciousness, with nearly complete separation from men and participation
1 Connections between the Amazon women and Scythians were likely the most common in classical sources, although Diana de Armas Wilson notes that the Greeks knew little about regions such as Thrace, Albania, the Caucasus, and India. Amazons were therefore also thought to inhabit these areas (213). 5 in occasional sexualized encounters, always according to a system devised by the women and for their own ends. Most classical narratives about Amazons note that the women met with men once a year to become pregnant and propagate the Amazon line, although the Amazons would only keep any daughters born from the unions. The boys would be strangled (Heywood, Exemplary Lives 100-01; Hey wood, Gynaikeion 221; see also Boccaccio, Famous 53), made lame, or sent back to their fathers' communities (duBois 34; Sobol 34-5), confirming the Amazon women's incongruous maternal status and their disruptions of patriarchal conventions for maternity and sexual difference. Given these clear associations between Amazon women and subversions of ordered, patriarchal standards, it is perhaps not surprising that popular texts critical of Elizabeth would compare her monarchy to amazonian rule. I argue, however, that courtiers and writers would also link Elizabeth to facets of the Amazon woman, albeit cautiously, as part of their efforts to lobby the queen or to work through aspects of her rule. Reimaginings and reshapings of Amazon women in Elizabethan culture led to indirect or implicit representations of the monarch that included transvestism, gender inversion, and female militancy, as well as more direct descriptions of the queen as amazonian. With a focus on Elizabethan and Jacobean court culture and political relationships, I investigate literary representations of Amazon women, connecting these textual figures to conversations about and with Elizabeth. I suggest that the Amazon woman thus becomes an active political metaphor in several Elizabethan texts, signalling engagements in any combination of discourses about gender inversion, misrule, nation building, succession, intrigue at court, the monarch's virginal chastity and refusal to marry, and relationships between the sexes. The Amazon or otherwise martial woman continues to be of importance in Jacobean understandings of Elizabeth. Indeed, the militant female often becomes an integral aspect of popular texts that nostalgically differentiate Elizabeth's rule from that of James I~as in John Fletcher's Bonduca (c. 1612)--while Queen Anna promotes and strengthens her position as a powerful court outsider by relying in part on masque presentations that are simultaneously Elizabethan and amazonian. 6
One could cautiously suggest a shift in textual usage of the Amazon woman from Elizabethan to Jacobean treatments, as seventeenth-century depictions of the martial figures do tend to be more explicitly positive. The women are often more easily controlled or domesticated by their male counterparts, or the figures are used in nostalgic descriptions that connect to Elizabeth's mythologized martial activity, as in Thomas Hey wood's Exemplary Lives (1640) and Troia Britanica (1609). The compendious nature of amazonian qualities makes such shifts difficult to track accurately or with certainty, however, as more negative treatments of Amazon women can certainly be found in seventeenth-century literature. Even as Fletcher makes use of Bonduca to distinguish Elizabeth's mythologized militant defence of England's borders from James's preference for more peaceful international relations, for example, the playwright still presents the militant tribal leader in what are often explicitly misogynistic terms. The Amazon's capacity for subversion of traditional structures certainly remains somewhat stable from Tudor to Stuart representations. Even as the post- Elizabethan figure becomes more easily habituated into domestic romances, the woman's threat more quickly contained by male authority, the Amazon woman always holds the possibility of subverting or collapsing representational or discursive frameworks. The multiple, overlapping discursive strategies used to make sense of Elizabeth's reign at times failed to work effectively, and I argue that literary representations of Amazon women frequently signal the moments at which traditional discourses breakdown or fail to coalesce, the moments at which systems fail to operate as they have in more conventional usages. Amazons sit at the intersection of the conventional and the subversive, highlighting the points at which the traditional reveals its fabricated basis to be malleable or vulnerable to attacks. I maintain that in early modern discourse, the Amazon woman becomes a means of negotiating Elizabeth's reign, variously standing in for the monarch or an aspect of her rule, and allowing members of different social strata to conceptualize and work with a body politic that has been gendered female. In 7 short, representations of Amazon women simultaneously suggest what has not worked efficiently or cohesively in representations of the queen. While my work is largely focused on textual analysis, I also devote some time to studying visual representations of the queen, as there are several well- known and important pieces that connect Elizabeth to martial victory, that address issues such as Elizabeth's uniquely politicized use of chastity and virtue, or that approach the body politic as governed by a woman. For instance, in Chapter Four Gower's Armada portrait and Thomas Cecil's Truth Presents the Queen with a Lance (1622) are both considered in relation to post-Armada depictions of Elizabeth as a sexually pure leader and protector of the nation. Gower's portrait, available only to an elite, courtly audience, closely connects the queen's chastity to her kingly authority, while Cecil's popular print presents a nostalgic depiction of a young Elizabeth carrying weaponry and vanquishing the seven-headed beast from the Book of Revelations. Her foe suggests the Spanish attack in the 1588 Armada, for Protestant authors commonly associated the beast with Catholic menace and with Rome in particular. Of special interest to me are the ways in which politicized uses and malleable figurations of chastity and anti-maternality connect to both Elizabeth and the Amazon woman. These values connect several of my primary texts, and they are often linked to other issues concerning female rule specifically, and female authority more broadly. I also see the queen's well propagandized virginity as important. I consider how the virgin body would traditionally function as a medium of and repository for patriarchal values—but also as a site that is not wholly readable or knowable—and how Elizabeth might complicate these understandings of the virgin female body, altering traditional conceptions of the king's two bodies, in order to allow for virginal physical integrity as a site of kingly authority. The phrase "the king's two bodies" refers to an early modern political and legal theory developed in order to explain and resolve the disparities between a fallible human political leader and the expected perfection of the monarchical position. As lawyers and bureaucrats separated the ruler's "body natural" from his 8
"body politic," specific characteristics and expectations were ascribed to both. The two bodies were considered distinct in function and traits, yet they were inseparable and invested solely in the monarch (Kantorowicz 12). The body natural referred to the physical body of the person occupying the throne: this body could be weakened, suffer illness or injury, be vulnerable to temptation, or be a minor, and it could of course die (7; Axton 12). The body politic, on the other hand, was the king's abstract, invisible body of governmental and legal perfection (Kantorowicz 4-5; Axton 12). It was incorruptible, timeless, and invested in a new ruler at the moment when the previous ruler died (Kantorowicz 4, 7, 13). Political theorists had long claimed that "the King" always lived on in a legal, administrative sense, but arguments that the body politic was "not only incapable of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong" were new developments in early modern understandings of the condition (4). Ernst H. Kantorowicz describes the legal fiction of the king's two bodies as a "seemingly ludicrous, and in many respects awkward, concept" (5), but he also acknowledges the theory's benefits. For example, the theory allowed a reconciliation of "the personal with the more impersonal concepts of government" (5); the body politic could also be used to subsume and eradicate any perceived weaknesses in the body natural (7, 10, 13). The body natural could never pollute the continuously perfect body politic, despite the bodies' indivisibility (7), although the former was considered '"the lesser'" of the two (9). The king's two bodies became a useful political and legal theory for Elizabeth as she claimed possession and the right to make use of all the characteristics traditionally associated with kingship (and the body politico- monarchical authority, justice, dignity, truth, bounty, and might—despite her female (thus weakened) body natural. Elizabeth's speech at Tilbury is perhaps the best example of her rhetorical attempts to minimize any perceived deficiencies in her ability to lead an army, as she points to her perfecting and constant body politic, which is invested in her. Indeed, her admission, "I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman," followed by her defiant claim, "but I have the 9
heart and stomach of a king and of a king of England too" (Elizabeth, "Armada" 326) is a key moment in her practical enunciation of the theory's functionality. Carole Levin has noted more generally that the theory "had a particular value to the queen," for the ability to possess a masculine "kingly body politic" could allow for arguments in favour of her ability not simply to govern, but to govern as an unmarried woman ("Heart and Stomach" 123). I further suggest that the king's two bodies allowed for new configurations of Elizabeth's virginity and chastity as kingly virtues, rather than as personal ones. Presentation and representation of Elizabeth's physical inviolability had the capacity to positively increase authority in her body natural, for her use of virginity as a political virtue allowed for a sense of agency and resolve. At the same time, the frequent conflation likely also placed an increased focus on her body natural as a site capable of public accountability and one intimately tied to national stability. Popular and elite commentaries on the queen's virginity and succession anxieties in the 1590s are perhaps more understandable once read through the unique valuation of Elizabeth's body natural as kingly in its virginal state, a point to which I return in several chapters. Although my chapters take up a variety of concerns—gendered patronage and courtly love; the gendered body natural and body politic; national history and nation building; corporeality, anti-maternal behaviour, and sexual difference; historiography and intertextuality; and the political functions and gendered implications for Queen Anna's court masque performances—they each examine the moments at which Amazon women signal the weaknesses in or failures of discourses that might otherwise seem naturalized and stable, and they each connect those moments to configurations of gendered power and authority in the Elizabethan or Jacobean court. My use of the term "power" follows the work of Michel Foucault, who stresses that for power to be effective, it must at least partly conceal itself (86, 89). Important to my argument that Amazons signal textual moments of discursive failure or incompatibility in representations of Elizabeth (and in conceptions and uses of power and authority at court) is Foucault's position that 10 discourse should not be divided into licit and illicit, or other simple binaries, for "a multiplicity of discursive elements ... can come into play in various strategies" (100). Representations of Elizabeth and uses of power can rely on seemingly disparate or irreconcilable frameworks in order to operate within, further, or show "an effect of power" (101). These discursive and representational strategies can become unmanageable in their multiple, discrete functions and anticipated effects, however: "discourse can be ... a hindrance, a stumbling-block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy" (101). I suggest that Amazon women appear in these moments of "hindrance" (101) and allow for new readings of and resistances to what might otherwise seem to be naturalized conditions related to the state or condition of power in early modern England. Power for Foucault does not refer to a monolith or set of "institutions and mechanisms" capable of demanding subjection to the state, nor does he describe a simple rule of power or "a general system of domination exerted by one group over another" (92). Rather, monarchical heads and presentations of legal or governmental totality or finality are results of rather than sources for power (92). Foucault sees power as polymorphous and as a series "of force relations" (92). Elizabeth does not simply or wholly exercise power over her subjects, nor does she hold ultimate or constant control over representational use of the monarch, her body natural, or her body politic. Rather, she becomes one of many in England entering into and maintaining various conversations about her rule, even as discursive strategies overlap, collide, and show the strain of disparate usages. While power in the Foucauldian sense can be conceived of "not [as] something that is acquired, seized, or shared, something that one holds onto or allows to slip away" (94), I suggest that authority is the presentation of power—of the possession of power—as if the force had just these traits. While Foucault maintains that "power is exercised from innumerable points, in the interplay of nonegalitarian and mobile relations," that power balances are constantly shifting and being modified (94, 99), I maintain that authority is a display or representation of one's possession of power and the sense that this possession can be somewhat stable. Authority allows for leadership and displays of agency, for a 11 sense that possession and use of power can be legitimate, rightful even: authority imbues a figure's power with a sense of purpose and direction, and it fuels the presentation of power as something that can be exercised over others. Nevertheless, I return to Foucault's position that power is always accompanied by resistance, which is also "never in a position of exteriority in relation to power" (95), as I suggest that the multiple, sometimes conflicting discursive strategies utilized to negotiate and make sense of various aspects of Elizabeth's rule occasionally collide and prove untenable. In these moments, subversion and new configurations of power and authority are possible. As the Amazon woman intersects various discursive and representational frameworks for understanding Elizabeth and her reign, signalling the moments at which these strategies fail to coalesce, the martial woman draws attention to discursive weakness. She becomes a "hindrance" and "a point of resistance" (101) to otherwise naturalized representations of power and authority in early modern England. Each chapter in my dissertation marks the textual and social moments at which conventional discourses are shown to be not simply fabricated but vulnerable to subversion and capable of responding or bending to disruptive or critical forces. Chapter One focuses on Sir Walter Ralegh's Discoverie of Guiana (1596), and his attempts to regain political favour and convince Elizabeth to fund future ventures in the country. I analyze the collision of relationships based on courtly love, male friendship, and patronage—discrete systems that rely on entirely different gendered codes and interactions—as I examine Ralegh's hopes for both his and the queen's future roles in New World economic and colonial projects. Throughout his exploration narrative, Ralegh stresses the fundamental values of male friendship and patronage in his descriptions of future English economic activity in Guiana: conditions and activities such as trust, mutual obligation, and exchange suggest the possibility of reciprocity between partners, and they set English activities apart from those of the Spanish, who are depicted by Ralegh as bloodthirsty and rapacious plunderers. As I shall discuss, however, this expectation for patronage based on the values of male friendship cannot work 12
smoothly in Ralegh's interactions with his first avenue for funding, Elizabeth, for the queen operates as both a (female) patron and an inaccessible courtly beloved, incapable of granting favour in full. The language of patronage and friendship also informs the editorial presence of Sir Robert Cecil, one of the men to whom the Discoverie is addressed and a key court insider who had shown Ralegh favour in the past. While reading the manuscript that was sent to Elizabeth in a bid for future funding, Cecil altered several passages—including material concerning Amazon women—that suggested Ralegh's unchecked impulsivity when left unsupervised in the New World. Cecil essentially accepted Ralegh's reports of gold in Guiana and the surrounding regions as credible, and, operating with a patron's or friend's sense of fair exchange, he took care to present a manuscript that was as convincing as possible for the first intended reader, Elizabeth, as well as for later public investors when Elizabeth declined to fund a second voyage. For the former reader, Cecil's expurgations and alterations created a text that implied a sexual control in the New World; for both readerships, the remaining references to Amazons could still connote the possibility of riches to be discovered, for Amazons had long been connected to the guarding of treasure stores (Kleinbaum 116). In order to receive funding for a second voyage, Ralegh and Cecil must suggest strongly that future exploration in the region would lead to viable economic gain, to an increase in the investor's initial fund allocation. In their access to riches, the Amazons become connected to this promise of future payments, of reciprocal exchange, yet I suggest that the Amazon women simultaneously mark the moments at which Ralegh's use of patronage frameworks collide with the expectations of courtly love. Indeed, even as Ralegh makes use of patronage frameworks in his proposed New World ventures, he also relies on the language and activities of courtly love, a system in which a male lover will declare service and loyalty to a withholding, distant female, who must necessarily deny (or at least delay) reciprocation, perhaps only granting favour in part. I argue that as Ralegh's descriptions of mutually beneficial economic relationships in the New World 13 begin to operate according to the language of courtly love—a system in which the male must always request favour and the woman must always prevaricate—the Amazon woman, described by Kathryn Schwarz as "a figure that articulates without resolving social and sexual incongruities" (Tough xiii), becomes an important signal for the incompatibility and breakdown of these different discourses. References to Amazon women in exploration literature often imply the possibility of nearby natural resources or precious jewels (because of the women's association with el Dorado, for example). I argue that when Ralegh includes second-hand reports and descriptions of the martial figures, he engages in part with this narrative tradition because Amazons will act for his readership as a near guarantee of Guiana's possible riches. I further argue, however, that Ralegh's reporting on the women's steady, apparently predictable trade of Manoan gold for green spleen stones actually suggests that men and women in Guiana are capable of operating under mutually productive and beneficial economic relationships, relationships that are developed according to the needs and equitable positions of power enjoyed by both. While Elizabeth's court may force those jockeying for advancement to engage in the multiple, sometimes conflicting and frustrating systems of patronage and courtly love, Amazon women and Guianan men seem capable of working toward specific economic goals under a stable system of exchangeable goods and corresponding rates. Chapter Two also examines an individual author's relationship to the queen, placing a court insider's understanding of politicized discourses within larger public expectations for and conceptions of female rule. In the second chapter I take up the issue of succession anxieties in the 1590s and the depictions of Elizabeth's body natural and body politic in Spenser's The Faerie Queene. I suggest that, although Elizabeth's status as an unmarried monarch furthered (and in fact necessitated) new representations of virginity as a site of kingly authority, the unique focus on her physical body as a site of perfection and resolve also increased attention to her childless state as her reign came to a close. Political and national stability became intimately connected to Elizabeth's body natural, and 14
Spenser's text works through the ramifications of the queen's decision not to marry and the reality of an unclear succession. As he addresses various aspects of Elizabeth's rule, Spenser frequently makes use of amazonian female leaders who direct their lives with practices of militancy and extreme levels of chastity. I maintain that these amazonian depictions reveal moments in which larger Elizabethan representational strategies become overburdened, moments in which representations of virginal authority, monarchical power, and stable succession do not neatly align. Spenser explicitly identifies only two characters as mirrors of Elizabeth (Belphoebe as the queen's body natural and Gloriana as her body politic), although several others are connected to the queen and unofficially represent various aspects of her rule, including the virtuous, militant Britomart, the Knight of Chastity. Britomart, an implicit representation of Elizabeth, is committed to the future wellbeing and stability of the Britons: her activities are largely directed towards entering Faeryland to meet and marry Artegall, the Knight of Justice, and to begin a new political dynasty, which will end conspicuously with Elizabeth, according to Merlin's prophecy in Book Ill.iii. Britomart is also positioned at several points in the poem as fascinated and affected by her nation's historical struggles. Her emotional reaction to learning about past political uncertainty and hardship compels her to find Artegall and initiate a new political era. While Britomart initially struggles with her growing awareness of sexualized love, she understands that her nation's future relies on her participation in traditionally domestic structures such as marriage and childbirth, and the martial woman capitulates to (later investing in) external demands for national security. In doing so, Britomart places her own desires as secondary to those of her nation. Her actions create a site of critique for Elizabeth's refusal to behave in a similar fashion, and Spenser's treatment of Britomart suggests that, while The Faerie Queene is generally read as encomium, the poem's narrative turns actually celebrate women's deferral to masculine authority. This deferral is initiated by Britomart when she begins her quest and cemented when the martial woman visits the Temple of Isis prior to her battle with Radigund, the Amazon queen. Indeed, 15
Britomart, Elizabeth's ancestor and alter ego, may in part reveal moments of Spenser's wishful thinking as she vanquishes the English queen's dark twin, Radigund. If Britomart suggests key disappointments about Elizabeth's reign or the complications associated with representing her political use of virginity, Radigund becomes a nightmare version of the last Tudor queen. The evil Radigund's Amazon territory and her enforced gender inversion make it impossible, I think, for Spenser to identify Radigund's counterpart, Britomart~the good martial woman and upholder of chastity—as an explicit, official mirror of Elizabeth, even though the associations are quite clear. While traditionally viewed as a celebration of Elizabeth, The Faerie Queene is in many ways a highly traditionalist text and one that reveals a fair amount of anxiety or ambivalence about women's rule. Radigund is described as bloodthirsty and cruel; she leads a savage band of women who are only too happy to enslave men and force them into domestic labour, all the while beating them and insisting that they wear women's clothing. Amazon territory is made right when the virtuous and chaste Britomart—only too happy to defer to Artegall afterwards—kills Radigund in battle, frees the men, and restores patriarchal ideals to the region. As Britomart recedes to focus on her future family line, she allows Spenser to fantasize about the possibility of national security through attempts at stable succession, a key point of consternation for many in England in the 1590s, as Elizabeth's politicized, heavily represented and mediated virgin body began to visibly age and she refused to name her political heir. Chapter Three also analyzes the female queen's body natural, but I shift the focus from questions of stable succession to issues of physical "abnormality" or marked otherness, as I investigate the possibilities for apparently naturalized conceptions of femininity, motherhood, women's (mis)use of authority, and sexuality. I examine the body as a repository of social conventions that are historically specific, while also considering the potential for women to reposition cultural norms through corporeal modification or natural abnormality. While I do not suggest that physical embodiment connects inherently to women's nature or any sense of femininity as natural or immediate, I do argue that socially specific, 16 historically situated understandings of the physical body can reveal and further develop a culture's sense of gendered norms. In arguing that these sites of unusual physicality connect to larger discourses about ignored social expectations, the rejection of traditional maternal behaviour, (mis)uses of female authority, and reconfigurations of femininity and sexual difference, I focus on amazonian monomasty and Elizabeth's rumoured extra "membrana" (Patterson, ed. 30), news of which Ben Jonson circulated in 1619 as he postulated about the queen's inability to be penetrated or impregnated. This third chapter considers the Amazon woman's monomasty as a key site of sexual difference made corporeal. I examine various iterations and repositionings of expectations for sexual difference, and I connect the notoriety of the single-breasted Amazons as "bad mothers" to larger questions about the misuse of maternal authority in apparently stable, patriarchal homes. As I have discussed, most classical, medieval, and early modern sources on Amazons note that the women would reject male companionship, choosing only to engage in sexual relations for the purpose of procreation. The Amazon women would then either kill (Hey wood, Exemplary Lives 100-01; Hey wood, Gynaikeion 221; see also Boccaccio, Famous 53) or maim their sons, or send them back to live with their fathers, while daughters would be raised to be warriors (duBois 34; Sobol 34-5). The scar tissue of the missing amazonian breast signals the Amazon woman's refusal to operate within normalized bounds for femininity, and it challenges expectations for appropriately maternal behaviour, simultaneously suggesting the successful rejection and disabling of traditional patriarchal structures. The missing breast makes sons and male lovers of little value. In a domestic system created and controlled by women, the monomastic Amazons are sexually ambivalent at best: they choose to live away from traditional spaces and only engage in sporadic interactions with men; sexual encounters always operate according to a heavily regulated code of the women's devising, one that successfully, continually prioritizes the need to reproduce daughters. Additionally, the men chosen for reproductive partners are by and large "inappropriate sexual 17 objects: men who are enemies, barbarians, prisoners, or physically maimed" (Schwarz, Tough 5). When the Amazons reject their sons, either sending them to live with their fathers, breaking their limbs in order to make them servile, or killing them outright, the women make these boys of little use in either amazonian or patriarchal structures. Indeed, as a sign of maternal disavowal—the separation not the son's choice but the mother's will (see "Mother" 299)—the missing breast hastens the son's distancing from his mother and her home. Rejected or disabled, the boy's place in patriarchy and his burgeoning masculinity are both decidedly uncertain. Chapter Three also moves from Elizabethan to Jacobean texts, both those relevant to the monomastic Amazons and a wider cultural fear of maternal violence, and those that—in treatments of Elizabeth's physical body and personal life—work against simplistic nostalgia for the deceased monarch. Tho. Brew.'s The Bloudy Mother (1610), and the anonymous Deeds against Nature (1614) and A pittilesse Mother (1616) all reflect the English fascination with and terror of the infanticidal mother, while Jonson's commentary on Elizabeth's "membrana" (Patterson, ed. 30) highlights the candour with which a monarch's body could be treated. While Elizabeth was depicted in seventeenth-century nostalgic pieces that (perhaps simplistically) distinguished her reign from James's and her female court culture from Anna's, the Jacobean use of her image was not always flattering. In fact, slightly incendiary texts about the late queen actually connect to gossipy expositions published during Elizabeth's life. Jonson's rumour mongering links to reports of Elizabeth's secret pregnancies and infanticides that were disseminated during the queen's reign, usually during times of political crisis or uncertainty (see Levin, "Power" 96, 100; Levin, "Heart and Stomach" 70, 84; Montrose, "Elizabethan" 311). Indeed, fictional histories of the queen's passionate private life would continue to be popular until the end of the seventeenth century. Jonson's description of Elizabeth's strange membrane, which she considers removing before deciding against the operation out of "fear" (Patterson, ed. 30), highlights the negative ramifications of her decision to so closely conflate political authority 18 and sexual purity. The queen's multifaceted, complex presentation of virginity places an increased value on the body natural: it allows her to possess an authority that is wholly located in the corpus, rather than completely relying on the body politic's virtues to correct and supplement the failings of or weaknesses in her (female) physicality. At the same time, her inviolate body becomes subject to critique, to public examination, because it functions as an integral aspect of her political role and accountability. Despite the sense of public access and voyeurism that can be found in Jonson's claims about her body, however, I argue that Elizabeth's strange "membrana" (30) does enable the queen to remain remote, beyond the grasp of a masculinized medical knowledge of the female anatomy and a disruption to the conventional Freudian understandings of sexed identity against which Jonson's gossip could now be read. Indeed, descriptions of Elizabeth's unusual membrane encourage a subversion and reconsideration of conventional expectations and iterations of both female sexuality and heterosexual relations. While making reference to Judith Butler's "lesbian phallus" {Bodies 84), I shall argue that Elizabeth's membrane complicates any simplistic Freudian understanding of lack and castration anxiety. I suggest that Elizabeth may deploy an unusual example of Butler's "lesbian phallus," for the queen's membrane "crosses the orders of having and being; it both wields the threat of castration (which is in that sense a mode of 'being' the phallus, as women 'are') and suffers from castration anxiety (and so is said 'to have' the phallus, and to fear its loss)" (J. Butler, Bodies 84). Elizabeth's reputed decision to retain her unusual membrane—and to continue taking sexual pleasure in the use of it with her rumoured multiple lovers—forces a reconsideration of how presence and absence are conceptualized, simultaneously shifting traditional notions of virginal impenetrability. Chapter Four shifts the focus from physical abnormality and female identity to connections among physical integrity, origins, and national defence. I take up two popular figures in Elizabethan and Jacobean depictions of female martial activity, the Amazon leader Penthesilea and the heavily mythologized first-century Iceni leader Boudicca. Both Penthesilea and Boudicca are 19 represented in a massive textual history that includes multiple genres, literary concerns, and objectives. I focus on allusions to the women in Elizabethan and Jacobean nationalist texts; in order to offer broader analysis of the allusions, however, I examine lengthier contemporary depictions of the women that also present issues related to English national foundations and future growth. I argue that while Elizabethan allusions frequently connect the queen to figures such as Penthesilea and Boudicca, often in order to praise Elizabeth's beauty, fortitude, or valour, the literary device also risks drawing attention to less favourable qualities that the women might share. Furthermore, in nationalist texts that make use of allusions in attempts to create and further an idealized, comprehensible national origin, the allusions can alternatively (and subversively) suggest the multiple, fractured interests at work in the construction of foundational myths. For example, conflations with Penthesilea would seem to be unproblematic in representations of the queen. The Amazon leader is frequently included in English texts that celebrate national defence or the expansion of the state through international military activity, as the classical figure is famous for her chastity, her martial skill, and her defence of Troy during the Trojan War. At the same time, Penthesilea's militant adherence to chastity allows her to operate outside of patriarchal codes, her amazonian lifestyle spurring a continued state of childlessness that highlights her resistance to the naturalized heteronormative progression from maidenhood to marriage and motherhood. Connecting Penthesilea and Elizabeth thus has the potential to initiate or add to a fraught discourse on the English queen's refusal to marry, almost from the beginning of her reign, and her avoidance of the succession issue beginning in the 1580s, when her physical aging made childbirth obviously impossible. Even as they are included in texts that aim to present an authoritative, respectable English national history, allusions to Penthesilea can signal Elizabeth's lack of participation in normalized frameworks for building her nation or assisting in its long term strength. The tribal leader Boudicca and her opposition to Roman rule in Britain also deserve serious inquiry in relation to Elizabeth, for Boudicca becomes a 20 popular if complex allusive epithet for the English queen, and, despite her ultimate military failures, she symbolizes a sense of British nationalism and armed resistance to incursion, both of obvious relevance to representations of Elizabeth, particularly after the Spanish Armada. Jodi Mikalachki contends that representations of Boudicca epitomize the collision of sixteenth- and seventeenth- century misogyny with concerns about the uncivilized reality of Brittonic culture (13). While early modern historiographers may have attempted to displace their anxieties by focusing attention on barbaric early queens, simultaneously endeavouring to uncover a history of "native masculine civility" that could be attached to early modern culture as a natural progression from earlier Brittonic society, these historiographers may have quite unintentionally suggested that Britain's early inhabitants were essentially and inordinately female in nature- uncivilized, unlearned, and prone to irrational or emotional behaviour (13). This uneasy understanding of national origins as not simply female but monstrously so is complicated further when the allusions and larger references to Boudicca are putative points of praise for Elizabeth, a queen who was able to position herself in her Tilbury speech as physically, spiritually, and ethnically pure. Elizabeth may claim that her borders, both physical and geographical, remain unbroken ("Armada" 326), but post-Armada allusions and more extensive treatments of Boudicca suggest a larger cultural anxiety, a fear that English origins rest not on ethnic purity and valour but on submission and miscegenation through a series of military defeats. While I do examine allusions to Penthesilea and Boudicca in light of more extensive, relevant contemporary treatments of the figures—Hey wood's Exemplary Lives and Troia Britanica, and Fletcher's Bonduca, for example—I contend that the allusions themselves actually hold a unique place in understandings of Elizabethan and Jacobean nation building. I argue that the very nature of the allusion as a literary device may disable its efficacy in early modern authors' nationalist projects. As the authors attempt to foster national identity by looking to Elizabeth's mythologized Brittonic origins (and by celebrating martial women who died defending the Trojans and the Britons), the allusions always fail 21 to produce an original source for the figure with whom Elizabeth is conflated, just as they fail to produce meaningful, material proof of an initial British cultural purity upon which national identity can be based. The allusion as a form of intertextuality encourages the reader to look backward for recognition, to make meaningful connections between past and present, yet allusions to Penthesilea and Boudicca simultaneously signal multiple, often conflicting stories about the women: the figures are essentially fragmentary, palimpsestic intertexts referenced in countless other works, no one past text more important or more closely linked to an original source than any another. The allusions reference mythological, classical, medieval, and early modern texts, and they operate in relation to the women's presence in multiple genres. Even as authors include allusions to martial women in order to draw positive connections between past and present national identities, and in order to praise Elizabeth, the literary device can disable these attempts at authoritative, laudatory historical narratives, instead suggesting a multiplicity of histories and cultures, a polyphonic collision of textual voices that suggest original multiplicity or fracture rather than original wholeness or comprehensibility. The allusions to Amazon and martial women immediately work at cross purposes to nation building in another sense too, for, as I stated earlier, referencing Amazons immediately suggests the women's disruptive presence in any understanding of marriage and reproduction as the traditionally female means to build a society, the allusions drawing attention to Elizabeth's refusals to conform to these normalized activities. The Coda returns to questions of domestic disturbance, gendered patronage, and perceptions of difference, as I investigate Anna's participation in Jonson's Masque ofBlacknesse (1605), a notorious court spectacle in which the queen consort performed while visibly pregnant and in blackface. Presented for the Stuart court, and with royal participation both in the creation details and the performances, the early masques—in their representations of goddesses and bands of virtuous and martial women—in large part look back to the recently departed monarch, Elizabeth, perhaps unintentionally and in ways that did not serve the political interests of the new Jacobean king. While the masquers were not strictly 22
Amazon women in Jonson's production, they echoed the martial women in their presentation of a chaste women's community from Africa that takes direction from Aethiopia, a moon goddess. Amazons frequently suggest the possibility that women could disrupt patriarchal holds over the domestic sphere and show male subjugation of women to be a constructed system rather than a natural condition of family life, and Anna's participation in Jonson's masque allows for readings of a figure who frequently clashed with her husband, making use of political alliances and aesthetic collaborations in order to voice her opinions and strengthen her position at court. Indeed, Anna often asserted her authority at court, both in Scotland prior to James's 1603 English succession and in England after. I participate in fairly recent critical work that rehabilitates Anna's image. Leeds Barroll in particular has questioned the long-held historical opinion that placed the queen consort as young, flighty, and materialistic, interested only in court entertainments and frivolity. I argue that Anna was in fact a politically savvy participant at court and capable of intense machinations: in the first decade of James's English reign, she made use of court masques as a politicized venue for furthering important court relationships; as patron and close friend of other patrons, Anna made use of her considerable resources to shape several genres' and fields' aesthetic productions in the early seventeenth century. Her patronage activities were at times complicated by traditional expectations for gender and the performance and use of authority, however, a point that can be seen in the script for Jonson's masque (and its follow-up, The Masque of Beauty, produced in 1608), as artist and patron struggle for ultimate aesthetic control of the production's themes and direction. Specifically, the struggle can be seen in the disparate depictions of and agency given to the amazonian moon goddess Aethiopia, and in the value ascribed to the women's self-made, isolated island of music and art. I argue that masque performances and other forms of patronage were Anna's primary vehicle for gaining and utilizing political power and authority. The detail of Anna and her ladies performing in blackface in The Masque of Blacknesse was Anna's invention, and I argue that this presentation of otherness, 23 of difference, coupled with the queen consort's noticeably pregnant body, allowed Anna to engage in conversations about her own powerful role at court, simultaneously suggesting her possible sense of alienation. Indeed, blackness provides an opportunity for Anna to speak from a place of marginalized otherness at court, even as she suggests that her blackness may have an inherent worth, an internal beauty that is expressed in her support of artists, poets, and architects who depend on her patronage. The amazonian presence in the queen consort's early English masques certainly speaks to the enduring potential in the trope's ability to present, critique, or negotiate female power and authority, and these performances also indicate the clear influence of Elizabeth in the Jacobean court. Indeed, the heavily represented monarch becomes a likely aspect of the new queen consort's own politicized image making activities. In conclusion, Elizabeth's long reign as an unmarried queen certainly had the capacity to spur conventional anxieties about women's authority, but it also allowed for new, creative opportunities to configure and discuss the multiple roles of women at court, the connections between stable succession and national security, women's use and abuse of power, and constructions of pure national origins as a means of confirming enduring fortitude. The Amazon woman's literary function took on new relevance during Elizabeth's reign, as English authors attempted to understand the workings of a differently gendered body politic. The martial figure often highlighted moments of discursive failure, of multiple politicized frameworks colliding rather than coalescing: in this space of uncertainty, the Amazon woman allowed English authors to work through specific anxieties related to Elizabeth's reign and to champion changes to her political practices. 24
Chapter One "all that glistered": Relationships of Obligation and Exchange in Ralegh's Discoverie of Guiana Introduction Sir Walter Ralegh's Discoverie of Guiana (1596) stands as a crucial record of English activities in the New World; the text additionally offers insights into the sometimes hidden and always complex system of early modern courtly relationships. While recounting his exploration of the regions surrounding Guiana and his attempts to find large stores of gold, stores that would justify his desired future explorations and military endeavours in the area, Ralegh rarely focuses explicitly on the monetary gain that he pursues. Instead, his text stresses relationships of social and fiscal exchange and mutual obligation—values upon which court patronage systems and classical notions of male friendship also (not coincidentally) rely. Working at cross purposes to such systems of exchange is the distinctly Elizabethan courtly love tradition, one in which courtiers such as Ralegh seek approval and reward from a distant, inaccessible object of affection, a queen whose role is rooted in Petrarchan convention and who can never fully comply with a lover's request. As Curtis Perry points out, the classically assumed status of equality between friends is never tenable in a relationship between monarch and subject (56; see also Aristotle 221, 228), but the traditional patronage and male friendship models are strained even further when one considers that within the gendered courtly love system, the inaccessible object of affection is incapable of anything close to complete reciprocation.3
2 A version of this chapter has been published. Schechter 2011. Renaissance & Reformation / Renaissance et reforme. 33: 3-42.
3 Indeed, Alison V. Scott suggests that complication arises when "the socio-political dynamics of the mistress-servant relationship can only be upheld if the mistress refuses to reciprocate the gift of the poet, whereas the morality or ethic of the gift can seemingly be upheld only if she gives in to his demands and reciprocates his gift/praise" (58). Sir Walter Ralegh engages in systems of courtly love, patronage, and male friendship. The latter two are based on mutual exchange and reciprocation, and conflict can be seen in the Discoverie (1596) and his earlier Ocean to Cynthia poems (1592), for, while the author seems to expect some level of recognition and reciprocation from his courtly beloved, his vaguely Petrarchan courtly relationship with Elizabeth I does not operate primarily according to the expectations of mutual exchange. 25
This chapter focuses on expected, reworked, and denied levels of reciprocity in court relationships, particularly as these relationships are presented and connoted in Ralegh's Ocean to Cynthia poems (1592) and the Discoverie. I suggest that as Ralegh attempts to engage discourses of patronage and male friendship in texts that also rely on the framework of courtly love, expectations or hopes for reciprocity are inevitably strained. While the former two discursive strategies frequently operate with an expectation of reciprocal exchange and some level of mutual investment in fostering relationships, courtly love texts (and the generic expectations for travel and exploration literature, of obvious importance to the Discoverie) instead function according to values of delayed (or refused) gratification, and of failure to find recognition or easily obtained reward. At various points in the Discoverie, a coalescing or cooperation among the author's competing objectives proves untenable, and, at these moments, Amazon women often make brief appearances in the narrative. The Amazon women take on new significance as markers of the explorer's complicated position in multiple competing social, financial, and courtly frameworks, and the martial leaders offer New World alternatives to the, at times, overly complicated combination of systems at work in Elizabeth Fs court. I shall return to these points on the Amazon woman, but first I shall outline my use of reciprocity, rather than the classical notion of equality, as a primary value for friendships in Elizabeth's court. Relationships of equality, no matter how constructed or artificial, operate with the basic assumption that all individuals involved approach one another with a parity of both status and rights. Given the Elizabethan court's extreme sensitivity to social hierarchies and shifts of power, however, reciprocity may be more useful than equality as a critical measure or operating value for friendship and mutual exchange. I suggest that reciprocity recognizes the unequal nature of power relations and social status, but it permits players to operate as if they were equals. Reciprocity allows a person to respond to a request as if all parties involved had matching access to resources and identical abilities to both give and receive. It acknowledges a person's assumed right to be treated as an equal, 26 regardless of whether or not that equality is actually present in the relationship. Reciprocity's emphasis on mutual exchange made it ideal for relationships based on patronage, in which financial transactions also strengthened much larger social relationships that relied on trust and exchange. While reciprocation ought to have been a useful operational framework for courtly manoeuvres and building political alliances, this apparent utility was hampered somewhat by the development of the Elizabethan courtly love system, which instead relied on enunciations of relationships explicitly based on inequality. This inequality was present even as (and especially when) the language of courtly love—a male lover's declared service and loyalty, delayed response by a distant, inaccessible beloved- was used in order to seek eventual royal reward and favour. Courtiers and other members of factions could and did build networks through fiscal and social systems of exchange such as patronage and the granting of favours. Although reciprocity was not always achieved among court players, of course, the system was further strained when individuals desired reward from Elizabeth and had to engage the conflicting systems of reciprocal exchange and courtly love. Once the queen's court began to operate, in part, under the expectations of Petrarchan and courtly love, erotic desire provided an acceptable and useful language for men to present political requests or declarations of fidelity. At the same time, for those comfortable with the levels of exchange and mutual gratification that were possible in more traditional male friendship and patronage models, the courtly love system's valuation of declared inequality and delayed reward could be quite frustrating. Indeed, Alison V. Scott posits that the courtier in Elizabeth's court may have been "dogged by feelings of impotence: desire comes to nothing, rewards are marred by the poisonous means of their acquisition, and men are trapped within a relentless cycle of hope and despair reminiscent of the plight of the Petrarchan lover" (48). In this reworked model of the Petrarchan beloved and her perennially loyal, loving suitor, expectations for exchange based on the traditional values of male friendship were impossible, not simply because the beloved was the monarch and thus incapable of anything close 27 to equality (see Perry 56; Aristotle 221, 228),4 but because courtly love as a discourse dictated that the suitor approach his beloved with no hope for immediate gratification or even acknowledgement of the suitor's professed desire and loyalty. While Elizabeth honed and maintained her status as the courtly beloved capable of controlling her sexual passions and retaining her display of virtue, Ralegh was, in writing his text, acknowledging his status as a fallen man, one who had been unable to exhibit a similar level of restraint. The Discoverie functions at least in part as an attempt to regain political favour with Elizabeth after Ralegh's unauthorized 1591 marriage to Elizabeth "Bess" Throckmorton, one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting; it endeavours "to re-enact and rewrite the scene of Ralegh's transgression as one of fidelity and continence" (Fuller, Voyages 75). Stressing trust, mutual obligation, and reciprocity as he writes to Elizabeth and her advisors, requesting support for a second venture, Ralegh engages the discourses of male friendship and patronage. His insistence that he undertook a gruelling, financially draining trek out of loyalty to the queen (and that he would return to Guiana without any personal financial motivation) relies on the language of courtly love, however. In short, Ralegh is simultaneously the exiled courtier attempting to win back the good graces of his inaccessible object of affection and the hopeful (if insistent) explorer describing what could be a lucrative site for trade and possible conquest under his leadership. While Ralegh promises a system based on trust and fair exchange with the indigenous Guianans, a system that would honour his professed loyalty and service to Elizabeth, his language quickly betrays the likelihood that the explorer has considered the possibility of attacking and pillaging Spanish forts for personal and national gain. The explorer's presence in the New World is framed by a moral hierarchy that places the respectful, restrained English as superior to the violent,
4 While individuals can, according to Aristotle, have a true friendship that survives vast differences in moral or fiscal stature, a monarch and a subject would never expect to be friends because the gap would be too great (221). Indeed, Aristotle maintains that a king could only be friends with a subject in the sense that the ruler would care for that subject "as a shepherd attends to his sheep" (228). That basic level of careful regard is of course a debatable point in the courtly love system, given Elizabeth's assumed role as an inaccessible, prevaricating beloved. 28 rapacious Spanish, yet Ralegh's willingness to steal from the Spanish would seem to go against the values of camaraderie and mutual obligation so frequently espoused in his text, simultaneously weakening the very moral hierarchy repeatedly described in the narrative. The sexualized nature of Ralegh's hints at conquest—his plans to seize Guiana's "Maydenhead," for example (Ralegh, Discoverie 211)—also suggest an overwhelming frustration with Elizabeth's refusal or inability to reciprocate when the explorer declares his service to her and offers the promise of gold as a future material proof of his loyalty. Ralegh's experience with patronage and male friendship may have conditioned him to expect easier, mutually satisfying terms of service and reward, but Elizabeth cannot reciprocate in full (or perhaps even in part) because her court does not simply operate under the guise of male friendship and mutual exchange. Rather, she has created a blended system of values that at times are inherently incompatible. Elizabeth engages in systems of patronage and mutual exchange, but she is also quite comfortable in the role of the Petrarchan beloved who by tradition must be distant and withholding when a lover declares his loyalty and service. Ralegh participates in and seeks support from both systems, but his efforts will have limited success because the frameworks themselves do not neatly align. As I noted earlier, in the moments when Ralegh's competing discursive strategies become irreconcilable, Amazon women often make brief appearances in the narrative. The Amazon woman, described by Kathryn Schwarz as "a figure that articulates without resolving social and sexual incongruities" {Tough xiii), stands in Ralegh's text as evidence of multiple systems working at odds with one another, simultaneously complicating the traditionally assumed natures or compositions of individual social, political, and economical frameworks. The Amazon women's reputedly active participation in the exchange and circulation of Manoan gold and spleen stones, for example, troubles otherwise easy connections between male exploration and a feminized new land as exploitable {Tough 71), but the women's activities also highlight Ralegh's awareness that systems of exchange in the New World need not be as complex or possibly 29 dissatisfying as Elizabeth has made them in England. Guiana offers the promise of regulated trade that is beneficial for all parties—Guianans, Amazons, and presumably Ralegh if he can gain the queen's permission to integrate himself into the system—but the surrounding areas also provide Ralegh with opportunities for purloining Spanish valuables. These likely violent acts of looting would go against classical notions of friendship and fair exchange, of course, but they might seem highly gratifying to someone who has been alienated from the queen, a withholding but crucial benefactor. Sir Robert Cecil's Editing Hand and the Discoverie Manuscript By positioning himself as a loyal subject who offers her something of value, Ralegh implies in his text that Elizabeth should receive his gift and continue the relationship with an appropriate level of reciprocity. In this layered, complex textual framework, Ralegh hints at the promise of many things for Elizabeth: productive and mutually beneficial trade relationships with the Guianans; a renewed sense of closeness between Elizabeth as monarch and the explorer as devoted courtier; the loyalty of the Guianans and the Amazon women as future subjects, should Elizabeth fund military ventures and launch a full scale invasion to usurp Spanish control of the region; and an English presence in the New World that would be built on trade and respect, qualities distinctly unlike the actions of plunder and murder, which are presented by Ralegh as typically Spanish. Ralegh's rhetorical positioning in this text as a devoted courtier and man of restraint in the New World, the land of plenty, is aided by the editing hand of Sir Robert Cecil, a key personality in Elizabeth's court and one of the figures to whom the Discoverie is dedicated, Charles Howard being the other. Between the November 1595 submission of the manuscript to Elizabeth and her advisors (the queen informed Ralegh by mid-December that no future missions to Guiana would be funded by the state) and the earliest printed version of the text in 1596 (the account was then aimed at a general readership and private investors who might support another, more extensive exploration of the region), Cecil made several careful editorial suggestions, often flagging moments of ebullience and 30
passages (including Ralegh's descriptions of Amazon women) that the queen might deem sexually incontinent or otherwise inappropriate. These passages then disappear from the printed text, or are at least heavily altered, a point that Joyce Lorimer's 2006 edition of the Discoverie makes clear, for Lorimer includes facing page transcriptions of the manuscript as well as the printed version. Likely prior to Elizabeth viewing the manuscript and certainly prior to its wider publication, then, Cecil actively shaped Ralegh's text in order to present the explorer as a man capable of probity. His textual alterations speak to the advisor's friendship with Ralegh and to his interest in securing a second voyage to Guiana. The Discoverie has traditionally been read in part as Ralegh's apology to Elizabeth—as an assurance that he had learned from the political fallout of his marriage, and as a promise that he could be trusted to lead an exploratory venture overseas (S. Miller 155-56; Montrose, "Work" 11, for example)—but Lorimer's edition of the text troubles any simple understanding of the relationship between Elizabeth and Ralegh. Indeed, Cecil's shadowy editorial presence and the larger court system in which all three were invested cannot be ignored. P. M. Handover suggests that Cecil did not respond favourably to Ralegh's pleas for help in securing a second voyage to Guiana, arguing that the royal advisor did not see financial viability in either privateering or the development of plantations (instead preferring the relative certainty of imports and exports) (124-26). Lorimer's facing page transcriptions would indicate, however, that Cecil did actually see the value in future exploration of the region, and that he was willing to help Ralegh secure a set of future investors, even as he identified passages in the text that might upset the primary reader and first avenue for financial support, Elizabeth. Furthermore, David Loades has noted that as early as 1564 Robert Cecil's father and political predecessor, William Cecil, had shown interest in exploration and discovery as a means of introducing English wares to foreign markets (120). The younger Cecil may have shared with his father a reserved but healthy respect for the financial possibilities to be found by exploring overseas. Indeed, while Ralegh had fallen into disgrace at court following his secret marriage to Throckmorton, and while he viewed his exploration in the New World as a means 31 of rehabilitating his reputation, Cecil seems to have had his own reasons for supporting future endeavours in the region. The possibility of establishing and strengthening New World revenue streams may have been sufficient motivation for Cecil to edit and omit material that would make a future voyage seem questionable to Elizabeth. In making the text as persuasive as possible for the queen, altering passages that suggest various forms of misbehaviour, or that relate directly to Amazon women or lead to discussions of them, Cecil indicates his own interest in Ralegh's additional exploration. This support is actually in line with Cecil's historical alliances with Ralegh; indeed, it was Cecil who negotiated Ralegh's release from the Tower of London, when Elizabeth banished him there upon learning of his secret marriage, and it was Cecil who assisted Ralegh in gaining back some of his political clout following the monumental mishap (201). Cecil's obvious involvement in the printed text complicates past readings of Ralegh's rather cryptic dedication, which repeatedly but obliquely refers to the hardships that result from unpaid debts, monetary language standing in for larger, equally important social debts. Shannon Miller, for example, notes the different tones in Ralegh's dedicatory material to Cecil and Howard and his preface to the general reader (155). She suggests that the former passage functions as an attempt to establish protection from the court insiders, and as an indirect apology to Elizabeth (S. Miller 155). The Discoverie text as a whole functions, according to Miller, as a placeholder for the promised gold of Guiana, yet the gift of gold (should it ever be found) will not repay the "debt," for Ralegh's is no financial obligation (S. Miller 156). Louis Montrose reads the dedication in a slightly different vein, as he suggests that the passage is Ralegh's attempt to ingratiate himself into courtly favour ("Work" 11). While Ralegh certainly utilizes his dedication as part of his larger bid to make amends to the queen and regain social stature, Lorimer's recent edition of the text suggests that Cecil was also working as an ally to support Ralegh's bid for future funding. Working within the models of patronage and male friendship, Cecil accepts Ralegh's promises of future gold, treating them as proof of his loyalty to him and Elizabeth; he also offers a level of reciprocity, as he responds by assisting Ralegh in his bid for financial support. 32
This issue will be taken up in my examination of Cecil and Ralegh's relationship and the language of restraint that Ralegh makes use of in the dedication, but first I shall sketch how Ralegh's exploration in the New World fits into a larger, mainly Spanish history of exploration in the Caribbean and South America. An analysis of Ralegh's fragmentary Ocean to Cynthia poems follows, and I then move into arguments about the triangular court relationships of Elizabeth, Ralegh, and Cecil. Next I enter into a discussion of the Discoverie's focus on trade, reciprocity, and obligation, tying these values to Ralegh's emphatic distancing of English New World activities from those of the Spanish. I conclude with a related analysis of how gender impacts the valuation of trade in the text; specifically, I examine the different but connected valuations of Elizabeth, the women who live in the region surrounding Guiana, and the Amazon women who are rumoured to live somewhere south of the Orinoco, as I argue that Ralegh's New World dreams of fair exchange quickly begin to operate according to the same exhausting, at times inefficient combination of systems at use in Elizabeth's court. Furthermore, Ralegh's promises of self-restraint in his future dealings in Guiana quickly show the strain of temptation, as the explorer almost immediately lists the multiple Spanish holdings that could be ransacked for English gain, also offering multiple descriptions of comely indigenous women. The more self-possessed and politically canny Cecil then alters these passages in order to create a persuasive, prudent text for Elizabeth, the first source to approach for future ventures overseas. Even as Cecil modifies and excises passages in order to present Ralegh as a man capable of probity, a man who is requesting funds for a sensible return to the region of Guiana, the multiple discursive frameworks upon which Ralegh relies prove to be unwieldy and, at times, irreconcilable. As he makes use of discursive traditions as diverse as patronage, male friendship, exploration, and courtly love, Ralegh's vision for New World exchange becomes as complicated as his Old World dealings. In these moments of instability, treatments of the Amazon woman emerge as confirmation that Ralegh's multiple discursive strategies will not coalesce or suture neatly. In fact, the Amazons' participation in 33
the regular, predictable exchange of jewels and precious metals suggests alternative strategies for an economic presence in the New World. This presence would not operate according to any conventional conflation of woman as exploitable, feminized geographical site (see Schwarz, Tough 71) or as prevaricating, withholding courtly beloved. Instead, Amazon women offer the possibility of an exchange system with recurrent, consistent access to gold, apparently the gold from the much sought after kingdom of el Dorado. It is an exchange system with mutually agreed upon, regulated terms and conditions, an exchange system distinctly unlike the frustrating blend of courtly love and reciprocal exchange used by Ralegh in his dealings with Elizabeth. El Dorado and Historical Exploration in the Area of Guiana In his exploration of the Caribbean and South America, particularly in his quest for el Dorado, Ralegh arrived late in the game, for Spanish crews had already been reconnoitring the region for over a century and representatives from the country had firmly established a military presence, often through violent confrontations with indigenous groups. The historical accuracy of European violence in the New World should not be ignored or minimized, but descriptions of Spanish brutality in particular were key aspects of English travel and exploration narratives. As I shall argue, these descriptions enabled English authors to justify an English presence overseas by distinguishing English explorers' respectful, respectable adventures from Spanish acts of depravity. In the case of Ralegh's Discoverie, the differentiation of Spanish from English is a key marker or point of evidence in arguments for England's better claim to New World resource expropriation and colonization. While a handful of explorers and conquistadores were wildly (and murderously) successful—the notorious Hernan Cortes in Mexico in the 1520s and Francisco Pizarro in Peru in the 1530s are both repeatedly noted by Ralegh in his text, while Ambrosius Dalfinger's Spanish 1531 expedition through the northern Andes yielded more than ninety-one kilograms of gold "by gifts or by raiding" over the course of eight days alone (Hemming 33)—this excitement just as frequently turned to disappointment. Locating el Dorado, "the golden one," was 34 one of the more specific of Spanish objectives in the New World and one to which Ralegh also attached his expedition. The el Dorado legend was inspired by an indigenous group with members who had, until about 1480, performed a religious ritual that involved covering a leader in gold dust (Penrose, Travel 142). The ceremony had taken place at Lake Guatavita, near Bogota, but the practice was terminated when the tribe was defeated by another indigenous group (142; see also Whitehead 72). Neil L. Whitehead suggests that the political leader's authority was renewed yearly in a ceremony that saw tribal members sprinkle gold dust on the figure before he dropped golden objects into a lake as thanks to the gods (72). Reports of the ceremonial lacustrine deposits of treasure morphed in the European mind into a golden city, Manoa, which could be found at the lake's edge, and a belief that multiple golden leaders or el Dorado?, existed in different locales (72-3). John Hemming traces the textual origins of the myth to 1541, claiming that "it quickly caught the imagination of the conquistadores. It spread fast, gained momentum and credibility, and evolved in detail during the ensuing century" (97), although the Spanish were certainly aware of the legend by around 1530. Indeed, Diego de Ordas was already searching for the figure during his expedition of 1530-31 and greatly influenced future searches for el Dorado, as he focused on the area between the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers (9). Searches for the golden leader in the 1560s ruled out the land east of Quito, Ecuador and south of Timana, Colombia (145), and interest again fell on the area surrounding the Orinoco and the Meta, roughly the region explored by Ordas in the early 1530s (146). Other expeditions looked for el Dorado in the late 1560s and searched even further west, along the borders of Guiana (148), while in the 1580s and early 1590s Antonio de Berrio—later the governor of Trinidad whom Ralegh would take hostage in 1595—focused twelve years of expedition time on the hills of Guiana (153). The Discoverie is in many ways the narrative of an upstart English empire competing against a far more established Spanish one, both vying for control over gold and positions of influence with indigenous leaders, the upstart having begun 35 to produce "literary texts [that are] very much concerned with the possibilities of revising such a [minor] position" (Lim 25), particularly in the wake of Sir Francis Drake's lauded circumnavigation from 1577 to 1580 and England's continued illicit privateering activities. Travel and exploration literature was wildly popular in England beginning in the late sixteenth century: the early English writers, so important to England's burgeoning presence in the New World, were, to quote Mary B. Campbell, "an articulate and voluble lot" (211). While the English presence in the New World was relatively delayed, particularly in comparison to nations like Spain and Holland, Ralegh is characterized by Mary C. Fuller as "ubiquitous in the early decades of English colonial history": she cites his involvement in military action in Ireland, his sponsorship of settlement in Virginia, and his participation in efforts to locate the Northwest Passage (Voyages 55). Ralegh's 1595 reconnaissance down the Orinoco as outlined in the Discoverie was only slightly longer than a month, but Hemming identifies it as the first English expedition of its kind in South America (170). His account of traveling to the Caribbean and South America follows the conventions of the traditional exploration narrative in its emphasis on authenticity and factual references about the regions visited. Indeed, Stephen J. Greenblatt maintains that the care taken to reference well-known geographical sites (and to describe the journey as logical and uncomplicated) presents or mimics "the style of the eyewitness who does not wish to distort his experience by using 'art' in the telling of it" (106). Ralegh's inclusion of native names simultaneously strengthens the text's presentation of authenticity and sparks the imagination of the reader, "suggesting something rich and strange and grandiose" (107). The harsh elements brought by the rainy season caused Ralegh's expedition crew much hardship, a point noted in his dedication to Cecil and Howard as he reminds the men of his "iorney of so great trauel" (Discoverie 5) and claims that he would "haue chosen rather to beare the burthen ofpouerty, then [risk courtly] reproach, & rather to endure a second trauel & the chaunces thereof, then to haue defaced an enterprise of so great assurance" during his first exploration of the region 36
(Discoverie 10), "travel" simultaneously signalling physical journey and travail,5 as well as indicating the level of extreme duress that Ralegh is willing to undergo should it assist or profit Elizabeth. Ralegh's lament for his suffering certainly has a political dimension, and it also fits into the tradition of narrating arduous journeys that can often be found in travel and exploration texts from the period. The fierce weather conditions in South America also function in the text as explanation for Ralegh's failure to return in 1595 with significant amounts of gold as proof of Guiana's potential resources. He claims that he did not collect more gold in the 1595 expedition because he lacked the supplies, time, and hands necessary for that type of labour (Discoverie 13). Additionally, the ever rising water levels of the Orinoco made it impossible to tarry at any one site, and Ralegh reminds his wider public readership in the more general Preface that he felt an added pressure to return to Trinidad, for he had left only a small group of men at the original locale to guard the ships (Discoverie 13). Importantly, Ralegh uses his hardships as evidence of the gold's value as he vociferously claims, I am not so much in loue with these long voyages, as to deuise, thereby to cozen my selfe, to lie hard, to fare worse, to be subiected to perils, to diseases, to ill sauours, to be parched and withered, and withal to sustaine the care and labour of such an enterprise, excepte the same had more cofort, then the fetching of Marcasite in Guiana, or bying of gold oare in Barbery. (Discoverie 14) The exhausting journey would not be worth his endurance if the gold were not real, if he had simply "[fetched ...] Marcasite in Guiana, or [bought...] gold oare in Barbery" on his course back to England (Discoverie 14), a point stressed later too as Ralegh attests that he would not undertake the hardships and perils of such exploration again if he were "not assured that the sunne couereth not so much riches in any part of the earth" (Discoverie 153-55). Rather, the physical hardship
5 "Travel." Def. 1 and 2. The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. The Oxford English Dictionary Online. Web. 26 October 2009. 37 and the authenticity of the (as yet largely undiscovered) gold create a closed tautological circuit in which each verifies and justifies the other, each also acting as confirmation of Ralegh's loyalty and service to the queen, qualities that might have otherwise lacked any material "proof." Lorimer notes that the report genre dictated less allowance for creative licence, as an author could easily be questioned or accused of falsehood by the immediate superiors who had commissioned the text (Introduction xvii). At the same time, limited success in early colonial endeavours led to a situation in which Elizabethan colonial propagandists were forced to adopt an approach which was "as much apologetic as descriptive", evolving "almost from the outset as a genre concerned with recuperating failure—as noble, strategic, even as a form of success." (Introduction xviii) As in Elizabeth's courtly love system, lack of reward must be reconfigured in the exploration genre to indicate a level of positive response, a reason to continue the pursuit of something that at times is completely intangible. Ralegh produces a record of disappointed expectations in many ways; he presents it and the promise of future gold as the material evidence of service to his courtly beloved, who must be approached with optimism and respect despite the explorer's full knowledge that he might never receive any fiscal or emotional gain for his labour, just as the contents of his narrative might be taken to be a series of empty promises. For Ralegh the expedition to Guiana was very much about the recuperation of his relationship to the monarch, although he was also certainly interested in exploration and the search for the political leader el Dorado. Aided by Cecil, Ralegh includes geographical points and descriptions of rumoured gold deposits as he presents his exploration and Manoa as credible. The explorer seemed to have had a genuine belief in the existence of a golden kingdom, and, as Lorimer notes, Spanish experiences in finding and looting Aztec and Incan treasures in the 1520s and 1530s made the Englishman's belief in a third kingdom's treasure "not unreasonable" (Introduction xxvii). Multiple demands on Elizabeth's coffers and martial resources made the proposed conquest of Guiana 38 impossible, and within six weeks of submitting his manuscript to her Ralegh was informed of the queen's decision to not offer state funding for future ventures (Introduction xxxviii). Ralegh nonetheless relied on the hazy probability of el Dorado's existence as he placed his manuscript into the hands of a public readership and began to search for private investors who would support his possible future initiatives in South America. Even as he nourishes a sense of realism in the text through multiple references to dates of travel and regions passed, and descriptions of geographical points of interest, Ralegh is often fairly vague about Manoa's location, stating that he first understood it to be "southward of the great bay of Charuas, or Guanipa," although he then learns "it was 600 miles farther off... and manie other impediments to them vnknowen and vnheard" {Discoverie 7). This opacity could be understood as part of Ralegh's efforts to minimize any publicly known, tangible details for locating (and thus rival expeditions for) el Dorado (and perhaps Guiana more generally), for later in the text he admits that while he had gained information about gold in the Guiana region, conditions were not favourable to begin digging and he "thought it best not to houer thereabouts" {Discoverie 117). Indeed, he fears that to stay and investigate the possible mines would alert competition to the site, particularly if the Spanish had made use of the same guides as he had {Discoverie 117). He is, however, far more precise in his descriptions of gold-rich Spanish settlements and forts that could be attacked and plundered. His extensive listing of sites includes the townes and Cities o/Merida, Lagrita, S. Christophero, the great Cities o/Pampelone, S. Fe de Bogota, Tunia and Mozo where the Esmeralds are found.... [T]he ports and villages within the bay of Vraba in the kingdom or riuers o/Dariena, and Caribana, the cities and townes... [which] haue gold enough to pay the King part, and are not easily inuaded by the way of the Ocean. {Discoverie 8-9) As cartographically recognizable locales, these noted sites strengthen Ralegh's claims to veracity; they simultaneously suggest that Ralegh sees his future venture 39 in Guiana as dependent on a much larger system of state-funded aggression against Spanish holdings in the New World. Despite his claims of self-control and his promises of future productive exchange with the indigenous peoples, should Elizabeth fund a second voyage to South America, Ralegh's listing of Spanish settlements betrays slippage in his ability to exercise restraint. The explorer may claim to have honoured Elizabeth's reputation by performing a service at his own financial and physical expense—by choosing a "iorney of so great trauel" (Discoverie 5)—but he does so as he makes an extended plea for further funding. Ralegh implies that, should Elizabeth grant additional resources, the queen could receive rewards far greater than the profits accruing from trade with the Guianans. In detailing these settlements and towns as possibly lucrative opportunities for plundering, Ralegh actually keys into Elizabeth's (and the wider readership's) knowledge of a successful history of English attacks on Spanish sites, and he indicates that his self-control could be nominal (or used strategically) if it would benefit him and, of course, Elizabeth, his most important possible patron. The queen had regularly given tacit approval for English buccaneering and privateering. Indeed, she viewed such activities as part of a larger attempt to control Spanish power in the New World (Lim 31), and the financial rewards to the English state could not be ignored: in 1573, for example, Drake purloined metals and jewels with a value of £40,000 (32). Ralegh and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex worked together in 1596 and 1597 to steal from and sink Spanish ships at Cadiz and near the Azores (Penrose, Tudor 28). Ralegh's willingness to assume the role of aggressor and to engage in acts of ransacking hinders any clear distinction between the Spanish and the English in the New World, a distinction that Ralegh is careful to stress in the Discoverie as he repeatedly notes that his interactions there are always based on values of respect and trade (unless provoked to violence). This deferential basis for relations in the Caribbean and South America is in clear opposition to his descriptions of the Spanish men's preference for theft and bloodshed, and Ralegh emphasizes his role as envoy of Elizabeth in his 40 rationale for estimable behaviour. Indeed, he claims to have forgone temptations to enrich himself, returning to England in 1595 "a beggar, and withered," because the urge for pecuniary reward was far less than his desire to maintain Elizabeth's honourable reputation among the indigenous populations (Discoverie 6). In doing so, Ralegh relies on the rhetoric of the courtly love system, and he positions himself as the devoted lover performing a service for a distant object of affection who may never acknowledge or reward the lover's suffering and sacrifice. At odds with this language of courtly love (and the overlapping experience of the explorer who must seek the edges of the map despite frequent failure and delayed gratification) is the rhetoric of patronage and friendship in which exchange and mutual benefit are at least real possibilities. As I shall discuss next, Ralegh's frustration with the irreconcilability of these discourses can be seen in his Ocean to Cynthia poems, the appearance of an amazonian moon goddess not coincidental as the poet attempts to make sense of the competing discourses at work in his strained relationship with Elizabeth. Court Politics: Elizabeth I, Sir Walter Ralegh, and Bess Throckmorton Ralegh's Discoverie is addressed to Elizabeth (albeit surreptitiously, as he chooses to dedicate it to Howard and Cecil), the text of "[t]he voyage to Guiana [... occurring] between potential reproach and past displeasure" over Ralegh's
