The Pennsylvania State University

The Graduate School

OBJECTS OF AFFECTION: INTIMATE EXCHANGES IN MARLOWE,

SHAKESPEARE, SPENSER, AND WROTH

A Dissertation in

English

by

Mckenzie M. Eggers

© 2020 Mckenzie M. Eggers

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

December 2020

The dissertation of Mckenzie M. Eggers was reviewed and approved by the following:

Garrett Sullivan Liberal Arts Professor of English Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee

Patrick Cheney Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and Comparative Literature

Marcy L. North Associate Professor of English

Tracy Rutler Assistant Professor of French and Women’s Studies

Mark S. Morrison Professor of English Head of the Department of English

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Abstract

“Objects of Affection” explores how the people of early modern England imagined, believed, hoped, and feared the material objects they exchanged with those closest to them would strengthen, sever, or otherwise shape their intimate ties to one another. More specifically, this project considers what fictional representations of object-centered intimacy in Renaissance literature reveal about early modern authors’ and audiences’ attitudes toward and understandings of the objects that performed critical functions in their intimate lives. This dissertation investigates its central topic through the lens of literature because the fiction of a period uniquely illuminates how its authors and audiences perceive the world around them and what their greatest desires and anxieties about that world are. To highlight the significance of objects in early modern fictions of love, friendship, familial relations, and sexual desire, “Objects of Affection” brings together two fields that have rarely been in conversation in early modern literary scholarship: intimacy theory and materialism. By employing literary and historical analysis and intimacy and materialist theory, this dissertation demonstrates that Renaissance intimacy is linked not only to interior thoughts and desires (as it typically has been) but to the material objects that exist in the external world. In reevaluating our understandings of early modern intimacy, my analysis adds to the relatively sparse work on intimacy in the field of Renaissance literary criticism as well. Whereas scholarship on the family, courtship, marriage, sexuality, and friendship abounds, less has been done to theorize early modern intimacy itself. Ultimately,

“Objects of Affection” offers a more comprehensive picture of Renaissance England’s intimate landscape than currently exists and suggests another lens—that of materiality—through which to

(re)consider interpersonal closeness in early modern England.

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Table of Contents

Figures ...... iv

Acknowledgements ...... v

Introduction Intimacy and Objects in Early Modern Literature and Culture ...... 1

Chapter 1 (Re)making Love in Early Modern England: “Come live with me and be my love,” Poetic Circulation, and Queer Utopias ...... 32

Chapter 2 Trying Love: The Marital Enforcement Suit in The Merchant of Venice ...... 99

Chapter 3 In Britomart’s Arms: Armor, Identity, and Intimacy in Books III-IV of The Faerie Queene ...... 149

Chapter 4 ‘Keep in thy skin this testament of me’: Tree Carving, Intimacy, and Publication in Lady Mary Wroth’s The First Part of the Countess of Montgomery’s Urania ...... 209

Coda The Letter of Love / Lettering Love: Dorothy Osborne’s Objects of Affection ...... 264

Works Cited ...... 284

Figures

Figure 1. Images of the recto and verso sides of page 121-22 from the 1621 Urania...... 245

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Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to the following people for their support and guidance, without which I could not have completed this project: My advisor, Dr. Garrett Sullivan Jr., who helped me become a stronger writer and thinker, responded to unmet deadlines with inhuman levels of patience, constantly pressed me to read the texts herein more cynically (I mean, critically), and ensured that my analyses and ideas were richer and more complex with every draft. He believed in the merit of my project and ideas even when I did not and never failed to provide the encouragement I needed to keep moving forward. Dr. Patrick Cheney, whose passion as a teacher and scholar always reminded me why I came to love and study Renaissance literature in the first place, who taught me to write and communicate with greater clarity and precision, and who introduced me to the field of intimacy studies and ignited an intellectual obsession that developed into a dissertation. Dr. Marcy North, who exposed me to early modern women writers I would not have otherwise encountered, shared her knowledge of paleography and manuscript studies, and helped me see Renaissance literature from new and unexpected perspectives. Dr. Tracy Rutler, who made herself available to answer my questions about the precarious intersection between queer theory and early modern literary studies, helpfully highlighted big- picture issues with my project that I was too close to see, and offered a warm smile and heartening words at each of our unplanned coffee-shop encounters. The Penn State Humanities Institute, who granted me a semester-long fellowship in Spring 2019 and gave me the opportunity to dedicate more time to my project as it neared completion. My mother, who assured me, time and time again, that she would still love me if I did not complete my doctoral degree; helped me celebrate successes and accept failures; revived me with home-cooked meals, shopping trips, and movie nights during visits home; and always answered the phone when I was in need of advice or comfort. Her constant care and limitless love have been an incredible gift and source of strength throughout graduate school (and, really, my entire life), and she has shown me that being kind to oneself and others is integral, not secondary, to success and growth. My father, who instilled a love of reading and writing in me from a young age, filled my childhood with whimsical stories, taught me how to use my imagination, never underestimated me, and has always valued and supported my intellectual pursuits. My partner, who has been by my side for the last six years, sharing their insights, assuring me that I am capable, and urging me to live life while finishing my degree. Thank you for reminding me that there are road trips to take, dogs to adopt, cities to explore, restaurants to try, trails to hike, board games to play, museums to visit, and meaningful conversations to be had outside of academia. Thank you for reading and thoughtfully responding to every document I’ve ever asked

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you to look at, for listening to all of my tiny (and not-so-tiny) complaints and frustrations, and for being a steady constant in my beautifully messy life. My best friend, without whom I would not have survived this process. Thank you for being an unimaginably perfect roommate; for constantly distracting me from my work and invading my personal space; for making sure we cooked balanced meals every once in a while; for a million thoughtful conversations about life, literature, and politics and a million less-thoughtful conversations about everything else; and for participating in all-night writing marathons with me, being my go-to tennis partner, and accompanying me on impromptu frozen yogurt runs every time I asked. You forced me to stop and appreciate even the tiniest moments of beauty, made me laugh when no one and nothing else could, and always shared your fries. You are a miracle.

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Introduction: Intimacy and Objects in Early Modern Literature and Culture

When my grave is broke up again Some second guest to entertain (For graves have learned that woman-head, To be to more than one a bed), And he that digs it spies A bracelet of bright hair around the bone Will he not let’us alone, And think that there a loving couple lies, Who thought that this device might be some way To make their souls, at the last busy day, Meet at this grave, and make a little stay? (1-11)1

I begin with the first stanza of John Donne’s “The Relic,” because it inspires many of the same questions that are at the heart of this project. What role did objects like Donne’s “bracelet of bright hair” play in the affective relations of Renaissance England? How do early modern representations of intimacy suggest that readers and writers wanted to employ these “devices” to shape their intimate ties to one another? How and why do objects fail to function the way people want them to in Renaissance fictions of intimacy? How do the same objects function in ways their users do not anticipate? What, ultimately, do the answers to these questions reveal about how intimacy was experienced and understood in early modern England?

As Donne’s speaker imagines what will become of the intimacy he and his lover share after their deaths, he focuses on an a bracelet made of her hair and explains its significance in the context of their relationship. This token is meant to serve as a “device” that makes their love last.

The speaker and his beloved imagine that this bracelet will maintain the connection between them until the world ends on that “last busy day.” For the speaker, the bracelet functions much like the rings Portia and Nerissa give their lovers in The Merchant of Venice (the focus of chapter

1 All Donne quotes are taken from John Donne: Collected Poetry, ed. Illona Bell (London: Penguin Books, 2012). 1

2). The speaker’s token serves as the beloved’s surrogate. The bracelet of hair is, after all, a literal piece of her. That is why—even though he imagines that only his remains (“my grave”) will be exhumed—the speaker repeatedly uses “us” rather than “me” to describe his bracelet- adorned skeleton. He similarly assumes that, upon noticing the bracelet of hair upon what is left of his wrist, the gravedigger will perceive a “loving couple” lying in his grave rather than a single body. It is as if the bracelet is the beloved. Because it is associated with her, was a physical part of her, the bracelet stands in for her and accompanies the speaker when she cannot.

In theory, this object keeps her physically and emotionally close to him, even in death.

The bracelet is also meant to contain or be imbued with the speaker and beloved’s intimate feelings for one another and to serve as a means through which those feelings can endure for all time. The speaker explains that he and his beloved believed the “device” would draw both of their souls to his grave on judgment day, allowing them to meet one final time.

They hoped that the bracelet of her hair on his wrist would retain the love they had shared, keeping their souls intertwined in death as they had been in life and bringing their spirits together again before the rapture, so that they could enter into eternity together. The speaker does have his doubts about their plan, though. He acknowledges that the bracelet “might” or might not function as he and his beloved intended. Yet, he explains that, even if the bracelet does not work as he and his beloved hoped it would, it might still immortalize the love they share. To do so, the bracelet must play a public as well as a private role. The gravedigger must “break up” their grave, see the token which signifies their love for one another, and correctly interpret its meaning.

Once the gravedigger exposes the speaker’s skeleton with his beloved’s bracelet of hair on the bone, this love token becomes public evidence of the bond that the speaker and his beloved shared. By witnessing the bracelet and understanding its cultural significance, the

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gravedigger keeps the speaker and beloved’s intimacy alive. When he “think[s] that there a loving couple lies,” both the speaker and his beloved are revivified. The present tense verb “lies” contrasts with the past tense verb “thought” in the next line. Even though the lovers think no more, they are, from the gravedigger’s perspective, a living, “loving couple” (rather than inanimate bodily remains) lying together—if only for an instant.

The other objects that the speaker mentions throughout “The Relic” perform a similar, public function. They also memorialize the love he and his beloved shared in the public eye, though to a much larger public. He imagines that “he that digs us up will bring / Us to the bishop and the king / To make us relics” and that “all women shall adore us, and some men” when they are “by this paper taught / What miracles we harmless lovers wrought” (14-16, 19, 21-22). The relics made from their remains and the story of their love recorded on “this paper” will make their intimacy widely known and celebrated. The men and women of the future will “adore” the speaker and beloved as they touch the relics made from their bodies and read poetry about their love. Together, the private and public roles that these objects perform will immortalize the

“miracle” of the speaker and beloved’s love.

Like the work of Donne (and many of his peers), this project explores how the material objects which circulated in early modern England (and which its inhabitants circulated around) participated in people’s intimate lives. I look to early modern texts like “The Relic” for answers as I examine literary representations of object-centered intimacy which were created, performed, and disseminated in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Specifically, this dissertation investigates fictional depictions of intimacies in tension—those which feature conflict between intimates and/or between those who share an affective bond and any third parties who influence their bond. As it investigates these depictions of intimacy, my project tracks the ways various

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non-human agents (book and manuscript pages, rings, caskets, armor, and trees) enable, prevent, or otherwise shape the development and resolution of the conflicts loved ones face. The chapters herein consider multiple types of intimacy—erotic, non-erotic, romantic, platonic, familial, same-sex, opposite-sex, etc.—and objects—mobile, immobile, animate, inanimate, large, small, worn, concealed—as they investigate how Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Edmund

Spenser, and Lady Mary Wroth represent the relationships between these intimacies and objects in a variety of genres (lyric, drama, epic, romance). This project, thereby, elucidates how fictions of object-centered intimacy change or remain consistent in a variety of different contexts, and it contemplates what these differences and consistencies reveal about early modern intimacy. By illuminating the integral role objects play in early modern fictions of love, friendship, familial relations, and sexual desire, my study will theorize Renaissance intimacy as linked not only to interior thoughts and desires (as it typically has been) but to the material objects that exist in the external world.

I look primarily to literature rather than historical documents, letters, or personal journals here because, while the fiction of a given period does not perfectly reflect reality, it does illuminate how people perceived the world they lived, how they thought the world should be, and what they wished it could be. Renaissance representations of object-centered intimacy, then, can effectively demonstrate how people thought objects did or should shape intimate bonds in early modern England and how they wanted them to. Examining literary rather than historical texts has other advantages specific to the study of subject-object relations as well. As Bruno Latour tells us, “the resource of fiction can bring…the solid objects of today into the fluid states where their

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connections with humans may make sense.”2 Because objects in fiction have narrative, thematic, and symbolic importance, literature illustrates their social roles in a language readers can easily understand. In reality (and in historical accounts of reality) the relations between subjects and objects usually invisibly blend into the background of everyday life and cannot be so easily isolated, explored, and understood. As Babette Tischleder explains in her recent book on The

Literary Life of Things in American literature, “literary texts…have the advantage of offering more versatile narrative and imaginative registers: they can relate the social trajectories of objects simultaneously to the cultural and ethical regimes of value and to the cognitive and affective lives of human characters.” Literature draws connections among subjects, objects, and the social world around them for the reader, making the relationship among all three entities easier to see and comprehend. When we study the relationship between objects and subjects through literature, we gain in psychic and social insight what we may lose in historical accuracy.

In literature “material artifacts become the nodal points of human stories and serve as both objects and expressions of people’s desires, anxieties, anger, and longings.”3 Fictional texts inherently link the functions of objects to human intentions, desires, and expectations and tell us how the characters and the people of a period perceived and felt about the ways objects participated in their lives.

So, while the texts I examine may not always accurately illustrate how objects were involved (and involved themselves) in early modern intimacy, they do reveal a great deal about the anxieties and desires early moderns experienced as they established or sought to maintain

2 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (New York: Oxford UP, 2005), 4. 3 Babette Bärbel Tischleder, The Literary Life of Things: Case Studies in American Fiction (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2014), 27, 21-2. 5

intimate ties with one another. For example, the fictional interactions between humans and objects that I discuss here repeatedly reveal a wish—if not always a fulfilled one—to control, concretize, stabilize, or make transparent that which occurs within and between individuals (and which is, therefore, subject to change and misinterpretation). Characters often express or experience anxiety about their inability to fully access another person’s interior thoughts and feelings, and they frequently attempt to assuage this anxiety by anchoring their intimate relationships in a concrete object whose meaning they and their loved ones both understand.

Ultimately, I posit that studying the various roles and functions objects perform in literary representations of intimacy will provide a better sense of how intimacy was conceived of in the early modern period and perhaps also how we think about and experience interpersonal connection today.

Renaissance England is a particularly apt focus for a study of intimacy because the term and its cognates first came into regular use in fifteenth-century England and quickly began accumulating multi-layered, and even seemingly contradictory meanings into the seventeenth century. These meanings reveal that early moderns understood intimacy to have both public and private dimensions and that they were cognizant of the role objects played in their interpersonal relations. For instance, while the verb “to intimate” meant to “imply,” “suggest,” or “hint at,” just as it does today, it could also mean “to make known formally, to notify, announce, state.”

So, to intimate could involve a type of communication dependent upon privacy and exclusivity

(only those with the necessary knowledge will get it) or it could be quite the public affair. Often, an intimation had both public and private dimensions. The reading of wedding banns in church, for example, was a civil and religious “intimation” meant to publicly announce a planned marriage and to provide parish members an opportunity to object, legally or morally, to the

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proposed union. At the same time, the practice likely had a private meaning for the couple planning to marry. It is also significant that, as intimacy became more and more closely associated with the human interior around the turn of the seventeenth century, definitions of

“intimate” and “intimacy” began to include references to physical objects, suggesting them as a means through which one’s interior could be more clearly understood by others. Intimate connection, no matter how deep and private, could not occur without public recognition or the materials of the outside world.

According to the OED, the first recorded cognates of intimacy—the noun “intimation”

(1442-3) and the verb “to intimate” (1548) —referred not to that which was private or inward but to that which was public and external. The noun “intimation” was first used to denote the “act of making known or announcing.” This was less an act of making oneself known to another or sharing personal information with a loved one, and more of a “formal notification or announcement.” With an intimation one might publicly acknowledge her or his financial assets, declare a war, or deliver an edict.4 When the verb “to intimate” emerged a little less than a century later, the term meant “to communicate,” but was used to express the sharing of knowledge or facts rather than of one’s inmost secrets and desires.5 By the 1630’s “intimation” even acquired a legal definition: “notification of a requirement made by law, coupled with an announcement of the penalty that will be incurred in case of default.”6 This kind of intimation conveyed public information about individuals in order to govern their behavior rather than to reveal something about their nature to the world. Throughout the fifteenth, sixteenth, and

4 “Intimation, n.,” OED Online, Oxford UP, March 2017, http://www.oed.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/view/Entry/98507?rskey=ff4B72&result=2&isA dvanced=false. 5 “Intimate, v.,” OED Online. 6 “Intimation, n.,” OED Online. 7

seventeenth centuries, then, intimacy was not a concept limited to the private realm, but one also closely tied to legal matters, matters of state, and other aspects of one’s public life.

Alongside these public-centered understandings of intimacy existed the meanings with which we are most familiar today. Over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, understandings of intimacy expanded to include private, interpersonal bonds, thoughts and feelings, and interior qualities. As early as 1531, the noun “intimation” began to signify not just a

“formal notification” but also “a suggestion, a hint.” Thus intimacy was not limited to direct, public communication but began to apply to private, mutual understandings shared by people familiar with one another. These understandings were necessary if a “hint” was to be understood by the person intended (and not by everyone else).7 By the end of the sixteenth century, the verb

“to intimate” meant to “signify,” “imply,” “suggest,” or “hint at,” again associating intimacy with private and exclusive communication. Intimacy became connected to a particular way of sharing and understanding information that separated those engaging in intimate communication from others around them. To intimate was an act which required the interpretation of internal meanings by way of reading external signs (key words, gestures, facial expressions). In 1590, the verb appeared in The Faerie Queene to denote the expression “by any means however indirect” of an internal emotion (III.ix.30.1) and, so, came to entail communicating, not any type of knowledge or fact, but something about one’s interior thoughts and feelings.8 In the 1630’s and

40’s the adjectival form of intimate” and the noun “intimacy” came into use; these terms, too, were associated with the private and internal. Intimate qualities were those which were “most inward” and “deep-seated.”9 Intimacy became an “inward quality or feature” and was established

7 “Intimation, n.,” OED Online. 8 “Intimate, v.,” OED Online. 9 “Intimate, adj.,” OED Online. 8

via the sharing of one’s “inner or inmost nature.”10 By the 1670’s that which was intimate

“pertain[ed] to the inmost thoughts or feelings proceeding from, concerning, or affecting one’s inmost self.” And so, intimacy eventually moved inward, where it is typically located now.

As meanings of “intimacy” and its cognates began to account for the internal as well as the external, they were increasingly linked to an engagement with or exchange of publicly visible and accessible objects. In the scientific sense, material things were thought to contain an “inmost nature or fundamental character,” just like people. Only with time and study would that nature reveal itself. As such, one could have an intimate bond, “characterized by familiarity” with both objects and humans.11 Even more interesting, though, definitions began to position objects as integral to interpersonal relationships. An intimation was now a hint or suggestion expressed “by a sign or token.”12 Presumably, these tokens provided intimates a common reference point during their interactions and conversations. When the adjectival form of intimate emerged, it not only applied to people “closely connected by friendship or personal knowledge” but also to “the transfer of things pertaining to or dealing with such close personal relations.”13 Thus, intimacy was still not viewed as a wholly private or internal phenomenon. Private relations were (and are) in part governed by the exchange of objects accessible not just to friends, lovers, and family members, but to everyone.

Despite the clear and significant relationship among objects, individuals and intimacy in

Renaissance England, there is no book-length project that reads subject-object relations in early modern British literature through the lens of intimacy theory. Many monographs and collections

10 “Intimacy, n.,” OED Online. 11 “Intimate, adj.,” OED Online. 12 “Intimation, n.,” OED Online. 13 “Intimate, adj.,” OED Online. 9

have focused on the relationship between people and the material world in early modern literature and culture,14 and others (though fewer) have looked to Renaissance British literature to theorize intimacy in the period,15 but the intersection between the two fields of study

(materialism and intimacy theory) has been largely neglected by early modern critics. Important book projects devoted to highlighting the connections between materiality and gender and sexuality in Renaissance literature and culture have recently been published, but they have only tangentially discussed how objects take part in creating, maintaining, and severing intimate bonds.16 A number of book chapters and articles published in the last decade explore the participation of objects in early modern intimacies, but, by necessity, they are limited in scope.

About half of these studies focus on early modern England’s material culture, tracing the impact of a particular object or physical structure upon interpersonal bonds. The topics they address include “‘A Very Fit Hat’…and Early Modern Affection,”17 the “Materials of Female Friendship

14 See Margreta de Grazia, Maureen Quilligan, and Peter Stallybrass, Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996); Ann Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000); Julian Yates, Error, Misuse, Failure: Object Lessons from the English Renaissance (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2003); and Tara Hamling and Catherine Richardson, Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and its Meanings (Surrey: Ashgate, 2010). 15 See James Bromley, Intimacy and Sexuality in the Age of Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012); Daniel Juan Gil, Before Intimacy: Asocial Sexuality in Early Modern England (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2006); and Kathy Eden, The Renaissance Rediscovery of Intimacy (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2012). 16 See Pamela Hammons, Gender, Sexuality, and Material Objects in Renaissance Verse (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010) and Johnathan Goldberg, The Seeds of Things: Theorizing Sexuality and Materiality in Renaissance Representations (New York: Fordham UP, 2009). 17 See Catherine Richardson, “‘A Very Fit Hat’: Personal Objects and Early Modern Affection,” in Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and Its Meanings, eds. Tara Hamling and Catherine Richardson (Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), 289–98. 10

in Margaret Cavendish’s Sociable Letters,”18 “‘Intimacy’ at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse,”19

“Bluestocking Friendship and Material Culture,”20 and the function of “Love Tokens….as

Memory for Plebeian Women in Early Modern England.”21 The other half of these shorter studies explores how objects are involved (or involve themselves) in fictional, interpersonal relations. These analyses are limited to a single text (Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Love’s Labour’s

Lost, Othello),22 author,23 or literary genre.24 It is also worth noting that my project contributes to the relatively sparse work on intimacy in the field of Renaissance literary criticism. Whereas scholarship on the family, courtship, marriage, sexuality, and friendship abounds, less has been done to theorize early modern intimacy itself. Moreover, with a few notable exceptions,25 criticism on early modern intimacy has limited its focus to one or two specific types (erotic,26

18 See Whitney Sperrazza, “Intimate Correspondence: Negotiating the Materials of Female Friendship in Margaret Cavendish’s Sociable Letters,” Women’s Writing 26, no. 4 (2019): 456– 72. 19 See Sarah Dustagheer, “‘Intimacy’ at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse,” Shakespeare Bulletin: The Journal of Early Modern Drama in Performance 35, no. 2 (2017): 227–46. 20 Elizabeth Eger, “Paper Trails and Eloquent Objects: Bluestocking Friendship and Material Culture,” Parergon: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies 26, no.2 (2009): 109–38. 21 See Jennine Hurl-Eamon, “Love Tokens: Objects as Memory for Plebeian Women in Early Modern England,” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 6 (2011): 181–86. 22 See John S. Garrison, “Glass: The Sonnets’ Desiring Object,” in Queer Shakespeare: Desire and Sexuality, eds. Goran Stanivukovic and Vin Nardizzi (London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2017), 51–67; Amy L. Smith, “‘Then We Cannot Be Bought’: Performing Thwarted Exchanges in Love’s Labour’s Lost,” Cahiers Élisabéthains: A Biannual Journal of English Renaissance Studies 95, no. 1 (2018): 40–61; and Adrian Howe, “(Dis)affectionate Fetishism—Dispossessed love in Othello and late modernity” in The Materiality of Love: Essays on Affection and Cultural Practice, eds. Anna Malinowska and Michael Gratzke (New York: Routledge, 2018), 145-60. 23 Eileen M. Sperry, “Decay, Intimacy, and the Lyric Metaphor in John Donne,” SEL Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 59, no. 1 (2019): 45–66. 24 Janet Levarie Smarr, “Substituting for Laura: Objects of Desire for Renaissance Women Poets,” Comparative Literature Studies 38, no.1 (2001): 1–30. 25 See Bromley’s Intimacy and Sexuality and Juan Gil’s Before Intimacy. 26 See Valerie Traub, Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2016). 11

non-erotic27 queer,28 male,29 female30) or facets (bodily31 and emotional32) of intimacy; to a specific genre (drama,33 letters34) or medium;35 to one or two authors;36 or to an individual work.37 “Objects of Affection,” on the other hand, considers a wide variety of intimacies as they

27 Christopher Marlow, “Friendship in Renaissance England,” Literature Compass 1, no.1 (2003): 1-10. 28 See Catherine Ingrassia, “‘Queering’ Eliza Haywood,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 14, no. 4 (2014): 9-24; John S. Garrison, Friendship and Queer Theory in the Renaissance: Gender and Sexuality in Early Modern England (New York: Routledge, 2014). 29 Alan Bray, “Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship in Elizabethan England,” History Workshop 29 (1990): 1-19; Claude J. Summers, Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment England (New York: Hawthorn P, 1992); Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia UP, 1985); Katherine O’Donnel and Michael O’Rourke, Love, Sex, Intimacy, and Friendship Between Men, 1550-1800 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). 30 Valerie Traub, The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002); Chris Roulston, “Framing Sensibility: The Female Couple in Art and Narrative,” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 46, no.3 (2006): 641-655. 31 James Bromley, “Intimacy and the Body in Seventeenth-Century Religious Devotion,” Early Modern Literary Studies: A Journal of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Literature 11, no. 1 (2005), accessed July 16, 2020, http://purl.oclc.org/emls/11-1/brominti.htm; Joe Moshenska, Feeling Pleasures: The Sense of Touch in Renaissance England (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2014). 32 Erin Keating, “In the Bedroom of the King: Affective Politics in the Restoration Secret History,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 15, no. 2 (2015): 58-82. 33 See Charles R. Forker “‘A Little More than Kin, and Less than Kin’: Incest, Intimacy, Narcissism, and Identity in Elizabethan and Stuart Drama,” in Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England: An Annual Gathering of Research, Criticism, and Reviews 4 (1989): 13-51. 34 See Eden, The Renaissance Rediscovery of Intimacy; Nicola Parsons, “Inscribing the Carte De Tendre: Mapping Epistolary Intimacy in Queen Anne's Court, in Expanding the Canon of Early Modern Women's Writing, ed. Paul Salzman (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), 168-180. 35 See Cathy Shrank, “‘These Fewe Scribbled Rules’: Representing Scribal Intimacy in Early Modern Print,” Huntington Library Quarterly: Studies in English and American History and Literature 67, no. 2 (2004): 295-314. 36 See Mary O’Connor, “Representations of Intimacy in the Life-Writing of Anne Clifford and Anne Dormer,” in Representations of the Self from the Renaissance to Romanticism, eds. Patrick Coleman, Jayne Lewis, and Jill Kowalik (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000), 79-96. 37 See Madelon Sprengnether, “Annihilating Intimacy in Coriolanus,” in Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Literary and Historical Perspectives, ed. Mary Beth Rose (Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1986), 89-111; Harry Berger Jr., “Three's a Company: The Spectre of Contaminated Intimacy in Othello,” in Shakespeare Studies Today, eds. Graham Bradshaw, Tom Bishop, Mark Turner, W. R. Elton, and John M. Mucciolo (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 235-263. 12

are depicted by multiple authors in numerous genres. No scholar (to my knowledge) has completed a comprehensive study of early modern fictions of object-centered intimacy.

As I explore literary depictions of object-centered intimacies, I draw from the work of contemporary and early modern theorists of intimacy and materialism and look for productive ways to join their insights. This project is deeply indebted to the theories of intimacy developed by Lauren Berlant, Michael Warner, Daniel Juan Gil, and James Bromley and to materialist scholarship focused on the significance of subject-object relations in early modern English literature and culture. In particular, I benefit from the insights that Margreta de Grazia, Maureen

Quilligan, Peter Stallybrass, Ann Jones, Julian Yates, Tara Hamling, and Catherine Richardson provide as they discuss different relations between people and the material world in early modern

England. Finally, to develop a clearer understanding of what an object is and what it does, I have looked to the materialist theories of scholars such as Bill Brown, Arjun Appadurai, and Bruno

Latour.

In the introduction to “Intimacy: A Special Issue” Berlant offers a definition of intimacy that has been influential in many fields. She describes intimacy as an “aspiration for a narrative about something shared, a story about both oneself and others that will turn out a particular way…set within zones of familiarity and comfort: friendship, the couple, and the family form

[and] animated by expressive and emancipatory kinds of love” whose “inwardness…is met by a corresponding publicness.”38 By linking intimacy with the public as well as the private, the external as well as the internal, Berlant’s definition has helped to shift the modern conversation about intimacy from one which treats the term as synonymous with “private” or “interior” 39 to

38 Lauren Berlant, “Intimacy: A Special Issue,” Critical Inquiry 24, no.2 (1988): 281. 39 See Madeleine Foisil, “The Literature of Intimacy,” in A History of Private Life, III: Passions of the Renaissance, ed. Philippe Ariès (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1989), 327-361. This early 13

one which presents intimacy as a complex set of interpersonal interactions involving both the personal and the social. Though Berlant does not discuss the functions of objects within intimate relations, her observation that intimacy has both private and public dimensions has prompted me to consider the literary objects I study as key agents in both the public and private performance of intimacy, to determine how their public and private uses converge and diverge, and to infer what these convergences and divergences reveal about early modern experiences of intimacy.

Shortly after Berlant offered her definition of intimacy, she and Michael Warner explored how it applied to queer affections in the United States. In “Sex in Public,” they ask why, even though intimacy is both a public and personal matter, social narratives framing intimacy as interior, private, and apolitical persist. They find that these social narratives are designed to disadvantage those who cannot participate in “the institutions of personal life,” those “privileged institutions of social reproduction, the accumulation and transfer of capital, and self- development” from which members of normative relationships benefit.40 They explain that, because queer affective bonds do not look like normative love, they are excluded from more prominent social narratives about intimacy and, therefore, are not seen as intimate. As a result, nonnormative relations are devalued and/or obscured, and those who pursue them are denied access to the “institutions of personal life.” In turn, unequal access to these institutions and the validation that comes with this access maintains the distinction between intimacy and nonnormative love. This distinction justifies the continued refusal to grant nonnormative

essay on intimacy usefully lists the different types of intimacy touched on in more personal early modern documents like diaries and memoirs but does not explain how various intimacies functioned in individuals’ lives. 40 Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, “Sex in Public,” Critical Inquiry 24, no.2 (1998): 553. It is worth noting that Berlant and Warner drew these conclusions before the United States legalized gay marriage in 2015. Nonetheless, many of their observations remain valid. 14

relations institutional validation, and so on. Thus, by separating discussions of intimacy from discussions of public life, the dominant discourses surrounding intimacy obfuscate its connection to these institutions, at the same time that they refuse to recognize love that exists outside of them. These discourses thereby ensure the continued marginalization of nonnormative love.

Berlant and Warner’s discussion of intimacy as a social concept which can be narrativized to endorse some relationships and denounce others has greatly informed my analysis of nonnormative intimacies.

This distinction between what intimacy is and how it is spoken about has been especially pertinent to my first chapter, which explores how Marlowe’s “Come live with me and be my love,” more commonly known as “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” challenged the normative narratives of intimacy being spread by the early modern church and state. The chapter argues that, by offering a counterdiscourse to the increasingly more prominent intimate discourses advanced by early modern England’s religious and political institutions, the lyric constitutes a queer utopia—an imaginative space which provides readers with the opportunity to define intimacy for themselves and to question the normative narratives of love they are familiar with.

Berlant and Warner’s work, though focused on intimacy today, has been taken up by queer theorists and early modern scholars Daniel Juan Gil and James Bromley, whose monographs productively join intimacy studies, queer theory, and early modern literary studies and have served as important models for my own project. Like Berlant and Warner, Gil and

Bromley explore social discourses about intimacy, or, as Bromley calls them, “scripts of intimacy” (social narratives dictating what intimacy should look like and how it should progress). But, whereas Berlant and Warner investigate the ways dominant scripts of intimacy

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marginalize and make invisible nonnormative forms of love, Gil and Bromley demonstrate how some early modern literature offers a counternarrative to the dominant discourses about intimacy that were growing increasingly more popular in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. To do so, they investigate literary representations of affective relations that do not “have an institutionalized home in a private, domestic sphere”41 and are not based on “interiorized desire and futurity.” Both scholars offer queer readings of early modern texts as they contemplate how fiction might have provided a resource for readers—especially those inclined toward or involved in non-normative relationships—to imagine love outside of the dominant scripts of intimacy in their time. Gil and Bromley also discuss how these texts—given that they continue to be popular and are taught and performed frequently—might help queer readers resist or reject the normative scripts of intimacy that persist in our world.42

Gil’s work focuses on what he terms an “asocial” sexuality, based on “powerful, phenomenologically sexual connections that spring up between people who have in some important way dropped out of the functional dimensions of an early modern society.” He concludes that literary narratives in which this type of sexuality appears can serve as “a powerful resource for rethinking and reimagining the terms of social life from the ground up, as it were, by focusing our attention on alternatives to the most basic ways people negotiate their experience of others in social life." Somewhat like Lee Edelman, Gil posits that literary representations of alternative intimacies show those engaging in asocial sexual relationships how to “recast” the

“pain of interpersonal breakdown…as a pleasurable connection to another body” and to withdraw from society.43

41 Gil, Before Intimacy, xi. 42 Bromley, Intimacy and Sexuality, 1, 5. 43Gil, Before Intimacy, x, xi. 16

Bromley, too, studies intimacies that exist outside of the “functional dimensions” of

Renaissance society. He calls these relations “failures of intimacy” because they are not future- oriented or based in interiority—two traits which, he argues, have been central to state- sanctioned intimacy since the early modern period. Bromley’s book illustrates that, through depictions of nonnormative interpersonal connection, early modern literature often “critiqued the consolidation of intimacy around long-term heterosexual monogamy and instead invested value in alternate forms of intimacy…that involve non-normative understandings of the body's pleasures.” He posits that the “failures of intimacy” which he studies, though perhaps not unequivocally endorsed by the works in which they appear, offered readers scripts in which queer affections “provide satisfaction and pleasure to those involved in them” and, accordingly, inspired early modern audiences to “reimagine their own intimate lives.” Bromley concludes

(more optimistically than Gil) that, because these texts remain popular today, they “along with the affections and pleasures they represent…are available to modern readers as scripts for intimacy, which can be appropriated and transformed to fit the present” and to resist normative and exclusionary social narratives about love.44

In this project, I often adopt Gil’s and Bromley’s reading practices by considering how the texts I analyze offered early modern readers and audiences an opportunity to think differently about their intimate lives. I also take up and extend their assertion that early modern texts position intimacy as dependent on surfaces as well as depths. Whereas Gil and Bromley focus on intimate connections centered around the contact between bodily surfaces, I demonstrate that object-centered representations of intimacy suggest an understanding of interpersonal intimacy

44 Bromley, Intimacy and Sexuality, 1, 2, 5. 17

as dependent upon the exchange of material objects. Thus, I explore a different kind of queer intimate script that appears in early modern literature.

Though my dissertation is primarily concerned with interpersonal intimacy, it also accounts for the important role that subject-object relations play in interpersonal connection.

Chapter 3, for instance, tracks the dynamics between characters (primarily the female knight,

Britomart) and their armor in Books III-IV of The Faerie Queene and argues that, for Spenser, armor exists in a reciprocal relationship with the person who wears it. Both subject and object shape one another over time such that a knight’s armor forms and is formed by its wearer and therefore co-constitutes her identity. Thus, when donned, a knight’s armor makes her identity visible to others and mediates her intimate interactions with them. Chapter 3, in particular, is strongly influenced by Ann Jones and Peter Stallybrass’ study of Renaissance Clothing and the

Materials of Memory in which they argue, “To understand the significance of clothes in the

Renaissance, we need to undo our own social categories, in which subjects are prior to objects, wearers to what is worn. We need to understand the animatedness of clothes, their ability to ‘pick up’ subjects, to mold and shape them both physically and socially, to constitute subjects.”45

“Objects of Affection” also relies heavily upon a few other materialist analyses of subject-object relations in early modern England’s literature and culture. Margreta De Grazia,

Maureen Quilligan, and Peter Stallybrass’ collection of essays, Subject and Object in

Renaissance Culture, usefully “break[s] open what can seem a long and monotonous history of the sovereignty of the subject” and reads Renaissance literature to illuminate “the way material things—land, clothes, tools—might constitute subjects who in turn own, use, and transform

45Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 2. 18

them.”46 Julian Yates’ Error, Misuse, Failure: Object Lessons from the English Renaissance demonstrates what literature can reveal about “the role things play in producing collectives or communities of human and nonhuman actors” in Renaissance texts (literary and otherwise).47

Most recently, Tara Hamling and Catherine Richardson have edited a collection of essays that uses “objects to get to the heart of individuals’ engagements with the wider processes of social, cultural and religious change which shaped their everyday existence” in medieval and early modern England and Italy.48 While these studies emphasize the important ways objects and subjects work upon one another, they do not typically consider how (or if) the objects they examine involve two or more subjects in intimate relations. Building on the work that has been done thus far, this project illustrates how the relationships between individuals and objects impact their relationships with other people.

As the scholarship I have discussed thus far makes clear, the key terms of this project—

“objects” and “intimacy”—can have a wide range of meanings. Throughout this project, I use the term “object,” much like Martin Heidegger and Bill Brown, to refer to a material thing with culturally assigned uses, meanings, and values.49 I recognize that, as Arjun Appadurai and Igor

Kopytoff find, these assigned uses, meanings, and values depend upon social context and may change from one location or society to another and/or accumulate new meanings over time.50

Moreover, in discussing the roles and meanings of various objects, I consider that, though people

46 De Grazia et al., Subject and Object, 4-5. 47 Yates, Error, Misuse, Failure, xix. 48 Hamling and Richardson, Everyday Objects, 23. 49 See Bill Brown, “Thing Theory,” Critical Inquiry 28, no. 1 (2001): 1-22. 50 See Arjun Appadurai, “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986), 3–63 and Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” in The Social Life of Things, 64–91. 19

may assign an object a primary purpose, value, or significance, it can perform social functions other than those prescribed and that, according to the central tenet of actor-network theory, objects are “actors…and not simply the hapless bearers of symbolic projection.”51 Objects and humans work together to shape one another’s existence.

To define intimacy, I work from and add to the definitions that Berlant, Gil, and Bromley provide. Like Berlant, I stress that intimacy involves communication and the formation of a

“shared narrative” and that it can take many forms (familial, platonic, sexual). As Gil does, I hold that intimacy is a “form of emotionally mediated interpersonal bonding.”52 With Bromley, I assert that intimacy is linked to interiority. I do not, as all three scholars do, limit intimacy to those bonds meant to last “over the long duration,” and I add that interpersonal connection is often achieved via material objects in the outside world. In short, this dissertation defines intimacy as any consensual, mutually experienced connection that involves the public and/or private communication—via verbal conversation, physical touch, or the “sparest of signs and gestures”53—of that which is interior (a wide array of thoughts, desires, fears, and emotions). It defines object-centered intimacies as those which depend, in part or completely, upon material objects to facilitate this interpersonal connection and communication.

Like Berlant’s definition of intimacy, mine is intentionally broad. It applies to sexual, romantic, platonic, and familial bonds. I do not exclude nonnormative bonds from the realm of the intimate as Gil and Bromley do. In considering “asocial sexuality” as belonging to those who have “dropped out” of society and “failures of intimacy” as scripts for resisting the

51 See Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (New York: Oxford UP, 2005), 10. 52 Gil, Before Intimacy, xii. 53 Berlant, “Intimacy,” 281. 20

“consolidation of intimacy around monogamous coupling,”54 Gil and Bromley have advocated powerfully and persuasively for the queer community, but they have also reified the distinction between intimacy and nonnormative love in doing so. They have focused on the potential for conflict between different types of love and have not investigated how these affective bonds may have, at times, coexisted peacefully or complemented one another in Renaissance England. As a result, their work may encourage a codification of intimacies that draws a more definitive distinction between “queer affections” and other intimacies than existed in the Renaissance. Yes, early modern culture had begun to position marital love based on interiority and futurity as the gold standard of intimacy, but it had only just begun.

Here I pay special attention to literature produced between the 1580s and the 1620s, during which time the concept of intimacy was still being formed. The realm of early modern intimacy had not yet stabilized and, while the religious and social institutions of early modern

England had begun to valorize the private, heterosexual, couple-form intimacy that is familiar today, the supremacy of heteroerotic, marital love was not yet guaranteed. Many early moderns still considered other intimacies (especially male friendship) as important as or even more important than marital bonds, and different understandings of intimacy coexisted alongside one another for a moment. My is hope is that, by examining the fictions of object-centered intimacy created during this transitional period, I can push back against the modern-day tendency to neatly categorize intimate practices or affections and arrange them hierarchically. For instance, instead of solely tracking the conflict between same-sex friendship/homoerotic attraction and opposite- sex affection in The Merchant of Venice, I will illustrate how the multiple ring exchanges in the play create an interconnected web of intimacies that places different relationships side-by-side

54 Bromley, Intimacy and Sexuality, 2; Gil, Asocial Sexuality, xi. 21

and smudges the boundaries between them rather than subordinating one or the other. By focusing on the ways the same object can bind people together in a variety of intimate configurations rather than upon individual categories of intimacy, I can determine how intimacies worked both differently and similarly in Renaissance England rather than strictly placing them in opposition to one another. Finally, because the literature I study here was written as a major shift in understandings of intimacy was taking place, I believe it provides ideal material for better understanding the complexities of early modern and modern intimacy.

This project consists of four chapters, each of which examines the object-centered intimacies associated with a major early modern text. I devote a chapter to each of the following works: Marlowe’s “Come live with me and be my love,” Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice,

Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (Books III-V), and Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania (part 1). I’ve selected these works for four reasons. First, they each feature objects prominently and explore intimate tensions as central, driving themes. Second, they collectively illustrate how different kinds of intimacy were represented in a variety of genres. Third, they address the perspectives of both male and female authors (though the project is weighted toward male authors). And fourth, as these texts survive on the stage, on the screen, and in the classroom today, their depictions of intimacy can most readily help us re-think our current perspectives on our own affective attachments and the objects that participate in them.

Each of the chapters to follow will focus on a unique form of object-centered intimacy, though some types of intimacy will be revisited and there is often overlap between them. Chapter

1 analyzes literature-based intimacies, interpersonal relationships resulting from engagement with a fictional text. These intimacies can take the form of imagined relationships that a text inspires in the minds of readers (as they envision themselves in the author’s fictional world or

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dream up intimacies based on their experience of this world), intellectual and emotional connections between the author of a text and her or his readers, and public and private ties formed among authors who respond (via literary texts of their own) to a fellow author’s work.

Chapter 2 concentrates on assignation-based intimacies, affective bonds meant to be strengthened and sustained via the exchange of a material object with an assigned meaning, like the bracelet of hair Donne contemplates in “The Relic.” This exchanged object often has cultural and symbolic significance as well as a meaning (or meanings) explicitly assigned to it by one or both/all parties in a relationship. It is worth noting that the exchanged object often refuses to adhere to its assigned roles. It fails to fortify interpersonal bonds as it is intended to and, instead, binds people together in ways not anticipated. Chapter 3 thinks through recognition-based intimacies in which the objects associated with an individual’s person—like a favorite hat, a work uniform, a tattoo—shape and are shaped by her in a reciprocal fashion. As a result, these material objects visually communicate truths about who she is and attract those who see their own identities or values reflected in the objects she carries with and on her. This chapter illuminates, more clearly than the others, that intimacy is based not just on what lies beneath an individual’s surface but on that surface itself. Chapter 4 considers memorial-based intimacies.

