Fantasies of Necrophilia in Early Modern English Drama

City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2-2014 Exquisite Corpses: Fantasies of Necrophilia in Early Modern English Drama Linda K. Neiberg Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1420 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] EXQUISITE CORPSES: FANTASIES OF NECROPHILIA IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH DRAMA by LINDA K. NEIBERG A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2014 ii © 2014 LINDA K. NEIBERG All Rights Reserved iii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Mario DiGangi Date Chair of Examining Committee Carrie Hintz Date Acting Executive Officer Mario DiGangi Richard C. McCoy Steven F. Kruger Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iv Abstract EXQUISITE CORPSES: FANTASIES OF NECROPHILIA IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH DRAMA by LINDA K. NEIBERG Adviser: Professor Mario DiGangi My dissertation examines representations of necrophilia in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. From the 1580s, when London’s theatres began to flourish, until their closure by Parliament in 1642, necrophilia was deployed as a dramatic device in a remarkable number of plays. Exquisite Corpses analyzes the relationship between the English Reformation’s abolition of the doctrine of Purgatory and obsequies for the dead, and the frequent, often eroticized representations of dead bodies in the commercial theatre. Despite Protestant iconoclasm, “the cult of the cadaver,” as Eamon Duffy refers to it, was not readily relinquished and remained indelible in the cultural imagination. My project expands the definition of necrophilia beyond sexual intercourse with corpses, and builds on current uses of the word by early modern scholars to include all eroticism that occurs within the vicinity of death and dead bodies in English Renaissance drama, all eroticism that cannot be understood without considering the role death plays in its formulation. During this same period, human dissections were publically performed more frequently and anatomical discoveries were published for lay as well as professional audiences. Outbreaks of the plague and public executions likewise kept the dead in intimate proximity to the living. I argue that the confluence of religious, anatomical, and punitive discourses contributed significantly to the eroticized depictions of corpses in early modern drama. Central to this study is my observation that the sex/death nexus is about the flesh. As theologians and polemicists v argued, lust is born in, expressed through, and ultimately corrupts the flesh; similarly, many discourses concerned with what “dead” meant posited that death was defined by the decay of the flesh. In other words, flesh conjoins the erotic and the thanatotic. Thus, to understand the eroticization of corpses, and the ways in which corpses influenced the shaping of erotic subjectivities, is to better understand how early moderns conceived of eroticism, death, and mortal flesh. To demonstrate my argument, I use a cultural historicist approach underpinned by psychoanalytic and gender theories and analyze plays that illustrate particularly well the conjunctions between sex and death and their relationship to subject formation. My intervention opens promising new models for understanding the reciprocal relationship between death and erotic subjectivity. As the first book-length study on necrophilia in early modern drama, it foregrounds several dramas that interrogate key cultural concerns about intimacies between the living and the dead. vi Acknowledgements This dissertation began as a seminar paper with Mario DiGangi, who encouraged me to submit it to a conference, and then provided me with much-needed help in shaping it into a presentable paper. This piece eventually became the cornerstone of chapter 5. From conception through the last stages of this dissertation, Mario has offered pointed advice, asked tough questions, and given so generously of his time to reading and rereading drafts—always with bountiful comments and suggestions. My project would not have been possible without his wisdom, patience, and encouragement. My gratitude to you, Mario, is “as boundless as the sea.” My readers, Richard C. McCoy and Steven F. Kruger, have been passionate interlocutors throughout my doctoral studies and were generous with their feedback on my project and supportive from the start, on a topic that seemed a bit off the beaten path. I also thank Susan Zimmerman, whose book on corpses and Shakespeare’s theatre inspired and underpins my own study. A portion of chapter 5 will appear in Shakespeare Studies in Fall 2013 and Susan’s scrupulous editorial eye sliced through miles of extraneous matter to uncover and reshape material worthy to be published. Under