6 In emphasizing Spanish cruelty in the New World, Ralegh relies on the well established "Black Legend," a descriptor first used in 1912 by a Spanish journalist who was upset by the continuation of a historical European trend that depicted Spain as "a backward country of ignorance, superstition, and religious fanaticism," a nation stuck in an arcane past (Greer, Mignolo, and Quilligan 1). The journalist, Julian Juderias, suggested that the Black Legend was primarily the creation of antagonistic early modern Protestants, and, in their study of the fictionalized or sensationalized aspects of the legend, Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo, and Maureen Quilligan point out that Spanish violence in the New World was hardly "unique" (1). Greer, Mignolo, and Quilligan note the irony that accusations of Spanish violence in the New World actually originated in the sixteenth-century writings of Spanish missionaries, especially Bartolome de las Casas, who voiced concerns about relations with indigenous groups in colonized areas (5). The content was quickly translated, and European and English authors happily added new texts and accusations concerning Spanish violence in the Americas (5-6). Edmund Valentine Campos notes England's unusual position in New World dealings: the English were relatively minor figures in sixteenth-century colonialism and imperialism; in seeking to improve that position, the English both imitated Spanish exploration efforts and sought to distinguish themselves by avoiding any association with cruelty (256), particularly the abuse of indigenous workers in mines (260-61). Instead, Campos suggests, the sixteenth-century English preferred to gain power and riches through attacks on Spanish holdings, opportunistically or conveniently treating piracy and privateering as a nobler activity than colonial endeavours, "as an ideological alternative to straightforward territorial acquisition and enslavement of native populations" (268). 41
1591 nuptials with Throckmorton (Fuller, Voyages 74). The apologetic tone and indirect penance to Elizabeth can perhaps be gleaned from Ralegh's preoccupation with the payment of debts, and his insistence that he has suffered "aduersitie" (Discoverie 4) and physical, emotional, and financial hardship in recent years (Discoverie 6). Ralegh had secretly married a lady-in-waiting to the queen, and, when the deception was discovered, both Ralegh and Throckmorton were held in the Tower until 1592 and Ralegh was banned from court for five years (Lorimer, Introduction xxii). Not only did the couple marry without Elizabeth's permission (already an act guaranteed to raise her ire), they exacerbated the situation by not immediately revealing their betrothal; indeed, the marriage was only discovered after Throckmorton gave birth to a child in 1592 (Robertson 100). By returning to the Privy Chamber a sexualized woman and later a mother, and in keeping this new status a secret, Throckmorton had denigrated the aura of virginity that Elizabeth so diligently cultivated and protected, simultaneously suggesting that virginity was an affectation rather than a physical condition. Throckmorton's return to the Privy Chamber hinted that a woman could convincingly perform virginity long after becoming sexually knowledgeable, thus allowing for the possibility that Elizabeth's own virginity was a recital rather than a reality. Karen Robertson offers political explanations for Elizabeth's anger upon learning of Ralegh's secret wedding to Throckmorton (101-02). First, and likely most importantly for the queen, marriage among the nobility confirmed and reified political networks and obligations. Elizabeth's careful monitoring of court marriages was therefore not surprising (102). Additionally, Robertson posits that because Throckmorton had seemed determined to remain in service after seven years of Privy Chamber placement and being unmarried, her decision to not die a maid "was a direct challenge to the Queen's assertion of the virtues of single blessedness" (102). Lastly, Robertson echoes my suggestion that, because Throckmorton hid her wedding, pregnancy, and childbirth, returning to service and feigning the status of an unmarried virgin, "she exposed the Elizabethan's court display of virginity as simply a performance, thus casting a shadow on the 42
Queen's own claims of virginity" (102). Much has been made of Elizabeth's resistance to her inner circle marrying and her violent reactions to the secret weddings of her ladies-in-waiting. She may have been particularly sensitive to such love matches, as she at all times wanted to avoid what Paul E. J. Hammer describes as the stereotypical problem of queenship—a "fleshy weakness and its consequences for the state" (82)—but her reactions were fairly similar to those of other contemporary European monarchs under similar circumstances, all of whom viewed such unauthorized unions as direct challenges to their dictates (81-2). Ralegh's fall from grace left him in a particularly vulnerable position, for he had no real political power or connection to leverage as an individual courtier. Specifically, he had inherited nothing of political substance as Cecil had through his father, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the Secretary of State for Elizabeth's first fourteen years on the throne and Lord Treasurer thereafter. Rather, Ralegh's political favour was earned solely through courtly activities (Adams 18). Although the explorer's was "an old-established county family," and his father briefly served as a regional deputy vice-admiral during Mary I's reign, Mark Nicholls and Penry Williams posit that as the youngest of several brothers and half-brothers in his family, the courtier may have not had great financial resources at his disposal. Ralegh's entry to court may have been provided by either his aunt Katharine Astley or his half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert, but Nicholls and Williams are uncertain about the explorer's early court presence. Ralegh's position at court became far more prominent beginning in the early 1580s, when Elizabeth took notice of him and began giving him generous gifts. As Nicholls and Williams contend, the infamous tales of Ralegh's chivalry- placing his cloak on the ground in front of Elizabeth, so that she could avoid dirtying her dress or feet; carving poetry with the queen onto a window pane—are all hearsay, but they do reflect the special relationship shared by the courtier and the monarch. Ralegh was by all accounts resoundingly unpopular with other courtiers: his fast rise through the ranks, based solely on royal favour, and his exaggerated courtly demeanour with the queen were both overwhelmingly disliked by others jockeying for advancement (Adams 36). Ralegh's personal 43 status as something of an outsider was mitigated, however, by his close relationship with Elizabeth, and his alliances with men like Cecil and Howard. Historians have generally divided courtly factions in the 1590s into two major camps: that of Essex and that of Cecil and Ralegh, the latter also being supported by Howard, the Lord Admiral. Such alliances should not be overstated, however, for allegiance was somewhat fluid and factional followers did indeed cross sides on a fairly frequent basis. The men also enjoyed personal relationships that shifted over the years. Essex was a godfather to Ralegh's first son, Damerei, born in 1592, and, despite the fact that Cecil and Essex are so frequently identified as locked in a struggle for recognition and reward from the queen, the three men worked together to carry out attacks on Cadiz in 1596 (Robertson 107). Because Cecil's camp was backed by Howard, one of Elizabeth's innermost circle—Lord Admiral from 1585 to 1597, Lord Steward afterwards— Ralegh's alliances with Cecil and Howard were well matched for garnering support or favour from the queen (Adams 34). Indeed, Ralegh's position at court depended greatly on his relationship with the monarch. As one of her favourites, Ralegh enjoyed a unique relationship with Elizabeth. Flirtatious and affectionate with the courtier, Elizabeth did not depend on him to lobby or negotiate her interests at court (not the levels of activity demanded of Cecil, at the very least) (121), nor did she have any sense of familial obligation to support the man. Rather, Ralegh's place at court was purely based on royal reward and the alliances that developed out of the queen's approval. As a result, Ralegh's social status was particularly vulnerable to any changes in his close alliance with Elizabeth. Furthermore, his relative lack of popularity among other men at court meant that he had less social capital to leverage during times of royal disfavour. While Ralegh did not solely rely on his relationship with the queen for political survival, the courtier was one of many who could and did use the principles of courtship in order to attain social and political advancement. At once sincere and superficial, courtship relied on cycles of call and (perhaps purposely delayed) response, flirtation and playful rejoinder, request and (occasional, possibly limited) gift. Courtship allowed Elizabeth to further develop 44 an established, acceptable framework wherein she could negotiate and hesitate before giving favour. Indeed, Catherine Bates maintains that courtship became the ideal political machine for Elizabeth, "the wavering, prevaricating, and normally dismissive behaviour of the conventionalized mistress providing her with an obvious role-model for political manipulation and manoeuvre" (45). One should consider the dual meaning of the word "court," for instance: the political court as a locus of power and authority (as well as of culture and the arts, and relationships of patronage), but also the social or erotic court as an act of seducing or of attempting to gain a love interest (Levin, "Heart and Stomach " 41; see also Bates 1). Requests for political promotion or favour were made through love poetry and vaguely erotic promises of devotion, yet Elizabeth's adopted role as courtly beloved also allowed her a great deal of inaccessibility when she so chose. Her conscious distancing from Ralegh following his marriage scandal can be seen in the fragmentary remains of his often dolorous Ocean to Cynthia poems, written in 1592 while Ralegh was held in the Tower. Cynthia, the virginal moon goddess, was an epithet and persona frequently connected with Elizabeth, while Ocean alludes to Water, the queen's own affectionate moniker for Ralegh. At once beautiful and unreachable, the moon goddess has ultimate control over the movements and directions of the ocean, yet the relationship does not extend to the ocean any similar powers, for the connection between the two is not one of friendship and equal exchange. Rather, Ocean and Cynthia operate within the system of Petrarchan or courtly love, and, as such, Ocean must pine for favour while Cynthia must, perhaps cruelly, withhold affection, at least in part. Cynthia had of course granted favour in the past, for the speaker mourns the advantages he forfeited "when first [his] fancy erred" (21st Book 3). Having lost Cynthia's affection, Ocean nominally addresses his complaints to his "joys interred" (21st Book 1), arguing that if his own pleasures had not died after his misstep, "the dead [... could] unfold, / Some sweeter words, some more becoming verse" (21st Book 8-9). These dead pleasures or "joys interred" (21st Book 1) could in fact "witness [his] mishap in higher kind" (21st Book 10). Even as he 45 introduces his own departed joy as the crux of his current predicament, the speaker slips and identifies the real cause for his continued hardship. He posits, "If to the living were my muse" (or, superficially, his musing) "addressed, / Or did my mind her own spirit still inhold" (21st Book 5-6), then he would be met with "Some sweeter words, some more becoming verse" (21st Book 9). The speaker's central problem is not in fact his "joys interred" (21st Book 1), but that he feels a disconnection between his thoughts and Cynthia, his "muse," more precisely, "her own spirit" (21st Book 6), which seems to not only be distanced from him but to actually lack vitality or compassion. After claiming vociferously that the blame for his current quandary should rest with his dead pleasures—"Slain with self-thoughts, amazed in fearful dreams" (21st Book 19)—the speaker attempts a rehabilitation of some sort, one that is denied by external sources rather than a strict sense of internal defeat: Cynthia "descends from benefactress to tormenter, from a sustaining symbol to one more especially painful part of his fragmented reality" (Stillman 36). Indeed, the speaker attempts what has in the past been a productive venture. He approaches trees, which are in fact bearing fruit at that moment, but he is only able to "gather withered leaves, / And glean the broken ears with miser's hands, / Who sometime did enjoy the weighty sheaves" (Ralegh, 21st Book 21-3). While the trees are "fruitful" for other men, they are only "healthless" for him (21st Book 21, 26). He may later claim to "love the bearing and not-bearing sprays / Which now to others do their sweetness send" (21st Book 306-07), yet Ocean exists in a liminal space, caught between injury and ultimate death, as a body violently slain Retaineth warmth although the spirit be gone, And by a power in nature moves again Till it be laid beneath the fatal stone. (21st Book 73-6) Indeed, the speaker imagines himself as the earth struggling to corral an internal strength and "Produce some green, though not as it hath done" (21st Book 80), once faced with the sun's abandonment (21st Book 77-80), the sun being a traditional metaphor for a monarch. 46
The speaker's frustration with Cynthia and her refusal to grant forgiveness or favour erupts in a lengthy exclamation that confirms the source of Ocean's continued unhappiness to be the moon goddess rather than personal inability to feel joy. The speaker's exasperation can be sensed as he highlights his past devotion to Cynthia and the pair's unusually close relationship: Oh hopeful love, my object and invention! Oh true desire, the spur of my conceit! Oh worthiest spirit, my mind's impulsion! Oh eyes transpersant, my affection's bait! Oh princely form, my fancy's adamant, Divine conceit, my pain's acceptance, Oh all in one, oh heaven on earth transparent, The seat of joys and love's abundance! (21st Book 37-44) At the same time, the impossibility of truly satisfying his mistress is suggested as the speaker questions, "When she did well, what did there else amiss? / When she did ill, what empires could have pleased?" (21st Book 53-4) Even as the speaker states that Cynthia "gave, she took, she wounded, she appeased" (21st Book 56), the goddess's actions do not suggest a friendly reciprocity or regular shifts in power, despite the paired nature of the chosen verbs~"She gave, she took" and "she wounded, she appeased" (21st Book 56). Rather, her actions as described by the speaker suggest capriciousness and mutability. Ralegh's dangerous dependence on Elizabeth for political survival also shows the limits of the courtly love system upon which Ralegh so frequently relied, for the courtier participated in a cultural conversation that promised no immediate or even eventual reward for service, yet Ocean's complaints suggest that Ralegh desires (and feels that he in fact deserves) the kind of reciprocity or exchange that might be found in male friendship, patronage, or trade. His frustration with the failure of multiple systems to cooperate makes his usage of Cynthia as a representation of Elizabeth not surprising, for Cynthia is connected to the chaste, amazonian moon goddess Diana, and Amazon women, as I have stated earlier, function as symptoms of multiple systems or discourses failing to 47 coalesce. The women's presence draws attention to the moments when discursive systems and seemingly naturalized institutions can be attacked, questioned, or subverted: courtly love under Cynthia's control becomes an opportunity for masculine independence and self-assurance to crumble, for example. Like Cynthia in Ralegh's poem and Elizabeth at her court, beautiful Diana has the ability to inflict cruel punishments for sexual transgressions. Diana maintains autonomy from men and leads a circle of women who are committed to chastity. The mythological goddess has no qualms about turning Actaeon into a stag and setting his own dogs on him when the hunter oversteps his boundaries and spies on her bathing, nor does she hesitate to punish Callisto, one of her virginal followers, when the nymph becomes pregnant after having been raped by Zeus. Indeed, depending on the version of the myth, Diana either exiles Callisto, transforms her into a bear and encourages her followers to give hunt, or (most favourably) unwittingly kills Callisto once Hera, jealous of Zeus's encounter with the nymph, turns her into a bear (Graves 1: 87). Diana, like Ocean's Cynthia, is all too vulnerable to human traits like anger and vindictiveness, and there is a constant sense of danger attached to the goddess, for she has proven her ability to enact physical injury, dismemberment even, as punishment if her practice of chastity is ignored or slighted by either man or woman. Like Diana, Cynthia forgets her divine nature and frequently behaves in a manner that is altogether human. Perfection may have created Cynthia's mind {21st Book 209), but it also "left her ... I... free from every evil but cruelty" {21st Book 211-12), and Cynthia has chosen to "be a woman for a fashion" {21st Book 203)~to be cruelly punitive and vengeful, to be irrationally angry and to withhold affection in response to the speaker's indiscretions. Ocean's accusation that Cynthia will "be a woman for a fashion" {21st Book 203) is indeed odd, for Cynthia has not engaged in any subversively gendered or anti-feminine behaviour prior to or since the duo's falling out. She did not, for example, engage in masculine behaviour for a period of time, "for a fashion," nor has she now decided on a whim~"for a fashion"~to take on a set of femininized characteristics and "be a woman" in her dress and manner {21st Book 203). Rather, she has 48 behaved as and has "[been] a woman" all along (21st Book 203). That Cynthia's womanhood can be "fashion[ed]" (21st Book 203) does speak to the artificial nature of behaviours judged to be feminine and masculine, however. Indeed, Cynthia can take on the demeanour and activities that will identify her as "a woman" (21st Book 203), and, more importantly, she can use these mannerisms and behaviours to her own advantage: her withholding favour and displays of anger both work to upset any hold over her that Ocean might otherwise attempt to establish. Ocean strongly implies that Cynthia allows her past favourite to suffer unusually malicious punishments as he compares her to Hero, arguing that she "hath left no lamp to guide her love— /... / She sleeps thy death, that erst thy danger sithed" (21st Book 488-90). In this revision of the myth, the lamp has not been blown out accidentally in a storm. Hero has simply forgotten to light the lamp (or has consciously chosen not to) and has gone to sleep, leaving loyal Leander to drown in the Hellespont. The speaker fears that he has lost Cynthia's favour forever—"Her love hath end: my woe must ever last" (21st Book 522)—and the poem follows Ralegh's estrangement from the monarch, an estrangement that indeed might have seemed permanent and without remedy as he wrote. In truth, however, favour may have been momentarily diminished when her favourites married, but Elizabeth's affectionate tone and behaviour continued throughout her relationships with her primary courtiers. Ralegh's successful atonement was confirmed in 1597 when she reinstated him as Captain of the Queen's Guard (Robertson 103), but Walter Lim surmises that Elizabeth's anger towards Ralegh had likely already dissipated to some degree in 1595, given that she supported his exploration of Guiana at all. Lim is careful to point out that "the furthering of England's national interests cannot be extricated from the advancement of the subject's own: Ralegh's desire to be restored to royal favor" (37). Ralegh admits this personal deficit in his dedication to Cecil and Howard, as he notes his hope that the manuscript of the Discoverie will "recouer but the moderation ofexcesse, and the least tast of the greatest plentie formerly possessed" (Discoverie 4-5). In the printed text's Preface to a 49 more general readership, however, Ralegh claims something quite different, maintaining that his sole motive in undertaking the exploration of Guiana was service to England and the Crown (Discoverie 14). He even goes so far as to claim that he is willing "to lose her highness fauour and good opinion foreuer, and [his] life withall" if a second voyage to Guiana proves him wrong about the gold waiting to be mined and expropriated (Discoverie 16). This last claim creates a different understanding of Ralegh as a determined courtier who remains a favourite of the queen, shifting the rhetorical focus from penitential suffering following disgrace to one of confidence and loyalty to the state. The second representation is quite at odds with the plaintive, weary voice heard in the dedicatory notes to Cecil and Howard. Indeed, the overly confident tone in the General Preface connects to a larger readership tradition that saw explorers as swashbuckling adventurers, engaged in amazing travels, but also as liars. Ralegh's text stands at a crucial moment, as general readerships began to demand realism in travel accounts, and the narrative assumes a position "between the vastly metaphorical and the responsibly documentary" (Campbell 221). Ralegh's General Preface often focuses on the material aspects of the gold ore samples that he has been circulating in London. He insists that the true Guianan gold can be found as either separate grains or as part of "the white Sparre, of which [he] saw diuers hils, and in sundrie places, but had neither tyme, nor men, nor instruments fitte to labour" (Discoverie 12). The limited number of samples he was able to extract from these reliable sources has now proven of great worth when appraised by experts in London: indeed, assessments by professionals have valued his pieces as ranging from £12,000 to £26,900 per tonne (Discoverie 12). As he remains adamant about the veracity of his gold, Ralegh stresses the hardships that he has endured on his travels: indeed, he and his men were forced to battle the raging tropical rivers of the rainy season; they barely survived due to a lack of victuals and supplies; and the explorer spent his own money in his initial efforts (Discoverie 13-4). Ralegh insists, however, that he undertook these challenges with the sole "respecte or desire ... to serue her maiesty and my Country thereby" (Discoverie 14). A return to South America is exigent not for 50
Ralegh to perhaps recoup lost expenses or to gain personal power; rather, the explorer reiterates in the closing pages of his Preface that English interests in the New World (and international safety more generally) are at immediate risk, for the Spanish are making inroads into Guiana and will soon have complete possession of the region's gold stores (Discoverie 14-15). Ralegh thus reconfigures his future exploration bid for a general readership and frames his additional voyages as necessary for national security in the face of a spirited, excessive Spanish aggression. Court Politics: Sir Robert Cecil, Sir Walter Ralegh, and the Language of Restraint While the Spanish are cruel thieves, Ralegh stresses moderation, ostensibly because he represents Elizabeth, but also perhaps because Cecil, a notoriously cautious and politically astute individual (Haynes 182), had such a substantial hand in shaping the final text. Ralegh distinguishes between the violent Spanish sexual excesses in the New World and the relative abstinence of the Englishmen, the subtext being that while the Spanish disrespect existing frameworks and care little about the honour of the indigenous peoples, the English want to build long-lasting relationships of trust and mutual benefit with the Guianan natives (see also Montrose, "Work" 16). Trade will set the English apart from the Spanish, affirming the former's better right to the New World in the process, and political relationships in the Americas will, by Ralegh's plan, operate under the basic principles of patronage~"[o]bligation, honor, and gift exchange" (S. Miller 156)—yet Ralegh's vision also confirms his public commitment to the courtly love ideals developed and performed by Elizabeth and her political insiders. Fuller examines Ralegh's directive that his men not engage in any sexual relations (consensual or otherwise) with the women of Guiana. She characterizes Ralegh's control as obedience to the Queen's prior command, a command which had never actually been given. Deferral or withholding of sexual violence then becomes a figure for Ralegh's general relation to 51
Guiana, his repeated turning away from the aims of his "discovery": Guiana itself, Manoa, gold-mines, tombs rich with gold. (Voyages 79) While Fuller's argument is of obvious merit and importance, the inclusion of Cecil's editing marks in Lorimer's edition of the Discoverie reveals that Cecil at several points reigns in the exuberant Ralegh. He points out lengthy descriptions of the comely indigenous women, descriptions that then vanish from the finalized text, and alters passages that summarize English gifts of alcohol to or revelry with indigenous South American groups. Removed from the final text is a rather exuberant description of the sensuous possiblities available to Englishmen in the New World, including opportunities to purchase wives "of all ages, and not inferiowr in shape and favour to any of Europe, cullowr excepted," the women sold for the going rate of "3 or 4 hachets a peece" (Ralegh, Discoverie 206). While this passage is likely edited because it indicates Ralegh's willingness to engage in sexual activities far from Elizabeth's immediate control, other descriptions of indigenous women remain if the representations are in the service of presenting the Spanish as immoral, violent, and rapacious. Following descriptions of Spanish sexual excess, for example, Ralegh is adamant that he knows of no English crew member who, "by violence or otherwise, euer knew any of [the indigenous] women" (Discoverie 111). Despite having seen "many hundreds, and had many in our power, and of those very young, and excellently fauored which came among vs without deceit, starke naked" (Discoverie 121), the English crew has apparently been perfectly capable of not buckling to temptation, unlike the Spanish occupiers in the region. Ralegh is certainly penitent and aims to improve his relationship with Elizabeth, but Cecil takes care to present Ralegh solely as a man of sexual and colonial restraint. Indeed, Cecil's more controlled voice is noticeable from the outset of Ralegh's text: "To the right honerable right wise & excellent spirited gentleman Six Robert Cecil Knight, of especiall trust and employment in her Majesties affaires & Councellor in her highnes priuy counsells" becomes the more concise, less obsequious dedication "to the Right Honorable Sr Robert Cecyll 52
Knight, Counceller in her Highnes priuie Councels" in the printed version, for example (Discoverie 2, 3). Ralegh begins his dedication by offering an abstract discussion about the delivery of his papers. The manuscript of the Discoverie is intended as a reciprocal gift and response to Howard and Cecil's "many Honorable and friendlie parts" "parts'''' perhaps alluding politely to the courtiers' personal qualities and grimly to the factions at court who would side against the explorer, those critics who "were much mistaken, who would haue perswaded, that [Ralegh] was too easeful and sensuall to vndertake a iorney of so great trauel" {Discoverie 3, 5).7 While the word "parts" could also be read caustically to refer to the performances of Howard and Cecil in feigning friendship with Ralegh (their "friendlie parts")? this possibility seems far less likely and something of a departure from interpretations of documented court alliances during Elizabeth's reign. Furthermore, Ralegh takes great pain to note his fallen, weakened state, and he faults his enemies at court for this condition, immediately recognizing Cecil and Howard for their friendship. The explorer notes that he began his journey to Guiana "in the winter of [his] life" and that his exploration would be "fitter for bodies lesse blasted with misfortunes, for men of greater abilitie, and for mindes of better incouragement" (Discoverie 4). He claims to have been "left of all, but of malice and reuenge" prior to his journey, for example, and he insists that Howard and Cecil loved him "in the darkest shadow of aduersitie" (Discoverie 4). Given historical accounts of the Cecil-Ralegh and Essex factions at court, Cecil's editing hand that seems determined to improve Ralegh's account of the expedition, and Ralegh's own plaintive dedication (which heaps praise on
7 "Part." Def. 15, 17b. The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. The Oxford English Dictionary Online. Web. 26 October 2009.
8 "Part." Def. 12b. The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. The Oxford English Dictionary Online. Web. 26 October 2009. A connection between Ralegh's usage of the term "part" and possible references to the "performance" of court roles is, however, completely valid. D. K. Smith looks to the very title of Ralegh's text as he argues that the choice of "Discoverie" points to the act of exploration, but also "to the 'unravelling or unfolding of the plot of a play.' From the narrative's very beginning, then, Raleigh's voyage seemed to involve equal parts exploration and theatricality, a perception echoed on the title page with the knowledge that all of this was 'Performed in the yeare 1595 by Sir W. Raleigh'" (137). 53 the two in Elizabeth's inner circle while damning unnamed others), arguments for Cecil's interest in future exploration of and possible resource appropriation from Guiana can be supported. Lorimer even notes that "[w]ord substitutions throughout the manuscript change the author's 'resolution' or 'belief that rich ore could be found to certain 'knowledge'" ("Untruth" 11), suggesting that Cecil felt a vested interest in convincing Elizabeth of Guiana's promise, and that he initiated editorial changes to this effect. Ralegh acknowledges his social obligation to the men; while he is unable to repay such an abstract (and, one imagines, monumental) debt, he "can doe no more for a time but confesse [it] to be due" (Discoverie 4). His expedition to Guiana then makes amends for past wrongs, functioning as an extended penance to the queen for his indiscretion in marrying Throckmorton, and the "bundle of papers" that he delivers to Howard and Cecil aims to help Ralegh "recouer but the moderation ofexcesse, and the least fast of the greatest plentie formerly possessed" (Discoverie 4-5). In claiming to only seek "the least tast of past favours, Ralegh positions himself as humble, as perhaps unlikely to seek out or be lured by excess in the future. Certainly the ability to temper emotions and temptations is suggested in his stated wish to secure "moderation" (Discoverie 4). "[Tjhe least tast of the greatest plentie formerly possessed" may also fit into the explorer's courtly love expectations for an incomplete, possibly dissatisfying response. The gift of the papers supplements Ralegh's past response of "promises" and seems to be closer to parity or reciprocity for the men's gift of friendship and support (Discoverie 3), one can assume because the manuscript is somehow a more material proof of the gold available in Guiana. In many ways, the Discoverie stands as a testament to Ralegh's relative failures as an explorer—he never actually sets foot in Guiana, nor does he gain immediately tangible details about the location of Manoa specifically or gold stores more generally, and he brings back ore samples that are of dubious quality and that spur his detractors to question the quality of the offerings—but Ralegh has after all explored the region that borders Guiana by the time Cecil and Howard receive the papers. His text is 54 the culmination of his knowledge gained from exploration, so he expects it to be treated as a more definitive confirmation of Guiana's riches than his past "promises" ever were (Discoverie 3). Ralegh goes further and argues that when "stockes" held "in trust" have been depleted by profligacy and "wastful factors," they still "doe yeeld some cullorfor the same in their account" (Discoverie 3), an argument that simultaneously alludes to his past political missteps in marrying Throckmorton without permission—the endangerment of political "stockes" due to "wastful factors'''--while claiming a residual right to respect—the "stockes" that still "yeeld some cullorfor the same in their account" (Discoverie 3). Having made reference to the endangerment of his "stockes" that have been depleted despite being held "in trust" Ralegh suggests that these "stockes" are still valid, that they still "yeeld some cullorfor the same in their account," "account" suggesting a twinned reference to his remaining political capital and the account of his exploration, the Discoverie manuscript itself. The choice of "cullor" is remarkably evocative, signalling not only vibrancy but also the colours of heraldry and the various orders of knighthood, a system to which Ralegh is politically, financially, and emotionally tied. One must not ignore, however, the more deceptive qualities of "cullor[ing an ...] account"--that of artificiality or verisimilitude, and of exaggeration.9 Ralegh's text would be accused of all these misleading or deceptive things, and his exploration narrative anticipates a sceptical response, for even as he thanks Cecil and Howard for their past kindness, he anticipates the "neede [for] a double protection and defence" (Discoverie 3-4). This protection is necessary despite Ralegh's repeated claims of penance through suffering. He emphasizes the continued poverty that he endures having controlled his behaviour while exploring South America and the Caribbean. He claims to have arrived back in England "a beggar, and withered," not for lack of opportunity to enrich himself but for his greater urge to respect Elizabeth and to maintain her spotless reputation
9 "Colour." Def. 2b, 6a. The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. The Oxford English Dictionary Online. Web. 26 October 2009. 55 in the New World (Discoverie 6). Indeed, Ralegh explains, "it had sorted ill with the offices of Honor, which by her Maiesties grace, I hold this day in England, to run from Cape to Cape, &from place to place, for the pillage ofordinarie prizes" (Discoverie 6). Ralegh stresses his restraint in not sacking the country already and in not holding the chieftains for ransom (Discoverie 6), and it is this commitment to presenting a respectable, honourable return to the New World that he shares with Cecil and for which both men are willing to engage in rhetorical positioning, even if such promises of restraint are quite possibly mere performance, and even if Ralegh, Cecil, and Elizabeth are all well aware of the lucrative possibilities that would follow from English privateering or looting of Spanish holdings. In his editorial work Cecil frequently marks for omission passages that either focus on the exotic or suggest illicit activities between Englishmen and indigenous people, activities that would work against Ralegh's presentation of self-control. One of the first substantial changes suggested by Cecil can be found, curiously enough, in one of the Discoveries longer passages on Amazon women. Having made a claim that the Guianans are great carousers (Discoverie 49-51), Ralegh mentions Amazon women for the first time. Their appearance in the text is without any warning and follows a detailed summary of the tribes along the Amazon River and in the region surrounding Guiana, tribes who trade and regularly wear gold from Guiana (Discoverie 61-3). Ralegh claims to have gathered information about the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers from "the most ancient and best traveled of the Orenoqueponi," who also share their knowledge of the Amazon women ("of some it is belieued, of others not") (Discoverie 63). He estimates the location of the New World's Amazon women to be "on the south side of the riuer in the Prouinces of Topago" and "not far from Guiana" (Discoverie 63). El Dorado's physical location frequently shifted in the European and English imagination, spurring exploratory treks in countless directions and locales, but Whitehead notes that "the geographical referents for the tale of the Amazons were far more consistent. [The Amazons' queen] was said to rule over seven settlements in the Guiana highlands and, [... a] system of roads, guarded by her warriors, connected those villages" 56
(95). While Ralegh initially notes the Amazons' ferocity, he quickly leaves any discussion of savagery and gives an account of the riches held by the women: he reveals a belief that the Amazons have vast holdings of gold, which they obtain by trading "a kinde of greene stones" {Discoverie 65), or spleen stones. The Amazons' access to wealth allows Ralegh to discuss the possibility of riches that figuratively connect to the funds held by Elizabeth, yet his disclaimer that many in South America do not believe reports about the women {Discoverie 63) helps to remove any sense of improperly strenuous lobbying for royal favour (or unacceptably vocal complaints about a lack thereof). Instead, Ralegh's use of the Amazons in this passage and his expectations for both Elizabethan and exploratory reward all remain in a safe space between reality and possibility. Any anxiety Ralegh feels about Elizabeth's propensity for anger or her capacity for punishing disobedient subjects may be conveniently displaced in his descriptions of the Amazons' rumoured violence, all of which is framed within the realm of the fantastic and the uncertain ("of some it is belieued, of others not") {Discoverie 63). Just as depictions of a despairing Ocean rejected by a cruel Cynthia suggest thinly veiled complaints about Ralegh's perceived treatment, descriptions of the Amazons as "very cruell and bloodthirsty, especially to such as offer to inuade their territories" {Discoverie 65) imply Elizabeth's response to news of Ralegh's indiscretions with a trusted lady of her Privy Chamber. At the same time, Ralegh's insistence that the martial women might not even exist offers him some level of protection, should the implication seem too bold, his quick change of topics (to the women's access to the green jewels) suggesting his discomfort with the possibility of a violent female retribution, either real or imagined. The jewels are discussed in some detail by Ralegh, and it is this passage that Cecil marks for alteration. Importantly, Ralegh speaks explicitly about Elizabeth's support during past troubles as he describes the Amazons' spleen stones. The original manuscript reads, Theis Amazones have great store of theis plates of gold which they recover by exchange, cheiflie for a kind of green stones which the Spaniards: call piedra de Sigiada, and we use for spleen stones, 57
and for the disease of the stone we also esteem them: but there is great diversitie of theis stones my selfe have had many, and the fairest that ever came into England her Ma/esty gave me, when I had many yeres before been greived with a hard spleen, which stone Sir Francis: Drake presented to her Highnes at his return from Cartagena: of theis I saw divers in Guiana, and comonlie every king or Cassique hath one, w/n'ch their wives for the most part weare, and they esteem them as great Jewels. {Discoverie 64) In the printed text, all explicit mention of Elizabeth, Ralegh's past "hard spleen," and Drake are removed. Instead, the passage reads, These Amazones haue likewise great store of these plates of golde, which they recouer by exchange chiefly for a kinde of greene stones, which the Spaniards call Piedras Hijadas, and we vse for spleene stones, and for the disease of the stone we also esteeme them: of these I saw diuers in Guiana, and commonly euery king or Casique hath one, which their wiues for the most part weare, and they esteeme them as great iewels. {Discoverie 65) Ralegh seeks support from Cecil and Howard by way of traditional expectations for male friendship and patronage, but he simultaneously requests future funding from Elizabeth through appeals to patronage frameworks, his past status as a court favourite, a cursory outline of future trading systems between the English and the indigenous in Guiana, and the suggestion of natural resource expropriation that would presumably operate outside of strict trade. These appeals all run aground, however, when one considers that in order to give fully, Elizabeth, "the source of liberality," would have to eschew her status as "the necessarily denying woman" of the courtly love system (Scott 47). Cecil removes an unambiguous reference to a previous time when Elizabeth had in fact soothed Ralegh's pain—a pain that would likely have brought melancholy as a symptom if his spleen was not functioning properly, and one that she remedied with a precious gift, a spleen stone brought back from Cartagena by Drake, the ultimate English explorer. In referencing "a hard spleen" {Discoverie 58
64), Ralegh draws on the humoral system, a dominant early modern understanding of the body that viewed human physiology in terms of the four humours: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Each humour was associated with an organ-the heart, the brain, the liver, and the spleen, respectively—and an overabundance of or deficiency in any one humour could lead to illness, which had to then be addressed through purging of the excess humour, medicinally- based corrective measures, changes in diet, or some combination of all three possibilities (Healy 20). An imbalanced spleen most commonly was thought to lead to melancholy in the individual, but it could also fail to limit the "arterial blood's potential to produce giddy impulsiveness or even violence" (Paster 118). This point is of special relevance to Ralegh's outlook as he wrote the Discoverie, for, even as he references Elizabeth's past graciousness and her gift of a spleen stone to one of her court favourites, he unwittingly alludes to his problems with recklessness. These problems led to Elizabeth withdrawing her favour from him once his secret marriage to Throckmorton was revealed, and they might hamper his efforts to gain further support for his activities in Guiana, far away from the direct surveillance of his queen. Because the early modern medical community linked a proper diet and lifestyle to the balance of the humours, physical health became part of a moralized discourse (Schoenfeldt, "Bodies" 20). Sickness could signal larger problems with morality, so it may come as no surprise that Cecil, working to create a persuasive text for Ralegh, substantively altered the contents of this passage. Ralegh's manuscript does however attempt to strengthen the possibility of future royal reward for hardship by giving an example of past relief, making his request for funding seem more reasonable and part of his unremitting friendship with the queen. The reference to Elizabeth's gift of a spleen stone also puts future funding in line with her past support for Drake's wildly successful and popularly acclaimed circumnavigation in the 1570s, a journey that brought the queen vast stores of Spanish booty. Thus, even as he references past gifts from Elizabeth, he implicitly requests future gifts and promises future rewards, rewards perhaps on 59 par with the treasure offered up by Drake following his circumnavigation and the series of raids on Spanish New World forts that followed in the 1580s. Like the cartographic details that suggest the existence of Manoa, the spleen stones verify the existence of Amazons, according to D. K. Smith: "having seen the stones, [Ralegh] is confident of almost having seen the women themselves" (153). In a similarly metonymic gesture, "the stones prove the Amazons, and the Amazons prove both the expanse of Guiana, with its unseen wonders and plenitude, and the promise of gold" (154). In connecting Amazon women to precious stones, Ralegh participates in a larger literary tradition that tied the martial figures to massive stores of treasure, a point that I shall discuss in more detail, and he simultaneously makes use of the spleen stone as a possible vehicle to gain affection from Elizabeth, another unmarried woman altogether. Even as he creates distinctions between Elizabethan and amazonian rule, Ralegh links these two forms of leadership and suggests possibilities for political relationships and economic gain other than those so carefully crafted by Elizabeth, her court favourites, and her advisors. Amazon women may be fierce, but, unlike the English queen, their movements and activities are somewhat predictable, and they are willing to regularly participate in an economic system— the controlled, apparently steady exchange of spleen stones for Manoan gold—that is beneficial for all parties involved. Elizabeth, on the other hand, immerses herself and others in multiple, often conflicting systems. Amazons had long been associated with material wealth, but, as Schwarz explains, the women functioned as metonymies that could never be fully realized, "indicating the impossibility of full presence and signifying that which cannot be comprehended or reached" {Tough 51), not unlike the role of courtly beloved played so often by Elizabeth. Additionally, Amazon women were traditionally associated with guarding treasure hordes, thus signalling obstacles for men who would of course like to attain the riches {Tough 69). The presence of women as agents and barriers to resource collection trouble otherwise easy connections between exploration as a masculinized activity and new land as a feminized and thus exploitable site: "[w]here women govern the spaces of discovery, those spaces cannot easily 60 appear as feminine objects subject to masculine appropriation; images of sovereign female power oppose the ideal of a receptive passivity" (Tough 71). Furthermore, Amazon women, according to the reports passed on by Ralegh, do not simply guard mythical stores of gold that might beg to be purloined by male forces, no matter how fiercely protected by the martial women. Rather, these Amazon women actively participate in a system of trade, which gives Guianan men (and English, should they become involved) the option of exchanging their gold for the Amazon women's green stones (Ralegh, Discoverie 65). Presumably, the exchange rate is agreed upon by the parties involved, and one must assume that the prices could change through renegotiation if any number of conditions- natural resource availability, personal clout, group goals or desires—were to change. Ralegh has no such certainty of reciprocity or fair exchange in his dealings with Elizabeth, for both figures are immersed in the gendered courtly love system—he will ask and suffer, she will likely prevaricate and withhold—even as they are caught within roles associated with patronage and exchange. The same page of the manuscript includes a curious digression marked and edited by Cecil. Following his description of the Amazon women's trade in gold for spleen stones, Ralegh had originally joked that "having now wandered out of the way among theis women, an error whereto many men are subject, it is now tyme to return to the enterprize of Berreo" (Discoverie 64), the governor of Trinidad whom Ralegh kidnapped in order to gain information about Guiana and the location of el Dorado. The quip is nowhere to be found in the printed text, likely because Cecil deleted it, feeling that Ralegh was in no position to make light of "wandering" towards or being lured by inappropriate women (Discoverie 64)—the revelation of Ralegh's scandalous secret marriage to Throckmorton still fresh in the minds of many, including Elizabeth. Lorimer suggests that Cecil's deletions were likely motivated by his desire to convince the queen of Ralegh's case for a larger expedition to Guiana: given that Elizabeth was still at least partly displeased with Ralegh and Throckmorton, Cecil may have felt it would be best to omit references to women altogether (Introduction xxxv). The change may also speak to an editorial preference for the practical and the factual—as part of Cecil's 61 overall interest in depicting the possibility of New World gold as credible—rather than the fantastic or the imaginative, even if such traditional travel genre elements are occasionally included by the passionate, creative explorer. Ralegh's tone habitually lapses into excitement, and Cecil, in support of a future English presence in Guiana (Introduction xxxii), works to create a more politic version of the Discoverie, one that would not quickly remind Elizabeth of Ralegh's disgrace and exile from court (see Introduction xxxv). Indeed, Lorimer suggests that the explorer's language of suffering and penance for past wrongs was often actually noted and amended by a more cautious Cecil, who overshadowed Ralegh's own preference in the narrative for a "rambunctious, swaggering voice" (Introduction xcv). Cecil not only limits the narration of physical and emotional hardship; as I have argued previously, he also alters several of Ralegh's descriptions when they could be considered inappropriate or immoral. As part of his own presentation of self-control (or as a more universally English version of the personal quality), Ralegh frequently distinguishes English behaviour in the Caribbean and South America from that of the licentious and cruel Spanish, often noting Spanish threats aimed at any indigenous groups who would consider trading or fraternizing with the English crew members. In a longer description of relations between the English and members of various tribal groups, Ralegh notes that while the indigenous along the Orinoco were initially reticent to speak or trade with the English, the kindness of his crew soon changes their outlooks (Discoverie 119). The tribal members explain that the Spanish "perswaded all the nations, that we were men eaters, and Canibals" (Discoverie 119); while this contention remains in the printed text, Ralegh's manuscript originally went further, claiming that the Spanish had also spread rumours that the English kidnap indigenous children, "[selling them] in England for Bardasos" (Discoverie 118). Lorimer assumes that this allusion to sodomy was omitted on the advice of one of his initial readers (Discoverie 118fn2).10
See "Bardash." The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nded. 1989. The Oxford English Dictionary Online. Web. 26 October 2009. 62
Also altered in this section is Ralegh's description of gaining the trust of the indigenous through the act of gift giving: initially, his manuscript noted, "we gave them wine, and to every one some thing or other, which was rare and Strang to them" (Discoverie 118). With these gestures of English kindness, the indigenous tribes gradually understand "the deceipt and purpose of the Spanyards, who indeed (as they confessed) tooke from them both their wives and daughters daylie, and used them for the satisfying of their own lust, especiallie such as they tooke in this manner by strength" (Discoverie 118). This initial reference to a gift of wine is changed to "we gaue them meate" (Discoverie 119) in the printed edition, yet the references to Spanish licentiousness and depravity remain unchanged. While the Spanish force impurity, the English offer sustenance, all references to the possibility of English misbehaviour excised from print. The edited text then presents indigenous reactions to and relationships with the English as vastly different to their experiences with the rapacious Spanish. When the English captains are noted drinking, the activity falls into a sense of building cultural relationships with Toparimaca and his followers. Indeed, the English sample indigenous "wine till they were reasonable pleasant," building camaraderie with the tribal leaders even as the indigenous celebrants become quite inebriated (Discoverie 127), a point that simultaneously suggests English restraint and the confirmation of racialized hierarchies in the New World. Excised from the printed text is a rather lengthy promise of comfort for the hot-livered and the reveller who might in the future invade or settle in Guiana: Those that have hott lyvers, and love drinke, shall find store of pott companions which can neither be out gone in their trade by Germaynes nor Flemings ..., both of good artificiall wine, well peppred for cold stomacks, and of wine of Pinas fytter for Princes, then for borachos. Those that are not married, and will christen of their nadons shall buy wives for themselves and their friends for 3 or 4 hachets a peece of all ages, and not inferiowr in shape and favour to any of Europe, cullowr excepted. Those that love 63
Tobacco may here smoke themselves tyll they become bacon, for the plentie. {Discoverie 206) The entire section, a lighthearted celebration of the senses (with some darker references to the slave trade and the purchasing of wives), was, not surprisingly, marked by Cecil and removed from the printed text {Discoverie 206fn5). This last example of an excision by Cecil powerfully demonstrates Ralegh's spirited tendencies and Cecil's more guarded presentation of the explorer's intentions and impulses in the New World. The explorer's descriptions of the New World do not shy away from summarizing the sensuous possibilities available to Englishmen, and this last censored passage suggests that English visitors to the New World would in fact be able to meet or surpass the standards of imbibing set by the Germans and the Flemish, a drinking capacity of which the Guianans are putatively capable. The apparent equivalences in excessive consumption among Guianans, northern Europeans, and the English make questionable any sense of a hierarchy of morals upon which the English might rely as Ralegh pushes for an increased presence in the New World. Such declarations of self-control are also in stark contrast to both Ralegh's past behaviour and the future privateering that is implied in his listing of Spanish forts and settlements. Relationships of Obligation and Exchange At several junctures, Ralegh identifies trade relations as that which separates English activities in Guiana from the barbarity of Spanish conquistadors. Indeed, Fuller surmises that when he presents his connection to the natives as friendly and mutually beneficial, Ralegh "engages a kind of fantasy ..., of a conquest by love rather than violence" {Voyages 72). Ralegh relates to the reader (never forgetting, of course, that Elizabeth is expected to be among the original primary readership) that the indigenous groups' willingness—eagerness, actually—to trade with the English is certified when they pledge loyalty to Elizabeth as a leader: by his account, the indigenous leaders "are already become her Maiesties vassals: & seeme to desire nothing more than her Maiesties protection, and the returne of the English nation" {Discoverie 7). The native population accepts her and begins to carry coins with her image on them after 64
Ralegh has praised the queen at length and told them about her generosity and peaceful but strong disposition (Discoverie 179). Ralegh explains that in so doing, the indigenous people "promise [to] become her seruants thenceforth" (Discoverie 179). This action (the description of which is mediated by Ralegh) should then give Elizabeth reciprocal obligations to the Amerindians. A problem arises, however, as Ralegh cannot extricate his dreams of international trade from his experiences in courtly love. The rumoured trade of gold for spleen stones between Guianans and Amazon women establishes a precedent in the text for the possibility of fair exchange between men and women, all parties apparently giving and receiving at rates that are acceptable to the groups involved, but Ralegh's introduction of coins with Elizabeth's image on them establishes a new possible system of exchange and a new set of gendered relationships that require an abstract sense of loyalty be a constant part of the trade between the English and Guianans. Amazon women highlight the friction inherent in Ralegh's New World dealings, for the indigenous people in the land bordering on Guiana have already sworn loyalty to Elizabeth after having seen a miniature portrait of her, a "picture which they so admired and honored, as it had beene easie to haue brought them Idolatrous thereof (Discoverie 31), yet Ralegh claims this indigenous devotion for Elizabeth, knowing that the Queen has shown very little past interest in establishing a New World presence (helpful to the Amerindians or not). By Ralegh's account, the indigenous groups essentially enter into the possibility of new trading systems, since the coins could easily be exchanged for material goods, but they also become enmeshed in something like a courtly love relationship, for the indigenous people do not intend to put the coins into market circulation. Rather, they intend "to weare" them, to carry them "with [the] promise that they would become [Elizabeth's] seruants thenceforth" (Discoverie 179). This vow of devotion is very similar to Patricia Fumerton's description of miniatures worn to signal loyalty at court: the miniature, hidden within a locket, was in a sense still a private token of love and affection; at the same time, if the locket was visible to members of court, one's loyalties had been made public (98). 65
11 The coins are then a material proof of an abstract relationship based on loyalty (Discoverie 179), but by Ralegh's description and under his care, the indigenous essentially declare their loyalty to a distant woman who may never respond. The Amerindian systems of exchange described by Ralegh seem to favour the active participation of men as agents (with the exception of the tribesmen's trade with Amazon women, who apparently are also able to negotiate for and exchange material goods with ease). Indigenous women seem to play no explicit role as agents of exchange; rather, they are objects of trade, bartered for material goods and for improved social relations through marriage, a condition that spurs Montrose to label the women as "politically invisible" ("Work" 12). I would argue that if Montrose is correct and the Guianan women are "politically invisible" ("Work" 12), they are not economically invisible, for they largely become commodities, traded by and amongst the men of Guiana for (other) useful items like cloth, food, and precious metals (Ralegh, Discoverie 153, 162, 183-4). The women may or may not be "politically invisible" (Montrose, "Work" 12), but they are of political and social use, for Ralegh's indigenous advisor Topiawari asks for the explorer's assistance in recovering women abducted by the Epuremei, a neighbouring tribe, during a past battle (Ralegh, Discoverie 173). In this case, Topiawari claims that recovering lost gold is of no interest to his tribesmen; their sole concern is rescuing their kidnapped tribeswomen (Discoverie 173), presumably because these women have both inter- and intra-tribal extrinsic value as wives and objects of exchange. Separated from the indigenous women are the Amazons, who barter with men while remaining outside of marital connections and tribal alliance building. The women live separately and only meet with men for an extended period of time once a year. Ralegh explains that after a month of celebrations and trying to conceive with neighbouring kings, the Amazons return to their homes; any male children born after the festivities are given to the fathers to raise, while the Amazons keep their daughters (Discoverie 63). The sexual relations are purely for
11 Patricia Fumerton's analysis of the miniature is in keeping with David Howarth's, who describes a miniature as "an intimate, private expression of loyalty; one which was hidden inside a jeweled case or a turned box; something kept in every way close to the heart" (115). 66 procreative ends, and the Amazon women apparently reward the kings who are able to give them girl children, sending the men gifts of gratitude in exchange for the men's participation in continuing the Amazons' line (Discoverie 65). Most important to Ralegh's narrative, however, is the Amazon women's control of the gold and spleen stone trade. Amazon women simultaneously signal the valuable jewels and metals that could be extracted from el Dorado's kingdom and control access to this precious merchandise. Tentative sightings and reports of nearby Amazon women were frequent features in early modem travel literature (Kleinbaum 104-13), but writers of the genre also regularly connected Amazon women to the guarding of treasure hordes. This tendency likely developed out of a conflation of the medieval romance tradition's fanciful descriptions of Amazon territory as sumptuous and laden with treasure (51-2); early imaginative texts such as the Prester John narratives, which describe the Amazon women's territory as separated from other regions by a river that begins in paradise (74-5); and older exploration and travel texts, which describe exotic locales offering fantastic creatures and largely untapped natural resources (71). Abby Wettan Kleinbaum notes that searching for Amazons was often even a part of the contract drawn between explorer and financier: "capitalists mandated the Amazon search not because of any interest in anthropology, but rather because of a firmly held conviction widely shared in early modem times: the gold is where the Amazons are" (116). The women are necessary for the text because their presence signals proximity to riches (cf. Montrose, "Work" 25-6). On a related note, Whitehead mentions a common belief that Amazons had access to emeralds, which could then be traded for gold, conceivably gold from el Dorado (95), a point that is supported by Ralegh's summaries of the Amazons' trading "a kinde of greene stones, which ... we vse for spleene stones" (Discoverie 65). Ralegh expects that the Amazon women will enter into relationships with Elizabeth: he argues that the female warriors are likely to be impressed by Elizabeth's vow of virginity and her ability to defend her realm (Discoverie 221), but nowhere does his text suggest that the Amazons' movements are as easily controlled as those of 67 the Guianan women. Rather, they maintain autonomy over their economic lives and dealings with Guianan men. The martial women's future status as willing subjects of Elizabeth would doubtless hinder their ability to remain economically and politically powerful, so Ralegh's promise here must be seen as simply excited dreaming or wishful thinking. His claims and the presence of the Amazon women do, however, signal the failed cooperation of multiple rhetorical, political, economical, and gendered frameworks or systems. Elizabeth I, el Dorado, and the Amazon Women Fuller suggests that early discovery writings like the text produced by Ralegh "offer a peculiarly attractive entrance to the question of the material" ("Fugitive" 46). Because the new land will supply a natural resource or precious metal, it in effect becomes the object, so Guiana is gold for Ralegh ("Fugitive" 46), even if the voyage is simply a series of metonymies: "Ralegh has never been to Guiana, but only to the country on the borders of the borderers of Guiana, and the furthest penetration into these borders was not made by him but by his 'right hand,' Lawrence Keymis; he has not been to a mine, but he has spoken to Indians who have" ("Fugitive" 45). Paradoxically, because Ralegh returns to the coast having never set foot in Guiana or seen the riches of the fabled el Dorado at Manoa, the explorer's "turning back permits that narrative to continue, permits the full presence of the thing to glimmer still at the limit of exhaustion" (Fuller, Voyages 80). Indeed, the promise of the possible wealth only increases. Ralegh's primary goal in exploring Guiana is to find el Dorado and the city of Manoa, which was widely believed to be somewhere between the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers. Should he actually find the legendary leader and the city of Manoa, expropriation of the massive stores of gold and jewels would place England at a level similar to Spain's following their plundering from the Inca and the Aztec (S. Miller 154; see also Fuller, Voyages 58). Miller notes, however, that Ralegh never frames his goal as one of expropriation; rather, he stresses the value of connections, of "an imagined relationship of feudal bonds—alliance, obligation, gift exchange—between the people of Manoa and the English" (S. Miller 154). In reading Ralegh's narrative solely through the lens of regular, fair exchange and 68 mutual obligation, however, Miller neglects the explorer's relative lack of power in his dealings with other members of court, and his simultaneous reliance on and frustration with the courtly love ideal developed by Elizabeth and court insiders for political advancement. Miller sees the circulation of English coins, described by Ralegh in the Discoverie, as being emblematic of the larger system of New World relationships that Ralegh proposes (S. Miller 155). Elizabeth, pictured on the English coin, becomes connected to commodity exchange, and she is also conflated with the women of Guiana, who are traded between communities, and with the rumored Amazon leaders, who are believed to live near el Dorado. The circulation of the coins is indeed a crucial material proof of Ralegh's argument that he has, unlike the Spanish, gained the trust and the respect of the Amerindians. The introduction of English money leaves open the possibility of future exchange between the English and indigenous groups, and it lays the groundwork for a new economic system over which Ralegh surely hopes to hold a great deal of control, even as he hints at immense wealth for Elizabeth and other financial investors who might support him. The coins may suggest that these conditions could emerge in the future, but the system that is most immediately echoed is courtly love, and the political relationship that is most strongly developed by Ralegh is that of Elizabeth as (both physically and emotionally) distant monarch and the indigenous as loyal subjects, for, by Ralegh's description, the indigenous plan to carry the coins as one would a miniature of a beloved, "with [the] promise that they would become [Elizabeth's] seruants thenceforth" {Discoverie 179). The coins may signal Ralegh's larger dreams of future prosperity in the New World, but they do not "prove" that future wealth anymore than do the ore samples that the explorer has sent (along with his bundle of papers) back to England {Discoverie 4-5, 12). Fuller has noted that the actual material object for which Ralegh searches— gold~is endlessly deferred in his text {Voyages 65). Indeed, gold is always in the next mountain range if not the current one, and, on one occasion, Ralegh arrives in a village where he expects a reasonable amount of riches only to find that the gold 69 refiner has recently departed (presumably with ore and gold), leaving his basket hidden but filled with "quicksiluer, saltpeter, and diuers things for the triall of metals, and also the dust of such ore as he had refined" (Ralegh, Discoverie 115). Ralegh's "discovery" of the basket leads only to the knowledge that gold is elsewhere, that he possesses the vestiges of another's past attempts to refine the metal. Montrose adds to Fuller's work on deferral in Ralegh's text, and he argues that the satisfaction or conclusion of any exploration endeavour must be deferred in order to continue the process of exploration and in order to justify its continuation ("Work" 25-6). Both these points tie into the second-hand reports of Amazon women in Ralegh's text, I think, for Amazon women by this point had begun to be associated with el Dorado and its legendary stores of wealth. Ralegh must convey that Amazon women are in the vicinity, for if they guard treasure hordes or promise the existence of el Dorado, then second-hand reports of their shadowy appearances along the riverbanks signify that gold must also be close at hand. At the same time, for Ralegh to justify future exploration endeavours, both gold and Amazon women must remain only slightly tangible and in the far distance. His search for treasure must "[work] against trying to close the distance between words or fantasies, and things," as Fuller suggests {Voyages 66). In order to ensure future activity in the region, Ralegh's text must in part be "about not discovering Guiana" {Voyages 71), for exploration and the appropriation of resources must continue. As much as Ralegh's work fits into a larger descriptive tradition in exploration literature, this tendency to turn back, to incorporate failure into a narrative of "success," to not find Amazon women, also highlights Ralegh's investment in and practical experience with the Elizabethan courtly love system, for he understands well the discrepancy or the distance between desire and action, between call and response, and between profession and material proof. Just as he should expect delayed, incomplete satisfaction from Elizabeth, his future voyages depend on a level of initial failure. Amazon women and gold must be undiscovered but on the horizon. 70
Amazon women must also be distinct from Elizabeth, lest Ralegh offend the English queen-the Amazons are described as reportedly "very cruell and bloodthirsty, especially to such as offer to inuade their territories" (Discoverie 65)~yet they must also be presented as ultimately containable and manageable, for Ralegh is attempting to convince Elizabeth that she would benefit from a military endeavour aimed at gaining control of this rumoured Amazon territory and Guiana more generally. Fuller reads references to Amazon women as operating within a larger attempt to feminize and make '"continent"' (Voyages 74) the Guianan region, to present a "space of absence [in which] the power of the Queen could be celebrated as a power between women which relegated men to an instrumental status" (Voyages 75), but I would argue that the Amazons have two more crucial roles. First, they mark the points at which Ralegh's manifold rhetorical and descriptive systems—patronage, courtly love, trade, exploration- become unmanageable, and second, these women suggest the possibility of English-indigenous trading systems that would operate according to economic principles of fair exchange or supply and demand (rather than Petrarchan or courtly systems, which might operate according to prolonged desire and the inability to fully satisfy). Indeed, the Amazon women are described at length as participating with Guianan tribes in apparently well-managed and predictable exchanges of gold for spleen stones. They are therefore necessary signals both to Ralegh and Elizabeth should the queen decide to fund future endeavours in the region and attempt further investigations into the location of el Dorado. Elizabeth is both agent and object of exchange: she funds Ralegh's venture and will possibly finance future exploration missions, and she should ultimately have to authorize any large scale economic or military actions in the region, yet the person putting her image into circulation (or withholding it from circulation) is Ralegh, and the person ultimately responsible for representing her in the New World is Ralegh. These issues complicate Montrose's reading of Elizabeth's place in the New World, as he argues that her (relatively unenthusiastic) funding of exploration and colonization in Virginia—along with her renaming of the original territory Wingandacoa to honour herself as a Virgin Queen—"symbolically 71
[efface] the indigenous society that already physically and culturally inhabits and possesses that land" ("Work" 8). Montrose's focus is really the suppression of indigenous groups following attempts at discovery or colonizing, and he examines how gendered language in New World texts can make acts of mastery appear natural ("Work" 12), so he is overwhelmingly concerned with the ways in which the English political system uses gendered rhetoric and discourse to inscribe itself onto the Amerindian landscape and culture. I would suggest, however, that the promise of Amazon women participating in the regular exchange of gold and spleen stones—of female leaders who demand that indigenous and foreign men alike participate in a controlled system of trade with mutual benefits, and who complicate any conception of masculine explorers invading "virgin" territory and taking feminized natural resources—may actually throw into question the efficacy of Elizabeth's own overlapping, sometimes contradictory systems of exchange and gift giving. Conclusion Fuller and Montrose have both noted the slightly threatening conclusion to Ralegh's Discoverie, wherein he implies that if Elizabeth will not take action and seize Guiana's still virgin "Maydenhead," there are men available who will (Ralegh, Discoverie 211; Fuller, Voyages 75; Montrose, "Work" 12). Ralegh's conclusion indicates a willingness to usurp Elizabeth's New World authority, a move that would of course destroy the relationships he has so carefully developed in his text and would make English actions indistinguishable from those of the Spanish as he describes them. The explorer ends with a confident promise—that should Elizabeth conquer Guiana, she would be invincible {Discoverie 196-99)— and with a warning: "if the king of Spayne enjoy it, he will be unresistable" {Discoverie 199). Amazons are invoked in the text's closing lines and a direct connection to Elizabeth's status as Virgin Queen is made, for conquering Guiana would also mean conquering Amazon territory {Discoverie 199). The Amazons would "heare the name of a virgin, which is not onely able to defend her owne territories and her neighbors, but also to invade and conquere so great Empyres and so farre removed" {Discoverie 199). Perhaps this passage is simply an 72 example of Ralegh's excitement left unchecked by Cecil, but I believe that the appearance of the Amazon women at this moment once again shows discrepancy and rhetorical instability on the part of Ralegh, for Elizabeth is represented here as more than simply capable of invading foreign territories. Indeed, she is described as likely to do so, when, in actuality, Elizabeth frequently resisted involvement in international military activities. In "Of the Voyage for Guiana," co-written by several men in Ralegh's company at the same time as The Discoverie was composed, the authors go further still, arguing that the Amazon women would be willing to join forces with the English in establishing a real resistance to the Spanish presence in the area (Appendix II254), a claim that essentially sees generic romance conventions collide uneasily with nation building and empire, not to mention the disconnection between Elizabeth's actual international military presence and the authors' obvious desire for an increase in armed involvement in New World power struggles. The cooperation of both Elizabeth and the indigenous groups in any future thwarting of the Spanish has already been assured by Ralegh in the opening pages of his text, for, upon first landing in the area surrounding Trinidad, he coordinates a meeting with the leaders to explain his current and future objectives. Using an interpreter as he speaks with the indigenous, Ralegh explains that he "was the seruant of a Queene, who was the great casique of the north, and a virgin, and had more casiqui vnder her then there were trees in their Hand" (Discoverie 31). Ralegh claims that the queen despises the Spanish and their cruel colonial practices, that Elizabeth has in fact deliuered all such nations about her, as were by them oppressed, and hauing freed all the coast of the northern world from their seruitude had sent [the explorer] to free them also, and with al to defend the countrey of Guiana from their inuasion and conquest. (Discoverie 31) Ralegh cements this new relationship of protection and trust by showing the indigenous leaders an image of the queen, a "picture which they so admired and honored, as it had beene easie to haue brought them Idolatrous thereof 73
(Discoverie 31). While circulating her image as part of his putative representation of Elizabeth in the New World, Ralegh promises future military resistance against the Spanish oppressors (first in Trinidad, later in regions closer to Guiana) (Discoverie 31, 179), despite the fact that the queen has offered no such involvement in the region. Indeed, as early as the dedication to Cecil and Howard, Ralegh outlines Spanish settlements (rich in gold) that could be sacked, a point that is at odds with his later vociferous claims for an interest in peaceful trade with and gallant protection of the indigenous people: Ralegh continues to strategize about future attacks on Spanish settlements, on "the townes and Cities o/Merida, Lagrita, S. Christophero, the great Cities o/Pampelone, S. Fe de Bogota, Tunia and Mozo where the Esmeralds are found' (Discoverie 8). Ralegh's vision in effect encompasses far more than an invasion of Guiana—dreaming of raids on Spanish holdings and a strong English presence in what are now Venezuela, Trinidad, Colombia, Panama, Peru, and Nicaragua (Discoverie 8-9)—a discrepancy to which he returns in the closing passage of the text at precisely the moment he again refers to Amazon women. Ralegh of course only explicitly asks Elizabeth for the support necessary to invade Guiana (in order to rescue the resident tribes from the barbarity of a Spanish presence), but his request is placed within a much larger summary of Spanish holdings (and possible sites for invasion) in the New World. The explorer makes use of the Discoverie to send a call to arms to the queen, simultaneously certifying her response—"the like & a more large discourse" (Discoverie 31)—before she has offered it. 74
Chapter Two "a Poet [and a Queen] historical": National Origins and Dynastic Failings in Spenser's The Faerie Queene Introduction As the last Tudor ruler, Elizabeth I in some ways signalled the end rather than the continuation of an era, particularly in the last decade of her reign when her aging had become most obvious. Her political dynasty was made all the more unclear by her refusal to name a successor, all public hopes for Elizabeth to produce children having long disappeared and her status as the Virgin Queen well established by the 1590s. While the queen's decision not to marry opened up new avenues for negotiating international political relationships under the guise of courtships, also encouraging new literary, artistic, and political strategies for representing the monarch, her single reign led to an unusual focus on the issue of succession as the sixteenth century came to a close and no explicit heir had yet been identified. Elizabeth and her advisors did enter into serious marriage conversations between 1578 and 1581 with Fran§ois, due d'Anjou and his representatives12; in fact, a minimum of twelve royals made bids to marry Elizabeth, according to Susan Doran, and several of these unions would likely have been politically beneficial for England ("Why Did Elizabeth" 30; see also Collinson).13 Doran hypothesizes that if Elizabeth's counsellors had all enthusiastically supported one of her suitors, she likely would have agreed to a marriage for political security and reasons of succession, but in truth many of the possible matches were
12 Incidentally, Susan Doran notes that the Virgin Queen representations did not begin in earnest until the late 1570s. They were initially part of a largely negative reaction to the wedding negotiations between advisors for Elizabeth I and Francois, due d'Anjou ("Why did Elizabeth" 37). While earlier portraits of the queen suggest her uxorial potential, the seven Sieve portraits instead signal the strength in Elizabeth's chastity ("Why did Elizabeth" 37). The Sieve portraits, produced between 1579 and 1583, depict Elizabeth holding a sieve, an object that ties her to Tuccia, a Roman devotee of Vesta who proved her chastity by carrying a sieve full of water and not losing a drop. Patrick Collinson also notes relevant entertainments in 1578 to celebrate the queen's annual progress. Several masques and other pieces conflated Elizabeth with Diana and with the Virgin Mary during this time.