These are relationships initiated, sustained, or imperiled by the monuments loved ones make to one another. To make these monuments their creators express their thoughts and feelings about a friend, lover, or family member upon a publicly accessible structure—like the epitaphs we inscribe on a loved one’s tombstone or the initials that couples carve into trees or write on locks attached to bridges. These monuments keep loved ones close to one another in a number of ways.

They serve as proxies for an absent friend or lover, places that an individual can visit to feel close to her or him. They function as mnemonic devices by sparking memories associated with a

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particular intimate relationship and providing a means through which loved ones can relive the experiences they have shared. Finally, due to their public nature, these monuments separate those whose love they memorialize (the only ones who know exactly what the monument is for and what it means) from everyone else (those who can see but not fully understand the monument).

In the eyes of their creators and the people for whom they are created, monuments publicize the exclusivity of the intimate bond they celebrate. Monuments can, of course, also impact intimacies negatively if they reveal the intimate connection they memorialize to the wrong person.

Specifically, Chapter 1 considers the literature-based intimacies facilitated by the material circulation of “Come live with me and be my love”—as a loose sheet and in print and manuscript collections—in early modern England. I argue that, due to its nonnormative (by early modern and modern standards) depiction of idealized love, Marlowe’s pastoral constitutes the kind of queer utopia that José Esteban Muñoz theorizes in Cruising Utopia. The poem functions as a tool to think with as it invites the reader to look to the pastoral golden world of the past in order to envision a future in which the intimacies in her life might be more fulfilling. As she pictures herself in Marlowe’s pastoral paradise, the reader can imagine what it would be like to share an intimacy that is not limited by the dominant legal and religious narratives of early modern England (which stressed that intimacy should be heteroromantic, marital, and reproductive). The lyric provides her with a mental space where she is free to reconceive of interpersonal affection however she pleases and to imaginatively experience the utopian intimacy she has dreamt up. Her experience remains in her memory when she turns her mind back to the real world and encourages her to compare the ideal intimacy she has conjured to the affective bonds actually available to her. If reality disappoints, her imaginative experience of love pushes

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her to contemplate how she would change the realities of her intimate life and encourages her to hope for, and possibly work toward, a future in which the type of intimacy she has envisioned might exist. After chapter 1 explains how Marlowe’s poem functions independently as a queer utopia, it examines how readers’ interpretations and experiences of “Come live with me” change as the poem inspires more and more authors to write replies and imitations. As it shows up in numerous manuscript and print collections, the lyric takes on different meanings determined by the material contexts in which it appears—the texts it is grouped with, the title attached to it (or lack thereof), who it is attributed to (if anyone), the lines or stanzas that have been removed, added, or altered, etc. Through circulation, the utopian world that Marlowe creates becomes broader and more diverse, giving readers access to a collection of poetic depictions of and reflections on utopian intimacy, all associated with one another through literary allusion.

Collectively, these poems show the reader that there is no single, correct way to imagine utopian intimacy. They provide material she can draw from as she imagines her own idealized form of love and offer models for thinking critically about the implications that utopian imaginings of intimacy might have for her actual experience of love in early modern England. Finally, this chapter elucidates how “Come live with me” made a second type of queer utopia available to those authors who encountered and responded to Marlowe’s lyric and to one another’s replies to the poem. In the process of writing their answer poems and imitations, these poets imaginatively entered a shared pastoral world like the one their lyrics were set in. There they became shepherd- poets, male companions participating in a friendly competition of wit and poetic skill and engaging in intellectual discourse as they joined a collective effort to define utopian intimacy.

This literary utopia, like Marlowe’s pastoral world, was a queer space. In it, authors shared nondyadic bonds with one another. They became part of a community of authors in which they

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were connected to a long line of pastoralists dead, living, and not yet born. Joining this literary community enabled authors to link their texts and literary legacies in the public eye and, thereby, preserve their authorly ties to one another long after their own deaths, bringing to life Marlowe’s dream of an intimacy free from the limitations of time. Finally, imaginatively entering this queer, pastoral space provided authors with an opportunity to experience other forms of nonnormative intimacy by placing themselves in the positions of their speakers, whose genders, sexualities, and social positions were often unlike their own.

Chapter 2 focuses on the rings that circulate among the characters of The Merchant of

Venice as they attempt to establish assignation-based intimacies with one another. It argues that, through Portia and Nerissa’s attempts to transform their love tokens into indicators of Bassanio and Graziano’s devotion, Shakespeare evokes the early modern matrimonial enforcement suit, a type of ecclesiastical suit meant to determine whether or not two people were legally betrothed or married. These suits hinged upon the ability of the plaintiff to establish that the defendant intended and consented to marry them. Often, deponents cited the love tokens exchanged between the two parties in conflict, or the absence of such tokens, as evidence that they did or did not express intent and consent to marry. In the same way that judges and deponents interpreted the significance of exchanged love tokens, Portia and Nerissa pay close attention to

Bassanio and Graziano’s attitudes toward and treatment of their betrothal/wedding rings to determine whether or not their marriage contracts remain intact once the men leave Belmont to rescue their friend. Unlike the deponents in enforcement suits, however, Portia and Nerissa look to their rings not only to verify the legal validity of their unions but to reveal the truth about

Bassanio and Graziano’s feelings for them. They assign their rings specific meanings to this end.

Portia tells Bassanio that, should he lose or give away his ring, it will “presage the ruin” of the

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love he and Portia share. Nerissa gives Graziano a ring with a posy that equates her with the love token (“love me and leave me not”) and suggests that the inverse of the posy (leave me and love me not) is also true. Both women hope to use their rings as a visible measure of Bassanio and

Graziano’s love for them. Over the course of the play, though, Portia and Nerissa discover that their rings do not function as they had hoped. Bassanio and Graziano give their rings away out of love for Antonio and the lawyer and page who save him but protest that they still love Portia and

Nerissa. As they circulate, the rings come to signify Bassanio and Graziano’s love for Antonio

(for whom they give the rings away) just as they had been the material markers of Bassanio and

Graziano’s love for Portia and Nerissa. The play’s heroines are left to determine if the rings’ new meanings supersede their first meanings or if the conflict between their two meanings can be reconciled. The final ring exchange suggests that the latter is true. Portia gives her ring to

Bassanio a second time, but she returns it via Antonio. In doing so, she uses her ring not to re- establish the dyadic bond between Bassanio and herself but to form a nondyadic union among herself, Antonio, and Bassanio. Through the final ring exchange, Merchant demonstrates that, while objects can, to some degree, be used to track affections, they cannot be used to effectively isolate and control a single intimate bond. Instead, just as objects accumulate new meanings over time, intimate relationships must be open to change and renegotiation.

Chapter 3 reflects upon the recognition-based and armor-centric model of identity and intimacy that Spenser outlines in Books III-IV of The Faerie Queene. It demonstrates that, from the first book—which focuses on the relationship between Redcrosse and the Armor of God—

Spenser’s epic romance theorizes identity as dependent upon characters’ habits—the visible components of their personhood, which include outward physical appearance, clothing, and comportment. Through Britomart’s engagement with other characters in Books III-IV, Spenser

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applies this theory of identity to intimacy, demonstrating how, in co-constituting and visually materializing a knight’s identity, her habit draws some people to her (those who recognize their own identities and values in her appearance) and repels others (those who do not see themselves reflected in her habit). At the beginning of Book III, Merlin informs Britomart that she is destined to become a knight and to seek out her future husband, Artegall. To do so, she must select a suit of armor. She chooses armor that once belonged to Queen Angela, a virgin queen who is both chaste and fierce, because she recognizes something the pertains to herself in it. It reflects that which she values, admires, and aspires to be. By living in and wielding Queen

Angela’s armor, Britomart does indeed become like her. The narrator describes her as a “maid martial,” as virtuous and fearsome as her exemplar. As she travels and fights in her armor,

Britomart shapes it just as it has shaped her. Other knights begin to identify her as the “Knight of the heben spear” and to recognize her armor as a sign of her own greatness (IV.vi.6).55 She is, however, most revered when her bodily habit (which communicates her chastity) and her armor

(which communicates her valiance) appear together. At these moments, the full extent of her exemplarity is visible. It is only when both her female body and her armor appear simultaneously that her two loves, Amoret and Artegall, recognize themselves in her habit and are drawn to her.

She, in turn, recognizes herself in their habits (Amoret’s chaste female body and Artegall’s illustrious armor) and reciprocates their love. In this way, the central, recognition-based intimacies of the books of love and friendship are established. Thus, Spenser theorizes intimacy as dependent upon readable, material exteriors rather than inscrutable interiors (the psyche or the

55 All Faerie Queene quotes come from the second edition of A.C Hamilton’s The Faerie Queene (London: Pearson, 2007). 28

soul) and posits that these exteriors draw people together when they see their identities and/or values reflected in one another’s habits.

Finally, chapter 4 focuses on memorial-based intimacies. It studies how the carved trees in the first part of The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania serve as metaphors for the published book in which they appear. The chapter argues that by positioning tree engravings as monuments to her characters’ intimate relationships and as mechanisms through which characters initiate and sustain affective ties to one another, Wroth suggests that her printed romance memorializes the intimacies she shares with those friends who appear disguised (sometimes very thinly) as characters in her roman à clef. In this way she justifies her decision to publish her book, even though it contains sensitive information about her and her loved ones. Though Wroth’s depictions of tree-carving in the Urania are, overall, favorable, she does demonstrate that publication (here taken literally as the act of making something publicly accessible) carries certain risks with it. Wroth’s protagonist and avatar, Pamphilia, likely mirrors her hesitation to publicize her intimate thoughts and feelings and the private details of her intimate relationships.

Pamphilia keeps her paper manuscripts hidden. She burns poems about her feelings for

Amphilanthus for fear that they will betray her secret love for him. Yet, the intensity of her emotions drives her to carve love poetry on the trees within and without her garden. The anonymity of her carvings—which mirrors the (somewhat) hidden identities of Wroth and her loved ones within the Urania—gives her an outlet through which she can express the intense suffering her love for Amphilanthus brings her without making that love public knowledge. Even so, there are those (like Antissia) who catch her in the act of carving or who can read the ciphers of Amphilanthus’ name that she carves on increasingly more public trees.

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Despite the risks, Pamphilia cannot seem to stop herself from engraving the trees she encounters with her secret. In many ways, this is because her tree carvings help her feel close to

Amphilanthus and sustain her devotion to him. As she engraves various trees, Pamphilia transforms them into monuments which glorify and memorialize her own pain and

Amphilanthus’ worthiness and, thereby, strengthen her resolve to continue faithfully loving him.

Pamphilia’s carvings also require her to precisely articulate how she feels about Amphilanthus, an exercise that makes the full force of her emotions known to her and intensifies her feelings for him further. Once she and Amphilanthus profess their love for one another, her ciphers bring the two of them close by signaling to anyone who comes across these symbols that the lovers who can interpret them share a secret all their own. Having a shared, publicly visible, secret gives

Pamphilia and Amphilanthus the pleasure of being in the know together, separate from those who do not share their knowledge. Pamphilia also carves ciphers into trees to make them into proxies for Amphilanthus. While she carves his name (in code) upon a tree she creates a mental space where she can think only of him which renews her faith in their bond and her determination to remain true to him.

Though Pamphilia creates these carvings with only Amphilanthus in mind, they also bind her to her dear friend, Antissia. At first, Pamphilia’s decision to publish her poetry threatens to ruin her friendship with Antissia, but Pamphilia’s carvings eventually bring them together.

Antissia first sees Pamphilia’s engravings when she spies on the princess in her private garden.

There, she catches Pamphilia in the act of carving love poetry about Amphilanthus on an ash tree. Antissia confronts her and, momentarily, views her as a rival, but Pamphilia (thinking she will never disclose her affection to Amphilanthus or anyone else) convinces Antissia that the poetry she carves represents no threat as it is written for another man. Then, Antissia opens her

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heart to Pamphilia completely and the two women grow close by freely discussing their shared pain. As time passes, both Pamphilia and Antissia carve more verses onto the ash tree in

Pamphilia’s garden, transforming the tree into a monument of their friendship and shared suffering in addition to their love for Amphilanthus. Through these tree carving episodes, Wroth, like Spenser, demonstrates that intimacy is not an entirely inward experience. Without the public disclosure of one’s feelings, certain affective bonds may suffer and others may not exist at all.

As a whole, these chapters demonstrate a shared desire among early modern authors to understand how the objects in their world influenced people’s relationships with one another.

Like Donne, they appear curious to know if and how exchanged objects can function as

“devices” to bring people together, keep them together, or memorialize a meaningful interpersonal bond. Their texts acknowledge that objects participated in both public and private experiences of early modern intimacy and illustrate that these objects, for better or worse, did not always behave as humans intended. If the objects analyzed herein have anything in common, it is that they do not adhere to normative human-made narratives about interpersonal affection. They link authors together through literary bonds that do not age, combine conflicting dyadic relationships to form more resilient, nondyadic intimacies, and question the necessity of distinguishing between one type of love and another. Studying these objects, then, asks us to rethink what we know about early modern intimacy and, possibly, to reconsider how intimacy works in our own world today.

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Chapter 1

(Re)making Love in Early Modern England: “Come live with me and be my love,” Poetic Circulation, and Queer Utopias

Before this project turns to the role exchanged objects play in fictional representations of object-centered intimacy, it considers how a literary text about intimacy can function as an exchanged object which binds people together and, simultaneously, influences how these people think about their interpersonal relationships. In early modern England, where manuscript and print versions of popular works were commonly shared by many readers, literary texts built connections among those who created them, those who encountered and responded to them, and those who passed them to one another. As they inhabited the fictional world of a poem, play, or story, readers intellectually engaged with and/or emotionally connected to the author. In the case of popular works which elicited numerous written replies, we can see how a text’s transmission inspired discussions and even emotional responses among those who encountered the same piece. As it was handed from person to person—as a loose sheet, an entry in a commonplace book, or part of a printed collection—a text inspired feelings of closeness among the friends, lovers, family members, or strangers who shared it and the experience of reading it. Certain versions of a work often contained notes or marks left by previous readers or were situated within a particular cluster of poems by print editors and manuscript compilers such that, by holding and reading them, audiences came into physical, emotional, and intellectual contact with those whose hands the works had already passed through.

This chapter focuses on the transmission of one early modern text in particular:

Marlowe’s popular pastoral poem, “Come live with me and be my love” (more commonly known as “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”). It illustrates how this lyric’s

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dissemination—both as an idea, a portrait or theory of utopian intimacy, and as a material object—formed and shaped real and imaginative interpersonal bonds in early modern England, disrupting normative understandings of intimacy in the process. Here I will elucidate how, as it circulated, Marlowe’s depiction of idealized intimacy enabled affective and intellectual ties among early modern readers and writers and provided them a space wherein they could define and experience (if only in their minds) love on their own terms. More specifically, this chapter will consider how the dissemination of “Come live with me” made a queer56 utopian world available to readers and how the poetic responses the lyric accumulated as it circulated enlarged and diversified this utopian space. It will also explore how the poets who responded to “Come live with me” entered a second queer utopian realm as they engaged with Marlowe’s work and with each other’s. Ultimately, I will argue that the utopian spaces created by “Come live with me” and expanded through readers’ and writers’ engagement with Marlowe’s work challenged the hierarchy of intimacies which was beginning to establish itself in early modern England and would eventually position the marital bond between husband and wife as the single most important affective union in one’s life.57

56 My use of “queer” here is not limited to same-sex attraction nor does it exclude opposite-sex attraction. I use “queer” to refer to intimate interactions but apply it to any affective relationship that does not comply with early modern standards meant to govern intimate connection. These standards include but are not limited to norms associated with gender, sexuality, race, and class. 57 Though male friendship remained a highly revered bond in Marlowe’s time, considered by many to be just as important as or even more important than the romantic bond between husband and wife, the long-term, legally sanctioned, marriage between man and woman was increasingly positioned by the state and the church as the most important affective tie in one’s life. For a more detailed description of the ways “the intimate sphere coalesced around relations characterized by …interiorized desire and futurity,” laying “the foundation for modern understandings of normative intimacy as coextensive with long-term heterosexual monogamy” in the form of marriage see Bromley, Intimacy and Sexuality, 1-5, 8-12. 33

For readers, “Come live with me” served as an invitation to reevaluate (and resist) the codification and ranking of intimate ties which was increasingly taking place in England at the time. In the tantalizing world of possibility (and impossibility) that Marlowe creates, conventional constraints upon interpersonal affection—the linear progression of time, gendered behavioral expectations, social norms and regulations—do not exist. So, Marlowe’s pastoral— like many other early modern poems of this genre58—functions as what Harry Berger, Jr., terms a “second world”:

the world of poem or play or treatise, the world inside a picture frame, the world

of pastoral simplification, the world of scientific experiment. Its essential quality

is that it is an explicitly fictional, artificial, or hypothetical world. It presents itself

to us as a game which, like all games, is to be taken with dead seriousness while it

is going on. In pointing to itself as serious play it affirms both its limits and its

power in a single gesture. Separating itself from the casual and confused region of

everyday existence, it promises a clarified image of the world.59

58 Free from the strictures imposed by England’s church and government and from the limitations of reality, pastoral worlds often urged early moderns to see their lives differently. As M.M. Gaylord explains in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, the pastoral genre creates a “mirror for dramatic changes in early modern experience” by “apparently retreating from the world, then reflecting on it.” Nancy Lindheim similarly observes that pastoral is “a tool to think with,” a tool which encourages “exploring what human beings (minimally) might need for a satisfying life,” and Paul Alpers argues that pastoral provides the reader an opportunity to reevaluate their identities and values. See M. M. Gaylord, “Pastoral,” in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 4th Edition, eds. Roland Greene, Stephen Cushman, and Clare Cavanagh (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2012), 105-8; Nancy Lindheim, The Virgilian Pastoral Tradition: From the Renaissance to the Modern Era (Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 2005), 13, 6; and Paul Alpers, What is Pastoral? (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996), 194. 59Harry Berger, Jr., “The Renaissance Imagination: Second World and Green World,” in Second World and Green World: Studies in Renaissance Fiction-Making, ed. John Patrick Lynch (Berkeley: U of California P, 1988),11-2. Patrick Cheney also argues that “Come live with me” constitutes a second world. Marlowe’s speaker demonstrates the “power of boy eternal: he sings 34

The second world is, in essence, a tool to think with. Its idealized elements—equitable or nonexistent political systems; the elimination of money; boundless, endless, mutual love—throw into relief their deeply flawed, real world counterparts—political corruption, economic inequality, power disparities between friends, lovers, and spouses. This contrast between ideals and reality encourages the reader to view her world critically, to question rather than accept the ways her society functions and the rules to which its subjects adhere. It leaves her wondering if and how she could change her world for the better.

Marlowe’s second world, centered as it is on idealized and nonnormative forms of intimacy, functions, more specifically, as a queer utopia—here defined as a space in which dominant early modern views of intimacy could be questioned and reimagined, a space which remained in the reader’s mind upon her return to the real world, helped her consider how the future of interpersonal intimacy might be more liberating than its present, and sustained her ability to hope that such a future was possible. As a single poem, “Come live with me” illustrated an idealized, queer utopia for readers (and still does); in doing so, it opened up a conceptual space in which they could momentarily leave behind the rules and realities of intimacy in early modern England and imagine living with their loves in Marlowe’s pastoral paradise. Moreover,

Marlowe’s lyric gave readers license to dream up their own utopian worlds and to consider what it would be like to live in those utopias as well. These imaginative spaces enabled audiences to view normative constraints on love and interpersonal intimacy from an outsider’s perspective such that, when they turned their minds back to the real world, they could see its flaws clearly and rethink (and even reshape) some facets of their romantic, platonic, or familial relations.

the Eros of eternal youth.” See Marlowe’s Counterfeit Profession (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1997), 83. 35

As “Come live with me” circulated in its various material forms and elicited more and more responses, the queer utopia Marlowe created grew. Michael Drayton, Richard Barnfield,

Sir Walter Raleigh, and John Donne, among many others, answered Marlowe’s vision of intimacy with their own interpretations of the exchange between lover and beloved.60 “Come live with me” and its numerous and varied imitations and replies formed a collection of idealized imaginings of love—all connected through their relationship to Marlowe’s pastoral and each other. As in the case of “The Nymph’s Reply,” Raleigh’s famous answer to Marlowe’s pastoral, these poetic responses often appeared alongside “Come live with me” in both manuscript and print collections. Collators and editors put imagined versions of utopian intimacy in conversation, encouraging readers to compare and evaluate those fictions about love, and binding

Marlowe and his respondents together in the eyes of early modern audiences. Individually,

Marlowe’s text and his fellow authors’ responses offered multiple different scripts of intimacy, different models for thinking about and approaching interpersonal relations. Cumulatively, this collection of texts opened up space for readers and authors to engage in an ongoing conversation about the qualities of an ideal, affective bond and the likelihood of experiencing such a bond, or even its approximation, in the real world. In this space there was no “correct” way to represent affective attachments, simply myriad examples of how one might. Readers could use this collection of texts to think critically about the discourses surrounding early modern intimacy or mine it for inspiration as they created their own utopian dream worlds.

60 Though the terms “lover” and “beloved” typically apply to a male speaker and the female object of his affections or desires, my use of the terms here is not gendered, nor it is limited to sexual and/or romantic forms of intimacy. I use these terms more broadly to indicate a person who loves another and her or his loved one, whether they be friends, family members, or sexual or romantic partners. 36

Those who approached “Come live with me” as authors had access not only to the same imaginative utopia as other readers but to a second kind of queer utopia. When Marlowe called upon his contemporaries to respond to his portrait of idealized intimacy by imitating the father of pastoralism himself (Virgil)61 and inviting them to “come live with me,” he beckoned them into a classical pastoral world which, like his own fictional world, was not limited by time or normative social expectations. Those authors who accepted Marlowe’s invitation became, for the moment, the competing shepherd-poets of the classical pastoral world who shared intense same-sex relationships and challenged one another to equally intense lyrical debates. Marlowe’s respondents entered into a (presumably) male62 literary community and developed nondyadic ties to the authors whose work they engaged with—fellow pastoralists both living and long dead.

Together they produced literary children via intellectual rather than reproductive intercourse.63

By imaginatively entering one another’s poetic worlds and adding their work to the collection of responses to “Come live with me,” many of these authors also occupied, however briefly, genders, sexualities, and social roles different from their own as they gave voice to speakers unlike themselves. Finally, through their work and the literary fame it would bring, these men ensured that their ties to one another as friends and/or fellow poets would survive long into the

61 It is widely recognized that “Come live with me” draws from Virgil’s second eclogue. 62 It is important to note that, while all known authors of the early responses I discuss here are men, it does remain possible that the anonymous replies to “Come live with me” (one of which is printed in England’s Helicon ) were written by women. It is also important to mention that many later responses to “Come live with me” were authored by prominent early modern women writers, Margaret Cavendish’s “Mirth and “Melancholy,” for example. 63 As I will discuss in the final section of this chapter, Richard Barnfield calls The Affectionate Shepherd “this new-borne babe, which here my muse brings forth” in his dedication to Penelope Ritch. This was a common trope used by male poets of the period who often compared the “labor” or writing poetry to the act of giving birth and described the product of that labor as a child. 37

future, bringing to life Marlowe’s utopian dream that interpersonal connection could thwart the limitations of time.

To discuss the utopia depicted in Marlowe’s text and the larger utopic space its circulation generated in early modern England, I rely upon José Muñoz’s concept of queer utopia.64 The queer utopia, like the pastoral worlds of early modern poetry, is a kind of second world, a space to think with. Muñoz explains how queerness can inspire the creation of a utopian- future, one fueled by a methodology of hope that insists on believing the world can be remade for the better:

Queerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality. Put another way, we are not

yet queer. We may never touch queerness, but we can feel it as the warm

illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality. We have never been queer, yet

queerness exists for us as an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to

imagine a future. The future is queerness’s domain. Queerness is a structuring and

educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of

the present. The here and now is a prison house. We must strive, in the face of the

here and now’s totalizing rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there.

Some will say that all we have are the pleasures of this moment, but we must

64 It may come as a surprise that I do not, as so much important work has, look to Lee Edelman’s No Future to make sense of the queer elements of Marlowe’s work. I find Muñoz’s approach to futurity better suited to a discussion of “Come live with me” because, unlike Marlowe’s plays, his famous lyric does not deal so much with a queer imperative to reject futurity and embrace death and the negative as it provides a vehicle for change by offering a hopeful alternative to the injustices and limitations of the present. For recent scholarship which considers Edelman’s work alongside Marlowe’s see Garrett A. Sulllivan, Jr., “‘My Life, My Company’: Amity, Enmity and Vitality in Edward II,” in Edward II: A Critical Reader, ed. Kirk Melnikoff (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017), 175-194 or Judith Haber, “Marlowe's Queer Jew,” Renaissance Drama 47, no. 1 (2019): 1-20. 38

never settle for that minimal transport; we must dream and enact new and better

pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds.

Queerness is a longing that propels us onward, beyond romances of the negative

and toiling in the present. Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is

not enough, that indeed something is missing. 65

Like Muñoz’s queer utopia—an imagined future that is freer and more equitable—Marlowe’s pastoral world is an “ideality.” It is “distilled” from the golden world of the pastoral past and

“used to imagine a future” different from the early modern present. As James Knowles observes,

“Come live with me” is one of many Renaissance pastoral poems “concerned with the idealised lives of rural shepherds” and written in that particular genre because it could be “inflected and appropriated for various purposes, including political commentary and the exploration of eroticism in amatory or sexual dalliance.” Relying on “classical examples [to] provide authoritative, culturally valued analogues and languages to describe, suggest, and even disguise emotions and desires for which there were no readily available categories or vocabularies,”

Marlowe’s lyric may “point towards a pattern of neoclassical sexual behaviour, used to explore and explain ideas and feelings beyond the condemnatory discourses of the church.”66 By setting his poem in the idealized golden world of the past, Marlowe, like Muñoz, offers a “theory of queer futurity that is attentive to the past for the purposes of critiquing the present.”67 He looks to the classical world to explore and illustrate modes of loving which were denied or denigrated in

65 José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New York UP, 2009), 18, 1. 66 James Knowles, “Sexuality: A Renaissance Category?,” in A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture, ed. Michael Hattaway (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 477-8. 67 Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 18. 39

dominant early modern discourses of intimacy and to help readers think past the constraints of the present, toward a better future.

In critiquing the present by gesturing to the golden world of the past, Marlowe’s lyric presents its readers with a “horizon imbued with potentiality” and encourages them to “dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds”—worlds in which biological sex has no necessary bearing on intimate connection, where love is a collaborative effort not guided or governed by gender norms, and where intimacy and time do not progress in a linear fashion toward marriage and reproduction. “Come live with me” offers a fiction of idealized love which illuminates that the “here and now is a prison house” and urges its readers to “strive, in the face of the here and now’s totalizing rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there.” Marlowe invites his readers into a utopian world so widely acknowledged to be beautiful and desirable that they cannot help but notice the failings of the world they live in when they return to it.

While scholars generally agree that Marlowe evokes utopia in “Come live with me,” there has been much debate about his treatment of the trope and what, for him, constitute the most important elements of a perfect world. Critics who read the text through a heteronormative lens generally conclude that the pastoral world Marlowe conjures up is not to be taken seriously.

Instead, they argue, Marlowe and his speaker offer an illusion which their audiences are meant to see through.68According to these scholars, the poem contains the tools of its own undoing. It

68 See Douglas Bruster, “‘Come to the Tent Again’: ‘The Passionate Shepherd,’ Dramatic Rape and Lyric Time,” Criticism 33 (1991): 53, 59-60; Rebecca C. Potter, “The Nymph’s Reply Nine Months Later,” in “And Never Know The Joy”: Sex and the Erotic in English Poetry, ed. C.C. Barfoot (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006), 110; and Diana Henderson, “Marlowe’s Lyric Strains,” in Passion Made Public: Elizabethan Lyric, Gender, and Performance (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1995), 125. 40

offers an impossibly beautiful world and simultaneously concedes that such a world can never be anything more than fantasy. There are also more optimistic scholars who argue that Marlowe’s poem presents a hopeful alternative to the intimate restrictions imposed by early modern

England’s government and society. Patrick Cheney and Erik Gray, for instance, both hold that

Marlowe uses interpersonal intimacy as a vehicle through which to question the authority of those typically in power (the state for Cheney and men for Gray) and to reconsider the relationship between the ruler and the ruled.69 Like these scholars, I see Marlowe’s utopia offering a genuine and hopeful challenge to the social and legal imperatives surrounding affective relationships in Renaissance England. Unlike them, I place queerness at the core of

Marlowe’s utopian vision.

Of course, many scholars have identified and examined the queer and homoerotic elements of Marlowe’s invitation,70 but none of them has identified his pastoral world as a queer utopia. Critics do often link the queer qualities of Marlowe’s pastoral with its subversive potential, though. According to Judith Haber, “what is ‘queer’ about ‘Come live with me’ is the

“radical non-instrumentality” of its form and aesthetics, which provides a “means of thinking

69 See Cheney, Marlowe’s Counterfeit Profession, 71, 82, 87 and Erik Gray, “Come Be My Love: The Song of Songs, Paradise Lost, and the Tradition of the Invitation Poem,” PMLA 128 (2013): 371. 70 For an early example of this type of scholarship see Bruce R. Smith’s Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare’s England: A Cultural Poetics (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991): 81-93. For a more recent example see Judith Haber’s Desire and Dramatic Form (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009), 14. For discussions of the link between the pastoral genre and homoeroticism which take “Come live with me” into account see Rictor Norton, “Pastoral Homoeroticism and Barnfield, The Affectionate Shepherd,” in The Affectionate Shepherd: Celebrating Richard Barnfield, eds. Kenneth Borris and George Klawitter (London: Susquehanna UP, 2001), 117 and Knowles, “Sexuality: A Renaissance Category?,” 478. For work which discusses the ambiguity surrounding the genders of Marlowe’s speaker and addressee see Cheney, Marlowe’s Counterfeit Profession, 81; Sinfield, “Marlowe’s Erotic Verse,” 133; and Haber, Desire and Dramatic Form, 16-7. 41

outside the constructions of [Marlowe’s] culture, of evading, if never fully avoiding their seemingly immutable truths.”71 James Knowles and James Bromley similarly suggest that the poem’s queer elements offer an opportunity for readers to interrogate early modern “truths” about intimacy. Knowles asserts that “linguistic utterances, especially complex texts” like

Marlowe’s “may act as imaginative, temporary, spaces beyond the control of the sex police.”72

Bromley agrees that literary texts offered an escape from cultural expectations for many early moderns. For him, “Come live with me” communicates that “pleasures might be unmoored from” the heteronormative values of “futurity and interiority and still produce intimacy.”73 He includes Marlowe’s lyric among a group of Renaissance texts that “critiqued the consolidation of intimacy around long-term heterosexual monogamy and instead invested value in alternate forms of intimacy,” and he argues that this group of texts “empower[ed] readers to reimagine their own intimate lives.”74 Literary worlds like Marlowe’s, then, did not only offer the imaginative space and analytical tools early moderns needed to conceptualize intimacy differently. They also

“sustained” those inclined toward or involved in non-normative intimate relationships by describing imaginative worlds where their desires were recognized and accepted and by encouraging readers to hope that one day these imaginative worlds might not look so different from their own.

71 Haber, Desire and Dramatic Form, 16-7, 1, 13. 72 Knowles, “Sexuality: A Renaissance Category? ,” 477-9. 73 Bromley explains that interiority and futurity support heteronormativity because “interiorized desire locates the truth about the self and sexuality inside the body, thereby organizing and limiting the body’s pleasures based on a hierarchized opposition between depths and surfaces” and “futurity involves the perceived sense of a relationship’s duration and its participation in legitimate social and sexual reproduction” (1). 74 Bromley, Intimacy and Sexuality, 26, 1. 42

Drawing from this important work, I bring one strand of criticism on “Come Live With

Me”—scholarship focused on the poem’s treatment of utopia—into conversation with another: scholarship focused on the lyric’s material circulation in early modern England. Few scholars provide a broad a survey of the multiple contexts and mediums through which early moderns encountered Marlowe’s lyric, and those who do, do not attend to the impact of the poem’s dissemination upon Renaissance discussions and conceptions of intimacy extensively.75

Criticism that does consider the poem’s dissemination alongside its implications for early modern intimacy is typically limited in scope 76 (often concentrating on one isolated literary exchange) or depth (briefly touching on a series of responses to “Come live with me”).77 By attending to the connection between the circulation of Marlowe’s poem and its treatment of

75 R.S. Forsythe was the first to do this type of work. See “‘The Passionate Shepherd’; And English Poetry” PMLA 40, no. 3 (1925): 692-742. For criticism which tracks appearances of “Come live with me,” focusing on its musical settings, see Frederick W. Sternfeld and Mary Joiner Chan, “‘Come Live with Me and Be My Love,’” Comparative Literature 22 (1970): 173- 87. For a recent survey focused primarily on appearances of the lyric in Marlowe’s dramatic cannon see Patrick Cheney, “‘The Passionate Shepherd” and Hero and Leander,” in Christopher Marlowe at 450, eds. Sara Deats and Robert Logan (Burlington: Ashgate, 2015), 163-200. 76 Most frequently, critics discuss Marlowe’s lyric alongside Raleigh’s response and position Marlowe and Raleigh as though they are in direct opposition. See Hannibal Hamlin, “Replying to Raleigh’s ‘The Nymph’s Reply’: Allusion, Anti-Pastoral, and Four Centuries of Pastoral Invitations,” in Literary and Visual Raleigh, ed. Christopher M. Armitage (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2013), 168, 170; Potter, “The Nymph's Reply Nine Months Later,” 109-10; and S.K. Heninger, “The Passionate Shepherd and the Philosophical Nymph,” Renaissance Papers (1962): 64-5. Scholarship has also focused on resonances between Marlowe’s work and the poetry of John Donne, Richard Barnfield, and Edmund Spenser. See Roy Erikson, “Marlowe and Company in Barnfield’s Greene’s Funeralls (1594),” Nordic Journal of English Studies 12, no. 2 (2013): 71; Norton, “Pastoral Homoeroticism and Barnfield”; and Hester M. Thomas, “‘Like a Spyed Spie’: Donne’s Baiting of Marlowe,” in Literary Circles and Cultural Communities in Renaissance England, eds. Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth (Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2000), 28. 77 Forsythe’s “‘The Passionate Shepherd’ and English poetry” attempts a comprehensive survey of the literary works influence by Marlowe’s poem, and Hamlin’s “Replying to Raleigh’s ‘The Nymph’s Reply’” traces the evolution of the pastoral invitation over the four centuries following the publication of “Come live with me.” 43

utopia, this chapter provides the first analysis to explore the significance of Marlowe’s queer utopia not only in terms of its representation within the poem but in terms of the actual circulation of “Come live with me” in Renaissance England. This chapter is also the first to discuss how “Come live with me” propelled a broad and nuanced conversation about utopian intimacy as it circulated, prompted literary responses, and linked the depictions of utopian love it inspired to one another and itself.

Taking a more expansive look at the cultural impact of “Come live with me,” this argument considers the text as both a conceptual object—a singular portrayal of utopian intimacy—and a material object—a circulating text which inspired and became part of a larger literary and social discussion about love. Such an approach presents a unique opportunity to consider how the meanings and functions of Marlowe’s utopian vision changed and evolved as the lyric appeared in many different contexts—by itself, in conversation with different responses, surrounded by replies and imitations in print collections and manuscript miscellanies. This line of inquiry also sheds light on early modern understandings of and debates about the values of different kinds of intimacy and on the ways the transmission of “Come live with me” affected and facilitated intimate connections between authors and audiences in Renaissance England.

In the next section, I will describe the utopian vision Marlowe outlines in “Come live with me,” focusing on the elements of his pastoral world which challenge normative, early modern views of intimacy. As I do so, I will illustrate how Marlowe’s portrait of idealized love urged his readers to question the standards for intimacy presented to them by the early modern

Church and State. Afterward, I will discuss some of the major poetic responses to “Come live with me” printed in the first two decades following the poem’s composition (around 1588). I focus on these early responses because they were written by authors whose careers overlapped

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with Marlowe’s. They were alive and writing at the same time as Marlowe, and their experience of early modern England’s shifting cultural views toward intimacy was, at least temporally, closest to his. As I review these replies and imitations, I will explain how Marlowe’s contemporaries built upon the conversation about utopian intimacy which “Come live with me” invigorated; how, as a collection, their pastoral and anti-pastoral poems further empowered readers to take an active role in defining utopian intimacy for themselves; and how their work opened up a queer, utopian space for them to inhabit, a common pastoral world wherein they could experience nonnormative intimacies by engaging with one another’s ideas and imagining themselves in their speaker’s positions.

“A Horizon Imbued with Potentiality”: Marlowe’s Queer Utopia

Before exploring Marlowe’s lyric in the context of the many responses it elicited from his contemporaries, I will begin by focusing on the queer utopia “Come live with me” invited its readers to experience. This section will provide a description of the utopian vision Marlowe lays out in his pastoral poem, concentrating on the ways it questions normative standards attached to early modern intimacy. It will also discuss how the lyric gestures toward normative intimate scripts, practices, and ideals to invite comparison between Marlowe’s utopian portrayal of love and the standards for intimacy outlined in early modern England’s dominant discourses. By encouraging the reader to make this comparison, “Come live with me” suggests that normative intimate scripts illustrate one shape rather than the shape that one’s interpersonal relationships might take. The lyric urges the reader to define utopian love for herself rather than allowing dominant discourses to dictate the terms of her intimate life.

Marlowe’s lyric is so enticing because it starkly refuses the hierarchies which structure early modern society—those between genders, among sexualities, among different types of

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intimate bonds (friendship, romantic love, familial ties, etc.), and between religious and political leaders and the average citizen. In doing so the poem also questions the predetermined social roles these hierarchies create and reinforce—male, female, friend, lover, husband, wife, mother, father, daughter, son, ruler, ruled—and challenges the reader to imagine different roles and different forms of relationality for herself and others. It disrupts normative systems of order and hierarchy by presenting readers with a world in which the organizing categories and structures of

Renaissance England’s society and early moderns’ social roles are pointedly altered.

Here, I will discuss four of these major transformations and explore how they encourage readers to reimagine their intimate lives. First, Marlowe’s utopia troubles gendered intimate scripts and the concept of gender itself. Where the speaker and addressee have no identifiable gender, there can be no system which imposes male and female gender norms and no hierarchy in which men have power over their wives and daughters. Second, with the erasure of gender, sexual orientation becomes indeterminable. The reader cannot establish whether the speaker and addressee are attracted to members of the same sex, opposite sex, or both; nor can she say whether they share a same-sex attraction, opposite-sex attraction, or no sexual attraction at all.

Because gender and sexuality remain illegible in Marlowe’s poem, the reader cannot ascertain the nature of the intimacy it depicts either. There can be no categorization of intimate ties and, consequently, no hierarchy of intimacies in which romantic or marital bonds between a man and a woman take precedence over erotic and/or platonic, same-sex bonds between two men or women. Third, “Come live with me” critiques the early modern social institutions which governed individuals’ intimate relationships and placed value upon certain intimacies over others. For instance, it evokes marriage only to question its value and necessity. Fourth,

Marlowe’s utopia exists outside of time, space, and reality. As the speaker describes it, the

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pastoral utopia sought in “Come live with me” offers an escape from the demands of normative, linear time—to marry, reproduce, and further the economic and social progress of the State. In this utopia, time may cycle endlessly or stop entirely, but it does not obey a normative trajectory from beginning to end, birth to death. What’s more, as the speaker illustrates an idealized pastoral life for the beloved, this life comes to exist at two different points in time and space. It manifests in the present, in the lover and beloved’s minds, as the speaker asks the addressee to enter an imaginative utopia with her/him, but it also remains in the future and (ostensibly) in an actual place the lover and beloved have not yet reached. The pastoral world of the speaker’s imagination exists somewhere and nowhere, now and later, all at once. The reader’s active role in (re)creating this pastoral world further confuses the relationship between the utopia of “Come live with me” and space, time, and reality. Not only does the utopia exist in the speaker and beloved’s minds, but in the reader’s as well. The love the speaker and addressee might share, the life they might lead together, and the pastoral world they might enjoy together are eternal and variable. They are brought to life in slightly or radically different forms by each reader who enters the imaginative realm of Marlowe’s poem. Finally, as she reads “Come live with me” and pictures herself in Marlowe’s utopian world, the reader momentarily exists outside of time and reality. So, the utopian world of Marlowe’s pastoral has no clear beginning or end, no clear location, and no limitations, save those of the speaker, addressee, and readers’ minds.

“Come live with me” first opens up space for the reader to imagine queer intimacies by presenting a world in which gender and the social expectations attached to it do not matter.

Though the poem’s most commonly used title, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” would seem to indicate that the speaker is male, there is no evidence that Marlowe assigned this title to the poem and certainly no reason to assume that all, or even most, readers would have associated

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it with Marlowe’s lyric. As far as we know, this title did not appear alongside Marlowe’s pastoral until 1600, when the poem was printed in England’s Helicon alongside Raleigh’s reply. A year earlier, a four-stanza version of the poem appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim with no title.

“Come live with me” also circulated untitled or differently titled in many early modern manuscripts. There is no reason, then, to assume that Marlowe’s speaker is a man, or even a shepherd, and no reason to assume that the speaker addresses a woman.78

Aside from the title attached to the lyric in 1600, gendered pronouns are conspicuously absent from “Come live with me.” In fact, Marlowe’s plays offer evidence that his “shepherd’s” words might be spoken by anyone. The male, female, and even divine characters in Dido and

Tamburlaine I-II, for instance, deliver key phrases from the lyric to the men and women (of the same sex and opposite sex) they love. As scholars have noted, only the clothing the speaker offers—a “cap of flowers, and a kirtle, / Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle” and a “gown made of the finest wool” (11-13)—has the potential to mark the beloved’s gender. The speaker and addressee have no behavioral or physical characteristics that identify them as male or female. Neither of them embodies early modern masculinity or femininity. As Judith Haber puts it, “gender, insofar as it exists [in Marlowe’s lyric], inheres only in clothes.”79 It is not something inherent to the speaker or addressee. Even then, the terms “gown” and “kirtle” were just as likely to designate men’s clothing as women’s in the early modern period.80 A kirtle was both “a woman’s coat” or her “skirt or petticoat,” and a “man's tunic or coat, originally a garment

78 For scholars who have made this observation see Knowles, “Sexuality: A Renaissance Category?,” 477; Haber, Desire and Dramatic Form, 16-7; and Sinfield, “Marlowe's Erotic Verse,” 133. 79 Haber, Desire and Dramatic Form, 13. 80 Smith, Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare’s England, 92; and Haber, Desire and Dramatic Form, 14. 48

reaching to the knees or lower, sometimes forming the only body-garment.”81 A gown might be a dress worn by a woman, but it may also be a man’s “flowing outer robe indicating the wearer's office, profession, or status” or his “loose flowing upper garment worn as an article of ordinary attire.”82 So, even the articles of clothing Marlowe mentions cannot definitively gender the addressee.