her guidance, I have started to recalibrate how I read and write. My research and writing have been supported by a Graduate “A” Teaching Fellowship at Hunter College and a Writing Fellowship at John Jay College, for which I am most grateful. I must also thank Clare Carroll and the RSCP Advisory Board for awarding me its annual Travel for Research Award, the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs for awarding me a Doctoral Student Research Grant, and the Ph.D. Program in English for the Millennium Dissertation Year Fellowship. I am also grateful to the Bernard L. Schwartz Communication vii Institute at Baruch College for granting me a Communication Fellowship, which gave me the time to finish this dissertation and challenged me to think in new ways about writing and speaking. My teachers, Martin Elsky, Michael Sargent, and Joan Richardson, posed important questions and presented ideas that helped me at crucial junctures of my dissertation. I likewise thank Jay Barksdale, Study Room Liaison at the NYPL. My project was greatly enriched by the opportunity to be a reader in the Wertheim Study, and by the chance to present an early version of chapter 4 during NYPL’s Shakespeare Week lectures. Several friends in graduate school have read various iterations of this project, offered insightful criticism, and prodded me to think in new directions. I particularly want to thank Simon Fortin, Jason Schneiderman, and David McKay for their no-holds-barred approach, for suggesting texts I had never considered, and for believing in my project. Amanda Springs read revisions and provided insight and fantastic company as this project rounded the home stretch. Brenda Henry-Offor, you have been there from the beginning, offering advice on everything from life to pedagogy to paragraph revisions. I am thankful for the bounty of your brilliance and friendship. I cannot say enough about my partner, Alfred Lippincott. He has sustained and encouraged me more than he may know. He read drafts, offered insights, braved my moods, massaged shoulders, prepared meals, quelled frustrations, planted apple trees, applauded my accomplishments, mused that my theoretical apparatus might look nice in Cor-Ten steel, and reminded me that it is important to sit back and breathe. Lastly, I would like to acknowledge my late father, Paul Neiberg, M.D., whose love and unwavering encouragement continue to be sources of strength. viii Table of Contents Acknowledgements vi Chapter 1 1 The Dead Body Speaks: Or, Cracking Open a Cold One Chapter 2 50 Liminal Flesh: Erotics of Mourning in Tamburlaine the Great and The Duke of Milan Chapter 3 72 “Consummations devoutly to be wish’d”: Feast and Fragment in The Bloody Banquet and ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore Chapter 4 119 Love’s “stony limits”: Marmorializing the Dead in Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and The Winter’s Tale Chapter 5 159 Death’s Release: Comedy and the Erotics of the Grave in The Widow’s Tears and The Faithful Shepherdess Bibliography 201 ix List of Illustrations Figure 1: The Yoga Lady 2 Figure 2: The Pregnant Woman 3 Figure 3: Frontispiece, De Humani Corporus 3 Figure 4: Copulating Couple 5 Figure 5: Impar coniugium 99 Figure 6: Lady Dacre 165 Figure 7: The Judd Marriage 176 1 CHAPTER 1: The Dead Body Speaks: Or, Cracking Open a Cold One The Tyrant: How pleasing art thou to us even in death! I love thee yet, above all women living, And shall do sev’n year hence. —Thomas Middleton1 Special Agent Prentiss: The victims are just your type: blonde hair, blue skin ………………………………………………………………………………. Ivan Bakunas: I don’t know these women, OK? You have the wrong— Detective Fullwood: —the wrong necrophile?! Ivan: You think I’m the only guy in town who likes to crack open a cold one? —Criminal Minds2 A slender female cadaver with her back muscles sliced in layers and extended heavenward like wings. The corpse of a tall, stout male with sections of his body carved and pulled out to resemble drawers. The cadaver of a well-toned female, arched in yoga bridge pose above a mirrored platform that reflects her genitals (fig. 1). As I studied the full-body plastinates3 in Gunther von Hagens’s traveling extravaganza, Body Worlds 2, I felt a pronounced kinship between my voyeuristic self and audiences in early modern anatomy theatres, where such spectacles originated. Indeed, the plastinate of a woman, five months pregnant, with her womb cut open to reveal her unborn fetus, recalls the frontispiece to Andreas Vesalius’s landmark anatomical treatise (figs. 2 and 3).4 I was struck, too, by the viscerality with which lines I often read resonated anew: Vindice’s “Does every proud and self-affecting dame / Camphor her face 1 Please see The Second Maiden’s Tragedy, (5.2.24-6).

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