13 Collinson further notes that each international show of interest had an immediate political benefit for the English crown in that the proposals certified the leaders' faith in the legitimacy of Elizabeth's succession. 75 inappropriate on religious grounds, or because they held no really enticing financial possibilities for the English crown, or they were simply too young ("Why Did Elizabeth" 41-2). Public and court support for Elizabeth's marriage was in no way unanimous: in fact, many had misgivings about the possible consequences of a wedding. Even if political controls were put in place to limit the husband's authority in power, as in Mary Fs marriage to Philip II of Spain,14 a danger of foreign, Catholic influence would still be present. Furthermore, while certain advisors did advocate that Elizabeth marry and attempt to produce an heir, others pushed to delay or defer such conversations, seeking instead the political advantage of entering into discussions with various international leaders twinned with an awareness that Elizabeth could die in childbirth or have trouble even conceiving, particularly as she aged (see Levin, "Heart and Stomach" 68). Elizabeth herself was often reticent to confirm any real interest in future weddings: indeed, upon succeeding to the throne in 1558, she almost immediately avoided making concrete promises about marriage, despite public concerns about the lack of an obviously English, Protestant heir, and she would go on to chide Parliament and her public when they occasionally became unacceptably explicit in their pushes for her to wed and produce a successor. The queen answered wedding and succession petitions in 1559 by informing her subjects that she was already symbolically wed to the nation and that her subjects were her children, and by chiding that it was not the place of her subjects to appoint her a mate or order that she marry ("First Speech" 59).15 Elizabeth again refused to discuss the succession issue in 1563, responding to petitions that she marry and secure her political dynasty, stating that she had
In fact, Elizabeth's correspondence with advisors suggests that these controls were part of her earliest discussions to marry the Catholic Anjou (Elizabeth, "Amyas Paulet" 233-37; Elizabeth, "William Cecil" 240-42).
15 Carole Levin points out that Elizabeth was hardly the only monarch to claim a marriage to the country for rhetorical effect: both Mary I and James I made similar statements, Mary before her wedding and James after (42). Furthermore, while Elizabeth certainly felt great demand to marry and secure the royal succession with children, she was hardly the first monarch to feel such pressures ("Heart and Stomach "43). 76 hoped that her subjects would not start desiring "[another] tree's blossoms" as her own had not yet born "fruit" ("Queen Elizabeth's Answer" 79). In 1566 the queen responded more angrily to requests that she secure the succession, and she explained to her subjects and advisors that she would not identify a successor who would then be harassed with demands. She reminded her subjects of past political rivalries between fathers and sons, and she argued that, if she named a successor, any number of others would also make claims to the throne ("Joint Delegation" 96-7). Specifically, the English feared that an uncertain political inheritance could lead to civil war, a corrupt or immoral foreign leader, domestic political extremism, or the loss of civil liberties or private properties. The potential complications noted by Elizabeth and her advisors (as well as by the various artists and writers who dealt with the possibility of Elizabeth's marrying and reproducing) drew attention to the likelihood that the queen's marriage might not actually be connected to a more stable succession, nor could it necessarily stave off the threat of future civil disturbances. Still, writers and court figures often connected Elizabeth's single reign to the dangers of unclear political inheritance and the future social instabilities that might arise from her death as a childless monarch. This chapter investigates the ramifications of Elizabeth's decision ultimately not to marry and the concordances between amazonian representations of the queen and an uncertain political succession in the 1590s. I first establish an understanding of Elizabeth's political use of virginity and chastity, tying both to the queen's larger strategies in presenting herself as simultaneously acceptably feminine and authoritative. I argue that while a public presentation of sexual autonomy was a productive element of the queen's political persona, also aiding the establishment of Elizabeth's courtly love system, it ultimately focused attention on the queen's physical body as her reign neared an end and, well past the age of childbearing, she refused to name a political successor. Other representational strategies were used to soften the political implications of prolonged virginity—Elizabeth as a symbolic mother to the nation and as a 77 phoenix capable of rising from the ashes in an act of renewal and continuance, for example—but I suggest that the emphasis placed on Elizabeth's corporeality was not always mitigated by these alternative representations of her. Rather, the maternal imagery in particular only added another layer of complication to her virginal political persona. Depictions of Elizabeth's virginal body as a site of impenetrability, political power, and authority collide with traditionally gendered discourses of nation building through (male) public service and (female) childbearing in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590 and 1596). I examine Elizabeth's two official mirrors in the text, Belphoebe and Gloriana, and I argue that both figures highlight the strains produced by Elizabeth's well propagandized performance of virginity clashing with expectations for stable political succession. Belphoebe, the virginal amazonian huntress and representation of Elizabeth's body natural in the poem, suggests the inaccessibility of the chaste mistress in Elizabeth's courtly love system. Spenser's depictions of Belphoebe imply that her virginity has become a stagnant barrier to the production of new life, her relationships with admirers always stunted. Gloriana, Spenser's depiction of Elizabeth's body politic, is physically absent from the text and the last certain Faery ruler. Despite Arthur's best efforts to complete his quest and meet her, Gloriana remains unreachable and her successor is unclear as Guyon reads the Faery history, Antiquitee of Faerie lond, in Book II.x.76. In sum, both Belphoebe and Gloriana are placed in strained relationships to the continuation of personal and political dynasty. I argue that these two putatively encomiastic figures actually highlight the complications that can arise in attempting to conflate Elizabeth's virginal body and monarchical power. These representational clashes are also noticeable in Spenser's depiction of a third female figure, Britomart, although I suggest that Britomart in fact stands as Spenser's attempt at mediating disparate discursive and representational strategies—virginity, maternity, the body natural, and the body politic. Britomart, the Knight of Chastity, is the figure on whom the bulk of my analysis focuses. Although Spenser's depiction of the amazonian, virginal princess does allow for 78 the temporary subversion of traditional displays of femininity—Britomart's transvestism, her quest, and her skill with weapons in jousting matches, for example—the character ultimately follows a conservative model for gendered leadership and strengthening her nation. The knight treats virginity as a temporary stage in life prior to marriage, and she largely directs her activities towards nation building through marital chastity. As the amazonian figure learns to accept her political and national responsibilities to the Britons, she highlights the complications inherent in Elizabeth's presentation of herself as simultaneously virgin and symbolic mother to the nation. I suggest that Britomart's presence in the poem functions as a wishful reconciling of the disparate personae used in Elizabeth's attempts to strengthen and diversify her monarchical authority. Britomart is marked as committed to her nation's future wellbeing when Merlin offers her a prophecy detailing her future marriage and the instigation of a new political line with her first born child (Spenser Ill.iii). While Britomart initially struggles with her awareness of sexual love, she quickly learns of her responsibility to the Britons' future and sets off on her quest to meet her future husband, Artegall, the Knight of Justice. I argue that Britomart's decision to participate in marital chastity and to one day withdraw from leadership when she feels the pull of motherhood present an alternative—and ultimately conservative- model for action, an imaginative literary approach to blending political leadership, traditionally and subversively gendered behaviour, and marital chastity that differs greatly from the strategies used by Elizabeth. I argue that Britomart's engagement with her nation displays her respect for past sacrifice by her people and a commitment to a future Brittonic political stability, her personal destiny resting on her roles as Amazon slayer, deferring partner to Artegall, and mother to political leaders. I then move into a related discussion of Spenser's use of history and his placement of late-Tudor England as the culmination of his characters' quests in the allegorical Faeryland and sixth-century Britain. I suggest that The Faerie Queene offers the possibility of reading Elizabeth's England as indebted to past sacrifices and nationalist efforts. Spenser frequently values and prioritizes stories 79 of national origins and political progress: by repeatedly connecting Elizabethan England to past examples of sacrifice in aid of political inheritance, Spenser draws attention to Elizabeth's refusal to secure or confirm her succession. I examine Briton moniments and the Antiquitee of Faerie lond, the histories read by Arthur and Guyon in Book II.x, to present a larger case for Spenser's push to highlight the veritable uncertainties caused by breaks in stable political lineages. I then attend to Britomart's role in Merlin's prophecy for the future of Britain, arguing that Britomart's placement in the poem as Elizabeth's ancestor and alter ego (III.iii.22-50, iv.l) further cements the text's positioning of Elizabeth's possibly noncommittal relationship to England's future stability. I continue to think through the importance of history and teleological commitment to the future in The Faerie Queene as I examine Alma's turret— where both Arthur and Guyon discover their national chronicles—as material evidence of older cultures and as the commitment of Alma and her sages to properly remember and continue historical narrative. I conclude with analysis of Britomart's active participation in history and her demonstrative commitment to the Britons' future as she confronts Radigund, the evil Amazon queen who has kidnapped Artegall and who rules over a chaotic land of gender inversions and female misrule. Radigund, who suggests anxieties about the reality of Elizabeth's reign and the abuse of female authority, must be stopped by Britomart, the princess committed to helping her nation's future through marriage and childbirth. As soon as she vanquishes Elizabeth's dark twin, however, Britomart returns authority to men and awaits her wedding, essentially receding from the narrative. Each of these sections builds on my argument that, although Spenser presents his poem as encomium for Elizabeth, his amazonian queenly figures often betray the irreconcilability of the monarch's multiple, malleable representational strategies as hopes for a stable political succession conflict with Elizabeth's use of virginal political authority. In the case of Britomart, the knight's dedication to instigating a political dynasty highlights Elizabeth's failure to do so, for the former ultimately participates in a conventionally gendered model for nation building, and she only retains authority for the period in which national 80 security makes such activities exigent. Indeed, Britomart proves to be emotionally invested in her people's future stability, and she expresses this investment by displacing female authority in favour of Artegall's leadership, focusing her attention on Brittonic wellbeing as she incorporates an understanding of sexualized love and the possibility of heirs into her model for chastity. The Virgin Queen: Official and Unofficial Mirrors In assuming the throne and retaining power in England, Elizabeth was forced to negotiate a paradox that centred on femininity and her ability to govern; essentially, political authority necessitated a move away from traditional constructions of gender that relied on feminine submission and mild manners, yet, in refusing these normative traits, Elizabeth risked accusations of monstrosity and gender inversion. Although her extreme social and economic privilege had long given Elizabeth access to political power (and those who held it prior to her reign), she had also grown up subject to conventional understandings of femininity that included obedience, modesty, humility, and chastity, as her careful adolescent self-presentation (and self-preservation) would indicate. Elizabeth crafted a political persona that incorporated virtues of temperance and chastity as sources of queenly strength. The performance of virginity thus became an essential political tool for the queen, for it suggested sovereignty, self-control, and authority without moving completely away from traditional constructions of femininity. Adopting a chaste, virginal persona allowed her to engage in multiple negotiations to marry, her interest in various international suitors shifting according to political need, and it fuelled the construction of complicated courtly relationships that were based loosely on the model of a suitor proclaiming his service to an inaccessible Petrarchan beloved. Virginity and chastity were both important features of early modern femininity: they served to enable normalizing behaviours and an artificial sense of social stability through the control of sexuality. I do stress the constructed nature of these sexual controls and place them as ideals that may not have been assiduously followed (or even terribly effective in achieving stability). Attesting to this point is Barry Reay's reminder that approximately 25% of early modern 81
Englishwomen—and as many as half of all brides in some regions—had weddings while pregnant (9), despite the apparent importance of patrilineal certainty as a rationale for maintaining virginity under patriarchal structures (Harol 2).16 Notwithstanding the predictable disparities between idealized constructions of sexual purity and actual behaviour, I would argue that virginity did carry social value for the early modern mindset. Its valuation is reflected in and furthered by countless texts that describe female virginity in particular as a treasure to be 17 protected and a fortress to be defended. As Elizabeth helped to shape and manipulate presentations of virginity as evidence of her own personal authority and mindfulness, she furthered an understanding of virginity that connected a physical state to a larger set of ordered behaviours, for virgins had to remain vigilant and engage in larger, chaste systems of piety, abstinence, temperance, or even relative asceticism in order to avoid all possibility of carnal encounters.18 As the queen advanced a courtly and political presentation of virginity, she emphasized personal traits such as poise, resolve, watchfulness, and personal control—all qualities that would be favourably
Corrinne Harol outlines three rationales for ascribing importance to virginity in patriarchal frameworks: for a model inspired by the work of Claude Levi-Strauss, virginity promotes exogamous marriage and therefore benefits inter-communal relations of economy; for frameworks that value the legitimacy of a man's offspring, virginity is of importance because it guarantees rightful inheritance within a family; and for a religious model based in Catholicism, virginity is placed under godly control and granted a sense of holiness and knowledge that operates separate from property exchange, inheritance, and reproductive possibility (2-3).
17 This language of fearful vigilance can be found as early as Jerome's fourth-century writing as he advises, "If you walk laden with gold, you must beware of a robber" (135). Virginity for Jerome is a treasure, but one that paradoxically makes a person more valuable and more likely to be pursued or taken. He also describes the virgin body as the most sacred of temples, one upon which few should look, as he makes a case for virgins to avoid contamination with the outside world (156, 148).
18 In her work on medieval constructions of and discourses on virginity, Kathleen Coyne Kelly notes a definite link between religious assessments of virginity and larger beliefs about appropriate behaviours. Indeed, she suggests, "There is no better example of the body exceeding its own physical boundaries than that of virginity, which exists on the cusp between the body and culture" (16). She makes clear that, for the medieval church, virginity was based on moral behaviour and actions that were in accordance with ecclesiastical commands and values (18). This social construction of virginity developed out of the beliefs of the early Church Fathers, who argued that chaste actions and thoughts were far more conclusive proof of virginity than tests on the physical body were (33-5). Elizabeth's presentations and politicized uses of virginity thus speak to her more general abilities to control her emotions and resist temptations that might otherwise weaken her abilities as a leader. 82 associated with a monarch—yet her presentation also drew attention to her physicality, conflating political stability with her body natural's virginal chastity, rather than with her body politic's traditionally kingly qualities. Female virginity rests on the issue of penetration and the presence or absence of the hymen, at least in theory, while chastity is more properly a sense of spiritual wholeness. Kathleen Coyne Kelly notes that early religious writing was consistently clear: a virgin must have "both bodily and spiritual integrity" (3). Later patristic opinions by Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine, however, were inconsistent in applying the terms virginitas and castitas. Either or both could refer to never having engaged in sex, or to a person choosing devout celibacy (even if the decision was made after marriage), or to marital chastity (3; see also Kelly and Leslie 16-17).19 Certainly Elizabeth made use of an understanding of virginity that allowed for a close connection to some of the traits and behaviours associated with chastity. Virginity, as I have suggested, implies corporeal integrity—a total lack of penetrative coital activity and a present hymen—while chastity connotes a larger dedication to mental and spiritual purity, to abstention from vice and commitment to self-vigilance. While the connection between chastity and virginity might seem obvious, Corrinne Harol points out that "no necessary relationship" exists between the two (3): virginity, remarkably difficult to prove in material terms, is no indicator of chastity after a person commences sexual activity, for example (4). Furthermore, virginity is such a tenuously defined and proven physical state, little would seem to be certain about it. The hymen's integrity—so difficult to establish and possible to break long before any sexual activity—is just one example of a physical "sign" of virginity that proves to be insubstantial, for example (4); indeed, the intact hymen is "notoriously unstable and ambiguous" (Kelly 10). Shedding blood would also seem to be inconclusive "proof of the loss of virginity, for, as Harol suggests, the
19 Aldhelm, for example, stresses virginity as a mental state and inner quality, arguing that virginity in one's spirit is more important than physical wholeness (129). His reasoning allows a virgin who has been raped to still be considered a virgin, if her spirit was chaste during the attack, for instance (129), while Jerome argues that one can physically abstain from fornication but still lose one's virginity through impure thoughts (138). These "bad virgins" are excluded by Christ, for they are "virgins in the flesh, not in the spirit" (138). 83
absence of blood does not immediately certify an absence of virginity; moreover, "blood is only a retrospective sign, one whose presence or absence manifests only when the information is no longer very useful, that is, after marriage, sex, or rape" (69). While early modern understandings of and evidence for virginity frequently looked to the physical body—to proof of a hymen or confirmation of blood loss after sexual activity—claims to physical virginity could also be connected to (if not explicitly proven by) more general behaviours that suggested chastity. Similarly, the physical body could suggest to the early modern observer the probability of certain behaviours, traits, or mindsets. Indeed, looking to the body for signs of larger emotional, psychological, or moral capabilities and conditions was an entirely early modern preoccupation. As David Hillman argues, early modern society would have readily accepted the belief that the physical body could reveal truths about a person's state (82; see also Schoenfeldt, "Fables" 243), and Elizabeth made use of these connotations as she closely conflated representations and presentations of her virginity with a more general ability to govern and further the stability of her realm. Physical virginity was thus tied (however artificially) to larger expectations for chaste behaviour and "the articulation of social and sexual coherence" (Schwarz, "Wrong" 13). Chastity necessitated vigilance and rigorous spiritual examination when faced with temptation (see Jerome 135, 139). The association between chastity and self-control links to Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Marina Leslie's observation that retaining female virginity could be imbued with positive masculine characteristics such as resolve and permanence (16); the conflation also places a certain agency and personal authority with women capable of reasoned self-examination and denial of desire. Kathryn Schwarz suggests, for example, that the patriarchal conceptualization of and demand for virginity might be overwhelmingly functional until "virgins themselves theorize the process," or use it to their own ends as Elizabeth did ("Wrong" 7). Indeed, Elizabeth was able to manipulate various iterations of virginity and chastity to present herself as in favour of marriage and in avoidance of the institution, as 84 appropriately feminine and entirely asexual, and as inaccessible Petrarchan beloved and mother to a nation. Representing the queen as beautiful and chaste could also be a lucrative venture for authors and artists who hoped to connect Elizabeth's virginal body to specific political issues. Philippa Berry notes representational links between Elizabeth and Diana, for example, and she argues that the mythological figure implied "a state of pre-lapsarian harmony with nature; but... also, as a huntress, [she was] equipped with the weapons and powers to defend it" (86). These points might indicate an early modern interest in representing Elizabeth as defender of an innocent, slightly pastoral conception of England, or as intimately connected to the country homes of the patrons who funded these amazonian representations (see also 88). On a related note, George Gower's series of Siena 'Sieve' portraits presents Elizabeth as Tuccia, the Vestal Virgin, who as testament to her virginity was able to carry water in her sieve without spilling any. The portraits, produced to support Elizabeth's continued single state (and the cessation of marriage negotiations with Anjou),20 valourize virginity in the obvious reference to Tuccia. As Louis Montrose notes, the sieve itself also favourably connects to the queen's virginal state. The sieve is held in a way "that emphasizes its circular form"; its placement near Elizabeth's thigh suggests an "analogical relationship both to her own female anatomy and to the globe that appears in the background" (Subject 125). At the same time, Montrose points out that Elizabeth's identification with Tuccia and her sieve implies that, like Tuccia, Elizabeth had to prove her virginity—that, like Tuccia, her chastity could be questioned by others (Subject 127). Indeed, the connections between Elizabeth's virginity and public political demands could lead to less than flattering depictions of the queen. Susan Frye
20 Roy Strong, for example, describes the Sieve portraits as "a deliberate intensification of the mystique of chastity as an attribute essential to the success of [Elizabeth's] rule" (Gloriana 97).
21 As discussed in Chapter One, for example, Sir Walter Ralegh's Ocean to Cynthia (1592) fragments suggest the difficulties inherent in courtly relationships predicated on distance and sexual purity. The text functions, in part, as a commentary on the courtier's relationship to Elizabeth and his inability to control or even enjoy the acknowledgement of the queen, despite his activities in shaping and furthering her image. Elizabeth's virginity was integrated into critiques of 85 points to two pieces planned for the 1575 Kenilworth Entertainments: the performances, which would have been incredibly unpopular with the queen, were cancelled and replaced with works that were in praise of Elizabeth (Elizabeth 62). Frye explains that one of the cancelled masques would have focused on a marriage debate between Juno and Diana, with Elizabeth depicted as Zabeta, a nymph looking to (and dependent on) the goddesses for guidance about the best use of her virginity (S. Frye, Elizabeth 70-1). Problems and opportunities connected to Elizabeth's sex and gender affected literary styles and themes in ways that were somewhat unique to her reign. Both queen and writer would respond to and help shape representations of the monarch in ways that could be mutually beneficial, but, while the queen was clearly active in producing and shaping public personae to fit her own political needs, she was also an object of representation (see also Montrose, Subject 303). As Kimberly Anne Coles notes, Elizabeth "was only a participant in this process of generated meanings; she could not control it" (31). Closely braiding virginity and political authority was a useful and productive strategy at several points in Elizabeth's reign, but conflations of the two also became problematic as Elizabeth's reign drew to a close and she refused to identify a successor. Because virginity had been such a central discursive strategy for several decades of Elizabeth's reign, her unclear succession was linked all the more doggedly to her physical body as a site of political integrity, even if the queen's political dynasty had been explicitly confirmed with the identification of a political heir who was not her offspring. While James VI was perhaps the most obvious choice for Elizabeth's political inheritance, his succession was not a given.22 As Spenser constructed The court culture by various authors, in fact, and Hannah Betts connects early modern pornographic writing to negative reactions to the cult of Elizabeth and its emphasis on sexual purity. Sexualized queens and lewd women link to frustrations over representations of Elizabeth as sexually chaste, according to Betts (156), as might comic depictions of women as sexual aggressors. William Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis (c. 1593) illustrates this last possibility. These points will be discussed in greater detail in my analysis of Belphoebe as an object of sexual desire.
22 David Scott Wilson-Okamura certainly argues that by the 1590s James VI of Scotland was the assumed choice for the English succession (and the publicly preferred one), although Jacobean scholars have challenged this sense of a general belief in James's claim to the throne. Doran 86
Faerie Queene in the 1580s and 1590s, Elizabeth's succession was indeed a point of contention in England, a point connected by many to an uncertain future. The Faerie Queene, particularly Book III, reflects the challenges Spenser faced as he simultaneously vaunted smooth successions, recounted political dynasties, and participated in celebrating and reifying the well rehearsed representation of the perennially virginal monarch. Indeed, Book III, ostensibly a meditation on chastity, often concerns itself with questions of childbirth and lineage, thus allowing for the possibility that the text is "poetic and political wish-fulfillment," rewriting childlessness as "chaste fecundity" (Boehrer 568). Rather than offering a focus on or celebration of Elizabeth's abstinence, Book III is ultimately concerned with finding honourable marriage partners for virgins, and with encouraging chaste reproduction designed to ensure legitimate offspring. The speaker in Book Ill's Proem treats Elizabeth's chastity as the subject matter, suggesting that Britomart's use of the virtue will be a somewhat analogous if imperfect representation of that developed by Elizabeth in the courtly love system, but the knight's commitment to marital chastity is completely distinct from Elizabeth's loosely Petrarchan practice of denial and prolonged virginity. The speaker attempts to resolve this quandary by avoiding explicit praise for Britomart's chastity in the proem and identifying Gloriana and Belphoebe as the queen's official mirrors, "th'one [functioning as praise for] her rule, ... th'other [for] her rare chastitee" (Spenser III.Proem.5.9). Tension remains, however, because Britomart's is the chastity most often identified in Book III as productive, not Belphoebe's. Indeed, while Belphoebe's extreme example of virginity makes her unapproachable, Britomart uses her chastity for conventional ends: she directs her activities toward marriage and building a nation through the birth of heirs. Unlike Britomart, Elizabeth did not put her sex "in the service of the state and her royal lineage"; instead, the queen's "gender had become an image of political authority in and for itself, and had seriously restricted the potential of her
describes succession questions in the 1590s as riddled with a fair amount of anxiety, for example. She maintains that from 1595 James became more concerned that his claim to the English throne might not be completely tenable, and that he crafted policy and friendships in order to strengthen his position (rather than as a display of pre-emptive confidence) ("James VI" 26-7). 87 male courtiers for action" (Berry 163). From a conservative, masculinist perspective, this self-definition and sexual autonomy could be unsettling. As a recuperative strategy Elizabeth at times fashioned herself as mother of England and sponsored several godchildren in order to shift focus away from her position not to marry or have children (Hackett 152). While others also used the imagery of symbolic motherhood in depictions of the queen, these representations were not always successful in deflecting attention away from the issue of Elizabeth's childlessness. In fact, those who pushed for the queen to marry and establish a firm succession through childbirth used maternal imagery to further these ends, yet the same imagery was used by those (including Elizabeth) who wished to deflect attention from her actual capacity or willingness to reproduce (153). As Helen Hackett suggests, representing the queen as "a true mother to the nation" became less "a soothing, pacifying device and ... instead a set of contested terms and ideas" (153). By choosing chastity, Elizabeth rejected her royal imperative to reproduce and diligently attempt as smooth a succession as possible. Britomart functions as an attempted mediation of Elizabeth's conflicting uses of prolonged virginity and symbolic maternity—the knight's acceptance of and ultimate successes within traditional constructions of marriage and childbirth suggesting the model for gendered nation building and political leadership that Elizabeth could have followed earlier in her reign— while Belphoebe and Gloriana both betray the difficulties associated with depicting and coalescing various aspects of Elizabeth's leadership and her use of virginity as authority. The virginal Belphoebe is perennially unattainable for her pursuers; she is in many ways the beautiful but distant and unknowable object of desire valorized by the Elizabethan courtly love system, additionally functioning as an amazonian echo in her dedication to virginity and in her ties to Diana and the hunt (Spenser II.iii.21.7, 29.1-4). One might assume that, given her status as an official mirror for Elizabeth, Belphoebe would be a central character to the text, perhaps even the Knight of Chastity, since her use of the virtue is said to exceed all other women's
23 A relevant analysis of Ralegh's Ocean to Cynthia poems can be found in Chapter One, and in my analysis of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene I shall discuss the relationship between Belphoebe and Timias. 88
(III.v.54), yet she is remarkably difficult to pin down, the descriptions of her often ambivalent. Belphoebe's chastity surpasses that of all living women; indeed, "none liuing may compayre" (III.v.54.4). The text innocently implies that "none liuing" in Belphoebe's Faeryland can match her chastity, but the speaker's observation also suggests that possession (and practical application) of her virtue may in fact surpass that of Belphoebe's mirror, the actual queen. The chastity of "none liuing" in Elizabeth's time "may compayre" (III.v.54.4) to Belphoebe's, in other words, for the speaker has already identified Belphoebe as the official representation of Elizabeth's virginal body natural (III.Proem.5.9). If "none liuing" (III.v.54.4) in late Tudor England can actually achieve Belphoebe's chastity, Elizabeth has constructed a version of the virtue that is impossible for anyone to actually maintain, including herself more likely than not. Furthermore, Belphoebe's public presentation of her virginal chastity allows "That Ladies all may follow her ensample dead" (III.v.54.9), "her ensample dead" (III.v.54.9) intimating that Belphoebe's (and, by extension, Elizabeth's) presentation of chastity is without vitality—a point that Coles notes is highlighted by the nearby phrase '"none liuing'" (56)~and that her extended, insistent virginity does in fact block the production of new life.24 The latter possibility reinforces the speaker's earlier comment that Belphoebe's "daintie Rose, ... / More deare than life she tendered," the implication being that Belphoebe would find her life meaningless without chastity, but also, more negatively, that she values virginity as more precious than the continuation of life. Indeed, "tendered" suggests both careful regard for her "daintie Rose" and a sense of exchange, of making use of her "daintie Rose" as a form of tender (Spenser III.v.51.1-2, 2, 1). One might argue that "[t]he girlond of her honour" is cherished acutely and insistently; it is guarded at the conscious expense of future generations, from a conservative viewpoint focused on traditionally gendered means of building future populations and national strength (III.v.51.3).
Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Marina Leslie note that while virginity was highly valued in early modern culture, there was an accompanying anxiety regarding women who remained virgins for too long, thereby defying their natural reproductive value. As Kelly and Leslie succinctly state, "Virginity was a valuable commodity, but it had a very limited shelf-life" (21). 89
The speaker actually differentiates between Belphoebe's "ensample dead" (III.v.54.9) and that of "faire Britomart," whose "ensample" the "faire Ladies" are encouraged to follow if "[their] kingdomes make / In th'harts of men" (III.xi.2.8, 8-9). The virginal knight embraces marital chastity: she "was as trew in loue, as Turtle to her make," or as a turtledove to her mate (III.xi.2.9), and her use of virginity is directed towards reproduction within the optimal model of marital chastity. In distinction to Britomart's "ensample" (III.xi.2.8), Belphoebe's virtuous habits make her insular, unable to understand Timias's honourable intentions when he pursues her, and incapable of responding favourably or in kind when the squire indicates his desire to serve her. In effect, Spenser's depiction of the virginal huntress betrays an anxiety about the productivity of and potential for isolation inherent in Elizabeth's insistent political use of chastity and withheld response to service. When Belphoebe first meets a wounded Timias in the woods, she is directly linked to Diana, the virginal goddess of the hunt with whom Elizabeth is frequently connected. Belphoebe has wounded an animal, and, as she follows the tracks made from the beast's blood loss, she comes upon the squire (III.v.28-30). Timias is thus placed in an analogous position to the wounded animal injured during Belphoebe's chase. His level of power serves as a fairly explicit review of gender relations in Elizabeth's courtly love system, which demanded male declarations of service and suffering prior to any possibility of reward or recognition by the untouchable female beloved. While Belphoebe does pity Timias and nurses him back to health (III.v.30-4), her attendance soon causes him additional grief. Indeed, Timias suffers, his body decaying and his mind feverish, as Belphoebe refuses to recognize the squire's wish to love her and provide service (III.v.42-50). The virgin's "vnfruitfuU paine" or labour "heales vp one and makes another wound" (III.v.42.1, 2): she creates a lovesickness that she must refuse to cure and to which Timias can not openly admit. Her "paine" is also "vnfruitfuU" in that her time spent with Timias produces no heirs (III.v.42.1). The interactions of Belphoebe and Timias stand as a direct critique of the Elizabethan courtly love system, one constructed by both courtiers and monarch 90 for mutual benefit, but one that might also contain a frustrating degree of sterility and stagnation if service is continually rejected and chastity is constantly paraded. Indeed, Coles suggests that "Timias' withering corpse is a deliberately rendered illustration of the effect of Belphoebe's virtue upon living clay'" (57). The tensions produced by the chaste constructions and performances of courtly love are perhaps released in descriptions of Belphoebe that simultaneously suggest purity and corruption, saintliness and eroticization, chaste distance and sexual proximity. When the buffoonish Trompart and Braggadochio first spy the virginal huntress in the woods, the poem's speaker offers a blazon of Belphoebe that combines erotic and religious descriptive elements, suggesting the larger problems in attempting to represent the queen in the wake of the cult of Elizabeth and its aesthetic influence. Although her face is "Cleare as the skye, withouten blame or blot" (Spenser II.iii.22.3), Belphoebe does blush (II.iii.22.4-6), suggesting her knowledge of morality and her ability to feel shame or embarrassment. Both points would place her in a fallen world with knowledge of and capacity for the illicit. The "ambrosiall odours" that she emits simultaneously carry the abilities to "heale the sicke, and ... reuiue the ded" (II.iii.22.7, 9), implying an association with Christ, but the suggestion of "resurrection" likely also carries a conflation of the sexual and the spiritual, according to Berry (159). As a depiction of Elizabeth's body natural, Belphoebe suggests the difficulty in accurately describing the queen's malleable, layered representational strategies. Both Elizabeth and her mirror are simultaneously virgin, Amazon, and Marian ; add to this combination the English queen's representation and self-presentation as symbolic mother to the nation and divinely protected ruler, and Spenser's task- depicting Elizabeth's virginal body natural while celebrating political stability through succession—might very well become insurmountable. Belphoebe remains
Representations of Elizabeth as Marian are well documented and could be fruitfully discussed in relation to The Faerie Queene, as well as in relation to the needs of an English public shifting from Catholicism to Protestantism (see Wells, for example), but such analysis is beyond the scope of this project. 91 unknowable because Elizabeth's overlapping representational strategies become unmanageable. Trompart can see Belphoebe's bare legs (Spenser II.iii.28), for example, yet the sight is tempered by "the multiple fastenings, knots, and foldings of her costume: hymen-like boundaries [that] emblematize her refusal of any phallic attempts at the unravelling and decoding of her body" (Berry 160). Indeed, her white dress is decorated "with many a folded plight" (Spenser II.iii.26.5), or pleat, her clothing secured by a series of hidden knots. The speaker's description of "The ends of all the knots, that none might see, / How they within their fouldings close enwrapped bee" (II.iii.27.8-9) isolates the impossibility of ever fully knowing or describing Elizabeth's body natural. At the same time, the eroticized passage suggests the frustration produced by operating within the courtly love system. In both eroticizing her and blocking Braggadochio from taking full advantage of his desire for her, Spenser uses Belphoebe to engage in a critique of Elizabeth's virginal iconography, simultaneously suggesting that the English queen could in fact be "sexually and ... politically compromised" (Betts 154). Indeed, as the text's speaker notes that her legs "Like two faire marble pillours ... / ... doe the temple of the Gods support" (Spenser II.iii.28.1-2), he suggests both Elizabeth's direct connection to divine authority and the nearness of her genitalia for the watching Trompart and the hiding Braggadochio. Descriptions of Belphoebe as beautiful, virginal, and ultimately inaccessible similarly allow for a critique of the courtly love system inspired by Petrarchan ideals. Indeed, presenting herself as the Petrarchan beloved of her courtiers may have been intended to counteract the anxiety produced by her constantly virgin state (see also Bowman 522), but, in doing so, Elizabeth also opened up a new discourse predicated on a different chastity, a withholding of satisfaction and a distancing from others. Belphoebe's guarding of her virginal chastity is constant and, despite being threatened at points, unaltered. In contrast, Britomart's chastity is directed toward traditional ends: she understands that she should follow her path to 92 marriage and motherhood, and she protects her virginity out of respect for her future marriage and her sense of obligation to strengthen her nation's future. Britomart's chastity falls under conventional early modern understandings of the virtue, for it is forward looking and put in the service of prospective marriage; her virginity ultimately is not a threat to traditional social institutions. Belphoebe's illustrations of Elizabeth's body natural and the queen's use of the courtly love system, however, operate outside of time constraints: her narrative has no "resolution" in sight. Britomart's chastity is tested at several points, but she is able to make use of it in order to begin and successfully continue her quest, and she builds several important relationships during her travels. Belphoebe's chastity, on the other hand, limits her interactions with the central protagonists in the books of which she is a part; in this way, she is essentially kept separate from and fails to "[contribute] to the human application of the different virtues which the books explore—temperance, chastity, friendship," as Berry argues (158). While Britomart will return to sixth-century Britain and the future struggles of her people, Belphoebe, based solely in Faeryland, operates without tangible historical reference or direction. Despite apparently illustrating Elizabeth's mortal body natural, descriptions of her actually remove the English queen from obvious associations with historical narratives or developments. Belphoebe's role as allegorical illustration of Elizabeth's body natural is not a perfect match for several reasons. In fact, Elizabeth is not split neatly into two mirrors. Gloriana, her body politic, is repeatedly described as chaste, despite the fact that chastity is not traditionally considered a kingly virtue. In fact, as Susanne Woods notes, many of Gloriana's virtues are not traits explicitly associated with kingship in traditional descriptions of the role: they are "authoritative virtues [,] useful to rule but not strictly speaking the virtues of rule" (148). Elizabeth's female rule and childless state not surprisingly necessitated new representational frameworks that could connote authority, resolve, and the capacity to make appropriate choices. Certainly, virginal chastity provided the queen with a new mode for presenting herself as kingly (and for being depicted as 93 such by others), but the conflation of virginity with the body politic was not without its complications. As Bruce Thomas Boehrer observes, Elizabeth's queenly body in the poem does not divide easily into political and natural (556): her personal virtues become princely ones, and her corporeal integrity is just as easily associated with her perfect, constant, timeless body politic as with her flawed, temporary, historically contingent body natural. Britomart, who highlights the collision of virginity, maternity, and political leadership—and the attempt to make the associated discursive and representational strategies coalesce—most completely combines Elizabeth's body natural and body politic. Her role as the co-progenitor of a new political dynasty sets her apart from Elizabeth's other official mirror, Gloriana, the Faery Queen, however, for Gloriana's dynasty is marked as uncertain at several points in the narrative. Gloriana is the source of all the virtues displayed or furthered by the knights in the text: she essentially represents "the glory of Elizabeth's imperial office; the desire to win glory that she inspires in [Arthur's ...] breast, and which, when won, is identical with her; and the divine glory she reflects and [in which she] participates" (Cain 111). All of these regal associations are appropriate, given the Faery Queen's mirroring of Elizabeth's body politic. Despite this important position in the narrative, however, Gloriana is almost never referred to in The Faerie Queene, particularly in the second half of the text, a point that highlights Spenser's difficulty in accurately depicting the body politic, an invisible collection of abstract values. Indeed, the only remotely descriptive passages about the Faery Queen can be found in Arthur's summary of his dream in Book I.ix.13-15 (the dream that spurs his quest to meet and serve her); Guyon's laudations for her in Book II.ii.40-1; Guyon and Arthur's praise of her in their discussion in Book II.ix.2-7; and her place in the Elfin and Faery political history read by Guyon in Book II.x.70-6. Even as they praise Gloriana, these relatively brief descriptions also highlight her inaccessibility to both the reader and the knights inspired by her. Woods notes that the figure's multiple names in the text—Tanaquill, Gloriana, and the Faery Queen—also move her farther from the reader's comprehension (148). 94
Furthermore, the knights' actual interactions with her are non-existent, their descriptions of her explicitly encomiastic but also oddly blank. While Spenser proves to be more than capable of describing and giving voice to other abstract allegorical concepts—Chastity and Justice, for example—Elizabeth's body politic is impossible to represent in any detail. The reader's sense of the Faery Queen's physicality is hardly enlightened, for example, after Arthur recounts his dream in which "a royall Mayd / Her daintie limbes full softly down did lay" beside him, promising him her future affections (Spenser I.ix.13.7-8, 14.1-4). This pact establishes Arthur's quest to marry himself to Elizabeth's most perfect kingly qualities, a key union for future Brittonic stability, yet the descriptions of Gloriana are cursory at best. Her abilities as a political leader are elsewhere made clear, as are her connections to glory, peace, and light, in Guyon's celebratory descriptions of "that great Queene, / Great and most glorious virgin Queene aliue," her throne visible over all land and sea and "her beames dispredden cleare" (II.ii.40.2-3, 8). Gloriana possesses "the richesse of all heauenly grace" and all valued earthly traits; she is "rare perfection in mortalitye," according to Guyon, and her glory inspires him to carry her image on his shield (II.ii.41.1, 3, 7). The depictions of Gloriana's image indicate the difficulty faced by Spenser as he attempted to describe an abstract body politic in physical terms, yet the strong, extensive descriptions of other characters who represent allegorical virtues and vices suggest that Spenser is more than capable of describing abstract concepts at some length. Furthermore, while Gloriana represents Elizabeth's kingly virtues, she is also described as a Faery leader, one who is born from a long line of Faeries and Elves, and thus has a physical form. "[T]hat fayre ymage of that heauenly Mayd" (II.i.28) is the extent of Spenser's expressive capabilities, although he can more easily represent Gloriana's ephemeral powers and political virtues. He can, for example, describe "the beauty of her mind ..., / That is her bounty, and imperiall powre, / Thousand times fairer than her mortal hew" (II.ix.3.5-7). Even these descriptions are rare and brief, however, leaving Elizabeth's body politic as often mysterious, missing, and untenable. 95
As a treatment of Elizabeth's body politic, Gloriana must necessarily be physically absent from the poem, although she does function as the impetus for several knights' quests. The relative lack of critical work to take up Gloriana's place in the poem likely speaks to the difficulties in comprehending her or analyzing her role at any length. Jeffrey P. Fruen hypothesizes that because Gloriana is constantly removed from the characters and the reader, she is always sought after (148-49). His point works well with the eroticized court culture of Elizabeth as the distant, inaccessible beloved, and it usefully connects the knights' quests in Faeryland to the declarations of service made by Elizabeth's courtiers. Gloriana, despite being an "absent centre" (Wofford 108), could also suggest Spenser's hopes for the future, if the future consists of the eventual union of Gloriana and Arthur. The knight attempts in his quest to join himself to the most perfect illustration of glory; Elizabeth simultaneously decides to marry herself to Arthur as the ideal conception of British national virtue, cementing her commitment to England's future in the process. If, as Susanne L. Wofford suggests, Gloriana portends "a union not yet possible, not yet representable, but one toward which Spenser hopes history will move, if the nation is led in the right direction" (108), Gloriana would thus enable or further a future national cohesion and sense of security, should Arthur complete his quest and meet her. Thomas Cain argues alternatively that, because she is never present in the text, Gloriana is never changed or subject to unfortunate happenstance; thus, while other characters "betoken Elizabeth at some moments but not at others[,] Gloriana always figures the queen" (112). The close connections among Gloriana, Elizabeth, and national security, as suggested by Wofford and Cain, lead to worrisome questions about political inheritance, however, for Gloriana's is the reign that seems to mark the zenith of Faery and Elfin culture while drawing attention to its approaching demise.
26 Jeffrey P. Fruen points out that Spenser had written to Ralegh, explaining that Gloriana would be featured extensively in the (never written) twelfth and final book of The Faerie Queene, in which case Gloriana could function in relation to "biblical typology... [.] Gloriana should be seen as a focal point to the poem's disjointed narratives in much the same sense in which Christ was seen as the unifying focus of the Bible" (147-48). Although Gloriana is never presented explicitly in the six books that we do have, several other laudable queens and females are, all of whom signal and act as a build-up to the Faery Queen (148). 96
The Faery Queen is the fairest and most regal in her land, but the Faery and Elfin line has no certain heir to Gloriana as Guyon reads his history, the Antiquitee of Faerie lond; the text's author can only hope that the Faery Queen will "liue, in glory and great power" well into the future (Spenser II.x.76.9). Like Elizabeth's reign, Gloriana's would seem to signal the end of an era rather than the continuation of it. Unlike Gloriana (and, one might argue, Elizabeth), Britomart takes an active interest in historiography and political legacy: in fact, her debut in Book III comes just after Arthur and Guyon's historical reading, and she overcomes Radigund's Amazon rule in Book V, likely the book in Spenser's epic that is most explicitly situated in the historical events and succession anxieties of the 1580s and 1590s.27 In his depiction of Britomart, Spenser suggests as ideal a behavioural model that allows female leadership and gender inversion when necessary to protect the larger interests of the nation and political certainty. Connected to stories of national origins and dynasty building at multiple points in Spenser's text, Britomart transgresses gendered expectations by dressing as a knight and adopting a chivalric code of arms, but she does so to travel through war-torn Britain and begin her quest to meet Artegall. Similarly, when Britomart fights the evil Amazon queen, Radigund, killing her and claiming authority in her territory, she battles the savage woman in order to free the enslaved Artegall and restore the appropriate gendered rule by men (V.vii.25-45). The links between Britomart and Elizabeth are implied but difficult to miss: the character represents Chastity in the poem, is heir to her father's kingdom (III.ii.22.2), and is Elizabeth's ancestor, the English queen also becoming successor to the earlier woman's admirable qualities (III.iv.1, iv.3). While Britomart signals Elizabeth's positive virtues—chastity, resolve, fortitude, and
27 Indeed, Book V is haunted by the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, an event referenced most certainly in Mercilla's reluctant decision to kill the evil Duessa after a lengthy trial finds her guilty, although Mary's execution is also likely recalled in Britomart's execution of the Amazon Queen Radigund. The allegory in Book V so transparently referenced Mary's imprisonment and execution, in fact, that James banned the text in Scotland and demanded that Spenser be arrested (McCabe 224). Richard A. McCabe notes, however, that this outrage was more fuelled by James's anxiety about possible complication for his own claim to the English succession than it was by the allegorical references to his mother's death (224). 97 bravery in battle, for example—she cannot be an official mirror for the queen because her future successes could too easily remind the reader of Elizabeth's failures and her avoidance of the very marital institution in which Britomart ultimately participates. Furthermore, an explicit association between Britomart and Elizabeth would raise the possibility of another, more damaging conflation: Radigund and Elizabeth. Indeed, the battle between Britomart and Radigund offers an opportunity to analyze Spenser's opinions on women's rule generally, but the passage also suggests his feelings about working under Elizabeth specifically. If Britomart suggests key disappointments about Elizabeth's reign or the complications associated with representing her political use of virginity, Radigund becomes a nightmare version of the last Tudor queen. The Amazon ruler suggests not what Elizabeth could have been but what she might actually have been (see also Villeponteaux, '"Not as'" 220): vindictive, a failure at love, irrational, and aggressive both in her pursuit of men and in her confrontations with female rivals. Radigund's Amazon territory, Radegone, thrives in a topsy-turvy world of inverted gender roles, perhaps functioning as a dark commentary on courtly love, for once captured by the Amazon women, men are forced to wear women's clothing and do menial chores (Spenser V.v.20-3). It is also a region of great stasis and abject failure by more typical standards of rule. Radigund's dreadful reign must be terminated by Britomart, the brave, chaste knight who has accepted her future domestic role, who cedes power to men as soon as she grasps it from Radigund and creates an initial sense of balance in the newly conquered territory, and who leaves the reader confident that a new, promising line of rulers will soon be confirmed by the birth of children. That dynasty will end conspicuously with Elizabeth, and not simply because she is the monarch on the throne when Spenser writes, so he therefore cannot guess who the next ruler might be. Rather, Britomart's political line ends because Elizabeth will fail to continue it. 98
Britomart and Arthur: Edmund Spenser's Use of History and Elizabeth I's England Perhaps the most well-known allegorical encomium for Elizabeth and certainly England's lengthiest national epic, The Faerie Queene explores and questions England's place in history and Elizabeth's role as leader and protector of the nation, Faeryland and Cleopolis functioning as mirrors of England and London, respectively, though the representations are not necessarily accurate or completely realistic. Indeed, the allegory is hardly a stable, cohesive set of historical references. Wayne Erickson has explained in detail the connections among the various worlds of the text. He argues that the allegorical Faeryland, which functions according to the expectations of the romance genre, acts as a bridge to and parallel system for several worlds that are set in historical (or somewhat historical) moments and that often operate by the structures of history and the epic (3-4). Britomart and other humans gain access to Faeryland through the sixth-century Wales and Cornwall of Arthur, for example, although other historical worlds also link to Faeryland. While Faeryland is "time-inclusive" (3), according to Erickson, it still reflects the political climate of the last Tudor queen's nation (5-6). At the same time, the allegorical space connects worlds both historical and not; therefore, Erickson suggests that "past, present, and future must be treated as relative, not absolute, terms" (6). Gloriana assigns various quests to knights both within and without her realm, and, when completed, each quest will establish a new order: Britomart and Artegall will complete their quests in Britain and Ireland, and they will produce political heirs who will carry on a new dynasty (6-7); Arthur's quest should end in Cleopolis, when he meets Gloriana, an event that Erickson argues would "initiate the prophetic nation of Tudor legend" and a "future ... apocalyptic third Troy" (7); and Redcrosse will conclude in the Eden lands, his wedding to Una allowing for a new religious order based on peace and salvation (7). Although these changes are dependent on the successful completion of the knights' quests and their weddings to partners, the text depicts the possibility of new political, cultural, and religious orders, each of them also connected to 99 teleological narratives and commitments to the future that are based on investment in a nation's past. As Michael O'Connell explains, the text "does ... include prospects from which we catch sight of the historical world, but the poet does not insist that such views are constantly in sight" (12). Even if the historical references are not always clear, The Faerie Queene is a text very much concerned with validating Elizabeth's England by placing it in history, as part of a historical narrative that ought to continue and thrive past Elizabeth's reign. Faeryland illustrates Tudor England, the Antiquitee of Faerie lond standing as a golden rendition of what Elizabeth's national past and future might look like, but, in idealizing her place in history, Spenser may also point out her flaws in the moments when Faery and English narratives do not actually align. This disjunction is only made more obvious by the violent, chaotic record of kingship found in Briton moniments, the history of British politics that Arthur reads in Book II.x. The Faerie Queene celebrates a highly constructed, desirable narrative of national origin and continuation, also outlining optimal political legacies at several points. Books II and III offer various written and oral political histories, chronicles and historiographies that attract Guyon, the Elfin Knight of Temperance, Arthur—the ideal knight who functions in the early modern period as "a hero of a composite people, uniting Britons, Saxons and Normans" (MacDougall 13), and who embodies all of the virtues held by individual knights in the epic poem—and Britomart, the virginal, militant Knight of Chastity marked as the woman destined to begin a new political line with Artegall, the Knight of Justice. Both Arthur and Britomart are tied to the active pursuit of soul mates, and both begin quests in order to meet their loves and begin new lines. Like Britomart, who first sees Artegall in her father's magic mirror and learns more about him after hearing Merlin's prophecy (Spenser Ill.ii. 17-18, iii.22-50), Arthur initially sees his beloved, Gloriana, in a vision, and one is cognizant of the Faery Queen's ability to give favour and likely ensure that her dynasty will continue should the knight meet her (I.ix. 13-14). 100
Arthur's quest should successfully conclude with his marriage to the Faery Queen and the continuation of the Faery and Elfin political dynasty, but the knight's quest is still incomplete at the end of Book VI.28 One could speculate that the knight and queen would finally meet in the never written Book XII, as Spenser did intend to write his epic in twelve parts (Fruen 147-48; Spenser 717). Merlin's prophecy in Book Ill.iii makes clear, however, that Arthur will die childless, and that a line of Britons will continue through his half-brother, Artegall, and Britomart (Spenser III.iii.26-7, 29), A. C. Hamilton et al. noting the pun on Artegall's name as Art-egal, or Arthur's equal (316fnStanza29). The abrupt end to the Antiquitee of Faerie lond similarly offers no help in identifying a successor to Gloriana (Spenser II.x.76). Erickson suggests that Arthur disappears from Merlin's prophecy of political dynasty from the sixth to the sixteenth century in order that the knight may function as Elizabeth's partner, not her forebear (106). By exiting the historical world of sixth-century Wales and completing his quest in the allegorical Cleopolis, Arthur can wed the Faery Queen and, according to Erickson, initiate his prophetic role of Arthur redevivus (106). While this narrative may be implied for encomiastic purposes, the jarring end to Guyon's Faery history in Book II.x and the suggestion in Merlin's prophecy that Arthur will die without issue (Spenser III.iii.26-7, 29) suggest alternatively that Arthur will ultimately fail to meet Gloriana, despite his best efforts, that Elizabeth will not secure a new political line through childbirth, and that she will ultimately not marry herself to national obligations developed out of historical conceptions of the ideal English nation (conceptions that are allegorized in the figure of Arthur). Merlin's
David Lee Miller offers an alternative reading, cautioning that Spenser never promises a wedding between Arthur and Gloriana; rather, Arthur's quest is to meet her (138, 140). In becoming acquainted, Arthur will succeed his father, Uther Pendragon, give his physical body to Guinevere (as described in the literary tradition focused on Camelot), and be married metaphorically to the perfect body politic (D. Miller 140).