Given these facts, scholars generally acknowledge that we cannot, with any certainty, say that Marlowe’s speaker directs her/his invitation to a woman. We cannot know that the speaker is male or even assume that the bond between Marlowe’s characters is (hetero or homo) erotic.

Still, critics continue to cite the speaker’s promised gifts as evidence that the addressee is a woman83 or a man84 in order to discuss the poem in terms of male-female or male-male romantic or erotic intimacy. They either position the speaker as a man imploring or seducing a woman or an older shepherd chasing after a younger shepherd.85 I would argue that to explore only two possible configurations of the relationship between the speaker and the addressee is to miss an opportunity to contemplate the implications of gender ambiguity in the poem more deeply. In

81 “Kirtle, n.1.,” OED Online. 82 “Gown, n.,” OED Online. 83 See, for instance, Potter, “The Nymph's Reply Nine Months Later,” and Gray, “Come Be My Love: The Song of Songs, Paradise Lost, and the Tradition of the Invitation Poem,” 379. 84 Consider the way Smith supports his homoerotic, Virgilian reading of “Come live with me” by explaining that the term “kirtle…survived in the sixteenth century primarily as a term for a robe of state…and only secondarily as a term for a woman’s gown.” See Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare’s England, 92. 85 Most scholars, like Cheney, Potter, and Zlateva, discuss the poem in terms of the love between a man and woman, though they often acknowledge that the lyric has homoerotic elements. See Cheney, Marlowe's Counterfeit Profession; Potter, “The Nymph's Reply Nine Months Later,” 107-22; and Joanna Zlateva, “Poetics and Politics of Nature in Three Early Modem Poems,” University of Bucharest Review 14 (2012): 123- 31. On the other end of the spectrum, early queer scholars like Smith have asserted that both Marlowe’s speaker and beloved are male, citing the strong connection between homoeroticism and the pastoral genre in classical literature. See Smith, Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare’s England, 85. 49

fact, I believe that the reader’s inability to determine the genders of the speaker and addressee and the nature of their relationship is a key element of Marlowe’s queer utopia.86

In a world without gender, the traditional, early modern gender roles and hierarchies—in which masculinity was tied to aggression and dominance and femininity to meekness and subjection—cannot exist. In such a space we cannot assume that the speaker is an active man pursuing a passive, female beloved or an older man chasing after a pretty boy. By declining to gender either the person extending the invitation or the person receiving that invitation, Marlowe opens up a space wherein a reader must re-imagine intimacy without relying on the usual gendered scripts—and the power dynamics associated with them. The ambiguity surrounding the lovers’ genders encourages the reader to consider several potential scenarios in her mind at once.

The speaker might be a man asking his female beloved to come live with him, a man misleading a woman for sexual purposes, a woman defying gender norms by actively pursuing a man, a woman persuading a female friend or lover to run away with her, a male shepherd asking another to be his life companion, etc. Yet, the lyric ultimately makes the relation of the speaker to the addressee impossible to determine, ensuring that any reader can imagine herself or himself in the position of the speaker or beloved. The poem’s refusal to gender either lover or beloved also shifts the reader’s focus away from gendered hierarchies and the predetermined intimate scripts

86 In recent decades, a few scholars have discussed the significance of the speaker and beloved’s indeterminate genders. Sinfeld observes that the poem simultaneously presents readers with two types of relationships, one based on “an ideal, symmetrical passion, which may be figured as androgynous—beyond gender difference” and one which “expects girls and boys to be available for the erotic attentions of older, wealthier, and more experienced men.” See “Marlowe’s Erotic Verse,” 133. Haber argues that Marlowe’s lyric “conflates…the image of a female beloved” with “the image of an eroticized male,” simultaneously presenting readers with a depiction of heterosexual and homoerotic desire. See Desire and Dramatic Form, 16-7. Most recently, Knowles has pointed out that, unlike most of the responses it elicits, “Come live with me” is much more equivocal about the sex of its speaker and addressee: “the poem offers us only ambiguity.” See “Sexuality: A Renaissance Category?,” 478. 50

associated with them and toward the nature of the idealized love the speaker hopes to share with the addressee.

The love the speaker describes to the beloved is based upon mutuality and equality. The frequent appearance of the words “with” and “we” certainly suggests a cooperative partnership, and the relationship the speaker imagines sharing with the addressee involves no division of labor or leisure based upon gender. Rather than pursuing their own entertainments or dividing their household tasks according to specific gender roles, the intimate partners will play and work together. The speaker promises, “we will all the pleasures prove”; “we will sit upon the rocks /

Seeing the shepherd feed their flocks”; and we will “pull” the “finest wool…from our pretty lambs.” The speaker also tells the beloved that “the shepherd swains shall dance and sing / For thy delight,” but it seems fair to assume that both will enjoy the “delight” this performance brings (2, 5-6, 13-4, 21). These partners’ labors will be collaborative, and all of their joys will be shared. They will, very nearly, lead the same life.

The wording of the speaker’s invitation necessitates that both parties (and the reader) do the work of determining what the speaker and addressee’s intimate relationship looks like and who they are to one another. This partnership does not carry with it predetermined rules and roles like a marriage or close male friendship. The phrases “live with me” and “be my love” evade any attempt to determine exactly what role the speaker hopes the addressee will fill. To live with someone might entail a marital or romantic relationship but it might also refer to platonic cohabitation. This cohabitation might be brief or life-long. Typically, the phrase “my love” was used to address or refer to a romantic interest, but its meaning could be more ambiguous. For instance, when Antonio instructs his dearest companion to tell Portia of his fate and ask her “whether Bassanio had not once a love” other than herself (IV.i.274), he may be

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claiming a romantic or sexual right to Bassanio or asserting the intensity of their platonic ties (or both). To live with someone and be her or his love, then, may or may not entail sex or erotic/romantic attraction. Though the speaker uses a suggestive term to implore the addressee, the “pleasures” to be proven are sensual but not necessarily sexual. They are delightful, sensory experiences—handling fine wool and sitting on warm or cool rocks; listening to melodious birds, singing shepherds, and the falls of shallow rivers; watching shepherds dance and feed their flocks—that lover and beloved share. These are acts that, though physically enjoyable, might easily be platonic. Thus, the invitation to “live with me and be my love” and “all the pleasures prove” remains ambiguous enough that the speaker, addressee, and reader have the freedom to determine for themselves exactly what it means.

The speaker’s desire for the addressee’s consent further suggests that the love these two share will be based upon liberty and equality. Other than the speaker’s persistence (he/she invites the beloved to “live with me” three times), there is no indication that Marlowe’s lover wants to bend the addressee to his/her will. Quite the opposite, actually. All of the speaker’s invitations are framed as entreaties or wishes, rather than orders, and are dependent upon the addressee’s will and desires. The speaker opens with a request: “Come live with me, and be my love, / And we will all the pleasures prove” (1-2). Though “come” could signal a command in certain contexts, it seems more like a conditional promise here: “If you come live with me…we will all the pleasures prove.” That the speaker wants to live with the beloved only if he/she truly desires the type of life proposed becomes even clearer in the penultimate and final stanzas. The speaker asks the addressee to “come live with me” only “if these pleasures may thee move” and “if these delights thy mind may move” (19, 23). These conditional requests emphasize that the beloved should consider the “pleasures” and “delights” the speaker describes before making a decision.

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They suggest that the speaker wants the beloved to enter into their union willingly, having considered (with heart and head) whether or not the promised “delights” would make for a happy life. Their affection for one another and their decision to live together should be mutual. Thus,

“Come live with me” encourages the reader to imagine sharing a freeing and equitable intimacy with someone she loves. It provides her space to envision her own pleasures (in addition to those already mentioned) and how she might enjoy them with the speaker.

Along with gender hierarchies, Marlowe’s poem rejects intimate hierarchies based on relationship type (platonic, sexual, marital, etc.) and affective orientation (toward members of the same sex or opposite sex). In doing so, it opposes the social imperative to distinguish and rank different kinds of interpersonal bonds which was growing in Renaissance England and gives the reader license to imagine an ideal form of whatever kind of intimacy she prefers. Specifically, the Church and State were using marital discourse—a discourse which was, ironically, borrowed from treatises on male friendship like Cicero’s De Amicitia and Aristotle’s Nicomachean

Ethics—to connect the institution of marriage to intimacy and affection and, thereby, position the marital bond as more important than other forms of love. The goal was to create the “sense that marriage ought to be the place to experience companionship and desire” and to effect “the effacement of affectivity and value in other relational forms.” Hence, the appropriation and reframing of discourses previously associated with male friendship. While Aristotle and other classical authors had described marital intimacy as a subcategory of friendship, the Church and

State “cast friendship as a competing form of affection in order to obscure” the similarities between marital discourse and classical theories of friendship and to “elevate marriage.”87 The

Church and State claimed for marriage the vocabulary used to praise the highly respected bond

87 Bromley, Intimacy and Sexuality, 9, 3, 8. 53

between male friends in an effort to shift social and cultural value from one type of intimacy to the other.

Ultimately, the goal was to assure heterosexual coupling and, therefore, reproductivity within the confines of an institution the state controlled. As Valerie Traub explains, early modern religious and legal institutions increasingly positioned “erotic desire for a domestic partner, in addition to desire for a reproductive, status-appropriate mate” as a “requirement for (not just a happy byproduct of) the bonds between husband and wife.”88 Close friendship and sexual attraction between men obviously threatened the success of these efforts. Still, friendship remained a highly revered bond in early modern culture. 89 At the same time that the Church and

State were reframing models of intimacy from classical texts, authors like Michel de Montaigne and Sir Francis Bacon were referencing the same texts “to idealize friendship as a culturally valuable form of non-marital affection.”90 Perhaps even more troubling to early modern authorities was the close resemblance between male friendship and sodomy. The many apparent similarities between these two intimacies—both lovers and friends, for example, might kiss, hold hands, or share a bed—made the need to differentiate between them particularly pressing, especially for a nation-state invested in ensuring marital reproductivity. 91 In this way, bonds between men posed a double threat to the Church and State’s goals. The valorization of friendship threatened the supremacy of marriage, and the possibility that friendship might

88 Traub, The Renaissance of Lesbianism, 265. 89 For discussions on the enduring reverence for male friendship in Renaissance England see Sedgwick, Between Men; Bray, “Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship”; and, more recently, Knowles, “Sexuality: A Renaissance Category?,” 477. 90 Bromley, Intimacy and Sexuality, 9. 91 For a germinal article that discusses the anxieties produced by the apparent similarities between friendship and sodomy see Bray’s “Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship.” For more recent work on the topic see Will Tosh, Male Friendship and Testimonies of Love in Shakespeare’s England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 54

imperceptibly slip into sodomy meant that male intimacy could pose a direct threat to the heterosexual reproductivity marriage was intended to ensure.

In response to these efforts to devalue nonmarital forms of intimacy, Marlowe’s pastoral renders a utopian vision which destabilizes the hierarchy of intimacies early modern England’s legal and religious institutions aimed to establish. It does so by removing marriage from the intimate equation altogether and by asking what difference such an omission makes. Is the love between the speaker and addressee lesser because it is not reinforced by marital ties? The poem’s implied answer, of course, is “no.” It is important to remember that, even though the speaker and beloved of “Come live with me” can be read as a heterosexual couple, their relationship is not necessarily normative; within the world of the poem, their bond does not rely upon legal or religious recognition or reproduction for its validity. By separating heteroerotic love from marriage in this way, Marlowe’s lyric demonstrates that the intimacies which were fueling so much social anxiety and conflict in Renaissance England—heterosexual coupledom, male friendship, and sexual ties between men—might be more alike than different. Indeed, Marlowe’s decision to write in the pastoral mode is particularly apt, since that genre was closely associated with all three of the aforementioned intimacies. Early modern readers would have come to a pastoral expecting to encounter one or more of the following affective relations: romantic love between a shepherd and his mistress, platonic friendship between two shepherds, or erotic/sexual intimacy between two shepherds. Because the speaker and addressee have no clear genders in

“Come live with me,” their love, set as it is in a pastoral landscape, brings to mind all three of these relationship types at once and blurs the boundaries among them.

While the similarities between male friends and sexual partners and the relative value of heterosexual love and male friendship were sources of concern for many in early modern society,

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Marlowe highlights and celebrates the ways these types of intimacy can resemble one another.

By using one intimate encounter to gesture to heteroerotic love (outside of marriage), male friendship, and same-sex male desire simultaneously, Marlowe prompts his readers to wonder,

“If these intimacies are so different, so opposed, how can a single invitation apply to all three?”

In Marlowe’s utopia, at least, the differences among these forms of love remain unclear and, ultimately, inconsequential. The reader is free to imagine the speaker, the addressee, and the love they share however she pleases and in as many different ways.

To speak to the growing conflict between heterosexual love and male friendship,

Marlowe chooses a genre that invites comparison between his lyric and other early modern pastorals, like Edmund Spenser’s The Shephearde’s Calender and Michael Drayton’s Idea: The

Shepherd’s Garland. While Spenser’s and Drayton’s works feature and celebrate both heteroerotic and homosocial/homoerotic ties, they put friendship and heterosexual, romantic love in opposition. For example, Spenser’s Hobbinoll and Colin share a deep, affectionate bond, but only until the young shepherd-poet falls in love with Rosalind and leaves Hobbinoll behind. As

Hobbinoll puts it, “the lad, whom long I loved so dear, / Now loves a lass” (April, 10-11).92

Colin cannot love Rosalind and Hobbinoll at the same time. Once he falls for Rosalind,

Hobbinoll must speak of their intimacy in the past tense. Unlike Spenser, Marlowe rejects this opposition between heteroerotic love and male friendship. Rather than illustrating two separate types of love in conflict, his pastoral includes a single intimate exchange that suggests both platonic bonds between men and romantic bonds between a man and woman (and neither). The poem encourages the reader to hold the scripts associated with these two, typically opposed,

92 Edmund Spenser, The Shephearde’s Calender, In Edmund Spenser: The Shorter Poems, ed. Richard McCabe (Penguin Books: London, 1999), 23-156. 56

intimacies in her mind simultaneously and to apply them to the same affective bond. This activity frustrates any attempt at valuation or differentiation and frees the reader to identify with either type of intimacy or both.

To further emphasize the equal value of opposite-sex and same-sex love and destabilize the boundary between them, Marlowe employs language suggestive of marriage, as he illustrates the intimate exchange between his speaker and addressee. The words and phrases his speaker uses to describe the life she/he hopes to share with the beloved are associated with matrimony closely enough to bring the institution to mind but not precisely enough to identify the relationship described in the poem as a marriage. Instead, Marlowe utilizes a vocabulary that might also apply to a homosocial or homoerotic relationship. The phrases “live with me” and “be my love” indicated a certain amount of commitment during the early modern period and were often associated with a martial bond, but this was not always the case. To “live with” meant “to cohabit with (a spouse or…a partner),” as it does today. To live with someone was often to

“make one’s home” with them.93 This phrase could certainly evoke a marriage between a husband and wife, but it could also refer to any sustained companionship between two cohabitating people, no matter their gender or relationship to one another. Similarly, to be someone’s “love” was often to be their spouse or betrothed. Yet, as in the case of Antonio and

Bassanio, one’s love might also be anyone with whom he or she shared a strong affective attachment: a sexual partner, close friend, or family member.

“Come live with me” evokes marriage again when it catalogues the love tokens the speaker plans to give the addressee. Most notably, the speaker offers the beloved a thousand

“posies” (10). This term referred to flowers and was a frequently used pun for poesies, but it also

93 “Live, v.1.,” OED Online. 57

brings to mind the posy ring, an object commonly exchanged as a love token and cited as proof of a legally binding marital agreement. Love tokens, especially rings, played an important role in courtships, betrothals, and weddings. When exchanged according to various socially prescribed guidelines—which I will discuss at length in the next chapter—they served as evidence of a marital contract. Yet, the speaker’s gifts are not clearly identified as love tokens. Even a ring did not qualify as a binding love token if it was not given with the expressed intent to marry. As such, the posy ring, cap, gown, etc., that the speaker offers could be tokens of goodwill— like the gifts Spenser’s Hobbinoll gives Colin “to win his wanton heart” (April, 24)—instead of love tokens. Tokens of goodwill might be exchanged between friends, lovers, family members, or business associates, and they did not constitute a legal contract, though they were meant to signify the formation of an affective bond. So, through carefully chosen terminology and the image of the posy ring, “Come live with me” suggests that marriage is not the only, or even the best, way for people to bind themselves together.

At the same time that Marlowe uses the pastoral genre to blur the boundaries between heteroerotic love and male friendship, he also employs it to conflate male friendship and male romantic/sexual intimacy. In Marlowe’s time (and long before) pastoral poetry celebrated the different kinds of love and connection men could share. Spenser’s The Shephearde’s Calender features homosocial bonds between male friends, while Richard Barnfield’s The Affectionate

Shepherd features a male speaker who celebrates his love and sexual desire for a beautiful male youth named Ganymede. Early moderns were also familiar with the founding fathers of the pastoral tradition—Virgil, Theocritus, Moschus, and Bion—for whom “sexual love between males was…integral.”94 Virgil’s second eclogue (one of Marlowe’s likely sources), for example,

94 Norton, “Pastoral Homoeroticism and Barnfield,” 117. 58

presents Cordyon’s desire for Alexis as sexual in nature. Since the “sexual associations of

[classical] pastoral were widely recognized” in Renaissance England, Marlowe’s poem, with its pointed ambiguity, would have brought to mind not only friendship between men but sex between them as well.95

In conjunction with the reader, then, “Come live with me” reasserts the merit of the

“other relational forms” early modern authorities attempted to devalue. The lyric resists the use of “marital discourse…to direct the ways in which individuals understood and evaluated their relational experiences”96 by doing the exact opposite. Marlowe’s poem introduces an intimate discourse which exists in opposition to normative marital discourse and uses it to remind readers that it is possible to think about intimacy differently than they have been told they should.

Beyond this, though, the poem refuses to guide the reader, leaving her with the freedom to understand and evaluate the speaker and addressee’s intimacy on her own. “Come live with me” celebrates that Marlowe’s speaker and addressee’s love exists only for them and the reader. It asks why the Church and State need to be involved in one’s intimate matters at all and who a heterosexual, reproductive union governed by the institution of marriage actually serves. Thus, it encourages the audience to refuse the efforts of legal and religious institutions to shape their understanding of intimacy. Readers need not feel limited to the three intimacies commonly evoked by the pastoral genre, either. Marlowe’s lyric leaves room for less familiar intimate scripts to emerge alongside them. For instance, his invitation could easily be delivered by a woman chasing a man, someone pursuing his or her social superior, one family member inviting another to escape the harsh realities of their real-world lives, one woman hoping to share her life

95 Knowles, “Sexuality: A Renaissance Category?,” 478. 96 Bromley, Intimacy and Sexuality, 3. 59

with another, etc. By ignoring gender, sexuality, and any distinctions between different types of intimacy in his lyric, Marlowe makes room for the reader to recall, revise, combine, or re- imagine an expansive variety of intimate scripts that could exist in his poetic world. In this way,

“Come live with me” presents numerous potential intimate scenarios simultaneously and places them next to one another—each scenario just as possible and valuable as the last—rather than in a vertical hierarchy.

In addition to questioning early modern views about the importance of marriage, “Come live with me” rejects a linear understanding of time, especially as it relates to the normative trajectory of romantic intimacy—from courtship to a lifelong marital union, complete with children. Even in form, the poem favors a cyclical structure over a linear one. “Come live with me” is episodic rather than sequential. Each self-contained stanza has an identical rhyme scheme

(made up of two rhyming couplets) and meter (iambic tetrameter) so that to reorder the stanzas would not be to disrupt the poem or significantly change its meaning. Together, these descriptions form a larger portrait of Marlowe’s pastoral world, each detail no more or less prominent than the one before or after it. The lyric does not head in a particular direction or build to a conclusion but “appears to proceed by simply accreting descriptions” joined by the conjunction “and.” “Come live with me” also confuses beginning and end as it “cycles back on itself through…refrain-like repetitions” of certain phrases like “we will” or “I will” and “live with me, and be my love.” The lyric refuses a traditional narrative arc (start to finish) and, presents its content as a series of points in a potentially endless loop. If, as Haber argues, “there exists a clear relation between conventional, causal narrative structure, which is productive of meaning, and other forms of orthodoxy, particularly conventional reproductive sexuality” in “all of [Marlowe’s]works,” then it seems reasonable to assume that the circular structure of his lyric

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critiques early modern “orthodoxy” and the assumption that the story of romantic intimacy should end in a particular way.97

Just as the poem’s structure is cyclical rather than linear, its events episodic rather than serial, the life “Come live with me” presents to the reader has no teleology, no clear endpoint or objective. The speaker and addressee will live together for an indeterminate amount of time.

They will pull wool from their lambs together. They will listen to the shepherds sing together.

Their life together will be made up of a series of events, pleasures piled on top of pleasures, but there is no indication that their life will head toward anything—certainly not marriage or a child.

They will just be, enjoying each other’s mutual love and company as long as they please. Some scholars do argue that the life the speaker and addressee share will only last for a limited amount of time. Bromley, for instance, posits that the speaker only expects to live with the beloved for a month, or “each May morning” of a single May (22).98 Many others assert that the speaker’s gift of fur-lined slippers subtly indicates that winter will arrive. Time will move on, and the pleasures of the pastoral world will end.99 Yet, as the speaker describes it, there is no reason to assume that her/his utopian world is subject to the changing of the seasons or the passage of time. This imaginative utopia may be frozen in time, set in a perpetual May, when lined slippers are made in anticipation for a winter that never comes. Alternatively, the speaker’s utopian world might cycle through the seasons eternally. The lovers will enjoy “each May morning.” Winter will come. Winter will go. And they will spend another May together. Time will move, but it will not progress toward an end. Either way, the lovers’ intimacy and their life together are experienced

97 Haber, Desire and Dramatic Form, 15-6, 13. 98 Bromley, Intimacy and Sexuality, 26. 99 See Potter, “The Nymph’s Reply Nine Months Later,” 109-10; and Cheney, “‘The Passionate Shepherd’ and Hero and Leander,” 172. 61

as series of moments rather than a linear sequence of events with a socially and temporally defined endpoint.

By inviting the addressee into her/his imagined utopia, the speaker not only describes a world that exists outside of time and reality but brings (at least) one other such world into being.

The world(s) she/he manifests exists in two times (the present and the future) and places

(somewhere and nowhere). In one sense, the speaker’s utopia comes into being in the speaker and addressee’s minds as soon as it is articulated. In another sense, it remains perpetually in the future, at an unverified location just out of reach. The speaker invites the beloved to envision this ideal life and world with her/him as much as she/he invites the beloved to an actual place. Both lover and beloved inhabit the speaker’s utopia together, imaginatively, before they set foot in a pastoral golden world. Even if they never physically arrive at the utopia the speaker describes— even if this utopia does not actually exist—they will have shared a place and experience made for the two of them. Yet, while a pastoral utopia manifests in the speaker and addressee’s minds as it is described, the paradise the speaker hopes to share with the addressee also exists in the future. Within the world of the poem, the life the speaker promises can never be fully realized.

She/he makes many assurances about the things lover and beloved will enjoy once they reach their pastoral utopia—“we will all the pleasures prove,” “we will sit upon the rocks,” “I will make thee beds of roses,” “the shepherd swains shall dance and sing for they delight”—but the two of them do not actually experience the pleasures of the pastoral world in the poem.

From the reader’s perspective, the utopia of “Come live with me” has the potential to extend interminably into the future. Marlowe hints that his speaker will write “poesies” to memorialize the beloved and positions “Come live with me” itself as the first of these poems meant to celebrate the addressee and the intimacy the speaker hopes to share with her/him. Thus,

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the poem itself and the reference to writing poetry which it contains alert the reader that she and those who encounter the lyric after her will bring the speaker and addressee’s intimacy to life again and again. Because each new reader revives and recreates the intimacy shared by lover and beloved, their fictional connection to one another endures far into the future, in its many imaginative iterations, as long as there is someone to read about it. Their potential love and utopian life are made eternal by poetry and the power of imagination.100

Finally, by demonstrating how the speaker and addressee’s utopian world can simultaneously exist (in their minds) and not exist yet (in reality), the lyric calls attention to its own function as an escape from normative intimate constraints. The reader, too, can leave behind the realities of early modern England and temporarily inhabit her own imaginative world. At the same time that “Come live with me” asks the reader to picture the pastoral bliss that the speaker and beloved share, it also encourages her to put herself in the position of the speaker and/or beloved and to imagine planning a life with someone she might like to live with and love. While she reads the poem, she lives outside of time and reality, with whatever loved one she has conjured for herself. One reader might create a dozen different imaginative utopias as the poem gives her leeway to imagine and reimagine what an ideal form of love looks like to her. In her mind she can envision and re-envision an entire life in an instant, she can draw out a brief intimate scenario and experience it again and again, she can live the same life over and over or live multiple different lives at once. For speaker, addressee, and reader, the utopias of “Come

100 Cheney makes a similar observation when he explains that “Come live with me” “promises to make [Marlowe’s] Love, his readers, and future English authors divine.” See “‘The Passionate Shepherd to his Love’ and Hero and Leander,” 177. On the other hand, Louis H. Leiter argues that it is the love the speaker and addressee share, rather than Marlowe’s poetry, that makes them divine and, thus, eternal. See “Deification through Love: Marlowe’s ‘The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,’” College English 27, no. 6 (1966): 444-49. 63

live with me” provide a space where it is possible to question the conventional, early modern expectation that one’s life should follow a particular course.

“New and Better Pleasures”: Early Poetic Responses to “Come live with me”

As critics frequently point out, the request to “come live with me” repeated in Marlowe’s pastoral is not only an invitation from the speaker of the poem to the addressee; it is also an invitation from Marlowe to his audience. The call to engage with and respond to Marlowe’s ideas about intimacy was surely alluring to many readers, and it is clear that other authors accepted his invitation with great enthusiasm as well.101 The popularity of “Come live with me” and its wide circulation (in multiple versions and different mediums) meant that the lyric elicited responses and imitations from many of the best-known authors of Marlowe’s time (and many lesser-known authors as well). Today, there are four extant early modern print versions of the lyric—in The Passionate Pilgrim (1599), England’s Helicon (1600), and two editions of The

Compleat Angler (1653, 1655)—and all or part of “Come live with me” has been found in eight early modern manuscripts, five of which were compiled during Marlowe’s lifetime or very shortly after his death.102 Musical versions of “Come live with me” circulated as well.103 Susanne

Woods even goes so far as to argue that the poem ‘s “transmission…was largely aural rather than

101 See Kimberly Huth, “Come Live With Me and Feed My Sheep: Invitation, Ownership, and Belonging in Early Modern Pastoral Literature,” Studies in Philology 108 (2011): 53 and Cheney, “‘The Passionate Shepherd to his Love’ and Hero and Leander,” 171. 102 Peter Beal, Index of English Literary Manuscripts, Volume 1 (London: Mansell Publishing Ltd: 1980), 326-7. 103 Frederick W. Sternfeld, “Come Live with Me and Be My Love,” in The Hidden Harmony: Essays in Honor of Philip Wheelwright, eds. Oliver Johnson, David Harrah, Peter Fuss, and Theodore Guleserian (New York: Odyssey, 1966), 173- 92. 64

scribal.”104 So, Marlowe’s lyric may have been even better known and more widely responded to than we realize.

The dissemination of Marlowe’s pastoral encouraged the creation of more and more literary imaginings of ideal intimacy. Some of these portraits questioned and critiqued

Marlowe’s illustration of utopian love—most famously Raleigh’s “The Nymph’s Reply” and

Donne’s “The Bait”—and others borrowed from, echoed, and added to his vision of love in paradise. Whether they supported or rejected Marlowe’ s understanding of utopian intimacy, these texts were clearly associated with his work. They recycled key images, phrases, and words from “Come live with me,” and some of them appeared alongside the lyric in print and manuscript collections of poetry. Collectively, they made up an assemblage of literary reflections on idealized love, all set in the pastoral world. All readers were surely not aware of each and every poem that engaged with “Come live with me,” but those responses a reader was familiar with formed a group of commentaries on and portraits of utopian intimacy that she could consider as a whole.

The poetic responses in these groups brought new shades of meaning to “Come live with me” and offered readers even more intimate scenarios to reflect upon in conjunction with those suggested by Marlowe’s lyric. For example, Raleigh’s “The Nymph’s Reply” portrays

Marlowe’s speaker as a man who might be intentionally telling his mistress lies to get her into bed, and Drayton’s “The Second Nymphall” adds to Marlowe’s exploration of nonnormative intimacy by depicting a nondyadic relationship among two shepherds and the woman they love—a woman who, in turn, claims that only time will tell if she loves one, both, or neither of

104 Susanne Woods, “‘The Passionate Shepheard’ and ‘The Nimphs Reply’: A Study of Transmission,” Huntington Library Quarterly 34 (1970): 29. 65

them. These answers and imitations also flesh out some of the numerous intimate possibilities that Marlowe’s poem gestures toward. Barnfield, for instance, focuses on the classical pastoral bond between a shepherd and his male beloved in The Affectionate Shepherd. Collectively,

“Come live with me” and the poetic responses to it showed readers that intimate ideals could shift and change based on an author’s preferences and opinions. Audiences were invited to witness and enter an unfolding discussion about the shape a perfect love should take, to determine for themselves which utopian elements they would incorporate into or exclude from their own imaginative worlds. Readers were given the opportunity to select what they liked from each intimate portrait and the license to combine these bits and pieces with their own ideas to create a collage of utopian intimacy that was uniquely their own. Like “Come live with me”

(though on a larger scale), these sets of poems showed readers it was possible to think of love in different ways—many of which were not part of dominant social narratives—and gave them a space wherein they could figure out what utopian intimacy looked like to them.

In the remainder of this section I will discuss early poetic responses to “Come live with me”—specifically those written or published within the first two decades after the lyric’s assumed composition date (1588)—and explain how they impacted readers’ experiences of the utopian world Marlowe’s lyric had invited them to enter. I will focus on printed replies and imitations because they were more widely accessible than manuscript versions and, therefore, tend to be the versions that reached the most readers and had the broadest cultural impact. I will, however, address manuscript versions of Marlowe’s pastoral and its responses where relevant.

While the replies to “Come live with me” are numerous, this section will focus on the first four poetic responses to reach print: Drayton’s “Eclogue VII” in Idea: The Shepherd’s Garland

(1593); the first two songs of Richard Barnfield’s The Affectionate Shepherd (1594); Sir Walter

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Raleigh’s “The Nymph’s Reply,” published as a single stanza in The Passionate Pilgrim (1599) and in its six-stanza form in England’s Helicon (1600); and the anonymous “Another of the

Same,” which appears after Marlowe and Raleigh’s pastorals in England’s Helicon.

Drayton’s and Barnfield’s pastorals demonstrate how—by building off of and adding to his portrayal of idealized intimacy—Marlowe’s contemporaries validated his utopian thinking and added more specific detail to the imaginative pastoral world his poem made available to readers. As they call to mind the utopian love depicted in “Come live with me,” Drayton’s

“Eclogue VII” and Barnfield’s “The complaint of Daphnis for the love of Ganymede” and “The second days lamentation of the affectionate shepherd” detail more precise forms of intimacy— classical male friendship and classical male sexual bonds, respectively—in a way that Marlowe’s poem, with its intentional ambiguity, does not. Whereas “Come live with me” suggests homosocial and homoerotic intimacy as possible types of utopian love, Drayton and Barnfield’s songs are clear about their speakers’ and beloveds’ genders and the kind of intimacy their speakers desire. “Eclogue VII” portrays a dialogue between two shepherds in which Drayton’s lover invites the addressee to abandon his pursuit of women and share a platonic, homosocial companionship with him in the pastoral world. Barnfield’s “Complaint” and “Lamentation” take a different classical approach, detailing Daphnis’ explicitly sexual desire for a young boy named

Ganymede. Through their more focused portraits of intimacy, both poets provide readers with concrete examples of how and why one might reject normative intimate expectations and define an ideal intimacy for her or himself.105 In doing so, they provide readers with more ways to imaginatively experience utopian love.

105 Though Barnfield later claims (in Cynthia) that his Affectionate Shepherd poems were nothing more than imitations of Virgil’s second eclogue, many scholars have noted the unconvincing nature of this claim. For examples see Raymond-Jean Frontain’s “‘An Affectionate 67

In “Eclogue VII” Drayton’s speaker, Borrill, “an aged shepherd swain, / with reasons doth reprove, / Batte a foolish wanton boy, / but lately fallen in love” (Eclogue VII, argument).106

As he does so, Borrill describes a utopian world that, like Marlowe’s, refuses to place a higher value on marital love than male friendship. Rather than challenging the dominant hierarchy of intimacies by blurring the boundaries between different types of love, though, Drayton upends this hierarchy and places heteroerotic love at the bottom, exiling it from the pastoral world altogether. Through Borrill, Drayton illustrates a world that celebrates platonic companionship between men above all other affective bonds and reminds his audience of the great reverence this form of affection enjoyed during the classical period.

Drayton’s elder shepherd begins his reproof by inviting a younger shepherd, Batte, to give up the pursuit of women and share a pastoral life with him. Echoing Marlowe’s speaker,

Borrill asks, “And wilt though Batte come and sit with me?” He promises, “Contented life here shalt thou only find” (21-22). To induce Batte to accept his offer, Borrill enumerates the ills of life in the real world and draws a connection between marital love and those ills. In a more explicit fashion than Marlowe’s speaker, Borrill voices a distaste for the pursuit of money that life in the city necessitates and the corruption that inevitably follows. There, he tells Borrill, people “cog for pence, / And waste their wealth in sinful bravery, / Whose gain is loss, whose thrift is lewd expense / And liven still in golden slavery” (25-28). He associates earning money and accumulating wealth with deceit and cheating (or “cogging”), waste, sin, loss, lewdness, and

Shepheard sicke for Love’: Barnfield’s Homoerotic Appropriation of the Song of Solomon,” and Anne Lake Prescott’s “Barnfield’s Spenser: ‘Great Colin’ and the Art of Denial,” in The Affectionate Shepherd: Celebrating Richard Barnfield, ed. Kenneth Borris and George Klawitter (London: Associated UPs, 2001), 99-116; 85-98. 106 Quotes taken from Michael Drayton, Idea the Shepheards Garland Fashioned in Nine Eglogs. Rowlands Sacrifice to the Nine Muses (London: T. Orwin, 1593), http://ezaccess.libraries. psu.edu/login?url=https:// search-proquest-com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu. 68

slavery. In other words, corruption and the pursuit of money go hand-in-hand, and both run rampant outside of Borrill’s rural landscape. Soon afterward, Borrill sings a song explaining why romantic love is “nature’s error” and situating it as another corrupting element of the real world.

In this song, Borrill associates love with the depravity he has already connected to life in the city

(136). He calls love “fancy’s fraud,” “sight’s deceit,” “cares slave,” “fortune’s bait,” “looks theft,” and “tongue’s treason” (124, 127, 131-134). It belongs in a world where everyone must lie and cheat to get ahead, not in the pastoral realm.

Unlike the real, corrupt world, the utopia Borrill describes is a place where male friends can escape social pressure to marry and have children. There, men can pursue spiritual and intellectual growth and enjoy simple pleasures together instead. This world allows for prayer

(“here mayst thou carol hymns and sacred psalms, / And hery Pan with orisons and alms”) and furnishes food and time for entertainment and education (“Here mayst thou hunt the…Hare, / Or else entrap false Raynard in a snare / Or if thou wilt in antique Romance read / of gentle Lords and ladies…Or learn the Shepheard’s nice astrology / To know the Planets moving in the sky”)

(23-4, 30, 31; 34-42). As in Marlowe’s utopia, Drayton’s pastoral landscape provides all that its inhabitants need and offers shelter from the undesirable elements of reality. There, men are not burdened by financial responsibilities or social mandates to marry and create families of their own. They can focus on higher matters, like bettering their minds and souls. Drayton’s portrait of utopia, then, gives readers a model for imagining a world where platonic friendship, rather than romantic love, is at the center of their intimate lives.

Like Drayton, Barnfield creates a pastoral utopia where male relationships can thrive and need not be sacrificed in favor of marriage and reproduction. Barnfield’s pastoral world, however, focuses on sexual and romantic, rather than platonic, ties between men. While recalling

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the queer utopia Marlowe depicts in “Come live with me,” Barnfield creates a poetic world that harkens back to the classical period as it illustrates and celebrates passionate same-sex intimacy.

In this world, Barnfield’s speaker, Daphnis, can unabashedly declare his strong physical, affective, and even spiritual ties to his beloved boy, Ganymede. As scholars have noted, the first two songs of Barnfield’s pastoral contain key phrases that call to mind “Come live with me”:107

“if thou wilt come and dwell with me at home,” “All these and more I’ll give thee for thy love,”

“Sweet love, come ease me of thy burthens pain,” “If thou wilt love me, thou shalt be my boy…

My love, my dove, my solace, and my joy” (“Complaint,” 163, 193; “Lamentation,” 17, 25-7).108

Barnfield’s speaker, Daphnis, echoes the conditional promise that Marlowe’s makes, assuring the beloved that, if he will live with and love Daphnis, the two of them will experience the joys of the country together. Daphnis will shower the gifts that nature has to offer upon Ganymede “if thou wilt come and dwell with me” and “if thou wilt love me.” Yet, the gifts and delights of

Barnfield’s utopia are not identical to those described in “Come live with me.” While Marlowe’s utopia offers sensual rather than sexual enjoyments and his speaker refrains from any direct reference to sex, Barnfield’s world is one in which Daphnis can freely express his desires for

Ganymede and act upon them.

Whereas Marlowe’s speaker only suggestively refers to “pleasures,” Daphnis uses (very) thinly veiled metaphors to illustrate in vivid detail the sexual experiences he longs to share with

Ganymede. Daphnis describes Ganymede’s “sugared love” as “full of sweet delight” and exclaims, “O would to God, so I might have my fee, / My lips were honey, and thy mouth a

107 See the previously mentioned essays by Prescott and Norton in The Affectionate Shepherd: Celebrating Richard Barnfield, 91, 126-7, 141. See also Julie W. Yen’s essay, “‘If it be sinne to love a sweet-fac’d Boy’: Rereading Homoerotic Desire in Barnfield’s Ganymede Poems,” in the same collection, 130-48. 108 Richard Barnfield, The Affectionate Shepherd (London: John Danter, 1594). 70

bee!” He goes on to tell his beloved that, if he “would but pity me,” the two of them could share more than a sweet, sticky kiss: “then shouldst thou suck my sweet and my faire flower, / That now is ripe and full of honey-berries; / Then would I lead thee to my pleasant bower, / Filled full of grapes, of mulberries, and cherries: / Then shouldst thou be my wasp or else my bee, / I would thy hive, and thou my honey, bee” (“Complaint,” 86, 89, 95-102). As Rictor Norton explains,

“This clever use of ‘fee’…([a] common Elizabethan pun for sexual intercourse) together with

‘sucke’ obviously implies fellatio.” Norton also goes on to interpret the lines above as follows:

The transfer of ‘honey’ from the mouth to the loins, from saliva to semen, is

effectively achieved in the second stanza: Ganymede’s flower is his penis, ripe or

erect, and full of spermatic honey-berries. He is to be Daphnis’s wasp as well as

bee, and has a potentially penetrative role, as his implied entry into Daphnis as

‘hive’ indicates.”109

By making his meaning obvious, Barnfield gives his readers an opportunity to imagine engaging in similar sexual activities and suggests that sexual satisfaction is an important component of utopian love. For male readers especially, he shows his speaker fantasizing about sex with a younger man and gives them license to fantasize about the Ganymede in their lives.

Barnfield’s speaker does more than voice his sexual desires; he acts on them without experiencing any shame. In the first stanza of “Complaint,” Daphnis suggests that he and

Ganymede have already enjoyed at least one sexual encounter, though it isn’t clear how long it has been since. Daphnis opens The Affectionate Shepherd by “cursing the time, the place, the sense, the sin; / I came, I saw, I viewed, I slipped in” (“Complaint,” 5-6). Paying special attention to the phrase “I slipped in,” numerous scholars have agreed that these lines allude to

109 Norton, “Pastoral Homoeroticism and Barnfield,” 124. 71

sexual activity of some kind, likely anal intercourse.110 Thus, Barnfield’s utopian world is one in which sex between men does not have to be a secret or a source of shame. While Daphnis does initially describe “slipping into” Ganymede as a sin, he is quick to reject this characterization of the intimacy they have shared. As Gregory Bredbeck argues, although the “intimations of sodomy” in these lines echo the condemnatory legal rhetoric surrounding early modern sodomy statutes111—with Daphnis “cursing” his weakness and referring to his actions as “the sin”—the stanza that follows them unequivocally rejects this rhetoric. Daphnis quickly qualifies that “If it be sin to love a sweet-faced boy, / Whose amber locks trussed up in golden trammels / Dangle adown his lovely cheeks with joy, / When pearl and flowers his faire hair enamels; / If it be sin to love a lovely lad, / Oh then sin I, for whom my soul is sad” (“Complaint,” 7-12). The implication here is, of course, that it is no sin to “love a sweet-faced boy” after all. If Daphnis felt at all repentant, he would surely not linger on the boy’s “amber locks” and “lovely cheeks” in such an enraptured fashion. Through Daphnis, Barnfield rejects the condemnatory rhetoric surrounding same-sex love and eroticism and gives himself and his readers an opportunity to imagine themselves inside a utopian landscape where such condemnation is impossible. He shows his speaker openly celebrating the physical intimacy he has shared (and would like to share again) with Ganymede and facing no negative consequences.

In both “Complaint” and “Lamentation,” Barnfield makes it clear not only that Daphnis is unafraid to speak of his intimate attachment to Ganymede, but that his speaker has every intention of making his adoration public. Rather than attempting to hide his feelings, Daphnis

110 Smith states that Daphnis “‘slips into sin’ with the alacrity of a lover slipping into his beloved’s arms—or into another part of his anatomy.” See Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare’s England, 100. 111 Gregory Bredbeck, Sodomy and Interpretation: Marlowe to Milton (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991), 150-1.

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repeatedly asks Ganymede to observe the physical signs of his love upon his body: “witness these watery eyes my sad lament, / Receiving cisterns of my ceaseless tears; / Witness my bleeding heart my soul’s intent, / Witness the weight distressed Daphnis bears.” By repeatedly asking Ganymede (and the reader) to “witness” the signs of his devotion, Daphnis asserts that his love for the young boy deserves attention. More than this, Barnfield’s speaker voices his intent to memorialize his love for Ganymede in the public eye, through poetry. Daphnis closes

“Complaint” by telling Ganymede that, by singing about him, “I honor thee that love thee so, /

And love thee so, that so do honor thee / Much more than any mortal man doth know, / Or can discern by love or jealousy.” Daphnis’ “shepherd’s lowly lays” put his love for Ganymede on display and “honor” it as something that deserves to be memorialized in poetry.