29 Wayne Erickson argues alternatively that Arthur and Gloriana's marriage would be celebrated in the first of Spenser's imagined twelve books on the political virtues, while Una and Redcrosse would also wed in Eden lands in the first book, and Britomart and Artegall would marry in Britain in the second book (107-08). 101 prophecy could also then imply that Gloriana will die childless, an allegorical illustration of Elizabeth's own waning Tudor dynasty. In contrast to Elizabeth's political mirror, Gloriana, both Arthur and Britomart understand their place in and obligation to history. Indeed, Elizabethan England is ostensibly the material product of the knights' participation in nation building. The Faerie Queene as a "historical" text thus confirms the successes of Arthur and Britomart—Britomart in particular—as they, like Aeneas before them, take steps to ensure the viability of Britons in the future, to ensure, in effect, the health of Elizabeth's nation. The existence of Elizabeth's nation, which reads The Faerie Queene centuries after the (fictional) knights initiate their quests, is "proof that the fictive Britomart completed her quest and began her new political dynasty with Arthur's half-brother, Artegall, thus successfully contributing to the longevity of her people. While Gloriana signals the end of a certain political Faery dynasty, Britomart and Artegall are figures who nurture the renewal and possible unification of Britain. Indeed, Britomart hails from South Wales but wears the armour of the dead Saxon Queen Angela (III.iii.58), while Arthur is associated with a lineage from north Wales and is regularly connected extra-textually to political revitalization and national alliances. Despite its placement as encomium, The Faerie Queene thus presents a future national survival that is not explicitly to the credit of Elizabeth's political persona. Britomart and Merlin's Prophecy Spenser at several points describes The Faerie Queene as a laudatory work; the text's proems are utilized as sites of explicit praise for Elizabeth, while characters are introduced in the cantos in order to effect indirect yet equally favourable descriptions of the queen. Britomart, who combines Elizabeth's use of virginal and maternal imagery—while still working in the service of conventional understandings of gendered leadership and national service or engagement- assumes the chivalric, masculine role of knight in armour upon seeing the shadows of her future love in her father's magic mirror (III.ii.17-18, 22-7), and upon learning about her role in producing a new political line (III.iii.26- 50). Britomart is dedicated to her chaste lifestyle, but she understands her obligation to 102 find Artegall, marry, and aid in future national security through the establishment of a dynasty. Although she initially resists the thought of marriage, her actions are soon enough directed towards the institution, and Spenser's early depiction of the character place her within a conventional set of feminine traits. Indeed, even before she spends time at the Temple of Isis and conclusively accepts her future political role, she looks forward to marriage and is excited to meet her partner in romance. The descriptions of Britomart as a lovesick young woman in her father's kingdom place her as overwhelmingly feminized, prone to frights, chills, and a wandering mind. Donald Stump posits that prior to being struck by Cupid's bow and cross-dressing in order to take on her quest, Britomart's preliminary psychological state can best be deduced by examining her response to seeing Artegall's reflection in her father's mirror, but he incorrectly attaches Britomart's feelings of despair and her wandering mind to her emotional state prior to being struck by Cupid's arrow at III.ii.26 (99). In fact, Spenser's initial descriptions of Britomart place her as a young woman "pure from blame of sinfull blot," who, while desiring no one in particular, is curious about her destiny and "wist her life at last must lincke in that same [marriage] knot" (III.ii.23.8, 9). This is a young woman who is "prone" to falling in love but has never before felt or struggled with carnal passion (III.ii.23.4). When she views Artegall in her father's magic mirror, she sees a brave, handsome knight in full armour, one who has defeated Achilles in battle, for he carries the Greek's arms (III.ii.24-5).30 Britomart, while not feeling desire at "her vnguilty age," likes what she sees: she "well did view his Personage, / And liked well, ... / But went her way" (III.ii.26.3, 1-3). Importantly, it is Cupid who initiates her feelings of passion, piercing her with an arrow "So slyly, that she did not feele the wound"
30 Spenser thus attempts to champion the Briton's Trojan origins, for he places Artegall as superior to the great Greek hero Achilles, also suggesting Artegall's continuation of and cultural inheritance from the older civilization. Artegall is, in other words, placed as solidly in a historical line developed from Trojan ideals, yet he also bridges Elizabethan England in this initial description, for his shield depicts "a crowned little Ermilin," or ermine (III.ii.25.8), the ermine of course being popularly associated with chastity and with Elizabeth in particular. ArtegalFs position in and responsibility to history is clearly laid out in this initial presentation, so it is perhaps no surprise that Britomart reacts favourably to his image. 103
(III.ii.26.8). Britomart only begins to experience desire and the accompanying symptoms of lovesickness and abstention (see Broaddus 187-88) at this point, although her partiality for sexual purity is maintained, given that her entry into desire is based solely on external intervention. The enforced transition to sexualized love and marital chastity suggests the imaginative reconciling of Elizabeth's political use of virginal and maternal imagery in her political persona as leader of the nation. The character's shift could function as a sort of exhortative or educational model for Elizabeth. Although far too late to be of material or practical value as Spenser's advice to reproduce—by the 1580s and 1590s, Elizabeth was well past the age of childbearing—Britomart's transition could still function as retrospective encouragement or a model for what might have been. Britomart's eventual acceptance of sexualized marriage highlights that Elizabeth could have considered using marital chastity to engage in sexualized relationships for reasons of historical and dynastic exigency, even if her personal preference was for virginity, in other words. While Stump incorrectly assigns Britomart's tremulous despair to her life prior to Cupid's piercing injury, he accurately notes the effects on Britomart's psyche when she first feels the pangs of desire (99). Indeed, "her prowd portaunce ... I... now did quaile" (Spenser III.ii.27.3-4, emph. added). Although she cannot explain the changes, Britomart becomes "Sad, solemne, sowre, and full of fancies fraile" (III.ii.27.5). Stump argues that Britomart's sickness highlights "her vulnerability to nightmares and 'ghastly feares' ... and her tendency to lapse into despair" (99), yet those moments of strife are simply not described in the text as predilections. The changes to Britomart's outlook are severe, sudden, and conspicuous, and they are necessary to highlight her natural state of innocence and chaste thought. Indeed, at the onset of the young woman's sobbing, "weary spright," and nightmares "with fantastick sight / Of dreadfull things," her nurse, Glauce, immediately notices the shift from her usual "liuely cheare" (Spenser III.ii.28, 29.2, 29.4-5, 30.9). Glauce is certain that the "suddein ghastly feares / [That] All night afflict [Britomart's] natural repose" have been swiftly brought on by love 104
(III.ii.31.1-2, emph. added), and she recognizes the disconnection from the young woman's habitual state. Britomart's disconcerted response to desire is necessary in order to highlight how ordered and controlled her approach to chaste romance had been prior to Cupid's intervention. Importantly, Britomart had defined her chastity as directed toward joining someone "in that same [marriage] knot" (III.ii.23.9), and marriage was already the focus prior to Cupid releasing his arrow, prior even to the virgin seeing Artegall in her father's mirror. Britomart struggles with chills, nightmares, and terror because she must learn to focus this new sense of desire and reconcile it with her previous predilection for virginal chastity. She must, in other words, begin to include sexualized love and the possibility of reproduction within her framework for (marital) chastity. In working toward this cognizance, Britomart moves further away from Elizabeth, and the latter's practice of prolonged virginal chastity is increasingly out of place when viewed alongside the activities of Book III, the Book of Chastity. Britomart's suffering and her uncertainty about its cause are severe enough that Glauce takes her to Merlin for guidance. Britomart, described elsewhere as the "worthie stock, from which [Elizabeth's] branches sprong" (III.iv.3.6), experiences the hint of sexualized desire as "her first engraffed payne, / Whose root and stalke so bitter yet did taste," "engraffed" suggesting the splicing together of her branch and Artegall's bitter root, simultaneously intimating a painful penetration into the virgin's body (Ill.ii. 17.5-6, 5). The introduction of desire is abhorrent to the virgin, and the description of desire as instilled in a "root and stalke so bitter" implies her feeling that sexualized love is distasteful at its most foundational level—at its "root and stalke" and, one can imagine, through the plant as a whole (III.ii.17.6). Because Britomart was without desire until Cupid pierced her with his arrow and awakened her capacity to feel lust, she has no ability to understand or identify her ailment (III.ii.22, 26-7), although her nurse suspects lovesickness of some variety. Indeed, the herbs that Glauce applies in Book III.ii.49~rue, savin, camphor, mint, dill, and colt wood—are all associated with minimizing carnal 105 desires or frustrating fertility (Broaddus 188; Hamilton et al., eds. 310fnStanza 49.5-9). Further to this point, Britomart laments that her unknown malady "hath infixed faster hold / Within [her] bleeding bowels," "bleeding bowels" suggesting menstruation, thus her initiation to both fertility and adult sexuality (Spenser III.ii.39.1-2, 2). Indeed, the pain "ranckleth" and she complains that "[her] entrailes flow with poisnous gore" (III.ii.39.3, 4); both descriptions add to the sense that desire is something foreign and horrid to Britomart's nature. Glauce's remedies are ineffective, and Artegall's "engraffed" influence (III.ii.17.5) has become completely embedded by the time Glauce takes her ailing charge to Merlin for help: its "rooting tooke," for Britomart soon suffers from a "deepe engraffed ill," an "evill, which doth her infest" so extensively, Glauce becomes convinced that the source of the trouble is supernatural (III.iii.16.6,18.3, 5, 5-9). Merlin's prophecy clarifies Britomart's suffering by placing her within a line of future rulers, a line that she and Artegall will begin with their first child (III.iii.22). Merlin insists that her struggle with desire was necessary, because her love for Artegall must be "deepe engraffed" (III.iii.18.3): indeed, "that Tree," that future family tree, "enrooted deepe must be" (III.iii.22.2). Merlin envisions an "embodied" tree, a tree that is at once substantial and material, and made of human bodies (III.iii.22.3; Hamilton et al., eds. 310fnStanza 1-4). These "embodied braunches" (Spenser III.iii.22.3) mirror the Tree of Jesse, as Hamilton et al. note: while the Virgin Mary and Jesus mark the end of Jesse's tree, Britomart's will apparently conclude with the Virgin Queen (310fnStanza 1-4). Britomart's line will be mighty, according to Merlin; her "famous Progenee" will possess "the auncient Trojan blood" and will live up to the culture's ideals (Spenser III.iii.22.5, 22.6). Merlin's prophecy effectively cements Britomart's role in and obligation to history: she inherits and must pass on the ideals of a great civilization. Elizabethan England is dependent on the success of her quest, which becomes a vehicle for strengthening and furthering the dream of a unified British nation.31
Howard Dobin similarly notes that while prophecy looks forward and promises the possibility of seeing future events through interpretation, prophecy in epics places the future in the 106
Merlin makes clear that while she will maintain a political partnership with Artegall and even assist him in battle, Britomart will retire from arms when childbirth becomes her priority (III.iii.28). While the prophecy details generations of success, it also outlines bloody defeats and years of struggle for the Britons. Britomart becomes "full deepe empassioned" to learn of the Britons' future losses to the Saxons (III.iii.43.1), and she is emotionally invested in the return to power and general safety of her people. The young woman sees her place in history and her debt to the future, having listened to Merlin's prophecy. Merlin does assure her that her "famous Progenee" will survive so many generations that the "embodied" tree will in fact reach "to heuens hight" (III.iii.22.5, 3,4), a prophetic detail that certainly confirms the Knight of Chastity's successes, but one that also draws attention to Elizabeth's tree, which has produced neither branches nor fruit (see Elizabeth, "Queen Elizabeth's Answer" 79). As Coles notes, the queen's line must end with her death, and, as a result, Spenser must end his prophecy with her: "[h]e would like to write her figure into the future ('the end is not'), but it is a creative impossibility. The Queen's copy cannot live beyond her unless it is literally fleshed out in the body of her issue" (54). Instead, Merlin foresees the rule of "a royall Virgin" before falling silent, seemingly dismayed by a "ghastly spectacle" (Spenser III.iii.49.6, 50.3): the act of offering prophecy may simply exhaust and overcome him, for the magician "stay'd / As ouercomen of the spirites powre" (HI.iii.50.1-2), or he may reach a point of the prophecy that is too awful to reveal. The "ghastly spectacle" is never explained in further detail: the vision may be of Elizabeth's death, which in itself would be a "ghastly spectacle" for an encomium (III.iii.50.3), but, in portending the possibility of the monarch's demise, the speaker also leaves the reader to consider the massive changes anticipated by this death. context of the past; it utilizes "prophecy as a way of structuring the nation's past [... and it] endeavors to impose meaning upon prophecy by confining it within an already told story" (149). Bart van Es seconds this point, arguing that "[ljooking into a historical mirror allowed one to envisage the road ahead" (164).
32 Merlin's silence at the "ghastly spectacle" (Spenser III.iii.50.3) can also be productively discussed in relation to sixteenth-century apocalyptic thought, which holds an important place in The Faerie Queene, although the confines of this project dictate that this line of inquiry cannot be 107
The prophecy as a whole motivates Britomart to find Artegall: the future struggles faced by her people somehow make her participation in dynasty building all the more necessary. Once Britomart's sexualized feelings are placed within the narrative of national obligations, she begins to see that her application of chastity will most usefully be directed toward marriage and children. The women's anxieties are removed, and "With lighter hearts" (III.iii.51.4) they begin to work out the necessary tactics for Britomart's quest to meet her mate. It is no coincidence that while the speaker initially compares Britomart to Belphoebe and Diana, he moves away from such conflations with extreme versions of virginity as the knight's quest progresses toward marital chastity, the form of sexuality and love most likely to be favoured by a conservative early modern society. Britomart's travels will in many ways be modelled after those of Aeneas, for both heroes are tasked with the responsibility of building new empires, and both quests hinge (though quite differently) on the submission to love. Andrew Fichter notes that in Book III Spenser actually follows the Aeneid quite closely: Aeneas visits Carthage in the first book of Vergil's text—Carthage, which Fichter describes as "the counterimage of the city that is his destined goal" (159)—while Britomart spends time at the hedonistic Castle Joyous in canto i; Dido falls for Aeneas during his stay at Carthage, and, in a comedic rendering, Malecasta makes advances at Britomart (159-60). Spenser differs, however, in shifting the hero's emotional injury from the fall of Troy to a "fall into love" (160). While Aeneas must "choose between Dido and Rome, love and empire[, ... Britomart] is
discussed at length by me. Kenneth Bonis has done important, convincing work on the subject, however, and he notes that when Merlin ends suddenly and remarks, "But yet the end is not" (Spenser III.iii.50.1), his words exactly match Christ's as he describes the Last Judgement (11). According to this reading, Merlin connects activities on "the Belgicke shore" (Spenser UI.iii.49) to Protestant eschatological prophecy and the Low Countries, Elizabeth becoming an important instigator of righteous action and the last days (Borris 12). Arthur's battle for Beige in Book V thus becomes all the more "idealized, complete, and drawn from apocalyptic anticipations of a perfected Christian futurity" (62). Richard Mallette also argues convincingly for Britomart's role as an apocalyptic warrior in Book V of The Faerie Queene. 108 exhorted to pursue both" (161). Indeed, love leads to Britomart's empire, and empire depends on her pursuit of love. Britomart learns to accept her responsibility to the future, and she owns her obligation to produce a new line of political heirs. Glauce suggests that the women's travels might be aided by disguises, since war-torn sixth-century Britain "doth burne in armes bright," and the nurse proposes that they wear armour and learn to handle weaponry, thus instigating Britomart's transformation into "a mayd Martiall" (Spenser III.iii.52.9, 53, 53.9). Importantly, Britomart achieves success in the text and has mobility because, although she hides her femininity under armour, she "serves the interests of the father by not allowing her femininity to disturb the patriarchal power balance, and by defining her 'chastity' according to historical necessity" (Benson 161). Unlike Elizabeth, the virginal knight directs her activities toward marriage and dynasty, so her chastity must contain this understanding and work within these conventional dictates. Prolonged virginity is no longer an option for Britomart, and her abandonment of it places her at odds with the realities of Elizabeth's reign. Historical Narratives and Secure Dynasties In Book Il.ix Arthur and Guy on stay at Alma's castle, and they visit a turret, soon discovering written histories for both of their cultures. As they ascend the stairs to the tower, the speaker notes the durability of the building's frame, suggesting that it is unlike those of past civilizations now destroyed, that it is Not that, which antique Cadmus whylome built In Thebes, which Alexander did confound; Nor that proud towre of Troy, though richly guilt, From which young Hectors blood by cruell Greekes was spilt. (Spenser II.ix.45.6-9) Spenser's speaker thus places Britonnic and Faery cultures as housed within a framework that is poised to survive, to somehow avoid the epic falls of the classical age. Alma's tower is presented as the pinnacle of earthly achievement,
Pamela Joseph Benson has similarly argued that the female knight "is never torn between love and duty; her love is her duty" (261). 109 and the men discover that the turret is inhabited by three sages (one who sees the future, one who observes the present, and one who preserves the past). Upon entering the room of Eumnestes, the sage responsible for remembering the past, Arthur and Guyon discover a library with half-destroyed scrolls, which Eumnestes supplements with his own recollections, and each man chooses a historical chronicle that surveys his own lineage. The sage is "an old oldman, halfe blind," his body "decrepit" (II.x.55.5, 6), but his mind remains strong, just as the foundations for the building stop the "ruinous and old" turret from collapsing (II.x.55.1). Eumnestes' room has also partly disintegrated overtime: he is surrounded by texts that are fragmentary and weather-beaten, yet his own memory, his "infinite remembraunce" (II.x.56.1), remains clear and complete. His memory, an "immortall serine," survives intact, while the records are "all worm-eaten, and full of canker holes" (II.x.56.6, 57.9), suggesting that personal dedication to remembering the past is crucial (and that it may very well have to supplement material reminders of the past that decay over time). Importantly, Eumnestes represents a universal sense of memory: he "is not a particular man only, but a faculty in all men, a specific trait belonging to the community of man-in-time" (Berger 79). As Arthur and Guyon read their histories, Eumnestes transfers or illustrates the ability to remember properly or effectively, the manner in which one must carry history into one's current mindset and obligations, in other words (79). The knights take an interest in their own heritages; indeed, the books passed from one generation to the next~"deliuered ... from hond to hond"—hold the Briton and Faery ancestries, and the men "[burn] ... with feruent fire" to know about their pasts (Spenser II.x.60.5, 6). In the chronicle of the Britons' history, Spenser surveys Elizabeth's line from its mythic origins to the time of Arthur, who is in many ways the pinnacle of Brittonic culture, and Spenser's speaker carefully positions Briton moniments as within and connected to a larger extra- textual set of historical records or "monuments" of the past. Not only does the speaker repeat information found in many other English chronicles, he offers descriptions that can be verified as geographical loci: the battle between Goemot 110 and Corineus can be placed by the extra-textual presence of "the westerne Hogh, besprincled with the gore" of the confrontation (II.x.10.7). These links to extra- textual veracity give the chronicle authority, but they also clearly place Briton moniments as part of a known history, the same history to which Arthur, Britomart, Elizabeth, and the English reader are all indebted.34 Spenser makes use of the chronicle tradition as he begins his history with Brutus's arrival in Britain and concludes with Arthur. The Britons' history will be "foretold" by Merlin in Book III.iii.26-50 (foretold from the Britomartian perspective, summarized from the Elizabethan), explaining the progression from Arthur's half-brother, Artegall, to Elizabeth, and the earliest history will be recalled by Paridell in Book III.ix.33-51 as he chronicles the Trojans' defeat to Brutus's discovery of the island he names Britain. Britomart will take an interest in this last historical narrative, and Paridell's story will thus explicitly tie the Knight of Chastity to Brittonic history for the second time. Britomart is implicitly tied to Arthur's reading of history, too, for Briton moniments will end with the reign of Uther Pendragon, the father to her epic counterpart, Arthur, who is tasked with wedding himself to the allegorical illustration of Elizabeth's body politic, and who disappears from Merlin's later prophecy in order that Britomart and Artegall can begin the dynasty that will culminate in the Tudors. The chronicle's initial commitment to placing England in history is made tangible as the speaker describes Briton's early state: he praises the nation that built an empire out of a "saluage wildernesse, / Vnpeopled, vnmannurd, vnproud, vnpraysed" (II.x.5.3-4). Unlike the wild people who inhabit the island prior to his arrival, Brutus hails from an established, respected line (II.x.9), and he ensures political longevity with his three sons by Inogene (II.x.13). Brutus's direct line of heirs often follows a chaotic progression, however, and it ends violently seven hundred years later after a power struggle. Indeed, Harry Berger, Jr. describes the
34 Corineus's textual exploits are marked and confirmed by the name Cornwall, which was given to him and named after him in recognition of his service to a Brittonic leader, according to the speaker (Spenser II.x.12). Spenser will include the same sort of geographical markers in his description of Merlin's cave in Book Ill.iii, thus giving his prophecy a sense of authority and truth: the speaker notes that Merlin resides near "Cayr-Merdin," or Carmarthen (III.iii.7.4), in a "hideous hollow caue (they say) / Vnder a Rock that lyes a little space / From the swift Barry ...J Emongst the woody hilles of Dyneuowre, or Dynevor" (III.iii.8.3-6). Ill chronicling of Brutus's descendants as "seven hundred years of almost uninterrupted mayhem" (90), and he suggests that the history demonstrates the lack of connection between national catastrophe and efficacy or morality in leadership (92). He maintains that many "good and reasonable kings" in Briton moniments "are hampered by a defect in nature whereby they leave no heirs, the wrong heirs, or too many heirs. And there is no help for it; the kingdom suffers on that account" (102). While Berger sees this detail as an indication of the universal and perhaps expectable levels of trouble in a political dynasty (90), I would argue that the breaks in political inheritance foreground the correlation between chaos and childless rulers. The word "moniments''' performs an important function in Spenser's larger presentation of political dynasty and the dangers of interregna. Bart van Es points to the multivalence and plasticity of the term "moniment," or "monument," in early modern culture, for it had usages "[ranging] from 'sepulchre' to 'written document', and from concrete 'structure' to enduring 'example'. It could refer to a fragment, 'carved figure', 'statue', 'effigy', or 'legal instrument', as well as to a 'portent' or 'warning'" (23). The "monuments" in Arthur's readings are thus simultaneously moral exempla, physical remainders of the past, and warnings about previous interregna and uncertain successions. Remember, for example, that Brutus's line is ended by Wyden's act of filicide, as she kills her remaining son following the princes' battles to gain political ascendency (Spenser II.x.35.7). With the "pittilesse" (II.x.35.9) act of a woman, the Britons' direct connection to Troy is severed, the filicide perhaps suggesting Elizabeth's own lack of (male) heirs and the chaos that might follow her death. "The noble braunch from th'antique stocke [is] torne" (II.x.36.4), and a power struggle ensues until Donwallo justly establishes a new dynasty (II.x.37-40). Indeed, Briton moniments tracks a few examples of leaders who die without children; importantly, each of these breaks in legacy leads to substantial violence and a great deal of bloodshed. Donwallo must rebuild and consolidate power after the deaths of Ferrex and Porrex terminate Brutus's political line (II.x.35-44); a rewriting of available historical record allows Spenser to place 112
Bunduca's activity in the midst of national uncertainty following the death without heir of Lucius (II.x.53-6; see Hamilton et al., eds. 256fnStanza54-6); the death of childless Maximinian leads to internal violence and invasions by Huns and Picts until Constantine II is able to gain power and drive back "Those spoylefull Picts, and swarming Easterlings" (Spenser II.x.61-2, 63.2). Briton moniments records an often vicious history, one of power struggles and wars that are exacerbated by breaks in political inheritance. The tome ends with the heraldic promise of young Arthur, who is poised to initiate a new dynasty and time of peace, for the last description is of Arthur's father, Pendragon, and "There abruptly it did end, / Without full point, or other Cesure right" (II.x.68.2-3). The lack of "full point, or other Cesure right" (II.x.68.3) suggests continuity rather than termination or interruption. The speaker implies that Pendragon's reign will not stop fully—that it will be "Without full point" (II.x.68.3)—and that Arthur's succession will be uncontested, smooth, and just, the text becoming quiet when history reaches the present and Arthur must decide how to continue Briton moniments into the future. He must choose whether the "moniments" will continue to stand. The briefer Faery history (II.x.70-7) signals England's political dynasties once more, key leaders allegorized as Elves and Faeries. Elfinan establishes Cleopolis, for example, just as Brutus develops London in chronicles about the foundation of Britain (II.x.72.7-8). The Brittonic and Faery histories respectively illustrate history and the idealization of political legacy. While Briton moniments is violent and filled with human struggle, Antiquitee of Faerie lond is seamless and peaceful. The knotty successions and violent confrontations of Briton moniments are avoided here by textual elision: Henry VII, Prince Arthur, Henry VIII, and Elizabeth are treated as Elficleos, Elferon, Oberon, and Tanaquill, respectively. Henry VII's succession is idealized (as it was historically), and the text delicately glosses over the complications that arose when Henry VIII's Oberon figuration "Doubly supplide" his deceased brother Arthur, or Elferon, "in spousall, and dominion" (II.x.75.9), just as it ignores what were often viewed as the less successful reigns of Edward VI and Mary I. 113
As O'Connell notes, the "Elfin idealization of the Tudors achieves as much meaning in what it pointedly excludes as in what it includes" (80), and it supports Elizabeth's long-term campaign to shape herself as directly and immediately connected to the Henrician reigns rather than those of her half- siblings. Indeed, Spenser makes use of the Faery history to suggest what a golden rendition of Tudor succession could look like, its leaders overwhelmingly successful and its transitions smooth. Oberon rules wisely and nobly when his "eldest brother did vntimely dy"; his "Great... power and glorie ouer all" descends without problem to "the fairest Tanaquill," as per the Faery King's final will (II.x.75.7, 76.1,4, 5). This political history perfects the multiple uncertainties faced during and after Henry VIIFs reign: the vexing marriage questions surrounding Henry's unions with Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, the rapid succession of queens consort, the declared illegitimacies of Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, the bald ambitions and deceptions of court insiders determined to achieve political advancement, and a public that was vocally discontent at points. In omitting the reigns of Edward and Mary from the Faery history, Spenser tactfully connects Elizabeth to her father's and grandfather's reign, creating a unified line of successful leaders with an unproblematic base in Henry VII, the great amalgamator of the Houses of Lancaster and York. Spenser also idealizes this line in order to fantasize about a perfect future succession, even as he intimates that Elizabeth's political inheritance may not be as smooth as Oberon's. The Faery history is incomplete, and it ends with Gloriana, just as Merlin's prophecy for the future of the Britons will end with Elizabeth. Gloriana is praised in the Faery history: described as "that glorious flowre" (II.x.76.8), the Faery Queen is well loved and successful. She is the epitome and pinnacle of nobility, virtue, and knowledge, and "none this howre" can surpass her (II.x.76.5). "[N]one this howre" (II.x.76.5) can replace her either, however, for she has yet to secure her political succession: although the text glosses over this point,
35 Lena Cowen Orlin has noted Elizabeth's habit of stressing the red hair and other physical features that she inherited from Henry VIII. She would apparently position herself in front of Hans Holbein's portrait of her father when guests visited her in the Whitehall Privy Chamber, and she used dyes to maintain her red hair well into old age (87; see also Montrose, Subject 159; Walker, Elizabeth 13-29). 114 uncertainty remains in the Elfin history; what or who comes next is indeed a mystery. Rather than ruminate on the troubles in Faeryland (troubles that predicated several of the knights' quests) or hypothesize about who might succeed Gloriana, however, Spenser's speaker cuts short the chronicle and instead describes the inspiration gained by both Arthur and Guyon after having read the texts. Not surprisingly, Arthur is moved by the history. He has read correctly and the abrupt break in the narrative causes him to be contemplative—the "wonder of antiquity long stopt his speach"—and then invigorated (II.x.68.9). Guyon is similarly described as "Beguyled ... with delight," for both men share an interest in and "naturall desire of countryes state," a desire to know more about their respective nation's origins and founding narratives (II.x.77.1, 2). Importantly, Briton moniments confirms Arthur's national origin as Brittonic, for he had earlier admitted that he knew little of his actual heritage, having been left in the woods and raised by Timon, a kind Faery knight (I.ix.3-4). Arthur's self-identification as Britain's "foster Childe" (II.x.69.5) ties to the intra- and extra-textual chronicles that record the composite nature of the island's people. The Britons as Arthur knows and embraces them are a nation made of many others; they are a nation whose history is one of invasion, expansion, and consolidation, although Spenser's text still holds onto a sense of Brittonic culture surviving and continuing into early modern England. Arthur, raised in Faeryland and uncertain about his exact origins, will actually signal the resolution of differences, and a new era of peace and security for Britain, even as he pursues Gloriana, the Faery Queen, in order to marry her and continue her Faery dynasty. While Elizabeth's official mirror remains inaccessible to her soul mate, Arthur—thus forcing a pause in the future of the Faery political dynasty—the English queen's unofficial representation Britomart is again tied to an interest in national origins and nation building as she listens to Paridell's family history of life after the fall of Troy (IILix). Paridell's history is a mockery told to impress Hellenore at dinner (Paridell and Hellenore functioning as a farcical play on Paris and Helen), and he claims a clearly fictionalized lineage from Paris's illegitimate 115 son, Parius (III.ix.36), before Britomart interrupts him to offer her thoughts on the fall of Troy. Like Arthur in Book II.x, Britomart "reads" her history properly and has the appropriate response of emotional investment. The Knight of Chastity is "empassioned" to hear of the Trojans' defeat, for she has "heard, that she [is] lineally extract" from the culture (III.ix.38.4, 7). The difference between the two historians is highlighted in the details and effects of their portions of the narratives: Paridell's claims that his family rescued "Trojan reliques ... from flame" are part of his larger attempt to seduce Hellenore through what is likely baseless bragging, but the introduction of the Trojan narrative "empassion[s]" Britomart, as she certifies her own Trojan origins by interrupting Paridell and inserting more veritable details into the history (III.ix.36.8, 38.4). She requests that Paridell give more information about Aeneas, but she quickly interrupts him once more to offer her own understanding of Troynovant's founding and to praise the strength of Brutus, who built the Britons' nation (III.ix.40,44-6). Paridell's errors and Britomart's interjections compel Heather Dubrow to describe Britomart and Paridell as "competing historians" (312), for Britomart insists on an accurate understanding of her people's history. The Knight of Chastity places the development of Troynovant in a teleological narrative of progress developing out of the fall of Troy. She sees the current state of her people as intimately connected to past struggles, and knowing her history fills her "with deepe compassiowne" (Spenser III.ix.39.7) and a drive to see Troynovant carried into the future. This emotional response is intimately connected to Britomart's decision to seek out Artegall and a sexualized form of marital chastity. Britomart's place in the narrative highlights the continuities to be found in bloodlines. She identifies herself as "lineally extract" from Trojans (III.ix.38.7), and she stresses the foundations of Troy, Rome, and Britain as in a nexus, even suggesting that Britain, the third iteration of Troy, is the equal of these older civilizations (III.ix.44). In fact, van Es notes that the wording in the passage allows for the simultaneous future, past, and present existence of Troynovant: "a third kingdome yet is to arise, / Out of the Troians scattered of-spring," according 116 to Britomart, although Paridell agrees that "of the antique Troian stocke, there grew / Another plant, that raught to wondrous hight," ultimately concluding that no one "this day" would see "two fairer Cities" than Troynovant or Cleopolis (qtd. in van Es 147-48). This point connects to Erickson's observation that time in this allegory is somewhat "relative, not absolute" or strictly progressive (6), for the passage places Britomart's interest in history as simultaneously Trojan, sixth- century British, and Elizabethan. Britomart's description of the three connected civilizations is, according to Andrew Escobedo, "one of the most succinct and complete expressions of historical continuity in The Faerie Queene" (181). The martial princess attempts to bridge past, present, and future, and her focus is always on political and cultural inheritance: by presenting the three historical moments as simultaneously progressive and co-existent, Spenser conflates the three rules of most importance to The Faerie Queene--those of Brutus, Arthur, and Elizabeth (van Es 148). The three reigns become somewhat interchangeable in their basic responsibilities to recognize the past and sacrifice for the future. Britomart's time with Paridell and the other dinner guests only strengthens her resolve to meet Artegall and secure the future safety of her people; having correctly "read" her history, however, Britomart may highlight Elizabeth's reticence to follow the same path. The Temple of Isis and Britomart's Leadership When Britomart's nurse, Glauce, convinces the young woman to adopt a militant persona, the Knight of Chastity is once more connected to history, although in a different manner. Glauce references two female heritages as part of her arguments: she points to a historical line of important women in England's history, and she also references Angela, the Saxon queen. The women initially listed in Book III.iii.54~Bonduca, Guendolen, Martia, and Emmilen—highlight a historical precedence for women to take on leadership roles when men are incapable or otherwise unavailable, and Britomart is once again emotionally invested in this sense of history, allowing it to inform her future actions. The speaker explains that the women's leadership was limited to particular conditions and roles: while all four women possess a natural ability to lead, Pamela Joseph 117
Benson suggests that "their actions do not challenge the traditional order of society as those of Amazons do. These are women whose female virtues lead them to find the strength to act in the interests of family and nation" (270). Furthermore, Glauce explains that the four women listed "Performd, in paragone of proudest men" (Spenser III.iii.54.6), that is, they followed exemplary male models in their behaviour. They did not take on masculine leadership roles in order to subvert traditional structures; rather, they assumed martial identities and mimicked activities that they viewed to be admirably masculine when their societies needed to be defended and men were absent. Britomart listens carefully to Glauce's brief history of women, and she is inspired; indeed, the nurse's "harty wordes ... deepe into the mynd / Of the yong Damzell sunke" (III.iii.57.1-2), and she develops a "great desire" to carry "warlike armes" (III.iii.57.2, 3), but one that will be modelled on appropriate exempla. When in Book III.iv.56 Britomart dons the armour of conquered Saxon Queen Angela, Spenser aligns Britomart with national growth through unification, for she merges the identities of Britons and Saxons into a future single people, however constructed that people may be in actuality. In addition, Britomart carries Bladud's magical spear, which, as O'Connell suggests, connects her activities to the earlier legends of political dynasty read by Arthur in Book II.x.25-6 (84). In her possession of past, present, and future Brittonic values and traits, and in her use of Saxon armour, "Britomart is a prophetic image of [a] final [cultural] resolution in the queen whose fictional ancestor she is," according to O'Connell (84), but a question remains as to whether Elizabeth will in fact complete the actions necessary to ensure a level of national stability. By initiating her quest and committing herself to her future reproductive role, Britomart aids conservative expectations and techniques for achieving national harmony and growth, but Spenser also assiduously distinguishes Britomart from more subversive amazonian behaviour by linking her activities to her larger support for existing structures: her decision to bear arms and initiate a quest is rooted in "feminine virtue, not in an inborn taste for violent activity or a hatred of men" (Benson 288). Indeed, Britomart's commitment to past forefathers 118 is made clear in her emotional, inspired reactions to each history and prophecy about the Britons' fate, and in the initial descriptions of her shield that portrays "a Lion passant in a golden field" (Spenser III.i.4.9), for this lion matches that found on Brutus's shield (Hamilton et al., eds. 289fnStanza4.9). Her commitment to the past ensures her acceptance of her obligations for a similar future. The poem's speaker essentially situates Britomart in a line of brave, militant women who, according to his descriptions, took on masculinized roles, but who did so when men could not and when the women's efforts might aid traditional understandings of nation building. Her later confrontation with the Amazon queen is thus exigent, for Radigund insists on a rule that thwarts traditionally patriarchal relationships between the sexes and that thrives on gender subversion. Britomart seeks guidance at the Temple of Isis prior to her battle with Radigund (Spenser V.vii), and, as she prepares for her encounter, the virginal knight has a prophetic vision that essentially confirms her impulse to restore masculine authority and work within existing social structures. The dream focuses on reproduction, and Britomart comes to understand conclusively that in order to satisfy her future role as mother to the nation, the virginal knight must slay that part of herself (and allegorically that part of Elizabeth) that is Radigund, that aspect that shies from marital chastity in favour of an unnaturally prolonged virginity. My point echoes that of Mary Villeponteaux, who suggests, "As an ofher-Britomart, Radigund is also an other-Elizabeth; one might argue that Britomart is Elizabeth as the poet wishes she were; Radigund is Elizabeth as she is" ('"Not as'" 220). The dream and the temple itself are both described opaquely, but the Temple of Isis is the site that ultimately and conclusively restores masculine authority in the text. While Benson correctly points out that Britomart's dream at the temple allows her to prepare for her battle with Radigund by productively combining her masculine and feminine characteristics, tempering what might otherwise be "male destructive forces" with a feminine equity (253; see also O'Connell 144-45), the passage would actually by and large seem to indicate a subordination of the feminine and the subversive to the masculine and the traditional. In fact, even as 119 the text furthers a sense of cooperation or cohesion with regard to certain male and female traits, this cohesion comes at the expense of feminine authority or autonomy far more often that it does masculine. Indeed, Britomart's ability to independently and authoritatively make sense of her vision recedes in the canto, as does a larger sense of feminine autonomy. The speaker, while describing Isis as "A Goddesse of great powre and souerainty," also presents her as symbolizing an aspect of a larger masculine sense of justice, which "Osyris, whilest he liued here, / ... truest did appeare" (Spenser V.vii.3.2, 2.8-9). Rather than describe equity, associated with the feminine, as a system in its own right, Spenser's speaker places equity and its allegorical representation Isis as "[shading] / [A] part of Iustice," which is identified with the "truest" or most correct deity, Osiris (V.vii.3.3-4, 2.8). Equity and Isis may be complementary and corrective, but they are also presented as partial or incomplete, as fragmented aspects of a larger masculine whole. The passage gradually moves toward a clear preference for male authority, and for symbols and images associated with masculinity. The priests, for example, are initially described in terms that do not confirm their gender (V.vii.4), but the head priest, who interprets Britomart's dream for her, is soon identified as a man (V.vii.18). Indeed, the priests with their "linnen robes with siluer hem[s]" and "long locks comely kemd" could be women, as the priests at Venus's Temple are "damsels, in soft linnen dight" (V.vii.4.4, 5, IV.x.38.9), although Hamilton et al. suggest that the long hair could simply identify the figures as attendants in the temple (553fnStanza 4.4-5).36 An initial sense of complementary gendered traits is furthered in this stanza as the moon is associated with Isis and femininity more broadly, while the sun is conflated with Osiris and masculinity (Spenser V.vii.4). The priests' "linnen robes ... siluer hemd" connect them directly and materially to their object of worship, Isis, for her temple idol is framed all of siluer fine,
The white and silver both directly connect the attendants to those of Elizabeth, however, as Anne Somerset notes that the queen's maids of honour wore dresses of the same hues (60). 120
And clothed all in garments made of line, Hemd all about with fringe of siluer twine. (V.vii.4.4, 6.2-5) The priests' head caps are "shaped like the Moone," ostensibly indicating a connection to Isis, but the mitres' crescent shape also connects these priests to Diana (and thus to Elizabeth) (V.vii.4.6). These close associations among Isis, femininity, silver, and the moon as points that tie the priests to a set of images traditionally viewed as feminine are immediately undercut by the "Crowne of gold" that rests on the idol's head, putatively to connote her "powre in things diuine" (V.vii.6.6-7). Gold, traditionally the colour of masculinity and the sun, is out of place in Isis's temple, yet it also immediately holds higher authority, for the crown is more visually arresting and placed in a more prominent position—both spatially and symbolically—than the silver threads that decorate the edges of the statue's gown. The "long white sclender wand" that the statue "stretchefs] forth" with her hand echoes Merlin's ultimate vision of Elizabeth, "a royall Virgin ... which shall / Stretch her white rod ouer the Belgicke shore" (V.vii.7.5, 5, III.iii.49.6-7), thus creating a closed circuit of feminine action and rule, a circuit shared by Elizabeth, Isis, and—as she lays "prostrate, and with right humble hart," praying to the goddess—Britomart (V.vii.7.8). As Britomart sleeps at the statue's feet, Isis presents herself in the virgin's dream and directs her decision to battle Radigund and save Artegall (V.vii.8, 12-17). This detail links to narratives of Brutus's arrival in Albion, for Brutus begins his journey and foresees his line of Britons, after he stays in a temple dedicated to Diana and the goddess appears to him in a dream, according to Geoffrey of Monmouths's History of the Kings of Britain (Hamilton et al., eds. 554fnStanza 8.8-9). While the priests' sex has not been revealed by the speaker, they seem to be associated with the feminine, in part because of the similar descriptions for the attendants at Venus's temple (Spenser IV.x.38.9), the summaries of their long hair (V.vii.4.5), and their use of silver and the moon (V.vii.4.4, 6.2-5, 4.6). The speaker immediately calls into question or even rejects these possibly positive 121 connotations with feminine leadership and activity, however, for he notes the priests' rejection of meat and more generally blood, which is immediately afterwards linked to the earth's fecundity and a larger call to "containe" the generative powers and "madding mood" of a personified Mother Earth (V.vii.11.9). The priests certainly display an active self-vigilance and ascetic lifestyle that connects to the prolonged virginal chastity practiced by Elizabeth, first with their "long locks" controlled and "comely kemd" (V.vii.4.5), and later in the speaker's descriptions of their daily activities. The priests sleep on the ground— "on their mother Earths deare lap"~in order to toughen their endurance "And proud rebellious flesh to mortify" (V.vii.9.2, 5). The priests have renounced everything save for "stedfast chastity, / And continence of life" (V.vii.9.7-8). They literally reject the consumption of flesh as well, opting for vegetarianism and even renouncing "wine, for wine they say is blood" (V.vii.10.3). In eschewing wine, the priests minimize the chance of polluting their bodies with luxuries, and in refusing blood they also distance themselves from any conflation with the physical or the carnal. This rejection of blood is tied to a larger anxiety about the unrestrained power of female fertility and agency, for blood, first conflated with wine, is immediately placed within a brief digressive narrative concerning the blood of giants, spilled during battles with the gods (V.vii.10.3, 4-5). The speaker claims that Mother Earth, "Wroth with the Gods" for slaying "her sonnes," absorbed the lost blood and "did against [the gods] swell" (V.vii.10.7, 7, 9). The "swell[ing]" of Mother Earth suggests a pregnant female's body, an association that is strengthened in the stanza that follows, for the speaker describes the giants' "vitall bloude" absorbed "Into her pregnant bosome" as an essential aspect of the earth's generative powers (V.vii.10.9, 11.1,2). Indeed, the blood enables Mother Earth to develop "The fruitfull vine" (V.vii.11.3), both the literal plants that emerge from the ground and the figurative progeny born of this female acting autonomously as she attempts to replenish a line of giants "To make new warre against the Gods" (V.vii.l 1.6). This fecund activity perhaps suggests the dangers of an autonomous 122 female subject if she places her sexuality or reproductive capacity outside of or separate from conventionally accepted limits. Importantly, the speaker offers a grim observation about the dangers of uncontrolled or unconventional female reproductive agency immediately prior to his shift in focus: he moves from a more general discussion of abstinence (from all material and physical pleasures) to an anecdote illustrating the need to "restraine" Mother Earth's "madding mood" as she engages in uncontrolled, excessive acts of generation (V.vii.11.8, 9), to Britomart's dream vision of political leadership, marital chastity, and directed attempts to responsibly improve her nation through legitimate political succession. By offering first an example of the priests' excessive privation, then a discussion of unrestrained reproductive agency, the speaker outlines two (unacceptably?) extreme versions of sexual activity, before he concludes with the possibility that he finds preferable—that of moderation and monogamous marital relations. Britomart experiences her vision while sleeping "Vnder the wings of Isis" (V.vii.12.2). As I have argued, the temple idol has herself come under the control of the priests and a larger sense of masculine authority, her practice of equity essentially shadowing Osiris's more complete system of justice (V.vii.2-3). "[A] Crowne of gold" having been placed on her head, and silver, traditionally associated with the feminine, having been relegated to the "fringe" of her robe (V.vii.6.6, 5), Isis will now direct Britomart's decision to slay Radigund and restore conventionally patriarchal rule in what was formerly Amazon territory. Britomart's dream also confirms her future role as mother and as leader second to Artegall, as explained to her by the male head priest (V.vii. 19-23). As Britomart's robe "transfigure[s]" (V.vii.13.4) from one that matches those worn by the priests and Isis to one "of scarlet red" (V.vii. 13.2-3, 5), her mitre also changes from "Moone-like ... to a Crowne of gold" (V.vii. 13.6): the description of her new crown matches the earlier descriptions of the one positioned on Isis's head (V.vii. 13.6.6). In this moment, the Knight of Chastity moves closer to imagery and symbols associated with the masculine, and the changes please her greatly (V.vii.13.7-8). Cain suggests that as the textual 123 associations shift, Britomart productively begins to represent and embody "the equity that restrains justice from undue severity," simultaneously gaining possession of the masculine trait of justice in and of itself (151). For Cain, Britomart's vision confirms for the knight that "[s]he both requires Artegall-Osiris as complement and simultaneously subsumes his meanings" (151). He reads Britomart's use of equity as a positive sign of masculine and feminine balance, and an increase in Britomart's productive capabilities and characteristics. I question whether Britomart actually "subsumes" masculine traits in this passage (151), however, and instead suggest that the Temple of Isis functions as the point at which the speaker confirms the need for feminine leadership to defer to masculine authority. At no point does the speaker suggest any real loss of authority or efficacy for masculine traits, in other words. Indeed, Britomart, "Spenser's norm of conjugal devotion" (Davies 25), leaves the temple ready to cede power in both the political and domestic sectors. This deferral to masculine authority and systems of control is confirmed in the vision when Britomart must conclusively moderate her sexual desire and put it to productive use. As Britomart happily considers her change in vestments, a sudden wind blows into the temple, a "hideous tempest" that originates "from below" (Spenser V.vii.14.2). Hamilton et al. suggest that this reference to a wind "from below" (V.vii.14.2) connects to a devilish sender (555fnStanza 14.2-6), and the danger posed to "The holy fire" on the temple altar would support this reading (Spenser V.vii.14.5). At the same time, the "hideous tempest... from below" (V.vii.14.2) could also suggest the dangers of unregulated desires, particularly since Cupid's arrival at the House of Busirane is signalled by "an hideous storme of winde," as Hamilton et al. suggest (Spenser III.xii.2.1; Hamilton et al., eds. 555fnStanza 14.2-6). The wind in Isis's Temple scatters live embers from the altar's fire, "which kindled priuily, / Into outragious flames" (Spenser V.vii. 14.6-7): the flames draw yet another link to the excessive sexual desire found at the House of Busirane, for Britomart must battle "A flaming fire" outside of Busirane's castle in order to gain entrance and rescue Amoret, the poem's great example of marital 124
chastity (HI.xi.21.6). Additionally, in her discussion with Glauce, Britomart unhappily describes her burgeoning sexual awareness and desire for Artegall as "no vsuall fire, no vsuall rage" (III.ii.37.3); indeed, the princess views her passion as "Her raging smart," her "flame" that will not "relent" (III.ii.43.4). The flames in the temple thus offer Britomart a final, conclusive opportunity to successfully manage her own passions and direct her sexuality toward controlled, conventional purposes. The valorization of marital chastity at the expense of female autonomy is confirmed in the vision's ultimate image of a crocodile awakening and impregnating Britomart (V.vii.15-16). The crocodile, which had earlier been described as under the control of Isis (whose "foot was set vppon" it "to suppresse ... forged guile"), is associated with the stereotypically feminine characteristic of trickery, but the statue of Isis seems capable of keeping this feminine weakness in check (V.vii.7.1, 3). Of course, Isis's ability "to suppresse ... forged guile" (V.vii.7.3) may be intimately connected to her own capitulation to and cooperation with larger, more holistic systems of masculine governance and authority. The crocodile, awakened by the "hideous tempest... from below" and the resulting "outragious flames," actually consumes both natural elements, its mouth "gaping greedy wide" (V.vii.14.2, 7, 15.5). While the dragon is often connected to chaste vigilance, according to Hamilton et al. (555fnStanza 6.8-9, 555fnStanzal5.5-8), the crocodile here internalizes the winds and flames associated with carnal passion and desire, and he "grow[s] great, / And swolne" (Spenser V.vii. 15.6-7). The speaker clarifies that the crocodile "[swells] with pride," but the "[devouring] / [Of] Both flames and tempest," the consumption and internalization of passions, must also suggest the "swolne" pregnant body (V.vii.15.7, 5-6, 7). When the crocodile "threatens [Britomart] likewise to eat," Isis is able to finally subdue it "with her rod" (V.vii.15.8, 9), the same rod that connects Isis to Elizabeth's place as "a royall Virgin ... / Stretch[ing] her white rod ouer the Belgicke shore" in Merlin's prophecy about Britomart's future (III.iii.49.6-7). Britomart is in danger of being consumed by a creature that itself 125 has "streight deuoure[d]" symbols of passion and desire (V.vii.15.5), but she is protected (and later inspired) by Isis, the goddess who in this narrative has come under the control of masculine systems and associations. Once tamed, the crocodile becomes humble and loving, and "he so neare [Britomart] drew, / That of his game she soone enwombed grew" (V.vii. 16.4-5). Her union with the tamed crocodile produces "a Lion of great might; / That shortly did all other beasts subdew" (V.vii. 16.6-7). The lion, a strong link to the larger sense of Brittonic identity and survival in the poem, will conquer "all other beasts" (V.vii. 16.7), be they political, religious, or sexual, and the figure also more directly connects the dream to Merlin's prophecy that "a famous Progenee / Shall spring" literally from Britomart's body and figuratively from her marriage to Artegall (III.iii.22.5-6). While the "Lion of great might" (V.vii. 16.6) should inspire Britomart as she wakes from her dream, the knight is instead left "full of fearefull fright, / And doubtfully dismayd" (V.vii. 16.8-9), for she has been placed within a quick succession of images associated with sexualisation and the recognition and acceptance of desire. Britomart's reactions here likely echo her initial feelings of fright and dismay upon becoming aware of her own capacity for sexual desire in Book IILii. Britomart has been figured as explicitly sexualized, pregnant, and giving birth to a lion (V.vii. 16.5-7). While Merlin's prophecy offered a certain level of prophylactic deferral with regard to her future birthing, Britomart's dream places these activities as certain, immediate, and visceral. Indeed, Britomart awakens feeling "doubtfully dismayd" (V.vii. 16.9): that is, she has been "doubtfully dis-mayd," or possibly deflowered, though she cannot quite believe it. Britomart seeks interpretation of her dream, and she descends "into the lower parts" in search of priests to assist her, "the lower parts" perhaps suggesting her own foray into parsing her capacity to recognize and control carnal impulses (V.vii. 17.6). The head priest, identified explicitly as a man, listens carefully before falling into deep thought "Like one adawed with some dreadfull spright" (V.vii.19.6, 20.8): this description closely matches Merlin's silence~"As [if] ouercomen of the spirites powre, / Or other ghastly spectacle dismayd" 126
(Ill.iii.50.2-3)—as his own earlier prophecy concludes. While Merlin outlines Britomart's political and reproductive path, concluding with Elizabeth's reign, the head priest specifically ties the knight's vision to her marriage to Artegall and her first-born child. The speaker implies that both events will happen very soon (III.iii.22-49, V.vii.22). He sees the crocodile illustrating Artegall as "[her] faithfull louer, / Like to Osyris in all iust endeuer" (V.vii.22.4-5). In fact, Artegall will be the key to Britomart's future happiness and moderation, for "That Knight shall all the troublous stormes asswage, / And raging flames" (V.vii.23.1-2). Britomart's ability to regulate her passions depends on a larger submission to Artegall's guidance, in other words. The priest may promise that the two knights will "ioyne in equall portion of [Britomart's] realm," but that "equall portion" (V.vii.23.6) will be minimized by Britomart's capitulation to largely conventional, appropriately gendered models of political leadership and marital chastity. As she leaves the temple, offering "royall gifts of gold and siluer," gifts that imply an equal acceptance of masculine and feminine traits and values (V.vii.24.4), Britomart's direction is once again focused: she must overthrow the unjust female government of Radigund before submitting herself to masculine authority. She travels "without relent" (V.vii.24.8), just as "[her] flame" would not "relent" when she first became cognizant of carnal desire and passion (III.ii.43.4), and her commitment to restoring traditional masculine rule is clear. Once female authority is subdued, the reader can look forward to Britomart and Artegall's nuptials. The former, having defeated Radigund, quickly moves to confirm the value of male rule and legitimate political succession, and she soon disappears from the text. Britomart and Radigund Although she transgresses expected norms for women, dressing as a knight and taking up a quest, Britomart's dominance of men in the text is a result of her quest rather than a goal of it, and her transvestism actually supports the patriarchal order rather than seriously destabilizing or critiquing it. Her goal is to meet her future love, not to overthrow masculine systems of governance; in marrying the Knight of Justice, she will combine Chastity and Justice within herself, but she 127 will also cede authority to Artegall and give up public leadership roles when the demands of motherhood become her focus. Published when Elizabeth was in her sixties, The Faerie Queene "could hardly have been intended to persuade the ... queen to marry, but it could certainly have been meant to criticize her for never having done so" (Bowman 524-25).37 Indeed, if Elizabeth unsettles by effectively finding political survival through presentations of abstinence and self-control, Britomart, "the defender of espoused chastity—a figure of female power, but one written with patriarchal scripts" (Coles 45)—suggests the English queen's failure to regularly capitulate to and operate within more traditional, patriarchal frameworks. Presenting the virtue most frequently associated with Elizabeth as a progression from transvestite displays of masculinity to wedded fecundity soon highlights how unusual the English queen's political use of virginity truly was, and it suggests the complexity Spenser faced in representing Elizabeth's practice. The Amazon Queen Radigund quite obviously demonstrates the dangers of women who refuse to cooperate with masculinised social structures and the traditional system of male rule, and those who in fact attempt to subvert or disrupt institutional structures such as patriarchy. The Amazon queen has sometimes been viewed as an allegorical representation of Mary, Queen of Scots (Bowman 520 and Wilson-Okamura 77-80, for example).38 Certainly the connections to Mary are present: the Amazon queen is beautiful, defiant, and a failure at love, her mistreatment of men stemming from a broken heart; she rules her own territory until her confrontation with chaste Britomart, who executes her (Spenser V.iv.29- 32, vii.25-34). She may also reflect the realities of Elizabeth's reign being so heavily guided and influenced by prolonged abstinence and the courtly love system, however.