As he creates a utopia where nonnormative modes of loving are legitimate, Barnfield follows Marlowe and Drayton in challenging legal and religious attempts to valorize heterosexual, marital intimacy at the expense of all other forms of love. Like Drayton, Barnfield inverts the normative hierarchy of intimacies. He conjures a pastoral world in which erotic love between men is superior to heteroerotic love. In “Complaint,” Barnfield’s speaker explicitly positions his love for Ganymede as much more valuable than Queen Gwendolyn’s love for him:

Compare the love of faire Queen Gwendolyn With mine, and thou shalt see how she doth love thee: I love thee for thy qualities divine, But she doth love another swain above thee: I love thee for thy gifts, she for her pleasure; I for thy virtue, she for beauty’s treasure.

And always, I am sure, it cannot last. But sometime Nature will deny those dimples: Instead of beauty, when thy blossom's past, Thy face will be deformed full of wrinkles; Then she that loved thee for thy beauty’s sake, When age draws on, thy love will soon forsake.

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But I that loved thee for thy gifts divine, In the December of thy beauty’s waning, Will still admire with joy those lovely eyen, That now behold me with their beauties banning (“Complaint,” 205-26)

Queen Gwendolyn is fickle and shallow. Her affection is based on the pleasure Ganymede’s attention brings her and his physical beauty. This love will fade when, inevitably, Ganymede’s

“blossom’s past” and his face is “full of wrinkles.” In the end, she will “forsake” him. On the other hand, Daphnis (like any Petrarchan lover worth his salt) loves Ganymede for his “qualities divine,” his “gifts,” and his virtue—in addition to his beautiful body. Even when Ganymede is no longer physically beautiful, Daphnis will remain constant. So, in Barnfield’s utopia male lovers have a greater capacity for faithfulness than their heterosexual counterparts.

To more firmly reject the supremacy of heteroerotic love, Barnfield creates a speaker who claims for Ganymede and himself those privileges conventionally reserved for heterosexual couples. While Marlowe’s speaker promises the addressee a sustained partnership that is not legally binding and in which there is no “wife” or “husband” role to perform, Barnfield assumes the authority to apply marital rites and roles to his own same-sex relationship. Daphnis asks

Ganymede not to be his love but “my boy, or else my bride” and promises him a “gold ring for thy finger” (“Complaint,” 77, 93). In Barnfield’s utopia, Gwendolyn does not deserve

Ganymede, but Daphnis can claim him as a spouse and wed him with a gold ring (if only the boy would consent)—never mind that their union would not only be legally illegitimate but, technically, punishable by death in Renaissance England.

While the first printed responses to “Come live with me” depict pastoral worlds that resemble and resonate with Marlowe’s, the most famous response—Raleigh’s “The Nymph’s

Reply”—is the antiutopian counterpart to Marlowe’s lyric. Because Raleigh presented his reply as the foil to “Come live with me,” his answer quickly became so closely associated with

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Marlowe’s pastoral that wherever “Come live with me” appeared in print or manuscript collections, “The Nymph’s Reply” was almost always sure to follow. In fact, Raleigh’s companion poem offers its rebuttal in every Renaissance collection of poetry known to contain

“Come live with me.”112 Marlowe and Raleigh’s pastoral reflections on love appeared together as early as 1589113 and no later than 1599, when “Come live with me” preceded the first stanza of

Raleigh’s reply in The Passionate Pilgrim. In 1600 the six-stanza versions of both lyrics were published in England’s Helicon.

Due to its consistent placement close to Marlowe’s lyric, “The Nymph’s Reply inflected its meaning (and vice versa) and altered the significance of Raleigh and Marlowe’s dialogue as a whole. As Heninger explains, Marlowe and Raleigh’s “poems, taken together, establish a system of resonances, so that the significance of each is amplified by juxtaposition with the other.” They create a “whole [which] is greater than the two parts.”114 Because “The Nymph’s Reply” appeared below, beside, and on the opposite side of the page from “Come live with me,” audiences were guided to read the two poems in conversation—especially when Raleigh’s reply was presented with its title or a heading like “Answer” or “Response.” The texts’ proximity invited readers to revisit both lyrics multiple times, to compare and contrast them, and to study their internal logics and determine which stance on utopian intimacy made more sense. Each time a reader revisited Marlowe or Raleigh’s poem, her experience and understanding of utopian love was likely to change.

112 Beal, Index of English Literary Manuscripts, 326-8, 393-4. 113 This is the earliest possible date of compilation for the Lilliat miscellany, the first manuscript known to include both poems. 114 Heninger, “The Passionate Shepherd and the Philosophical Nymph,” 64. 75

The frequent coupling of these poems further altered readers’ imaginative experiences of

Marlowe’s utopian vision by steering the poetic conversation about utopian love in a new direction. When Marlowe and Raleigh’s pastorals appear in dialogue, they demarcate the extreme stances in the poetic debate surrounding utopian intimacy. Marlowe’s dreamy idealism is pitted against Raleigh’s insistent need to bring readers “back to harsh reality,” pushing other poets and readers to position their own views on the feasibility of idealized love somewhere on the spectrum between Marlowe and Raleigh’s positions.115 Once these poems appeared in conversation, readers and authors were not only beckoned to draw upon “Come live with me” for inspiration as they imagined what love in paradise might look like; they were also encouraged to look along with Raleigh for cracks in the infrastructure of Marlowe’s pastoral world. Audiences were forced to reconcile Marlowe’s utopian vision and their imaginative experience of this vision with Raleigh’s more realistic illustration of love in early modern England. They were asked to consider what bearing Marlowe’s idealized portrait of love had on their own lives, whether or not it had a place in the world as it actually was, and, most importantly, whether

Marlowe or Raleigh (if either) was right. Was a perfect form of love attainable, somewhere in the distant future? Was utopian intimacy nothing more than a misleading fiction told by a shepherd with no truth in his tongue? Or did the facts lie somewhere in the middle?

Of course, audiences’ answers to these questions varied, in part because the debate between Marlowe and Raleigh did not look the same in every circumstance. Each pairing of

“Come live with me” and “The Nymph’s Reply” was unique, shaped by its contextual surroundings, and, therefore, prompted different thoughts on and responses to idealized love. In the print and manuscript collections that joined them, “Come live with me” and “The Nymph’s

115 Hamlin, “Replying to Raleigh’s ‘The Nymph’s Reply,’” 170.

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Reply” appeared together in a variety of configurations: with different headings and authorial ascriptions (or none at all), with stanzas and lines removed, added, rearranged, altered slightly, or rewritten entirely, and grouped with other, related pastoral reflections on love. These varied configurations created the potential for a wide range of different readings and interpretations of

Marlowe’s utopian world and of his debate with Raleigh. For instance, in an early 17th-century manuscript housed at the Pierpoint Morgan Library (R-V. R of E.), the collator misattributes

Marlowe’s poem with the heading “Poems written in the reign of Queen Elizabeth: A sonnet madrigal by Sir Phillip Sidney.” The version of Raleigh’s answer that follows this entry is simply headed “Response” and opens with a variant line that reads “But if the world and love were sound,” rather than the standard “If all the world and love were young.” It seems reasonable to assume that a reader might encounter these texts differently if she believed Marlowe’s speaker was Sidney’s creation and Raleigh’s speaker was questioning the very soundness of love and the world rather than observing that neither can remain “young” forever in reality. The manuscript that produces what is perhaps the most unique reading of Marlowe and Raleigh’s dialogue

(Folger, MS V.a.169) was compiled between 1650 and 1660. It contains six-stanza versions of both poems (likely transcribed from Izaak Walton’s 1655 The Compleat Angler) which appear with the headings “The Milkmaid’s Song” and “The Milkmaid Mother’s Answer.” When the speakers of both poems are women, mother and daughter, Raleigh’s reply becomes a cautionary, maternal response to a daughter’s naïve and idealistic view of love. As these manuscript versions of the Marlowe/Raleigh debate illustrate, the material contexts in which readers encountered

Marlowe’s lyric and its responses would have influenced their interpretations of these poetic exchanges.

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Because it can be difficult to determine how widely a particular manuscript circulated in early modern England, and because printed versions of “Come live with me” and “The Nymph’s

Reply” were obviously more uniform and widely disseminated than the various manuscript versions that existed at the same time, I focus on the first two print pairings of Marlowe and

Raleigh’s companion poems here. In The Passionate Pilgrim, “Come live with me” and “The

Nymphs’ Reply” (along with most of the other poems in the collection) were misattributed to

Shakespeare. Neither poem was printed in its entirety, “Come live with me” appeared without a title, and Raleigh’s reply was labeled “Love’s Answer.” A year later, the six-stanza versions of

Marlowe and Raleigh’s lyrics were paired—and followed by an imitation of Marlowe’s lyric titled “Another of the Same”—in England’s Helicon (1600). This time, “Come live with me” was correctly attributed to Marlowe, and “The Nymph’s Reply” was attributed to Ignoto, which may or may not have been a penname for Raleigh. Both poems were designated the official titles attached to them today: “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love” and “The Nymph’s Reply.” The significant differences between these two pairings of Marlowe and Raleigh’s pastorals impacted readers’ understandings of the texts and directed how they approached the concept of utopian intimacy.

In The Passionate Pilgrim, “Come live with me” was accompanied by “Love’s Answer,” the opening stanza of Raleigh’s response:

If that the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd’s tongue, These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee and be thy love.

Whereas Raleigh’s full answer, as printed in England’s Helicon, deploys reason to counter

Marlowe’s aspirational ideals and reasserts a normative definition of intimacy—as limited by time and meant to be shared between lovers of the opposite sex within the confines of

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marriage—this lone stanza only stresses how alluring Marlowe’s queer utopian world is and makes readers more inclined to long for a love and a life like the one illustrated in “Come live with me.” James Bromley similarly observes that “Love’s Answer” only “weakly challenges” the

“vision of…intimacy” Marlowe outlines in his lyric whereas the complete version in England’s

Helicon “rejects this vision and defines intimacy as the experience of interiorized desire within long-term coupledom.”116 As a result, the 1599 version of the Marlowe/Raleigh exchange only reinforces the desirability of Marlowe’s utopia and stirs readers to enthusiastically enter and engage with his poetic world.

“Love’s Answer” denies the existence of the utopian world Marlowe’s speaker describes.

Its speaker doubts the trustworthiness of Marlowe’s lover and the possibility of a world exempt from the passage of time but does not push back against Marlowe’s characterization of idealized intimacy (as unmoored from gender, sexuality, and normative hierarchies of intimacy). Neither the title nor the first stanza of Raleigh’s response marks the speaker as a woman. “Love’s

Answer” leaves the identity of the beloved a mystery, and, therefore, does not insist upon heterosexual coupling or otherwise indicate what kind of relationship Marlowe’s speaker and

Raleigh’s addressee could share. Raleigh’s lone stanza also fails to convince readers that

Marlowe’s queer depiction of utopia deserves to be dismissed. Raleigh’s speaker ends the stanza by admitting that, if the harsh realities of time could be avoided and if lovers did not need to fear one another’s false “tongues,” “these pretty pleasures might me move / To live with thee and be thy love.” These lines leave the reader with the sense that even Raleigh’s skeptical beloved wishes the world Marlowe’s speaker conjures were real. The version of Raleigh’s poem in The

Passionate Pilgrim does introduce the issue of reality into the Marlowe/Raleigh debate, and it

116 Bromley, Intimacy and Sexuality, 23. 79

leads audiences to ask (and answer) what utility the imaginative world of “Come live with me” has in their actual lives. “Love’s Answer” reminds the reader that, sadly, the type of intimacy

Marlowe has dreamt up does not exist in the real world. Yet, even if this exchange leads readers to the conclusion that Marlowe’s utopian vision is a pretty lie that they would be best to forget, it leaves them with little desire to do so. Instead, they are likely to find reality that much more dissatisfying when they turn their minds back to it and, perhaps, to return to Marlowe’s world in hope of prolonging their temporary escape.

A year later, in England’s Helicon, the complete versions of Marlowe and Raleigh’s lyrics were printed together bearing the titles most commonly assigned to them today. In its complete form, Raleigh’s response voices his skepticism much more powerfully. The lyric submits itself as a necessary counterbalance to “The Passionate Shepherd.” It mirrors Marlowe’s pastoral—matching it stanza for stanza and employing the same rhyme scheme and meter—and offers a much darker reflection of the utopia he illustrates. Raleigh’s response carefully addresses the pastoral pleasures mentioned in “Come live with me” but considers how they would translate to the real world. Outside of Marlowe’s lyric, time moves on; lovers lie; intimate relations are heterosexual, marital, and reproductive; and unsanctioned intimacies pose a threat to one’s reputation and wellbeing—especially in the event that “love still breed[s]” even though no marriage has taken place (“Nymph’s Reply,” 21). Moreover, Raleigh clearly identifies his speaker as a woman, for whom the realities of early modern intimacy could be particularly harsh.

Like the 1599 version of Marlowe and Raleigh’s debate (though much more forcefully), this pairing of “Come live with me” and “The Nymph’s Reply” confronts readers with the many ways their intimate lives are limited by the inescapable realities of the world they live in. Unlike

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the previous version, though, the 1600 pairing of Marlowe and Raleigh’s lyrics stresses that failing to recognize or ignoring these limitations can have very real, negative consequences.

Throughout his answer, Raleigh’s speaker insists that the passage of time is an inevitability no one can escape, not even in the pastoral world, and emphasizes that this inevitability places unavoidable constraints on life and love. To begin, the structure and logic of

Raleigh’s poem reinforces an understanding and experience of time as finite, linear, and measurable. Whereas “Come live with me” seems as if it could go on forever as the speaker adds more and more pleasures to her/his narrative, “The Nymph’s Reply” has a clear beginning and end, marked by the Nymph’s refusals in the first and final stanzas. It does, like Marlowe’s lyric, conclude where it began when the speaker repeats her initial rebuff in the final line, but the poem’s narrative clearly reaches a conclusion in the closing stanza. Raleigh’s Nymph has countered all her suitor’s points and, having justified and reaffirmed her decision, has no need to add anything further. The nymph’s arguments themselves also rely upon a linear understanding of time. She focuses on what will happen to her and her lover as time moves forward, toward winter and pregnancy. So, “The Nymph’s Reply” reimposes the laws of time just after

Marlowe’s cyclical lyric has lifted them.

Reading Raleigh’s reply even makes the audience experience the movement of time as more rapid than usual. Whereas Marlowe’s poem seems to stop time and suspend the audience in a world of endless possibility, Raleigh’s lyric speeds readers through the changing of the seasons. As Hamlin puts it, “Raleigh’s nymph presents the pastoral world as if in time-lapse photography, where all nature withers, dies, and grows cold.” 117 To each potential pleasure that

Marlowe’s speaker introduces with an “and,” the nymph presents a “but,” illustrating what will

117 Hamlin, “Replying to Raleigh’s ‘The Nymph’s Reply,’” 170. 81

come of this pleasure when time inevitably passes. She counters each of the springtime joys depicted in “Come live with me” with their dreary winter counterparts, insisting that the entertainments and joys Marlowe’s speaker promises must end and decay. Marlowe’s fields yield

“to wayward winter reckoning” (10). His “shallow rivers” with their pleasant falls “rage” in

Raleigh’s reply (6). The rocks Marlowe’s speaker proposes to sit upon with her/his love “grow cold” and the “melodious birds” who sing madrigals “becometh dumb” (6-7). The nymph insists that, even if he refuses to admit it, the passage of time will make her lover’s utopia substantially less hospitable. She also points out that his promised gifts, like the springtime pleasures of the country, are ephemeral. She stresses that, in the real world, “Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses. / Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies” will “soon break, soon wither, soon [be] forgotten” and cites this as proof that the gifts Marlowe’s speaker promises are “in folly ripe, in reason rotten.” For this reason, she explains, “Thy belt of straw and ivy buds, / Thy coral clasps and amber studs, / All these in me no means can move, / To come to thee and be thy love” (13-20).

The nymph’s methodical approach to turning her suitor down is certainly more convincing than the general expression of wariness and disbelief communicated by the speaker of “Love’s

Answer.” In this iteration of the debate, the reader must spend as much time contemplating the future destruction of Marlowe’s utopian world as she does enjoying its beauty, as much time considering its risks as reveling in its rewards. She is confronted with a concrete illustration of what happens to all earthy things, even the pastoral world, in time.

As Raleigh’s nymph insists upon the passage of time, she also reminds the reader that, in reality, intimacy cannot be whatever one would like. Her clearly marked sex dictates that the passionate shepherd’s beloved must be female. Her fear of pregnancy marks heterosexual intimacy as reproductive and implies that it must be validated via a marital union. A good and

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socially acceptable life follows a linear progression from heteroerotic love to marriage to children. For these reasons, the nymph voices understandable concern that there is not “truth in every shepherd’s tongue,” youth does not last, and love does breed. If she were to take

Marlowe’s speaker up on his offer, she may end up pregnant and abandoned. Without a binding marriage, she has no guarantee that her lover will care for her and help her raise their child. He may indeed have a “honey tongue” and a “heart of gall,” and his desire to be her lover may be as ephemeral as his gifts (11).

Raleigh’s decision to replace Marlowe’s madrigals with the mute Philomela effectively communicates the nymph’s concerns. Before she transforms into a nightingale, Philomela’s brother-in-law rapes her and cuts out her tongue. So, her presence in Raleigh’s pastoral landscape hints that invitations like the one Marlowe’s speaker offers, though beautiful on the surface, can hide sinister intentions. That Marlowe’s lover makes Raleigh’s nymph think of this classical figure indicates she is wary of his offer. Philomela’s appearance also intimates that

Raleigh is suspicious of the utopian intimacy Marlowe describes. The figure of the nightingale communicates to readers that believing too readily or uncritically in Marlowe’s vision of utopian love (or one of the imaginative versions they have created themselves) may not end well for them.

And yet, as with the single stanza printed in The Passionate Pilgrim, just because the nymph will not agree to “be thy love,” does not mean she would not like to. Raleigh’s answer begins and ends with conditional refusals—inversions of Marlowe’s opening and closing conditional invitations—which suggest that, despite her good judgement, the nymph is tempted by her suitor’s offer and would like to be proven wrong. As I discussed earlier, Raleigh’s speaker begins by saying that she could be moved by the “pretty pleasures” Marlowe’s lover describes if

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she could believe that he was telling the truth and that love really could stop time (and pregnancy along with it). Unfortunately, as Potter observes, she knows that “time does not stop when lovers love” even if “admittedly…[she] wished it did.”118 Then, after four stanzas of arguing that the gifts her beloved promises are trivial and ephemeral, she begins the final stanza with a “but” as she, again, explains the conditions under which she would accept her lover’s offer. She tells him

“but could youth last, and love still breed, / Had joys no date, nor age no need, / Then these delights my mind might move, / To live with thee and be thy love” (21-4). For the second time she presents her suitor with a conditional refusal. She will not love and live with him unless he really can find a place where lovers do not age, love does not fade, and sex does not necessarily beget children. Marlowe, Raleigh, and their readers know that no place can free people from the passage of time. They are aware that, in early modern England, love does fade and sexual relations between men and women are generally procreative. Still, by ending the dialogue this way, Raleigh signals that it is perfectly understandable to want a world like Marlowe’s. Even he and his nymph are tempted by Marlowe and his speaker, but they are limited by their own insistence on what is rather than what could be. Readers, then, must decide for themselves whether it is better to accept a flawed reality or take the risk of hoping for a future where some elements of Marlowe’s utopian vision might manifest.

Audiences must also determine whether or not to accept Raleigh’s interpretation of

Marlowe’s text. Is “The Passionate Shepherd” really speaking to a female nymph? Does he just want sex from her? Is his invitation disingenuous? Or is Raleigh’s speaker unnecessarily skeptical? Is she needlessly depriving herself of a lifetime (or perhaps many lifetimes) of happiness? Many authors wrote responses to answer these questions and others. In fact, the

118 Potter, “The Nymph’s Reply Nine Months Later,” 119. 84

editor of England’s Helicon followed Marlowe and Raleigh’s companion poems with one such response: “Another of the Same Nature Made Since.” This lyric demonstrates how Raleigh’s answer turned many of those replies which came after it (both spatially and chronologically) into a commentary not just upon “Come live with me” but upon the debate between Marlowe’s idealistic speaker and Raleigh’s realistic nymph as a whole. Responses like “Another of the

Same” offered readers new, utopian and antiutopian worlds which they could use to (re)imagine intimacy. These responses also provided models for thinking critically about Marlowe and

Raleigh’s debate, for deciding who was right, or finding middle ground between their positions.

“Another of the Same” is not another answer like Raleigh’s, as its title and placement

(immediately after “The Nymph’s Reply”) seem to suggest. Instead, this pastoral is a rewriting of

“Come live with me” which functions as a commentary on both Marlowe and Raleigh’s texts and forges a compromise between the two extreme positions they take. “Another of the Same” presents a third illustration of utopian love for the readers of England’s Helicon, leaving them with a cluster of intimate portraits that approach idealized intimacy in distinct ways. The poem insists that the invitation Marlowe’s speaker extends to what the anonymous author calls “Love’s paradise” is not simply a trick or lie. Two lovers can escape the constraints of their everyday lives and enjoy their love in a paradise separate from the rest of the world. But, they can only do so as long as they follow early modern England’s central mandates about intimacy—that romantic love is shared by a man and woman who produce offspring—while they are there and so long as they do, eventually, reenter society.

“Another of the Same” closely imitates Marlowe’s lyric in its early stanzas, especially in its opening lines: “Come live with me and be my dear / And we will revel all the year” (1-2).

The anonymous author models his utopia and the joys it has to offer closely after those that

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Marlowe’s speaker mentions. Both paradisal landscapes feature groves, hills, woods, and rivers.

“Another of the Same” also repeats or slightly changes many of the entertainments Marlowe’s speaker promises. For instance, Marlowe’s speaker tells her/his love “we will sit upon the rocks…By shallow rivers, to whose falls melodious birds sing madrigals” (5-8), and the speaker of “Another of the Same” promises his beloved, “The seat for your disport shall be / Over some river in a tree, / Where…the birds, with heavenly tunèd throats, / Possess wood’s echoes with sweet notes” (9-12, 21-2). Both speakers promise their loves that they will sit by the river and listen to the birds singing.

The anonymous poet’s revelries do diverge from Marlowe’s pleasures in significant ways, though. Most obviously, many of the delights his speaker describes are overtly

(hetero)sexual and limited by time. As if considering the critiques posed by Raleigh’s nymph, the author presents readers with a utopian intimacy which still largely adheres to normative standards and which offers only a temporary escape from reality. The speaker identifies the beloved as a woman when he calls her “summer’s queen,” and his allusions to reproduction suggest that he must be male (8). In the fourth line, the speaker borrows a term from Raleigh as he tells his beloved that the very air in his pastoral paradise “breeds sweetest gales.” He also mentions that she will “see the nymphs at play, / And how the satyrs spend the day,” suggesting that opposite-sex desire is a key component of pastoral intimacy (13-4). Unlike Marlowe’s speaker, who actively avoids any direct reference to sexual activity, the lover of “Another of the

Same” makes it clear that he intends to have a sexual relationship with his beloved. He tells her that the birds’ songs will “inflame the heart” and “possess [her] to play with me and do no less”

(20, 23-4). He then shares with his beloved that “In bowers of laurel trimly dight, / We will outwear the silent night, / While Flora busy is to spread / Her richest treasure on our bed” (25-8).

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Speaking not only of sex but fertility, the speaker tells his beloved of his intentions to make a baby with her. Whereas reproduction does not factor into Marlowe’s utopia and is the nymph’s central source of anxiety in Raleigh’s response, the author of “Another of the Same” suggests that love’s paradise can be a place where lovers “pass the welcome night / In sportful pleasures and delight” and produce a child (37-8).

Though both lovers can “revel all the year,” they must return to society once their child is born. For this reason, the speaker limits his offer to twelve months—enough time to reproduce.

In his closing lines he tells his beloved, “come with me and be my dear, / And we will straight begin the year” making the expiration date on their time in paradise clear (43-4). So, the anonymous poet finds some middle ground between Marlowe and Raleigh. For him, utopian intimacy cannot exist separate from the rest of the world for all time, but it is also not a complete fabrication, a tale spun to manipulate a woman into bed. This poem, placed as it is directly after

Marlowe and Raleigh’s debate, illustrates how their literary argument provided a new way for poets to offer their own thoughts about utopian love and presented readers with new utopias and anti-utopias to ponder. “Another of the Same” also illuminates how responses to the

Marlowe/Raleigh debate modeled for audiences a method of thinking critically about utopian intimacy and deciding for themselves if and how both authors’ ideals applied to the affective relations in their own lives.

“Another of the Same” is, of course, not the only response poem to comment upon both

Marlowe’s and Raleigh’s lyrics. In fact, most replies published after England’s Helicon, address both authors’ arguments about utopian intimacy. Like “Another of the Same,” poems such as

John Donne’s “The Bait,” Samuel Daniel’s “Ulysses and the Siren,” and Alexander Craig’s

“Alexis to Lesbia” model different approaches to negotiating the conflict between Marlowe’s

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idealism and Raleigh’s realism. They suggest how one might weigh Marlowe’s utopian vision against Raleigh’s critiques and come to her own conclusion about the value of theorizing and imagining utopian forms of love. As a whole, these and other early responses to “Come live with me” provided early modern readers with more vivid and varied imaginative experiences of idealized intimacy and with more ways to reflect upon these imaginative experiences alongside the realities of their intimate lives.

“This World is Not Enough”: Co-Authoring a Literary Utopia

At the same time as the responses to “Come live with me” expanded and altered the imaginative, utopian space available to early modern readers, writing these responses brought a different kind of utopia into being for Marlowe’s fellow authors. In the process of writing their replies, these poets entered a shared pastoral world like the one their lyrics were set in and temporarily adopted the roles of shepherd-poets, competing in singing contests and reveling in male companionship and intellectual discourse. This fictional utopia was, in many ways, a queer one not entirely unlike the pastoral world Marlowe beckons his readers into. It enabled nonnormative, literary intimacies among Marlowe’s respondents as they engaged with one another’s ideas, and it gave them opportunities to imaginatively experience alternative forms of love through the pastoral fictions of intimacy they created. While many poets responded to

Marlowe and, thereby, gained access to this communal pastoral space, I will focus on the authors of those replies discussed in the previous section (Drayton, Barnfield, and Raleigh) here as I examine how engaging with Marlowe’s work and articulating their reflections on utopian intimacy ushered many early modern poets into a queer utopia of their own.

In the literary utopias these authors visited and helped to create, normative understandings of intimacy as dyadic, heteroerotic, reproductive, and limited by space and time

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did not apply. Entering this space shaped authors’ orientations toward one another and influenced their real and imagined experiences of intimacy. In this space, authors connected themselves through webs of interpersonal relations that stretched back to the classical era and forward to the pastoralists who would succeed them; linked their texts and literary legacies in the public eye and, thereby, preserved their authorly ties to one another long after their deaths; and, finally, experienced unfamiliar and unsanctioned forms of nonnormative intimacy by imaginatively inhabiting the worlds of speakers with genders, sexualities, and social positions unlike their own.

Responding to “Come live with me” wove Marlowe’s respondents into intellectual and affective interpersonal networks as they engaged cognitively and emotionally with a common topic and participated in a collaborative project to define and evaluate idealized love. To do so, authors had to immerse themselves in Marlowe’s poetic world and in each other’s literary portraits of utopian intimacy. They had to see affective relationships from Marlowe’s perspective and one another’s. Then, in turn, they shared their own thoughts in the form of answer poems and imitations. As they made reference to Marlowe’s work and one another’s in their own texts, these poets engaged with a pastoral “tradition of invitations and replies” which was “thickly and incestuously allusive, with chains of allusions stretching back to the classical origins of

Theocritus and Virgil and incorporating many of the major subsequent examples of the genre, which themselves allude to each other.” Through allusion, early modern authors linked themselves to the long line of pastoral poets who came before them, to their contemporaries, and to the pastoral poets who would come after them. In this way, literary allusion enabled a “kind of convening of poets”119 across time and space and provided them with a “way of escaping

119 Hamlin, “Relying to Raleigh’s ‘The Nymph’s Reply,’” 199. 89

solitude” and finding “companionship of a kind.”120 As Hamlin argues, these authors engaged so closely with one another’s work that their poetry “sometimes seems like a palimpsest or cacophony, in which there are so many layers of allusions to allusions, so many reverberating echoes of echoes, that distinguishing specific poetic relationships is both impossible and pointless.”121 The texts this collective of authors produced were so deeply interconnected that their relations could not (and need not) always be determined.

In a sense, this literary community Marlowe and his respondents created made them into the kind of shepherd-poets that peopled the pastoral worlds they imagined. Rather than being paired off or partnered up—though some authors certainly engaged more closely with one another’s work than others—they were all companions. As Hamlin says of Raleigh’s reply to

Marlowe, when a pastoralist responds to “Come live with me” he “converts a…single song into a pastoral singing contest.”122 As he writes, he acts as a member of a broader community, participating in a friendly competition with the goal of winning a debate and earning recognition as the superior songwriter. Acknowledging this parallel between pastoral poets and the fictional shepherds they speak through, Barnfield signs the dedication to The Affectionate Shepherd as

“your honor’s most affectionate and perpetually devoted shepherd: Daphnis.” He conflates his role as author with Daphnis’ role as a shepherd-poet. Drayton also seems to point out the similarities between the shepherd community of his pastoral, Idea, and the literary community he joins by writing it. Drayton’s elder shepherd, Borrill, who attempts to dissuade Batte from pursuing heteroerotic love, invites him to a utopia where platonic male bonds flourish and male friends are free to focus on intellectual pursuits and philosophical inquiry instead of marriage and

120 Christopher Ricks, Allusion to the Poets (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002), 92. 121 Hamlin, 179. 122 Hamlin, 68. 90

reproduction. As he creates this fictional world, Drayton momentarily enters a similar utopia in reality. He enriches his mind as he puts his poetic talent to the test and theorizes intimacy alongside Marlowe, Raleigh, and others. In writing “Eclogue VII,” then, Drayton fictionalizes his entry into a communal pastoral world where he and his fellow authors can leave behind the pressures and realities of their everyday lives as they adopt their pastoral personas. In their communal utopian world, Marlowe’s respondents can enjoy intellectual freedom and stimulation as well as male companionship while they imagine, together, what a perfect form of love should look like.

In many ways, then, the work Marlowe’s respondents created was collaborative and cumulative rather than individual. As each of them illustrated the type of world they wanted to live in, these authors drew from, altered, and commented upon one another’s pastorals. Their texts could be read singularly, but had a greater significance when read together, as the product of a literary community rather than a single author. The connections among Marlowe and his respondents were a public matter as well as a private one. By alluding to “Come live with me” and to each other’s pastorals, Marlowe’s contemporaries connected themselves to Marlowe and each other not only through unseen intellectual and emotional engagement but through their public affiliation with one another in print. This affiliation was recognized by the authors themselves, early modern audiences, and the generations of readers who would follow them. As

Patrick Cheney observes, because Marlowe’s lyric “invites imitation” it “is not only about erotic intimacy…but also about literary imitation and rivalry.” In fact, Cheney claims that “the link between intimacy and rivalry may well be our most important directive for thinking about this poem.”123 Those writers who responded to Marlowe’s work positioned themselves as fellow

123 Cheney, “‘The Passionate Shepherd to his Love’ and Hero and Leander,” 166. 91

poets, admirers, and/or competitors when they circulated and published their responses to “Come live with me.” In some cases, the act of creation even tethered authors to Marlowe and one another in physical books. In print and manuscript collections, editors and collators placed these poets’ work side-by-side, strengthening their literary ties to one another and binding them and their authorly reputations together for years to come. Their relationships became timeless, just like the intimacy Marlowe’s speaker hopes to share with the addressee.

The public connections among Marlowe and his respondents could be drawn by the respondents themselves and/or by the editors and collators who chose to group certain replies with “Come live with me” in their print and manuscript collections. Drayton, Barnfield, and, especially, Raleigh intentionally linked themselves to Marlowe in agreement and contention.

They marked themselves as collaborators, working with (or against) Marlowe and one another to define utopian love. Drayton and Barnfield’s dedications to Robert Dudley and Penelope Ritch in

Idea and The Affectionate Shepherd indicate that they intentionally published their responses to

Marlowe. So, when Drayton’s Borril asks Batte, “And wilt thou…come and sit with me? /

Contented life here shalt thou only find,” and Barnfield’s Daphnis promises Ganymede that the two of them will enjoy a host of pastoral pleasures together “If thou wilt come and dwell with me at home,” both authors associate themselves with Marlowe publicly by imitating the opening lines of “Come live with me” (21-2). Yet, despite the fact that Raleigh himself did not arrange for “The Nymph’s Reply” to be printed alongside Marlowe’s poem, his lyric became the response most closely associated with “Come live with me.” Raleigh clearly meant to link his poem with Marlowe’s, but it was the numerous collators and editors who repeatedly paired the two lyrics that reinforced this association. In these ways, Drayton, Barnfield, and Raleigh (with a

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little help) became associated with Marlowe and his mission to envision an ideal form of love via their poetry.

After “The Nymph’s Reply” was published alongside “Come live with me” in 1600, respondents began to allude not only to Marlowe’s lyric but to other replies as well. And so, they formed enduring literary ties not just to Marlowe, but to other pastoralists involved in the effort to define utopian love. The anonymous author of “Another of the Same” makes his connection to

Marlowe obvious when he opens with the line “Come live with me and be my dear,” but he also gestures to Raleigh’s reply when he references “nymphs at play” and air that “breeds” in the same way that “love…breeds” in Raleigh’s poem (“Another,”1, 13, 4). There are resonances between this anonymous author’s work and Donne’s “The Bait,” too. We cannot be sure which poem influenced which—though Donne’s poem likely came first—but the description of a river

“where silver sands and pebbles sing / Eternal ditties with the spring” and where there are “fishes gliding on the sands, / Offering their bellies to your hands” in “Another of the Same” closely resembles that of the “whispering” river with “golden sands” where the fish “will amorously to thee swim” in Donne’s “The Bait” (“Another,” 11-12, 15-16; “The Bait,” 3, 5, 11). Like

“Another of the Same,” Donne’s lyric communicates a relationship to both “Come live with me” and “The Nymph’s Reply” as it refers to “new pleasures” separate from those pastoral pleasures

Marlowe, Raleigh, and many other pastoralists discuss. By recycling some of the most recognizable images and phrases from “Come live with me” and from one another’s replies as they publicly responded to Marlowe and one another, many early modern authors linked themselves in tangled webs of literary intimacy. The editors and collators who recognized the resonances among these poems and grouped them in pairs and clusters also played a role in binding these authors’ literary legacies together in the eyes of their readers.

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The efforts to associate these authors’ work—on the part of collators, editors, and the authors themselves— were clearly successful. Because Raleigh’s reply so clearly connects itself to “Come live with me,” the editors of The Passionate Pilgrim and England’s Helicon placed their pastorals side-by-side. The earliest pairings of Marlowe and Raleigh’s poems encouraged more and more. In 1612 “Come live with me” and “The Bait” were printed as song lyrics in The

Second Book of Ayres, and in 1655 Sir Isaac Walton connected “Come live with me,” “The

Nymph’s Reply,” and “The Bait” (with some added stanzas) as part of a narrative about fishing in The Compleat Angler. Even today, Stephen Orgel’s edition of Christopher Marlowe’s poems and translations follows “Come live with me” with “The Nymph’s Reply,” “Another of the

Same,” “The Bait, ” and a few later responses to Marlowe’s lyric.124

The publicly accessible texts that Marlowe’s fellow pastoralists created in response to one another’s lyrics preserved their literary relationships to Marlowe and one another long after their deaths. In fact, if these poets’ fictional references to the eternizing power of poetry are any indication, they realized (and likely hoped) that publishing their replies and imitations—filled with allusions to “Come live with me” and to one another’s response poems—would permanently bind them together as fellow authors. In “Lamentation,” Daphnis tells Ganymede that, through the love poetry he writes for the young boy, his “true love…shall everlasting be, /

Wrote in the annals of eternity” (“Lamentation,” 430-2). In the second and sixth eclogues of

Idea, Drayton’s shepherds discuss the power of poetry to preserve affective bonds even as time passes. In Eclogue II, Winken tells Motto that Rowland (the work’s main poet figure) engraved

“the Beechen tree on yonder plain” with a “rhyme of love’s idolatry” and thereby made his

124 Christopher Marlowe, The Complete Poems and Translations, edited by Stephen Orgel (New York: Penguin, 2007), 205-14. 94

mistress “alone, next to that eternal He, / The express image of eternity” (67-8, 79-80). Because he carved love poetry about his mistress into a tree, for all to see, Rowland made his love for her eternal. As I will discuss in my final chapter, carving poetry on a tree was seen as an effective way to publicly memorialize the intimacy the carver shared with her or his beloved and, thereby, to protect it from fading or disappearing as time passed. Later, in Eclogue VI, Perkins sings the praises of Pandora, “the muse of Britanie” and, again, attributes verse with the power to protect her memory and memorialize his devotion to her: “Upon thy tomb shall spring a laurel tree, /

Whose sacred shade shall serve thee for a hearse, / Upon whose leaves (in gold) engraved this verse, / Dying she lives whose like will never be, / A Spring of nectar flowing from this tree, / the fountain of eternal memory” (97-102). If these poets’ statements about the eternizing power of poetry are sincere, they knew their legacies would live on alongside those authors whose work was associated with their own. Their pastorals not only publicly celebrated their connection to one another but promised to preserve their authorly kinship for all time.

Given the potential their poetry had to endure for generations, responding to Marlowe’s work and each other’s provided this community of authors with an opportunity to situate their legacies outside of the social mandate to marry and reproduce. In this literary community, pastoralists coupled with other men to give birth—as the common Renaissance trope goes—to a literary child who would serve as evidence of their union and would never die. Ideally, this

“child” would also offer wisdom and move readers to better themselves and others. Barnfield expresses this view of his poetry most explicitly in his dedication to Penelope Ritch when he calls the work to follow his “new-born babe, which here my muse brings forth” (dedication, 12).

Finally, this literary community provided a space where its members could imaginatively experience forms of intimacy that had previously been foreign to them. As they created speakers

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with different genders and/or sexualities than their own, authors stepped outside of the social roles and norms typically assigned to them. For example, as he composed his nymph’s response,

Raleigh inhabited the position of a woman tempted (though not successfully persuaded) to pursue an extramarital relationship with Marlowe’s speaker. To voice Daphnis’ desires,

Barnfield imagined love from the perspective of a shepherd who is openly, sexually, attracted to a young boy. For the authors in this literary community, then, the act of writing, as well as reading, enabled them to consider intimacies unlike those they had experienced in the real world.

By writing Daphnis’ songs, Barnfield, like Drayton, entered a fictional realm where he could escape the constraints of early modern life and live as a shepherd for a short while. If Barnfield was, as so many critics claim, attracted to men,125 it seems likely that he would see some reflections of himself in his speaker. Assuming Barnfield did imagine himself in Daphnis’ position, writing “Complaint” and “Lamentation” was an act of creating and inhabiting a world where he could, momentarily, live more freely, where he could be openly and unabashedly in love with a younger man. In this setting, where homoerotic love and sexual practices were not antithetical to “the relative innocence and naturalness associated with pastoral life,” Barnfield could imagine not only that he loved a young boy but that there was a place where this love was beyond reproach.126 He could leave the regulations and expectations of early modern society behind and inhabit a world that celebrated amorous bonds between men as natural and valuable.

If Barnfield was not sexually attracted to men, then writing Daphnis’ songs gave him an

125 Because he never married or had children and had been disinherited at the time of his death, scholars often assume Barnfield was romantically and physically attracted to men and that his sexual preferences estranged him from his family. See Claude J. Summers, “Foreword,” in The Affectionate Shepherd: Celebrating Richard Barnfield, 10-11. 126 Kenneth Borris, “‘Ile hang a bag and a bottle at thy back’: Barnfield's Homoerotic Advocacy and the Construction of Homosexuality,” In The Affectionate Shepherd: Celebrating Richard Barnfield, 206. 96

opportunity to imagine his sexuality differently and to experience a socially unsanctioned form of love.

Raleigh’s poetic engagement with Marlowe also enabled him to experience gender and sexuality differently. As he pictured himself in Marlowe’s utopian landscape and offered a response to his lover’s invitation, Raleigh inhabited the identity of a woman, pursued by a man.

Temporarily assuming this identity for himself, Raleigh saw intimacy from a new perspective and had to imagine how he might feel about an invitation like the one posed in “Come live with me” if he were female. Moreover, if we assume that Raleigh and his speaker and Marlowe and his are aligned (in their own eyes or the eyes of their readers), then, through their surrogates,

Raleigh and Marlowe engage not only in a pastoral singing competition but in a courtship-like form of homoerotic intimacy. Given the classical associations attached to the pastoral genre, it would be easy for a reader, or even the authors themselves, to conflate Marlowe and Raleigh with their speakers and to see them not only as rival shepherd-poets, but as two men engaged in a deeply intimate encounter—two positions which were certainly not mutually exclusive in the pastoral world.

Over the centuries, “Come live with me” has continued to accumulate imitations and replies at a steady rate. In addition to the poems I have already discussed, the seventeenth century saw the publication of Alexander Craig’s “Alexis to Lesbia,” Robert Herrick’s “To

Phillis to love, and live with him,” Thomas Campion’s “If thou long’st so much to learn,” and

John Milton’s “L’Allegro” and “Il Pensoroso.” In the eighteenth century William Wordsworth,

John Thelwal, Charles Lloyd, and Phillip Freneau published their responses: “The Mad Mother,”

“Stanzas Written in 1790,” “Poetical effusion: written after a journey into North Wales,

February, 1794,” and “To an Alien, who after a series of Persecutions Emigrated to the

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Southwestern Country—1799—.” Responses in the nineteenth century include “Fancy” by John

Keats; “A Phantasy” by Bryan William Proctor; “An Invite to Eternity” and “The Invitation” by

John Clare; In Memoriam by Alfred Tennyson; and “Proposal,” “Autumn,” “A Wintry Waste,” and “The Lover’s Interdict” by Alice Cary. The most recent replies include Ogden Nash’s “Love under the Republicans (or Democrats),” Kate Benedict’s “Atlantic City Idyll,” Robert Frost’s “A

Line-Storm Song,” and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. William Carlos Williams and Greg Delanty have even updated the Marlowe/Raleigh debate with “Raleigh was Right” and “Williams was

Wrong.”127 Even today, the call to join the pastoral utopia inhabited by authors like Marlowe,

Raleigh, and Barnfield remains enticing, and the project to define and make real a utopian intimacy remains, as it always will, unfinished.

127 For a brief discussion of these and other responses see Hamlin, “Replying to Raleigh’s ‘The Nymph’s Reply,’” 166-99. 98

Chapter 2

Trying Love: The Marital Enforcement Suit in The Merchant of Venice

As everyone knows, The Merchant of Venice revolves around a contract and the trial that ensues when its terms are not met. Though he has no intention of doing so, an offending party fails to fulfill a legally binding promise. The offended party uses the broken bond to exclaim on the offender. Disappointed that the defendant has not kept his word, the plaintiff seeks justice and hopes to effect a satisfactory outcome, given the circumstances. The defendant stands to pay a steep price for failing to uphold his end of the bargain, and, on top this, the broader, social stakes of the ruling are quite high. The decision reached will have significant personal, legal, and cultural implications. Ultimately, though, a gifted judge uses her wit to resolve the conflict, and, best of all, no one has to die.

Anyone familiar with Merchant will recognize that the above account applies to the climactic trial scene in which Shylock attempts to take the pound of flesh Antonio owes him.

They might, however, be surprised to learn that it also pertains to the dispute surrounding Portia and Bassanio’s marital bond. Like Antonio, Bassanio fails to uphold the terms of a contract he has “confirmed, signed, [and] ratified” (III.ii.148), and the financial and personal consequences could, similarly, be devastating. As soon as Bassanio passes the casket test, he and Portia are betrothed, but this betrothal comes with stipulations. Portia gives Bassanio a ring to bind their agreement and declares, “when you part from, lose, or give away [the ring] / Let it presage the ruin of your love.” Bassanio accepts her terms, taking the token and promising “When this ring /

Parts from this finger, then parts life from hence” (III.ii.171-3, 183-4). Despite his agreement with Portia, Bassanio does remove his ring and give it away. His decision to part with the love

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token threatens to unravel his emotional ties to Portia, their marital contract, and even—if his hyperbolic promise were taken literally—his mortal coil.

Because Bassanio puts his marriage to Portia and his love for her into question, the heroine must preside over a second trial to determine what her beloved’s behavior means and what the legal and personal ramifications of his actions are. To conduct this trial, Portia enacts an investigation reminiscent of those which took place in early modern matrimonial enforcement suits—ecclesiastical court cases in which a plaintiff sought to established whether or not he or she was legally married or contracted to be married to a defendant. Here I suggest that the matrimonial enforcement suit, not the legal conflict between Antonio and Shylock, is truly the trial at the center of Merchant. The comedy’s primary focus is not the religiopolitical conflict between Jews and Christians but the crises of intimacy that the play’s characters must navigate.

Merchant’s better-known trial, which comes to a head in Act IV, scene i, is often identified as the focal point of the play, and, accordingly, has received much more critical attention than any of its other events. The conversation inspired by Merchant has consistently insisted that the “conflict between Jews and Christian is undeniably at the centre”128 of the play and that the court scene offers a ruling not only on Antonio and Shylock’s conflict but upon a larger clash between Christian and Jewish values.129 For some, the verdict marks the victory of

128Robin Headlam Wells, “Value Pluralism in The Merchant of Venice,” Shakespearean International Yearbook 4 (2004): 294. 129The introductions of most recent scholarly editions of Merchant identify the clash between Antonio and Shylock, the trial that ensues, and the larger conflict between Christians and Jews set up by this trial as the play’s central issues. See The Pelican Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice, ed. A.R. Braunmuller (New York: Penguin Books, 2017); The Merchant of Venice: Authoritative Text, Sources and Contexts, Criticism, Rewritings and Appropriations, ed. Leah S. Marcus (New York: Norton, 2006); The Oxford Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice, ed. Jay L. Halio (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008); and The Arden Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice, ed. John Drakakis (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2010). 100

Christian faith and law over Jewish faith and law. When Portia defeats Shylock in court, she effects “the allegorical triumph of Christian mercy over Judaic justice”;130 reaffirms the

“credibility and stability of the entire legal system of Venice”;131 and joins the “more civilized characters” of the comedy in protecting Antonio, themselves, and the larger “Christian community” from Shylock and “their own Shylockean tendencies.”132 The decision reached at court—which increases Venice’s revenue and forces Shylock to both financially support his

Christian son-in-law and convert to Christianity himself—ensures the religious, legal, and social

“prosperity of the city”133 and its inhabitants.

Others argue, instead, that the play offers a more critical view of Christian ethics, or at least of Merchant’s Christian characters, whose practice of their religion reveals “the disparity between that practice and the principle.”134 They assert that, while Merchant “seems to be celebrating the New Testament values of charity and forgiveness and condemning Shylock's brand of Old Testament vindictive morality” it asks readers to determine which values the

Christian characters’ actions reflect.135 Many scholars urge that, when we do look closely at the

130Michael Jay Wilson, “View of Justice in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure,” Notre Dame Law Review 70, no. 3 (1995): 713; M. Mackay, “The Merchant of Venice: A Reflection of the Early Conflict Between the Courts of Law and Courts of Equity,” Shakespeare Quarterly 15 (1964): 371-5. 131Allen Mendenhall, “A Time for Bonding: Commerce, Love, and Law in The Merchant of Venice, in Capitalism and Commerce in Imaginative Literature, ed. Edward W. Younkins (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016), 85; David Lucking, “Standing for Sacrifice: The Casket and Trial Scenes in The Merchant of Venice,” University of Toronto Quarterly 58, no. 3 (1989): 359; Rebecca Lemon, “Law,” in The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare, ed. Arthur F. Kinney (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011), 563. 132M.J. Hamill, “Poetry, Law, and the Pursuit of Perfection: Portia’s Role in The Merchant of Venice,” SEL 18 (1978): 231, 241. 133Lucking, “Standing for Sacrifice,” 359. 134Johnathan P. Martinez, “Shylock and the Deconstruction of Christian Piety,” Publications of the Mississippi Philological Association (1994): 116. 135Wells, “Value Pluralism in The Merchant of Venice,” 300. 101

Christian characters’ behavior, it becomes clear that the “real evil” in Merchant is not Shylock or the Jewish people but “the corrupt value system of the…Christian characters” whose “hypocrisy is never more odious, than during the trial scene.” In reality, “Shakespeare presents and critiques false justice and the hypocrisy of the courts” in the trial scene.136 Some view Portia’s conduct as particularly “odious.” They find that her convenient reading of Shylock and Antonio’s bond twists the law so egregiously that it cannot help but reveal the deeply partial nature of the

Christian court system.137 Her actions demonstrate the measures some Christians will take to avoid punishing one of their own in favor of an outsider. To save Antonio, she “violate[s] the most basic principles of fairness and impartiality,” and, as a result, the “perception of impropriety that her manipulations have created threatens to damage public confidence in the integrity of the judiciary.”138 It has even been suggested that IV.i and the comedy as a whole seeks to “correct what [Shakespeare] sees as theologically unwarranted and politically deleterious abuse of Jews…in the name of Christian teaching.”139

Regardless of their position, scholars agree that Merchant’s “main thesis is taken to be

Christian mercy contrasted with Pharisaical justice.”140 The court scene, which occurs in a symbolically and culturally loaded space—where “the emissaries of radically different value systems are each compelled to subject their most deeply held assumptions to the test of an

136Tatjana Dumitrašković, “Modern Critical Approaches to Shakespeare: New Readings of The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure Among the Late 20th Century Critics,” in Mapping the World of Anglo-American Studies at the Turn of the Century (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publisher, 2015), 77, 75, 78. 137Terry Eagleton, William Shakespeare (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 35-47. 138David B. Saxe, “Shylock, Portia and a Case of Literary Oppression,” Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature 5, no. 1 (1993): 121. 139Martin D. Yaffe, Shylock and the Jewish Question (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1997). 140Martinez, “Shylock and the Deconstruction of Christian Piety,” 111. 102

alternative world-view”141—answers the play’s most important questions. What is justice?

Mercy? Who gets to define and wield those values? Despite the importance of Merchant’s trial scene, though, I maintain that the play is most concerned with answering questions of a different kind. What makes intimacy work? How can two people love one another even though they can never fully know one another? What tools can they use to sustain and develop their connection?

From its opening scene—in which Graziano and Lorenzo (after a good deal of questioning) determine that Antonio’s sadness must be caused by love—to its closing lines—in which

Graziano bawdily promises to prove his devotion by “keeping safe Nerissa’s ring” (V.i.306)— the play asks how to access an intimate’s thoughts and feelings, what to do when that is not possible, and how to strengthen one’s ties to a loved one who will never be fully knowable.

For this reason, I argue that Merchant’s most important trial resolves an intimate conflict rather than a religiopolitical one. It is, after all, a comedy. Merchant hinges upon the uncertainty surrounding Portia and Bassanio’s marital bond and the intimate ties shared by the other characters in the play. Though scholars have not recognized it as such, the famous trial between

Antonio and Shylock is actually a prelude to the matrimonial enforcement suit which Portia presides over as she determines whether or not Bassanio’s decision to “part with” his ring invalidates their marriage and gives her a reason to doubt his love.142 Is the legal status of their unconsummated marriage uncertain after Bassanio relinquishes the physical sign of their union?

If Bassanio is willing to give his ring away, does that mean he values or devalues the “trifle”

(and, by proxy, Portia’s love) only according to its financial worth (IV.i.426)? When Bassanio

141Lucking, “Standing for Sacrifice,” 356. 142Scholars such as Lemon have drawn connections between Antonio and Shlock’s broken contract and that between Bassanio and Portia. Yet, they often claim that Portia and Bassanio’s marital dispute turns “the chaos of broken contracts into a joke” rather than seriously considering the play’s anxieties about intimacy. 103

yields to Antonio’s request that his defender’s “deservings and my love withal / Be valued

‘gainst your wife’s commandment” (IV.i.446-7), does this suggest that he cherishes his ties to

Antonio more than his marriage?

Portia closely reads the moments in which Bassanio receives and gives away her ring— when he initially accepts it from her, when he hands his wedding/betrothal ring to Balthasar

(Portia in male disguise), and when he receives it from Portia a second time through Antonio— to answer these questions and reach a decision in her second trial. Like the deponents in enforcement suits, Portia interprets her beloved’s treatment of a betrothal token to understand the nature of his attachment to her, and like the judges who heard and ruled on these suits, she uses the evidence collected to make sure that her marriage to Bassanio is legally enforceable. Yet, unlike early modern judges and deponents, Portia moves beyond the goal of enforcement and employs her trial not only to investigate the legal validity of her marriage but the status of the affection she and Bassanio ostensibly share.

As Portia scrutinizes the intimacies most important to her, objects (caskets and rings in her case) emerge as agents which both generate and resolve intimate crises. They are also agents with which Portia and her loved ones create, settle, and otherwise navigate those crises. Through

Portia and other characters’ engagement with caskets and rings, Merchant explores the objects’ functions within intimate bonds and demonstrates how they can be repurposed within and/or excised from certain relationships. Over the course of the play, caskets and rings promote two contrasting types of intimacy. The caskets fixed in Belmont foster a rigid kind of love whose terms are determined unilaterally by an overbearing patriarch. The rings, which circulate from person to person and accumulate multiple meanings, support a more flexible bond that can be

(re)negotiated between consenting friends and/or lovers. In the end, the caskets are left behind in

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favor of the rings, and the intimate models the caskets enforce are replaced by those models the rings enable.

By placing the evolving intimacies supported by the circulating wedding rings in opposition to the static and patriarchal intimacies regulated by the caskets, Merchant both examines potential problems associated with the fluid and confusing relations the rings facilitate and celebrates the possibilities generated by the openness to intimate renegotiations they necessitate. As a whole, the play’s treatment of the caskets and the rings gestures toward a broader, non-dyadic model of intimacy. In the final scene, Portia accepts (via the three-way ring exchange among Bassanio, Antonio, and herself) that a lasting intimate bond cannot be dictated by a single individual, assigned a fixed meaning, or separated from the complex interpersonal webs in which it is necessarily tangled. It must, instead, be flexible and open to transformation and expansion.

To provide historical context and offer a lens through which to read the play, this chapter begins by explaining the importance and function of matrimonial enforcement suits in early modern England. More specifically, it focuses on depositions which reference exchanged gifts and explores how and why these tokens were thought to provide evidence of consent and intent.

This section is followed by a brief discussion of the ring in early modern England—its importance to enforcement suit rulings, cultural significance, symbolic meanings, and other social functions. Next, I describe the theatrical nature of enforcement suits, demonstrating how these ecclesiastical court proceedings lent themselves to dramatization. From there, I discuss how Portia and Nerissa talk about their rings—how they describe their own relation to the rings and what beliefs they express about their husbands’ failure to keep their rings. I explain that, during these conversations, they resemble deponents in enforcement suits, reading their lovers’

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treatment of their tokens to determine whether or not their marriage contracts remain intact.

Following this section, I contrast the functions of the rings and caskets in the play to illustrate how these two objects encourage different types of relationality. I assert that the intimate model promoted by the rings—because it is flexible and can adapt to change—replaces the rigid model of intimacy Portia’s father uses the caskets to impose. In the penultimate section, I offer a reading of Portia’s enforcement suit, describing how she adopts both the positions of a plaintiff and an ecclesiastical judge to determine whether her marriage contract has been broken (it has), whether this means that Bassanio no longer loves her (it may not), and what she should do to address Bassanio’s violation of their agreement. I close with an interpretation of the final ring exchange among Portia, Antonio, and Bassanio. I posit that this exchange marks Portia’s acceptance that she alone cannot dictate the terms of the love she and Bassanio share, nor can she control his intimate life. She resolves the tension between Bassanio’s love for Antonio and his love for her by making herself, Antonio, and Bassanio equal partners in a three-person union.

Through this final exchange, the play acknowledges that the intimacies in one’s life are interwoven and celebrate the fact that these intimacies are dynamic, as adaptable and changeable as the people who share them.

Love Tokens and Enforcement Suits in Early Modern England

As the behavior of the characters in Merchant and many of Shakespeare’s other plays suggests, early moderns struggled with their inability to know the motives and desires of those they bound themselves to (in business, marriage, friendship, etc.). The difficulty associated with illuminating someone’s interior created anxiety and uncertainty then as today. This was especially true in relation to courtship and marriage, whose validity relied entirely upon the

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difficult-to-interpret (and even more difficult to prove) matters of consent and intent.143 How could a lover know that her beloved planned to uphold his promise to marry her? How could she know that he would still want to marry her next week, or tomorrow? How could she prove that he was bound to her should he change his mind or be forced to retract his consent by a third party? For many, love tokens offered a potential answer.

A love token was often considered the solution to the problem of proving intent and consent as it was thought by many to “demonstrate earnestness” and “signify explicit deep commitment.”144 In light of this fact, it is unsurprising that “as a general rule a relationship was made and sealed with some physical symbol passing between the couple.”145 As Diana O’Hara argues, the “giving of gifts and tokens was a social imperative which played a key role in the transacting of personal relationships within the marriage process.” Early modern gift-giving was

“a public matter, morally and socially obligatory” and “[a]ttitudes to giving and receiving, to refusing or returning gifts and tokens, demonstrate the constraints imposed, the repercussions experienced and the implicit significatory force behind the practice.” 146

The presence of a “physical symbol” was certainly a source of concern for John Nicholls when he bound himself to Elizabeth Cage. As Loreen Giese discusses in her study of early modern marital enforcement suit depositions, Elizabeth and John were contracted to be married twice. The first contract left John with no material proof, and the absence of a love token worried him so much that, according to witness Willian Nightdale, he enacted a second. This time, he

143 Loreen L. Giese, Courtship, Marriage Customs, and Shakespeare’s Comedies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 3. 144 Eric Josef Carlson, “Courtship in Tudor England,” History Today 43 (1993): 24-5. 145 Peter Rushton, “The Testament of Gifts: Marriage Tokens and Disputed Contracts in North- East England, 1560-1630,” Folk Life: Journal of Ethnological Studies 24 (1986): 25. 146Diana O’Hara, Courtship and Constraint: Rethinking the Making of Marriage in Tudor England (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000), 64. 107

made sure to both give Elizabeth a token (a piece of gold) and to receive something from her.

Even though “Elizabeth had no token for John again he took…a pin of her.”147 It appears John believed having material evidence of their union made their bond more secure. In all likelihood,

John expected that Elizabeth’s possession of his coin and his possession of her pin would demonstrate their mutual consent should their marriage be questioned or should Elizabeth change her mind before the marriage was made official.

John’s anxiety was certainly understandable. First, courtship was a process surrounded by ambiguity in early modern England as it “was an experimental venture” which might or might not lead to marriage and “[e]ntry and exit…were extremely fluid.”148 Second, as has been well documented, marriage was an institution in transition in early modern England and could be defined in a number of ways. Most simply, any verbal contract to marry bound a couple together, but early moderns pursued many different avenues to marriage. A couple might marry via "a verbal contract without solemnization…a verbal contract with solemnization, a verbal contract witnessed by a clergyman away from church, [or] a ceremony from the Book of Common Prayer conducted by a clergyman in church, and away from church.” 149 All of these forms of marriage were considered legally binding, though some (typically those involving fewer public, institutionalized procedures) were more easily contested than others. It follows that it could be difficult for early moderns to feel confident in their romantic ties with one another. While one party may consider herself or himself legally married or engaged, what was to stop her or his betrothed from arguing that no marriage or promise of marriage had taken place?

147 London Metropolitan Archives, DL/C/213 (December 1586- June 1591), 185. 148 See Eric Josef Carlson, Marriage and the English Reformation (Blackwell: Oxford, 1994), 112. 149 Giese, Courtships, 2. 108

This uncertainty surrounding courtship and marriage led to both civil and ecclesiastical marriage suits. While civil suits focused solely on compensating the aggrieved party for economic losses related to courtship, ecclesiastical enforcement suits sought “a ruling on the validity of an alleged marriage…[which] often turned on the issue of consent and intent.” Such suits could, like civil ones, be filed for restitution, but they were most commonly used to “secure the enforcement of a disputed contract” by providing evidence that the defendant consented to and knowingly entered into a marriage contract or marriage. Less frequently, these suits were waged when one party wanted to stop another from falsely claiming to be married to her or him or when two parties claimed to be betrothed or married to the same person.150 Suits might also be initiated by a plaintiff fully aware the defendant was not bound to her or him. Pregnant women filed suits out of desperation and jilted lovers sometimes initiated them to damage a love interest’s reputation and cost them time and money in the process. 151 Generally speaking, though, plaintiffs in these suits wanted help clarifying the nature of their relationship to the defendant. To provide this clarification, proctors questioned deponents about the details of courtships and marriages—either their own or those they had formally or informally witnessed.

Ideally, deponents’ answers “could provide evidence of courtship (verbal exchanges, physical displays of affection, gift exchanges before a marriage), verbal marriage contracts, confirmation of a marriage (hand holding, drinking, token exchange during and after marriage), and public fame.”152 Notably, gift and token exchanges featured prominently as both “evidence of

150 O’Hara, Courtship and Constraint, 12. 151 Martin Ingram, “Spousals Litigation in English Ecclesiastical Courts, c. 1350-1640,” in Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage, R.B. Outhwaite (New York: St. Martin's P, 1981), 44, 47. 152 Giese, Courtships, 2, 4, 5. 109

courtship” and “confirmation of a marriage.” They were thought to offer valuable information that could provide the answers plaintiffs sought.

Studies of enforcement suit depositions conducted by scholars such as Loreen Giese,

Diana O’Hara, and Peter Rushton demonstrate that early moderns looked to objects to clarify the bonds supposedly shared between plaintiff and defendant. As Rushton’s study reveals, “many disappointed individuals pursued their reluctant partners in the church courts by demonstrating that gifts—‘tokens of marriage’—had been given or exchanged.”153 He finds that roughly 36%

(29 of 81) of the matrimonial dispute cases brought before the Durham diocese’s consistory court between 1560 and 1630 included testimony which referenced gifts and tokens.154 O’Hara similarly explores the role of tokens in early modern marital disputes through 16th-century ecclesiastical court depositions given in Kent. She notes, “Although the words of consent in the law of matrimonial contract would theoretically have been the principal subject of dispute in marriage cases, the depositions suggest that gifts were themselves crucial foci of investigation when the validity of marriage was debated.”155 O’Hara finds that in “the diocese of Canterbury, for the period 1542-1602, just over half of the 301 matrimony cases (172 or 57 per cent) drawn from towns and villages discuss the giving of gifts and tokens.”156 Most recently, Giese has examined matrimonial enforcement depositions given between 1586 and 1611 in the London

Consistory Court where “gift exchange [was] the second most common courting behavior deponents cited.”157 That early moderns so regularly relied upon love tokens and gifts when

153 Rushton, “The Testament of Gifts,” 25. 154 Rushton, “The Testament of Gifts,” 25. 155 O’Hara, Courtship and Constraint, 63. 156 O’Hara, Courtship and Constraint, 64. 157 Giese, Courtships, 84 110

describing the relationship between a man and woman indicates an impulse to use material objects to illuminate the consent and intent of both litigants.

The love tokens frequently identified in marital enforcement depositions were considered particularly useful for verifying intent to marry and mutual consent. Unlike other gifts (for example, gifts given in friendship) which could not prove “consent in a legal sense, betrothal tokens were strong circumstantial evidence.”158 For this reason “gifts became subject to fierce debate when the existence of a legally binding contractual relationship was in question.”159 This is likely why the man who married Richard Thompson and Helen Butt suggested that they should exchange a token. When this “stranger dressed like a minister” married them, he asked

Richard for a ring to place on Helen’s finger. Upon being told that there was no ring, he “made a ring of rush” and offered it to the couple to use as they completed the ceremony. 160 This action on the part of the stranger suggests he thought a physical token was necessary to solidify Richard and Helen’s marriage. The ring was to attest to their mutual consent and formal religious union.

In another case, Katherine Garnett pointed to “the ring that knit the knot between Thomas Powell and me…and that made …us man and wife” as proof of her marriage. Elizabeth Chadborne, a witness in her case, recounts Katherine’s response after being asked if she was really married:

Katherine “answered that she was and with that pulled of her glove and showed her…a gold ring upon her finger saying here is my wedding ring.”161 Katherine’s actions indicate that, from her perspective, the ring on her finger left no doubt that she was Thomas’s lawfully wedded wife. In contrast to Katherine, Edmund Billwyn defended himself against Maragret Luke by citing the

158 Carlson, Marriage and the English Reformation, 127. 159 Rushton, “The Testament of Gifts,” 25. 160 London Metropolitan Archives, DL/C/214 (June 1591 – November 1594), 118. 161 London Metropolitan Archives, DL/C/216 (June 1600 – June 1603), 324v, 251v. 111

absence of a love token as proof that no legal marriage contract was made between them.

Edmund explained that he had not “at any time given unto…Margaret Luke any gift or token in respect of any contract.”162 Because there was no physical evidence of his contract with

Margaret, he argued, no one could prove he consented to marry her. Unfortunately for Margaret, the truth about Edmund’s consent and intent existed only in his head. Clearly, the presence or absence of material proof could impact the outcome of an enforcement suit.

The importance of physical tokens in courtships and marriages was so much a part of early modern culture that widely recognized norms related to giving and receiving gifts were often cited in depositions. Gift-giving practices that fit the general mold “could point to intent and to the progress of a courtship,” demonstrating that a mutually understood bond existed and indicating how serious that bond had become.163 In this way “the making of marriage…[was] signaled with gifts from beginning to end” and understood through the “language of tokens” which “embodied an ambiguous interplay of emotions and behavior.”164 Supposedly, feelings of affection and desire drove gift-giving and determined which types of gifts were given, in what order, how often, and what they were worth. Thus, behaviors associated with gift-giving (and receiving) provided physical evidence which could be used to establish the existence or lack of consent and intent. Most simply, willing receipt of a love token—a specific type of gift whose exchange was accompanied by an explicit agreement that this gift “signif[ied] part of a binding marriage contract”—indicated consent to a marriage and served as a “pledge of faith.”165

Refusing to accept a love token or returning it indicated that consent was not granted or had been

162 DL/C/213, 647. 163 Giese, Courtships, 87. 164 O’Hara, Courtship and Constraint, 64. 165 Rushton, “The Testament of Gifts,” 26, 27. 112

withdrawn. These actions prevented the establishment of a contract and nullified an existing contract, respectively.166

Though deponents consistently referenced gifts and the ways they circulated as evidence of intent to marry and mutual consent, their testimony also reveals that the meaning of love tokens was not always straightforward. Giese, O’Hara, and Rushton maintain that tokens lent some sense of legitimacy to a union, but they also stress that pinning down the symbolic meanings of even the most commonly exchanged tokens was extremely difficult. As Giese explains, while “[o]ne might think that the giving and receiving of a certain gift would serve as a material means of discerning the intentions of the parties, since it could possibly be measured and quantified…[m]eaning did not usually lie in certain words, gestures, or objects alone but in the intentions behind them and in those reading the intentions.”167 Depositions illustrate that litigants repeatedly referenced objects to “measure and quantify” the legitimacy of a marriage or marriage contract, but they also show that plaintiffs, defendants, and their witnesses rarely offered identical readings of the same object, the “intentions behind” its transfer, or its role in a courtship or marriage. Consequently, judges had to carefully take the “fluidity” of objects’ meanings into account when determining what, if anything, they revealed about early moderns’ relationships to one another.168 Thus, Rushton’s observation seems particularly apt: “[n]either the nature of the gift nor the circumstances of its giving could guarantee its identification as a marriage token, and because of this vagueness the consistory court judges became earnest

166 O’Hara, Courtship and Constraint, 77. 167 Giese, Courtship, 3. 168 Giese, Courtship, 85. 113

sociological investigators, delving into tortuous questions of motives, intentions, and the social context of the gift.”169

While the exchange of a love token could signify a binding marriage in court, it was often difficult to discern whether or not both parties involved in that exchange viewed the object’s significance similarly. To make matters more confusing, the same items commonly exchanged during courtship—rings, gloves, shoes, kerchiefs, hats, purses, aprons, oranges, brooches, lockets, etc.—could also be given as “tokens of goodwill,” a vague umbrella term applied to gifts freely given to friends, family members, love interests, potential business partners, etc.170 Hence, while gift-giving could indicate a formal agreement, a defendant might argue that any token was given or received as part of an economic exchange, out of friendship, or as an act of flirtation. In the case between Thomas Wye and Agnes Bushey, Thomas sent Agnes many gifts which— according to the woman who delivered them, Katherine Freame —she “with much ado received…but not in the way of any marriage.” Agnes even reciprocated Thomas’s gift-giving, but, as Katherine explained, she only sent one gift “in recompence of some part of his gifts he had before time sent her, but not in respect of marriage as the respondent verily thinketh.”171

While Thomas believed Agnes’ receipt and reciprocation of his gifts signaled her consent and intent to marry him, Agnes believed (or claimed to believe) that she had answered a friend’s generosity in kind. Gift-exchange created similar confusion in the case between Richard

Campion and Joan Mortimer. While Richard assumed the objects they traded were binding love tokens, Joan described their exchanges in purely financial terms: “she did lend him a hand kerchief and a payer of cuffs, and then did pay him money namely three shillings four pence

169 Rushton, “The Testament of Gifts,” 30. 170 Ingram, “Spousals Litigation,” 46-7. 171 DL/C/213, 829, 831. 114

again, which he had laid out for the gloves and waistcoat received…by…[her]. And she believeth that at another time she gave him a shirt band, which cost…two shillings six pence in recompence of the girdle which he delivered her.”172 By giving gifts “in recompence,” Joan considered herself cleared of financial obligation to Richard, not bound in marriage to him as he claimed.

Depositions like these demonstrate that a material object could not always successfully communicate intent. An exchange did not always mean the same thing to both parties involved.

Even if both parties did agree on the significance of an exchange, one might later claim otherwise due to a change of heart and a desire to be free from a marital contract. Thomas and

Richard (and the judges overseeing their cases) could not know whether Agnes and Joan ever planned to marry them based on the women’s gift giving practices. Perhaps the women initially intended their gifts as signs of marriage and changed their minds (and their stories) later. Maybe marriage never crossed their minds upon giving and receiving these gifts. Despite having material proof of their interactions with these women, Richard and Thomas could not know or prove whether or not Agnes and Joan ever consented or intended to marry them.

How someone received and treated a gift was also the subject of scrutiny in enforcement suits. In the case between Ann Hyde and Alexander Hollinworth, Ann “deny[ed] to receive” a pair of gloves which were then thrown “unto her lap and left…with her.” She strengthened her case by explaining that “she never sent to [Alexander] for any gloves nor…spake to him for any” and adding that she “never wore them.”173Ann’s clarifications suggest that either of these behaviors would have signaled her consent. Her orientation to the gift (whether she wanted or

172 DL/C/214, 11. 173 DL/C/214, 565. 115

asked for it and how she treated it after receiving it) also helped judges determine whether or not she received it willingly. Not only did Hollinworth’s intermediary (John Griffin) force a pair of gloves upon Ann, but he also “snatched” a “silk flower in her bosom…and so went forth at the door. And the next day when she asked him for it he said he had given it to…Alexander who said he would wear it in his hat as long as it would hold together.”174 Alexander also knew that treatment of a gift factored importantly when assessing its significance. Just like Ann’s treatment of the gloves, Alexander’s treatment of the flower mattered. By cherishing Ann’s flower and displaying it prominently, Alexander manipulated the codes associated with gift giving to make it appear as though Ann had given her consent to marry him.

To minimize the ambiguity associated with exchanged gifts, early moderns often coupled the transfer of tokens with verbal contracts to strengthen their agreements and to clearly specify the meaning of a gift. In the case between Joan and the too-persistent Edward discussed above,

Edward argued that he had made such a verbal contract with Joan. Though Joan mentioned only denying his gifts, Edward claimed that she agreed to “interpret her body by the grace of god as she would forsake all other men, and submit herself to [him] to be his wife. And because she promised this, he took her a piece of gold at that time valued 13s 4d upon condition that she should be his wife, which she upon that condition willingly received.” 175 Whether or not

Edward’s account of his “marriage” to Joan was accurate, he did believe it would convince a judge. Supposedly, his contract with Joan was secure because their gift exchange had been accompanied by a verbal agreement in which he made the significance of the token clear.

Unfortunately for Edward, this supposed agreement turned out to be a conditional one.

174 London Metropolitan Archives, DL/C/215 (October 1597- June 1600), 113v. 175 C.C.A.L. MS. X/10/16, 277r-v, 283. 116

In a conditional agreement involving a gift exchange, a token could strengthen a verbal agreement, but its absence could also invalidate that agreement. In the case above, Edward claimed to give Joan a piece of gold on the condition that she would be his wife. Edward explicitly identified the gold token as sealing that agreement. By taking the gold, Joan entered into a legal bond with Edward. So long as the gold piece was in her possession, she was obligated to marry him. If Edward asked Joan to return his gold or if Joan returned it of her own volition, lost it, or gave it away, their contract would be null and void. The problem, of course, was that, according to Joan, she had no piece of gold. Without the token, no proof of a conditional contract existed.

Conditional contracts could also be complicated by timing. For it to have the power to bind a couple, a token had to be exchanged at the same moment in which a conditional agreement was made. Because the gifts Anne Johnson exchanged with Arthur Packenam did not meet these requirements, she argued that they did not prove a binding marriage contract. While

Anne did not deny entering into a conditional contract with Arthur, willingly receiving gifts from him (a purse and a pair of gloves), or sending him gifts in return (a handkerchief), she defended herself by explaining that “all was given and received before the words aforesaid and therefore not in the way of marriage.”176 In Anne’s eyes, neither gift exchange nor verbal contract alone could legally obligate her to Arthur. The two had to occur simultaneously. The tokens had to be explicitly identified as binding bride and groom to one another. The verbal contract had to be accompanied by a gift exchange. This case suggests that both a conditional agreement unaccompanied by a gift exchange and a gift exchange unaccompanied by an explicit statement

176 O’Hara, Courtship and Constraint, 74; C.C.A.L. MS.X/10/11, 255v-256. 117

of consent and intent to marry carried less weight than a gift exchange whose conditions were clearly expressed, understood, and adhered to.

While deponents’ differing interpretations of a token’s meaning could typically be attributed to the details of a gift exchange (the words which accompanied it, whether or not it was reciprocal, whether the gift was given or received consensually), the economic or symbolic value of a token itself (the monetary value of the item, the material it was made of, its cultural significance) could also influence a deponent or judge’s reading of an exchange. For many, the economic value of a token might be used to gauge the giver’s “seriousness of intention.” 177

While a gift’s value was ideally irrelevant (any token intended as a sign of marriage had legal force), deponents typically mentioned the monetary value of gifts given and received as they interpreted the nature of their relationship to one another. The passages included throughout this section reveal that deponents like Edward Culling and Joan Mortimer considered what exchanged items were worth as they offered a reading of their interactions. For Edward, the value of the gold coin he gave Joan Essex highlighted the seriousness of their conditional contract. For Joan Mortimer, returning Richard Campion’s gifts with objects of equal value absolved her of any obligation to him. While related to value, the material of a token could also be interpreted to support or deny an enforcement claim. According to Alice, the silver coin which she and her alleged husband split “between them to bind a contract of marriage between them” did not successfully bind them because it was not a gold coin: “if it been gold she said it would have bound but by reason it was but silver she said it could not bind and she said that therefore the contract was void.”178 Even a contract as seemingly straightforward as this one

177 O’Hara, Courtship and Constraint, 67, 72. 178 London Metropolitan Archives, DL/C/219 (November 1609 – June 1611), 250r. 118

could be interpreted differently by two parties (though perhaps willfully so on Alice’s part) based on the material composition of a love token. Finally, an object’s symbolic implications might be used to (mis)interpret the meaning of a contract. Something so commonly indicative of marriage as a ring might be interpreted as a gift of goodwill rather than a love token. Thus, lovers who relied upon the symbolic force of a particular gift might be unpleasantly surprised to find the men and women who had received these tokens did not consider them binding and, therefore, did not perceive themselves as betrothed or married.

The fluid nature of love tokens’ meanings led many to doubt their validity as evidence.

Some involved in martial disputes considered tokens “insufficiently ‘evident’ and ‘urgent’, interpreting the practice of giving and receiving gifts…as purely amorous of flirtatious.” Yet, deponents continued to cite these objects to make their cases, asserting that, in some way, a love token could provide information about intent and consent. Although gift-giving was not considered a legally binding act in all circumstances, the fact remains that, as O’Hara finds, “the giving of gifts and tokens was a social imperative which played a key role in the transacting of personal relationships within the marriage process.”179 Determining the exact meaning of an object or exchange proved difficult, but love tokens nevertheless bound early moderns together, though sometimes in contention rather than martial harmony.

With this Ring…

While no object alone could legally bind a couple and prove intent and consent to marry, some had more symbolic and evidentiary weight than others. As scholars of early modern marriage establish, the ring was chief among these. Ralph Houlbrooke claims that no gift was

179 O’Hara, Courtship and Constraint, 62, 64. 119

more “closely associated with marriage in the eyes of the law.”180 Eric Josef Carlson even goes so far as to claim that a ring automatically qualified as a “betrothal token” rather than a regular

“courtship gift,” and, as such, left “little doubt [about] what was intended” when bestowed.181 As might be expected, Giese’s study reveals that rings were among the most popular gifts given to contract a marriage and were the objects most commonly cited to confirm one. They were referenced by 46 of 456 deponents (roughly 10%) in her analysis of London depositions.182

Houlbrooke’s study of close to 400 cases heard in the consistory court of the bishop of Norwich between 1519 and 1563 likewise finds that silver or gold rings were the gifts most frequently referenced by deponents and those most closely associated with oral pledges to wed.183 So, it might seem that, like Portia, early moderns viewed a ring exchange as the best way to ensure the legal force of a marriage contract.

This faith in the ring’s power to bind comes from its broadly recognized cultural and symbolic meanings and uses. Since the classical period, the ring has been employed in betrothals and marriage ceremonies and has carried legal, religious, sentimental, and magical significance.184 Many rings have even featured figures and symbols to forcefully suggest a binding union. For example, the gimmal ring, which was popular in the early modern period, was joined by clasped hands evocative of a contractual agreement.185 Though some sixteenth-century reformers began to argue against the use of wedding bands in marriage services (because they associated them with popery), rings continued to feature prominently in both formal and informal

180 Ralph Houlbrooke, “The Making of Marriage in Mid-Tudor England: Evidence from the Records of Matrimonial Contract Litigation,” Journal of Family History 10 (1985): 344. 181 Carlson, Marriage and the English Reformation, 127. 182 Giese, Courtship, 135. 183 Houlbrooke, “The Making of Marriage,” 344. 184 O’Hara, Courtship and Constraint, 61. 185 Giese, Courtship, 136. 120

marriage proceedings.186 Most notably, the ring played a crucial role in the Solemnization of

Marriage Ceremony as outlined in the 1552 Book of Common Prayer. During the ceremony, a ring was exchanged from groom to bride, a prayer was said which identified the ring as a token of the vows exchanged, and the priest joined the couple’s hands with the phrase, “Those who

God hath joined together let no man put asunder.”187 Knowledge of the ring’s importance in the

Solemnization of Marriage Ceremony was so widespread that deponents often supported their claims by comparing their own ring exchanges to that dictated by the Book of Common Prayer.

Despite its strong connection to marriage, though, a ring exchanged between parties was not always a betrothal or wedding ring.

While rings were closely associated with marriage, they had other common uses. For instance, they were often given as funeral gifts188 or willed to loved ones.189 Even more frequently, they were exchanged amongst friends and family members. This meant that, as was the case with other exchanged gifts, distinguishing a ring given as a love token from one given as a token of good will was not always an easy task. In their recent study of Medieval and

Renaissance rings, Sandra Hindman and Scott Miller outline some of the roles these items played in the context of early modern ‘friendship’:

The practice of gifting rings was intimately bound with medieval and early modern

concepts of sociability and friendship. The word ‘friend’ had a wide semantic berth

throughout the period, describing the bonds between blood relations, spouses, children,

186 O’Hara, Courtship and Constraint, 62 187 Carlson, Marriage and the English Reformation, 46-7. 188 Giese, Courtship, 136, 91. 189 Shakespeare himself left money to his friends, requesting that they remember him with memorial rings. See Alan Powers, “‘What he wills’: Early modern rings and vows in Twelfth Night,” in Twelfth Night: New Critical Essays, ed. James Schiffer (New York: Routledge, 2011), 226. 121

and even newly made acquaintances…A posy ring inscribed with the motto ‘Love and

Live Happy’ speaks to the complexity of the concept of friendship in medieval and early

modern society, its generalized sentiment of well-wishing rendering it appropriate for any

number of occasions or recipients.”190

As Hindman and Miller illustrate, even a ring with a posy, a phrase which would seem to clarify the nature and significance of an exchange, did not eliminate the ambiguity surrounding intimate exchanges. Though a ring was often inscribed with words that should indicate why it was given and what it meant as a token, vague posies like “Love and Live Happy” were just as likely meant for a friend as for a lover. In fact, they were often meant for both friends and lovers as rings could circulate from friend to friend to lover, lover to lover to friend, or among any combination of friends, love interests, and family members. It was not unheard of for someone to re-gift a token, bringing new meaning to the ring itself and any messages inscribed within it.

The fluid significance of rings is evident in many of the depositions Giese considers.

Richard Houghton, for instance, explained to Mistress Jacob that he did not give her a ring “to the end to make her [his] wife” as Mistress Jacob assumed but “only to keep till I called for it again for I mean to have it.”191 Because of these and other ambiguities, exchanged rings did not constitute irrefutable evidence of a betrothal or marriage. Even though the exchange of a ring was strongly associated with betrothal/marriage, the details of the exchange—the words traded along with the ring, whether the ring was received willingly and clearly identified as a love

190 Sandra Hindman, Scott Miller, and Diana Scarisbrick, Take this Ring: Medieval and Renaissance Rings from the Griffin Collection (Chicago: Les Enluminures in association with Brepols Publishers, 2015), 97. 191 DL/C/214, 542. 122

token, whether the ring was exchanged in private or in public, how the ring was treated by the recipient—were still subject to scrutiny. 192

The Drama of Enforcement Suits

Some evidence indicates that, around the turn of the seventeenth century, ecclesiastical courts started to grow less willing to hand down and enforce rulings on disputed marital contracts. This is suggested by the depositions, which provide so much information about the tokens given and received during a courtship or marriage but so little about court rulings or sentences delivered.193 In his analysis of early modern spousal litigation, Martin Ingram takes this to mean that “some suits were simply abandoned, others settled out of court with or without the help of arbitrators and mediators…Many suits probably remained in a totally indeterminate state.” He posits that the growing tendency to withhold a sentence in Renaissance enforcement suits “suggests that ecclesiastical lawyers were gradually turning their backs on the ancient law of spousals to the extent of treating unsolemnized unions, at least in cases of dispute between the parties, as virtually unenforceable” 194 Why, then, did couples keep bringing their cases to court?

Perhaps because ecclesiastical courts were not just a site of legal decision-making but a performative space in which plaintiff and defendant (and their witnesses) acted their parts—jilted lover, dutiful go-between, unwitting or unwilling recipient of a love token, unrequiting maid or youth—to convince judges, defendants, friends, and community members that their version of events was accurate. They performed with hopes of persuading reluctant lovers to agree to be married to them or with the goal of publicly clearing their good name. Courtroom performances were not their first either. Early moderns followed intimate scripts from the beginning of their

192 O’Hara, Courtship and Constraint, 62. 193 Giese, Courtship, 6. 194 Ingram, “Spousal Litigation,” 51-3. 123

courtships, and love tokens were their primary props. To enact a marriage, a couple moved through a series of what O’Hara calls “rehearsals” in which they practiced the art of navigating

“promises, matrimonial negotiations, and conviviality,” and used symbols and objects to do so.

O’Hara interprets this to mean that “[m]arriage, then, should be seen…as a ‘social drama’ where rituals and symbols, gifts and tokens, played a ‘dynamic and creative’ role in both its making and breaking”195 If marriage was a “drama” and early modern courtship was a series of “rehearsals,” the enforcement suit was (as it is in Merchant) the climactic scene preceding what, hopefully, would be a comic ending. Ideally, the evidence collected during these cases promised to provide closure, encouraging a disdainful beloved to relent and return her suitor’s affection, clearing up confusion between lovers, and uniting plaintiff and defendant in marriage.

Due to their theatrical nature, enforcement suits offered ready-made comic material, and

Shakespeare adapted this material for the theater, often evoking these suits to explore the intimate anxieties of Renaissance England. Noting this connection between intimate conflict in the courtroom and on Shakespeare’s stage, Giese shows how enforcement suit proceedings can

“provide a context by which to understand better the [courtship] behaviors in early modern

English dramas.” Analyzing Twelfth Night and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, she uses enforcement suit depositions to explore “the complex ways those plays participate in and comment upon” the “courting and marrying behaviors” of Renaissance England.196 While Giese focuses on only two comedies, the theme of putting intimacy on trial drives many of

Shakespeare’s plays. Yet, the ways Shakespeare makes use of enforcement suits themselves—

195 O’Hara, Courtship and Constraint, 64. In describing marriage this way, O’Hara borrows terms and concepts from John. R. Gillis who presents the idea that courtship and marriage were dramatic, communal activities governed by rituals and symbols. See For Better, For Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to Present (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985), 6-7, 17. 196 Giese, Courtship, 13-14, 8-11. 124

rather than marriage and courtship practices more generally—has remained underexplored. So, in the remaining sections of this chapter, I will demonstrate how Shakespeare evokes the marital enforcement suit through the figure of the wedding ring in Merchant, and I will explain how he uses characters’ perceptions of, treatment of, and attitudes toward the ring to comment upon both its utility in intimate relationships and its limitations.