37 Mary Villeponteaux similarly notes, "In 1590 it was far too late to urge the queen to marry, but it was not too late to insult her by suggesting that she should have married and borne an heir" ("Displacing" 54).
38 Michael O'Connell even argues that this depiction of Mary, Queen of Scots is as fair as possible (140-41). Although she operates outside of Artegall's system of justice, Radigund has her own code of law, and O'Connell maintains that Artegall's weakening and prevarication at the sight of Radigund's beauty suggests the English difficulties in handling the case of Mary, while the parity of Britomart and Radigund in battle shows a respect for both English and Scottish monarchs (140-41). 128
The poem certainly makes connections between Radigund and Elizabeth. Some links are small: Fichter points out that Radigund is connected to a city, just as Elizabeth is attached to London, Britomart to Troynovant, and Gloriana to Cleopolis (188). Radigund also carries a scimitar shaped like a crescent moon and her shield resembles a full moon (Spenser V.v.3), the moon frequently connected to Diana, Cynthia, and the chaste English queen. Lastly, when Radigund's face is revealed after her helmet is removed by Artegall, her beauty is apparent despite the blood and sweat from battle, "Like as the Moone in foggie winters night, / Doth seeme to be her selfe, though darkned be her light" (V.v. 12.8-9). Radigund is depicted as a less visible moon, as a moon that does not radiate quite as brightly as Cynthia (or Elizabeth) might, or as brightly as Britomart does when her face is compared to the moment when fayre Cynthia, in darkesome night,
Breakes forth her siluer beames. (III.i.43.1-4) Indeed, O'Connell goes further and suggests that the description of Radigund is "vaguely sinister, and we recall that the moon is also a symbol of impermanence and change. But even more importantly, the moon dimmed by winter fog seems a parody of Elizabeth's own icon," of her Mask of Youth that had become so paramount by the 1590s (141). Perhaps the most obvious connection between Radigund and Elizabeth is the hyperbolic version of Petrarchan service in which the Amazon queen and her male prisoners participate. Spenser's depiction of the court at Radegone highlights the weaknesses or frustrations inherent in Elizabeth's courtly love system. The evil Amazon queen takes apparent pleasure in mistreating her male prisoners, forcing them to take on feminized roles and to wear women's clothing (Spenser V.iv.31), an exaggerated rendition of the usual Petrarchan (or courtly) lover dying to serve his cruel, withholding beloved. Indeed, Radigund tricks and cajoles men into serving her; once the knights are under her control, she confiscates their weapons, thus limiting their ability to revolt (V.iv.31). Under duress, the men are 129
"[compelled] to worke, to earne their meat, / To spin, to card, to sew, to wash, to wring" (V.iv.15-16). She is wholly "the kind of female monarch that misogynists predicted.... The queen of an artificially constructed matriarchy, she subverts male authority and strength; she is politically and sexually corrupt" (Benson 293), suggesting the dangers of female rule and the misuse of authority. Britomart and Radigund are obvious counterparts, yet, while they have clearly different attitudes and objectives, Artegall approaches them both in an identical manner. In Artegall's second fight with Britomart and in his only battle with Radigund, he is defeated after a challenging confrontation in which he lands a strong blow but is then disarmed at the revealed beauty of his opponent (Spenser IV.vi. 19-22, V.v.l 1-14). His final blow in battling Britomart is strong enough to dislodge her helmet: "Her ventayle shard away" (IV.vi. 19.3) functions as an unveiling of her face. Artegall is taken by Britomart's "angels face,... / Like to the ruddie morne ..., / Deawed with siluer drops," and he cannot "worke on her his vtmost wracke" (IV.vi. 19.5-7, 21.2). Instead, his "cruell sword out of his fingers slacke / Fell downe to ground," the speaker implying that both man and weapon felt compelled to "[obey] / ... so diuine a beauties excellence" (IV.vi.21.5-6, 8-9). Britomart wants to continue fighting after her face is revealed, but she soon realizes that her opponent is in fact Artegall, the man whose reflection she has pursued so lovingly (IV.vi.23, 26-7). She is both literally and figuratively disarmed when she identifies Artegall. Britomart has the advantage, standing "full of wrath" over her opponent and "Threatning to strike" (IV.vi.23.1, 5). The very moment she connects Artegall's visage to the reflections in her father's mirror, however, her fury from battle abates "And haughtie spirits meekely ... adaw" (IV.vi.26.8). Britomart puts down her weapons and cannot even command herself to scold him (IV.vi.27). Radigund also wants to continue her match with the Knight of Justice, but, as in his earlier fight with Britomart, Artegall is defeated after he discovers his opponent's beauty and loses his nerve to fight. Artegall is surprised by his opponent's beauty, and, in an act of pity, he discards his weapon (V.v.l2-13). Katherine Eggert suggests that when Artegall is made powerless by a woman for 130 the second time, his defeat offers a dark twist on his future marriage to Britomart, because of the women's physical similarities and Artegall's voluntary submission to both (38). I would argue, however, that the key difference between these scenes lies not in Artegall's reaction to his challenger but in his opponent's actions after disarming him. While Britomart quickly subdues her temper and behaves graciously, meekly even (Spenser IV.vi.23, 26-7), Radigund takes advantage of Artegall's pity. In the full knowledge that the Knight of Justice "Stand[s] with emptie hands all weaponlesse, / With fresh assault vpon him she [does] fly" (V.v. 14.2-3). Her cruelty only increases with every request for mercy until "he [is] ouercome, not ouercome, / But to her [yields] of his own accord" (V.v. 14-16, 17.1-2), thus sealing his fate as one of her feminized prisoners. In becoming one of Radigund's slaves, Artegall effectively highlights "the danger of submitting to female authority without demanding that it have natural, legal, and divine sanctions" (Benson 293). Despite the women's differences, Britomart realizes "that her powers are, to Artegall, indistinguishable from Radigund's. The beauty that wins his love can also entrap him; the martial force that conquers Radigund to set him free can equally be employed to enslave him" (Bowman 512). Britomart must therefore resolve this problem and distinguish herself by challenging Radigund, restoring patriarchy and submitting to men's rule; this move is all that she can do to truly set herself apart from the gendered inversion of Radigund's reign, and she must defeat Radigund in order to marry Artegall and initiate a new political dynasty. In her confrontation with Radigund, Britomart refuses to accept the Amazon queen's usual conditions for battle—that the defeated essentially agree to enslavement by the victorious—and instead insists that "For her no other termes should euer tie / Then what prescribed were by lawes of cheualrie" (Spenser V.vii.28.8-9). Britomart approaches her antagonist by conforming to and making use of a heavily gendered set of values. While she must take on the masculinized role of knight in order to challenge Radigund (and complete her larger quest), she respects the traditional gender codes upon which chivalry relies. As the women attack each other, their violence is directed toward physical sites of femininity and 131 motherhood, for they "[spare] not / Their dainty parts" (V.vii.29.5-6), taken here to be breasts. While Radigund attempts physical assaults against the Knight of Chastity, who is so often directed toward heterosexual love, marriage, and motherhood, Britomart focuses her aggression on Radigund's rejection of these very states, the Amazon's eschewal already made obvious in her self-mastectomy. As the women engage in war, they attack each other's participation in and commitment to their respectively gendered social systems, focusing their anger on Their dainty parts, which had created So faire and tender, without staine or spot, For other vses, then they them translated; Which they now hackt and hewd, as if such vse they hated. (V.vii.29.6-9) Indeed, the women prove to despise each other's "vses" of "Their dainty parts" as these anatomical sites relate to a larger commitment to or rejection of marriage and maternity (V.vii.29.8, 6). As Britomart attacks Radigund's single breasted, Amazon body, Radigund injures the physical site that will feed Britomart's destined offspring. The women's battle proves to be incredibly bloody—indeed, "all the grassie flore / Was fild with bloud, which from their sides did flow," spilling on the ground "Like fruitles seede" (V.v.31.5-6, 9)~but Britomart eventually emerges victorious after she levels a death blow to her opponent's head. Importantly, Britomart attacks Radigund's "very braine," her seat of reason (or, from a misogynist's point of view, her seat of irrationality and guile), before executing the Amazon "with one stroke" (V.v.33.8, 34.6). Britomart seeks justice (and Justice) by injuring and ultimately severing her opponent's head, traditionally a metaphor for a ruler's place in the body politic as commonwealth. Britomart attacks female rule, irrefutably rejecting its viability, even as she herself takes on leadership roles to do so. When she kills Radigund and ends her horrible control over the Amazon territory, Britomart actually moves the region of Radegone further from the court system developed by Elizabeth: the martial princess effectively ensures political inheritance through legitimate offspring, confirms the efficacy and desirability of patriarchal governance, and discards the comical representation of Petrarchan service furthered by the Amazon queen. Britomart not only frees Artegall, she restores natural, patriarchal order to the kingdom (V.vii.42), for Radigund's Amazon realm is very much presented as a chaotic, topsy-turvy world of threatening gender inversions. Britomart also compels the other recently freed knights to swear loyalty to Artegall rather than to her (V.vii.43), a move that Mary R. Bowman argues is more than just her operating for a higher value of Justice, for "she is, rather, effacing her own power" (510). Britomart gains authority through victory in battle, but she promptly utilizes it to restore gendered hierarchies that demand her subordination . to men as correct, all of which is entirely in keeping with her past behaviour. Indeed, she leaves the text waiting for Artegall to complete his quest and return to her, the armour discarded in favour of traditionally feminine behaviour suitable for and expected of a lovelorn, moral housewife anxious to start a family. Conclusion Spenser's stated and unstated goals—praising his queen and shaping the education of gentlemen; placing Elizabeth's England in a strong historical framework that values stable, legitimate succession; celebrating the pastoral; and suppressing most examples of female rule by valorizing patriarchal structures and traditional gender conventions—are often masculinist in nature. Although he frequently makes positive use of Britomart, favourably placing her in a position of leadership and describing her in terms that sometimes go against normatively
This point is in keeping with the work of Andrew Hadfield, who questions whether the Amazons are intended to function as commentary on Elizabeth's governance (or anxieties associated with it) or as antitypes to the English queen (132). He suggests that Britomart and Radigund may represent different aspects of Elizabeth, "the one a type of Boudicca, a virago who will protect her nation, not least through marrying and securing a stable succession; the other, a frustrated and dangerous harpy who, despite her beauty and charms, wrecks the lives of the (male) subjects on whom she should depend" (132). Mihoko Suzuki similarly sees Britomart and Radigund as purposely similar, and she argues that Britomart's substantial wounding in her battle with the Amazon queen "implies that her violent slaying of Radigund constitutes a partial self- destruction" (188). Villeponteaux also discusses the vicious Amazon queen's connection to Elizabeth, arguing that, because Radigund at least partly mirrors both Belphoebe and Britomart, her link to Elizabeth seems fairly certain ('"Not as'" 211). Villeponteaux also suggests, like Suzuki, that Radigund represents weakness in Britomart—her "violence, her domineering ways, her unwomanliness, her 'shadow' ... [, her] sterility" are all possibilities—and Britomart must defeat this weakness in order to become Artegall's wife and the mother of a nation ('"Not as'" 218). 133 feminine behaviour, the knight's quest does not ultimately threaten Spenser's objectives or masculine authority in the text, because her adventures are part of her larger effort to support traditional marital structures and confirm her political dynasty through childbirth. Indeed, Linda Gregerson notes that "[Britomart] is told by vision, by prophecy, by every literary and social code that her proper role is that of consort and catalyst, of helpmeet and tempering influence" (188), and the knight willingly takes on these roles to improve her nation's future and honour its past. Britomart does not just pursue her own appropriate union with Artegall; rather, as the Knight of Chastity she fights for the normative, appropriate sexual behaviour of others, as when she frees Amoret from the House of Busirane in Book Ill.xii, allowing the text's paragon of marital chastity to reunite with her husband, Scudamour. This dedication to conventionally feminine nation building—and the knight's move from extreme chastity to an acceptance (and later active support) of monogamous marital love and traditional gender roles in marriage—makes Britomart's model for political leadership distinctly unlike that followed by Elizabeth. Had Elizabeth entered into a marriage with any one of her suitors, the English doubtless would have voiced other concerns—worries over international influence in the English court, disappointment if the husband were Catholic—but texts produced in the 1590s, including The Faerie Queene, instead reflected and fuelled misgivings related to the succession and a sense of England's place in history, often drawing attention to the queen's well rehearsed conflation of virginity and political authority in the process. Spenser at several points introduces storylines related to political inheritance, and he suggests a need to confirm the continued survival of England's history, often through a character's personal dedication to his or her nation, and through that character's interest in continuing bloodlines and strengthening political certainty. While Spenser presents the text as encomium, I argue that his treatment of several key female figures actually calls into question the laudatory nature of his work, as does his presentation of the Britons' and Faeries' histories in Book II.x. Arthur's reading material is an often violent history of the Britons, 134 and it offers several examples of political chaos following the deaths of childless monarchs, an important point to keep in mind, given the political realities of the 1590s. While Guyon's Faery history may seem like an idealized version of Tudor political inheritance, its overly smooth surface may in fact reveal superficial cracks. The Antiquitee of Faerie lond presents key moments in English political history as Faery, but its author noticeably skips over the problematic rules of Edward VI and Mary I and the text suddenly quiets at the reign of Gloriana, the Faery Queen. In doing so, its author draws attention to Elizabeth's own waning political life and England's uncertain future. As Elizabeth's ancestor and unofficial mirror (Spenser III.iii.22-50, iv.l), Britomart plays a special role in Spenser's imaginative presentation of English history and in his allegorical illustration of Elizabeth's commitment to her nation's future. I have argued that Britomart's acceptance of her future role as mother to the nation and her willingness to one day withdraw from political life in order to concentrate on domestic matters both attempt to reconcile the quandaries of Elizabeth's virginity and unclear succession, for the Knight of Chastity's use of the virtue throughout the text and into its projected future is completely unlike Elizabeth's public presentations of prolonged virginity for political manipulation and survival. In her final battle with Radigund, Britomart slays the aspect of herself that would still perhaps yearn for martial activity and eschewal of marriage and procreation, yet in killing her dark twin, she draws attention to Elizabeth's possible refusal to make similar sacrifices for the good of her nation. 135
Chapter Three "a membrana on her": Embodied Otherness, Sexual Difference, and Female Authority in Early Modern England Introduction Perhaps because Amazon women initially signalled a set of othered qualities for Greeks to understand what was civilized, male, native, and rightfully in the polis, the martial figures easily took on roles that were located outside of conventional early modern bounds.40 They are associated in the early modern period with savagery, disordered female rule, anti-maternality, sexual voraciousness, and the foreign, easily signalling disturbance or disconnection in multiple political, social, and literary frameworks that might otherwise simply and wholly domesticate the women. This sense of otherness, of a simultaneously thrilling and terrifying femininity, becomes material in the fixation on the Amazon woman's missing breast, the physical site becoming a signal for much larger conversations about and reactions to disordered sexual difference. I suggest that the shocking descriptions of the Amazons' willingness to reject or even murder male offspring gain a material expression in the women's monomasty. Indeed, while the bared breast in classical literature could suggest a reassuring level of chastity (Schwarz, "Missing" 158), and the Virgin Mary's lactating breasts often signified boundless compassion and kindness (N. Miller 4),41 the scarred tissue of the missing breast highlights the instability of conventional maternal behaviour and the Amazon woman's refusal to operate
Indeed, Page duBois notes that in Greek mythology, Amazons inhabited a liminal site of difference, marking off conceptions of sexual difference, but also racial or ethnic designations, and the separation of animal and human (27). In Greek myth, Amazons "[establish] the possibility of another cultural alternative to that of the Greek polis" (32).
41 James Aske actually describes Elizabeth I as a loving nurse and mother who would have suckled the Babington Plot traitors, but to no avail, for the men ignored her "milke of lawes (her sacred life-full lawes)" and her "sacred lawes a cradle" (12). Aske's claims connect to Helen Hackett's work on maternal imagery in early modern political rhetoric. She places references to Elizabeth as a mother as part of a larger rhetorical and conceptual structure that created an analogy between the state and the family (149). Lena Co wen Orlin also notes the political metaphor of mothering the nation, and she offers several brief references to Elizabeth as a mother: Thomas Bentley's Monument ofMatrones (1581), as he praises her status as mother to the Church of England; Aske's references to the queen in Elizabetha Triumphans (1588); W. Averell's A meruailous combat of contrarieties (1588); Peter Wentworth's A pithy exhortation (1598); and Sir John Harington's Letters and Epigrams (91). 136 within normalized bounds. Many classical, medieval, and early modern sources note the amazonian practice of searing or otherwise removing the right breast in order to aid in accuracy with a bow and arrow (Boccaccio, Famous 53, for example).4 The missing breast also speaks to the amazonian eschewal of traditional maternal behaviour, for Amazon women famously only coupled with neighbouring tribesmen at prescribed times every year and solely for the purposes of reproduction: any sons born to the Amazons were murdered while daughters were raised to be warriors, according to Giovanni Boccaccio (Famous 53; see also Hey wood, Exemplary Lives 100-01; Hey wood, Gynaikeion 221), although other sources suggest that the women might have allowed the sons to remain in the colony as slaves, having been crippled by their mothers (duBois 34; Sobol 34-5; McMillan 113). Sir John Mandeville claims that the Amazon women would "sende for" men and request meetings in a region near to but separate from the Amazons' community (49). The men would stay and couple with the Amazons for "viii. dayes or as the woman [liked]," and he maintains that any sons born from the unions would be dispatched "to their faders whan they [could] ete and goo," that is, when they were past infancy (49). Even in the softened descriptions by Mandeville, however, the Amazons' unusual maternal practices speak to a larger refusal to conform to conventional behaviour. Mandeville does, for example, repeat the commonly accepted story that the first Amazon community was created when the women banded together and murdered their kinsmen (49). In fact, the epithet "Amazon" was frequently given to early modern stage characters that were disobedient; the name could signify excessive lust or uncontrolled resolve, defiance, intemperance, or belligerence (Shepherd 14). Simon Shepherd maintains that for the early modern mindset, the Amazon's most upsetting characteristic would be her well-documented antipathy to men and the marital institution (14). Importantly, I suggest that the Amazon woman not only
42 Sir John Mandeville also argues in favour of "Amosony," or Amazonia, and claims that all the women have one breast burned off: if the women are nobility, or "of gentyll Mode," they remove their left breasts in order to more easily hold onto shields; if the women are commoners in the colony, or "of lytell blode," they burn off their right breasts in order to improve accuracy and ease when shooting arrows (49). 137 rejected patriarchal frameworks such as marriage, but that she actually thrived without them. While the refusal to marry may be the most troubling of the Amazon's consistently noted qualities, it is her missing breast that is most identifiably amazonian, according to Kathryn Schwarz ("Missing" 148), and I would argue that the missing breast is the physical locus around which all other amazonian qualities constellate. Schwarz is correct to note that "weaponry or sexual self-sufficiency or violence against men [... can] apparently be attributes of 'war-like wives,'" but monomasty becomes "the hallmark of the genuine Amazon" ("Missing" 148). In this chapter I examine the Amazon woman's missing breast as a marker for larger disruptions in conventional behaviours, and I expand my analysis to consider references to and the implications of Elizabeth I's rumoured extra "membrana," the details of which Ben Jonson circulated in informal 1619 conversations (Patterson, ed. 30). This extra, vaguely hymeneal membrane supposedly made sexual penetration and pregnancy impossible for Elizabeth, but, according to Jonson's gossip, the queen ultimately chose to avoid surgery and retain her abnormality (30).431 argue that these separate sites of physicality embody the instability of conventional discursive frameworks for maternality, femininity, sexual difference, and sexuality, although they do so in different ways, and I shall discretely discuss the examples. In effect, these textual descriptions of corporeal abnormality point to ignored expectations (and reconfigured possibilities) for multiple social fields that often operate according to naturalized values. Indeed, these examples of physical strangeness connect to larger discourses as diverse as good mothering, female authority (and the misuse of that authority), patriarchal stability in the domestic sphere, appropriate and conventional femininity, and sexuality. I shall examine how each of these marks of "abnormality" is an unruly
Ben Jonson's outlandish rumours about Elizabeth's body offer one possible early modern theory for the queen's childlessness, but, as I shall argue, the ease with which members of the public spoke about Elizabeth's body natural also led to equally outrageous claims about her secret pregnancies and acts of infanticide. Discussions about and explanations for Elizabeth's lack of offspring often relied on claims about her physicality, and, as I later suggest, no theory or argument about her body was viewed as outside of the realm of possibility. 138 intersection for socialized expectations regarding sex and gender, a moment of disruption in what might otherwise be forcibly contained cultural conventions. Each example of unusual corporeality functions as an individual challenge to traditional expectations, also drawing attention to the malleability, if not fragility, of dominant social institutions and the discursive frameworks used to conceptualize and explicate them. Indeed, the Amazon's missing breast and Elizabeth's curious membrane each suggest that patriarchal stability and sexual norms are ultimately changeable. That Amazon women operate successfully in a social system of their own construction indicates that patriarchal convention is not necessary for longevity or stability. The women's insistence that sons be exiled— often maimed or killed in the process—places a strain on patriarchal systems, as, in the multiple textual accounts of the practice, the men of traditional cultures have to accept and respond to the boys who are weakened, devalued, and rejected by their mothers.441 argue that this sense of amazonian threat to patriarchal domestic stability speaks to the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century preoccupation with unruly women and infanticidal mothers, both of whom are well represented in early modern literary pieces such as Tho. Brew.'s The Bloudy Mother (1610), and the anonymously published Deeds against Nature (1614) and A pittilesse Mother (1616). Frances E. Dolan notes the dramatic rise in popular texts on infanticide and other felonies committed by women, and she dates this publication trend to the end of the sixteenth century, contending that the depictions only became more "varied and numerous" as the seventeenth century progressed (2). The reporting of domestic crimes took many forms in print: pamphlets; folk songs and short
44 Perhaps not surprisingly, Giovanni Boccaccio's claims about amazonian infanticide are surrounded in Famous Women by other accounts of disruptive mothers and female leaders from a variety of cultures and times, implying that disobedience and subversion can erupt anytime and anywhere. Boccaccio describes the life of Semiramis, for example, and suggests that, as she assumed control of the government when her husband died, the leader initially crossdressed in order to deceive the troops who might not obey a woman (Famous 19). Once Semiramis achieved success as a leader, she ruled openly as a woman, Boccaccio surmising that "[i]t was almost as if she wanted to show that spirit, not sex, was needed to govern" (Famous 19). Boccaccio claims, however, that the ruler's successes were ruined by her many sexual affairs, including one with her own son, who eventually murdered her (Famous 23-5). Venus, Queen of Cyprus is connected to the initial practice of prostitution (Famous 45), while Medusa's story is sandwiched in the middle of the profiled Amazons (Famous 88-91). 139 poems; dramas that made use of court records; descriptions of addresses made at the scaffold; and confessions (2). The authors of the three texts that I discuss present their claims as factual, as accurate depictions of actual events. I follow Dolan in my treatment of these representations of offenses, viewing them "not as records of particular crimes but as evidence of the processes of cultural formation and transformation in which they participated" (3). Indeed, these and other depictions of infanticide emerge from and help to develop social beliefs about women's capacity for familial violence. While The Bloudy Mother, Deeds against Nature, and A pittilesse Mother all ultimately recoup conservative values for maternal behaviour, each infanticidal mother punished in the courts and with social approbation, the Amazon women's anti-maternality actually strengthens their own alternative, subversive community and forces patriarchal structures into accommodation. As Amazon women engage in self-mastectomy, taking up arms and rejecting male offspring, they actively shape a nation of women that functions according to structures and values that are alternative to conventional patriarchal standards. Indeed, amazonian monomasty works against expectations for traditional maternal nurturance, highlighting the Amazon woman's rejection (often outright murder) of sons, but also connoting the possibility that mothers everywhere could abuse their maternal power and withhold care. While the Amazon woman's missing breast suggests a larger danger in the powers afforded to women as mothers, Elizabeth's surplus membrane speaks to her politicized display of virginity as a source of personal authority, a literalizing and reification of her inviolability as a monarch that also ties into larger doubts about the queen's public performance of sexual purity. Elizabeth's physicality was frequently a site of curiosity and an opportunity for critique in discussions concerning her childlessness. Just as her unusual membrane could explain her impenetrability, the queen's own conflation of her body natural and political stability could encourage hypotheses about her capacity to reproduce and even her willingness to carry and kill secret heirs. Indeed, in moments of political uncertainty, texts that were critical of Elizabeth frequently included accusations 140 and rumours about the illegitimate offspring that resulted from her secret love affairs (see Levin, "Power" 96, 100; Levin, "Heart and Stomach" 70, 84; Montrose, "Elizabethan" 311). These putative children were always quietly disposed of, and Elizabeth's annual progress was often reported to be an excuse that allowed her to travel to remote, rural locations where she could secretly deliver and discard her children (see Levin, "Power" 100,103-05; Levin, "Heart and Stomach" 83-4). These inflammatory, fabricated claims continued to appear throughout the seventeenth century, long after the queen's death and the commencement of Elizabethan nostalgia that is often associated with Jacobean culture, and they highlight the negative ramifications of Elizabeth's decision to so closely conflate political authority and sexual purity. The queen's multifaceted, complex presentation of virginity placed an increased value on the body natural: it allowed her to possess an authority that was wholly located in the corpus, rather than completely relying on the body politic's virtues to correct and supplement the failings of or weaknesses in her physicality. At the same time, her inviolate body became subject to critique, to public examination, because it functioned as an integral aspect of her political role and accountability. Despite the sense of public access and voyeurism that can be found in Jonson's claims about the queen's body, however, I argue that Elizabeth's strange "membrana" (Patterson, ed. 30) does enable the queen to remain remote, beyond the grasp of a masculinized medical knowledge of the female anatomy and a disruption to conventional Freudian understandings of sexed identity. Indeed, Elizabeth's putative membrane encourages a subversion and reconsideration of conventional expectations and iterations of both female sexuality and heterosexual relations. While making reference to Judith Butler's "lesbian phallus" (Bodies 84), I shall argue that Elizabeth's membrane complicates any simplistic Freudian understanding of lack and castration anxiety. These examples of corporeality speak to normalized early modern conventions for femininity and manifestations of sexual difference. The Amazon women's decision to alter and make strange their physicality (and, in Elizabeth's 141 case, the reputed decision to retain a natural abnormality) challenges those conventions, reconfiguring femininity in ways that force responses from patriarchal centres of power. I do not suggest that Amazon women and Elizabeth are somehow beyond systems of power, or that they are solely creating their own uses of gender (see J. Butler, Bodies x), but I do argue that physicality offers each figure a certain amount of resistance to and subversion of the political, conventional systems of power in which they operate. The monomasty and the strange membrane highlight patriarchal conceptions of female authority, conventional maternal behaviour, sexual difference, and sexuality, while offering alternatives and suggesting the weaknesses inherent in traditionally gendered patriarchal systems. The represented body becomes a site of disruption, and it reveals the ways in which early modern expectations for gendered behaviour and physical sexual difference became localized in the putatively natural space of corporeality. Theorizing the (Anti-)Maternal Breast The Amazon woman's breast is a site of connection for the social codes of gender and the (socially constructed and comprehended) biological codes of sex, as I have suggested, but this conflation also applies to the breast more broadly. Breasts are a clear example of differently sexed bodies. As Schwarz posits, "women's breasts neither look nor act like those of men" ("Missing" 148). Perhaps more accurately, breasts are one of the ways in which we understand sexual difference, one of the ways that confirms for us what sexual difference should look like, and how it should operate. Certainly for the Galenic "one-sex" model of anatomical study, the ability to lactate placed women's breasts as distinctly unlike men's (Trubowitz, "Cross-Dressed" 189-90).45 The lactating
45 Thomas Laqueur has noted an early modern shift in understandings of the human body. He tracks changes from use of the earlier one-sex model, in which women were believed to have less important equivalents of male genitals ("the vagina as penis, the uterus as scrotum"), to the two- sex model in which male and female organs were completely distinct (viii). Laqueur stresses, however, that the one-sex model by no means vanished once the two-sex model began to gain currency (ix). The Galenic, one-sex model positioned women on a spectrum shared by men: women's genitals were simply incomplete versions of male genitals, and the former were to be found inside the body rather than outside (4). In support of this point, Laqueur notes that Galen referred to women's ovaries as testes (4). Rachel Trubowitz's point that the Galenic model treated lactation as a sign of sexual difference ("Cross-Dressed" 189-90) suggests, however, that male and 142 female breast thus becomes "an inescapable site of difference," and it also places Englishwomen within a nondescript, totalizing category of naturalized maternity ("Cross-Dressed" 190). Lactation becomes equated with the ability to give birth, simultaneously intertwining with early modern expectations for acceptable maternity and good mothering. Breasts do not simply exemplify gender difference, however: they "summarize the implications of gender difference," as Schwarz suggests ("Missing" 148). Creating a causal relationship between the sexed body's breast and expectations for a woman's feminine behaviour can be a tenuous association and can easily lead to accusations of essentialism,46 but I would argue that historically contingent or specifically situated analysis of the body—of value-laden understandings of the body—can reveal a great deal, for the body is so often the site upon which social constructions of gendered behaviour are read and imposed. In flagging assumptions about "natural" traits and the body, and the interactions of gender, discourse, and power, I reference Butler, whose work on the construction and reiteration of gender has become somewhat iconic. I shall deviate from Butler's theories, however, as I insist on the utility and importance
female sexual organs were considered separately, even in a framework willing to acknowledge a spectrum of possiblities or variations on the masculine ideal.
46 John Dupre has discussed the difficulty in attaching essentialist understandings to arguments about kinds, specifically to arguments about sexual difference, noting "that if a real essence is to serve any purpose, it must at least determine the scope of generalizations covering the entities that realize it. But, for a serious empiricist, there is never any reason to suppose that this can be done" (441). He argues against essentialism by suggesting "that there are natural kinds without real essences, unless perhaps in an almost vacuously attenuated sense," and he questions how one could empirically ascertain the presence of determining essences without having already identified the kinds, even if real essences could in fact determine types (443). Dupre also notes that biology tends to exist in "a range of intermediate cases," rather than in strictly defined binaries with "sharp boundaries," so "a theory of essences would have to be considered as applying to typical members of kinds rather than to all members" (444). Similarly, Dupre contends that a range of "natural kinds" can exist without any corresponding set of real essences (445). Marilyn Frye has also responded to concerns about essentialism in feminist analysis of sexual difference, particularly in relation to third-wave feminist critiques of whether gender can be a useful container of meaning, given a rejection of any shared female essence and the reality that there is no universal experience for subjects ("Categories" 41). She suggests that "having an image of living kinds that has arisen within the domain of biological science and is not an image of defining and determining interior essences can free up our imaginations and may help us move toward the ability to think of biological kinds and generalizations as not always and not necessarily essentialist constructs and processes" ("Categories" 46). 143 of considering corporeality as its own reality, even as the body always operates within discursive systems of power. Butler usefully engages with evaluations of sex and gender as always in transition, as iterations caught in moments in time, suggesting that the body continues to accrue value and significance. She describes gender as constructed through multiple, diverse acts, as "an identity tenuously constituted in time—an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts" (J. Butler, "Performative" 402; see also J. Butler, Gender 33). In this model, maternity would be entirely social, constructed from and within discursive systems that are already in place and constantly responding to (and being shaped by) systems of power. Indeed, the breast as a site of maternity would have no physical (or "natural") reality separate from the valuation developed by and with social conditions, discourses, and conventional influences. For Butler, gender is expressed "through the stylization of the body," and the body is never simply a "factic materiality; it is a materiality that bears meaning, if nothing else" (J. Butler, "Performative" 402, 404), a point first outlined in Gender Trouble as she describes "a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeals over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being" (J. Butler, Gender 33). In order to fully appreciate early modern conceptions of sexual difference, however, I find it necessary to temper Butler's insistence that the actual body has no meaning or function separate from that which it develops in negotiation with systems of power. That repetitive performances of gender lead to the appearance of gender as a natural, embodied condition (J. Butler, "Performative" 412) should not preclude the possibility that usage of and reactions to corporeal realities could be used as the basis of analyses into gendered identity, I argue. The physical body is of course immediately evaluated and immersed in conventional expectations for biological sex and social constructions of gender, but corporeality ought to be considered at least in part as its own reality, as something that does exist and operate separately from any social standards placed on it (even if it exists with simultaneous immersion in systems of traditional power and social convention). 144
Linda Alcoff, for example, returns to reproductive function as a means of measuring gender, or "sexed identity" in her terms, from an objectivist standpoint ("Metaphysics" 31). She argues that whether or not they have any desire or capability to reproduce, men and women's primary physical differences relate back to reproductive function: the associated "set[s] of practices, expectations, and feelings" that accompany these physical differences also distinguish men and women, although these social values and systems are obviously hegemonic and not essential ("Metaphysics" 31). In her examination of identity politics and her discussion of Teresa de Lauretis's work, Alcoff acknowledges that conceptions of "woman" are constructed and confirmed through arbitrary discursive frameworks, but she does not reject the importance of considering these constructs, fabricated though they are ("Cultural" 422-24). Alcoff suggests that identity politics allows one "to recognize one's identity as always a construction yet also a necessary point of departure," and she maintains that "political theory must base itself on the initial premise that all persons, including the theorist, have a fleshy, material identity that will influence and pass judgement on all political claims" ("Cultural" 432, 433). Citing the work of Toril Moi, Alcoff has since warned against a complete division of sex and gender in analyses of "sexed identity" ("Metaphysics" 31): she suggests that treating the two as completely distinct disconnects and exiles the body from discussions of gender, despite the fact that "gender's consistent manifestation [is] through the body" ("Metaphysics" 21). Corporeality then gets left out of analyses of historical effects and the social construction of gender ("Metaphysics" 21). Christine Battersby, like Alcoff, has argued for the importance of reproductive function in understandings of identity. She acknowledges that multiple social markers and personal experiences make impossible any single female subjectivity, but she locates natality as "the conceptual link between the paradigm 'woman' and the body that births" (7). This link does not make any suggestion that all women ought to, will, or can bear children; rather, Battersby aims to "[register] the norms and regulative practices that at one particular time 145 and in one type of culture act as sexual definers" (32). Both Alcoff and Battersby broaden Butler's analysis of gender as undoubtedly socially constructed: while Butler stresses the body's fabrication by way of "gender fables [that] establish and circulate the misnomer of natural facts" (J. Butler, Gender xiii), maintaining "that bodies only appear, only endure, only live within the productive constraints of certain highly gendered regulatory schemas" (J. Butler, Bodies xi), Alcoff and Battersby both emphasize that reproductive function is a physical reality that- even as it bears the weight of cultural significance and evaluations-may help to separate sexed bodies, and that culturally specific conceptions of the body may reveal a great deal about how gender has been constructed at given moments. Alcoff and Battersby do so without accepting as a given that a unified group known as "women" actually exists, and without hiding the influences of other social markers that impact identity, two problematics identified by Butler as she questions the efficacy of referring to "women" in feminist discourse (J. Butler, Gender 3-4). The two philosophers ultimately allow for a more flexible reading of corporeality as a socially evaluated and constructed site (or series of sites), providing frameworks for reading physicality in ways that Butler cannot. In Bodies that Matter, her follow-up and clarification for Gender Trouble, Butler does suggest readings of corporeality that can be reconciled somewhat to those of Alcoff and Battersby, but she ultimately diverges from the other two in substantial ways. Butler acknowledges that "what constitutes the fixity of the body, its contours, its movements, [is] fully material," for example, and she approaches that "materiality" as the result of operating within systems of power (J. Butler, Bodies 2), but she ultimately insists that "the materiality of the body" can never be separated from the discursive frameworks and systems of power that produce and confirm that "materiality" (J. Butler, Bodies 2). Butler further argues that "sex does not accrue social meanings as additive properties" (J. Butler, Bodies 5). Rather, Butler suggests that sex as a stable container of meaning disappears within the gendered discourses and systems of power that give it value (J. Butler, Bodies 5). Because her careful writing so often promotes critical examinations of the 146 body's social construction, of identifying moments when gender might otherwise seem naturalized, Butler's work on sex and gender are of considerable value to my reading of both Amazon women's monomasty and Elizabeth's membrane. Nonetheless, the moments when I do not faithfully follow her are (at least informally) guided by Alcoff s and Battersby's arguments that reproduction possesses an importance to the body that is independent of social values, even as systems of power ascribe meanings to and naturalize our understandings of how the body reproduces (Alcoff, "Metaphysics" 31; Battersby 7). Significantly, Butler warns that, even if one operates with knowledge of the conventions that shape gender, one's gender can never simply be a chosen performance: "[s]uch a willful and instrumental subject, one who decides on its gender, is clearly not its gender from the start and fails to realize that its existence is already decided by gender" (J. Butler, Bodies x). In removing a breast and rejecting her sons, for example, the Amazon woman does not simply select anti- maternality and reject the influence of the discursive systems that previously shaped her. The subject is always already shaped by pre-existing systems of power and various conventions for behaviour, but Butler does suggest that opportunities exist to include iterations of gender in performances that challenge traditional norms and reconfigure expectations for identity (J. Butler, Bodies x). Amazonian acts of auto-mastectomy confirm a larger rejection of traditional mothering, but they also demand a response from and capitulation by the patriarchal communities with which Amazon women interact. Important to my work is Butler's assertion that "[i]f sexuality is culturally constructed within existing power relations, then the postulation of a normative sexuality that is 'before,' 'outside,' or 'beyond' power is a cultural impossibility and a politically impracticable dream" (J. Butler, Gender 30). Both Amazon women and Elizabeth create opportunities to challenge and subvert dominant paradigms, but they never operate completely separately from conventional uses of power. While Butler sees parody as a means of drawing attention to the construction of gender, of using the body as "the site of a dissonant and denaturalized performance that reveals the performative status of the natural self (J. Butler, Gender 146), other subversive strategies are possible. For example, the Amazon woman's conscious decision to remove a breast "illuminate[s] as [it] destabilize[s] the categoric process of reading through the breast" (Schwarz, "Missing" 148). The missing breast challenges expectations for appropriate, "good" mothering, and it allows Amazon women to enact and embody a new understanding of sexual activity that operates separate from conventionally eroticized heterosexuality, perhaps functioning as what Butler has termed "disidentification" (J. Butler, Bodies 4). As Shepherd notes, to be warriors and to take on masculine attributes, Amazon women are prepared to reject their sexual capital in the patriarchal system, cutting off one breast to aid in shooting arrows and to make certain their warrior status (15).481 would go further and suggest that in choosing monomasty, Amazon women actually create a new capital that pointedly and successfully challenges traditionally patriarchal structures, drawing attention to the weaknesses in those systems in the process. The Amazonian Breast Even as the maternal body is inscribed by patriarchal valuations of appropriate chastity, sexualisation, and maternality, the Amazon's missing breast highlights a larger anxiety about women's acts, namely, "that women might not only enable sexual reproduction, but control it" (Schwarz, "Mother" 294). The self-inflicted mastectomy alters what might otherwise fall within the normalized category of marital chastity—namely, infrequent sexual encounters that are solely for the purposes of reproduction—subverting the traditional practice and drawing attention to the women's central, active roles in defining their sexual relationships and regulating their interactions with men. The missing breast also makes sons
47 In her work on "female masculinity" (or female masculinities, more correctly), Judith Halberstam has similarly suggested that normative, mainstream, '"heroic masculinities' depend absolutely on the subordination of alternative masculinities" (1). She maintains that "female masculinity," rather than merely parroting normative characteristics of maleness, can actually help to identify the values, preferences, and standards out of which masculinity develops in its traditional male iterations (1).
48 Interestingly, Moira Gatens maintains that citizenship and one's permitted place in the body politic require that "a body [... be] capable of reason and sacrifice. Such admission always involves forfeit" ("Corporeal" 83). She reads amazonian monomasty as an example of forfeit, and she makes an analogy to Abrahamic circumcision, the classic example of "corporeal sacrifice" to gain entry into the body politic ("Corporeal" 83). 148 and male lovers of little value. In a system created and controlled by women, the monomastic Amazons are sexually ambivalent at best: they choose to live away from traditional spaces and only engage in sporadic interactions with men; sexual encounters always operate according to a heavily regulated code of the women's devising, one that successfully, continually, and subversively prioritizes the need to reproduce daughters. Mandeville, for example, notes that the women usually attempt to conceive for eight days, but he also claims that their interactions with men can be lengthened "as the woman likes" (49), leaving the terms of the Amazons' reproductive activities in the women's power. In his text on Guiana, Sir Walter Ralegh repeats stories about the Amazon women rumoured to live in the region, noting that the women meet with men for a month of celebrations and couplings each year (Discoverie 63), and that the Amazons handsomely reward any men who give them girl children (Discoverie 65). As part of dictating the terms of their reproduction, the Amazon women often choose lovers who would not be considered conventionally attractive candidates. Indeed, Schwarz points out that the men chosen for reproductive partners are by and large "inappropriate sexual objects: men who are enemies, barbarians, prisoners, or physically maimed" (Tough 5). Creating a new system of reproductive values that demands the critique and subversion of traditionally patriarchal structures, Amazon women attack convention in their choices for partners and their dictation of the terms for procreative activities, but they also do so when they forcibly exile, injure, or kill their sons. Indeed, when the Amazons reject their sons, either sending them to live with their fathers, breaking their limbs in order to make them servile, or killing them outright, the women make these boys of little use in either amazonian or patriarchal structures. The missing breast hastens the son's distancing from his mother and her home, but, rejected or disabled, the boy's place in patriarchy and his burgeoning masculinity are both decidedly uncertain.49 Furthermore, the son's
Patricia Crawford notes a seventeenth-century conviction that parenting style did affect a child's personality (26), while Valerie A. Fildes points to a common belief that suckling 149 exile from the amazonian domestic front is not self-imposed but demanded by his mother, a point supported by Schwarz's contention that [representations of amazonian monomasty literalize lack without referring it to [female] disempowerment, ... asking what happens if the things the boy child imagines about his mother are true, the products not of his ideas but of her acts. The result is a story about the mother's bodily agency rather than the child's imaginative power, a story that separates sons from their mothers without enabling masculine independence. ("Mother" 299) The Amazon's remaining breast furthers an additional anxiety about breast milk and cultural purity, for Amazon communities are always imagined at the edges of the map, at the limits of European and British cartographical knowledge. Amazons (and Amazons' breasts) are decidedly foreign at a time when, in the midst of English uncertainty about national borders and cultural integrity, breast milk had developed a unique value as a purified, nourishing form of blood. Early modern medical communities strongly believed that menstrual blood, once clarified and refined, became breast milk (N. Miller 4-5). Rachel Trubowitz argues that English concerns about national purity were exacerbated by the 1603 succession of a Scottish king, James I, the rise of imperialist and colonialist projects, and, by the 1650s, the realities of civil war and attacks on the kingdom ('"Blood Whitened'" 82-3). The common understanding of breast milk as purified blood enabled a new sense of urgency about the national, sexual, and moral purity of nursing women, and the seventeenth century saw a flurry of cautionary medical and religious texts, advising against the employment of wet nurses of unusual or uncertain status, women whose "unregulated and 'strange' milk" might "endanger the physical health and moral integrity of both children and families" ('"Blood Whitened'" 83, 84). These points of advice of course tied into the early modern belief that a child could absorb the characteristics of the woman who nursed him or her, as physical, moral, and emotional traits were engendered an emotional connection, be it with a mother or wet nurse (48). Amazonian mothering can thus work against the "healthy," conventional development of any sons born, while encouraging subversive growth in daughters. 150 believed to be transmitted in breast milk ('"Blood Whitened'" 84; Fildes 48; P. Crawford 31).50 Elizabeth Clinton, Countess of Lincoln provides a positively framed exhortation for mothers to nurse their young, and she places breastfeeding as an explicitly Christian duty. In The Countesse of Lincolnes nurserie (1622), Lincoln explains that "it is the expresse ordinance of God that mothers should nurse their owne children" (2). She also implies, however, that honourable, moral women breastfeed out of love and have "a true, naturall affection" for their children (3). Indeed, for Lincoln, nursing one's own infant is "the part of a true mother, of an honest mother, of a iust mother, of a syncere mother, of a mother worthy of loue, of a mother deseruing good report, of a virtuous mother, of a mother winning praise for it" (7). While Lincoln's is generally a piece concerned with positively encouraging women to breastfeed, some fear of cultural otherness and its transmission through breastmilk may be noticed in her remark that in the natural world no animal will ever accept the milk of another beast (9). Indeed, she claims that animals reproduce by divine commandment, just as humans do, and "that every kinde" ought to produce and nurse its own (9). Henry Newcome provides a later, lengthier example of a text that feeds fears about the dangers of wet nursing. In The Compleat Mother (1695) Newcome characterizes the wealthier family's decision to hire a wet nurse as leaving the child "turn'd out, exil'd from his Mothers embraces as soon as from her Womb, and assigned to the Care of some Stranger, who hath no other Endearment toward it, than what are owing solely to her interest" (7). Indeed, he claims that, because wet nurses care little for their work or their charges, "vast numbers of children from wealthier families are "undoubtedly destroyed' (7). Additionally, he warns that healthy bonds will be broken, if the mother does not nurse, and that neither the parent nor the baby will develop an emotional attachment (52-3).
Fildes reports that, by the seventeenth century, breastfeeding was apparently more common among sectarian protestants than among other groups (99). Wealthier families generally continued to retain wet nurses through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and aristocratic women who chose to suckle their young were unusual enough that their contemporaries and relatives would chide them (99-100). 151
The early modern anxieties about foreignness and the permeability of the child's physical borders are apparent in Newcome's warnings that infants are "very susceptible of new Impressions" brought on by alterations in their feeding (69). Furthermore, he threatens the possibility of infant death. Making use of an analogy to gruel and brown bread (70-1), Newcome claims that if a child has been nourished in the womb by a mother "of a delicate and finer Mold," the shift to a wet nurse who is "robust and of a courser allay" may prove too shocking to the baby's system (70). Newcome explicitly advises that wet nurses can bring disease or "some desperate Contagion" as the "Infant Suck[s] Death from her Breasts" (71), and that the milk of a wet nurse can negatively affect a child's emotional outlook, intelligence, or morality (76-7). While the good English mother might pass on appropriately racialized, conventional civility through her breast milk, and the inappropriate wet nurse could transmit disease, immorality, and disorder through hers, the Amazon woman's milk could nurture foreignness and violent reminders of sexual difference. Furthermore, just as the amazonian rejection of sons suggests the frightening possibility that all women are capable of this eschewal, "the idealized white-blooded maternal breast" did not, according to Trubowitz, erase English fears about racial impurity ('"Blood Whitened'" 87). Rather, this valuation implied the possibility that the culturally, racially, sexually, and morally pure breast might not be completely distinct from and might be capable of changing "into the reviled, morally dark-complexioned breast" ('"Blood Whitened'" 87).51 The Amazon woman's single breast thus signals the chance that patriarchal homes —apparent bastions of sexual, moral, and cultural convention and coherence- could become sites of difference, disorder, racial otherness, and questionable masculine authority. It is perhaps no coincidence that, in moments of political uncertainty between 1560 and 1640, instability in the patriarchal family was also a subject of
51 In reality, the wet nurses who were hired by upper-class English families were generally from rural areas and were not wealthy, but they were also not impoverished (Fildes 153). The women who accepted this type of work were usually married to middle-class or artisan-class men (163). popular concern (Underdown 119). Court records indicate that increased public attention was paid in these decades to witches and domineering, scolding, or physically abusive women, women who would undergo public shaming rituals such as charivari, the ducking-stool or cucking-stool, and the scold's bridle (119).53 Like popular print and public centres of discourse, the traditionally patriarchal domestic sphere~"the linch-pin of the whole structure of order," according to P. E. Underdown (116), and the microcosmic exemplum of the paternalistic state relationships of monarch and subject, and God and biblical patriarch—also fixated on questions of racial difference, cultural integrity, the strength of patriarchal values, and gendered behaviour, including the abuse of female authority. Relevant authors often responded to uncertainties with conservative assurances of power and traditional iterations of gendered behaviour.54 Anxieties about Amazon women as bad mothers and understandings of their monomasty as indications of a larger rejection of traditional domesticity should be placed within the historically specific context of motherhood in early modern England, for views on maternity shifted continuously in the culture and were subject to frequent reshapings. Attitudes and expectations could be placed on a spectrum of possibilities and conventions for mothering. According to Naomi J. Miller, these discussions and changing values also incorporated women who performed work associated with maternity: wet nurses, nurses, midwives, female counsellors, and educators all found their caregiving examined and critiqued in texts from several genres, as well as in visual and musical pieces (N. Miller 1). As
Simon Shepherd has similarly argued that the solidity of marriage, one of early modern England's most integral institutions, acts as an indicator for solidity of other social institutions, political and juridical being two (19).
53 Frances E. Dolan notes a 1624 piece of legislation that explicitly made it a criminal offense for single women to kill their infants newly born and out of wedlock (123). In fact, a mother could face death if she was accused of delivering in secret and concealing the birth by quietly burying or otherwise disposing of the child. To avoid death, the mother would require a witness to the birth who could publicly state that the child had been stillborn (129-30).
54 On a related note, Pamela Joseph Benson suggests that generally early modern popular texts "are conservative works, and they reinforce traditional stereotypes of ideal conduct and roles for each sex by means of antimasculine satire and sentimental portraits of women" (205-06). 153 examples of female caregiving (and motherhood more specifically) were depicted, early modern culture was establishing and naturalizing a range of appropriately maternal behaviours, simultaneously strengthening understandings of and investments in patriarchal structures and women's positions within them. As Amazon women reject the breast and their sons, they highlight a larger early modern concern that if women have the ability to nurture their young, they also have the ability to abuse their power and withhold care (see N. Miller 6). The refusal to love their sons might then suggest that "[a]t its most unnatural, amazonian maternity is oddly predictable, a logical outcome of the fear that, even within the safe space of the home, women may be dangerous to men," as Schwarz posits ("Mother" 294). Along with the increased legal attention to and public shaming of verbally and physically abusive women noted by Underdown (119), instability in the patriarchal sphere was reflected by the reams of early modern texts that focused on vocal, belligerent, or disobedient women, and wives who beat, cuckolded, or verbally humiliated their husbands (116-17). Additionally, Dolan notes that as infanticide became more heavily and explicitly criminalized, regulators clearly treated the killing of babies as a sign and confirmation of larger turmoil in social structures (128). Textual depictions of women's criminalized or otherwise aggressive behaviour enjoyed wide circulation, given their popular forms, and relevant narratives were available to those who were illiterate and literate alike (6-7). Indeed, London residents from almost all social strata enjoyed dramatic performances, and several productions dealt with narratives of domestic crime. Ballads, printed inexpensively and easy to carry, were memorized by readers and then recited in public for others to enjoy, while pamphlets were produced quickly and were easy to sell at a rate equivalent perhaps to '"two quarts of strong beer at the alehouse'" (7). These representations of female violence likely changed with each new reader or interlocutor. As audiences in theatres and those listening to tales in pubs and markets heard details about cases of infanticide and other examples of domestic crime, they could change details, adding to the narratives, 154 personalizing them in key ways, and further feeding a strong interest in mothers who abused their authority and position of trust (9). Susan C. Staub identifies "a pervasive cultural anxiety about motherhood" in early modern English culture (333), and she argues that early modern understandings of wifely submission were complicated by the relative level of power that women exercised over their children's welfare (334). These uncertainties about the authority of women as mothers are reflected in the era's literary fascination with infanticide. Although the devil or sin is implicated in each fictional case examined by me, the mothers profiled in the three seventeenth- century texts—The Bloudy Mother, Deeds against Nature, and A pittilesse Mother--have a variety of social backgrounds and reasons for murdering their young. Infanticide can apparently transpire multiple times at the hands of a servant and her employer (Brew.); the crime can be committed by a single woman who is living in a boarding house and ashamed of her illegitimate child {Deeds); or it can occur in the home of a kind gentlewoman who kills her children in a misguided attempt to save them from religious damnation (A pittilesse). In all three texts, however, women destabilize the domestic sphere as they consciously carry out their crimes and, in some cases, attempt to conceal them.55 While all the women are punished harshly for their deeds, their later regret is not at all certain in some of the depictions. Although early modern mothers were far more likely to commit infanticide through acts that did not involve brute physicality-suffocation or exposure, for example (Dolan 124)—the authors of The Bloudy Mother, Deeds against Nature, and A pittilesse Mother stress the savagery of the acts, often placing the mothers as something other than women and as less than animals. The descriptions are a clear tie to classical evaluations of Amazon women that still informed early modern understandings of the martial figures. Indeed, Brew.