“The virtue of the ring”

While Portia’s ring receives the most attention in Merchant, hers is not the only significant ring in the play.197 Before the wedding ring appears on stage (III.ii.171), Portia makes a telling reference to a death’s head (I.ii.44), and Shylock laments the loss of Leah’s turquoise

(III.i.100). As the play closes, Nerissa explains the import of the ring she has given Graziano— immediately before Portia explains the significance of her ring to Bassanio (V.i.141-207). Taken together, these characters’ descriptions and characterizations of wedding and betrothal rings closely resemble early modern deponents’ discussions of the rings and other love tokens exchanged between plaintiffs and defendants. Portia and Nerissa, especially, share the impulses of judges, plaintiffs, defendants, and witnesses as they look to love tokens for a material means

197 Portia’s ring is also far from the only significant ring in the Shakespearean cannon. As Powers establishes in his study of “Early modern rings and vows” in Twelfth Night, “The exchange of rings as spousal gesture or subarration, occurs on stage in Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merchant of Venice, and Cymbeline, and offstage in Romeo and Juliet, All's Well that End's Well, and Twelfth Night....The gift of a ring by messenger takes place in The Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Twelfth Night” (220). Not only do Shakespeare’s plays consistently feature rings, but those rings often have the ability create and resolve intimate confusion. Shakespeare’s comedies, in particular, demonstrate both the chaos and clarity a ring can bring to a relationship. For instance, in All’s Well That Ends Well, the ring is the mechanism through which Bertram craftily avoids an undesired union with Helena and the means through which the play’s heroine finally solemnizes their marriage (through some trickery of her own). In Twelfth Night the ring brings disorder when Olivia uses it to woo Cesario, but it eventually binds Olivia to Viola’s twin brother, Sebastian, to enable the (mostly) happy resolution of the play. 125

of accessing a loved one’s intentions. At the same time that Merchant’s characters adopt the behaviors and approaches of enforcement suit deponents, they seek to verify not only that their lovers have legally given their hands in marriage but that they have given their hearts as well.

While deponents and judges only treat rings as evidence of consent and intent to marry,

Merchant’s characters treat them as physical signifiers of both the giver and receiver’s devotion and affection. They hope that the rings they give can be imbued with the love they feel for the recipients and that these tokens can, in turn, communicate how their new owners feel about the characters who offered them. The characters who give rings in this play hope that they will bind those who exchange them together emotionally as well as legally.

Portia, Nerissa, and Shylock see their rings as a means of accessing and/or controlling the intimacy between giver and recipient. Shylock values Leah’s ring for its ability to connect him to its former owner, to the love she felt for him and to the intimacy they shared. Portia and Nerissa hope the rings they give Bassanio and Graziano will serve as their proxies, keeping their husbands devoted to them when the men leave Belmont. The rings are meant to remind Bassanio and Graziano of Portia and Nerissa’s love for them and of the love and obligation they have for and to wives. The heroine and her double also portray their rings as visual evidence of their husbands’ constancy. Love, like intent and consent, cannot be seen, but these wives try to transform their rings into the signs of their husbands’ love so that they will know when and if that love falters. Their actions bring to mind the accounts of many plaintiffs who were adamant about sealing their marital contracts with love tokens and who detailed the opposed party’s treatment of the love tokens she or he received. Someone’s usage of a token supposedly revealed whether or not she or he intended to marry the man or woman who had offered it. For Portia and

Nerissa, Bassanio and Graziano’s treatment of their rings indicates the status of their marital

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bonds and their affective ties. In the end, though, Merchant suggests that while a ring can link people emotionally and connect them to a shared intimacy, it cannot necessarily reveal or control a loved one’s thoughts or emotions.

The figure of the ring first appears in the second scene, as a proxy for a potential suitor or husband. It stands in for this suitor, linking him to Portia, even when he is not present. In this scene, Portia mentions the ring after she laments that she “cannot choose one nor refuse none” as her husband. She must obey the rules of the casket test designed by her late father (I.ii.23-4) and marry according to his wishes. Portia then remarks that she “had rather be married to a death’s- head with a bone in his mouth” than any of the men who have pursued her (I.ii.44-5). While making a joke at her suitors’ expense, Portia equates the death’s head—a memento mori ring with a skull on it sometimes exchanged as an engagement or wedding ring198—with her potential husband and the feelings of dread she associates with the marital bond she might be forced to share with him. Portia personifies the ring, saying it has a “bone in his mouth,” and draws a parallel between the ring itself and her future husband. She poses her dilemma as if she could either have a suitor or the ring. The two are interchangeable. The ring and spouse, then, are equivalent. The memento mori is closely linked to the bond it threatens to facilitate and to

Portia’s feelings for her hypothetical future husband. Like Portia’s future marriage, the ring inspires thoughts of death and feelings of apprehension or, perhaps, defeated resignation.199

198 Giese, Courtships, 138. 199 Memento mori were not inherently associated with fear or dread. Though they were, of course, associated with death, the positive or negative nature of this connotation was determined by context. One might keep a memento mori in remembrance of a deceased friend or give it to a spouse as a sign that his or her love would last as long as his or her life. In this particular context, it seems safe to assume that the death’s head of Portia’s imagination is bound up with her fear that her marriage will be suffocating and unhappy. Therefore, the ring has a negative connotation in this scene. 127

Next, Shylock’s turquois appears, and it performs the same function as Portia’s death’s head. In this case, though, Shylock wants to be linked to the person his ring stands in for and the mutual love it preserves. Shylock speaks of his ring as a part of his cherished connection to Leah

(presumably his deceased wife or former lover) and all he has left of her. For this reason, even in a world where everything has a price, the ring is irreplaceable, and Shylock feels its loss deeply.

When Tubal informs him that Jessica has traded the ring for a monkey, Shylock exclaims, “Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal. It was my turquoise. I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor.

I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys” (III.ii.100-2). The ring was not just a ring. It was Shylock’s last physical link to the woman he loved and to the intimacy they shared.

This assumption that Shylock and Portia make, that the ring becomes a part of both spouse and marital bond (or that they become part of the ring), makes it easy to understand why, in the scene after Shylock loses his turquoise, Portia and Nerissa attempt to secure their marriages to Bassanio and Graziano by giving them this particular type of love token. In the same way that the death’s head and Leah’s ring stand in for the person who gives it and for the feelings that the giver and recipient have for one another, the rings Portia and Nerissa ask

Bassanio and Graziano to keep are, ideally, extensions of themselves, linking them to their husbands across physical distance and ensuring Bassanio and Graziano are always reminded of and able to access the emotional connection they share with their wives. The ring’s status as proxy emerges most clearly when Graziano, Nerissa, and Portia argue about the value of the ring

Nerissa has given Graziano as a love token. Though Graziano devalues his “paltry ring” with its

“posy…like cutler’s poetry / Upon a knife,” the posy itself (and Nerissa and Portia’s indignation) indicates that the ring’s significance does not come from its monetary value. The posy, “love me and leave me not,” clearly draws a parallel between Nerissa and her love token (V.i.146-9). Its

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command implies that Nerissa and the ring are one and the same. Because Graziano has “left” the ring he does not love it. If Graziano does not love the ring, does he still love Nerissa? Has he left her too?

Nerissa’s reaction makes it clear that, to her, the ring is more than a “paltry” hoop. She asks, “What talk you of the posy or the value? / You swore to me when I did give it you / That you would wear it till your hour of death, / And that it should lie with you in your grave”

(V.i.150-3). Nerissa asserts that the ring stands in for her and the eternal bond she and Graziano have entered into. Just as Graziano has vowed to be Nerissa’s husband for the rest of his life, he has promised to keep the ring “till [his] hour of death.” Even afterward, the ring should “lie with

[him] in [his] grave” so that he and Nerissa can be bound together for all eternity. So, when

Graziano fails to keep the ring until his “hour of death,” Nerissa is left to wonder if their eternal bond has been prematurely severed.

Portia and Nerissa expect their rings to do more than maintain their intimate ties to

Bassanio and Graziano. They imagine these love tokens will serve as indicators of Bassanio and

Graziano’s emotional investment in them. In theory, Bassanio and Graziano’s attitudes toward the rings and treatment of them should tell Portia and Nerissa how these men feel about their wives. When Portia chastises Graziano for parting “so slightly” with his “wife’s first gift,” she flatly tells Graziano “You were to blame, I must be plain with you” and explains that his ring should have been “a thing stuck on with oaths upon your finger, / And so riveted with faith unto your flesh” (I.i.165-8). Portia insists that when Nerissa and Graziano exchanged oaths, the ring should have become a part of him. As husband and wife are united in marriage, Graziano and

Nerissa’s proxy (her ring) should be joined as well. If his oaths are genuine, Graziano’s ring should be so securely attached to his finger that it is as if the rod of a rivet has been driven into

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his flesh, keeping the ring in place. Graziano’s hand alone can, supposedly, reveal how devoted he is to his marriage. If the ring is “stuck on with oaths” and “riveted with faith unto [his] flesh,” its absence can only mean that Graziano’s oaths are no longer valid, that his “faith” has diminished or disappeared entirely. Otherwise, the ring should be (metaphorically) impossible to remove.

When Bassanio finds that an empty finger is such damning evidence in Portia’s eyes, he jokingly wonders if “I were best to cut my left hand off / And swear I lost the ring defending it”

(V.i.176-7). Rather attached to his hand, Bassanio admits that he, like Graziano, has breached his contract. He does so by showing his empty finger to Portia: “you see my finger / Hath not the ring upon it. It is gone.” She immediately concludes, “Even so void is your false heart of truth”

(V.i.186-8). If the ring is an indicator of Bassanio’s affection, a naked finger is the same as an empty heart. If Bassanio has broken his bond, there is no evidence that his protestations of love are anything but “false.” So, according to Portia, without the ring, the union between husband and wife could cease to exist.

While the rings are meant to strengthen these couple’s emotional ties, we find that, when

Portia and Nerissa attempt to use them as a measure of Bassanio and Graziano’s devotion, they have the opposite effect. Because Portia and Nerissa place faith in their rings’ ability to visually measure their husband’s love, they have reason to wonder if their husbands’ negligence might extend past the keeping of their rings and to the care of their wives. Portia and Nerissa’s assumptions here demonstrate both the merits and limits of using a token to measure marital devotion. The ring is an imperfect indicator. That Graziano and Bassanio give their rings away certainly suggests they do not value Nerissa and Portia as much as the women would like. The ring’s absence also makes the dissolution of these couples’ marriages legally possible, given that

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their unions are unconsummated. Yet, Graziano and Bassanio’s ringless hands do not necessarily indicate that they no longer love Nerissa and Portia. The loss of their rings does not automatically invalidate their marriages. These love tokens are useful, but only to a point. The meaning Portia and Nerissa have assigned to their husbands’ rings does not hold. Bassanio and

Graziano contest their wives’ readings of their actions and protest that they love Portia and

Nerissa even though they have no rings to prove it. It becomes clear that these love tokens cannot accurately show Portia and Nerissa how deeply Bassanio and Graziano love them or enable the heroines to dictate the terms of the marital intimacies they share with their husbands.

Opened Caskets and Voided Contracts

When Portia and Nerissa look to their rings to shape and strengthen their unions and to help them control the intimacy they share with their husbands, they are following the example set by Portia’s father. This patriarch employs the caskets to “speak with authority from beyond the grave.”200 He uses them to dictate the relationship his daughter will share with his replacement

(her husband) and to maintain his control over her. Through the caskets, he ensures that Portia’s ties to him endure and that the nature of their relationship—Portia’s father commands and she obeys—remains the same. To a certain degree, he also employs the caskets to dictate the terms of his daughter’s marital intimacy. It must be based upon virtues rather than appearances, genuine affection rather than riches. Though these terms are reasonable and desirable, they are nevertheless set forth without Portia’s input.

The structure of the casket test indicates that, like Portia, Nerissa, and so many enforcement suit deponents, Portia’s father expects an individual’s treatment of and attitude

200 John Drakakis, “Introduction,” in The Merchant of Venice, ed. John Drakakis (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2010), 87. 131

toward an object to serve as a material means of interpreting his motives. The casket test reveals a father’s concern that suitors’ outward professions of love might not match their inward thoughts and feelings and his hope that an object can reveal the truth. As Kenneth Gross observes, “the casket game…frames a dramatic contrast between inner and outer, surface sign and hidden truth, illusion and disillusionment, as each suitor pulls out the concealed symbol from within the closed box…the rigid structure of understanding and intention provided by the casket test feels itself like an attempt to contain, exclude, and make discrete what is otherwise so confusing” 201 The caskets supposedly simplify what could be a courtship process filled with deceitful suitors who only really want Portia’s money. Ideally, each suitor’s intentions are revealed and communicated through the material of the casket he chooses (gold, silver, lead) and the symbolic object (a skull, a fool, and Portia’s portrait) it contains. The test’s “rigid structure”

(supposedly) ensures that Portia can only be won by the man who values her more than her riches. Any dissemblers will be detected, rejected, and forbidden to marry, not just Portia, but any woman.

To bridge the gap between seeming and being, the casket test assesses each suitor’s motives through his attitudes toward the material object he selects (II.vii.63, II.ix.53, III.ii.115).

Accordingly, suitors who focus on the caskets’ exteriors while reading their inscriptions do not choose correctly. On the surface, the gold casket’s inscription—“Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire” (II.vii.5)—suggests success, but as Morocco voices his reason for choosing this casket—“Never so rich a gem / Was set in worse than gold” (II.vii.54-5)—his greed and an impulse to conflate Portia with her riches become apparent. Similarly, the silver

201 Kenneth Gross, “The House of Three Caskets,” in Shylock is Shakespeare (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006), 32-3. 132

casket’s inscription—“Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves”—unveils that pride and self-importance drive Aragon’s desire to marry a woman with wealth and social clout. When he decides, “I will assume desert,” and chooses the silver casket, he thinks of his own worth rather than Portia’s (II.ix.50). Only Bassanio understands that “The world is still deceived with ornament” and “outward shows be least themselves” (III.ii.73-4). His choice demonstrates that he can look past the exterior and that he is willing to “give and hazard all he hath” for Portia

(II.vii.16). Ideally, this also means that he values Portia not just for her beauty and wealth but also for her virtues. So, the test allows Portia’s dead father to read her suitors’ intentions and determine whether or not they deserve her.

Though the rings and caskets do both promise to clarify a loved one’s (or potential loved one’s) interior motives, the intimacy promoted and enforced by the caskets proves unsustainable.

In fact, when Portia attempts to use her ring in the same way that her father uses his caskets—to define and control the love between Bassanio and herself—she finds that she must rethink the role of the ring in her marriage. Unlike the ring Portia gives Bassanio—which circulates from person to person and accumulates different meanings—the caskets have a single, fixed meaning which has been unilaterally dictated by a dead man. Portia and Bassanio can (and do) negotiate and renegotiate the terms of their marriage as Portia’s ring changes hands, but Portia and her father obviously cannot discuss the terms of their familial relationship or of the casket test. The caskets’ purpose can only ever be to maintain a father’s control over his daughter and to match her with a suitable husband. Once a husband has been chosen and the caskets have served their purpose, though, they are no longer relevant. They are immediately pushed to the background, replaced by the ring Portia gives Bassanio, and they disappear—along with any reference to

Portia’s father or her ties to him—for the duration of the play.

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As agents which maintain Portia’s ties to her father and bind her to her future husband, the caskets are not associated with an intimacy based upon consent but control. Because the caskets are installed at Belmont, suitors must come to Portia, and she must stay there to receive them. She remains safely locked away in the domestic sphere until another patriarch comes to take her father’s place. Unlike Antonio (who willingly binds himself to Shylock) and Bassanio

(who takes Portia’s ring and promises of his own accord never to part with it), Portia does not consent to the father-daughter contract imposed via the casket test nor does she participate in determining its conditions. The terms of the test are, instead, stipulated in “the will of a dead father,” a document which, presumably, does not take into account “the will of a living daughter”

(I.ii.21-2). At the beginning of scene ii, Portia paints this contract as oppressive when she explains that it makes her “little body aweary of this great world” (I.ii.1-2). She describes the contract not as an agreement but a “cold decree” (I.ii.17). These details suggest that Portia’s father devised the casket test by himself and that she may not have consented to their contract if she had been given a choice. Portia does not choose the casket test. Because she obeys its rules, she does not choose her husband either. While Nerissa hopes “the lottery…will no doubt never be chosen by any rightly but one who you shall rightly love,” her father’s “lottery” requires

Portia to marry whoever has “chosen…rightly” whether she “rightly love[s]” the man or not

(I.ii.25-9). Portia has no recourse if the wrong man happens to choose the right casket. Just as she does not consent to the casket test itself, Portia may be forced into a marriage she does not consent to as well.

It is no wonder, then, that Portia uses something of her own to establish a new contract with Bassanio the moment he passes her father’s test. She does consent to this union and gives

Bassanio a love token of her choosing to demonstrate as much. While she does, at first, position

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the ring as a means to define and control her marriage with Bassanio, she also gives Bassanio an opportunity to declare whether or not he consents to their union. He gives his consent when he takes Portia’s ring and agrees to her stipulation—that the loss of the ring will result in the loss of their love. Afterward, the caskets disappear from the play. Their fixed significance renders them and the model of intimacy they support obsolete. Portia’s father dies a second time as she leaves behind the last object binding her to him and forms a marital bond with her own object and in the manner that she chooses. Control of Portia is not simply transferred from Portia’s father to

Bassanio as the casket test might suggest it should be. Instead, Portia replaces the caskets with an object that seals a contract formed with mutual consent. With this change of objects, she enters an intimacy that allows her more agency and freedom of movement. She will soon follow her husband to Venice and assume the role of a heroic judge, saving Antonio for the sake of the man she loves. By the end of the play, her ring will take on new meanings in addition to the significance Portia initially assigns to it. Ultimately, the ring will inspire an intimate renegotiation which expands and strengthens her ties to Bassanio.

While Portia opts to replace the casket with a new object, her double, Jessica, repurposes it instead. She uses her father’s casket to fund her escape with Lorenzo. As David Lucking notes,

“the chest of treasure that Jessica purloins from her father supplies an ironic foil to the caskets whose secret Bassanio must fathom in order to win Portia as his bride.”202 In Act II, scene V— situated immediately before Portia’s first suitor, Morocco, tries his luck—Jessica frees herself with the same object that restricts Portia’s agency. When she flees with Lorenzo, she orders him,

“Here, catch this casket. It is worth the pains” and assumes a more autonomous role in her relationship with her father and husband-to-be (II.vi.33). Whereas Portia allows her father’s

202 Lucking, “Standing for Sacrifice,” 362. 135

caskets to keep her at home, awaiting the right suitor, Jessica removes her father’s casket from his house to run away with a lover of her own choosing. While the caskets at Belmont can only be opened by the men who pursue Portia, Jessica opens Shylock’s casket herself, allowing its contents (jewels, ducats, and Leah’s ring) to circulate freely and emptying it of its previous meaning. In Belmont, closed chests help Portia’s father maintain his patriarchal authority. In

Venice, Jessica opens Shylock’s casket in defiance of the same authority.

Jessica’s treatment of Shylock’s casket does not serve only as an “ironic foil” but comments upon the viability of a patriarchal bond made without a daughter’s consent. Her behavior suggests that unilaterally formed bonds are at risk of being dissolved. John Drakakis suggests that her actions not only break her familial bond with Shylock but result in his spiritual death: Jessica “elopes with a ‘casket’ (2.6.34) that, like one of the caskets in Belmont, contains her father's ‘meaning’, his wealth…and she is the agent of his metaphorical death, his enforced conversion to Christianity.” While Portia initially allows her father to define her “meaning” and contain it in a casket, Jessica “in a willful rejection of her domestic role and the patriarchal authority of her father, chooses to be her own meaning.” 203 In taking possession of the casket,

Jessica claims her own dowry without Shylock’s permission and bestows it upon a Christian. She rejects the understood contract between father and daughter and usurps Shylock’s role as patriarch of their household, permanently excising him from her life.

If Jessica’s actions make her “the agent of [Shylock’s] metaphorical death,” his response to her behavior reveals his desire to be the agent of her very literal death. Upon discovering that

Jessica has abandoned him and taken a diamond worth “[t]wo thousand ducats…and other precious, precious jewels,” he tells Tubal, “I would my daughter were dead at my foot and the

203 Drakakis, “Introduction,” 81. 136

jewels in her ear! Would she were hearsed at my foot and the ducats in her coffin!” (III.i.74-6).

Most simply, Shylock’s reaction reveals a desire to restore his connection to his daughter, to retain his control over her even if the only box he can use to contain her is a coffin. As Gross observes, “You could see this image as Shylock's translation of Portia's casket…She [Jessica] is still, in Shylock's fantasy, decked as a bride. He is in the coffin with her, buried alive.”204 Just as

Portia’s father hoped to preserve his connection to and control of her by choosing her husband,

Shylock wants to maintain his connection to Jessica, even if this connection can only be preserved in death. That Portia and Jessica’s fathers are not able to maintain their ties to their daughters is a firm indictment of the model of intimacy associated with their caskets. Intimate contracts that are not based upon mutual consent or open to future negotiations have no place in this comedy. Once Bassanio solves the casket test and Jessica empties Shylock’s casket to fund her elopement, the caskets are replaced with rings, the objects which ultimately enable intimate resolution and comic closure. Before the rings play a role in resolving Merchant’s intimate confusion, though, they catalyze its central conflict.

“When this ring parts from this finger”: Portia’s Enforcement Suit

Act IV consists of only two scenes, each of which offers a verdict in a different case. The civil case of Antonio v. Shylock concludes at IV.i.403, and a second trial (Portia v. Bassanio) begins with the very next line, its verdict discovered in IV.ii. In both cases, Portia determines whether or not the defendant is guilty of breaking a contract. In both, she concludes that he is— and contrives to let him off the hook anyway. After IV.i, Merchant leaves Antonio’s case behind, and, for the remainder of the play, Portia puts her husband and her marriage on trial, acting as both the judge and plaintiff of her own matrimonial enforcement suit. Just as Portia scrutinizes

204 Gross, “Shylock's Nothing,” in Shylock is Shakespeare, 25. 137

Antonio and Shylock’s legal agreement to resolve their dispute, she uses the conditional contract between Bassanio and herself to resolve her conflict with him. The most crucial piece of evidence in this trial is, of course, the missing ring which Portia cites as evidence that Bassanio has violated the terms of their agreement, putting both their marital and affective bonds into question. Indeed, Bassanio’s actions could constitute a breached contract in a real matrimonial suit, especially since Portia and Bassanio have not consummated their union. This trial, though, is not an accurate representation of an enforcement suit. Rather, it is a dramatic interpretation with a comedic slant. The final scenes of Merchant call upon the enforcement suit’s cultural force as they focus on intimate rather than legal matters. They bring to mind the important role love tokens played in enforcement suits and ask if a ring really can reveal truths about a lover or spouse’s motives and attitudes. They explore whether, in addition to the legal status of a marriage, a ring might shed light upon the strength of the intimacy between husband and wife.

Portia’s enforcement case emphasizes the important role a symbolically loaded object might play in a relationship and illustrates how the heroine’s ring provides an opportunity for her to address her remaining uncertainties about Bassanio’s devotion.

From the moment Portia initiates a marriage contract with Bassanio, she attempts to use her ring to ensure that she can, at any time, confirm the constancy of Bassanio’s love and the legal validity of their union simply by looking at his hand. Immediately after Bassanio solves the riddle of the caskets, Portia quickly pushes the casket test (whose rules have been determined by her father) to the background and assumes ownership of the intimacy she shares with Bassanio by dictating the terms of their marriage herself. Portia declares, “This house, these servants, and this same myself / Are yours, my lord’s,” stipulating, “I give them with this ring, / Which when you part from, lose, or give away, / Let it presage the ruin of your love.” Bassanio agrees to these

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terms and vows to keep the ring: “But when this ring / Parts from this finger, then parts life from hence” (III.ii.170-3, 183-4). The ring thereby becomes the lynchpin that holds both their marriage and their love together so long as it remains on Bassanio’s finger.

Behaving like the most careful of enforcement suit deponents, Portia uses her ring to strengthen the legal force of her marriage to Bassanio. First, the ring provides material proof of intent and consent to marry. When Portia offers Bassanio this love token, it becomes the sign of her intent, and when Bassanio willingly accepts it, the ring becomes the sign of his consent.

Second, in handing the ring to Bassanio, Portia elicits a reciprocal promise from him. Not only does Portia verbally confirm her intent to marry him, she also waits for Bassanio to affirm his intent to be bound to her, to demonstrate that he receives her token knowingly and willingly. By coupling their verbal oaths with the gift of a ring, Portia gives Bassanio no opportunity to claim that their vows were not validated by a gift exchange, or vice versa. Third, Portia explicitly identifies the ring as a sign of her union with Bassanio and stipulates her intentions in giving it to him. She explains that “with this ring” she plans to make Bassanio her “lord, her governor, her king” and to convert “myself and what is mine to you and yours.” She leaves no room for ambiguous interpretations of the token’s meaning. It is a love token and cannot be mistaken for a token of good will. Fourth, Portia makes sure to give the ring to Bassanio in front of Nerissa and

Graziano, potential witnesses should Bassanio go back on his word. Witnesses were valuable in the period as they could crucially corroborate a plaintiff’s story and support her or his case in the ecclesiastical courts.

Portia does not only give Bassanio her ring to establish legal intent and consent, though.

She also hopes the ring will serve as a permanent indicator of his emotional orientation toward

(or away from) her, as a measure of the intimacy she shares with him. This is why she states that

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his loss of the ring will result in the “ruin of your love” rather than the “ruin of our marriage.”

She obliquely references their legal ties to one another, but focuses on the “love” they share rather than their contractual obligations to one another. The heroine certainly has reason to feel unsure of her lover’s motives, and she understands what she risks by giving “This house, these servants, and this same myself” to a man she loves but does not fully know. Bassanio may love her, but he may also be after her fortune. Shakespeare certainly suggests as much to the audience when Bassanio asks Antonio for money to pursue “a lady richly left” (I.i.161). If he is only after her riches, Bassanio may neglect or even mistreat Portia once their marriage contract is finalized.

Even though Bassanio wins Portia by correctly rejecting the “gaudy gold” and “pale and common” silver caskets and their “outward shows” in favor of the “meagre lead” casket

(III.ii.101, 103, 73, 104), Portia cannot yet know whether he sees her worth or just has enough wit to solve a riddle (or simply take a hint).205 So, by transforming the ring into a sign of

Bassanio’s emotional attachment to her in addition to a sign of his legal obligation to her, Portia attempts to make visible the strength of Bassanio’s love.

Because she remains uncertain of Bassanio’s feelings and motives, Portia shrewdly makes her marital contract conditional. She gives all that she has “with this ring” but makes it clear that, “when [Bassanio] part[s] from, lose[s], or give[s] away” the ring, his actions will dissolve their union, “presage the ruin of your love,” and “be my vantage to exclaim on you”

(III.ii.174). As many feminist scholars have argued, Portia may include her condition with every

205 Some scholars assert that Portia’s command, “Let music sound while he doth make his choice” (III.ii.43) belies her intention to point Bassanio toward the right casket. The lyrics of the song which plays as he makes his choice include words that rhyme with lead—“bred,” “head,” and “nourished” (III.ii.3, 4, 5)—and, thereby, direct (at the conscious or unconscious level) Bassanio to the lead casket. See Neil H. Wright, “Portia and the Power of Music,” Kentucky Philological Review 16 (2001): 48-53 and Eric Rasmussen, “Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice III.ii.63-68,” Explicator 44, no.2 (1986): 12-3. 140

intention of finding a way to “exclaim” upon Bassanio and gain the upper hand in their relationship.206 Still, her loophole might also stem from a concern over the uncertainty of

Bassanio’s feelings and intentions. If the ring measures the validity of both Bassanio’s “love” and his marriage to Portia, there can be no marriage without love. His adorned ring finger presents visible proof that he continues to honor their contract in both legal and affective terms.

However, if Bassanio loses the ring and gives Portia reason to question his devotion to her, she can nullify their legal ties. As many early modern defendants assert, a conditional marriage contract was not binding if its conditions were not met. Unfortunately for Portia, the same approach she uses to protect herself also imperils the union she and Bassanio share. Bassanio, too, can claim that their marriage is no longer valid if there is no ring. By losing the ring or giving it away Bassanio might, intentionally, invalidate their marriage contract. Most problematically, Portia’s conditional contract assumes that the ring is an accurate indicator not only of her legal agreement with Bassanio but of his feelings for her. What if—as Portia later finds—this is not necessarily the case?

In addition to the conditional nature of Portia and Bassanio’s contract, other aspects of their betrothal might prove troublesome. While Nerissa and Graziano witness the oaths Bassanio and Portia exchange, no minister can attest to the validity of their union. When Bassanio learns that Antonio is in danger, Portia asks him, “First go with me to church and call me wife, / And then away to Venice to your friend.” But, once the urgency of Antonio’s situation becomes clear,

206 See Corinne S. Abate, “‘Nerissa teaches me what to believe’: Portia's Wifely Empowerment in The Merchant of Venice,” in The Merchant of Venice: New Critical Essays, ed. John W. Mahon (New York: Routledge, 2002), 283-304; Karen Newman, “Portia's Ring: Unruly Women and Structures of Exchange in The Merchant of Venice,” Shakespeare Quarterly 38 (1987): 19- 33; and Anne Parten, “Re-Establishing Sexual Order: The Ring Episode in The Merchant of Venice,” Shakespeare and Renaissance Association of West Virginia: Selected Papers 6 (1981): 27-34. 141

Bassanio decides to “make haste,” likely leaving no time for a formal ceremony (III.ii.302-3,

322). In addition to forgoing a public ceremony, Bassanio leaves Portia without giving her anything in return for her ring (except his verbal oath). He provides her with no material proof of their union. Most importantly, though, Bassanio departs to rescue his other love before the new couple can consummate their marriage. Such unsolemnized unions were fairly easy to dissolve.

Thus, the conditional and unconsummated nature of Bassanio and Portia’s contract leaves the fate of their union uncertain. It remains entirely possible that their marital contract would not hold up in court if Portia, Bassanio, or a third part decided to question it. While this alone might make Portia anxious, she learns she has more reason for concern as she observes how Bassanio treats his ring—the object upon which the validity of their love and marriage depends.

If Portia felt unsure about her position in Bassanio’s life before he rushed to Antonio’s side rather than the nearest church, what she witnesses in Venice only increases her anxiety.

While disguised as Balthasar, Portia watches Antonio and Bassanio enact a marriage which would be just a legally binding as her own—if Antonio were a woman. Nonetheless, the handfasting ceremony that Antonio and Bassanio enact demonstrates that Portia has competition for Bassanio’s affection. When his death appears impending, Antonio uses his last words to ask,

“Give me your hand, Bassanio…Commend me to your honorable wife. / Tell her the process of

Antonio’s end, / Say how I loved you. Speak me fair in death, / And when the tale is told, bid her be judge / Whether Bassanio had not once a love” (IV.i.261-73). Antonio’s phrasing pointedly evokes marital enforcement suits in which a “judge” sometimes had to resolve disputes between two individuals claiming to be married to the same person. In these cases, the prior claim received more weight. Accordingly, Antonio (in passive aggressive fashion) asks Bassanio to inform Portia that he already “had…a love” before he married her.

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While this information in and of itself might be disconcerting for a new wife, Bassanio’s response to Antonio is anything but reassuring. Rather than refuse Antonio’s request and express his devotion to his wife, Bassanio affirms the superior status of his bond with the merchant:

“Antonio, I am married to a wife / Which is as dear to me as life itself; / But life itself, my wife, and all the world, / Are not with me esteemed above thy life. / I would lose all, ay sacrifice them all / Here to this devil to deliver you” (IV.i.78-83). While Portia may be “dear” to Bassanio, it seems she is not as dear as Antonio, for whom Bassanio would “sacrifice” his “life…wife, and all the world.” Portia makes her concern and displeasure clear in an aside—“Your wife would give you little thanks for that / If she were by to hear you make the offer” (IV.i.284-5).

The anxiety associated with the threat of a prior claim is amplified in Portia’s double,

Nerissa, who responds similarly to her husband’s devotion to Antonio. Graziano matches

Bassanio’s protestations proclaiming, “I have a wife who, I protest, I love. / I would she were in heaven so she could / Entreat some power to change this currish Jew” (IV.i.285-7). In response,

Nerissa registers her anger and observes the potential harm that a husband’s divided devotion might cause: “ ‘Tis well you offer it behind her back; / The wish would make else an unquiet house” (IV.i.288-9). Nerissa frames Bassanio and Graziano’s decisions to prioritize their bond with their male friend as potentially damaging not only to Portia and Nerissa but to family life, as represented by the figure of the “unquiet house.” With their faith in their marital bonds shaken,

Portia and Nerissa set out to gauge how dear they really are to Bassanio and Graziano.

Bassanio provides Portia with the perfect opportunity to try his devotion when he urges

Balthasar to “[t]ake some remembrance of us as a tribute” in return for saving Antonio

(IV.i.418). In response, she asks Bassanio for his ring. When he hesitates, she urges “Do not draw back your hand. I’ll take no more, / And you in love shall not deny me this” (IV.i.424-5).

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Whereas Bassanio’s love for her has not stacked up against Antonio’s, Portia now attempts to discern how it compares to the love Bassanio owes the stranger who has just saved his best friend’s life. While Bassanio does not immediately give up his ring, he does devalue it, a common tactic used in enforcement suits to downplay the importance of a gift and/or the bond it forged. He describes the ring as “a trifle” and adds “I will not shame myself to give you this”

(IV.i.426-7). The audience knows that Bassanio describes the ring this way to keep his word, but

Portia might justifiably worry that in devaluing the ring Bassanio also devalues his love for her and their marriage. She presses Bassanio further claiming, “I will have nothing else, but only this” (IV.i.428). He finally admits that “this ring was given me by my wife, / And when she put it on she made me vow / That I should neither, sell, nor give, nor lose it” (IV.i.437-9). Though

Portia affects indignation—“That ‘scuse serves many men to save their gifts” (IV.i.440)—she departs satisfied that Bassanio has kept his promise. Her relief, however, is short-lived.

At Antonio’s urging, Bassanio sends his ring to Balthasar, voiding his conditional contract with Portia and placing Antonio’s wishes above his wife’s. In fact, he grants a specific request from Antonio to “value” his love over Portia’s: “Let his deservings and my love withal /

Be valued ‘gainst your wife’s commandment” (IV.i.445-7). Placing his “love…’gainst” Portia’s commandment, Antonio asks Bassanio to choose one or the other. When Bassanio yields to

Antonio and sends the ring, he not only breaches his contract with Portia by failing to uphold his agreement, but he unwittingly returns her love token to her. This act—returning a love token to the person who originally gave it—often signaled the end of a courtship or unsolemnized marriage in early modern England. So, Bassanio ends his first marriage with Portia in two different ways, and the ring becomes connected not only to the romantic bond between Portia and Bassanio but to Bassanio’s betrayal and to the loving union between Bassanio and Antonio.

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“I Dare Be Bound Again”: A New Contract

By the end of the play, it becomes clear that Portia’s ring has brought as much confusion as clarity. The token has proven an unreliable indicator of Bassanio’s love for Portia. It has inaccurately signaled that Bassanio’s “false” heart is as “void” of feelings for her as his naked hand is void of her ring, but it has truthfully revealed the limitations of Bassanio’s commitment to Portia and the depth of his devotion to Antonio. The ring has failed to provide Portia with a reliable means of seeing into Bassanio’s heart, and it has proven resistant to her attempts to assign it a clear, fixed significance. Instead, the token has circulated from Portia to Bassanio and back again, accumulating multiple meanings in the process. To confuse matters further, each new meaning the ring has acquired has not nullified the others that came before it. Bassanio gives his ring away out of love for Antonio, but this does not negate the fact that he first accepted it out of love for Portia. So, even though Portia attempts to replicate her father’s casket test by assigning her love token one and only one meaning—as the sign of Bassanio’s affective and legal ties to her—and by demanding that Bassanio use it according to her instructions, her efforts are thwarted. After Bassanio gives the ring back to Portia’s alter ego, Balthasar, at Antonio’s bequest, Portia recognizes that she must reconsider its function and significance. If not, she and her token might disappear from Bassanio’s life in the same way that her father and his caskets have disappeared from hers.

With her first marriage to Bassanio symbolically terminated, Portia spends the final scene reassessing the significance of her ring and determining how to move forward. Should she bind herself to Bassanio again, with a new item? Should her second union with Bassanio look like her first? Ultimately, she uses her old ring to establish a new kind of intimacy. Portia employs her love token to incorporate Bassanio and Antonio’s friendship into the marital bond she shares

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with her husband. In doing so, she relieves the tension between Bassanio and Antonio’s friendship and her marriage which has been prominent throughout the play. Whereas, before, each of these intimacies put the other in jeopardy, they now become part of the same intimate bond as Portia, Antonio, and Bassanio tie themselves together by exchanging Portia’s ring.

As soon as Antonio and Bassanio enter the final scene, Portia begins reconfiguring her relationship to both of them. Because she has witnessed the problems that arise when she insists that Bassanio love her above anyone else, Portia opts to support Bassanio and Antonio’s love for one another and, thereby, inserts herself into their relationship. When Bassanio enters with

Antonio, he introduces the merchant to Portia as “the man…/To whom I am so infinitely bound,” referencing not only their economic and companionate ties but the handfasting ceremony she witnessed in the preceding act. Rather than rejecting this “infinite bond,” or asserting the primacy of the union between herself and Bassanio, Portia accepts its validity. She agrees, “You should be in all sense much bound to him, / For as I hear he was much bound for you.” Portia could demand that Bassanio reject his friend in favor of her or at least that he declare that his marriage takes precedence over his friendship with Antonio. Instead, she affirms the mutual,

“infinite,” bond these men share and recognizes its value. Even when Antonio asserts that, thanks to Portia, he is “well acquitted” of his bond to Shylock (which also acquits Bassanio of his debt to Antonio), she insists upon linking Antonio and Bassanio again by asking the merchant to return her ring to Bassanio rather than doing it herself (V.i.133-7).

Before Portia produces the ring and initiates a second exchange, she, Bassanio, and

Antonio establish the terms of their new agreement. Bassanio swears “by my soul” that, if she can forgive him, he “never more will break an oath with thee.” Antonio, eager to resolve their dispute, offers, “I dare be bound again, / My soul upon the forfeit, that your lord / Will never

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more break faith advisedly” (V.i.250-3). Portia accepts Bassanio and Antonio’s terms and tells

Antonio, “Then you shall be his surety.” So, Bassanio pledges his devotion to Portia anew, and

Antonio agrees to be “bound again” (to Portia rather than Shylock) as Bassanio’s “surety.” Both men enter into contracts which are reiterations of those they have so recently been “acquitted of.”

Bassanio is indebted to Antonio a second time, and Antonio is now bound to a new benefactor for Bassanio’s sake. However, the stakes of Antonio and Bassanio’s new agreements are higher than their first. Rather than a wife, an estate, or a pound of flesh, both men stand to lose their souls if they violate their vows.

After the terms have been set, Portia seals these new contracts with the same ring that has caused so much trouble throughout the play. When she hands the ring to Antonio, she makes it a visual representation of their ties to one another. The ring becomes a sign that Portia supports and shares Bassanio’s love for Antonio and that Antonio embraces his responsibility to keep

Portia and Bassanio together. By accepting the ring from Antonio, Bassanio recognizes it as sign that he is equally bound to his dear friend and to his wife. The ring now enforces Bassanio and

Portia’s renewed union, signifies that Bassanio and Antonio’s love coexists with this union, and symbolizes Antonio’s duty to preserve this union. It is significant that, rather than using her ring to re-establish her dyadic relationship with Bassanio, Portia repurposes it to create something like a marriage among herself, Antonio, and Bassanio. The same ring which has come to signify

Bassanio’s devotion to both Portia (for whose love he originally accepted the ring) and Antonio

(for whose love he gave it away) now represents the connection among all three characters.

Though Portia implies that this is a new ring—when she tells Antonio to “bid [Bassanio to] keep it better than the other”—it is only new symbolically (V.i.254). The “new” ring forms a new type of bond, though it simultaneously retains the meanings that the “other” ring accumulated through

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its social circulation. Just as a ring passed from groom to bride in the Solemnization of Marriage

Ceremony created an infinite link between the two, this ring, passed from Portia to Antonio to

Bassanio, binds them in a complex and strong union. This new bond ensures that Portia,

Bassanio, and Antonio can live in harmony until death do they part. With this second ring exchange, Shakespeare’s play emphasizes that the intimate ties in one’s life exist in a complex and changing web and cannot be easily isolated, hierarchized, or kept static. It celebrates the possibilities that a flexible and renegotiable intimacy presents as Portia’s second union resolves the conflict in the play and brings the comedy to a close.

Ultimately, The Merchant of Venice, responds to audiences’ (both early modern and modern) discomfort with the uncertainty and ambiguity that surround the formation and preservation of intimate bonds. It works through their desire to define, differentiate, categorize, and even rank the interpersonal bonds central to their lives. As they play demonstrates, the temptation to use visible signs—in this case physical objects with symbolic and culturally assigned meanings—to understand the strength and nature of a shared intimacy and to maintain some control over that intimacy is strong. Many of Merchant’s characters insist, like the enforcement suit deponents they resemble, that there must be some way to use an object to illuminate a loved one’s motives and intentions and to definitively and permanently establish what you are to this person (spouse? friend? a nuisance?). Yet, in the end, the play suggests that to give in to these impulses as Portia initially does, is folly. Intimacies are complex, evolving, and interwoven. They must be negotiated and renegotiated among the parties involved in them.

Accepting this truth can lead to new and liberating kinds of love. Rejecting it, like Shylock and

Portia’s father, might leave you alone with (or without) your casket.

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Chapter 3

In Britomart’s Arms: Armor, Identity, and Intimacy in Books III-IV of The Faerie Queene

While Shakespeare explores how and why objects fail to communicate interior thoughts and feelings, Spenser demonstrates how the objects which a person carries with them on a daily basis can, in fact, reveal truths about their identities. In The Faerie Queene, identity is not an immutable part of an individual that resides solely in their interior, nor is intimacy based upon access to that interior. Identity is, instead, relational, co-constituted by subject and object, person and material. It is determined by characters’ dress and appearance and by the behaviors they adopt when they appear and dress like themselves. Intimacy depends upon the way others understand one’s identity through the visible components of their personhood. Because

Spenserian identity and intimacy hinge on perception, they are necessarily rooted in those visible elements of selfhood we might think of as superficial today—things like a pretty face, clothes, hairstyles, or, in the case of this argument, armor. In Spenser’s epic poem, armor obviously protects the woman (or man) within it, but, more importantly, it influences how knights inhabit their own identities and are recognized (or not) by those with whom they interact. A knight’s armor and the manner in which she uses it communicate her most important qualities and, therefore, shape her interpersonal relations. The Faerie Queene, then, suggests that the self and any intimacies built upon an understanding of that self cannot be separated from the habits that shape an individual’s identity.