55 Importantly, Dolan notes that, while women and domestic employees were far more likely to be the targets of abuse, according to accounts given in court proceedings, the popular depictions of domestic violence consistently place "the threat [... as] in the familiar, rather than the strange, in the intimate rather than the invader" (4). In these texts women attack those who trust them not to (4). Dolan concedes that, when women did in fact murder, they overwhelmingly acted against family members or servants (124). 155
describes Jane Hattersley as a tiger in The Bloudy Mother ([Br]), Martha Scrambler is placed as "a creature more savage than a shee wolfe, more unnaturall than either bird or beast, for every creature hath a tender feeling of loue to their young" {Deeds A3v), and Margaret Vincent, "a fierce and bloudy Medea" (A pittilesse A3v), is positioned as more barbaric than "Pagan, Canniball, Savage, Beast or Fowle" for her acts of infanticide (Bv). These animalistic descriptions create patent correlations to Amazon women, who, as Page duBois explains, were considered by the classical Greeks to indicate the boundaries between man and woman, cultured and savage, but also between human and animal (27). The authors all also emphasize that the acts were carried out by hands that ought to have nurtured. Much like Boccaccio's claims that the first Amazon women murdered their own families, each woman slaying "with her own weapon" in order to gain her freedom {Theseus 21), Jane Hattersley strangles her child "[w]ith the hand that should have tenderly fed it" (Brew. Br). Martha Scrambler acknowledges in Newgate that "[she] should have kept [the baby] from all harmes," but that she instead behaved like an animal and "smothered [it] up in blood" {Deeds B2r), while Margaret Vincent "by nature should have cherisht [her offspring] with her owne body" (A pittilesse A3v). All three examples point to a fear that early modern mothers could in fact destabilize the home by abusing their ability to care, withholding nurturance, and rejecting their children. While women convicted of killing their children were overwhelmingly disposing of illegitimate offspring, the popular texts on the subject often focused on the acts of married women, perhaps because these murders more explicitly revealed threats to patriarchal authority in the private sphere (Staub 335). In A pittilesse Mother, for example, Margaret Vincent, a gentlewoman, is described as "of good parentage," and "of good education, graced with good parts from her youth" (A2v). Her marriage is stable, her behaviour estimable, until she errs and leaves herself vulnerable to the teachings of Catholics (A2v). Even this mistake has its origins in good intentions, for, seeking to understand various aspects of spirituality "and being carefull as it seemed of her soules happiness," Margaret speaks to a variety of religious figures (A2v). Once converted to Catholicism, 156 however, she becomes horrified that her children have been "brought up in blindness and darksome errours, hoodwinckt (by her husbands instructions) from the true light" (A3r). Operating under the belief "that it was merritorious yea and pardonable to take away the lives of any opposing Protestants" (A3r), Margaret goes against the religious teachings of her husband and follows what she mistakenly believes to be a tenet of her own faith: positive that her children can be saved in death, she strangles them with her own gaiter (A3r-v), only repenting over time and following extensive counsel with Protestant leaders at Newgate (Bv-B2r). While married women were popular figures in texts detailing cases of infanticides, single mothers were also depicted. This literary treatment is perhaps more in keeping with surviving records for women who faced charges for the crime. Keith Wrightson points to past scholarly research and cautiously suggests a relative frequency of infanticide as a form of unacknowledged population control, but he concedes that limited records make definitive arguments impossible (10). Between 1601 and 1665, extant parish records for Essex show sixty instances of deaths deemed infanticides, for example (11). In all but one of the recorded cases, the mother was the parent who faced the charge of murder, and Wrightson suggests that early modern infanticide may have at times been committed to curb numbers of children, while other cases may have been the result of parents suffering from temporary insanity (10-12). The numbers of recorded deaths show near parity between sons and daughters, but the infants killed were overwhelmingly illegitimate (12). The mothers in both The Bloudy Mother and Deeds against Nature give birth to children out of wedlock.56 They also conceal their pregnancies and deliveries through suspicious means, the implication in both cases being that the concealments speak to the women's deceptive natures more generally (Brew. [A4r]; Deeds A3v-[A4r]). In The Bloudy Mother, Jane Hattersley stands as a
This narrative point has some basis in historical demographics. Barry Reay suggests that up to one third of illegitimate children in early modern England were the results of single women's affairs with married men (14-15), and certainly one quarter of early modern brides (up to one half in some areas) were pregnant when they took their vows (9). 157 negative example of "the bloody and most dangerous events of lust, and such libidinous liuing" (Brew. A2r), and, unlike Martha Scrambler in Deeds against Nature, she never voices any misgivings about her felonies. In fact, Jane, abetted by her partner and employer, murders multiple secret children over the course of several years. Jane's activities are particularly threatening to the domestic sphere, for the house servant has an affair with her employer, Adam Adamson (an Everyman name if ever there was one). The affair lasts several years, and she even plots to kill Adam's wife (Brew. [A3v-A4r]). She has liaisons with other men as well, and she hides each of her pregnancies "with loose lacing" and "tucking" of clothes, and with "odde tricks" designed to simulate menstruation ([A4r]). Her sexual activity with Adam challenges the marital institution, and Jane consciously carries on the affair for several years, even as she engages in copulation with other partners, paying no attention to conventional expectations for chastity and experiencing no sense of guilt for enabling Adam to break his marital vows. Jane also demonstrates her ability to hide from men information about her body and her sexual (im)purity: she performs virginity and uses devious means to avoid any hint that she might be pregnant on multiple occasions ([A4r]). With each incident, in fact, Jane hides her condition and disposes of the baby as soon as possible (Br- v, B2r, B2v). Martha Scrambler also secretly carries her child and gives birth without any of the tenants in her boarding house becoming suspicious, although the author of the text goes further still and notes that Martha attempted to miscarry~"by a divilish practise sought to consume it in her body before the birth"--when she first realized that she was expecting {Deeds A3v). Martha's attempt to abort is in line with the activities of other early modern women who limited and terminated their pregnancies by "[reading] against the grain of medical advice: pointers on how to bring on menstruation slipped easily into hints for inducing a miscarriage; advice on increasing fertility was turned upside down to become information about fertility control" (Reay 31-2). Of the three profiled texts and their descriptions of murder, Martha's act of infanticide—following her unsuccessful effort to terminate 158 the pregnancy—is perhaps most shocking, as she discards the child in a privy house and leaves it to drown in refuse {Deeds [A4r]). Importantly, Wrightson notes that while the infanticide was often an outright killing soon after delivery, it could also take the form of slow starvation through withheld nursing (10): a prolonged act of maternal neglect or abuse, the repeat refusal to nurse suggests a conscious decision rather than any temporary insanity or panic. In many of the popular depictions of infanticide, married women kill their children in a misunderstood act of protection. Staub explains that in attempting to shield their young from religious oppression, poverty, or maternal depression or psychosis, infanticidal mothers enact "a perversion of the responsible mother of the conduct manuals" (335; see also Dolan 144-45, 148). Margaret in A pittilesse Mother is a prime example of this sort of act, for even after she is arrested and taken to Newgate, she continues to insist that she performed "a deede of charity in making [her children] Saints in heaven" (Bv), only realizing her mistake after extensive counselling with Protestant religious leaders (Bv-B2r). The women perform "good" mothering in all the wrong ways, "carrying the mother's legitimate power to its most extreme manifestation," and "exaggerating and distorting maternal nurturance" (Staub 344). If some mothers can abuse their ability to care, even identifying compassion as the rationale for infanticide, perhaps all "good mothers" are capable of doing so. While infanticidal mothers of court record and sensational media murdered their children in order to hide illegitimacy, or in order to further legitimacy through tragically misunderstood notions of maternal care and compassion, however, Amazon women harm their sons in order to further illegitimacy and to disable patriarchal conventions. The same acts are carried out with quite different motivations, and, in the latter instance of amazonian infanticide and maternal rejection, the acts, famously carried out by monomastic women, lead to and further successful communities that show the weaknesses and the malleability in patriarchal structures. 159
Elizabeth I's "Membrana" and Subversions of Virginity In a discussion about Mary, Queen of Scots' political fall, Susan Dunn- Hensley notes the sexualized, gendered nature of attacks on her, and she posits that "[b]ecause of her position as queen, Mary's physical body possessed political significance" (101). Her argument could just as easily be applied to Elizabeth's body, which was a site of fixation in works critical of her reign and which frequently became the subject of rumour and speculation in times of political stress or anxiety (see Levin, "Power" 96, 100; Levin, "Heart and Stomach" 70, 84; Montrose, "Elizabethan" 311). Importantly, discussions about Elizabeth's body and sexuality touched on multiple salacious topics: her intent to marry or not; her ability or inability to reproduce, and the possibility that she had secretly murdered her offspring; the veritable or fabricated nature of her prolonged virginity; and her menopausal body were all open to speculation. In short, no area of sexuality was inappropriate subject matter (and no theory outside the realm of possibility) for these texts. Carole Levin notes that while Elizabeth had already experienced gossip circulating about her sex life and courtships prior to assuming the throne, the interest in her private life skyrocketed once she became queen ("Power" 96). Rumours about Elizabeth secretly giving birth to children and having them destroyed, often by fire, abounded ("Power" 103-05; Levin, "Heart and Stomach" 83-4). Diplomats and other agents from European courts passed along gossip in their letters home, while the English were also implicated in speaking openly about their monarch's sex life: Levin notes the case of Mother Anne Dowe, who was jailed in 1560 after claiming '"that the Queen was with child by Robt. Duddeley'" ("Heart and Stomach " 76), while a man by the name of Marshame was given in 1570 the choice of having his ears cut off or paying £100 fine for claiming that Elizabeth had actually given birth to two of Dudley's children ("Heart and Stomach" 78). The rumoured children multiplied to four by 1572, when Robert Blosse was censured for saying similar things, and people continued to be punished for making comparable claims well into the 1580s ("Heart and Stomach" 78, 83). The censured rumour mongers included Henry Hawkins, who 160 suggested that Elizabeth '"never goethe in progress but to be delivered,'" the implication being that Elizabeth misused her political office and made progresses through the country in order to secretly deliver and destroy her offspring ("Heart and Stomach" 83). Levin suggests that many of these rumours were drummed up by Catholics abroad who were intent on weakening the queen's political standing ("Power" 103), the references to death by fire then taking on the resonance of martyrdom and Catholic anger over the history of religious violence inflicted on their orders. Elizabeth's political role and persona were clearly and inextricably tied to her physicality. Rob Content, for example, points to early unofficial portraits that depicted Elizabeth as deformed, and he connects these representations to the contemporary public worry about the queen's health and future childbearing (229). Hannah Betts has focused on the connections between pornographic writing in the last fifteen years of Elizabeth's reign and how these texts could "reflect the political metaphors of the Elizabethan court in a way that compromised the queen's own virginal iconography," for example (153). She examines several late-sixteenth-century printed texts that figured echoes of the queen as "sexually and ... politically [compromised]," and she notes the possible connections between early modern pornography and (a sometimes conservative) social critique (154, 154-55). While the language of desire could be used for positive ends, Betts focuses on the more pejorative possibilities in the literature, suggesting that the language of courtly love and Petrarchan purity could be "[transformed] ... into a series of grotesque sexual manifestations" of Elizabeth's body natural (156). Helen Hackett's very different examination of maternal imagery in Elizabethan political texts suggests that early modern beliefs about infertility, hysteria (or "womb-sickness"), and women who abstained from sex and maternity also tied into popular opinions about Elizabeth's choice to negotiate marriage possibilities with Frangois, due d'Anjou (161). Indeed, according to Hackett, some in England feared that once Elizabeth became menopausal, "England would find itself with a queen whose body natural was in a state of womb-sickness," her 161 mind controlled by the impulses of hysteria (162). Elizabeth's ability to conceive and bear children had long been of interest to many invested in her reign. When she was still a relatively new (thus possibly fertile) monarch, ambassadors for European courts would pay Elizabeth's ladies for information regarding the queen's menstruation cycles, sending the particulars to their superiors at home (Levin, "Heart and Stomach" 86). Several ambassadors repeated gossip about mysterious impediments or irregularities suffered by the queen: de Feria related to Philip II that '"for a reason they have given me,'" Elizabeth was infertile, while the Nuncio claimed that Elizabeth '"hardly ever had the purgations proper to all women'" {"Heart and Stomach" 85, 86). Tellingly, Elizabeth's singularity as an unmarried female leader was mirrored in rumours about her corporeality and fertility, in vague descriptions of mystifying reproductive abnormalities. In fact, interest in Elizabeth's physicality continued to appear in early modern texts after the queen died.57 In 1619 Jonson apparently passed on gossip about Elizabeth's strange "membrana" as he visited with William Drummond, positing about the queen's childlessness (Patterson, ed. 30). Indeed, Jonson claimed that Elizabeth "had a membrana on her, which made her uncapable of man, though for her delight she tryed many" (30). According to Jonson, Elizabeth consulted with a French surgeon about removing the membrane—the surgeon apparently summoned during the visit of Anjou, Elizabeth's most serious suitor— but "fear stayed her" and she refused the operation (30). The surgeon's death shortly after consulting with the queen seems to have put the matter to rest, for Jonson's conversation with Drummond comes to a close, and Drummond's record of the discussion holds no other details (30).
John Watkins notes that as late as the closing years of the seventeenth century, texts continued to be produced, all stressing the private life of Elizabeth, and all creating dramatic romantic entanglements for her (136). In fact, Watkins maintains that there was another surge in the popularity of sordid royal histories in the 1680s and 1690s (during the Exclusion Crisis, especially). This later interest supported multiple reprintings of gossipy histories, and Watkins contends that these mock histories enjoyed far more circulation than other, more realistic accounts of her life (150-51). Like Carole Levin ("Power" 103), Watkins connects the salacious texts to religious propagandists who aimed to denigrate Elizabeth as part of an effort to gain or protest tolerance (137). Watkins suggests that the texts detailing Elizabeth's secret children could also offer critics of the Stuarts an imaginary line of possible Tudor rulers who might be able to supplant the current ruling family (148). 162
Jonson's rumour mongering is telling for several reasons: the writer has no compunction about discussing the former monarch's genitalia, Elizabeth's body natural coming under a scrutiny for which the body politic apparently offers no correction or protection; the queen's own propagandized use of virginity as a political tool has left her physical body vulnerable to speculation, and it has made her corporeal integrity a matter of public accountability or record. In fact, the speculation about Elizabeth's body natural indicates the massive representational strain under which (and with which) her corporeality operated: her simultaneous, overlapping presentations of herself as Virgin Mary proxy, mother to the nation, and sexually pure, perennially remote courtly beloved all encouraged examinations of her body natural as perfect and hygienic, but each functioned according to its own set of conventions and expectations. The propagandized focus on sexual purity inextricably linked Elizabeth's virginity and chastity to her abilities as a monarch, however. This conflation made it possible for members of the public to connect Elizabeth to the Virgin Mary, even as they speculated about the former's romances. Jonson's comments also suggest that Elizabeth's chastity (and possibly her virginity) was performance, not physical reality, for her "membrana," which apparently blocked full penetration or impregnation, did not limit her sexual activity with men, whom "for her delight she tryed many," the reference to "delight" implying that Elizabeth's sexuality was driven by desire and agency, not any sense of duty to reproduce with conventional interest in marital chastity, despite Anjou's visit (30). Her private disregard for virginity and public, politicized recital of physical integrity also connote a larger sense of artificiality at court, particularly given Jonson's previous comment to Drummond that "Queen Elizabeth never saw herself after she became old in a true glass; they painted her, and sometimes would vermilion her nose" (30). The queen's body in Jonson's gossip is constantly one of illusion, of disjunction between private act and public statement, yet even as Elizabeth's rumoured "membrana" (30) highlights her unconventionally virginal body and allows a public scrutinizing of her propagandized corporeal integrity, it also makes her body unknowable: her 163 physical reality is inconceivable—she can apparently enjoy sexual relations without penetration or impregnation—and her genitalia seems to be lethal to anyone who looks too closely. Elizabeth becomes a Medusa in this rendition of her history, the sight of her genitalia enough not only to stop a surgeon's ability to act but to actually kill him, "his phallic scalpel... emasculated by the queen's inviolate membrane" (Aasand, '"Her burning face'" 96). It seems fitting that Elizabeth would consider removing this putative membrane during Anjou's visit, however, given that their negotiations were the closest the queen ever came to publicly choosing a partner and legitimizing marriage: as she considers accepting social conventions and entering into wedlock, she consults with a surgeon about castration, about excising an excess and moving towards corporeal female normalcy. That "fear stayed her" and terminated her conversations with the surgeon does not suggest to me that this "membrana" is to be read as operating within patriarchal conventions, however (Patterson, ed. 30). Rather, her strange membrane works against a simplistic understanding of phallic power as solely masculinist: the surgeon dies having examined her,58 and Elizabeth's marriage negotiations with Anjou break down, but one can assume that the queen continues to take "delight" in her "many" lovers, operating in the full knowledge that pregnancy (even complete penetration, given that Jonson declares her "uncapable of man") will never be a possibility (30). Elizabeth's sexual pleasure also draws challenging concordances to Freudian notions of lack and "A/not-A" models of negation, and it allows for a possible example of what Butler has termed "the lesbian phallus" (J. Butler, Bodies 84). Using science as the foundation of his examination into sexual
The narrative of the surgeon's death draws obvious connections to Sigmund Freud's thoughts on Medusa as an iteration of the castration complex, but it also works against a Freudian reading, for the surgeon gains no eventual comfort from his reaction of "stiff[ening] with terror" ("Medusa's" 273). Freud maintains that a boy enters into the castration complex when he sees "female genitals, probably those of an adult, surrounded by hair, and essentially those of his mother" ("Medusa's" 273). Seeing the female genitals makes a boy understand that castration is possible, that he could in fact lose his genitals as punishment for something: hence, he goes "stiff with terror," experiencing erection as "consolation to the spectator: he is still in possession of a penis, and the stiffening reassures him of the fact" ("Medusa's" 273). 164 difference (he immediately makes reference to both sperm and ova), Sigmund Freud insists on the definitiveness of sexual difference ("Femininity" 113), revealing that his work falls into the process described by Butler as "the constraints by which bodies are materialized as 'sexed,' and how ... we... understand the 'matter' of sex,... the repeated and violent circumscription of cultural intelligibility" (J. Butler, Bodies xi-xii). Freud locates difference in the biological and treats the biological as fixed, arguing that sexual difference is the first observation one will make about a person—"and you are accustomed to make this distinction with unhesitating certainty" ("Femininity" 113). The psychoanalyst suggests that everyone has a mixture of biologically male and female traits, but that these levels can vary widely from one person to the next: importantly, he argues that—despite this previously identified scientific, biological basis to masculinity and femininity—both are actually somewhat intangible and that "which anatomy cannot lay hold of ("Femininity" 114). As he introduces the possibility of behavioural traits that indicate psychological masculinity and femininity, Freud traces the growth of sexual pleasure, tying it to the development of appropriate, standardized femininity in girls ("Femininity" 114, 117-18). Freud posits that once in the phallic phase, boys begin to understand that stimulating the penis brings pleasure; "the little girl is a little man," and she connects her clitoris, or "little penis," to the same kinds of pleasure ("Femininity" 118). For Freud, however, the healthy development of female sexuality and appropriate femininity demands that the clitoris's importance as an erogenous zone be transferred to the vagina ("Femininity" 118). Girls must also shift their attention from their mothers as love-objects to their fathers, holding their mothers responsible for the castration complex and a burgeoning sense of sexual difference, for, according to Freud, girls believe that their mothers are responsible for not providing them with penises ("Femininity" 118-18, 124-25). For the Freudian model of sexual difference, a girl's sense of her own female identity is always inextricably connected to lack, to the absence of a penis, while a boy begins to comprehend that his penis can disappear (perhaps as punishment, hence the anxiety over the possibility of castration) ("Femininity" 165
125; see also Freud, "Medusa's" 273). While one could read Elizabeth's decision to keep her extra "membrana" (Patterson, ed. 30) as a form of fetishism, as "a substitute for the penis, ... for a particular and quite special penis that had been extremely important in early childhood but had later been lost" (Freud, "Fetishism" 152), I argue instead that Elizabeth's membrane allows her to operate in a space that is not predicated on a simplistic understanding of absence and presence. Elizabeth's "membrana" (Patterson, ed. 30) does not supplement her clitoris, or "little penis," nor does it replace her missing one, for to replace would be to operate according to the principles of lack (Freud, "Femininity" 118). Rather, Elizabeth's membrane encourages her to function according to a model of "A:B" (M. Frye, "Necessity" 998), one that acknowledges differences but does not insist on mutual exclusivity or exhaustiveness, and one that does not define "B" through negation. Marilyn Frye suggests that rather than accede to working under a Freudian model of presence and absence, or a model of "A/not-A" negation, feminists should operate with an understanding of two categories, two subjectivities, A:B. Conceive a positive category that is entered, occupied, animated, by females—a category and subjectivity and realm of sociality in which anatomical femaleness is intelligible, in which there are vaginas, clitorides, and wombs. ("Necessity" 998)59 Frye argues alongside Luce Irigaray that "not-A" is a limitless group of qualities defined only by not being "A": it "is an undifferentiated plenum, unstructured, formless, a chaos undelineated by any internal boundaries" (M. Frye, "Necessity" 999). As an alternative to "A/not-A," Frye suggests that for members of a group, presence in an organized structure is what ties them together, not commonality necessarily; in fact, Frye maintains that structure necessitates a certain amount of
Frye's proposition connects in part to a query made by Gatens in her own examination of gender and psychoanalytic theory. In her discussion of the Oedipus complex, Gatens questions why boys and girls, "at least at a crucial age, see sexual difference in terms of (one) presence and (its) absence rather than in terms of (two) different presences" {Feminism 105). 166 difference, if only in nominal ways such as one's physical position to the left or right of another person (M. Frye, "Necessity" 1001). Frye posits that women can be categorized as such, "not by making up a list of attributes and consigning everything that does not share those attributes to indifferentiation, to insignificance, but by working differences into structure" (M. Frye "Necessity" 1001). She also points out that her "A:B" framework would allow for one's presence in multiple other "A:B" structures, that "what-I-am ... is constantly being coconstructed with and in relation to different others[;] there is no single what-I-am" (M. Frye "Necessity" 1001).60 Elizabeth's "membrana" (Patterson, ed. 30) thus does not have to fit into the mould of "A/not-A," nor does it have to function according to Freud's understanding of sexual difference through castration anxiety and lack. The queen's sexual pleasure need not be strictly limited to the vagina in order for her to conceive of herself as feminine and in possession of a healthy female sexuality, for she can take "delight" in incorporating her mysterious "membrana"~simply described as "on her"~into her poly amorous relationships with men (30).61
Nancy Jay offers some support for Frye's "A:B" model, for she suggests that "A and B are mere contraries, not logical contradictories, and continuity between them may be recognized without shattering the distinction" (44). "A:B" structures also allow for the existence of "C ..., and then the distinction becomes A/B/C" (44). Indeed, Jay stresses that the "A/not-A" model has limited applicability in "the empirical world, for there are no negatives there. Everything that exists (including women) exists positively" (48).
61 This sense of self-directed pleasure and acceptance of her genitalia also calls to mind Luce Irigaray's work on sexual identity. Irigaray maintains, for example, that in a masculine framework for gendered and (hetero)sexual behaviour, women's sexual organs become reduced to the clitoris as a diminished penis and the vagina as "a hole-envelope" for the service of men ("This Sex" 23). Female sexuality then becomes identified by lack and emptiness, along with envy of the penis, and Irigaray suggests that women attempt to gain a symbolic phallus by loving male authority figures, by desiring boy children, or by trying to hold on to cultural rights or norms usually given or attached exclusively to men ("This Sex" 23-4). All of these efforts are without any sense of female pleasure, and Irigaray suggests as an alternative that the shape of a woman's labia, "two lips in continuous contact," allows her a private access to her body and to touch that requires no manual stimulation by herself or another ("This Sex" 24). Elizabeth's "delight" in her male lovers (Patterson, ed. 30) goes against the "violent break-in" of penile penetration described by Irigaray, but the philosopher does propose the development of a framework that does not see women's sexual pleasure lost with the intrusion of the penis ('This Sex" 24). In Jonson's claims about Elizabeth's activities, male erection plays little part in the description of sexuality, another potentially promising sign for Irigaray's proposed framework, as she maintains that focusing on erection indicates the marginalization of women's sexuality in the system ("This Sex" 24). In the anecdote about Elizabeth's strange membrane (Patterson, ed. 30), one can instead find a multiplicity of erogenous zones—'woman has sex organs more or less everywhere"—sad a sense of 167
The flexibility in Elizabeth's sexual and corporeal limits connects to Butler's provocative discussion of "the lesbian phallus" (J. Butler, Bodies 84). In her response to Jacques Lacan's work on the phallus and the penis—in which Butler summarizes Lacan's cagy definition of "the phallus [as ...] not a body part (but the whole), [as ...] not an imaginary effect (but the origin of all imaginary effects," Lacan ultimately suggesting that the phallus has a "relation of symbolization" to the penis (J. Butler, Bodies 83)—Butler questions why, if a symbolic relationship moves the actual away from the symbolized, the phallus would necessarily rely on the penis as a crucial aspect of its symbolization (J. Butler, Bodies 83-4). She suggests that if "the object of symbolization is precisely not... that which symbolizes," then the phallus could contain the "capacity to symbolize in relation to other body parts or other body-like things" (J. Butler, Bodies 83, 84). Elizabeth's "membrana" is represented simultaneously as capable of provoking her "fear" when she considers removing it and as Medusean, capable of killing the surgeon who examines it (Patterson, ed. 30). That Elizabeth feels "fear" (30) at the prospect of removing her membrane hints at the anxiety of a possible castration, decreasing the distance between phallus and penis in a traditional reading of the pair's symbolized connection, yet her Medusean powers to make the surgeon "stiff[en]" (Freud, "Medusa's" 273) imply that her initial castration is already complete. That her membrane may have the ability to make her surgeon "stiff[en] with terror" ("Medusa's" 273) suggests a traditional Freudian reading of the male reaction to castration anxiety upon viewing female genitalia and the absent penis, for, according to Freud, the male goes "stiff as he understands that castration is possible and that he himself could be punished with the loss of his genitals ("Medusa's" 273). Even as Freud's Medusa threatens castration, however, the male's engagement with her (and his entry into the castration complex) still prioritizes a male power and the ability to shape his own subjectivity, for the boy "stiff[ens]," or experiences an erection,
enjoyment that moves along several trajectories (Irigaray, "This Sex" 28, 29-30). Indeed, Elizabeth's sexual activity would seem to be ultimately distanced from passivity, modesty, and masochism, three key characteristics for the development of appropriate, normalized femininity (see "Psychoanalytic" 36-7). 168 which functions as a "consolation" or a reminder that he still has a penis ("Medusa's" 273). Elizabeth's Medusean membrane does not offer the male viewer the same level of reassurance, however. Rather, the sight of her genitals literally stops the surgeon's ability to act, for he dies shortly after viewing them (Patterson, ed. 30). One could suggest that Elizabeth then deploys an unusual example of Butler's "lesbian phallus," for the queen's membrane "crosses the orders of having and being; it both wields the threat of castration (which is in that sense a mode of 'being' the phallus, as women 'are') and suffers from castration anxiety (and so is said 'to have' the phallus, and to fear its loss)" (J. Butler, Bodies 84). Elizabeth's decision to retain her unusual membrane and to continue taking sexual pleasure in the use of it with her multiple lovers forces a reconsideration of how presence and absence are considered, simultaneously shifting traditional notions of virginal impenetrability. Although Freud places emphasis on sexuality and sexual identity as always in process, as constantly responding to external influences and stimuli ("Femininity" 114, 116-18; see also Gatens, Feminism 103- 04), he quickly insists on a normalizing and a limiting of sexual practice, tying these preferences to conventional scientific assumptions about the realities of typical male and female bodies. Moira Gatens stresses that, for psychoanalytic theory, "[a]natomy is not the question here. The question is rather 'what is the cultural and social significance of anatomy?' or, put differently, 'how is anatomy represented in culture?'" (Feminism 103) Freud's writings on sexual difference would indicate a veritable, substantial interest in the corporeal as a key to understanding behaviour and desire, however: even as he allows for the influence of relationships and social stimuli in gender's development, he stresses and places value on the innate, natural characteristics in sperm and ova. Freud claims, for example, that maleness is connected to activity, a point that is confirmed by the activity level of sperm, while women are conflated with passivity, a point that corresponds to the passivity and restful nature of the ova ("Femininity" 114). Freudian conceptions of sexual difference then rely on fixed, limited understandings of corporeality, understandings that are presented as naturalized rather than as largely socially constructed, negotiated, and confirmed. A reading of Elizabeth's "membrana" (Patterson, ed. 30) informed by Butler's work helps to destabilize this naturalization, promoting a broader, more creative examination of gender's connection to the corporeal. Indeed, the amazonian monomasty and Elizabeth's unusual membrane both speak to different understandings of sexual difference, and to the rejection of conventions that have, through practice and reiteration, become normalized. 170
Chapter Four "As liuing now, equald theyr vertues then": Elizabethan Allusions and Amazonian Histories in Literary Treatments of Penthesilea and Boudicca Introduction While Elizabeth I did not encourage comparisons between herself and Amazon or otherwise martial women, brief allusions to and more extended treatments of leaders such as Penthesilea and Boudicca are relatively common in popular early modern historiographical texts with encomiastic and nationalist passions. These references are particularly frequent in the five decades following the Spanish Armada, a time when English writers and historians were actively shaping a sense of nation that included the threat of and resistance to foreign incursion. Indeed, when given the chance to praise Elizabeth, early modern authors frequently relied on a well established set of allusions aimed at lauding various combinations of the queen's chastity, beauty, intelligence, militancy, fortitude, peaceful disposition, and generosity. The women referenced would be praised for their possession of individual traits that were thought to be perfected and to reside in whole in Elizabeth. In addition to Boudicca and Penthesilea, figures from mythology, classical literature, and the Bible—Diana, Cynthia, Pallas Athena, Astraea, Hippolyta, Deborah, and Judith, for example—are all commonly utilized in encomiastic and nationalist texts, while Elizabeth is also connected (though less frequently) to figures such as Zenobia, Semiramis, Artemisia, and Camilla.
Examples of texts with relevant allusions include James Aske's Elizabetha Triumphans (1588), Richard Johnson's "A most royall song of the life and death ... Elizabeth" (1612), and Thomas Heywood's Exemplary Lives (1640). Julia M. Walker also notes several memorial inscriptions in parish churches that describe Elizabeth I as either Judith, Deborah, Esther, or Amazon women ("Bones" 260; see also Walker, Elizabeth 40-7). Allegorical and other creative representations of the queen (as any number of literary, historical, or mythological figures) open up even more literary works and political performances for study. Such texts include Elizabeth's coronation entry into London and various courtly entertainments held throughout her reign (see Berry 83-110), George Chapman's The Shadow of Night (1594), John Lyly's Endymion (1591) and Gallathea (1584-88), Sir Walter Ralegh's Ocean to Cynthia (1592), William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1594), and Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590 and 1596). 171
These allusions are perhaps only intended to serve as brief references, as signals for whichever of Elizabeth's qualities the author will praise in more detail in the larger work. At the same time, even as authors celebrate the queen, often furthering a sense of national identity in the process, their allusions may in fact reveal more than superficial laudation; in fact, the references can anxiously suggest unfavourable similarities between Elizabeth and the women. This possibility certainly would work against any encomiastic features in the texts. I further suggest that even as nationalist historiographers make use of allusions as part of their efforts to create an authoritative, monologic English history and sense of stable, honourable national origins, the allusions themselves may disable this nationalist function by suggesting a multiplicity of origins, a panoply of literary, cultural, and experiential standpoints that do not align neatly. In order to showcase some of the more negative cultural associations for each of the figures (associations that likely could not be divorced from the positive Elizabethan attributes that are explicitly referenced in the separate texts containing the allusions), I shall analyze allusions to Boudicca and Penthesilea within the context of lengthier descriptions of the women. These more extensive representations treat the same anxieties and negative possibilities inherent in the allusions, but I contend that the allusions themselves actually hold a unique place in understandings of Elizabethan nation building. As I have stated, I argue that the very nature of the allusion as a literary device may hinder its efficacy in early modern authors' nationalist projects. As the authors attempt to foster national identity by looking to Elizabeth's mythologized Brittonic origins (and by celebrating martial women who died defending the Trojans and the Britons), the allusions always fail to produce an original source for the figure with whom Elizabeth is conflated, just as they fail to produce meaningful, material proof of an initial British cultural purity upon which national identity can be based. The allusion as a form of intertextuality encourages the reader to look backward for recognition, to make meaningful connections between past and present. Mikhail Bakhtin stresses the specificity of social context in language production and usage, and he focuses on the importance of the "utterance," which 172 is always produced in response to other utterances. Julia Kristeva later defines the utterance as "an operation, a motion that links, and even more so, constitutes what might be called the arguments of the operation, which, in the study of a written text, are either words or word sequences (sentences, paragraphs) as sememes" (37). The multiple voices and uniformly valid interests—the dialogism, polyphony, hybridization, and heteroglossia—present in a text always interrupt and throw into question any attempt at an authoritarian explanation for culture or art, although more monologic iterations of state authority will attempt to quell those dialogic critiques (Bakhtin 6-7). As each utterance develops out of and helps to shape various public needs and concerns, disparate conceptions of social institutions, "[n]o word or utterance ... is ever neutral," as Graham Allen explains (18). While historiographers might attempt to construct authoritative, monologic narratives of the nation's development, allusions encourage polyphonic reading experiences in which the text, author, and reader all change and "join a process of continual production," and meaning is altered with each textual experience (34). The text becomes the locus for tensions between "communications and that which breaks communication apart—what Kristeva calls signifiance" (35). According to Kristeva, a text becomes "a mosaic of quotations" and a site of multiple "utterances ... taken from other texts [... to] intersect and neutralize one another" (66, 36). Intertextuality can thus mark a language usage that works against monologic readings—that opens up a multiplicity of meanings, origins, and relationships—while still placing texts within larger social contexts. Texts can never be interpreted as wholly separate from others and are, as Allen suggests, read within "a network of textual relations" (1), but allusions allow for more immediate proof of past works and events than a slightly spectral sense of cultural "influence" or historical "interest" might. Allusions need not
Julia Kristeva similarly sees the text as a "permutation of texts" and "a mosaic of quotations" (36, 66), while Roland Barthes refers to the text as "a tissue of quotations" ("Death" 149) and the reader as "a plurality of other texts, of codes which are infinite or, more precisely, lost" (5/Z 10). 173 point to a simple, single source text, but they suggest the possibility and continuation of origins, and they encourage historicization by drawing links between earlier and present cultures, by implying some sort of commonality between the hypotext and the hypertext, to use Gerard Genette's terms. These textual connections occur, even if the hypertext can sustain meaning on its own without the reader being forced to reference the past text, or hypotext.65 While allusions place texts within "a network of textual relations" (Allen 1), they also allow the reader to consider works as "a space in which a potentially vast number of relations coalesce" (12). Each allusion can suggest a multiplicity of origins or sources, thus drawing the reader away from any one history, meaning, or certain interpretation, even as nationalist historiographers make use of the literary device to direct the reader to certain reference points. Allusions to Boudicca and Penthesilea simultaneously signal multiple, often conflicting stories about the women, for the figures are essentially fragmentary, palimpsestic intertexts referenced in countless other works, no one past text more important or more closely linked to an original source than any another. The allusions reference mythological, classical, medieval, and early modern works, and they operate in relation to the women's presence in multiple genres—poetry, drama, historiography, catalogue—yet the allusions can never produce anything other than a vague sense of Elizabeth's role in nation building (a vague sense that can just as quickly backfire and remind readers of damaging connections between Elizabeth and dangerously unconventional, martial women
Indeed, critics have misunderstood Kristeva's work on intertextuality if they focus simply on source study rather than on the textual implications of "a literary history of meshing systems" (Clayton and Rothstein 17) or the text as "a dialogue among several writings" (Kristeva 65). Wary of the misapprehension of her ideas, Kristeva later began to prefer the term "transposition" over "intertextuality," as she stressed the "transposition of one (or several) sign systems(s) into another; ... [transposition] specifies that the passage from one signing system to another demands a new articulation ... of enunciative and denotative positionality" (qtd. in Clayton and Rothstein 21).
65 One might be reminded, too, of Mikhail Bakhtin's argument about what type of material is "essential" in Fyodor Dostoevsky's work (29). Bakhtin maintains that in the author's novels, "the essential" must be capable of "simultaneous coexistence" in time: "[t]hat which has meaning only as 'earlier' or 'later,' which is sufficient only unto its own moment, which is valid only as past, or as future, or as present in relation to past or future, is for him nonessential and is not incorporated into his world" (29). For Dostoevsky's characters, then, the past is only recalled if it continues to be part of their current worldview, if the past is "that which is still experienced by them as the present" (29). of the mythologized past). The allusions to Amazon and martial women immediately work at cross purposes to nation building in another sense too, for, as I have argued in past chapters, referencing Amazons suggests the women's disruptive presence in any understanding of marriage and reproduction as the traditionally female contributions to nation building, the allusions drawing attention to Elizabeth's refusals to conform to these normalized activities. In murdering their original mates and choosing to only keep daughters as viable, valuable members of their women's colony, the Amazon women disrupt and challenge patriarchal frameworks for nation in yet another crucial way. I begin this chapter with a brief history of population shifts in Britain and an explanation of the various early modern understandings of nation, as I establish the popular English identification with an original Brittonic people connected by blood to the Trojans. I position the English as a nation frequently looking backward for recognition, a "nation ... profoundly preoccupied with its own historicity" (McEachern 33), no matter how constructed. I then argue that historiographers who make use of amazonian allusions frequently disable the nationalist qualities of their texts, for, according to popular accounts, Amazon women have the ability to destroy formerly functional, patriarchal communities, murdering their male relatives in order to begin their women's colony, and further weakening remaining societies by rejecting any sons born to them. Having established the differing English and Amazon understandings of nation, I move into an analysis of the heavily mythologized first-century Iceni
In a study on dramatic representations of Boudicca, Wendy C. Nielsen has similarly suggested that portrayals of the Brittonic leader are often disappointing for audiences, because the figure is asked to do too many, often contradictory, things for various dramas, giving the audiences little to hold onto in terms of familiarity: Boudicca has been a character "resisting empire (the Romans) and embodying British expansionism"; while some plays stress the figure's role as a stoic mother defending her children, others focus on her unusual status as a military leader; her actions are either criticized excessively or not enough (595). In short, Nielsen maintains that "Boadicea does not really work as a national icon because she evokes too many contentions for British audiences" (595).
67 Summaries and descriptions of the Amazons' decision to begin their women's colony by murdering their male relatives, as well as their valuation of daughters over sons can be found in several sources, including: Heywood's Exemplary Lives (100-01) and Gynaikeion (220-21); Giovanni Boccaccio's Famous Women (51-3) and Book of Theseus (20-1); Sir John Mandeville's Book of John Mandeville (49); Page duBois's "Centaurs and Amazons" (34); and Donald J. Sobol's The Amazons of Greek Mythology (34-5). 175 tribal leader Boudicca and her opposition to Roman rule in Britain. Boudicca becomes a popular, if complex allusive epithet for Elizabeth, and, despite her ultimate military failures, she symbolizes a sense of British nationalism and armed resistance to incursion, both of obvious relevance to representations of the Tudor queen, particularly after the Spanish Armada (even if a larger sense of a Brittonic or British nation had yet to be developed when Boudicca led her revolt).
/TO I argue that while literary treatments such as Thomas Hey wood's Exemplary Lives (1640) and John Fletcher's Bonduca (c. 1612) do at times support Jodi Mikalachki's contention that early modern historians and writers attempt to displace concerns about native Brittonic savagery onto specific female leaders (4, 11, 13), the texts also suggest several negative connections to Elizabeth and an inability to recover or possess an original national purity. In the case of Fletcher's play, female misrule can certainly be noticed, and the text has several misogynistic descriptions of Bonduca's and her daughters' participation in military efforts. I suggest, however, that the drama just as frequently engages in conversations about the permeability of British borders. Apprehensions about the inevitable Romanization of British culture and fractures already noticeable among British tribes in the play likely speak to negative reactions concerning James's conciliatory gestures to Catholic Spain and his attempts to officially unite Scotland with England and Wales. The issue of national purity is of crucial importance to analyzing Boudiccan allusions in treatments of Elizabeth at Tilbury. Indeed, I suggest that depictions of Elizabeth as sexually, spiritually, and nationally pure are called into question once she is conflated with Boudicca's military failure and the Romanization of Brittonic tribes. Elizabeth may claim that her borders, both physical and geographical, remain unbroken ("Armada" 326), but post-Armada
68 More extensive descriptions of the events leading up to Boudicca's revolt and the details pertaining to her army's ultimate military failure can be found in several recent publications: Miranda Aldhouse-Green's Boudica Britannia: Rebel, War-Leader, and Queen (2006), Sharon Macdonald's "Boadicea: Warrior, Mother and Myth" (1987), Jodi Mikalachki's The Legacy of Boadicea: Gender and Nation in Early Modern England (1998), Paul R. Sealey's The Boudican Revolt against Rome (2004), Graham Webster's Boudica: The British Revolt against Rome AD 60/1 (1978), and Carolyn D. Williams's Boudica and Her Stories: Narrative Transformations of a Warrior Queen (2009) are all examples. 176 allusions and more extensive treatments of Boudicca suggest a larger cultural anxiety, a fear that English origins rest not on ethnic purity and valour but on submission and miscegenation through a series of military losses. Boudicca, like the passionate defence of English origins that she signals in early modern nationalist texts (and like the allusion as a literary device), is nothing more than "a tissue of quotations" (Barthes, "Death" 149). Elizabethan allusions to Boudicca have no original whole: instead, they—like English national identity—point to multiple sources, some of them less civilized than others; they are accretive, plastic, and compendious. I conclude with analysis of Penthesilea, and I maintain that although depictions of the Amazon woman at Troy are often quite positive, she ultimately also confuses historiographical attempts at nation building. The Amazon leader is frequently included in English texts that celebrate national defence or the expansion of the state through international military activity, as the classical figure is famous for her martial skill and her defence of Troy during the Trojan War. At the same time, Penthesilea's militant adherence to chastity allows her to challenge patriarchal codes, her amazonian lifestyle spurring a continued state of childlessness that highlights her resistance to the naturalized heteronormative progression from maidenhood to marriage and motherhood, a progression that would conventionally be used in the continuation of a people. From the conservative perspective of appropriately gendered nation building, Penthesilea's chastity becomes stagnant rather than productive; it suggests a failure to conform to expected roles rather than a commitment to militancy and personal strength. Connecting Penthesilea and Elizabeth thus has the potential to initiate or add to a fraught discourse on the English queen's refusal to marry, almost from the beginning of her reign, and her avoidance of the succession issue beginning in the 1580s, when her aging made childbirth impossible. Penthesilea's status as an Amazon also highlights her community's practice of subverting and forcibly altering patriarchal structures through the rejection of sons. Furthermore, although Penthesilea is included in texts that encourage English national growth or expansion through military activity 177
overseas, the allusions are questionable, given Penthesilea's death at Troy and the fact that, by the time she is a leader, the Amazon line has entered into a period of steady and final decline following a series of military defeats by various Greek forces (Sobol 61). The Amazon leader's insistent practice of virginal chastity allows her to remain separate from traditionally gendered means of national development in Heywood's fanciful history Troia Britanica (1609), for example. George Peele's A farewell Entituled (1589) implies the imminent decline of both Amazon and Trojan nations, even as he makes use of Penthesilea to push for Elizabethan military efforts aimed at national expansion. Lastly, in describing Elizabeth as Penthesilea in Elizabetha Triumphans (1588), an account of the queen at Tilbury and a larger history of English Protestant resistance to foreign Catholic incursion, James Aske effectively places Elizabeth in a history of women's leadership, but one that has multiple cultural, textual, and political points of origin, thus distancing her from a comprehensibly English narrative of national development. In sum, I suggest that both Boudicca and Penthesilea stand as markers for competing and irreconcilable conditions in early modern texts: the desire for authoritative, subject-defining connections and the reality that origins might be both fragmentary and susceptible to attack when left vulnerable to amazonian leadership. While the allusion might superficially encourage connections between past and present, it can just as easily point the historiographer and the reader to multiple histories, some disparate and some overlapping. Indeed, the historiographical impulse to create or strengthen a totalizing, seamless narrative of national origins and continuation is disabled by the multiplicity of source materials and textual functions to which each woman is attached. National Origins, English and Amazonian The island of Britain's overarching cultures are now identified as English, Scottish, and Welsh, but Britain's earliest society was, at least in theory, more unified. It is this sense of an identifiable, comprehensible national origin that early modern nationalist and encomiastic texts seek to further. Traditional mythologies about the island-Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain (c. 178
1136), for example— maintain that Brutus and his followers landed on the island of Albion, and that he then, after skirmishes with the original inhabitants, settled the land, naming it Britain and his settlers Britons.69 According to popular belief, Brutus split the island into three kingdoms—England, Scotland, and Wales—and after his death his three sons each ruled one, until the Scottish king died, at which point all three kingdoms came under the rule of the English king. The Britons certainly spread throughout the island (particularly south of the Firth of Forth and across to the western coast), and they created a distinct language and culture, but they were weakened by a series of historically verifiable invasions by other groups—Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Scandinavians, and Normans—each of which left substantial effects on the Britons' culture and, as conceptions of nationhood developed over centuries, their sense of self. The Roman presence in England and Wales (which lasted more than three centuries) made it impossible for Britons to escape the imposition of their conquerors' values, and social, political, and religious structures, although the Britons did maintain tribal leaders who governed in cooperation with the Romans, and the Romans had very little influence over the Picts or Caledonians in the north (Snyder 4). When the Romans departed c. 410, the Britons' culture was soon forced to negotiate another wave of invasions, settlements, and cultural shapings by Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, all Germanic tribes that began to drive the Britons out of their traditional tribal domains in England. While some Britons cooperated with or became resigned to cultural amalgamations with the Germanic groups, thus "melt[ing] into the nascent English state," others refused such mixtures (4). The Brittonic resistance to foreign influence in the early Middle Ages can be seen most clearly in the continuation of earlier linguistic and cultural
Certainly Heywood insists on and furthers this legendary origin, simultaneously distancing England from any Catholic history or connections, as he asserts, "The Antiquity of London was helde to bee longe before Rome. For Brute landed here in the yeare of the Lord 2855. In the yeare before Christ 1108. Rome was built long after, in the time that Riuallo ruld in Britain, the yeare after the floud 1554" (Troia 436). One should note that the early modern English were capable of imagining "two Romes, both the corrupt popish Babylon of Foxe's martyrology, a Jezebel to be feared rather than studied, and the great ancient city, whose mighty past and ruinous fall inspired awe" (Woolf 171-72). 179 practices in the northern regions of England, as well as in Wales, Cornwall, and— separate from Britain itself—in Brittany (and at one time in Galicia) (5). By the beginning of the seventh century, England, Scotland, and Wales were well into the process of differentiating themselves as distinct political regions, and the Britons' culture had begun to filter into more geographically, linguistically, and socially distinct groups—the Cumbric, the Welsh, the Cornish, and the Breton, for example. Although several waves of Germanic and Scandinavian groups had been settling in England since early in the fifth century (86-93), the real shift in power came in the ninth century, according to Christopher A. Snyder, when the Scots and Anglo-Saxons both gained important amounts of authority on the island, leaving Brittonic communities separated and isolated (141). By the end of the tenth century, Anglo-Saxon tribes had firmly taken control of England, and their languages, practices, and culture had become dominant, forming the basis of English society. Geoffrey's imaginative history of the island does track some of the earliest of these changes, as his work describes incursions into Britain and military successes by the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons, and Merlin offers a "prophecy" about the Norman Conquest (which had occurred in 1066, seventy years prior to the text's composition). Geoffrey's text, while unreliable as a historically accurate narrative, was a valuable tool in minimizing tensions among Britons, Anglo- Saxons, and Normans, and it greatly furthered the circulation of Welsh Arthurian legends in England. It also later became a "useful prop" for Tudor and Stuart justifications of political legitimacy through rightful inheritance, as these monarchs could gain knowledge about and claim closer ties to original Brittonic inhabitants of the island (MacDougall 7).70 Indeed, the early modern English often relied on Welsh history and leaders for a sense of national history and
70 Roberta Florence Brinkley similarly argues that royalist leanings could usually be connected to a reliance on or interest in Brittonic history and Arthurian legends, while Parliament often insisted that the Arthurian heritage was largely fiction, as was Brutus's founding of the nation that became England. Instead, Parliament would claim Anglo-Saxon origins for the people, often in response to James VI and Fs conviction that the Divine Right of Kings was an appropriate, correct, and necessary doctrine of rule (26-7), for members of Parliament felt that the Germanic customs and laws were more democratic than those put into effect when the Norman William the Conqueror took possession of the island (31). 180 identity, or what Philip Schwyzer terms "British nationalism, the nationalism of the English" (Literature 6), tracing through the Welsh a Brittonic connection to Brutus and the Trojans.71 The sixteenth century certainly saw a burgeoning sense of nationhood develop in England, and Liah Greenfeld argues that this conception of "nation" was entirely new and that it established the modern understanding of the word (6). Nationalism fosters (and is fostered by) a belief that the individual has a place within a larger social group, a group that shares a history and a teleological drive toward narratives of improvement. While Schwyzer cautions against imbuing excessive amounts of nationalist interest in the early modern English culture (Literature 1), instead suggesting that nationalism in England may have often been limited to small groups of people with relatively large amounts of privilege and access to political resources (Literature 8-9), he does argue that in order to develop a sense of national spirit, a nation must absorb ancient practices, tastes, dialects, and languages; the nation must recognize "that 'they' were 'us,'" that their practices shaped ours (Literature 2). The common history claimed by a social group might be nothing more than "[m]yths of origin" (MacDougall 1), but these myths can nonetheless anchor a group, allowing them to place their culture temporally and geographically (1). As Arthur B. Ferguson notes, "Without being able to go back confidently to origins, without finding a vanishing point for their historical perspective, [the English] felt a sense of intellectual insecurity" (101). While they may not have been completely satisfied with national mythologies that they reasonably suspected to be fictional, "the English still needed a beginning," and they were willing to continue looking to older texts in order to secure some sense of
71 Indeed, several Tudor monarchs would tie their political validity to Arthurian lineage. When Henry VII succeeded in 1485, having united the Houses of Lancaster and York to create the House of Tudor, he was popularly viewed as initiating an age of unification and political renewal. That he named his first son Arthur and had his christening at Winchester, an important site for Arthurian nostalgia, was no accident, according to Hugh A. MacDougall (15-16). Henry VIII undertook the project of repairing and improving Arthur's Round Table housed at Winchester (Heninger 378), while James VI was regarded by Arthurians as a particularly important future ruler of England because he could claim Brutus's lineage through both his maternal and paternal families (MacDougall 20-1). 181 historical foundation (101). "Myths of origin" (MacDougall 1) can imbue a social group with historical relevance, connecting them to legendary events and leaders, and they can establish the rationales for shared ideologies and worldviews that connect members of a social group in the present, thus "[urging] connections between past and present, between members of a group, and between people and state" (McEachern 5). This social group thus becomes a "people," and, as Greenfeld suggests, the "people" can be "seen as the bearer of sovereignty, the central object of loyalty, and the basis of collective solidarity" (3). This understanding of nation as a people essentially erases important social distinctions—"status, class, locality, and in some cases even ethnicity"—or treats them as only minor differences in what is otherwise a "fundamentally homogenous" community (3). A nation shares a familiar understanding of future direction, and the people identify and nurture a common identity, even if these visions and characteristics exist only in theory. The nation becomes special, its history and its conception of the future setting it apart from other nations, and, as Greenfeld maintains, all members of the nation can rightfully claim "its superior, elite quality" (7; see also Howard 142). Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England was a "nation ... profoundly preoccupied with its own historicity" (McEachern 33), even if its use of history involved the silent absorption of multiple cultures' traits and languages, and even if its imagined past focused on Trojan and Brittonic roots (rarely acknowledging what were considered to be the nation's cruder Anglo-Saxon origins). While early-sixteenth-century England generally conceptualized a "nation" as "race, or kind—the kith and kin of a common nativity, or birth," Tudor England gradually saw a change in understandings of the word (1). Indeed, Claire McEachern suggests that with each successive Tudor monarch, nation "comes to denote that principle of political self-determination belonging to a people linked (if in nothing else) by a common government" (1). The English certainly conceived of themselves as a political nation by the beginning of the seventeenth century; this "community of free and equal individuals" suggested that, at least in 182 theory, all members of the nation "had equal right to ... political participation, active membership in one's political community, or what we now understand as citizenship" (Greenfeld 30). Although the monarchy had not yet lost its primacy in sixteenth-century English conceptions of nation, monarchs were more than aware of the need for public support (50; see also Howard 142), a point that does not necessitate viewing early modern England as at all democratic or culturally unified in any kind of practical way. Indeed, McEachern suggests that the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English nation "is a performative ideal of social unity founded in the ideological affiliation of crown, church, and land, imagined not in opposition to state power, but rather as a projection of the state's own ideality" (5). In short, the form of the early modern English nation hangs in a delicate balance, relying variously on conceptions of cultural or ethnic commonality (a composite of originally distinct peoples who share a Trojan and Brittonic heritage that is somehow set apart from other nations), ethnic differentiation and superiority through conquest (a series of invading cultures each establishing new social codes), and understandings of "the principle of political self-determination. It holds no particular form, but its form is, nonetheless, particular," as McEachern posits (12).72 The relative strength of these differing conceptions of nation quickly falls apart, however, if national origins are feared to be monstrously female and predicated on a civilizing miscegenation following an initial military defeat by the Romans, as in the histories of Boudicca's leadership, or, perhaps worse, if—as in the case of Boudicca as well—origins can never be recovered in any kind of pure form, or if—as in the case of Penthesilea's and other Amazon women's wilful rejection of and antagonism towards conventional social structures—national origins and growth can be completely destroyed at the hands of women operating outside of traditionally masculinized systems of governance. While monstrously female, fractured, or porous origins can at least be reformed, even if tenuously
In addition, Philip Schwyzer notes that early modern constructions of England and the English historical identity were often developed as part of a "complex and often bitter negotiation among the nations of the Atlantic archipelago (England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales)" (Literature 3). 183 and anxiously, Amazon women will repeatedly threaten to break apart the entire concept of masculinized nation, showing it to be a constructed system that is actually quite vulnerable to external pressures. Amazon women do not simply complicate national growth or development, as they have the capacity to wilfully end formerly operational, patriarchal, heteronormative societies. Indeed, Amazon mythology has a dark, disruptive connection to national origins, for a prevalent story about the first Amazon community details the growth of a women's nation at the expense of a more traditional social structure. Heywood repeats common lore about the Amazons, namely that they were originally Scythian women who began to defend their territories when their warrior husbands were killed by a hostile tribe {Exemplary Lives 100; Heywood, Gynaikeion 220).73 The Scythian women became so adept at managing their own defences, "and finding the sweetnesse of liberty, and soveraignty [sic] added," they killed the remaining Scythian tribesmen and began a women's colony (Exemplary Lives 100; see also Heywood, Gynaikeion 220). Giovanni Boccaccio's earlier account is even more terrifying, for in his narrative the women do not decide to kill their remaining male relatives after several die in battle and the women learn to take on more responsibilities. Rather, he maintains that a group of "wild and ruthless women in Scythia, to whom it probably seemed intolerable that their husbands should lord ... over them," spontaneously decided to separate from their male relatives, "and in a haughty proclamation announced that they would not be kept in subjection, but that they wanted to govern themselves" (Theseus 20). The women do not simply abandon their tribesmen. Rather, each woman murders her own male relatives "with her own weapon, leaving them in the icy embrace of death as the stone cold victims of her spite" (Theseus 21). Boccaccio's Amazons do not gradually assume more (and ultimately enjoyable) autonomy when their husbands' absences (then deaths)
73 Boccaccio offers a slight variation in Famous Women, as he argues that the women were Cyrian. When the Cyrian community was attacked by Scythians, many of the Cyrian men died and the women took up arms, soon deciding to kill the remaining Cyrian men and continue in their military campaigns (Famous 51-3). Boccaccio's earlier Book of Theseus relies on the traditional connection between Amazons and Scythians, however (Theseus 20). make such activity somewhat exigent; rather, the women embody Herodotus description of Amazons as "Oeorpata, the equivalent of mankillers, oeor being the Scythian word for 'man', andpata for 'kill'" (306-07). Boccaccio's narrative presents a violent group of women whose decisions are impulsive, deadly, and predicated only by a desire for less restrictive lives.74 Most sources on the Amazons note that the women occasionally relied on neighbouring tribes for reproductive needs; the martial figures otherwise eschewed contact with men and were only interested in raising daughters born to them. Hey wood argues that any sons would be strangled (Exemplary Lives 100- 01; Hey wood, Gynaikeion 221; see also Boccaccio, Famous 53), although other sources allow for the possibility that the women might cripple the boys and keep them as servants, or send them to live with their fathers (duBois 34; Sobol 34-5; Mandeville 49). Regardless, Amazon women immediately signal a violent disorder for stories of masculinized or civilized national origin or nation building, even as Penthesilea is described as bringing a thousand women to support Priam in the Trojan War. Additionally, their connection to motherhood is complicated by their rejection of heteronormative social structures like marriage and their preference for daughters over sons. In refusing to nurture their male offspring, Amazons are deemed to be "devoid of socially significant maternity" (Macdonald, "Drawing" 13). Perhaps more importantly, in rejecting, crippling, or murdering their sons, Amazon women disable the ease with which patriarchy reproduces itself. They break apart any sense of the masculinized nation's invulnerability or that nation's
74 While Boccaccio's Book of Theseus initially presents a far more militant, directed Hippolyta, female power and rebelliousness are quickly contained, as the Greeks gain the upper hand in their battle with the Amazons and Hippolyta eventually advises her women to surrender, suggesting that "[i]t will not be a disgrace for us to be conquered by such an excellent man" (Theseus 43). The court romance genre takes over as Hippolyta agrees to marry Theseus as part of her negotiations in defeat, the other Amazons also giving up arms and regaining their modesty and interest in traditionally patriarchal marriages (Theseus 44-6). Young Emilia, Hippolyta's sister, becomes the object of affection for Arcites and Palaemon, and the romantic triangle takes up the bulk of The Book of Theseus.
75 Boccaccio maintains that any men who approached Hippolyta's Amazon territory borders were to be killed if they did not leave immediately (Theseus 21), while Heywood claims that Penthesilea created a law for her court, one that stipulated that any man who stayed at court for more than three days "should sure be gelt" (Troia 367). uncomplicated use of sexual reproduction for the purposes of long-term growth and improvement. Boudicca Beginning in earnest in the decades following the Spanish Armada and continuing into the twenty-first century, Boudicca has been feted as a symbol of a strong, proud Brittonic heritage and of resistance to foreign incursion. Several relatively extensive descriptions of the leader are offered in Elizabethan and Stuart chronicles, histories, and catalogues—texts published in England and Scotland—and Boudicca is also occasionally used as an allusion in encomiastic representations of Elizabeth, particularly in the half century following the Armada.76 Indeed, Julie Crawford declares Boudicca "the ultimate English female worthy" in the catalogue tradition, and "the prototypical Amazonian female worthy and thus the most appropriate and deployable allegorical representation of Queen Elizabeth" (359). Although few details about her life are known definitively, a mythologized biography for the leader was well established by authors working from Tacitus and Dio Cassius, her resistance to the Romans often romanticized in early modern texts.
These early modern summaries of Boudicca's confrontations with Roman forces were written in both England and Scotland. Notable publications include Polydore Vergil's English History (c. 1512-13), Hector Boece's Chronicles of Scotland (1531), Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), William Camden's Brittania, John Fletcher's play Bonduca (1611-14), Heywood's Exemplary Lives (1640), and John Milton's The History of Britain (1670). Later creative works include Richard Glover's Boadicia (1753) and William Cowper's "Boadicia: An Ode" (1780). The authors generally follow some combination of the earliest historiographical work on the leader—Tacitus' Annates and Dio Cassius' Roman ffistory--although some historians follow their source material more closely than others. Tacitus focuses on the personalized attacks against the Iceni leader and her children in his presentation of her impetus to go to war, while Dio removes all mention of the Romans raping Boudicca's daughters. He instead focuses on the Iceni leader as a figure who inspires dread in the feminized Roman forces. Both Tacitus and Dio spend time describing Boudicca's speech to her troops before battle, and the language is similar across these original source texts. Vergil's summary of the leader's life closely mirrors descriptions by Tacitus, while Boece offers a fairly imaginative rendition of the Iceni's story. He places "Voada" in the Scottish royal family, and her husband actually sends her to prison in order to carry on an affair with a Roman woman. After the husband's death, Voada and her daughters are assaulted by Roman forces, and Voada insists on leading a separate army of five thousand women who have been shamed by Roman soldiers, while her brother Corbreid organizes the male troops (113). Holinshed and Camden both make more traditional use of Tacitus and Dio, while Milton's presentation of the queen is "almost hysterically hostile," according to Williams (Boudica 44), as is Glover's rendition. Cowper's is a far more celebratory piece. 186
In The Exemplary Lives and Memorable Acts, for example, Hey wood praises Boudicca, "Bunduca" in this case, as "this British Queen, whose masculine spirit / Shall to all future, glorious fame inherit," and he characterizes her ultimate defeat as the product of "adverse fate" rather than weakness in her leadership or female nature (Exemplary Lives 68). Bunduca's "masculine spirit" is the quality that she shares with Elizabeth, the last woman profiled in the text and the leader who possesses all of the individual virtues held by the selected women (Exemplary 68, 185). As I shall discuss, however, Hey wood's catalogue treatment of the Iceni leader must also acknowledge a history of barbaric violence, military failure, and lack of national purity, making a connection between Bunduca and Elizabeth somewhat questionable, for the reader must put aside these negative associations in order for the encomiastic impulse to operate effectively. Indeed, to recognize and facilitate the intended praise for Elizabeth, the reader must see Bunduca only as a brave military leader who worked to repel foreign invaders and who defiantly stood for Brittonic purity (national, cultural, and sexual). The heavily mythologized first-century woman was, according to historical accounts, the widow of Prasutagus, an Iceni tribal leader who left control of his territories with his wife while his daughters were minors. Boudicca's husband died hoping that Nero would grant them the freedom to control their own territories, but the Roman emperor instead took more than his lawful share of the bequeathed land and riches, and he oversaw a massive level of violence carried out by Roman forces. Boudicca was publically whipped and her daughters raped by Roman soldiers, leaving the woman "full of most just grief and wrath, and all the tempestuous passions which embased nobility, or violated nature can suggest" (Exemplary Lives 72; see also Tacitus 14.31). It is important to also consider the rape and flogging as symbolic of the injuries committed against the Britons as a whole, the injuries to the nation becoming more poignant because they are inscribed on female bodies. In response to the multiple Roman aggressions, Boudicca raised an army of Britons. According to Heywood, the insurrection found support for many reasons: the Britons resented the looting and violence carried out by Nero's soldiers, and they disagreed with the Roman 187
"Senecales intolerable usuries"; they also saw the tribal leader's claims for leadership as a good opportunity to rise up; lastly, the Iceni woman began to gather forces and plan attacks at a time when Suetonius Paulinus, Nero's military supervisor in Briton, was distracted and called away on other matters (Exemplary Lives 73). The armed response of Boudicca and her troops is notorious for its violence (and its brutality was met with harsh retribution from the Romans after the unsuccessful rebellion was quelled). Indeed, according to textual accounts (which are not always completely or even remotely reliable), when her forces took control of Virulum and realized that the local residents had cooperated with the Romans and had willingly allowed themselves to be a part of the empire, the Britons laying siege had no mercy, destroying Briton and Roman alike "[w]here sword and fire ... devoured what rape and robber had left" (Exemplary Lives 82- 3). Bunduca and her troops are described as scourges for the dishonourable, essentially, as meting out punishments to the Romans and the Britons who would go against the continued vitality of the Brittonic nation. Their attacks on the Roman strongholds (and towns supportive of the occupiers) are described in terms that are unequivocally savage and excessively violent. Heywood claims to not criticize the carnage left by Bunduca and her forces, despite the fact that "the wild uplandish crew of her irregular troopes, spared nothinge, quicke or dead: thirst of revenge in her, and rapine in them, banisht all humanity" (Exemplary Lives 82). Indeed, Heywood follows Dio (62.94-5) in summarizing the Britons' actions: the forces captured the women of Virulum, "stript them naked, then cut of [sic] their paps or dugges, and stitcht them to their mouthes, to make them seeme feeding, and after put their bodyes upon stakes" (Exemplary Lives 83). The army similarly tortured the men of the town, disembowelling them, impaling them with fiery spears, or scalding them to 77 death with boiling oil or water (Exemplary Lives 83).