I use the term “habit” frequently in this chapter to refer to characters’ garments, physical appearances, and comportment. Early modern applications of the term highlight the connection among apparel, appearance, behavior, and selfhood, making it particularly apt for the present discussion. “Habit” could indicate “bodily apparel or attire; clothing, raiment, dress” or, more

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generally, “outward form or appearance”—made up of both apparel and physical qualities like hair, stature, attractiveness, etc. The word also applied to one’s “bodily condition or constitution” which included a person’s good (or bad) looks but also described their anatomy, health, physical strength, etc.—all of which necessarily impacted their comportment. Habit could even describe one’s psychological state, personality, and character—“the way in which a person is mentally or morally constituted; the sum of the[ir] mental and moral qualities; mental constitution, disposition.” “Habit” was used not only to communicate what one was or was like but what one did and how they lived. One’s habit was “the dress or attire characteristic of [their] particular rank, degree, profession, or function.” It thus defined their social identity for others and impacted their “bearing, demeanor, deportment, behavior, [and] posture” while worn. It makes sense, then, that “habit” was also applied to a “settled disposition or tendency to act in a certain way.” A habit was (and is) “acquired by frequent repetition of the same act until it becomes almost or quite involuntary” and formed through “settled practice, custom, and usage”—like assuming the clothes and disposition appropriate to one’s profession and social position each day. 207 The term links appearance, constitution, disposition, and social role. Altogether, one’s “habit” made up her or his identity in Renaissance England.

In what follows, I will demonstrate that, through its treatment of characters’ habits,

Spenser’s epic romance presents its readers with a portrait of identity and interpersonal intimacy that challenges modern readers’ understandings of the surface/depth, subject/object, and self/other relationships as they relate to our bodies, psyches, apparel, personalities, and ultimately, our interpersonal attachments. The habit I focus on here is the suit of armor Britomart wears at (almost) all times, but I also attend to her maidenly attire and her body as well as the

207 “Habit, n.,” OED Online. 150

armor and bodies of those characters with whom she forms intimate bonds. I argue that in Books

III and IV Spenser uses Britomart’s—and, to a lesser extent, Artegall’s—martial garments to outline a model of intimacy based on exemplarity, an intimacy which relies upon readable, material exteriors rather than inscrutable interiors (the psyche or the soul). While this type of intimacy occurs throughout The Faerie Queene, I have chosen to focus on The Legend of

Chastity (Book III) and the Legend of Friendship (Book IV) because both take interpersonal intimacy as their central subject. As scholars have argued, these two books, though presented as discrete reflections on separate virtues (love and friendship), can actually be treated as “a single book on the subject of love.”208 The Legend of Chastity theorizes Spenser’s ideal of marital intimacy, marked by a faithful—but not celibate—devotion to one’s spouse and a mutual exchange of physical and emotional closeness. The Legend of Friendship explores platonic bonds and thinks through how they differ from, are similar to, and otherwise factor into the bonds between husband and wife.209 As Lauren Silberman maintains, both books work together to subject “discourses of love to critique.”210 Accordingly, they provide valuable subject matter for a study on the ways armor impacts intimate exchanges in Spenser’s epic romance.

The intimacy of exemplarity Spenser models in Books III and IV is enabled by a process that breaks down the distinction between armor and knight, one character and another. Knights’ arms—through their association with exemplars both living and dead—help them become more

208 C.S.Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1958), 338. 209 Humphrey Tonkin argues that “the Legend of Friendship describes the virtue that is a precondition of marital chastity,” and Patricia Parker finds that, when combined, Books III and IV enable Spenser’s epic romance “to enlarge its definition of…love to include friendship.” See Tonkin’s The Faerie Queene (New York: Routledge, 2015), 133; and Parker’s Inescapable Romance: Studies in The Poetics of a Mode (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1979), 93. 210 Lauren Silberman, Transforming Desire: Erotic Knowledge in Books III and IV of The Faerie Queene (Berkeley: Berkeley UP, 1995), 2. 151

fully themselves and develop their own exemplary identities. These exemplary identities in turn shape the affective relations they share with others. A character’s excellence (as registered in her habit) draws others to her, and when two characters recognize their own exemplary identities in one another they form deep, intimate bonds. When Britomart first decides to don her armor, it acts as a mirror, bringing her in touch with her future self, the Knight of Chastity—a queen, a wife, and the mother of a long line of renowned leaders. Much like Redcrosse’s armor of God

(which I will discuss briefly in the next section), Britomart’s armor simultaneously broadens her understanding of her own identity and compels her to develop into who she will be (and, paradoxically, who she has always been). It does this by serving as an emblem of the many exemplars (her future self, a Saxon Queen, Artegall ) who guide and inspire the Britoness as she works to become the historical figure she is destined to become. The armor she dons reminds her to emulate these exemplars, to be as worthy of knighthood as them, and shapes her behavior accordingly. As soon as she puts it on, she begins to inhabit her destined identity and quickly transforms from a maid to a maid martial. Once Britomart lives and fights in her armor, she can see her own exemplary qualities, a revelation which further enables her to become like the figures she reveres.

As The Knight of Chastity’s fame grows, Britomart’s armor becomes more than the emblem of someone else’s exemplarity. It begins to reflect her own greatness. Her arms serve as a sign of her strength, courage, and knightly virtue, recognized by those who have witnessed her feats on the battlefield. Yet, Britomart inspires the most awe when her female body—a sign of her chastity—appears alongside her martial apparel. During these moments, her womanly and knightly virtues are displayed side-by-side, and Britomart inspires more devotion than she could as a knight or lady alone. The full extent of her exemplarity is made visible. All who see her in

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this state become immediately bound to her (whether in lust, love, or friendship), and the revelation of her dual identity draws in her two closest companions—Amoret and Artegall.

When the warlike maid reveals her body and armor simultaneously, Amoret sees her own chastity echoed in Britomart’s modest features, and Artegall sees his courage, strength, and honor in both her face and armor. Britomart is attracted to Amoret by the womanly virtue registered in her body and comportment at Busirane’s castle and to Artegall by his manly face and illustrious armor, which mirror her own knightly virtues. Through this model of exemplary intimacy—in which identities are shaped and communicated by armor and bodies—Spenser demonstrates how material exteriors constitute identity and, subsequently, impact affective bonds.

Today we are used to thinking of intimacy as dependent upon the mutual exchange of truths and secrets about one’s interior, but much Renaissance literature indicates that early modern understandings of interpersonal connection were more varied than our own. On one hand, many texts—Othello, for instance—do express concern over the inability to see into a loved one’s heart and mind, and they explore the problems that arise when someone hides or misrepresents their true thoughts and feelings. On the other, a number of works suggest that intimacy might not necessitate the revelation of interior truths. James Bromley, for instance, proposes a body of Renaissance texts—including “The Passionate Shepherd,” Hero and

Leander, All’s Well that Ends Well, Cymbeline, The Maid’s Tragedy, Friar Bacon and Friar

Bungay, and The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania—that depict and celebrate physical rather than psychic forms of affective connection.

Bromley does clarify, though, that this group of texts was part of a counterdiscourse to dominant social narratives about intimacy that increasingly positioned access to another’s

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interior as a prerequisite for affective connection. He explains, “During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the intimate sphere coalesced around relations characterized by…interiorized desire…[which] locates the truth about the self and sexuality inside the body, thereby organizing and limiting the body’s pleasures based on a hierarchized opposition between depths and surfaces.” More and more, the truth of who someone “really” was, was located in the heart and mind. Interpersonal intimacy was increasingly defined by the sharing of personal and private information and valued according to the extent to which friends or lovers shared this kind of information with one another. A hierarchy developed which positioned relationships based on the exchange of private information above those that were not. If the interior was the site of one’s personhood, those with whom an individual shared their secrets must be more closely bound to them than those with whom they did not.211 In Renaissance England, then, a social imperative to know loved ones by accessing their private thoughts and feelings had emerged and was becoming more emphatic.

211Bromley, Intimacy and Sexuality, 1, 14. For more scholarship which places the birth of the modern (autonomous, unified, interiorized) subject in the early modern period see Gil’s Before Intimacy and Anne Ferry, The Inward Language: Sonnets of Wyatt, Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne (U of Chicago P, 1983). For criticism that places the birth of the modern subject after the Renaissance see Francis Barker, The Tremulous Private Body: Essays in Subjection (U of Michigan P, 1995) and Catherine Belsey, The Subject of Tragedy: Identity and Difference in Renaissance Drama (London: Methuen, 1985). Both argue that the subject, as we understand him or her today, emerged in the Restoration period. For scholarship that denies the notion of the independent self altogether see Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980) and Johnathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (Durham: Duke UP, 1989). Greenblatt famously argues that the subject does not exist independently but is rather “the ideological product of the relations of power in a particular society” (256). Dollimore holds that there has never been (and will never be) the type of subject we imagine to be rooted in Renaissance ideology—an autonomous individual who operates independent of social and political systems. 154

Because relationships were increasingly valued according to the extent of one’s knowledge of another’s interior, early modern England witnessed a growing concern with accessing others’ hearts and minds. Anxieties surrounding the interiorization of intimacy were taken up by authors, especially playwrights, who explored how the opacity of the self might bear upon interpersonal relationships. Characters like Iago, who explicitly states, “I am not what I am,” and Richard III, who only reveals his true self to his henchmen (and the audience), reflect concerns the one might be misled by those closest to them. No one, after all, wants to end up like

Othello or Prince Edward. As I discussed in the previous chapter, The Merchant of Venice also works through anxieties surrounding the interiorization of intimacy. By evoking marital enforcement suits, the play asks, how do you determine whether or not someone really loves you? Though Portia hopes to use the wedding ring she gives Bassanio as an indicator of his feelings for her, the play makes it abundantly clear that access to an intimate’s interior cannot be so easily obtained. Yet, as I mentioned earlier, not all early modern authors and readers agreed that the self resided solely in the interior and had to be uncovered to establish intimate bonds.

Recent work on Renaissance intimacy has demonstrated that, in response to the cultural anxieties which accompanied the interiorization of intimacy, many early modern authors depicted human connections as dependent upon bodily surfaces rather than psychic interiors.

Bromley posits that, alongside the “contraction of the intimate sphere [which] drew from and furthered the reconfiguration of embodiment and interiority that took place in the early modern period” a counterdiscourse of intimacy emerged in the work of poets and playwrights, insisting that early moderns might look to “the world of surfaces, especially corporeal ones,” rather than the psyche, to form bonds with each other. He notes that the scripts of intimacy this discourse produced “reverse [the] hierarchy [of depths over surfaces], make the external and internal

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equivalent, or completely avoid the distinction altogether.”212 Focusing more specifically on the role of emotions in interpersonal connection, Daniel Juan Gil argues that, rather than treating emotions as “deep, inner states or personalities” many early modern texts (including The Faerie

Queene) “value powerfully corporeal, often depersonalized emotions for the ways they define specific forms of connection between bodies that arise when functional connections between socially legible persons have been foreclosed.”213 As Juan Gil points out, Spenser’s epic poem brings the world of surfaces to the forefront in the intimate relations of its characters. Building upon this work, I expand the world of bodily exteriors to include the worn materials which were very much a part of early modern identities.

In conceiving of an intimacy based upon worn materials, I take up Bromley’s observation that, even though the “intimate became easily associated with inwardness because of its derivation from the Latin superlative intimus, or in-most...the Latin term can also mean proximal when it describes relationships between things.” Though Bromley goes on to describe proximal intimacy as physical closeness between two bodies, I would argue that his discussion of this mode of connection as one which “remains on the level of the surface” and “implies the possibility of abutment” rather than “bypass[ing] surfaces altogether in favor of depths” is also quite relevant to a consideration of the ways worn materials impact identity and intimacy.214

Through “abutment” Britomart’s armor shapes her, giving her a guiding emblem to carry with her and eventually helping her to become an exemplar herself. When adjacent to her exposed female body, her armor provides a striking and more complete portrait of her identity to those present, drawing them to her.

212 Bromley, Intimacy and Sexuality, 12, 6, 13. 213 Juan Gil, Before Intimacy, xii. 214 Bromley, Intimacy and Sexuality, 5. 156

By discussing how worn materials shape the intimacies Spenser’s characters share, I bring intimacy studies into conversation with criticism focused on self/object relations in

Renaissance literature and culture. Recent examples of this criticism include Ryan Perry’s chapter on book ownership in the late medieval period215 and Will Fisher’s book on the role of

“prosthetic parts” in shaping early modern gender identity. 216 Perry investigates how the content and aesthetic appearance of the texts in a person’s library put their ideals and status on display for others to admire. Fisher reads a wide variety of texts (plays, diaries, medical and political treatises, portraits, material artifacts) to explore how handkerchiefs, codpieces, beards, and hair impacted how early moderns understood their own gender and perceived others’. Most relevant to this chapter is Ann Jones and Peter Stallybrass’ work on the link between clothing and identity in Renaissance England’s literature and culture. In “Worn Worlds: Clothes and Identity on the

Renaissance Stage” Stallybrass explains how livery constituted an individual’s identity and functioned as “a means of incorporation…marking…a body so as to associate it with a specific institution.”217 In his later collaboration with Ann Jones the two of them complete a more thorough study of livery in early modern England and illustrate how, through this social practice, clothes functioned as “material establishers of identity” for both the wearer and those they encountered. They “permeate[d] the wearer, fashioning him or her from within” and “inscribe[d] themselves upon a person who [came] into being through that inscription.”218 While these studies rethink the relationship between objects and identity in Renaissance literature and culture in

215 Ryan Perry, “Objectification, Identity, and the Late Medieval Codex,” in Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and Its Meanings, eds. Tara Hamling and Catherine Richardson (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2010), 303-19. 216 Will Fisher, Materializing Gender in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006), 33. 217 See Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture, 290. 218 See Jones Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 4, 2. 157

illuminating ways, they do not consider how (or if) the same objects facilitated intimacies between or among the subjects who interacted with them as I do in this chapter.

In addition to more general work on the link between objects and identity in Renaissance

England, critics have noted Spenser’s particular interest in the ways objects construct selves.219

Again, though, this work has not considered how The Faerie Queene makes use of subject/object relations to explore the role of the object in one’s intimate life.220 Of specific interest here are

Judith Anderson and John Adams’ arguments about Britomart’s armor: that it influences her gender identity and becomes a part of her person. Anderson observes that “Britomart’s use of

[her] armor not surprisingly remakes her as well” and explains how Britomart becomes more

“androgynous” through “armored expression,” the act of using and inhabiting her armor.221

Adams similarly asserts, “Britomart, in putting on armour, enters into a partnership with the physical objects that make up her new gender assemblage together with her.”222 As Britomart wears her armor, it becomes a part of her. Together she and her martial gear become someone/something new. In what follows, I will explore not how Britomart’s use of armor reshapes her gender identity but how it shapes her identity as a whole and mediates the intimate bonds she forms with others through its constant proximity to her body.

219 For recent work on the human/object relationship in The Faerie Queene see articles by Rachel Eisendrath, Michael West, Tiffany Werth, and Julian Yates in the special issue titled “Spenser and ‘the Human’” in Spenser Studies vol. 30 (2015): 343-419. 220 See Louis A. Montrose, “Spenser’s Domestic Domain: Poetry, Property, and the Early Modern Subject,” in Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture, eds. Margreta De Grazia, Maureen Quilligan, and Peter Stallybrass (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), 44-83. 221 Judith H. Anderson, “Britomart's Armor in Spenser's Faerie Queene: Reopening Cultural Matters of Gender and Figuration,” English Literary Renaissance 39, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 76, 81. 222 John Adams, “Assembling Radigund and Artegall: Gender Identities in Spenser's Faerie Queene,” Early Modern Literary Studies: A Journal of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Literature 18, no. 1-2 (2015): 1-22. 158

Spenser’s interest in the relationship among subject, object, and identity is not unique to

Books III and IV. In fact, he devotes Book I to carefully illustrating how the armor of God helps

Redcrosse become St. George. Because Spenser outlines his theory of identity most clearly in

Book I and because he builds upon this theory as he illustrates how Britomart’s armor shapes her identity in Book III, I will begin by briefly tracking how Redcrosse’s identity changes from the moment he first puts his armor on in the opening canto to the moment he fully inhabits it (and his destined identity) in the final canto. From there, I will focus on the crucial role armor plays in

Britomart’s transformation from maid to maid martial. I will demonstrate how Queen Angela’s armor, like the Armor of God, puts Britomart in touch with exemplars she emulates as she learns to inhabit her identity as the Knight of Chastity. I will then establish not only that Britomart and her armor act upon one another to produce her knightly identity, but that her armor becomes a marker of her own exemplarity and, thereby, impacts her interpersonal relationships. When placed next to her female body—another marker of her exemplarity—her martial apparel expresses that which her body alone cannot: not only is she a paragon of modesty (as her body testifies) but she is also a model of courage, strength and knightly virtue. When both her body and armor appear together, they stun everyone present and bind them in devotion to Britomart.

Other knights and ladies see in Britomart’s martial and corporeal habits, the full extent of her exemplarity, and, recognizing those admirable qualities they value and/or possess themselves, they cannot help but love her. It is only when Britomart sees a reflection of her own identity in the body and armor of others, though, that she is drawn to them in turn and moved to form an intimate relationship with them. By outlining the ways armor not only shapes characters’ identities but their intimate relationships in The Faerie Queene, I will ultimately illustrate that

Spenser’s text puts forth a theory of identity and intimacy in which, by breaking down the

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boundaries between self and object and self and other, the visible and the material rather than the private and immaterial constitute individuals and bind them together.

Fashioning St. George: Redcrosse and his Armor

From its first canto, Book 1 of The Faerie Queene charts the process by which Redcrosse makes his armor his own and, in doing so, grows into St. George. First, Redcrosse’s (or rather,

St. George’s) armor presents him with admirable men to emulate—the most prominent being the patron saint of England. Marked with St. George’s iconic red cross as well as dents that evidence the previous holy men who have wielded it, this armor gives the new knight an identity to live up to—an identity that is simultaneously already his and one which he cannot yet fully claim. Much like the literary exemplars Timothy Hampton discusses in Writing From History, Redcrosse’s armor “provides [him] with an image of the self, a model of an ideal soul or personality” which drives him and reminds him to live up to his potential. 223 As Redcrosse uses and lives in his armor, he also acts upon it, making his garments his own. He covers his martial trappings in scrapes and blood (his and that of his enemies) during his battles with sin and evil and adds them to the marks and dents left there by the holy men who have worn and fought in the Armor of God before him. These marks, both old and new, serve as evidence that Redcrosse can fulfill his destiny. Because he is worthy to wear and use the armor marked by holy men, he too must be a holy man. When he leaves his own impressions on the armor, he both demonstrates that he can follow in the footsteps of the warriors before him and that he can forge his own path. The young knight emulates his predecessors as he records his martial and moral accomplishments on the

223 Timothy Hampton, Writing From History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990), 19. While the literary exemplars Hampton discusses are meant to form the reader into a better individual and citizen, Redcrosse’s armor functions as an exemplar within the text, helping him to fashion himself into the holy man he will become. 160

armor of God. But, the stains and scratches he adds are unique; they are his own. All of these marks and dents, then, help Redcrosse develop into the saint his armor has suggested he could be from the start.224 At times, Redcrosse strays from the identity his armor presents to him, but through separations and reunions knight and armor eventually merge. St. George’s armor becomes Redcrosse’s as Redcrosse becomes St. George. Once Spenser’s hero defeats the dragon terrorizing Una’s kingdom, man and armor finally match—St. George’s armor upon St. George’s person—a coming together which enables the hero’s victory and the closure of Book I.

The first two stanzas of Book I, canto 1 demonstrate how, by wearing the armor of God,

Redcrosse begins to form himself into the historical exemplar his armor indicates he will be (and is). When the narrator introduces Redcrosse in the first stanza, he highlights the gap between the identity Redcrosse will assume along with his armor and the one he inhabits before he puts it on—that of a shepherd. That the new knight can wear St. George’s armor at all suggests he has the capacity to become a legendary figure, but first he must learn how to fit into his new habit.

Though the narrator introduces Redcrosse as a “Gentle knight,” with all that implies about his virtuous and noble nature, he also takes care to specify that, before putting on the armor of God,

“arms…he did never wield.” Thus, Redcrosse is and is not a soldier of God as the book opens.

He wears his armor well and seems a “full jolly knight…/ As one for knightly jousts and fierce encounters fit,” but he has yet to make use of his martial garments and prove that he is indeed

“fit” to be a Christian warrior (I.i.1, 1-2, 8-9). In addition to noting the initial distance between

Redcrosse and his armor, the narrator outlines how the knight’s martial wear will help him

224 Craig A. Berry makes a similar point when he argues that, at the beginning of Book I, “Redcrosse has the protection of armor he did not earn, but possessing it empowers him to achieve the glory which validates its possession.” See Berry, “Borrowed Armor/Free Grace: The Quest for Authority in The Faerie Queene I and Chaucer's Tale of Sir Topas,” Studies in Philology 91, no. 2 (1994): 144. 161

become himself: by providing him with various religious exemplars. First, the armor presents

Redcrosse with reminders of its previous wearers, other holy and virtuous men. The “mighty arms” he wears still bear physical records of their martial feats, “old dints of deep wounds” and

“cruel marks of many a bloody field” (I.i.1, 3-4). These “marks” and “dints” present visible evidence of the moments when previous warriors demonstrated bravery as they fought God’s enemies. By wielding the armor and keeping it about him, then, Redcrosse draws inspiration from their example and strives (sometimes unsuccessfully) to model his behavior accordingly.

In addition to the “marks” and “dints” on St. George’s armor, the crosses painted on it also serve as “material mnemonics,”225 which shape Redcrosse’s behavior by continually reminding him of his divine purpose: “on his breast a bloody Crosse he bore, / The dear remembrance of his dying Lord / For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore…Upon his shield the like was also scored” (I.i.2, 1-3). Redcrosse looks to his armor not just for protection but to remind himself of his core values as “The Patron of true Holiness.” The bloody cross on his chest serves as a “remembrance of his dying Lord,” a reminder that Christ died a brutal and painful death to save all mankind from their sins. As the knight suffers and fights for good, the cross reminds him that he is emulating Christ, the ultimate model for a man of God. It also reminds him how much God, for whose “sweet sake” he wears the cross, deserves his unwavering devotion and how small his sacrifices and sufferings are when compared to those

Christ endured. This “glorious badge” marks him as a holy man and ensures that he will do all in his power to be like his Lord, who died to save him. Yet, to fulfill his destiny the former ploughman must transform not only his social behavior but his own orientation toward his arms by taking ownership of them. He must make his own impressions upon his martial apparel.

225 Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 14. 162

Over the course of Book I, Redcrosse does just that, adding his own “marks” and “dints” to his armor. Its surface begins to display not only the proof of its former wearers’ courage and religious devotion, but Redcrosse’s as well. When he chokes Error, she covers him in “a flood of poison horrible and black” (I.i.20, 2), and when he fights Sansfoy a “large share” of his helmet is

“hewed out of the rest” (I.ii.18, 8). During his battle against Sansfoy’s brother, Sansjoy, both

Redcrosse and Sansjoy’s “helmets hewn deep shew marks of eithers might,” and they bleed so profusely that “the arms, that earst so bright did show, / Into a pure vermillion now are dyed”

(I.v.9, 5-6). Bearing the marks of his battles, the hero’s armor begins to reflect his own holiness and valor back to him—and to those who encounter him—emblematizing his devotion to fighting evil and living a virtuous life. As he closes the gap between his present and future identity, the evidence of his own battles recorded upon his armor becomes something he carries with him at all times, a material reminder of his previous victories and losses. Through the recollection of his bitter defeats and his growing number of victories Redcrosse’s sense of self develops, helping him embody the identity he hopes to assume.

Throughout Book I, Redcrosse becomes and, at times, ceases to become St. George.

Sometimes he inhabits his saintly identity perfectly, but he also suffers setbacks—most of which occur after he sets his armor and, consequently, his saintly identity aside. After his first battle,

Redcrosse lodges with a disguised Archimago and sleeps unarmed in the magician’s home.

Without his armor about him, the knight is easily fooled by the false Una whom the sorcerer conjures up, and he abandons the real Una, the symbol of the one True Church. In canto 7, weary from fighting Sansjoy, Redcrosse again disarms, and Duessa finds him by Diana’s

Fountain. She easily persuades him to drink from the fountain, and the water makes him “faint and feeble,” weakening him morally and physically. He succumbs to its power and is “poured

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out in looseness on the grassy ground” with the monstrous seductress, “both careless of his health and of his fame.” His “carelessness” is both active and passive. In one sense, Redcrosse intentionally sets aside concerns for his moral development and his reputation just as he intentionally removes his armor. In another sense, he forgets the importance of his “fame” and his destiny when the emblem of his saintly identity is out of sight and mind. He forgets himself and ceased to behave like a holy man. This carelessness opens him up to Duessa’s influence to the extent that, when the giant Orgoglio approaches, he cannot orient himself (mentally or physically) toward his “unready weapons” in time to fight (I.vii.7, 2-3, 9). Without the trappings so integral to his sense of identity secured around him, Redcrosse cannot address himself to battle. He succumbs to fear, becoming “inwardly dismayed” and, as a result, can

“scarcely…wield his bootless blade” (11, 6-9). Without access to his arms, Redcrosse cannot inhabit the saintly identity materialized and emblematized by his armor. Orgoglio defeats him and takes him hostage, and Redcrosse suffers a lengthy separation from his martial garments.

Because Redcrosse’s armor remains crucial to the maintenance of his identity, his separation from it leaves him physically and emotionally discomposed (and decomposed). This separation changes him into someone else. When Arthur and Una rescue Redcrosse from

Orgoglio’s dungeon, “His rawbone arms, whose mighty brawned bowrs / Were wont to rive steel plates, and helmets hew, / Were clean consumed, and all his vital powers / Decayed, and all his flesh shrunk up like withered flowers.” When confronted with her beloved’s reduced circumstances, Una observes, “of your self ye thus berobbed are / And this misseeming hew your manly looks doth mar” (I.viii.41, 6-9; 42, 8-9). Along with his armor, Redcrosse is “berobbed” of the self it emblematizes and the victories it records. He is robbed of the self he is within the armor of God. He is still himself in that he is a man who exists, but he is no longer himself in

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that the saintly identity his armor helped him embody had become his and is now lost. Redcrosse experiences his loss physically and emotionally. The muscles in his arms, used to wielding a sword in battle, lose their “vital powers” and his body, separated from that which enables his exemplarity, begins to “decay” and resemble a dying flower. He grows pale and no longer looks or acts like his “manly” self. Even once he is reunited with his armor, Redcrosse does not immediately re-assume his identity. On his first quest post-imprisonment, Redcrosse proves so unprepared that he gives in to Despair and attempts to kill himself—and would succeed if Una were not there to stop him.

To help him reclaim what he has lost of his identity, Una brings the broken knight to the

House of Holiness where men of God heal him physically and spiritually. There Redcrosse learns that he is not a fairy but an Englishman, one who “Shalt be a Saint and thine own nations friend / And Patron: thou Saint George shalt called be / Saint George of merry England, the sign of victory” (I.x.61, 7-9). His ability to live up to his armor now certain, Redcrosse is finally ready to become a saint, and he sets out to vanquish the dragon terrorizing Una’s kingdom. The hero battles the dragon three times. His first and second attempts result in his death and rebirth

(the well of life and the tree of life revive him). During the third battle—having received divine aid twice—Redcrosse’s faith in God and himself is at its strongest, and he easily slays the dragon, finally closing the gap between Redcrosse and St. George and becoming the rightful owner of his armor. His identity no longer exists in the realm of paradox. His selfhood no longer relies upon his armor. He is now completely and permanently the patron saint of England.

By carefully detailing Redcrosse’s relationship to his armor, Book I illustrates that, for

Spenser, identity is not synonymous with subjectivity. It is not an internal phenomenon but is

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shaped by the material world. Humans and their “worn worlds” 226 exist in a reciprocal relationship. While Spenser is certainly not the only early modern author to explore the relationship between subject and object, human and habit, he does outline a unique model of selfhood in Book I of The Faerie Queene. Armor works upon its wearer by presenting him with exemplars to emulate. As a knight attempts to become like his exemplars, he acts upon his armor—marking and denting it in battle—and eventually takes ownership of his martial wear and the exemplary identity it emblematizes. He becomes the man his armor has always made him out to be. In Books III and IV, Spenser builds upon this model of identity as he more explicitly identifies the process by which Britomart’s “worn world” shapes her. He also outlines how, in molding and emblematizing her identity, the female knight’s armor enables intimacies based upon the visible, material components of her person.

A “Maid Martiall” Made

In contrast to Redcrosse, Britomart transforms from a “young Damsel” to a “warlike maid” quickly, easily, and without wavering (57, 2). Whereas the Knight of Holiness gravitates toward and away from his armor as he comes to fit it, Britomart assumes her identity as the

Knight of Chastity directly after she dons her martial habit for the first time. Though Britomart adopts her destined identity much more quickly and easily than Redcrosse, the process by which her armor helps her become someone new is the same. Her suit of armor, like the armor of God, is both the emblem of those figures who inspire her and the agent that helps her become like them. Once she puts Queen Angela’s armor on, she beings to emulate the Saxon queen, other female knights, and the knight she herself will become. As Britomart lives and fights in her

226 I borrow this term from Jones and Stallybrass who define it as “a world of social relations put upon the wearer’s body.” Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 3. 166

armor, striving to be like these extraordinary knights, she becomes the embodiment of their virtue. Though this process of transformation works similarly for both characters, Spenser details how Britomart’s armor shapes her much more explicitly than he describes the impact of the

Armor of God upon Redcrosse. He even uses Glauce as a mouthpiece who pointedly encourages

Britomart to imitate various “ensamples” and “paragons” by putting on Queen Angela’s armor.

As the narrator tells us, these exemplars take hold in Britomart’s mind and transform her into a knight as soon as she dons her martial gear. Having adopted her new identity quickly and easily,

Britomart becomes an exemplar herself quite early in Book III—something Redcrosse does not achieve until the end of his book. Spenser then uses the remainder of Books III and IV to explore how Britomart’s armor, as a visible component of her identity, shapes her intimate encounters.

Just as Redcrosse only fully embodies his saintly identity after discovering who he really is at the House of Holiness, Britomart becomes the Knight of Chastity after Merlin tells her of her fate—to marry and fight beside the knight whose love-inducing image has appeared in her father’s enchanted mirror. In contrast to Redcrosse, she learns of her destiny at the beginning of her quest rather than the end. Merlin assures her of her success before she even begins to pursue her future identity as a wife, a warrior, and the matriarch of a long line of “renowned kings, and sacred Emperors” (iii.23, 1). The sorcerer tells her she must find her beloved and bring him back to Britain, “his native soil,” where both will ward off invaders (iii.27, 7). During their battle against “The power of foreign Paynims” (iii.27, 9), Britomart will “proof of thy prow valiance…make, t’increase thy lovers pray” (iii.28, 3-4). Even afterward, she and Artegall “both in arms shall bear great sway” for a “long time” until she becomes a mother (iii.28, 5). Merlin’s account of Britomart’s future orients her toward her new identity, ensuring her that the knightly habit she wears will belong to (and on) her. But, she must still put her armor on, fight in it, and

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live as a knight to complete her transition from maid to maid martial. She must also rely upon various examples of excellence for guidance as she learns to embody her destined identity.

Arguably, Artegall is Britomart’s first exemplar. His illustrious image, which appears to her in Merlin’s enchanted mirror, begins her quest, and he becomes, perhaps, the most impactful embodiment of knightly excellence she encounters. Despite the importance of the mirror episode,

I will set aside any discussion of Artegall’s influence upon Britomart’s identity for the time being. In this section I will instead focus only on those figures overtly identified as Britomart’s exemplars by Glauce and the narrator.

Once Merlin has revealed Britomart’s destiny, Glauce suggests quite explicitly that the young maid should emulate the “ensample” set by other female warriors to make herself into a knight (III.iii.56, 8):

And sooth, it ought your courage much inflame, To hear so often, in that royal house, From whence to none inferior ye came: Bards tell of many women valorous, Which have full many feats adventurous, Performed, in paragon of proudest men: The bold Bunduca, whose victorious, Exploits made Rome to quake, stout Guendolen, Renowned Martia, and redoubted Emmilen. (III.iii.54)

Here Glauce suggests that, by thinking of “valorous,” “victorious,” “stout,” “renowned,” and

“redoubted” women, Britomart can form herself into another. She encourages the young maid to draw connections between herself and these warriors, telling her charge that they displayed their martial prowess “in that royal house / From whence to none inferior ye came.” In other words,

Britomart should see herself as equal to these women and, therefore, capable of performing the same “feats.” Accordingly, their stories “ought [her] courage much inflame,” assuring her that she also has the potential to become a “valorous” knight and inspiring her to follow in the

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footsteps of the legendary warriors who have come before her. Just as these women have “full many feats adventurous performed in paragon of proudest men,” Britomart will make Bunduca,

Guendolen, Martia, and Emmilen her paragons—a word which, in the period, could mean “a person of outstanding merit…who serves as a model of some quality” or “a match, an equal… a rival or competitor.” 227 Britomart is to keep these women in mind, emulating them and striving to match or even surpass them. After mentioning a series of figures in passing, Glauce dwells at length upon the ideal exemplar for Britomart: the virgin Queen Angela, “no whit less fayre, then terrible in fight” who “hath the leading of a Martial / And mighty people, dreaded more then all /

The other Saxons” (56, 3-6). She instructs Britomart, “Therefore, faire Infant her ensample make

/ Unto thy self, and equal courage to thee take” (8-9). Again, Glauce asserts that Britomart can draw strength from an exemplar. Keeping Queen Angela in mind will give the young maid courage and help her inspire in others the same dread as the Saxon virgin.

As the narrator tells us, Britomart does indeed take the “ensamples” Glauce presents to heart. The nurse’s

hearty words so deep into the mind Of the young Damsel sunk, that great desire Of warlike arms in her forthwith they tined, And generous stout courage did inspire, That she resolv’d, unweeting to her Sire, Advent’rous knighthood on her self to don, And counseled with her Nurse, her Maid’s attire To turn into a massy habergeon, And bade her all things put in readiness anon. (iii, 57) The examples of these female warriors take hold “deep into” Britomart’s mind and orient her toward her identity as the Knight of Chastity. The mental images she forms of them inspire a

“great desire of warlike arms” and awaken “generous stout courage” within her, just as Glauce

227 “Paragon, n. and adj.,” OED Online. 169

predicts. In this way, they inform her identity and become linked to those arms Britomart does eventually adopt. Filled with courage and a desire to put on armor, Britomart “resolves” to become a knight, a verb whose loaded meanings should not be overlooked. First, the more common meaning of “resolve” (the one typically used today) connotes strength and certainty. To resolve is a forceful act, “to determine, settle, or decide upon,” to “fix upon a course of action,” or to “make (something) one’s firm intention.” This verb communicates that, in the face of these exemplars, Britomart displays great determination and firmness, traits which will no doubt serve her well as a knight. More interestingly, “to resolve” also meant “to change or be transformed into some other form or state.” While this term typically referred to a change in states of matter—a solid melting into a liquid or a mist condensing into a pool of water—the language of transformation pertains to Britomart here. The pause after “she resolved,” in the passage above, invites the audience to read the phrase as “she transformed” (from a “young damsel” to a “maid martial”). That the sentence continues, expanding upon what exactly Britomart resolved to do, indicates that the phrase also means “she made a firm decision.” Both uses make it clear that

Britomart needs the exemplars from which she draws inspiration to transform herself into the woman she is meant to be. The heroine repeats the language of resolution when she discusses her decision to turn “her Maid’s attire…into a massy habergeon” with Glauce. Rather than trading her woman’s weeds for a suit of armor, Britomart plans to transform (almost magically) her attire in the same way that she has resolved herself. She does not set aside her maidenly habit to put on armor. Her clothing changes form yet retains the same elements such that the materials with which she has dressed herself as a maid will also attire her as a knight. Her habit resolves from a dress to a coat of mail just as she resolves from a maid into a warrior. Her womanly and knightly identities have merged, and her attire reflects this coming together.

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It is of no small importance, then, that the suit of armor Britomart adopts once belonged to the woman who is likely her most fitting “ensample”: Queen Angela. As fate would have it, a

“band of Britons” had recently “gotten a great pray / Of Saxon goods” which now resided in

King Reynce’s armory. Among these goods is, conveniently, a “goodly Armor, and full rich array, / Which long’d to Angela, the Saxon Queen, / All fretted round with gold, and goodly well beseen” (III.iii.58, 7-9). It is with this armor that Britomart will complete her transition from young damsel to the Knight of Chastity. With her new habit, Britomart plans “Advent’rous knighthood on herself to don.” Here the narrator conflates “adventurous knighthood” with the armor Britomart plans to adopt, as when he describes her wish to become a knight as “a great desire of warlike arms.” These arms are more than material, then. They enforce a way of being, a new identity that Britomart will inhabit as she wears them, fights in them, and moves through the world in them. When she “dons” her martial garments, Britomart adopts the habit (in all senses of the word) of their former owner. That she does so with astonishing ease indicates that she has always had the capacity to fill Angela’s shoes. She only needed the right example(s) to follow.

If armor is identity in the way that the narrator suggests when he equates “adventurous knighthood” with martial gear, Queen Angela’s armor inevitably shapes Britomart. Wearing the

Saxon ruler’s garments makes the young maid inclined to imitate her in order to inhabit a new identity as the Knight of Chastity. Living inside this armor keeps her constantly in touch with her

“ensample” and encourages her to comport herself as she imagines Angela would. She carries with her a reminder of what she can achieve and how she might embody knighthood. It is no wonder, then, that with “practice small,” Britomart learns to combine her physical attributes— she is “tall” and “large of limb”—with her knightly garments to become, like Queen Angela, a

“maid Martial” (III.iii.53, 3-9). Just like Angela, who is “no whit less fayre then terrible in fight,”

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Britomart becomes equal parts fair woman and fierce fighter as she uses and lives in her armor.

As the narrator explains in canto 1 (where he introduces the heroine as a seasoned warrior),

Britomart “was full of amiable grace, / And manly terror mixed therewithal” (III.i.46, 1-2).

Thus, by inhabiting Angela’s armor and emulating her, Britomart internalizes her grace and ferocity along with the admirable traits of the other female exemplars Glauce presents.

Disarming Britomart

Throughout Book III, Britomart makes a name for herself in Faery Land, defeating every foe she encounters and quickly developing into an “ensample” herself. At the beginning of canto

4—where the narrator laments that female warriors have become a thing of the past—he wishes for a return of “the warlike feats, which Homer spake / Of bold Penthesilee, which made a lake of Greekish blood so oft in Trojan plain” of “stout Debora” who “strake / Proud Sisera” and

Camill who “hath slain / The huge Orsilochus” (III.iv.2, 4-9). Though he expresses admiration for these women, he adds that “these, and all that else had puissance, / Cannot with noble

Britomart compare, / Aswell for glory of great valiance, / As for pure chastity and virtue rare /

That all her goodly deeds do well declare” (3, 1-5). She surpasses these legendary women because she exhibits not only “great valiance” but “pure chastity” and “virtue rare.” While

Penthesilea leaves lakes of blood on the battlefield and Debora and Camill “strike” and “slay” their opponents fiercely, the narrator does not mention their womanly virtue, only Britomart’s. It seems she is not only a better warrior but a more virtuous woman. Later in this canto, when

Britomart soundly defeats Marinell in battle, the narrator declares her “th’ensample” of womanly

“might,” again setting her up as a paragon to be admired and emulated both as a woman and as a warrior (44, 7), and in Book IV, canto v, after winning Satyrane’s tournament, he calls her “the most redoubted Britoness” (IV.v.13, 1), suggesting that she has supplanted “redoubted

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Emmilen,” one of the exemplary women Glauce proposes as a model for Britomart in Book III, canto iii. So, her armor begins to signify not only her role models’ exemplarity, but her own as well, an exemplarity marked both by “might” and womanly virtue.

As Britomart defeats more and more foes, other characters increasingly associate her armor with her strength and courage. Those who have the fortune (or misfortune) to witness her skill on the battlefield begin to recognize her martial trappings and connect them to her deadly proficiency. After defeating all her opponents in Satyrane’s tournament, she earns the title

“Knight of the Heben spear,” and this spear becomes a marker of her identity as the Knight of

Chastity. Artegall (assuming that Britomart is male) identifies the knight who defeated him in the tournament as “A stranger knight…unknown by name, / But known by fame, and by an Heben spear, / with which he all that met him down did bear” (IV.vi.6, 3-5). Even though Britomart remains a “stranger knight” who does not reveal her name or body, those who encounter her

“know” her by her knightly deeds and by her spear. Artegall draws a parallel between the glory

Britomart has earned as a knight and her primary weapon. In doing so, he emphasizes the important role the maid martial’s spear plays in constituting her exemplary identity. Her weapon becomes as much a part of her as the fame she earns when she uses it. For this reason, when

Scudamour hears Artegall “mention…that spear” as he describes Britomart’s performance at the tournament, “he wist right well, that it was Britomart” Artegall encountered (1-2). Again,

Britomart’s spear distinguishes her. It is, in part, who she is. In fact, in the lines above, Britomart and her spear are grammatically positioned as one and the same: “it was Britomart.” Importantly, this spear also links Britomart to Minerva228 (an association the narrator later makes explicit) and

228 Michael Leslie, “Armor,” in The Spenser Encyclopedia, ed. by A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 61. 173

so suggests to all who see Britomart bear it that she embodies the same martial ability and womanly virtue as the virgin goddess of warfare. In addition to her spear, characters recognize

Britomart’s arms and shield as part of her identity. After being defeated by Britomart in Book III,

Paridell encounters her again in Book IV. Though he would like to steal her fair companion

(Amoret) from her, he remains “mindful how he late by one was felled, / That did those arms and that same scutcheon weld.” He decides to leave Amoret alone as he has “small lust to buy his love so dear” (IV.i.34, 4-6). So, Britomart’s armor becomes not only an emblem of the exemplars who guide and shape her but a part of her identity, a material reminder (to her) and indication (to others) of her knightly skills and virtues.

It is only when she removes some or all of her martial garments, though, that Britomart reveals the true extent of her exemplarity. While fully armed, Britomart is the pattern of martial greatness, a knight others fear and/or admire. Without her armor, she appears as the model of female beauty and chastity, but her strength and bravery are not visible. However, each time her face and/or body emerges from her suit of armor, her unsurpassed “pure chastity and virtue rare”—with which the narrator claims even the great female warriors of legend “cannot… compare”—becomes apparent. It is as Redcrosse says: “Faire Lady she seem’d, like Lady dressed, / But fairest knight alive when armed was her breast” (III.ii.4, 8-9). When armed, she does not cease to be a “fair” woman, but she also becomes the “fairest knight alive,” possessing a beauty enhanced the way her two habits (body and armor) complement each other. She proves the embodiment of the most exceptional manly qualities (courage, strength, honor) and the most exceptional womanly qualities (beauty, holiness, chastity). In those moments when woman and armor appear together, her hybrid identity materializes and draws in anyone and everyone present as they see in her what both man and woman should aspire to be. As a result, the removal

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of her armor facilitates intimacies Britomart cherishes as well as one-sided attachments she might rather avoid.