Heywood's account is also generally in line with Tacitus' Annals, as the latter posits that, in the attacks, Boudicca's army "did not take captives, or sell them, or indulge in any other wartime trafficking; rather, they hastily resorted to slaughter, the gallows, burning, and crucifixion, 188
While his only admitted point of contention with the Britons' behaviour seems to be that, in pursuing their violent retributions, they lost time and allowed the Roman forces to plan a response to the attacks (Exemplary Lives 82), Heywood's choice of descriptions would seem to support Mikalachki's contention that in early modern texts the Britons are generally (if sometimes anxiously) characterized as savage and ultimately benefiting from Roman influence, even as authors simultaneously deflect their anxieties about Brittonic barbarity by focusing on the misrule and violence of early queens (12-13). Although Hey wood first claims that Bunduca's defeat was the workings of "adverse fate" (Exemplary Lives 68), phrasing that limits the leader's culpability, he later refers to the army as "misgoverned" (Exemplary Lives 83). This later description highlights Bunduca's inexperience as a military leader, it may or may not point to her sex as a root cause for her army's ultimate failure, and it creates questionable ties to Elizabeth, the woman who is celebrated as possessing Bunduca's "masculine spirit" and all other positive virtues profiled in the catalogue (Exemplary Lives 68, 185). Elizabeth apparently does not possess the same propensity for mismanagement in times of military confrontation. Certainly Hey wood presents Elizabeth's leadership at Tilbury as the apex of her reign, as do many other authors; she is described as "appearing in the head of her Troopes, and incouraging her Souldiers, habited like an Amazonian Queene" (Exemplary Lives 211), and the English success at Tilbury would seem to point to her historical dissimilarity from Boudicca and the Brittonic forces. Heywood's reader is asked then to separate Bunduca's military failure, rejection of traditionally feminine virtues, and brutal treatment of enemies from his or her understanding of Elizabeth, even as he or she is asked to connect the women in
accepting that they would face punishment, but meanwhile taking revenge for it ahead of time" (14.33).
78 Boudicca's sex was often the focus of historiographical summaries of the unsuccessful Britonnic revolt, so Heywood would hardly be alone in implying connections among female rule, violent excess, and military failure, but the connections in this particular text would be puzzling, given that the text as a whole aims to praise Elizabeth's positive qualities (Exemplary Lives 185) and argue for women's equality to men by finding occasional examples of women who "exceed their usual stations in life" (Exemplary Lives 2). other ways. Bunduca's singularity (and irregular performance of gender) is perhaps most apparent in Hey wood's description of her leadership as the Britons sack various towns and direct their aggression towards civilian women and men (rather than simply soldiers in combat). The violence aimed at women's reproductive organs and sites of maternity (the Roman sexual assaults against Boudicca's daughters and the Britons' retributive removal of breasts at Virulum, along with the monstrous performance of nursing as the dead women's breasts are attached to their own mouths) is palpable in Hey wood's account of the rebellion, just as it is in other renditions, including Fletcher's play Bonduca, likely first performed between 1611 and 1614, although, based on textual points, I would suggest an initial production after the November 1612 death of James's son Prince Henry.79 Heywood's text is at least nominally a celebration of Elizabeth and the historical, literary, and mythological women who share her attributes, but Fletcher's work is far more ambivalent in its presentation of military leadership and in its questionable celebration of a residual Brittonic cultural purity that can be found (or not) in the Jacobean English population. Fletcher's play is certainly misogynistic at points,80 and it does focus
William W. Appleton dates Bonduca as likely first performed between 1609 and 1611, although he is willing to suppose that the play premiered as late as 1613 or 1614 (55), while Andrew Hickman cautiously suggests a first staging between 1611 and 1614 (143), and Goran Stanivukovic places the text's production between 1609 and 1614 (41). The bond between the aging military leader Caratack and his young nephew Hengo is one of the central and most well developed relationships in the play. Hengo's death is presented as tragic, and it clearly signals the end of the Britons' hope for further resistance against the Romans. Given the propagandistic early modern connections made between Prince Henry and the future of Protestantism in England, Hengo's valiant death may very well serve as loose allegory for Henry's death in 1612, a suggestion also made by Appleton (56) and Hickman (143).
80 Bonduca's misogyny is hardly unique when compared to other works in Fletcher's corpus, for it is present in several of Fletcher's plays, including his collaborative works with Francis Beaumont. The gendered response to rape in Bonduca becomes one of the key vehicles for expressing misogyny, for few men show any real regard or sympathy for the sexual assaults of Bonduca's daughters, and the young women's participation in capturing Roman soldiers is often dismissed. In her sensitive reading of the play's different conceptions of war for men and women, Alison Calder demonstrates that Fletcher's focus on the Roman sexual threat for Bonduca and her offspring highlights the gendered treatments of war in the play and shows how women are blocked from participation in traditional military activity (211). Calder suggests that "[f]or the women in the play, rape eventually becomes the primary issue, one that cannot be transcended. The masculine construction of honor is meaningless: bound to permeable bodies, the women cannot afford to deal in abstractions" (217). Indeed, sexual assault casts a pall over the play: Bonduca's daughters have already experienced it prior to the drama's unfolding, and they reference their 190 on Bonduca's weakness as a female military leader, but I argue that, just as importantly, his work reflects larger cultural anxieties about England's relationship to Catholic Spain, and the possibility of the official union of England, Scotland, and Wales under James. Gender and gender subversion become decoys that allow Fletcher to (in an act of simplistic nostalgia) distinguish Elizabethan policies from Jacobean, simultaneously revealing a concern that an original national purity can never be recovered. In his presentation of Bonduca and her multiple attempts to secure her nation's survival and its cultural integrity, Fletcher looks backward to Elizabeth's feted defiance of the Spanish forces during the Armada, but he also suggests that Caratach has valorized the Roman military system and codes of honour to such a degree that he can no longer appropriately or adequately defend the Britons in the face of foreign incursion. If the experienced Brittonic military leader functions as a loose representation of James, Caratach's actions and values open up a critique both of James's interest in improving relations with Spain, including his support for the Spanish Match during the 1610s, and his attempts to officially unite the kingdoms of England and Scotland. This unification would ideally create shared legal, governmental, monarchical, and religious systems in the regions, possibilities that made many in England and Scotland apprehensive. International borders are not the only ones under attack in the drama, however, as several internal divisions among the Britons become quite apparent. Indeed, Fletcher's play works against the traditional understanding of nation as a people united by common origins and teleological narratives of nation building— as these principles are outlined by Hugh A. MacDougall (1), Ferguson (101-02), McEachern (5), and Greenfeld (3, 7)—for several members of the Britons' army, Bonduca included, demonstrate that the Britons are indeed savages who face internal strife as often as they encounter the threat of foreign cultural contamination. Perhaps worse, the play suggests that the Britons are
rapes when they pray before participating in war and before committing suicide (Fletcher 3.1.27- 36, 4.4.110-12), just as they sexualize their language when they capture and plan to torture Roman soldiers (3.5.26-30,41). 191 indistinguishable from their invaders and that Roman occupation will not lead to the improvement of the nation. Bonduca tracks the history of the Iceni leader during her brief rise and fall as a military force, and Fletcher repeatedly connects Bonduca's sex to the mismanagement of her army and her nation's eventual collapse, a move that makes it easy to assume that gender will be the primary (perhaps the only) problematic in the play. I shall argue, however, that issues related to cultural purity and national integrity loom just as large in the work. The opening scene certainly conflates military defeat with femininity or effeminacy, and it highlights misogynistic reactions to a woman leading an army. The action begins as Bonduca's forces celebrate their recent victories over the Romans, and Bonduca immediately gives pejorative descriptions of the Roman soldiers as coddled and feminized, scoffing, BONDUCA. Their mothers got 'em sleeping, pleasure nurs't 'em, Their bodies sweat with sweet oils, loves allurements, Not lustie Arms. Dare they send these to seek us, These Romane Girls? (1.1.7-11) The Romans' effeminate activities have led to an internalization of delicacy, for, according to the victorious Bonduca, "Their bodies" actually excrete refined "sweet oils" (1.1.9). Sweat, a mark of physical exertion and the proof of prowess, becomes a signal in Bonduca's mind for weakness, for the Romans' inability to succeed in foreign surroundings and for a lack of comportment. Bonduca highlights the uniqueness of her victory, marvelling, "a woman, / A woman beat 'em, Nennius; a weak woman, / A woman beat these Romanes" (1.1.15-17): the word "woman" (repeated four times over three lines) reminds the reader of Bonduca's sex and the culturally constructed gender conventions that she often ignores as a military leader. The Britons' general, Caratach,81 quickly undercuts her achievement and scolds her for boasting, retorting, "So it seems. / A man would shame to talk so" (1.1.17-18). In minimizing the Iceni queen's victory,
81 Caratach is presented as Bonduca's cousin in this play, although historically Caratacus was an unrelated leader who instigated a separate rebellion in the decade prior to Boudicca's 60/61 CE revolt. 192
Caratach privileges a misogynistic construction of women as haughty and chatty, and his remark draws attention to Bonduca's lack of familiarity with etiquette following success in a military confrontation. Alison Calder notes that Caratach feels obligated to "school her" and guide Bonduca towards a more traditionally masculine leadership stance (212). Caratach reminds her that while the Romans fled this particular battle, the Britons have done likewise in previous encounters: "[He has] seen these Britains, that [Bonduca] magnifie[s], / Run as they would have out-run time, and roaring / Basely for mercy, roaring" (Fletcher 1.1.91-3). He insists that all three military leaders—Bonduca, Nennius, and he—have joined their soldiers in avoiding confrontations in the past, their forces retreating "Like boading Owls, creeping] into tods of Ivie, / And hoot[ing] their fears to one another nightly" (1.1.104-05), more timorous than "a virgin [running] from the high sett ravisher" (1.1.87). Dismissing the possibility of cultural difference as it pertains to cowardice, the general implies that the Britons are not actually distinct from their invaders, a condition that would work in Caratach's favour, because he frequently identifies with a larger fraternal code of military honour and more often than not believes that the Romans make use of that code. Caratach's comment also immediately calls into question the sense of national integrity and distinction upon which so many early modern historiographies rely, however, suggesting instead that Britons and Romans are equally capable of cowardice and that both are susceptible to defeat. Not surprisingly, Caratach frequently isolates the women's sex as he censures them for behaving dishonourably and as he lambastes Bonduca for her weak leadership following the Britons' eventual defeat, actions that certainly support a reading of the play as primarily a critique of gender and female misrule. When Bonduca and Nennius catch the Roman Judas and four other soldiers in the region of the Britons' camp, both Britons feel justified in torturing and then hanging the men, for the starving Romans had been in the process of stealing the Britons' food (2.3.1-2, 16). Bonduca's daughters look forward to torturing the men, and the younger of the two, Bonvica—finally in a position of power 193
-confronts members of the nation that assaulted her, asking, "Sirha, What think you of a wench now?" (2.3.18) The Britons' revenge is thwarted by Caratach, who comes upon the girls and Nennius. He chides them for planning to harm enemies who have been captured outside of a formal military confrontation (and for not taking the honourable route of a fair fight on the battlefield) (2.3.40-50). Caratach goes further still as he insists on feeding the Roman captives, asking only that they repay the favour by fighting well in their next altercation with the Britons. In doing so, Caratach feels that he is supporting a larger fraternal order among male soldiers (2.3.51-2, 93-5). Caratach will once again circumvent the daughters' apparently dishonourable attempts to torture the Romans, and in this second encounter the general's propensity for misogyny is clearly displayed. Bonvica and her sister concoct a plan to lure Junius and other Roman soldiers into captivity (3.2.9-35), and the soldiers soon fall for the trap (3.5.26-30). The sisters again deviate from acceptably feminine behaviour as they eagerly await torturing the Romans, sexualizing the violence as they imagine using "[their] arrows points" to "prick their answers" to the Romans' amatory advances (3.5.41), a fitting reverie, given the sisters' previous injuries at the hands of Roman soldiers. Caratach discovers the sisters and their prisoners, and he balks at the knowledge that the Romans were taken by guile rather than by skill in battle (3.5.62-8). He hurls abuse at the sisters, dismissing the possibility of "A womans wisdome in [the Britons'] triumphs" and crying, "Out ye sluts, ye follies; from our swords / Filch our revenges basely?" (3.5.66, 66-7). When Bonvica and her sister point out that they captured the men to avenge their rapes, Caratach blames them for the assaults, going so far as to advise them that "[they] should have kept [their] legs close[d]" if they wanted to avoid the attacks (3.5.71). While some critics have followed Mikalachki to varying degrees and argued that the play often sets up a gendered dynamic that hinges on notions of femininity as irrational, emotional, adulterated, and constantly under attack, simultaneously relying on representations of masculinity as strategic, logical, honourable, and unified, I would suggest that Bonduca just as frequently 194 challenges these gendered conventions and places male characters in morally or logically compromised positions.82 Indeed, the Roman and the Brittonic men are frequently divided, and the internal quarrels lead the reader or viewer away from a simplistic understanding of nation as originally whole or unified. The Romans often break rank and needlessly question or impudently disobey the orders of their superiors, while Caratach, the seasoned military general so fixated on appropriate behaviour and adequate displays of honour, frequently criticizes the equally experienced military commander Nennius. Furthermore, Fletcher implicitly critiques Caratach's admiration of Roman behaviour far more than he explicitly praises the general's attachment to the Britons or the survival of their nation. Gendered leadership cannot simply or solely be the play's main concern. The play may indeed treat Bonduca as possessing a kind of savage national identity that will be subdued by the Roman invaders, but she is hardly the only character in the play to resort to excessively violent behaviour, nor is she the only one to fail to strategize effectively. Furthermore, Roman men are just as likely as the Brittonic women to be duplicitous, querulous, and emotional (all traits that are normally attributed to female weakness). To focus on the violence of Bonduca and her troops during the uprising is also to neglect or to sidestep the Roman violence that precipitated the revolt and the dishonourable conduct of several Romans in the course of the play. This point raises the possibility that while Bonduca and her troops may be conquered, Brittonic identity will not be supplanted with anything better. Caratach blindly attaches himself to an understanding of Roman honour that simply does not exist, for the behaviour of the invaders often is indistinguishable from that of the apparently savage Britons. Ronald J. Boling characterizes Fletcher's Caratach as "a loner disdaining human relationships and indeed humans," and he argues that throughout the play the military leader "remains a monologist... listening to no one, learning nothing" (393). Indeed, when Caratach—who in Mikalachki's reading would likely represent a "tradition of native masculine civility" (13)~asserts his
82 Calder, Sandra Clarke, Stanivukovic, and Williams ('"This frantic woman'") have each contributed to this and similar readings of gender in the play, while Ronald J. Boling, Julie Crawford, and Hickman have individually offered productive responses to this type of analysis. 195 authority and forces an action (usually defying his leader, Bonduca, in the process), he often pursues a course that leads to the detriment of the Britons, thus "fail[ing] at the job he accuses Bonduca of being incapable of doing" (J. Crawford 374). When Bonduca orders her troops to hang the captured Judas and his four comrades, for example (a course of action supported by Nennius, incidentally), Caratach later insists that they be freed (Fletcher 2.3.1-2,40-50). Not only does he force Bonduca's daughters and Nennius to release the men, he orders the men to eat the Britons' victuals, for he is convinced that a military code of honour would dictate such behaviour (2.3.51-2, 93-5). Caratach's mistake here is tragic in its proportions, for the name "Judas" immediately signals the Roman's propensity for dishonesty and betrayal, as does Fletcher's description of him as red-bearded (2.3.126), while his small company of Roman soldiers creates a clear reference to the four who carried out Jesus' crucifixion (Boling 400). Fletcher essentially places Caratach in the position of defying his queen in order to feed, celebrate with, and ultimately free figures whom the audience would recognize as being Christ's murderers (400), and, by giving away substantial amounts of the Britons' dwindling food supplies, he actually limits his own army's future efficacy. The audience can be certain that Judas will not suddenly disavow his past perfidies and begin to practice the (likely fictional) Roman system of honour to which Caratach so enthusiastically subscribes. In fact, Judas and his friends go on to kill the person who means the most to Caratach: they will set a deadly trap for a starving Hengo, luring him into an open space by leaving food and then attacking him with arrows when he accepts the bait, all of this while the boy is under Caratach's supervision (Fletcher 5.3.99-159). In many ways, the most interesting and most developed antagonism in the play is not between the Britons and the Romans, but one that pits Caratach against his fellow Britons, Bonduca, her daughters, and Nennius. Nennius, out of place historically, as he led revolts against Julius Caesar more than a century before Boudicca's rebellion (and Caratacus's resistance a decade prior to Boudicca's), stands with Bonduca in Fletcher's play as the spirit of Brittonic identity and resistance. He is a military figure who always supports Bonduca's decisions, and 196 he follows her final directive that all remaining leaders commit suicide after their failure to fend off the Roman forces, even taking the traditionally heroic measure of falling on his sword (4.4.80-1). Indeed, while Bonduca's monstrously female nature is noted by Brittonic and Roman leaders alike, particularly once the Britons suffer a series of defeats and she orders a mass suicide rather than submit to Roman rule, Nennius's determination to die rather than allow the Britons' fortress to fall into Roman hands is not criticized in the text: he is viewed as "[n]either female nor hysterical" for his decision to follow Bonduca's orders in battle and later to commit suicide (Boling 396). Fletcher suggests that a Brittonic national purity is lost when Bonduca, inexperienced in leading troops in battle, finds her forces defeated at the hands of the Romans, and when Hengo dies in a separate attack. Her awareness of foreign rule and cultural miscegenation as very real certainties compel Bonduca to commit suicide and to ensure that her family and closest advisors follow suit before she takes her poison. The Britons' mass suicide, conducted as a horrified group of Romans looks on and the Roman general Swetonius pleads with the queen to reconsider her decision (Fletcher 4.4.40-112), putatively ensures their cultural purity in death, but this purity has been disputed throughout the play, as Romans and Britons have often behaved in ways that are identical. Brittonic purity will almost immediately be called into question once more, for Caratach will soon surrender to the Roman forces, whom he admired so greatly throughout the play. Importantly, the Romans are hardly unified themselves, for the Roman forces are introduced as working in cooperation with other invaders and as fostering connections to other nations that would also be threats to the Britons. Indeed, Bonduca's first reference to the Romans includes her haughty dismissal of the force's "big-bon'd Germans, on whose Pikes / The honour of their actions sit in triumph" (1.1.13-14), while the Roman Petillius refers to his general's "new wine, new come over" from the continent, perhaps from France since other supplies likely arrive from the same region (1.2.47, 163-64). The Roman Judas decries his troops' rations of "French Beans, where the fruits / Are ripen'd like the people, in old tubs" (1.2.79-80), and Swetonius promises Petillius 197 that better food will soon be shipped from a port within one or two days' distance, ordering him to placate the starving troops "a day or two: provision / Waits but the winde to reach us" (1.2.163-64). Food that close at hand would have to sail from France, as a shipment could not begin in Italy and reach Britain in one or two days. Cultural miscegenation is inevitable in this play, and this determinative position is reinforced in several instances by characters drawing attention to internal divisions within their own nations. The overall anxiety about this lack of purity and unification is actually made worse by slippage in the play implying that the Britons may have never had their elusive austere origins, that the Romans may be eerily similar to them in temperament and capacity for dishonourable behaviour, and that military defeat and Roman occupation will not actually lead the nation towards improvement. The Brittonic and Roman interactions, both within and between camps, essentially make impossible any standard narrative of a masculinized, honourable, culturally pure Roman force civilizing the feminized, savage, compromised Britons. Any nationalistic effort to retain or claim an original whole that survives past the Roman occupation is futile, for this cultural integrity never existed, nor was it replaced by any simplistically unified and civilizing presence. Indeed, Bonduca's place in the play draws attention to just how fictional theories of nation can be, to the ways in which "nation" is heavily constructed as sharing a common history and teleological movement for the future, and to the ways in which fictions of nationhood can attempt to erase important social markers-gender, economic status, and ethnic distinctions, for example (see McEachern 3). Both Bonduca and Caratach focus on the Roman incursion as an irreparable harm to the Britons' identity, but this initial presentation of Brittonic integrity and resistance will soon be tested. Caratach urges Bonduca to consider the relentless determination of the invading forces and the Britons' capacity for cowardice (Fletcher 1.1.85-105), but he also vows to kill himself before the Romans can make him a subject or begin to interbreed, claiming, CARATACH. That hardy Romane That hopes to graft himself into my stock, 198
Must first begin his kindred under ground, And be alli'd in ashes. (1.1.171-74) Caratach discusses the Roman threat as if it is relatively new; the danger to the Britons' national identity is thus presented as graver and more immediate. Similarly, the military leader's vow to die before mixing his "stock" with a Roman "graft" (1.1.172)~to only "be alli'd" if he is "in ashes" (1.1.174)-implies that the Britons have not yet had substantial cultural, personal, or sexual interaction with the fairly recent invaders, that the nations each retain a kind of purity. In reality, however, research suggests strongly that the Romans and the Britons had been affecting each other for decades prior to the Roman invasion of the island in 43 CE (Aldhouse-Green 1-2), and the Romans certainly made an initial reconnaissance of the island under Julius Caesar's leadership in 150 BCE. This exploratory activity led to Nennius' resistance towards Roman incursions into Britain (and it was certainly known to an early modern audience). In fact, Boudicca's husband, Prasutagus, likely possessed Roman citizenship, a point that can perhaps be supported by looking to the leader's decision to leave a political will, which left his territory to his daughters and to Nero as co-heirs, for a written will was hardly a Brittonic convention (70). If Prasutagus did have Roman citizenship, then Boudicca also did as his wife (70), a possibility that complicates the mythology of cultural purity and resistance that has been built up for the Britons, and for Boudicca in particular. Caratach's resistance to the Roman invasion (and the cultural integration that one assumes would follow) is actually fairly suspect, and the general's enthusiasm for Roman military codes and soldiers dampens his initial claim that the Britons "grapple" against the Romans "for the ground [they] live on, / The Libertie [they] hold as dear as life" (Fletcher 1.1.159-60), as well as his vow to die before allowing a Roman "to graft himself into [his Brittonic] stock" (1.1.172). Similarly, Caratach's ability to act in the interests of Brittonic sovereignty is doubtful, given the general's commitment to a (likely imaginary) larger fraternity among male soldiers; his insistent aid for a thieving Judas (2.3.51-2, 93-5); his extensive mourning for Penyus, whom he apostrophizes as 199
"Thou hallowed relique, thou rich diamond / Cut with thine own dust; thou for whose wide fame / The world appears too narrow" (5.1.56-9); and his ultimate surrender to the Romans on the condition that Hengo receive a proper burial (5.3.184-88). Caratach's claim that "[he] yeelds then, / Not to [the Romans'] blowes, but [their] brave curtesies" (5.3.187-88), that he joins the Romans not because his army was weaker but because he admires the Romans' chivalric codes, indicates that even in defeat Caratach retains an unrealistic understanding of the Romans' integrity, both cultural and moral. Bonduca may on her deathbed advise Swetonius to "Place in [his] Romane flesh a Britain soul" (4.4.152) if he wants to achieve success, but the only surviving Brittonic leader, Caratach, actually seems to disdain much of his Brittonic culture. He will likely "graft himself into" (1.1.172) what he admires about Roman roots as he admits defeat to the foreign forces, disavowing all that he viewed as savage and unsuccessful in the Britons' way of life, and moving away from the insistent independence and dedication to integrity that characterized Bonduca's campaign. Caratach's frequent blindness to the Roman threat and his apparent inability to prioritize the needs of the Britons could allow for a critique of James's international relations and his attempts during the first decade of his English reign to officially unite Scotland with England and Wales. Bonduca's defiance in the face of Roman invasion would then be viewed as a (relatively simplistic) nostalgia for the English national resistance epitomized by Elizabeth at Tilbury, a reaction to Jacobean anxiety about English purity in the face of a proposed union of states. Crawford has similarly argued that although Bonduca is not strictly allegorical, the play does offer echoes of early-seventeenth-century anxieties about James's military policies and his feelings about and reactions to his predecessor, Elizabeth. These echoes are played out in the relationship between Caratach and Bonduca (J. Crawford 357-58).83 Certainly Elizabeth became a
Claire Jowitt has also connected the relationship between Caratach and Bonduca to seventeenth-century reactions to and nostalgia for Elizabethan policies, although Jowitt's approach is quite different. She provocatively (and convincingly) ties pre-Christian Brittonic culture and colonial efforts in Virginia, and she argues that Fletcher problematizes and critiques the English 200 useful representational tool for James's critics and those opposed to aspects of his reign, because James so frequently distinguished his rule from hers (J. Crawford 360; see also Ziegler 35). These loosely allegorical connections would also support Fletcher's presentation of young Hengo, "the hopes of Britain" (Fletcher 5.3.160), as inspired by Prince Henry, who was frequently attached to English Protestant hopes for the future, given fears that James was easily influenced by Catholics at court and abroad. The prince took on an increasingly public, active role in the last two years of his life,84 and he identified with (and recognized the political value in) militantly anti-Catholic rhetoric. He entered into the public sphere at a time when tensions between France and Spain were running high, and those in politics who wanted English involvement in international Protestant campaigns saw Henry as an obvious future leader of interest, especially because James so often followed a strategy of peace when possible, refusing to involve England in battles against Catholic Spain (Strong, Henry 71-2). Indeed, once on the throne in England, James quickly offered conciliation with the country (after eighteen years of hostilities), and in the 1610s he was in favour of a Spanish bride for Henry (although the prince was not). One should not too eagerly or markedly distinguish James's early reign from the final years of Elizabeth's, however, despite the rhetorical efficacy and power of such a position. As D. J. B. Trim suggests, James's foreign policies in his first decade of his English rule were in actuality fairly close to Elizabeth's past preferences for limited international involvement and support for Protestants on the continent (239-40; see also Watkins 4). His explicitly peaceful stance and warming relations with Spain allowed for a certain amount of nostalgia for Elizabeth's perceived nationalism, a popular positioning of Elizabeth as a Protestant crusader (both on national and international levels), and further rhetorical development of Henry as settler presence in the New World (475). Jowitt's analysis does much to explain both the Britons' and the Romans' food shortages in the play, as well as the leaders' unsympathetic responses when their forces' physical exhaustion and weakness lead to failures.
84 Roy Strong even suggests that more texts were produced to mark and grieve Henry's death than Elizabeth's demise in the decade prior (Henry 220). J. W. Williamson also notes the impressive number of elegies and other texts that commented on the prince's passing (172). 201 a future king, even if, as John Watkins points out, the Tudor-era push to become involved in international military campaigns came from members of Elizabeth's inner circle and certain parliamentarians, not from the queen herself (8-9).85 As Trim posits, it is easy to overstate the differences in James's initial approaches when compared to Elizabeth's closing policies (239-40; see also Watkins 4), but distinctions could certainly be made by the 1610s. The transition from Elizabeth's reign to James's was actually quite smooth—aided by James's favourable marriage to Anna of Denmark, rather than a Spanish or French woman, his Protestantism, and the secured continuation of his bloodline in three children—but the king's work to foster peace with Spain was not always well met, and his interest in a Spanish Match for Prince Henry caused concern in the 1610s, goading growing worries that the new English monarch had developed overly friendly ties to Catholic nations.86 Read through the lens of James's conciliatory frameworks, the Spanish Match, and Protestant fears of Catholic incursions into England, Caratach's unquestioning affiliation with Roman military codes seems all the more suspect, his inability to appropriately defend the Britons' national integrity all but confirmed. At the same time, Fletcher's play asks questions about what "nation" Caratach fails to adequately protect, for the Britons are a highly divided group at war with foreigners, but also with each other. This sense of internal strife among the Britons may speak to James's efforts to unite Scotland with England and Wales, Bonduca drawing attention to a nostalgic defence of national purity and
D. J. B. Trim actually suggests that James's policies only began to diverge substantially from Elizabeth's after the deaths of Prince Henry and the king's close advisors, Robert Cecil and Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, the first two in 1612 and the third in 1617 (239), and he argues that a strong Catholic influence at court did not really emerge until 1619 (253).
86 These anxieties would only grow from 1614 to 1623, as James later supported a marriage between his son Charles and the Spanish Infanta. The possible wedding largely spurred concerns that England would become a puppet to Spanish influences and demands, and that the match would undo much of the nationalism fostered by Henry VIII and Elizabeth (Walker, Elizabeth 55). Because James so frequently distinguished his reign from Elizabeth's, representations of the latter were appropriated for various political ends in the seventeenth century. Indeed, Walker notes that the English queen's victory over the Spanish Armada was utilized by those who supported the Spanish Match, as well as by those who opposed it (Elizabeth 55). Not surprisingly, images of Elizabeth as martial and specifically Protestant became popular again with those who opposed warming relations with the Spanish and, by extension, Rome (Elizabeth 55). 202
Caratach highlighting the possibility of unforeseen threats from various outsiders. While John Kerrigan argues that "[a] play about ancient Britain could not exist for post-1603 audiences ... in a purely English perspective" (123), I would respond that for an English audience it could indeed present Britain as England under attack from nations that were perceived as essentially different. Early in his English reign James was passionate about officially joining Scotland with England and Wales to create Great Britain. This excitement was quite premature, for England and Scotland shared nothing infrastructural other than a king: even here the coronations, political councils, and systems of legislative governance remained separate, as did the official churches and the legal frameworks. Indeed, even after he abandoned the cause, effectively ending discussions to merge kingdoms, he continued to refer to himself as "King of Great Britain" throughout his reign. Legislative attempts were initiated between 1603 and 1608, with the understanding that all three regions would share legal, political, and religious systems, and D. R. Woolf suggests that Jacobean historiography often reflected the unofficial union. Many histories treated the amalgamation as the ideological end for a divine plan that began in 1485, when the Welsh Henry VII created the House of Tudor by joining the Houses of York and Lancaster (55). In fact, given that James presented the Scottish as sharing a Brittonic origin with the English, this teleology could be extended even further into history, since Brute and Arthurian legends both contained prophecies about a future leader who would lead and unite the Brittonic people in a new age of stability and peace. Woolf maintains that while the general population was reasonably in favour of union "(everyone could agree that unity was better than division)," plans to join always fell through at the bureaucratic level, as James could not come to agreement with the pertinent parliaments (55). This synopsis of the cultural climate in both England and Scotland seems simplistic, as a great deal of resistance to union (as well as support for it) can be found in both popular and elite texts from the period. Watkins notes that Scotland and England had been warring even during Henry VIII's rule, and that the former's alliance with France 203 had placed Scotland as even further separate from or outside of England (14). Furthermore, while the majority religion in both states was protestant, Scottish Presbyterianism was still markedly different from and a challenge to the authority of the Church of England (14). The introduction of "a foreign monarch with foreign interests" created some uncertainties (and fuelled residual ones) when James took the English throne (14), and many English critics pointed out that England would gain little under the king's proposed union (Doran, "James VI" 30). Of crucial importance to anti-unionists was the argument that the English and Scottish were too different to amalgamate. Critics from both states resisted the (ultimately successful) call for reciprocal naturalization of subjects born after James began his English reign, and the English were particularly concerned about the absorption of Scots into England should the king successfully create a unified state (Russell 2). Indeed, many English feared that if "mutual naturalization" were to occur, the whole concept of English citizenship as unique would be worthless (2). Not surprisingly, James looked to Brute and Arthurian legend as he and other unionists argued for the relevance and importance of a politically and culturally unified Britain, and as they attempted to build a national identity that connected clearly to the past (Schwyzer, "Jacobean" 34). As Schwyzer suggests, the historical basis or validity of Geoffrey's work was not the crucial question for unionists; instead, the pertinent issue was whether the Jacobean English and Scottish could build a new British identity by looking to a shared Brittonic past, by connecting to a culture that was for all intents and purposes irretrievable ("Jacobean" 34). Although a slightly late addition to the debates on unionist efforts, Bonduca reveals the uncertainties produced by this call for cultural amalgamation and the simultaneous monarchical push to look backward for a shared national origin. I would argue that an English anxiety about outsiders and the dissolution of English national integrity can easily be seen in Bonduca's efforts and Caratach's failure to halt the Romanization of Brittonic culture. As Crawford suggests, tying Bonduca's militancy and nationalism may indeed draw attention to 204
James's stated preference for peaceful relations and non-involvement in military confrontation, just as it highlights his Catholic international allegiances (J. Crawford 358). As discussed earlier, however, Bonduca's status as an amazonian, militant female necessarily signals the failure of a nationalist rhetoric to adequately present a cohesive "[myth] of origin," to use MacDougall's phrase (1). Bonduca draws attention to sex difference within the nation, undoubtedly, but her speeches and interactions with others also reference other social divisions that make the myth of original unity untenable. The Britons' army breaks rank frequently, and different tribes have been fighting for regional distinctions prior to the danger of Roman settlement erupting. Indeed, Caratach alludes to regional, political, and class-based disputes, admitting in the first act that the Britons' confrontation with the Romans is much more than a quarrel over CARATACH. some pettie Isle, Or [a disagreement] with our neighbours ... for our Land-marks, The taking in of some rebellious Lord, Or making a head against Commotions. (Fletcher 1.1.154-57) The Britons are in fact a fractured, divisive force resisting an equally divisive, multinational army,87 the Britons led by a woman who by the early modern period had no clear historical referent, a woman who immediately signalled multiple genres, rhetorical uses, and literary treatments. Boudicca and Tilbury In popular representations Boudicca and her forces stand outside of any Roman civilizing efforts, adamantly resistant to incursion but also to integration. This insistent connection to purity can be linked to Elizabeth's own defiant stance in her Tilbury speech (and in representations of her role in the victory), for she conflates England's defence with sexual, religious, and racial inviolability. As I argued earlier, however, Boudicca can signal national resistance, but she can just
87 Related to this point of analysis, Christopher A. Snyder argues that internal divisions among the Britons led to their inability to fend off the Roman invasions, and that the Britons changed this strategy when dealing with Germanic invaders; indeed, vast numbers organized around a shared set of religious and other social values in order to resist Anglo-Saxon power in Britain (5). An initial sense of Brittonic identity may thus have been indebted to the Roman presence on the island, and this identity may have been further strengthened by the later invasions of the Anglo- Saxons (75). 205
as easily suggest defeat and miscegenation, making her rhetorical efficacy somewhat suspect. In the same vein, Elizabeth's insistence concerning her physical purity may ultimately suggest inviolability while simultaneously pointing towards the danger of penetration. Susan Frye is correct to point out that the Armada speech and descriptions of Elizabeth at Tilbury have developed in the English mind over centuries, although no reliable descriptions of either the speech or the queen's (possibly armoured) costume have been found (at least no versions that were produced immediately after the event) ("The Myth" 96). Indeed, the English understanding of the event is likely an amalgamation of many literary and visual depictions. That being said, the various descriptions of Elizabeth and her troops at Tilbury are still important (if not necessarily historically accurate) texts, for they do much to explain how Elizabeth has been presented and how representations of her have influenced depictions of other martial women over time. For example, because the texts all focus on themes of national pride, resilience, and survival, post-Armada descriptions of Boudicca's speech to her troops before their first battle have striking resonances to Elizabeth's Tilbury speech. Furthermore, as I noted earlier, Boudicca herself becomes a relatively common allusion in descriptions of the English queen's courage during the Armada, specifically because early modern authors feel compelled to praise Elizabeth's resistance to incursion and her dedication to the English nation's integrity (fictional though it may be). In Heywood's summary of the Iceni leader's life, Bunduca offers a series of contrasts between Brittonic fortitude and Roman weakness or daintiness, and she questions the masculinity of Nero specifically (Exemplary Lives 75-7), much of which can also be found in Bonduca's opening speech in Fletcher's play (1.1.1-11). The Britons' lack of armour is turned into a point of strength, for they are not weighed down by such equipment; the Romans, on the other hand, are "[loaded ...] with their brazen weight, and ... unapt for pursuite" (Heywood, Exemplary Lives 75). In her speech at Tilbury Elizabeth concedes that her troops have yet to be paid for their service, that they ought to receive "rewards and crowns" in recognition of their "forwardness" in defending 206 their nation, but she turns their lack of remuneration into proof of their loyalty and evidence that the English deserve to defeat the Armada ("Armada" 326). In Elizabeth's speech, bravery and national survival are thus the overwhelming priorities, not personal gain, individual security, or comfort. Elizabeth presents a version of the English nation that is unified against the foreign threat—that seems to not have divisions of gender, religion, ethnicity, or class, for example (see McEachern 3)—and that shares a vision for future (Protestant) national survival and amelioration, a vision based on a shared origin and history. Bunduca similarly claims that the Britons' lack of supplies and food over the years has made the forces resilient and able to make do with the materials needed for basic survival—"any roote or stocke serves them for food: water will quench their thirst, and every tree is to them a Roofe, or Canopy" (Heywood, Exemplary Lives 75). The Romans, on the other hand, will revolt or their army collapse into weakness without personal luxuries like "bread or ground Corne, Wine, and Oyle.... [T]he Romans must have their warme bathes, their catamites, their dainty fare, and their bodyes suppled with oyle" (Exemplary Lives 76). The resilience and national spirit of Bunduca's troops make them hardy, however, and they can survive with few physical comforts. The rugged determination of Bunduca's troops perhaps connects to Elizabeth's self-presentation in the Tilbury speech, for she admits her physical frailty--'! know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman"—only to rebuke her corporeal weakness with her assertion that her body politic will correct and indeed perfect her flawed body natural, for "[she has] the heart and stomach of a king and of a king of England too" ("Armada" 326). Indeed, Elizabeth's "heart and stomach"—her nobility, bravery, strength and passion—will allow her to risk "her honor and her blood even in the dust of battle," for she allows the spiritual, ethical, monarchical, and judicial perfection of her body politic to guarantee both her survival and the protection of her troops ("Armada" 326). Just as Elizabeth "take[s] foul scorn" at any foreign leader who "should dare to invade the borders of [her] realm" ("Armada" 326), Bunduca derides anyone (Romans included) who would submit to Nero, arguing that those who 207 have continued to live under "their Lady and Mistresse, Madame Nero, (for who can thinke him to be a man?) deserve to continue slaves still" (Hey wood, Exemplary Lives 76). While Bunduca pledges that she would prefer "to dye bravely" (Exemplary Lives 77) rather than "spend [her] days under a Donitia, or Neronia, (fitter names for him than any of the masculine gender)" (Exemplary Lives 76-7), Elizabeth makes a claim for the loyalty of her English subjects, maintaining that "[she] would not desire to live to distrust [her] faithful and loving people," thus placing her troops as devoted to both her and the Protestant religion that she presents as unifying the nation under attack by Catholic interests ("Armada" 326). At the same time, she deftly connects death and treason, a subtle threat for any troops who might resent their forced participation, given their lack of remuneration, or who might hesitate to fight the Spanish menace. Elizabeth insists that her geographical and physical borders remain unbroken by Spanish men, that she "take[s] foul scorn that Parma or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of [her] realm" ("Armada" 326), but while the virgin body and land have not been conquered, their very integrity draws attention to the possibility of breach, or what Louis Montrose terms "pollution" (Subject 150). George Gower highlights Elizabeth's physical integrity in his Armada portrait (c. 1588), her chaste life figured in the large bow and pearl that hang over her abdomen, and he connects the queen's virginity to the Protestant English resistance and the Catholic Spanish incursion. In the portrait, Elizabeth foregrounds depictions of the Spanish Armada on the viewer's left and the English forces on the right (the connections between sin on the left and justice on the right of obvious relevance to the nations' positioning). Frye maintains that Elizabeth's '"jewel"' connects with the naval battle scenes in the background: it implies "that the queen's chastity forms the connection among the Spanish defeat, the emerging English empire, and her own virginal presence" (S. Frye, "Chastity and Rape" 356). While the portrait can of course only depict her physical body, her chastity-depicted in the bow and pearl, as I have argued-becomes an aspect of the kingly authority implied in the painting. 208
The king's crown, sitting over the globe upon which her hand rests, further suggests Elizabeth's possession of the body politic, its traits of monarchical justice and might allowing her power in and over the world. The Armada portrait did much to build up the English victory in the minds of English citizens, also supporting the already existent conflation of chastity and national inviolability (Montrose, Subject 145; also Strong, Gloriana 98-9, 136). This same commitment to purity, and national protection and defence can be seen in the popular print Truth Presents the Queen with a Lance by Thomas Cecil (1622). In Cecil's print, Elizabeth carries a sword and shield, and she sits atop a white horse. She is young, and she has crushed the seven-headed beast from the Book of Revelations, a feat that clearly suggests the queen's victory over Spain, for the beast is regularly connected to Catholic Rome in Protestant eschatological thought. Furthermore, Elizabeth receives the lance with her right hand, another visual cue that Elizabeth's defence of the nation is inextricably connected to justice and rectitude. The discarded armour of her conquered foes lies on the ground, and the naval forces in the background, positioned below Elizabeth as she stands on a cliff in the foreground, echo Gower's presentation of the Spanish ships in the Armada portrait, simultaneously reinforcing Elizabeth's victory over Spain since she is clearly far above the invaders, impossible to reach. Cecil's print, readily available to the public as an object of mass production, likely initiates and simultaneously reflects Elizabethan nostalgia at a time when James had turned his interests to a Spanish Match for Prince Charles (Walker, "Bones" 252-53). Importantly, these post-Armada visual media make significant connections among national security, sexual and cultural purity, and Elizabeth as an object of praise, connections that are also made in Hey wood's catalogue Exemplary Lives, to some extent in Fletcher's Bonduca, and most certainly in Elizabeth's own Armada speech. Cecil's print and Hey wood's and Fletcher's texts all look backward to make authoritative connections between past and present, and, like the allusion as a literary device, they utilize militant women in order to both laud aspects of Elizabeth's leadership and to suggest a long tradition of defence against 209 foreign incursion. Boudicca can stand for a Brittonic cultural heritage that putatively lives on in the English populace, but allusions and more extended treatments of the figure can just as easily miscarry and suggest Elizabeth's singular status as a female leader who often resists the types of behaviour that are appropriately or traditionally feminine. The allusions and various literary depictions can also work against an encomiastic, nationalist impulse by figuring a larger history of military failures, savagery, internal divisions, cultural and sexual miscegenation, and the dangers of female rule. Indeed, allusions to and lengthier treatments of Boudicca often put forward the possibility that national origins can never be recovered in any pure form, that an initial cultural integrity has been supplanted (for better or for worse) with multiplicity and uncertainty. As I have argued, however, Boudicca's role in denying traditional "[m]yths of origin" (MacDougall 1), simultaneously suggesting the possibility of a fragmented and tenuous national history, is perhaps still favourable to the disruption faced when Amazon women are placed in narratives aimed at creating national foundations. While uncertain national origins can still be explained or resolved through constructed narratives, Amazon women such as Penthesilea actually work against all heteronormative, patriarchal modes of nation building. Indeed, Amazon women have a history of their own, one that involves the repudiation and destruction of formerly functional patriarchal societies, societies with a commitment to appropriately gendered roles and procreation as traditional means of nation building. Penthesilea Perhaps the Amazon woman most likely to appear in early modern texts (although Hippolyta is also a popular figure), chaste Penthesilea is, according to Kathryn Schwarz, "certainly the most accessible to patriotic appropriations" ("Missing" 158), for the Amazon warrior lays down her life fighting to save Troy, the city that the early modern English often mythologized as establishing their own origins and that proved to be popular subject matter for several genres. Indeed, Montrose maintains that while early modern authors usually avoided drawing explicit connections between Elizabeth and Amazons, the one exception 210 was the comparison of the queen and Penthesilea, the brave leader who "sacrificed herself not for the Amazonian cause but for the cause of patriarchal Troy, the mythical place of origin of the Britons" (Subject 157). Penthesilea's fierceness and bravery on the battlefield are almost always noted, be it in a prose romance, poem, catalogue, or historiography, and she is generally attached to the values of chivalry in battle and a ferocious commitment to chastity.88 Despite her death at the hands of the Greeks, her leadership of a female army in defence of Troy frequently is praised, although treatments of her are sometimes brief. In his translation of Phrygius Dares' Troy account, for example, Thomas Paynell presents Penthesilea as a valiant leader, and he relates that Priam's men were waiting, "lokynge for ayde" from the martial woman' army (Dares 48r). The Amazons prove to be more than equal on the battlefield, as under Penthesilea's leadership they "[fight] so valiauntly for certain daies," they push the Greeks back to their camp (48v). Indeed, according to Dares' account, Penthesilea's force is only stopped by Diomedes, "although wl great dificulte," and, had they not met this defence, "the noble Penthesilea [would have] burnt the Greks shippes, & finallye spoiled the" (48v). The Trojans only begin to see results with the arrival of Penthesilea and her army, and, despite their later setbacks, she continues to provoke the Greek camp, attempting to rouse them to battle again (48v). Penthesilea is finally killed in battle (by Neoptolemus in this version), and her death causes the Trojan men to lose heart and flee (49r). In this telling, the Greeks only definitively gain the upper hand once Penthesilea has died, and the Amazon
Boccaccio, for example, praises the warrior's physical stamina, ability, and intelligence, although his laudation is hampered or minimized to some extent by his claim that Penthesilea adopted masculine dress and traits in order to compensate for her discomfort about her feminine beauty, and by his insistence that she fought at Troy in order to show her love for Hector (Famous 129-31). Phrygius Dares offers an overwhelmingly positive portrayal of the warrior while not discounting or minimizing her brutality on the battlefield (48r-49v), while Benoit de Sainte- More's lengthy romantic poem Roman de Troie {Story of Troy) presents Penthesilea's decision to fight the Trojans as based on chivalric expectations and as an opportunity for the warrior to prove her ability to be courteous (Kleinbaum 52). John Lydgate's Troy Book is perhaps more ambivalent in its treatment of the Amazon "Pantysyllya," for he imbues her with some masculine and feminine attributes, but he is overwhelmingly concerned with furthering conceptions of chivalry as an essentially masculine activity. M. Wendy Hennequin suggests that the virginal Pantysyllya's violent "death punishfes] her for performing a third gender when her society-and Lydgate's~only permits two" (9); while she shares many attributes with the important male heroes in the text, Pantysyllya is never referred to explicitly as a knight or as chivalrous (13). 211 woman proves to be a respectable threat to several key Greek leaders, men of both physical and intellectual strength. Quintus of Smyrna's text is equally generous in its praise of Penthesilea at Troy, for he claims that prior to the Amazons' arrival, the Trojans are terrified of Achilles and disheartened following the murder of Hector; indeed, the men are like "cattle [that] refuse to approach a fierce lion in the woods," even after Achilles drags the dead Trojan's corpse through the city (24). Penthesilea arrives with her forces, and the Trojans welcome her with relief, only retreating after her death in battle with Achilles (27,41). Of special interest to me are English narratives that rely on nostalgia for Troy in order to effect or further nationalist energies following the Spanish Armada, an event that has been viewed as key to establishing a sense of English nationhood (constructed and unrealistic though the conception may have been), and one that also provided several authors with opportunities to lionize Elizabeth and her efforts to both protect and build the English nation. In the nostalgic and fanciful history of Britain Troia Britanica, for example, Heywood combines biblical history, Greek mythology, classical narratives about Troy, and English chronicle in order to create a composite history of England, simultaneously placing the English nation as a product of all four historical or quasi-historical narratives. Heywood makes use of Penthesilea at Troy in order to further an authoritative sense of England's relationship to the past—in order to strengthen links between the present and the historical—but his amazonian references actually work against any simplistic appraisal of national origins. Instead, his use of Penthesilea suggests the Amazons' earlier decision to murder their male relatives and begin an autonomous colony,89 her insistent avoidance of childbirth ( one of the conventionally female means to build a nation), and the threatened demise of the Amazons' colony following military defeats at the hands of the Greeks (see Sobol 61). Heywood sees the contemporary English carrying on the values of Troy and the spirit of Trojan heroes, and he dedicates his text to Edward, Earl of
89 See Heywood's Exemplary Lives (100-01) and Gynaikeion (220-21), and Boccaccio's Famous Women (51-3) and Book of Theseus (20-1) for more details on the women's initial decision to murder their male relatives. 212
Worcester and Sir Gower, of the Order of the Garter, arguing that both men descend from Trojans and continue the older culture's ideals. Heywood notes the appropriateness of his dedication, that those lordes which we from Troy deriue, Should in the Fate of Troy remembred be, For since their Graund-sire vertues now suruiue, And with the Spirits of this Age agree, It makes vs fill our Cantons with such men, As liuing now, equald theyr vertues then. (Troia A3r) There is a physical link, a similitude, and a parity between the two cultures. Because the people of England's nation both descend from Troy and maintain the older culture's virtues, Heywood suggests that the celebration of their origins will propel the men (and a wider readership) toward successful nation building in the future. In A farewell Entituled, Peele similarly connects post-Armada nation building to the initial strengths of England's founding culture, as he attaches a history of the Trojan War to a poem that celebrates two English national heroes, Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake. A farewell Entituled commemorates the anticipated victory of Norris and Drake's multifaceted 1589 attack on Spain, as the men had raised a force of 20,000 and planned to raid several Spanish sea towns as they made their way to Lisbon, where they would overtake Spanish forces and declare Dom Antonio the rightful king of Portugal, which had been annexed by Spain. In exchange, Dom Antonio would allow the English increased access to trade in the region surrounding India. Expectations and hopes for both the voyage and the leaders were more than high. Peele uses the battles at Troy in order to make a case for English international military expansion, and to justify that expansion by looking to the continuation of honourable national origins. The author praises the virtues of both men in his dedication, and he argues that in reading the poem about Troy, one can "fitly ... recreate ... the chiualrie of England" (3). By reading the brief history of Troy, Norris and Drake can engage with their heroic heritage; their "minds 213 enflamed with honourable reports of their auncestry, [the men] may imitate theyr glory in highest aduentures" (3). The poems are meant to inspire continued bravery and success not only on the part of the text's immediate, primary readers, Norris and Drake, but also one assumes on the part of a more expansive public readership dedicated to improving the nation and continuing the founding values that (at least in myth) originated at Troy and were brought to Britain by Brutus. Hey wood and Peele both briefly describe Penthesilea's role in the Trojan War, although Heywood connects the Amazon far less obviously to Elizabeth (and to the related attempts to build national fervour through celebration of the monarch). Instead, the author simply proclaims Elizabeth "The most admired Queene that euer rained" and suggests that even if her time on earth had to end, praise for her does not (Troia 57). Penthesilea, described as "the warlike Queene" (Troia 174), nevertheless is placed as part of England's history, and Heywood notes that when the leader was finally overwhelmed in battling the Greeks, her poleaxe had been destroyed and she had been abandoned on the field by the surviving Amazon and Trojan forces (Troia 381). Her death cannot thus be explained by any form of feminine weakness on her part (although perhaps on the parts of the remaining Amazon women who flee), and her determination to remain on the field actually highlights the fear and inconstancy of the Trojan men who refuse to stay and fight. The queen's death is violent, and her killer, Pyrrhus in this account, is encouraged by the Amazon woman's Greek enemies, who watch from a distance as he hacks her to pieces (Troia 381). Pyrrhus refuses her a proper burial, instead insisting that "her limbes ... I... be strow'd about the sieged wals" (Troia 381). Forced to lie outside of the city walls, thus an organized social structure, Penthesilea's "strow'd about" limbs signal just how poorly she fit within conventional social and political systems (Troia 381). Despite Heywood's efforts to place the Amazon leader in an estimable, comprehensible English national history, Penthesilea can never stand comfortably within conceptions of nation, traditional or otherwise. Not only does she refuse to develop the nation via conventionally gendered mechanisms of marriage and motherhood, she leads the 214
Amazons at a point when the women's state is in a period of steady decline, weakened by a series of defeats at the hands of various Greek heroes (Sobol 61).90 Unlike Heywood, Peele explicitly connects Elizabeth and Penthesilea to English nationalism and the expansion of English Protestantism in the year following the Armada. Trojan exploits and Penthesilea's valour are linked to Norris and Drake, as the author refers to London as "Troynouant" and encourages the men to "Bid Englands shoare and Albions chalkie clyffes / Farewell" (5) as they attempt to improve their country's international power through military and naval campaigns. These remnants of classical civilization and amazonian bravery are also clearly conflated with the English queen and state, for the frontispiece illustration has the royal coat of arms with the motto for the Order of the Garter ("Honi soit qui male y pense" 'Shame on him who thinks evil of it'), and Elizabeth's motto ("Semper eadem" 'Always the same'). A dedication in Latin runs just below the crest, reading, Gallia victa dedit flores, inuicta leones Anglia: ius bellj in flore, leone suum: O sic O semper ferat Elizabetha triumphos Inclyta Gallorum florum leone suo Conquered Gaul gave youths, invincible England gave lions: The authority of war in bloom, in [England's] lion: O in this, O always may Elizabeth have triumphs, [England's] own young lion, renowned by the Gauls.
Other narratives about Penthesilea's involvement at Troy are silent about her burial, although Quintus of Smyrna takes care to note that Priam received her body, prepared it for a hero's funeral and buried her in a tomb of Laomedon (45). In ancient Greek culture (and this point continued into early Christian belief) lament for and burial of the dead were considered necessary steps in treating the deceased with appropriate respect and in avoiding later supernatural recriminations from either the soul or angry gods (Alexiou 4). Burying the dead was also considered a gift to the earth and an attempt to help continue the cycle of life (9), a generative, reproductive cycle outside of which Penthesilea's body once more stands in Heywood's account (Troia 381). Ian Morris argues that a funeral served various purposes for Greek society: it officially allowed for the separation of the soul from the corpse; it was part of a ritualized process that allowed mourners to release their ties to the deceased; and it provided an opportunity for mourners to cement their positions among the living (32). The funeral and burial process thus allowed for the strengthening and continuation of recognized, familiar social conventions (32), and to be refused burial "was a total denial of status," the most serious of slights (47,46). 215
Peele connects the men's military victory to Elizabeth, '[England's] own young lion,' and he envisions Norris and Drake's current activities as an English attack on popery, an assault on "loftie Rome" (6) that has obvious resonance given Elizabeth's Armada Speech of the year prior and her positioning of England as an essentially Protestant nation with a leader second only to God, a leader who "[took] foul scorn that Parma or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of [her] realm" (Elizabeth I, "Armada" 326). While the Armada saw English victory following a defensive position, that victory also gave Peele the opportunity to claim that England's state policies and national religious tendencies were correct and honourable. The English victory of the year previous sparks Peele's ambitions, and he now urges the English to battle on the offence. He encourages Norris and Drake to go to Armes, to Amies, to glorious Armes,
Vnder the Sanguine Crosse, braue Englands badge, To propagate religious pietie. (5-6) Peele insists that the men's virtue affords them an unlimited scope in their efforts to "deface the pryde of Antechrist / And pull his Paper walles and popery downe" (6). His historical poem about Troy is Peele's contribution to Norris and Drake's future battles to destroy Catholicism, for the text functions as an inspiration and source of strength for these agents of the state. Having read the work, Norris and Drake could behave in ways that are similar to their brave Trojan ancestors (3); the text might operate as 'an ibis to arms, / Since [its] master cannot march,' according to the instruction that is given on the opening page.91 Peele's first presentation of the Englishmen's future battles is one that focuses on glory, virtue, and the excitement of expansion fuelled by religious conviction: he initially depicts Elizabeth and her nation as young and growing, as 'The authority of war in bloom' destined for greater victories. Norris and Drake's
91 The instruction to the reader reads in full, "Parue nee inuidio sine me (liber) ibis ad arma, / Hei mihi, quod domino non licet ire tuo" 'Oh for me, book, be small and not ill disposed without me, an ibis to arms, / Since your master cannot march' (Peele). 216 many positive characteristics tie the men to the brave Trojan forces and those who fought alongside them, but the author's attached historical poem about Troy also highlights the vast violence and bloodshed that was necessary to defend the doomed Trojan state. While Peele does not describe Penthesilea's death, he does summarize the Greek sacrifice of the virginal Iphigenia at Aulis (14), who was killed in order to gain the favour of the gods and to gain the wind needed to sail to Troy. I suggest that the latter's virginal body ultimately works against uncomplicated narratives of international expansion and military success. Iphigenia was summoned to Aulis under the pretence that she was to marry Achilles and was murdered by her kinsmen, her death necessary to begin the war against Troy (a key moment in Greek national definition), yet her death also thus spurs the downfall of Troy, and much blood loss on both sides. The description of Iphigenia's death is followed almost immediately by a brief summary of Penthesilea and her "warlike bande, / [Who] Ariu'd in honor of King Priams land" (15). Peele elides any confirmation of the Amazon queen's death (perhaps out of deference to the aging Elizabeth and to avoid any connotations of future failure on her part), noting only that "ouer-long it were for [him] to tell, / In this afflicting warre what hap befell" (15). He then turns to a lengthy list of deaths on both Greek and Trojan sides, as well as extensive descriptions of the violence necessitated by the war (15-16). Within the space of two pages, then, Peele has on two occasions closely braided female virginal bodies and violence done to male military bodies, suggesting or betraying a fear that the virginal female body cannot build masculinised, patriarchal nation as easily as she can destroy it. The virginal female body may inevitably operate outside of paradigms of nation, refusing to cooperate with the heteronormative, patriarchal structures necessary for national origin and growth through military expansion, for Iphigenia's sacrifice does not ultimately help to restore the sanctity of Helen and Menelaus' marriage so much as it enables the downfall of a nation. Indeed, Peele's poem, which celebrates an international military effort that will ultimately be largely unsuccessful, ends with the Trojans defeated, their king dead, their queen driven mad, and their princesses raped and killed by enemy forces (20). 217
Aeneas's survival and his departure for Carthage at the text's conclusion (21) have the capacity to fill Norris and Drake with hope, pride, and the desire to expand and strengthen their nation through military efforts, since Aeneas will eventually leave Carthage and found Rome, but the hero's departure also inadvertently points to his nation's (and his leader's) failures. Aeneas leaves a nation in ruins, just as Norris and Drake leave a monarch whose era may be in decline, a monarch who has consistently refused to allay public and court anxieties by naming her political successor, and one who has repeatedly resisted international expansion or excessive support for continental religious struggles. Even as allusions to Penthesilea emphasize Elizabeth's chastity, her military success, and her place as the honourable queen of a nation with (at least symbolic) Trojan origins, they produce slippage and suggest the Amazon woman's failure to protect Troy and her leadership of a nation in decline. As the last Tudor ruler, Elizabeth signalled an era at its terminus, particularly in the 1590s when her aging had become most obvious, and, like Penthesilea, she had proven unwilling to expand and develop her nation through traditionally gendered means. Elizabeth's leadership caused further consternation, however, for those in public and at court who wanted to build on the English success during the Armada and more aggressively pursue international expansion, particularly via attacks on Catholic strongholds. Penthesilea's role in texts like Peele's A farewell Entituled can then mark a tension between pushes for international military pursuits through the celebration of mythologized national origins and realistic fears that national origins can only ever rest on fracture following defeat, or on virginal women whose military activities work against the conventional development of patriarchal structures. Penthesilea and Tilbury Not surprisingly, Elizabeth's subjects linked her to Amazons when she gave her Armada speech at Tilbury in 1588, and the descriptions of the queen wearing armour while she addressed the troops only get more detailed as time passes, a point that would perhaps indicate a certain amount of nostalgic fancy rather than historically accurate record. As I noted earlier, conceptions and 218
descriptions of Elizabeth at Tilbury continued to develop in the English mind over several centuries. Although no completely reliable description of the queen's speech or of her rumoured armour exists, depictions of the day and Elizabeth's participation are important objects of study, for these texts and images can reveal a great deal about how Elizabeth has been viewed since the sixteenth century, and, in making use of the Armada, the authors of these texts frequently participate in post-Armada nationalism. As Winfried Schleiner argues, "[w]hether she actually wore the elements of Amazonian attire is less important than the fact that people did compare her to an Amazon" (175). In Elizabetha Triumphans, written almost immediately after the Spanish Armada, Aske describes Elizabeth as Penthesilea (rather than as Deborah or Judith, for example), in his summary of her speech and as part of his larger history of Protestant resistance to Catholic antagonism in England. Importantly, Aske links Elizabeth's Trojan and pre-Catholic Roman origins to his support for an increase in the queen's military presence battling Catholics abroad. The author first dedicates his pamphlet to Julius Caesar in the hopes that Caesar-the great architect of civilization, nation building, and expansion—can defend the writing "from the biting lawes of snatching carpers." Elizabeth's presence is then directly connected to Troy and Penthesilea, for Aske describes her as "nought vnlike the Amazonian Queene, I... beating downe amaine the bloodie Greekes, I Thereby to grapple with Achillis stout" (23). As she leaves the camp, Elizabeth is viewed as "most Dido-like" (25), the Queen of Carthage drawing a third connection to Aeneas and the culture that—by legend, at least—developed out of the ruins of Troy and prefigured the English nation. The text, essentially a religious commentary that offers a lambasting history of meddling popes and the violence instigated by Catholics, praises Elizabeth as an agent of God's will who directs the faithful, beleaguered Protestants. The Spanish Armada is then placed within a lengthy history of papal interference in England and Catholic attempts to destabilize the nation, and Elizabeth's Trojan origins are clearly linked to Aske's sense of a strong Protestant English resistance to Catholic European incursion. 219
Elizabeth is conflated with Amazons and other militant women at several points in the pamphlet, and these links would seem at least superficially to function as praise for Elizabeth's attempts to guard and build the nation, but these allusions may just as often work against the fostering of conventional nation building. Elizabeth's martial, insistently chaste body at Tilbury draws attention to itself as "nought vnlike the Amazonian Queene" Penthesilea's (23), but it also causes Aske to only nominally position her within the narrative of a stalwart English Protestant opposition to European Catholic forces. The text certainly praises the queen, but Aske, in his introductory materials, describes her activities at Tilbury—"all [her] deedes," in fact—as being guided by "Pallas hand." Indeed, he promises Elizabeth, "Zenobia-hke thy Fame will neuer cease," and in the body of the poem, he describes the queen as "Bellona-like renown'd" (18), as "nought vnlike the Amazonian Queene" Penthesilea (23), as continuing to display the virtues once possessed by Voada (Boudicca) and her daughter Vodice (23), and as "most Dido-like" when she departs the camp (25). The allusions highlight Elizabeth's bravery and determination as she inspires her troops, but they also place her within an alternate, multicultural history of women. These leaders do not fit neatly into traditional understandings of nation or political succession, nor do they enable any comprehensible singular narrative of origin, any one connection to the past. Similarly, in Exemplary Lives, a text that praises nine examples of virtuous, mythological, and literary women (each of the nine individual traits found collectively in Elizabeth), Hey wood celebrates Elizabeth's role at Tilbury as the crowning achievement of her reign. He praises Penthesilea's courage in fighting for Priam during the Trojan War (Exemplary Lives 94), and he notes Penthesilea's ingenuity with weapons—"shee is said to be the first ever devised the Poleaxe" (Exemplary Lives 103)—but in creating his historical catalogue of women, Hey wood may inadvertently confirm Penthesilea's (and, perhaps by extension, Elizabeth's) place outside of traditional narratives of national development. For better or for worse, the virginal and militant Penthesilea's history is connected solely to other militant women. Hey wood's descriptions of 220 the Amazon's activities are prefaced by brief summaries of Semiramis' usurpation of power from her husband; Camilla of Volscia, who, "fed with the milke of wilde beasts" (Exemplary Lives 97), was raised by her father and encouraged to pursue masculine ventures like hunting and gaining skill with weaponry, and who later fought against the Trojans in the Trojan War; and Zenobia's more lawful claim for power after her husband's death (Exemplary Lives 97-8). By positioning Elizabeth as the heir to Penthesilea's virtue of courage in battle, Hey wood also places the English queen in a lineage that operates in distinction to more traditionally authoritative narratives of national growth. Elizabeth becomes part of a history that works against monologic historiographies of England's past. Instead, she is connected to several origins, all female and all linked to multiple (sometimes conflicting, always compendious) representations. Conclusion The twinned impulses to foster a national identity and to reach for one's origins both rely on a sense of certainty, of stable narratives, but authoritative texts with clear historical referents rarely exist for early modern England. Similarly, the allusion can usefully place a work within a larger system of texts and socio-historical conversations—within "a network of textual relations," to use Allen's term (l)--but in opening up the possibility of uncertainty, palimpsest, and multiplicity of source texts, the allusion is put into conflict with the more monologic narratives and explanations of society and history that state authority would prefer to create (see Bakhtin 6-7). I argue that allusions to and larger literary treatments of Boudicca and Penthesilea in the early modern period frequently attempt to cultivate a comprehensible national "[myth] of origin" (MacDougall 1) for the English, one that stresses cultural and sexual purity, as well as a history of resistance to incursion, in the case of Boudicca, and dedication to chastity and national defence, in the case of Penthesilea. A problem arises, however, in that the women are represented in a staggering array of texts, genres, and periods, with many competing motivations and uses—so many, in fact, that the women can never truly be connected to any original narrative, nor can they effectively be harnessed to enable the creation of a 221 stable account of origins for the English state or its authors. Instead, the militant women mark the reality of two irreconcilable impulses for the early modern English nation: they are placed in texts that would attempt authoritative histories and clean connections to a past (uncorrupted) culture, often in order to develop a teleological narrative of future nation building, and they signal the impossibility of these efforts to make uncomplicated links between past and present, instead suggesting a multiplicity of origins and the permeability of borders. Boudicca can function as a representative of an earlier Brittonic age and as a defiant leader who defends her nation against foreign threat—characteristics that make conflations of her and Elizabeth more than understandable—yet the allusions and other literary treatments are not limited to these positive implications. Indeed, readers may very well also draw more negative connections between the two women. Rather than a sense of militant defence and national pride, the texts may suggest martial failure and monstrous female rule, just as they may signal a total lack of clarity or integrity with regard to the English people's heritage. Indeed, narratives about Boudicca are likely to suggest the continued presence of several nations (following the Britons' multiple military failures), as well as the larger Brittonic inability to fend off cultural influence over centuries of sharing the island with others. These implications then complicate otherwise reasonable connections between the Iceni leader to Elizabeth in texts that apparently praise the latter's ability to maintain her borders, both physical and national, and to withstand assault from foreign aggressors. Similarly, Penthesilea's heated, valiant defence of Troy should make her a useful allusion for Elizabeth after the Armada, but these links become fraught when one thinks through the multiple implications in literary treatments of the Amazon woman. On the whole, Penthesilea's courage is highlighted in the various early modern narratives that adapt classical myths and detail her involvement in the Trojan War. Her presence at Troy does make visible sexual difference and the Amazon's uneasy relationship with masculinised nation building, however. Even as she defends Troy, cooperating with male soldiers and participating in a masculinized military endeavour that revolves around 222 supporting and maintaining the romantic entanglements of Helen of Troy and Paris, Penthesilea's insistence on a permanent state of chastity causes her to stand outside of the very heteronormative structures for which she fights. Her active defence of Helen and Paris cements her support for relationships that attempt to function in defiance of the traditional marital institution, while her personal dedication to virginity causes her to operate beyond the limits of the patriarchal systems of marriage and reproduction, thus disabling these frameworks and also calling into question the martial female's efficacy within them as she fights on the side of Troy. When authors describe Elizabeth as Penthesilea, they may thus highlight the queen's own refusal to transition from virginity to the traditionally patriarchal social structure of marriage and motherhood. Like Penthesilea's, Elizabeth's virginity operates outside of patriarchal attempts to monitor and control the female body, and it frequently disrupts the normalized conventions that connect sexual reproduction and women's participation in developing and continuing the nation. Elizabeth becomes heir to an alternative political history that frequently functions in resistance to patriarchal ideals and that draws attention to the fabricated nature of historiographical narratives of origin. 223
Coda "the blackest nation of the world": Female Authority and Patronage in The Masque ofBlacknesse Introduction In this concluding piece I track reactions to and political relationships involved in the infamous Masque ofBlacknesse (1605). Written by Ben Jonson, it was a spectacular court production in which Queen Anna appeared visibly pregnant and in blackface. I tie masque presentations of loosely amazonian women's communities to Anna's own politicized circle of English noblewomen, their patronage activities, and their attempts to build and sustain politically advantageous relationships through masque performances, even as Anna occasionally presented herself as antagonist to or outsider from the masculine Jacobean court culture. While virginity was a crucial aspect of Elizabeth I's political persona and helped to enable her authority as a leader, Anna's fertility was an equally important vehicle for claiming power as James I's queen consort. Her body quickly became a topic of public conversation—the shift from the ageing, childless Elizabeth to the young, fertile Anna more than apparent—and in her time in both Scotland and England, Anna made use of her maternal status in her efforts to secure her political desires, which did not always neatly coincide with those of her husband, and to encourage the aesthetic and educational interests of her children. Although Anna did perform in The Masque ofBlacknesse while visibly pregnant, I largely focus on her decision to appear in blackface, discussing her use of maternity in the broader context of Stuart court culture. I argue, however, that the combination of her obvious fertility and her mommerie places her physical presence in the masque as a key element of the spectacle's content and its aims. As the allegory of the masque collapses into the materiality of her flesh, Anna is blackness at court, even as she presents her power, both in her fertility—the ability to produce royal heirs and guide their educations and marital choices of obvious value—and in her economic advantages as patron and overall aesthetic director of 224
the production. I suggest that Anna's place among a band of virginal amazonian women marks important moments of conflict between the queen consort as patron and Jonson as scriptwriter for the performance. I argue that gender adds a level of complication to relationships of patronage and authority in the masques, as Anna, highly vocal about her preferences for the production, interferes with Jonson's preferred role as the masque's "inventor," that is to say, the creator of the key themes and conceits for the piece. My reading of Anna's activities participates in recent critical work that reconsiders the queen consort's role at the Stuart court. Long viewed as flighty and shallow, Anna and her circle of ladies actually developed and maintained important social and political relationships through their masque performances and their patronage activities more broadly. I present Anna in particular as vocal, determined, and interventionist, frequently using her political connections and her status as a mother in order to effect some of the changes that she desired. In Blacknesse, Anna and her courtly ladies perform as a band of Ethiopian nymphs in search of a sun strong enough to whiten their skin. While the women's journey to Britannia for a cure suggests the ladies' desire for union and cohesion with the masculine court culture of James, I argue that the decision to appear as '"black beauties'" (Andrea 248) also opens up opportunities for commentary on Anna's sense of her isolation and otherness at court; additionally, the performance of blackness allows for analysis of the competition between artist and patron in the masque. Anna's role as outsider, as antagonist to her husband's policies, may in fact be productive, and her presence in the spectacle showcases the overall control that she enjoyed while planning the production. Certainly her presence in the masque highlights the actively political stance for which patronage allowed, for Anna is able to make demands of the masque's creators, including key plot details for political effect. Jonson's script suggests that this surge of female authority was not always welcome or accepted, however, for blackness is ultimately whitened, and female leadership eventually falls under the control of male agency, particularly if the masque's sequel, The Masque of Beauty (1608), is considered. Blacknesse allows for the possibility that 225 the Ethiopians are virtuous and beautiful, despite their exterior darkness, and the production highlights the leadership capabilities of Aethiopia, a beautiful, virginal moon goddess who first directs the women to the land of "TANIA," or Britannia, as a site that might give the women respite (Jonson, Blacknesse B2v). The appearance of a moon goddess only two years after Elizabeth's demise—and a year after Anna funded Samuel Daniel's A vision of the 12 goddesses, a masque celebrating peaceful governance through presentations of mythological women, including Pallas Athena, Diana, and Astraea, all common avatars for the deceased queen—suggests that Anna may have appreciated the former queen's strength and the political value in her presentation of inner virtue as authority. That she takes guidance from Aethiopia and builds connections to Elizabeth implies that Anna was already crafting an alternative women's court to the traditional Jacobean centre of political power and authority, or that she may have seen (or may have wanted to highlight) continuity between the Tudor and Stuart courts, even as James emphasized their separate natures and drew political connections between himself and Henry VII.92 Anna did, for example, actively craft her own female friendships in England—always with active patrons from families of considerable social, financial, and political clout-and she soon created her own primary residence separate from that of James, renaming Somerset House as Denmark House. The queen consort quickly opened the new site to performances in the arts and opportunities for socializing with the cultural and political elite, thus allowing for political alliances that developed outside of James's official, masculinized court system. The positive presentation of female leadership and women's community, and the sense that otherness at court could still contain beauty are minimized in Blacknesse's sequel, however. Indeed, in Beauty the male figures of authority,
92 Many of James I's policies in the first decade of his English reign were actually fairly closely aligned with Elizabeth's past preferences. He quickly moved to establish peace with Spain, a distinct break from Elizabeth's activities, but the transition between rulers was often smooth, because the monarchs were fairly similar in their approaches to the most important political issues. Despite these overlaps, James propagandized his rule as distinctly unlike Elizabeth's, and he rarely made explicit mention of his predecessor, preferring to stress his blood relation to Henry VII (Walker, Elizabeth 19-20,49). Indeed, when James fashioned himself as Caesar Augustus, it was Henry VII whom he viewed as Caesar Julius (Elizabeth 19-20). 226
Albion and Januarius, emphasize that, in order to attain "true beauty" (Beauty C3v), the Ethiopians must submit themselves to and trust in Albion's ability to lighten their skin and supervise their daily lives in Britannia (Beauty D3v-[D4v]). Additionally, Jonson introduces Night as the most prominent figure of female agency in the masque. Night, a jealous figure of destruction and violence, attempts to block the dark nymphs from falling under the care of Albion; peace is only restored once the evil force is exiled from Albion's sphere (Beauty C3v, [C4r]). When read together, the two masques highlight the push and pull of gendered authority at the Stuart court, and they reveal the active roles and occasionally conflicting desires of patron and artist, as both attempted to further aesthetic goals and political connections with members of England's elite. One cannot underestimate the political value and importance of these lavish encomiastic court spectacles, which were always produced to celebrate or recognize specific occasions. Court masques, described by Martin Butler as "[performed by, with, and to the court," became opportunities for "ritual exchanges between monarch and courtier [to mime] the ties of obligation bonding England's political elites" (20). The goal of a masque was always to fete the ruler and mark the event for which the masque was produced, but the roles created did have symbolic values that allowed for deeper readings of the performances, even if the extant texts are often cursory records of the actual masques as a whole. Indeed, Jerzy Limon notes the multiple traditions necessary to understand the masques: classical mythologies and English conceptions of these stories; emblems and iconography; religious and classical philosophical texts; political practice; and the standard activities of theatre and court (209). While the figures portrayed frequently depict allegorical virtues possessed by the ruler, the masque's conceits also allow for political commentary on contemporary issues and the furthering of court connections.93 Leah Sinanoglu Marcus suggests more generally that "[t]he court masque was perhaps the most
J. R. Mulryne points out that while the masques were political performances—designed to mark specific occasions, and involving members of court as both participants and spectators—the masque audiences would likely focus on the aesthetic elements in their reviews and summaries (12). 227 inherently topical of all seventeenth-century art forms. Masques were shaped by contemporary events and intended, in turn, to give shape to those events" (201). Therefore, the key to comprehending masques may lie in having a firm understanding of the socio-political context in which Jonson and others wrote. I turn now to a historical situating of Anna's place in Stuart court culture, and to a general explanation of the key aspects of a masque and the political networking that was developed and strengthened in the performances. Queen Anna, Female Authority, and Masque Productions: A Critical Reconsideration Susan Dunn-Hensley suggests that once Anna was installed as queen consort to James, "the coming of a capricious, political, fertile queen consort could not help but feed interest in the concept of queenship and in the connection between female power and the female body" (105). Anna has been painted frequently (and unfairly) by critics and historians as immature and materialistic, as have her inner circle of ladies. Anne Somerset, for example, describes the queen as "[fundamentally good-natured, but shallow and petulant when crossed," lacking in beauty and intellect (94), and primarily drawn to "[immersion ...] in frivolity rather than in the cold realities of courtly politics" (106). She goes on to depict Anna and her attendants as "girlishly immersed ... in parlour games" and "childish pleasures" (106). Somerset is far from alone in her lack of interest or even dismissal of Anna's role at court, as Roy Strong has also described her in whimsical, materialistic terms, suggesting, "On the whole, Anne lived for pleasure, passing her time moving from one of the palaces assigned to her to the next" (Henry 16), and focusing on "dancing, court entertainments, and the design and decoration of her houses and gardens" (Henry 25).94 These comments ignore the queen's patronage of and life-long passion for architectural ingenuity, for example, the politicized nature of her active involvement in the planning of masques, and her overall support for key artists. These historians and critics also
94 Joan Faust similarly maintains that Anna and her circle "were notorious for 'their trivialized version of manly pursuits'" (17), while Alan Haynes notes the traditional estimation of Anna "as a majestic nonentity," suggesting that, while James disliked the many masques produced at his court, the spectacles were useful distractions for the queen, who might otherwise spend time ruminating on James's aloof nature or his attraction to men (183, 182). 228 fail to recognize Anna's fluency in languages and her savvy use of political connections for her own needs and goals at court. Rather than simply labelling the masque productions and other advancements as "Jacobean," I would argue that much of the literary and artistic growth in the early English Jacobean court should actually be credited not to the new king but to Anna. Certainly her funding and enjoyment of the arts in England grew out of her well developed interests and activities in Scotland and, prior to her marriage, in Denmark (see Meikle and Payne). Furthermore, I argue that although court masques are often considered to be sumptuous, occasional celebrations of the court—more style than substance—these events ought to be considered more seriously as highly aesthetic opportunities (each shaped by several people), opportunities to work through relevant political concerns.95 As I focus on the interactions of Anna, her ladies, and favoured artists and writers such as Inigo Jones and Jonson, two of several men to seek and be granted patronage and influence in the design of politically important court masques, I suggest that various groups in the body politic assumed and made use of different levels of power at different times, a position seconded by Malcolm Smuts, who argues for a treatment of court culture that recognizes the relationships between court and other institutions, as well as those between the court and more popular voices (103). One should note of course that these groups were internally diverse in their political beliefs, values, and ambitions. Leeds Barroll explains that, as the consort, Anna was in a uniquely challenging position: Anna "was an entity that was of the Crown but not the Crown" (5). While she was granted a certain level of authority as consort, she could only expect an "ambiguous obedience" that was "ambiguously commanded" (5). Aside from her political role as consort, however, Anna was James's wife, and as such in a traditionally subjugated familial role, although she regularly proved to be a disobedient spouse; she was also a subject of the Crown and thus obligated to display loyalty. Additionally, one could note the queen
95 Marion Wynne-Davies has similarly argued that The Masque ofBlacknesse, although credited to Ben Jonson, was more accurately "a production by diverse people of whom the Queen was the most politically notable force" (80). 229 consort's own royal lineage as daughter of a king (and as mother to a future ruler), roles about which Anna spoke proudly and frequently (5). Historians and literary critics who have depicted Anna as childish and flighty ignore her long history of active political involvement during her time as queen consort in Scotland. Indeed, Anna frequently manipulated court factions to suit her own political needs, suggesting a keen understanding of court culture and processes. Her sense of self and her assertiveness may have been nurtured by her parents, who both supported projects in arts and sciences, and who both saw the value in education (15-16; see also Meikle and Payne). In fact, Queen Sophia, Anna's mother, provided an early model of leadership, as she continued to be politically active after King Frederick IPs death in 1588, even attempting (unsuccessfully) to act as queen dowager when her son and heir to the throne, Christian, was too young to rule (Barroll 16). Anna's assertion of her political interests in the 1590s and her political feuds were noted by Lord Burleigh in England by January 1592, not two years after Anna was crowned queen consort in Scotland (17-18), a point that spurs Hardin Aasand to describe the queen as consistently "less a wife and more a rival sovereign to James" ('"To Blanch'" 279). Indeed, Anna's working and faction building against the Scottish Chancellor, Sir John Maitland, were so intense that by late 1592 Maitland stated publicly that he wanted leave to retire to England. Anna responded by requesting that Elizabeth not grant him favour in her country (Barroll 18). Hostilities continued through 1593, when James wrote to Elizabeth for assistance and Maitland made similar gestures with English officials. The two only declared a truce when Maitland offered to give up his claim to a tract of land that had been given to the queen in her dowager (19; Meikle and Payne). The queen consort's political will was voiced once more in 1594, this time against her husband, when she strenuously opposed the removal of the newborn Prince Henry to his guardian's family estate (Aasand, "To Blanch'" 278; Barroll 20-1; Meikle and Payne). Barroll notes that James's decision to have Henry cared for by John Erskine, second earl of Mar, was sensible from a Scottish point of view, for Mar's father and grandfather had both cared for royal children, but Anna was incredibly unhappy to have her child raised away from family (20-1). In 230
March of 1595, Anna, now with the support of Maitland, asked James to terminate Mar's role as guardian and allow her to supervise the baby. Although James refused her appeal, she continued to make similar requests and strengthen her faction of courtiers and political insiders who supported her venture. Her faction was threatening enough, in fact, that, in letters to Mar, James suggested implicitly his fear that he himself might be kidnapped or even killed (22-3). Anna's insistence that she regain custody of Henry came to a head in May 1603, when the queen, on her way to enter London, stopped at Mar's castle in Stirling and demanded that the man's family allow her and her party entry into his castle. Anna's stand-off with Mar's family lasted several days, during which time she miscarried, still refusing to leave the castle without Henry (28-9).9 Anna essentially forced James to relieve Mar and his family of guardianship, likely years earlier than James had planned to, and the prince instead completed his education in England, soon living in various residences with his mother (33). Barroll notes that when establishing his new court in England, James mainly included nobles who had been Anna's enemies in Scotland and those who had refrained from negotiating or machinating with her in the past (34). With her traditional political abilities curtailed, Anna spent her first decade in England imagining anew her role as queen consort. Instead of overt political alliances, she fostered artistic and intellectual circles that allowed her to mingle with new connections in the nobility and peerage, simultaneously positioning herself at the centre of the court's artistic life. Masque performances and other forms of patronage were thus Anna's primary vehicle for gaining and utilizing political power. Anna's politicized patronage and masque performances also became useful strategies for the inner circle of noblewomen who were associated with her, for many of her closest friends were frequent patrons who through birth and marriage were connected to England's wealthiest families. The political function of the performances are an important consideration, for masques allowed creators
Maureen M. Meikle and Helen Payne even suggest that Anna may have instigated the miscarriage by making use of '"balme-watter"' ("Anne"). Even if this rumour is not true, the possibility of sacrificing one child to gain custody of the royal heir draws new resonances for the issue of Anna's performances for political ends. 231 and participants opportunities to make, further, or comment on connections to members of the peerage. I focus on Anna's activities in the first decade of James's English rule, and the ways in which Anna made use of the masque in order to further her own political agenda, one that arguably included the creation of her own "court" separate from James's official one once she moved her primary residence to Greenwich, renaming Somerset House as Denmark House. In fact, her political activities in England were noticeable enough that James wrote her a scathing letter on the subject (Andrea 276), and the French diplomat La Broderie noted in a letter that the king "was 'not master in his own house'" (277).97 The masques often mark a collision of masculine and feminine authority, both creative and political, as Anna, her ladies, and their patronized artists negotiated the terms of production for each spectacle.98 Indeed, as patron Anna would supervise all elements of a production and select the masquers; details for both the script and the performance would be created by her playwright, set designer, composer, and choreographer only after consultation with the queen. While many critics have noted the artistic clashes between Jones and Jonson, fewer have extensively considered those between Anna and James, or Jonson and Anna, as the masques putatively functioned as encomia and more general celebrations of royal splendour. Daniel's heavily emblematic A vision (1604), for example, allows Anna the opportunity to perform as Pallas Athena, an odd choice for the masque's goal of celebrating James as a peaceful monarch,99 and an awkward reminder of Elizabeth, whose propagandized
Louis H. Roper has similarly noted that Anna even occasionally worked at cross-purposes to the king in order to see the promotion of her acquaintances (47).
98 Clare McManus has also noted that Jonson's necessary capitulations to his patron, Anna's demands result in certain textual tensions and issues related to performance (94).
99 Indeed, the performance highlighted Pallas Athena's martial nature, although Samuel Daniel attaches her to wisdom and defence in his prefatory materials to the printed edition of A vision (each masquer functioning as a virtue or virtues that have blessed the nation). James preferred to present himself as a king of peace: as a masquer Anna ought to have represented and praised one of the virtues held by the monarch, yet her decision to portray Athena and her chosen costume indicate a separation between her and her monarchical husband, for Pallas is described as having worn a gown embroidered with images of weapons. She wore a helmet, and carried a lance and 232 martial persona was frequently conflated with Athena. Similarly, The Masque ofBlacknesse, a key site of investigation for this chapter, highlights female leadership and community—a band of African nymphs taking direction from a virginal moon goddess (while under the protection of their father, Niger)—while suggesting that blackness, otherness, can contain beauty. The script for the masque is Jonson's, but the original conceits for the production were all suggested by Anna, a point to which I shall return, for Jonson's preface to the printed edition of the masque simultaneously acknowledges and minimizes Anna's creative role. Traditional readings of the Stuart court masques have generally positioned Anna and her ladies as naive performers in lavish productions about which they understood little, as "oblivious to the serious allegorical representations and political statements of the scripts, scenery, and even of their own costumes," instead functioning "as unwitting agents in these serious presentations" (Barroll target to complete her martial presentation. In fact, several of the goddesses profiled in the masque have martial connotations, even in the prefatory materials to the printed edition of A vision. Juno, for example, is described as "the Goddesse of Empire and regnorumpraesidi ('protector of kingdoms')," while Tethis is linked to "power by Sea." Peter Holbrook speculates that the appearance of Astraea a year after Elizabeth's demise must have reminded viewers of the queen's mythologized presence as a Protestant crusader (76), a point echoed by Kathryn Schwarz {Tough 116). Jonson's Masque of Queens (1609) also provided a curious venue for the presentation of martial women from the past, again suggesting a disjunction between the object of celebration-the peaceful king—and the chosen encomiastic means. In this later masque, however, Jonson essentially strips the women of their martial power, limiting any suggestion of it to Penthesilea's carrying a sword and being described as "the brave Amazon" {Queens 487). Suzanne Gossett suggests that in doing so Jonson shifts attention back to James's capabilities, not allowing Anna or her ladies to eclipse him (101).
100 Geoffrey Creigh suggests that Daniel may have faced criticism for this rather oblique masque from the time of its performance at court, for the author responds to such criticism in his preface to the 1604 printed edition (22-3). Daniel saw the masque's primary use and value to be as a vehicle for praising the monarch (23-4), but it is more than likely that he had to capitulate at times to the demands of his patron, Anna, who may very well have had her own political agenda in producing the spectacle. The prefatory material to A vision lacks the same tensions that can be found in the text of Jonson's Blacknesse, however. Literary critics have generally overlooked Daniel's first Stuart masque, complaining that it is overly emblematic and too concerned with simple pageantry, that it lacks relevance, and that it is incoherent as a narrative (Creigh 28). Certainly Stephen Orgel has dismissed Daniel's masque as "little more than pageantry" {Jonsonian 101). The masque was incredibly popular at court, however, and I argue that, despite its heavily symbolic content and our limited knowledge of the production outside of the extant printed text, themes of peaceful governance and harmony can be gleaned. Certainly in his preface Daniel describes the purpose of a masque as "ornaments and delights in peace ... to entertaine the worlde" and "the decking & furnishing of glorie, and Maiestie." Holbrook further argues that Daniel's masque celebrates peace while struggling with the opinions of some at court that peace was essentially reticence or cowardice, just as the masque as a form was often viewed as ephemeral and insubstantial (72). 233
74). This conventional historicization must be corrected, if only to note the abrupt shift in gendered performance, for masques in Elizabeth's court and James's Scottish court were both overwhelmingly associated with male performers. Although women did occasionally participate in these earlier masques, the dominance of Anna and her ladies was indeed unusual, and the productions allowed the queen a method of presenting and vocalizing her concerns (76-8). Anna's presence as queen consort also allowed for new possibilities for noblewomen eager to gain positions at court. While Elizabeth had required female assistants, all overtly political positions were given to men.101 The queen consort was viewed as the social leader of England's noblewomen, according to Barroll (39). While men still administered all of the queen's finances, Barroll maintains that "a queen consort could, it seems, appoint a female circle of women whose function was analogous to that exercised by members of the King's Bed or Privy Chambers" (40). Anna, again showing assertiveness and political will, chose her own circle of English noblewomen, ignoring the party of ladies that Robert Cecil had sent to accompany her progress into London, and she gravitated towards figures whom Cecil did not favour (41-5; see also Meikle and Payne).
Simon Adams maintains that under the reigns of Mary I and Elizabeth I, "the Privy Chamber ... ceased to be an independent power in council.... [I]ts personnel were largely female, occasionally reflecting outside male influences, but incapable of acting as political figures in their own right" (96-97). Adams seems to hold a naive view of women's agency in these reigns, and he operates with a limited definition of what could be encapsulated in "politics." Barbara J. Harris has, for example, focused on the largely untold and unexamined relationships between aristocratic women, and how these relationships aided in property and power dispersal ("Sisterhood" 22). She notes, for example, the importance of choosing an appropriate aristocratic household when teenage, upper-class girls were in need of placement, a common activity among the socially and politically elite, for such placements could lead to advantageous marriages ("Sisterhood" 24-5). Similar female networks were needed if one wanted to secure a daughter a position at court ("Sisterhood" 26-7). The scholarly tendency has traditionally been to limit analysis of "politics" to sectors that were dominated by men in the early modern era—the monarchical, legal, and bureaucratic, for example—but Harris has pointed to the court as a space in which elite women figured more prominently than in other, more obviously public sphere loci ("Women" 259). Country houses offered the aristocracy chances to repeat their courtly political machinations on a more provincial level, and Harris maintains that women "participated with enthusiasm, persistence, and success in all the activities connected to forming, maintaining, and exploiting patronage networks" ("Women" 259, 260). Patronage and kinship network formations were thus two obvious, crucial examples of women's political work. Natalie Mears has also criticized researchers who focus on the Privy Council as the sole or most important site for policy decisions (68). She argues that the women of the Privy Chamber could be crucial sources of information for men who planned to approach Elizabeth with requests or strategies (73), and she discusses the roles of Katherine Astley and Lady Mary Sidney as marriage negotiators-unofficial diplomats, essentially~when Elizabeth entered into tentative discussions to wed foreign nobility (69-72). Importantly, Anna was choosing men and women as allies who were all notable patrons. A group of eight noblewomen always appeared in Anna's masques, while others appeared sporadically, so the lists of women dancing the masques reveal a great deal about Anna's most trusted circle of acquaintances. The countesses of Derby and Montgomery are present in the five extant lists of performers for the court masques, while the countess of Bedford is noted in four of the confirmed lists of participants. Lady Penelope Rich passed away early in Anna's time in England, but she participated in the first two masques. The women who performed in the masques took on roles that were heavily politicized, developing court relationships and strengthening friendships as they danced with predetermined court insiders of political value to Anna. Indeed, perhaps even more important than the masque's script, technical performance details, costumes, or dance steps (although these points will in part be considered by me) were the social aspects of the masque and the masquers themselves. A masque certainly had value exceeding the written text, given that the majority of masque scripts totalled about eleven pages, while the entire spectacle lasted for three hours (Orgel, Jonsonian 113). Following the masquers' initial presentation to the audience, in which a professional actor spoke and explained the masquers' functions in the piece and their individual connections to the masque's larger themes, the masquers would participate in "the measure," or dancing. Masquers would, in a process known as "taking out," seek the participation of audience members in dancing, acts described by Stephen Orgel as "celebrations of royal power and assertions of community" {Illusion 7), by Robert C. Evans as "political works" (222), and by Barroll as "[c]eremonial politics"
102 The five extant lists of noble performers are for Jonson's Masque ofBlacknesse (1605), Hymenaei (1606), Masque of Beauty (1608), and Masque of Queens (1609); and Daniel's Tethys' Festival (1610). The lists can be found respectively in Jonson's Blacknesse ([B4r]), Hymenaei ([B5v]), Beauty (Elr), Queens (Lindley, ed. 53); and Daniel's Tethys' (Lindley, ed. 55).
103 D. J. Gordon maintains that Jonson produced "[f]he most coherent body of masques," but he also cautions that the texts need to be considered as more than simply the text found in Jonson's collected works, for "[t]he masque was not only verbal—it was not even primarily verbal. It was spectacular, it was choreographic, it was musical," and it involved an unusual degree of engagement from the audience (19). 235
(86). Dancing would continue after the ordinary measures, but masque participants selected new partners, as did the nobility already chosen from the audience for the first taking out. The masque's central presenter then interrupted the dancing and turned the audience's attention back to the masquers, who at this point would solely occupy the performance space and complete the last dance, sometimes referred to as the sorti (87). After this final dance, the masque participants revealed their true identities and socialized with the spectators in a grand celebration. Anna made important changes to the traditional masque format. While the Tudor masques had generally centred on unmarried noblemen, Anna's focused on female performers, many of whom were already married, so weddings were not necessarily the immediate motivation for participation in her masques (89-90). The noblewomen did invite men to dance during the measures, but the men selected were never their husbands; rather, the spectators had been selected by Anna for their political functions and importance (95). Anna also added four spots to the masque numbers: the traditional eight always came from her inner circle of ladies, and four new places went to a rotating group of young, single women who were usually from politically important families (90). The casting for Anna's masques always reflected the women's political clout at court, as masquers were chosen from the wealthiest, most influential families in England, and the women's order of presentation in the masques also suggested their political importance and power. Anna's closest ladies were presented first and the later tiers would include the young, unmarried women, who did not possess the same level of authority, nor did they enjoy such close friendships with the queen consort. In Jonson's Blacknesse, for example, the countess of Bedford—one of Anna's closest allies and an important patron of the arts in her own right—appeared in the first pair of women with Anna. Together they held "A golden tree, laden with fruict" ([B4r]) as an indicator of their beauty and bounty, perhaps. The pair was followed by the second group of ladies, Lady Herbert and the countess of Derby, and by Lady Rich and the countess of Suffolk following that ([B4r]). The pairings continued, each set of women holding a 236 standard that suggested their functions in the masque, until the four young, unmarried women appeared, also in groups of two ([B4v]). At a time when James was well into developing his persona as patriarchal and absolutist, Anna was constructing an alternative site of power that was largely inhabited by her and her female friends: their system of authority was largely concerned with supporting the arts through financial compensation for artists, writers, composers, and architects, and with solidifying informal political ties through friendship and mutually beneficial interests. While Anna did of course possess a higher level of authority, by virtue of her political function and role, and the masquers were presented hierarchically in performances, their artistic circle and individual levels of power as patrons suggest a certain parity or similarity among them, a point perhaps supported by their identical costumes in Blacknesse, for Jonson describes the women as "alike in all, without difference" ([A4v]).104 One need not view the women's indistinctness onstage as a failure to reaffirm social hierarchies, as Clare McManus suggests, however (104).105 Rather, one could point to patronage as a vehicle for gaining and utilizing power, a vehicle that is generally equally accessible to all members of the political and social elite, even if access does not lead to a total parity in authority. On a related note, Orgel maintains that when the audience members joined the performers in dance, it was a declaration of equality between masquer and spectator (Jonsonian 117). I would argue that the obvious displays of hierarchy in the presentation of the ladies and the selection of dance partners did not strictly allow for equality; rather, the masque performances spoke to the relative equalization of power available to the elites who participated in lucrative patronage activities, including masque appearances. Financial power then opened up new configurations of authority, both in the women's relationships to each other and in patronage connections, as elite women were able to make demands of
104 On a related note, Anna seems not to have been perturbed when in Daniel's A vision (1604) the lady performing as Juno, whom Daniel describes in his preface as "the Goddesse of Empire," appeared wearing a golden crown and carrying a sceptre.
105 Wynne-Davies alternatively reads the ladies' mommerie as indication of a temporary freedom from hierarchies and a celebration of power inversions in line with carnival or other acceptable moments of disruption (90, 99). 237 their (usually male) artists, male authorship no longer necessarily standing as ultimate authority over a text or production. Instead, these financial relationships necessitated exchange of ideas and respect for patrons' demands. Tensions can be seen between Anna and the recipient of her patronage, Jonson, as both had goals to achieve in the production of court masques. Evans suggests that masques were for Jonson vehicles of self-promotion and opportunities to stress his highly intellectual contributions, the subtleties of which were likely not grasped by his audiences (223). Male authorship (and male authority) is at once challenged, however, as Anna insists on the inclusion of key elements for the spectacles. Indeed, Bernadette Andrea similarly suggests that Blacknesse and its response masque, Beauty, "act as vehicles for the Queen's spectacular representation of her author(ity) through her audacious display of blackness as beauty" (255). While racial otherness in The Masque of Blacknesse becomes a site for Anna to declare the political and creative agency that she achieves while isolated or placed as Other at court, Jonson pushes back in the masque's sequel, The Masque of Beauty (1608), as the nymphs come under the direct purview of Albion and Januarius, all the positive aspects of blackness from the first masque minimized in order to stress the traditionally dangerous qualities of pitch dark, female Night—chaos, evil, and irrationality. The participation of Anna and her ladies in patronage highlights the gendered demands that can exist within the system: patronage had an impact on all types of early modern intellectual work, according to Evans, and it affected how individuals conceived of their social place and the places of those around them (23). While reciprocity would optimally guide patronage exchanges of production and remuneration, patronage in reality had to also address the demands of gendered and economic hierarchies, the management of various egos, and the associated other political relationships that could be developed or weakened with each exchange. The Masque of Blacknesse and Female Worth The queen's active participation in creative works as a means of securing and furthering her own political agency is nowhere more obvious than in the masques produced early in James's English reign. Anna's second English masque, 238
The Masque ofBlacknesse, allowed her and her ladies the opportunity to explore questions of otherness and inherent worth, as they performed in blackface as a troop of African nymphs in search of a sun strong enough to bleach their darkened skin. The masque, the highlight of the court's Christmas celebrations, was a luxurious production costing approximately £3,000 (Barker and Hinds 222). Although the decision to perform in blackface has generative points for analysis and contains the possibility of genuine political engagement, the appropriative and exoticized elements of mommerie ought to be considered. Andrea, for example, admits the women's "complicity" in the development of imperialist racism and participation in slavery (247).106 She views Anna's dressing in blackface and celebrating '"black beauties'" as a challenge to the traditional binary that would "[privilege] whiteness and suspect blackness" (248), yet she also acknowledges that Anna's actions are ultimately "appropriation, since it is white (European) women in blackface, not black (African) women as such who are celebrated" (248). Leslie Mickel has similarly argued for nascent imperialist leanings, as the Africans are overwhelmingly female, prone to thoughtlessness and wandering, and in need of correction (57). Jonson's masque was not the first entertainment to present blackness at court, but it was the first documented production that included the use of blackface (Andrea 260-65; Barthelemy 20). While Anna's request—that the masque centre on her and her ladies as black nymphs—was not that unusual, the actual performance conditions proved to be. Indeed, the Masque ofBlacknesse was unique for many reasons: it was the first documented performance to involve participants in blackface (Barthelemy 20), but it was also the debut performance of the Jones-Jonson partnership, Jonson's first court masque, and an opportunity for Jones to present truly innovative props and landscapes (Lees-Milne 42). Earlier presentations had relied on racialized costumes to indicate blackness—dark
Importantly, Kim F. Hall connects imperialism, colonialism, and patronage as she points out that England's wealthiest families were actively involved in both developing and furthering the period's literature and economic projects overseas (18). Yumna Siddiqi similarly insists that the masque's treatment of blackness be read within a framework of aristocratic involvement in colonialist projects abroad (141-42). She reads The Masque ofBlacknesse and The Masque of Beauty as "enactfing] a transformation and containment of the feminized African body" (141). facial masks, exoticized harem wardrobes, and scimitars, for example—and black performers had made appearances in Tudor and Stuart entertainments.107 Black servers also had a visible presence at court (Edwards 16-22). The presentation of blackness did signal the exotic and the unusual, of course: a burgeoning English slave trade by the 1570s led to small numbers of African slaves in England, and these numbers were still quite low by James's reign (Fryer 8).108 Most who were in the country by the sixteenth century were either servants, sex workers, or employed at court for entertainment (8). The Masque ofBlacknesse follows a band of young Ethiopian nymphs— "the / blackest nation of the world" (Jonson, Blacknesse A3v)—who despair over their dark skin and travel with their father, Niger, in search of a land known as "TANIA" {Blacknesse B2v), or Britannia, which contains a sun (King James) strong enough to transform their visages to fair. The ladies' black make-up was made all the more apparent by their costumes, which contained opulent white pearl necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, all in stark contrast to their blackened skin and their robes "alike in all, without difference: the colours, Azure and / Siluer" {Blacknesse [A4v]). The pearls stand as clear reminders of the material wealth available in exotic regions—connecting to Kim F. Hall's assertion that patron families ought to be considered in light of both their funding of the arts and colonial ventures (18)—but they also suggest the women's purity and unique inner
Anthony Gerard Barthelemy notes a history of courtiers appearing as black characters in court productions, a tradition that begins in 1510 at the very least. He suggests that the early use of Moors in masques was simply intended to connote exoticism and extravagance, connecting to the conditions of the masques' productions, for masques always celebrated an unusual or special event (19-20).
108 Peter Fryer even opens his book on the historical presence of black people in Britain with the confident assertion that "[t]here were Africans in Britain before the English came here" (1): soldiers in the employ of Rome and slaves were present in the early centuries of the millennium, although few recorded notations exist prior to the early modern era (1-2). Bernadette Andrea also notes the historical presence of black people in England, from legionnaires who participated in Roman rules, to black slaves who arrived in Ireland on Viking ships in the eighth century, to the slaves and servants who worked in England from the end of the fifteenth century. She states that black women were employed at court as ladies-in-waiting and as dancers (256-57). Lynda E. Boose cautions, however, that English participation in the slave trade was not heavily racialized in the sixteenth century: most slaves bought and sold in Britain were of Celtic origin until the eighteenth century, and she stresses the Irish as the primary other for the English mind (36). 240 beauty. The pearls connect to the women's internal values that might otherwise be forgotten in the spectator's rush to judge the blackened skin. Jonson stresses in his script that although the women are black, their "feature /Assures vnto the creature" (Blacknesse Br): that is, they have an inner quality that redeems their blackness. The nymphs' father, Niger, explains to Oceanus that he had previously tried to convince his daughters of their beauty, but that the ladies had been inconsolable until the moon goddess Aethiopia—a likely spectre of Elizabeth, given that the masque was produced only two years after James's succession—had appeared to the women and given advice (Blacknesse Bv-Blr, B2v). Aethiopia, "a Face, all circumfus'd with light," had directed the unhappy nymphs to search for -tania (B2v). Niger explains that he has since accompanied his daughters on a fruitless trek from south to north, dark to light, from "Blacke Mauritania first, and secondly / Swarth Lusitania; next... / Rich Aquitania" (Blacknesse B2v), yet none of these places have been the correct region. Aethiopia's ability to provide female leadership is thus somewhat limited, and Niger must ultimately rely on Oceanus, who explains that the party needs to search for Britannia, or "Albion the fay re," who governs Britannia (Blacknesse B3r). Aethiopia, who then appears on stage on a silver throne and wearing a white and silver robe (Blacknesse B3r),109 can only confirm the completed directions given by a male deity, her information first limited and later secondary. She then encourages the nymphs to approach Britannia, at which point the masquers began their dances (Blacknesse [B4r]). The masque concluded as sea maids called the ladies back to the water, and Aethiopia advised the ladies to remain chaste while they waited for their transformational meeting with Albion, at which point Anna and her ladies retreated from the stage in dance and song (Blacknesse Clr-v).110 The masque relies on a well-documented, widely accepted early modern connection between blackness and evil, but Jonson's script also suggests that the
109 Perhaps not coincidentally, white and silver were the colours worn by Elizabeth's attendants (Somerset 60).
110 Having initiated their integration into Britannia and their transformation from black to fair, the nymphs in performing the masque's dances "physically play out the discipline that transforms their wandering steps, carefully 'footing' the elaborate rounds and measures of English courtly ritual," according to Siddiqi (149). 241 ladies may have an inner beauty that can be revealed overtime, for "though but black in face, / Yet are they bright, /And full of life and light" (Blacknesse Br). While Albion will ultimately be responsible for their metamorphoses, the ladies must prepare over the course of a year by, in vaguely amazonian terms, living in isolation, practising chastity, and performing a series of cleansing rituals each time the full moon appears in the sky (Blacknesse Civ). This sense of inner fairness and virtue in part ties into a larger early modern conflation of blackness and beauty, perhaps inspired by the Song of Solomon and Plato's Symposium (Barthelemy 21-4; Hall 132). While the argument for inner beauty also reflects the masque's function as celebration of the court—thus suggesting Anna's virtues as an extension of James's—Anna's creative interventions and displays of blackness also connote the possibility that her own sense of her otherness at court could have meaning for her, that being an outsider and an antagonist in her husband's court could be a site of political agency and activity.111 Aasand positions Anna as "a woman whose existence in the British court was characterized by her ethnic, religious, and feminine estrangement from accepted convention" ('"To Blanch'" 276), but the queen consort's active role in producing the masque suggests that she took this otherness, this blackness, as an aspect of her politics and as a productive state from which change could occur. The blackface performance was not met with an entirely positive reception, however: while some were pleased with the spectacular elements, others such as Dudley Carleton were dismayed to see noblewomen performing with blackened faces.112 Aasand maintains that Anna, "the feminine representative of the country's political hierarchy," behaved unacceptably for Carleton because, dressed as an Ethiopian and wearing black make-up, the queen presented and
111 Barthelemy suggests that Jonson had to stress the Ethiopians' inner beauty and fair qualities, in order to not offend the royal participants who were, of course, in blackface and thus not visibly clear featured (22), but this argument neglects Anna's role in developing the masque's central issues, as well as the larger history of and interest in the performance of blackness at court (see Edwards 16-22).
Anna had also faced criticism for her costume the year prior: Gossett notes that her shortened dress in Daniel's A vision was deemed inappropriate for a royal (98). 242
"promote[d] a court fundamentally inverted by [her]" ('"To Blanch'" 273).113 While Elizabethan masques celebrated sexual purity and unattainable objects of affection, Anna's placed racial otherness and fecundity on display: the queen's blackness and her creative leadership both led to Carleton's accusation that she and her ladies were promiscuous and his fear that their "indelible trace of blackness [... threatened] to mark the entire court" (Andrea 265). McManus similarly notes the early modern conflation of face painting and "a certain sexual voracity" (104). Even as Anna and her ladies search for the island of -tania and its powerful sun, Anna's royal presence suggests that blackness may actually be beautiful, that otherness may have value separate from any bestowed by the sun's generosity. Blackness, tied historically to the feminine and to promiscuity, becomes a vehicle for Anna's declaration of political agency. Anna's mommerie, connected visually to her pregnant body, reminds the audience members of the power possessed by the queen, as she carries the king's offspring and makes use of patronage in order to guide the aesthetic tastes of her children as future patrons, and in order to develop and sustain politically crucial and aesthetically beneficial relationships. The Masque of Blacknesse, Patronage, and Gendered Authority The conflict between (or negotiations of) feminine and masculine authority in Blacknesse can first be seen in Jonson's preface to the printed edition. Jonson acknowledges the queen's request that the ladies be presented as "Black- mores at first" {Blacknesse A3v). His wording highlights a tension between himself and Anna, however, as artist and patron both attempt to seize creative control: he writes, "Hence (because it was her Maiesties will, to haue them Black- mores at first) the inuention was deriued by me, & presented thus" {Blacknesse A3v). In describing the creative process in this way, Jonson claims sole authorship, simultaneously marginalizing both Anna and Jones, while suggesting that the mommerie, if of questionable artistic merit, was at the behest of "her Maiesties will" {Blacknesse A3v), not the playwright's desire or inspiration. By
See Orgel (Jonsonian 67-8), McManus (94-5), and Wynne-Davies (88) for similar arguments. 243 designating himself the "inventor" of the masque, Jonson takes credit for the selection of issues to be examined—the themes to be explored—but in reality he chose these themes because the queen, his patron and political superior, requested them. Orgel has argued that, in complying with Anna's direction (that she and her ladies appear in blackface), Jonson's first masque "fulfills the requirements of the queen, but does not, in any deeper sense, take into account the fact that she is the queen" (Jonsonian 69). I disagree with Orgel, for masques offer the opportunity to literalize and incorporate allegory, to present blackness as more than a questionable virtue in an imaginative literary text. Rather, masques present nobility not simply playing a part, but being a part. Anna is blackness in the masque, as are her ladies, and her request to appear in black make-up allows her to be a queen in blackness, a queen in otherness or difference. While Anna and her ladies are in Blacknesse "the visual, narrative and ideological centre of the event" (Barker and Hinds 222), the gendered struggle over aesthetic control takes on a new urgency in The Masque of Beauty, as Jonson presents an Aethiopia with greatly decreased powers and introduces the figure of Night, a darkly destructive female force who endeavours to keep the Ethiopians separated from Britannia and the corrective, triumphal rays of Albion. In The Masque of Beauty, the direction given by Aethiopia has largely been supplanted by the powers of Albion. The nymphs—delayed from making contact with Januarius, who will observe and celebrate when Albion bleaches the women's skin—come under the attack of Night, who worries that darkness will soon be undervalued as a result of the nymphs' bleaching efforts (Jonson, Beauty C3v, [C4r]). Additionally, the black nymphs' inner beauty, suggested so clearly in the first masque, is completely discarded in the second: they must return to Britannia and come under the guidance of Albion in order to experience "true beauty" (C3v). As the masque concludes, the Ethiopians do indeed find the curative sun and their skin is presented as white (Beauty D3v, [D4v], E2v). The women are horrified by Night and become conventional, fair beauties who follow the leadership of male figures of authority. Furthermore, the ladies abandon their 244 separate island, to which they had retreated during Night's chaotic rampage of "mallice, and magicke" ([Cr4]); the women do so at the advice of Aethiopia, who has intervened to end Night's activities, but who explains that the ladies' island of Elysium, a peaceful site of artistic growth, will "soone I ...fix it selfe vnto [the] continent" of Britannia (Dlv). The women's island is not entirely fulfilling, in other words, and the ladies still require Albion's rays for total validation and their transition to beauty. The inner light of Blacknesse is replaced in Beauty by the figure of Night, a female container for disorder, jealousy, and evil. Although Night's spell is only broken by Aethiopia, who then guides the nymphs back to -tania (Beauty Dlv) and appears on stage as "the Moone ... in a Siluer Chariot, drawne by Virgins," the moon's purpose is soon simply to provide the ladies with a secondary light as they approach Albion and the Thames (Beauty [D4r]). Aethiopia now only seems capable of correcting female behaviour: she cannot, for example, replace or better the guidance given by men, as she does in Blacknesse when she initiates the nymphs' journey to -tania following Niger's fruitless pleas for self-acceptance (B2v).114 Rather, the nymphs' ability to be transformed is entirely dependent on the workings of Albion and the subjugation of evil Night. Upset at the ladies for not desiring her dark colour, Night does more than remind the audience of "the ugliness and imperfection of blackness; Night reveals the evil and danger of blackness" (Barthelemy 27). Indeed, in Beauty Night actively works to circumvent the furthering of light and all of the attributes associated with fairness and whiteness. Blackness becomes ugly and dangerous, and female leadership made questionable by the chaotic acts of Night, whose
The role of gender is not clear cut as Jonson presents different experiences of blackness, for Niger is not burdened by the colour of his skin. Indeed, he begs his daughters to see their skin as beautiful, but the women feel marginalized and ugly as they mourn their dark features (Jonson, Blacknesse Bv-Blr). Hall maintains that "[i]n this special sense of inequality, all women were 'black' in King James's court" (135), although I must also point out that, according to Niger, poets were responsible for initially drawing the women's attention to their blackness (Jonson, Blacknesse B2r). Male artists, praising conventional images of fair beauty, left the Ethiopians feeling excluded and ashamed, so—perhaps indicating the duelling authorities of Anna and Jonson in this production—men are responsible for the women's sense of isolation, but Albion is also ultimately the only figure who can correct their features and bleach their skin with the perfect beauty of his sunbeams, a metamorphosis that the women actively seek (Blacknesse B3r, [B4r]). 245 presence is inimical to "Loues lights" (Jonson, Beauty [D4v]). As Lynda E. Boose suggests, "by aligning blackness, night, and chaos against light, day, and generativity, ... Jonson ... pushes the discourse of colour difference outside any framework conducive to tolerance, let alone affirmation" (50). Blackness and beauty become irreconcilable: female agency is aligned with the selfish, disastrous acts of dark Night, and Night is compulsorily rejected and exiled for the good of all involved. Jonson's masque production thus pushes Anna and her ladies to reject a world of their own making in favour of peaceful integration with the masculinized Jacobean court. At the same time, Anna's political will and her demands as patron may be seen in the persistent, intervening presence of Aethiopia, the moon goddess whom the nymphs worship and who continually provides the ladies with a positive example of autonomous female leadership and capability. Aethiopia, "their queen," places the ladies on a Throne of Beauty, for example (Beauty Dlr), one that holds enough spaces for all of the masquers (Beauty Dlv). As the ladies approach the Thames on their throne, their float seems to have also included elements of their self-discovered island of Elysium: accompanying the women was a grove of trees, ripe and "laden with golden fruict," and two running fountains, one celebrating youth, the other pleasure (Beauty D3v). Musicians sitting under the trees also approached on the same float, so the courtly masquers were seen to bring with them to Britannia a functioning world of art and beauty (Beauty D3v). As their throne approaches Albion and the masquers are welcomed by the Thames (Beauty [D4v]), however, the masquers are finally suffused with a legitimating light (Beauty D3v-[D4v]), and, after a series of songs with accompanying dances, Januarius interrupts and encourages the masquers to cease their wandering and to now consider beauty as the unique quality of Britannia (Beauty E2r-v). Indeed, Januarius suggests that the ladies' throne, given to them by Aethiopia, is "straying, [and] vncertayne" (E2r), and that the women should make their seat and themselves a part of Britain, "this place, alone" (E2v). The women's throne, which had been dynamic and able to "turn vnto the motion of the 246
World," allowing the ladies to move as heaven does around the globe (Dlr), must now be static: it must operate within Albion's jurisdiction and, like James's state, "Be fixed as the Isle" (E2v), functioning within traditional expectations. Female external and internal beauty thus falls under the purview of Jacobean encomium, none of which connects to the autonomous political agency so often displayed by Anna. The queen consort's masques indicate larger, more enduring examples of disruptive female agency, however, for several of her close circle and fellow performers engaged in behaviour that was transgressive on both domestic and political fronts. Lady Rich gave birth to four illegitimate children, and her brother, the earl of Essex, was executed for his role in the 1601 Essex rebellion against Elizabeth, a rebellion that also involved the countess of Bedford's husband. Lady Stuart proceeded to secretly wed Lord Seymour, for which she was punished with time in the Tower. Lady Walsingham was later accused of poisoning her husband, and Lady Wroth would be exiled from court in 1621 after having two illegitimate children with her cousin and publishing Urania, her prose romance. Anna, so often a disobedient spouse, aligned herself with women who had been implicated in political plots in both Elizabeth's and James's reigns, and who would in time show disregard for marital conventions, yet they all displayed interest in patronage and ingenuity in their political connections at a time when Anna by necessity had to find new methods of gaining power at court. Perhaps the women's sense of responsibility or consequence was minimized by their obvious access to financial holdings and the protection developed through political relationships, but I would argue that historians and literary critics err to simply label Anna and her ladies as shallow, materialistic, and hedonistic. Perhaps their disruptions suggest more agency and political knowledge than mindless intemperance and profligacy. Certainly their active participation in patronage and their performances in masques suggest keen intellects and commitments to creating and sustaining politically advantageous connections, yet Anna's work in Jonson's Masque ofBlacknesse would indicate that she was aware of her status as an outsider in James's court, and that she 247 perhaps felt some need to defend her position as still worthwhile. While blackness is ultimately corrected to pale skin, and the women leave their self-discovered Elysium to live in Britannia, Blacknesse does suggest that Anna valued her position as leader of a band of blackened court beauties. 248
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