As Britomart herself comes to embody the virtues of her exemplars, Spenser illustrates not only how her armor has shaped her identity but how it projects that identity for others to see and, accordingly, mediates her interactions with those she meets. Her exemplarity draws others to her when they recognize in her habit(s) a virtue they also value or possess (or imagine they do). Britomart, in turn, is attracted to those whose garments and bodies reflect the admirable parts of her identity back to her. In this way, then, armor and other habits erase the boundaries between person and material, self and other, and facilitate intimacies based upon the visible, physical components of personhood. When two characters both wear armor and inhabit it in parallel ways, they recognize themselves in one another. They understand each other’s armor as part of who they are. They can see that their identities overlap, that there is something they have in common, and this shared component of their identities attracts them to one another. The same is true of bodies, most often faces. One’s body and the way she or he carries it communicates her or his virtues. When a character sees her own virtues mirrored in another’s form and comportment, she cannot help but be attracted. This ability habits have to blur the distinction between self and other accounts for Britomart’s deep attraction to Artegall’s “manly” face and armor and Amoret’s chaste beauty. It also explains why Britomart elicits love and adoration from nearly everyone she meets, especially when both her body and armor are visible.

Notably, Britomart only exposes her body after a display of martial might. She lifts her visor at Castle Joyous after defeating Malecasta’s six “liegeman” (44, 8) alongside Redcrosse.

She disarms completely at Malbecco’s castle once she finishes embarrassing Paridell in a joust.

When she comes upon a castle that only admits knights accompanied by ladies, she defeats a

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stranger knight who attempts to claim Amoret as his own before she removes her helmet to gain entrance. Even when Artegall exposes her face during battle, Britomart has the chance to prove herself a formidable opponent first. Her demonstrations of martial might add to the admiration and awe she inspires when it comes to light that she is not only a knight, but the “fairest knight alive.” In these moments especially, her armor testifies to her heroic comportment, so recently demonstrated. The stunning beauty and modesty written on her body both shock and delight because, moments ago, her female identity was concealed. She appears not only as an exemplar of knighthood or womanhood, but as a paragon in which two different exemplary identities mix.

Britomart exposes her body twice in Book III and twice more in Book IV. All of these episodes demonstrate how her exemplarity elicits love and admiration from those who witness it, but it is not until Book IV that Britomart forms bonds with those in whom she recognizes her own admirable qualities. Not all who adore the warlike damsel are adored by her. There are few who are as chaste, brave, and virtuous as the Knight of Chastity, and, for this reason, she typically does not see herself in others’ habits. In Book III, Britomart awes a number of unsavory characters when she exposes her face and body. Malecasta, Satyrane, Paridell, and Malbecco feel strong attraction to her when they see her female body emerge from her suit of armor. Britomart, however, does not recognize her own virtues in these characters, and, therefore, feels no attachment to them. In Book IV, however, Britomart begins to form mutual affective bonds. She and Amoret see their modesty reflected in each other’s bodies. She and Artegall recognize their honor, strength, and bravery in each other’s faces, armor, and fighting skills. Upon distinguishing the shared components of their identities in each other’s habits, Britomart and her two great loves form deep and lasting intimate relationships. While those episodes of disarming in Book III do not depict Britomart forming mutual affective connections, they do illustrate in detail how and

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why Britomart’s hybrid identity inspires awe and devotion when it is discovered. Spenser builds on these episodes as he explores the intimacies Britomart develops with Artegall and Amoret in

Book IV. So, I will discuss Book III’s episodes of disarming here.

Britomart first exposes her body at Castle Joyous. Because the castle is “full of Damsels and of Squires, / Dancing and reveling both day and night, / And swimming deep in sensual desires,” Britomart uncovers as little of herself as possible. Yet, exposing even a sliver of her face still brings the heroine trouble (39, 6-7). While everyone else removes their armor, “the brave Maid would not disarmed be, / But only vented up her umbriere / And so did let her goodly visage to appear” (III.i.42, 7-9). Importantly, her “visage” rather than her “face” appears here.

While the term “visage” might seem to refer only to the visible portion of Britomart’s face, I would argue that it refers, instead, to the image of her exposed face within a helmet. A visage is specifically defined as “the front part of the head, of a person.” With only her visor lifted, the

“front part” of Britomart’s head certainly includes her face and all that surrounds it. What’s more, a visage can refer more generally to the “appearance or aspect” of a person or thing.229 So, what has “appeared” is not just Britomart’s face, but a more complete picture of her praiseworthy traits. Rather than suggesting that Britomart’s true identity (her womanhood) “appears” through her visor, the statement that her “visage appeared” indicates that her hybrid identity as a virtuous woman and unsurpassed warrior has been revealed in this moment.

When Britomart’s dual identities appear together, she far outshines the other knights at

Castle Joyous. “Such was the beauty and the shining ray, / With which fayre Britomart gave light unto the day” that all of the other knights surrounding her seemed “but shadows.” The narrator attributes her superiority not just to the beauty of her face, but to the assemblage of armor and

229 “Visage, n.,” OED Online. 177

woman she presents to everyone around her. Comparing her visage to the natural world, he equates Britomart’s face within her helmet to “faire Cynthia in darksome night,” whose rays break through the surrounding clouds. Like the moon, her light cannot stand out without that which surrounds it (43; 45, 9). The narrator further observes that she outshines the other knights because “she was full of amiable grace, / and manly terror mixed therewithal” (46, 1-2). Her

“amiable grace” is written on her face, and her armor presents a reminder of the “manly terror” she has just exhibited in her fight against Malecasta’s liegemen. The mixture of the two understandably drives Malecasta to distraction, moving her to go so far as to climb into

Britomart’s bed to be close to (who she assumes is) the man of her dreams. Unfortunately for

Malecasta, Britomart does not return her affection. The Britoness sees in Malecasta’s “shameless beauty” and “false eyes” which she “did rove at her with crafty glance” a “loathy sight” (48, 9;

49, 6-7). There are no signs of chastity or virtue on Malecasta’s body, and Britomart is, therefore, repelled by rather than attracted to her.

Near the end of Book III, at Malbecco’s castle, Britomart disarms completely and awes the men she fought moments before. Despite the stormy weather, Malbecco denies Satyrane,

Paridell, and Britomart entry to his home, leaving them to vie for space in a small shed.

Britomart and Paridell fight until Satyrane intervenes. Then, the three of them decide to join forces and persuade Malbecco to let them in. Once they gain entry, all are forced to take off their wet armor, and everyone is stunned to find a female knight in their midst. Just as it did at Castle

Joyous, the appearance of Britomart’s body alongside her armor awes everyone present. As what, moments ago, would have seemed an impossibility (that there is a woman inside

Britomart’s armor) becomes undeniable, the true extent of Britomart’s exemplarity appears all the more impressive. To highlight Satyrane and Paridell’s enrapturement, the narrator describes

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the warlike Britoness’ unarming in the same way that a lyric poet might reverently described his beloved undressing:

Though whenas vailed was her lofty crest, Her golden locks, that were in trammels gay Upbounden, did them selves adown display, And raught unto her heels; like sunny beams, That in a cloud their light did long time stay, Their vapour vaded, shew their golden gleams, And through the persant air shoot forth their azure streams.

She also doffed her heavy habergeon, Which the faire feature of her limbs did hide, And her well plighted frock, which she did won To tuck about her short, when she did ride, She low let fall, that flowed from her lank side Down to her foot, with careless modesty. Then of them all she plainly was espied, To be a woman wight, unwist to bee, The fairest woman wight, that ever eye did see. (ix, 20, 3-9; 21)

First she takes off her helmet, and her “golden locks” (described in typical Petrarchan fashion as

“sunny beams”) fall down to her heels, cascading over her armed body. Then, she removes her

“heavy habergeon,” uncovering the “faire feature of her limbs.” Up to this point, the blazon centers on disrobing, but next Britomart untucks her frock and lets it fall “down to her foot, with careless modesty.” While the maid martial’s disarming might at first seem only an erotic description of a female undressing, this detail complicates such a reading. Britomart covers up her body rather than exposing it. What she actually reveals is her womanly virtue, the previously hidden part of her dual identity. This womanly virtue is signified by the beauty of her face and hair and by her long dress which reaches to her feet and effectively hides her body from the stunned men in her presence. Rather than exposing herself, then, Britomart reveals the maidenly garment she wears underneath her knightly apparel. She does not trade one for the other (her armor remains somewhere near her, and she has always worn her dress under it) but places her

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two habits side-by-side. She presents the signs of her exemplary chastity and “manly” honor together, for all to see. The peeling away of her armor, like (and not like) the undressing of a

Petrarchan beloved, grabs and holds the attention of her onlookers as they revel in what they have discovered.

In this state, dress on and armor laid down beside her, Britomart “plainly was espied.”

This might seem to indicate that there is a woman hidden within Britomart’s armor who can finally be seen “plainly” when she removes her trappings. Yet, the final couplet of stanza 21 indicates that Britomart is “plainly espied” not to be a woman, but “To be a woman wight, unwist to be, / The fairest woman wight, that ever eye did see.” Like the multiple definitions of

“visage” discussed above, the numerous meanings of “wight” prove crucial to understanding this moment of disarming. As a noun, “wight” could refer to “a living being in general; a creature,” a man or woman. This definition would, in fact, suggest that Britomart appears as a fair woman when she disarms. What if, though, “wight” is not a noun, but an adjective, as in “she plainly was espied to be a wight woman”? In that case, “wight” might mean “strong and courageous, esp. in warfare; having or showing prowess; valiant, doughty, brave, bold, stout.” This adjective certainly describes the Knight of Chastity, especially given that she has just unseated Paridell so forcefully that he could not stand without the help of his squire. What’s more, “wight” also denoted “supernatural, preternatural, or unearthly beings” in the Renaissance. 230 So, Britomart

“plainly” appears here not just as a strong, courageous, and fair woman but a womanly deity. Her two identities combined make her appear so stunning that she becomes goddess-like. These three lines assert that Britomart “plainly” reveals herself not as a woman but as a “woman wight,” a

230 “Wight, n., adj., adv.,” OED Online.

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female warrior, the “fairest” female warrior they have ever seen, in fact—so fair that she might be mistaken for a goddess.

Specifically, the narrator compares the disarming Britomart to a fellow “woman wight”—

Bellona, or Minerva, the goddess of warfare. She is

Like as Bellona, being late returned From slaughter of the Giants conquered; Where proud Encelade, whose wide nostrils burned With breathed flames, like to a furnace red, Transfixed with her spear, down tumbled dead From top of Hemus, by him heaped high; Hath loosed her helmet from her lofty head, And her Gorgonian shield gins to untie From her left arm, to rest in glorious victory. (22)

Such a comparison between two “wight” women disarming emphasizes the splendor which surrounds Britomart in this moment. The Britoness appears so elevated that she resembles the ultimate exemplar for women warriors, the goddess of warfare herself. Moreover, she favors

Minerva in a moment of triumph, as she “slaughters” giants, “transfixes” them with her spear, and enjoys a “glorious victory.” This comparison between the disarming Britomart and the goddess of warfare is not singular. For example, the narrator again compares her to “Bellona in that warlike wise…with shield and armor fit” when she removes her helmet to prove she is a woman in Book IV, canto i (i.14, 6-7). Both episodes makes it abundantly clear that Britomart’s identity as “woman wight” inspires awe in all who witness her unveiling and that the full extent of her exemplary identity can only be understood when her female habit and her suit of armor appear together.

The narrator clearly expresses how Britomart’s armor draws others to her when he describes Paridell and Satyrane’s reaction to her unveiling. As they “beheld” her they “smitten were / With great amazement of so wondrous sight” and “stood gazing as if sudden great affright

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/ Had them surprised.” “At last avizing right, / Her goodly personage and glorious hew, / Which they so much mistook,” these men see Britomart more fully than they had before. Satyrane and

Paridell are certainly “smitten” with and “surprised” by the “wondrous sight” of the beautiful woman underneath Britomart’s armor, but it quickly becomes clear that, more than Britomart’s sex, the revelation of the dual identities which make up her “goodly personage” and “glorious hew” produces the shock, wonder, and delight they experience. Once Britomart begins removing her armor, everyone present realizes that two seemingly opposed identities mix in her to produce the “fairest knight alive.” Because this initial moment of revelation has such a strong affective impact upon Satyrane and Paridell, they continue to “take delight in their first error” (assuming

Britomart was a male knight) after the moment has passed. They return to the instant of unveiling—whether within their minds or in conversation—to again “take delight” in the knowledge that a fair woman wields Britomart’s armor. Even once she fully divests herself of her arms, Satyrane and Paridell continue to understand her in terms of her relationship to martiality. Their “wonder of her beauty” and tendency to fix their eyes upon her as “note their hungry view be satisfied / But seeing still the more desir’d to see” stems not only from her loveliness but from its inextricable connection to the martial feats they have watched her perform and the armor which has enabled her to perform them. Though Satyrane and Paridell certainly acknowledge her beauty, Britomart’s onlookers “most…marveled at her chivalry, / And noble prowess, which they had approved.” The seeming incompatibility of Britomart’s two identities leads those around her to “marvel” at the impossibility of her existence and to fall to

“contemplation of [her] divinity.” Ultimately, the sight of Britomart removing her armor results in devotion: “every one her liked, and every one her loved.” Even Paridell still “partly discontent

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/ With his late fall…was soon won his malice to relent, / Through gracious regard of her faire eye, / And knightly worth, which he too late did try, / Yet tried did adore” (23-5).

As at Castle Joyous, all of this adoration is entirely one-sided. The narrator is careful to state that Britomart does not feel any particular attachment to Satyrane or Paridell. He tells us that, while everyone liked and loved her, “none of all them her thereof amoved.” This is the first encounter Britomart has had with these knights. She has fought them briefly and seen them divested of their armor but has not otherwise interacted with them. Yet, Satyrane and Paridell’s habits tell her they are not honorable men. They do not share any of her virtues—especially not her devotion to chastity—which becomes painfully obvious when Paridell woos a married woman, Hellenore, in front of her husband at the dinner table. Though Britomart’s armor does not help her develop mutual intimacies in Book III, her episodes of disarming do clearly illustrate how her knightly apparel—in conjunction with her female clothing and body— communicates her exemplarity to those around her and elicits their admiration and adoration.

Having laid this groundwork in Book III, Spenser demonstrates how Britomart’s armor brings the maid martial and her two great loves—Amoret and Artegall—together in Book IV.

In the first canto of Book IV, Britomart’s armor plays a crucial, though complicated role in the intimacy she and Amoret share. Britomart has already seen Amoret’s chaste body, but

Amoret has only seen Britomart’s suit of armor, her martial identity. She remains ignorant of the warlike damsel’s sex and of her modesty. This ignorance restricts the relationship between the two women at first. Once Britomart removes her helmet, however, Amoret no longer keeps her distance. She immediately feels close to the Britoness once she recognizes her own womanly virtues in the maid martial’s face. She rushes to her bed, where the two women spend the night talking—or “talking,” depending on how you read the text. From there on out, they become

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inseparable. Later, the narrator describes Britomart’s companion as “her own Amoret” (IV.v.20,

7), a phrase that communicates not only the maid martial’s deep affection for Amoret but also her “ownership” of her female companion. Calling Amoret Britomart’s “own” suggests possession, though not in a negative sense. Amoret is of Britomart, like her “own” hand. Seeing themselves in one another binds the two women together so closely that it becomes difficult to determine where Amoret stops and Britomart begins. 231

From the first time Britomart sees Amoret, the kidnapped maid’s body communicates her purity. Even before Britomart lays eyes on her, the warlike maid hears of Amoret’s great faithfulness from her distraught husband, Scudamour. He tells Britomart that his beloved has been taken by an evil sorcerer and “cruelly pend / In doleful darkness from the view of day, /

Whilst deadly torments doe her chaste breast rend, / and the sharp steel doth rive her hart in tway, / All for she Scudamore will not denay” (III.xi.11, 1-5). Seeing his distress and pitying the suffering his faithful wife endures, Britomart promises to rescue Amoret from her captor,

Busirane. As she searches the sorcerer’s castle for Amoret, she stumbles upon a masque. Amoret emerges, led by Despight and Cruelty, and “She doleful Lady, like a dreary Spright…Had

Death’s own image figured in her face, / Full of sad signs, fearful to living sight.” “Yet in that horror” she “showed a seemly grace, / And with her feeble feet did move a comely pace”

(III.xii.19, 4-9). Even though Amoret is “fearful to living sight,” with “death’s image” and “sad signs” “figured in her face,” her “seemly grace” and “comely pace” also make up her womanly identity in this moment. They are the qualities of a virtuous maid, appearing all the more impressive as they exist side-by-side with the signs of her suffering. As Despight and Cruelty cut her chest open, Amoret’s “breast all naked, as net ivory” and “skin all snowy clean” contrast

231 “Own, adj. and pron.,” OED Online. 184

starkly with the blood that dyes them “sanguine red.” (20,1,9). This contrast between white skin and red blood highlights the purity of Amoret’s body. That Amoret endures this daily torture without giving in to Malbecco’s demands provides more visual evidence of her extreme devotion to her husband and strengthens Britomart’s resolve to rescue her. When the masque ends, the participants exit through a door that is immediately locked with a charm, and Britomart must wait until the next day “when that same Mask again should forth avize” to free Amoret (28, 5).

As soon as the door opens for the masque to begin again, Britomart rushes in to find only

Amoret and Busirane. In the struggle that ensues, Busirane attacks Britomart—who is still fully armed—and drives a knife “into her snowy chest, / That little drops empurpled her faire breast”

(33, 4-5). In reality, it is highly unlikely that Busirane could pierce Britomart’s armor with a knife. Even if he did, he and Amoret would not be able to see how Britomart’s wound

“empurpled” her breast. Given these facts, we can conclude that Spenser’s description of

Britomart’s wound is for the reader and the reader alone. This wound symbolically communicates the affinity Britomart has developed for Amoret. Like Amoret’s “snowy clean” skin and “ivory chest” which are stained “sanguine red,” Britomart’s “snowy chest” is

“empurpled” with her blood beneath her armor. After Britomart sees how Amoret’s body and demeanor mirror her own and, consequently, begins to care for her, the difference between the two women becomes harder to distinguish—so much so that she momentarily assumes Amoret’s role as a virgin suffering at Busirane’s hand.

Directly after she has rescued Amoret from Busirane, Britomart and her new companion begin to forge a tentative bond as they travel together. Britomart’s armor attracts Amoret, but it also limits just how close she is willing to get to her rescuer. Fully armed, Britomart flirts with

Amoret “to hide her feigned sex” (or so the narrator claims), and Amoret struggles to respond

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appropriately (IV.i.7, 3). At first glance, Britomart’s armor, which genders her as male, seems to prevent her from connecting (either romantically or platonically) with her new companion. Yet,

Spenser hints that Britomart’s armor draws Amoret to her as much as it pushes her away.232

Assuming Britomart is a man,233Amoret feels obligated to keep her distance, but her ambiguous responses to her literal knight in shining armor could suggest that she is attracted to as well as wary of “him.”

While Amoret’s reaction to Britomart can be read as a fearful one, the narrator also suggests that the armed hero who has just rescued her from seven months of torture attracts her.

While in Britomart’s care, Amoret “right fearful was and faint,” this is true. But, her fear centers on what she might do rather than what her rescuer might do to her. Amoret worries that “she with blame her honor should attaint.” She does not fear that Britomart will harm her but that she will shame herself. This could, of course, simply reflect Renaissance attitudes about rape (that a woman was to blame if she “allowed” herself to be violated or “tempted” her attacker), but it could also suggest that Amoret worries she won’t be able to resist the knight who has just performed a feat her own husband could not.

232 Dorothy Stephens notes another way Britomart’s armor might bring these women together rather than keeping them apart. She explains that Britomart’s feigned gender enables her to flirt with Amoret without incurring any of the risks associated with same-sex desire in early modern England. She asserts, “By keeping her helmet on, Britomart can afford to raise the dialogue to a higher erotic pitch, engaging in a closer intimacy than would otherwise be allowable.” See Stephens, “Into Other Arms: Amoret’s Evasion,” in The Limits of Eroticism in Post‐Petrarchan Narrative: Conditional Pleasure from Spenser to Marvell, 25-46 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998), 37. 233 As Stephens sees it, the narrator’s claim that Britomart endeavors to “hide her feined sex” has two meanings. On one hand, it might suggest that she “does an awfully good job of hiding it,” but, on the other, “the phrase also means, illogically, that Britomart manages to hide her pretense of being male. And if she ‘maske[s]’her painfully frustrated desires the way that Busyrane masques his, she is not concealing but displaying, putting on a show of signs meant to be deciphered.” Stephens argues that Amoret may, therefore, suspect that Britomart is a woman and, nevertheless, remain attracted to her. See Stephens, “Into Other Arms,” 36. 186

It might also be worth stating that fear and attraction are not mutually exclusive.

Amoret’s physical reaction to Britomart does indeed suggest both emotions: “every word did tremble as she spake, / And every look was coy, and wondrous quaint, / And every limb that touched her did quake” (IV.i.5, 2-9). Amoret may tremble out of fear. In being coy she may be displaying modesty or shyness. Her “wondrous quaint” looks may be “prim,” as A.C. Hamilton’s gloss suggests.234 But, these behaviors could also signal attraction. Amoret’s words may tremble from desire instead of fear. The narrator may use coy here “with emphasis on…displaying,” rather than practicing, modesty.235 In other words, she may be feigning propriety or struggling to maintain it. Her quaint looks may not be “prim” at all, but “skillfully made so as to have an attractive appearance” or “beautiful, pretty, fine, dainty.”236 They may be inspired by an urge

(conscious or unconscious) to draw Britomart in rather than repel her. After all, Amoret does

“wist, as true it was indeed, / That her lives Lord and patron to her health / Right well deserved as his dueful meed, / Her love, her service, and her utmost wealth / All is his justly, that all freely dealth” (6, 1-5). Amoret knows that Britomart risked a great deal to save her and, therefore, feels her rescuer deserves whatever she can offer in return.

Amoret feels more than obligation, though. Her thoughts reveal a deep admiration of

Britomart’s knightly comportment. She “surely thought / [Britomart] To be a man, such as indeed he seemed, / and much the more, by that he lately wrought, / When her from deadly thralldom he redeemed, / For which no service she too much esteemed, / Yet dread of shame, and doubt of foul dishonor / Made her not yield so much, as due she deemed” (8, 1-7). She admires the knight who has saved her from “deadly thralldom” and who appears “much the more” a man

234 Hamilton, The Faerie Queene, 411. 235 “Coy, adj.,” OED Online. 236“Quaint, adj., adv., and n.2.,” OED Online. 187

because of the feats he “lately wrought.” She deems “him” worthy of her love and “service.”

Only her fear of “foul dishonor” (and, ostensibly, her love of Scudamour) keeps her from giving her hero all she believes “he” is “due.” Britomart’s armor, then draws Amoret to her as a component of her knightly identity, an identity marked by martial strength and heroism. Whether she simply admires Britomart’s knightly comportment or desires the Knight of Chastity is unclear. Either way, though, the manner in which Britomart inhabits her armor attracts Amoret to her at the same time as it limits her willingness to express that attraction.

Given that Britomart’s armor is bound up with her alluring heroism, it is no surprise that, once she removes her helmet and reveals her golden locks and lovely face, Amoret devotes herself to Britomart completely. When Britomart’s face and armed body appear together, Amoret can finally recognize in her the devotion to chastity they share. She stops resisting the attraction she has felt and forms a deep, intimate attachment to the Britoness. The nature of this attachment has been the topic of much scholarly debate, 237 but most agree that Spenser’s portrayal of

Amoret and Britomart’s relationship is ambiguous. The text hints that the two women may have a sexual relationship and/or a romantic attachment without confirming that is the case.

Homoerotic, platonic, or something else entirely, it is quite clear that Britomart and Amoret form some type of deep and intense bond when the warlike virgin removes her armor.

Amoret discovers the maidenly half of Britomart’s identity when the two women come across a castle that only permits knights accompanied by ladies to enter. There, they encounter “a jolly knight, / Who being asked for his love, avowed / that fairest Amoret was his by right” (10,

1-3). In response, the “warlike virgin…waxed inly wroth” and fought the stranger knight. He

237 See Stephens, “Into Other Arms,” 25-46; Anderson, “Britomart’s Armor,” 84-5; Traub, The Renaissance of Lesbianism, 58-9; and Kathryn Schwarz, Tough Love: Amazon Encounters in the English Renaissance (Durham: Duke UP, 2000), 168-9. 188

“soon was overthrown, / And made repent, that he had rashly lusted / For thing unlawful, that was not his own” (10, 6; 11, 2-4). After defeating this knight and again defending Amoret’s chastity, Britomart takes pity on him and allows him to claim her as his lady. The three enter

(Amoret as Britomart’s lady and Britomart as the stranger’s) together, and Britomart takes off her helmet to prove her sex: “With that her glistering helmet she unlaced; / Which doffed, her golden locks, that were up bound / Still in a knot, unto her heels down traced, / And like a silken veil in compass round / About her back and all her body wound” (13, 1-5). A second time, her

“golden locks” fall down to her heels and “compass round” her armed body in a glorious fashion so that “when those Knights and Ladies all about / Beheld her, all were with amazement smit”

(14, 1-2). In this moment, Amoret can see that Britomart is not only a defender of chastity, but a virtuous woman herself. Just as she did at Malbecco’s castle, the maid martial appears like a goddess—so much so that some of the knights and ladies present “thought…that Bellona in that warlike wise / To them appeared, with shield and armor fit” (14, 5-7). Amoret finally sees both the “warlike” identity she admires and the womanly identity that reflects her own modesty embodied simultaneously by her companion.

In removing her “glistering helmet” and allowing her “golden locks” to wrap themselves around her armed body (15, 6-9), Britomart demonstrates that she is, in some ways, like Amoret.

This act removes any remaining boundaries to the intimacy she and her companion share:

And eke fayre Amoret now freed from fear, More frank affection did to her afford, And to her bed, which she was wont forbear, Now freely drew, and found right safe assurance there. Where all that night they of their loves did treat, And hard adventures twixt themselves alone That each the other gan with passion great, And griefull pity privately bemoan. (IV.v.16)

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Once Amoret recognizes those qualities she and Britomart have in common, she is “freed from feare”—the only thing keeping her from pursuing a deeper intimacy with her rescuer. Amoret’s affection (already inspired by Britomart’s heroic deeds and appearance) is not new, but “more frank.” She wastes no more time getting close to Britomart and “freely draws to her bed” where the two share what Dorothy Stephens identifies as “the one happy bed scene in the whole poem.”238 They may simply spend the night chatting gleefully about the men in their life. Yet, as

Valerie Traub notes, “beds are thematized…in Renaissance literature as an ambiguous site of hetero- and homo-erotic contact, especially in the genre of romance.”239 That Amoret “freely draws” to Britomart’s bed could imply that her connection to the warlike virgin is sexual.

Dorothy Stephens’ observation about the “erotic subtext” of this stanza is persuasive:

The double entendres of ‘passion,’ ‘bemone,’ and ‘hard aduentures’ reinforce

one's initial sense that the phrase ‘their loues’ not only points outward to two male

objects but encloses a more private exchange between the two women. They

speak ‘twixt themselues alone’ of their previous ‘hard aduentures,’while at the

same time, they speak of ‘hard aduentures’ that happen ‘twixt themselues

alone.240

Whether they become fast friends, lovers, or both does not matter so much as the fact that

Britomart and Amoret become closely bound to one another as they discover their overlapping identities. In fact, the friends become so deeply connected that, when Britomart must tell

Scudamour that she has lost his wife, she claims, “Ne ever was there wight to me more dear /

Then she, ne unto whom I more true love did bear” (IV.vi.35, 8-9).

238 Stephens, “Into Other Arms,” 38. 239 Traub, Renaissance of Lesbianism, 6. 240 Stephens, “Into Other Arms,” 37. 190

Just as Britomart and Amoret are separated, the warlike maid and her destined love,

Artegall, finally come together. They trade blows as canto vi begins, but, after they see one another’s “visages” (their faces framed by their helmets), the two knights recognize themselves in one another and end up exchanging vows to marry instead. Before he knows that Britomart is a woman, though, Artegall views her as a rival. He tells Scudamour, ‘He in an open Turney lately held, / From me the honor of that game did rear; / And having me, all weary earst, down field, / The fairest Lady reft” (IV.vi.6, 6-9). Frustrated that he has recently and (in his mind) unfairly lost the beautiful False Florimel to the “Knight of the Heben spear,” Artegall challenges

“him” to a fight. Not one to back down—and not yet recognizing the Salvage Knight as

Artegall—Britomart proves a fierce opponent. Eventually, though, the stroke of Artegall’s sword

“Her ventayle shard away,” and her “angels face, unseen afore, / Like to the ruddy morn appeared in sight” (19, 3-6). Around her face “her yellow hair / Having through stirring loosed their wonted band, / Like to a golden border did appear” (20, 1-3). With helmet and hair framing her face, Britomart appears as the “peerless pattern of Dame natures pride, / And heavenly image of perfection” that she is (24, 5-6). She is a “pattern” worthy of emulation and admiration, a heavenly exemplar of womanly and knightly “perfection.” Seeing such an image, Artegall cannot help but adore her. His “powerless arm benumbed with secret fear / From his revengeful purpose shrunk aback, / And cruel sword out of his finger slack / Fell down to ground, as if …obedience /

To do to so divine a beauties excellence” (21, 3-9). He “of his wonder made religion, / Weening some heavenly goddess he did see” (22, 3-4). Why, though, does Artegall fall deeply in love with this “heavenly goddess” rather than simply lusting after her like Malecasta or adoring her platonically like Satyrane and Paridell?

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Because, in Britomart’s heavenly image, Artegall sees a female reflection of himself. If

Artegall sees in her the “heavenly goddess” to which the narrator most frequently compares her, then he sees her Minerva-like identity. She reflects back to him his exemplary martial abilities and warlike qualities. Britomart’s “ruddy” face “dewed with silver drops, through sweating sore,

/ But somewhat redder, then beseem’d aright” reflects his own fury, strength, and bravery back to him in a female body (19, 6-8). Her “modest countenance…/ So goodly grave and full of princely awe” (33, 4-5) conveys the same sternness and magnificence with which Artegall carries himself. In her angelic and modest face, he sees womanly traits that he does not possess

“mixed” with those manly traits he does. Upon discovering Britomart’s identity as an exemplary knight and woman, Artegall sees that she reflects and complements him. Encountering his own extraordinary traits embodied by a beautiful and chaste woman, he mistakes her for a divine being and instantly falls in love with her.

Soon after Aretgall lowers his sword, Glauce negotiates a truce, and he lifts his beaver, revealing himself to be the hero Britomart has been searching for. Though she does not recognize his armor (as the Salvage Knight Artegall has covered himself in vegetation), Britomart does recognize his visage. This revelation sparks Britomart’s memory of the armed figure she first fell in love with and definitively ends their battle:

When Britomart with sharp avizeful eye Beheld the lovely face of Artegall, Tempered with sternness and stout majesty, She gan eftsoones it to her mind to call, To be the same which in her father’s hall Long since in that enchanted glass she saw. Therewith her wrathful courage gan appall, And haughty spirits meekly to adaw, That her enhanced hand she down can soft withdraw. (26)

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Only once the Britoness realizes that the man before her is “the same which in her father’s hall /

Long since in that enchanted glass she saw” can she “withdraw” her “enhanced hand.” She was ready to kill Artegall a second ago, but when she pictures him clad as he was in Merlin’s

“enchanted glass,” his visage appearing through his “bright ventayle lifted up on high” (III.iii.24,

3), her heart “leaps” and “all her heartstrings tremble” (29, 2). She cannot see the splendor of his armor in the moment, covered as it is by greenery, but the “lovely face of Artegall tempered with sternness and stout majesty” calls to mind that “manly face” she first fell in love with, “that did his foes agrize, / And friends to terms of gentle truce entice.” She recalls his “Heroic grace, and honorable gest” as she first witnessed it in Merlin’s mirror. As a result, her “haughty spirits meekly…adaw” and she “withdraws” her “enhanced” hand to pursue a marriage rather than a martial victory.

Like Artegall, when Britomart sees in her opponent her own exemplary qualities she feels a deep connection to him. The “sternness and stout majesty” that “temper” Artegall’s face mirror her own “fierce fury and great puissance” and, as I mentioned earlier, her “grave” countenance and “princely aw” (III.iv.16, 2). She can tell by his “manly face” that he “did his foes agrize,” much like she leaves her enemies “quite terrified”—as when her assailants at Malecasta’s castle were “with her dreadful strokes…dismayed” (III.i.66, 9, 4). His “heroic grace and honorable gest” reflect Britomart’s “great courage,” “great valiance” and “the pure chastity and virtue rare,

/ That all her goodly deeds do well declare” (III.iv.11, 3). His “countenance bold” (IV.vi.27, 5) reflects her own boldness—a boldness the narrator makes much of when she rescues Amoret from Busirane. In short, Artegall is exactly as she, in her “feigning fancy did portray / Him such, as fittest she for love could find, / Wise, warlike, personable, courteous, and kind”—just like her

(III.iv.5, 7-9).

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Without seeing each other’s exemplary identities, as reflected in the combination of their armor and faces, Britomart and Artegall would not have recognized themselves in one another.

Britomart may never have set out on her quest to find Artegall if she had not seen his visage in

Merlin’s mirror. If she had not seen this same visage on the battlefield, she may have killed the man meant to be her husband. Similarly, Artegall may have slain his future wife if he had not exposed her face with the stroke of his sword first. The two knights would have continued to

“bath their hands in blood of dearest friend, / Thereby to make their loves beginning, their lives end,” as the narrator fears (IV.vi.17, 8-9). So, Spenser demonstrates how Britomart and

Artegall’s martial garments prove essential to the intimate bond they form. He stresses that their habits (both their bodies and their armor) bring them together and make them fall in love with each other. Theirs is a love based on the material, the visible. They have seen each other fight.

They have glimpsed each other’s helmeted faces. Spenser also takes care to illustrate that the bond these lovers form, though based on appearance, is not shallow. Britomart and Artegall share a deep and genuine intimacy driven by an understanding of one another’s identities, identities that are fully communicated by their bodies and armor.

Mirror Images: Soulmates in Arms

As I have shown thus far, Britomart and her intimates are drawn together when they recognize themselves in one another’s habits. The selves co-constituted by Britomart and her martial gear and Artegall and his are a special and complex case, though. By virtue of the particular suits of armor they wear and the role that armor plays in bringing them together, the two lovers are always already reflections of one another. The armor meant for Artegall displays an allegiance to Britomart’s people—both her ancestors (the Trojans) and her descendants (a line of British monarchs)—and a respect for those virtues Britomart prizes the most (honor and

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chastity). Wearing this armor necessarily shapes him into a man who embodies the same values his armor celebrates, a man Britomart cannot help but love. This is the man, fully armed with his visor lifted, that stuns Britomart when she first sees him in Merlin’s mirror. His image draws

Britomart in by reflecting parts of her identity back to her. In addition to being her beloved,

Artegall is also her first exemplar. In the enchanted glass, he appears to Britomart not only as a desirable man but as an exemplary knight worthy of emulation. And Britomart does, indeed, model herself after him. Seeing Artegall’s image strengthens Britomart’s devotion to the virtues celebrated on his suit of arms—most prominently, a devotion to chastity. Upon seeing the figure in Merlin’s enchanted glass, the young maid adopts a suit of armor which belonged to a virgin queen and a heben spear associated with the virgin goddess of warfare, Minerva. Wielding this suit of arms and spear and inhabiting her new identity shapes her into a knight who resembles her example, Artegall. Britomart emulates him so well that he easily recognizes himself in her once they meet. Upon seeing his own exemplarity embodied in a female knight, Artegall falls for her just as intensely as Britomart has already fallen for him. The armor meant for Artegall and

Britomart, then, was always going to shape them into mirror images of one another; it was always going to bring them together. The intimacy they share is written into and enabled by the martial habits they are destined to wear and the selves they are meant to become within those habits.

Given that Spenser’s model of exemplary intimacy relies upon the recognition of the self in the other, it is particularly significant that Britomart’s journey toward knighthood and wifehood begins when she sees Artegall’s resplendent image in an enchanted mirror. Artegall— with his armor on and visor lifted—is, literally, her reflection at the moment she falls in love with him. As she looks into the mirror, Britomart sees a magnificent knight she does not yet

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know, but she also sees herself—her values and those qualities she is destined to develop as a knight—in Artegall’s face and armor. The distinction between the two of them blurs as the looking glass shows Britomart both the self and the other embodied in the figure of a single, exemplary knight. Wearing his armor, Artegall simultaneously presents to Britomart who she is, who she wants, and who she has the potential to become. This mirror image fills the young maid with a deep longing for the knight she sees in Merlin’s “glassy globe” and sets in motion a series of events that begin her quest to find her future husband—a quest which necessitates that she become her future self as well.

When Britomart first looks into the enchanted glass, the mirror serves only its most mundane purpose as she “her self awhile therein…viewed in vain” (III.ii.22, 6). It is not until she remembers that her father’s mirror “virtue had, to shew in perfect sight, / What ever thing was in the world contained…/ So that it to the looker appertained” that she begins to “bethink of that

[which] mote to her self pertain” (19, 1-4; 22, 9). Then, she watches her reflection transform from a maid into a heroic knight:

Eftsoones there was presented to her eye A comely knight, all arm’d in complete wize, Through whose bright ventayle lifted up on high His manly face, that did his foes agrize, And friends to terms of gentle truce entice, Looked forth, as Phoebus face out of the east, Betwixt two shady mountains doth arise; Portly his person was, and much increased Through his Heroic grace, and honorable gest.

His crest was covered with a couchant Hound, And all his armor seemed of antique mold, But wondrous massy and assured sound, And round about yfretted all with gold, In which there written was with ciphers old, Achilles arms, which Arthegall did win. And on his shield enveloped sevenfold He bore a crowned Ermilin,

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That decked the azure field with her fayre pouldred skin. (24-5)

This heroic figure “pertains” to Britomart in more ways than one. As the maid’s reflection gives way to this “comely knight all arm’d in complete wize,” Britomart sees a glimpse of who she will love and who she will become.241 Because she is not familiar with this knight and cannot even be certain that he exists, Britomart can easily see herself in the image Merlin’s mirror projects. She even compares herself to Narcissus when she speaks of the impact Artegall’s image has had upon her. She claims she is “fonder, then Sisyphus foolish child, / who having viewed in a fountain sheer / His face, was with the love thereof beguiled” (ii.45, 6-8).242 This comparison indicates that, in this moment, Britomart sees herself in Artegall and Artegall in herself. Just as

Narcissus and his refection are identical, so too are Britomart and Artegall. The boundary between the figure in the looking glass and the person looking into the glass, between beloved and lover, becomes difficult to distinguish.

While Britomart sees herself in Merlin’s mirror, she, of course, also sees an illustrious male knight. Stunned by the image of her destined husband in such a glorious state, she “gan to love his sight.” Britomart falls for the armed figure in Merlin’s enchanted glass based on appearance alone—by “beholding” him (III.ii.18, 1-2, 17, 4). The sight of Artegall’s face and armed body communicates his identity to Britomart so effectively that she loves him instantly, without ever having met him. His strength and virtue register on his armor and his face, drawing

241 Schwarz has similarly argued that Britomart imagines the exemplary figure in Merlin’s glassy globe to be her future self. See Tough Love, 141-3. 242 Camille A. Paglia also notes that Merlin’s mirror seems to present Britomart with a future version of herself: “when as a girl she looks into the ‘mirror’ or ‘looking glass’ (111.ii.17, 18) of the crystal ball, Britomart sees an armed knight (Artegall), whom Spenser describes first generally and then specifically, so that it initially seems as if Britomart were looking into a real mirror and seeing herself, or rather, her future knightly self, represented here as a nascent masculine psychic phenomenon.” See “The Apollonian Androgyne and the ‘Faerie Queene,” English Literary Renaissance 9, no.1 (1979): 55. 197

her to him, and his martial habit reflects the most praiseworthy parts of Britomart’s identity back to her. The “crowned little Ermilin” with “pouldred skin” on Artegall’s shield emblematizes chastity and suggests that sexual fidelity is central to his identity. For the early modern reader, the crown worn by the ermine would have brought to mind British royalty, especially the virgin queen.243 Interestingly enough, according to Merlin’s account of Britomart’s lineage, Queen

Elizabeth will be one of Britomart’s descendants. The “crowned ermine,” then, celebrates her progeny who are, of course, also Artegall’s. The inscription upon Artegall’s armor, written in

“cyphers old” further signals his loyalty to Britomart’s people, but this time it is to her ancestors rather than her descendants. It reads “Achilles arms, which Arthegall did win” and declares that he has bested an enemy of the Trojans, Britomart’s people. Thus, Artegall’s armor valorizes

Britomart’s history and her ideals. It celebrates what she already recognizes in herself (her chastity) and what she will soon discover about herself (her lineage). The intimacy Artegall and

Britomart share is determined by his knightly habit. It ties Artegall to Britomart the second he puts it on and helps shape him into a knight who shares her values. His martial apparel and the way he inhabits it communicate his devotion to these values such that, when Britomart sees him fully armed she immediately feels bound to him.

In addition to attracting Britomart, Artegall becomes her first exemplar. His “person

[is]…much increased through his heroic grace and honorable gest.” He is clad in a “bright ventail” and “antique” armor that is “wondrous massy and assured sound” and—lest these other details should fail to impress—“yfretted all with gold.” Even the inscription on his armor communicates his superior martial abilities. He has “won” his armor and, in doing so, has usurped its former owner, the legendary Achilles. In addition to his armor, what Britomart can

243 Hamilton, The Faerie Queene, 306. 198

see of his body deserves praise. He has a “manly face” like “Phoebus face out of the east” that frightens foes and welcomes friends. Awed by this figure, Britomart aspires to be like him once she takes “adventurous knighthood” upon herself.

That Britomart becomes a knight much like Artegall affirms his influence upon her. Her mental picture of Artegall’s armor and the attractive face within it shape her identity as much as wearing Queen Angela’s martial apparel does—especially if she adopts her armor with

Artegall’s in mind and, therefore, associates it with him. This is likely, since the knightly habit

Britomart chooses resembles Artegall’s and celebrates the same virtues. Like Artegall’s armor, which is “yfretted all with gold” Queen Angela’s is “all fretted round with gold” (III.iii.58, 9;

III.ii.25, 4). As the “crowned ermilin” on Artegall’s shield celebrates chastity, Britomart’s arms also honor the virtue. She adopts the armor of a famous virgin queen and the spear of Minerva, the chaste goddess of warfare.

Britomart’s knightly disposition and characteristics further demonstrate Artegall’s influence upon her identity. His armor likely influences her decision to assume her title, The

Knight of Chastity, and to make defending that virtue her primary concern (III.ii.25, 8). She becomes a “comely knight” like the knight in Merlin’s mirror, whose face can strike fear in the hearts of her enemies and welcome friends. Though the warlike maid may not have a “manly” face like her love, she does possess a “manly terror.” She adopts his “honorable gest” and carries herself with “heroic grace.” In many ways, then, Britomart’s martial attire and the identity it helps her inhabit make her look and act like her beloved. By modeling herself after

Artegall, Britomart becomes both like him and like the knight she was always meant to be.

Given that Britomart’s martial identity is based upon Artegall’s, it is no surprise that he later recognizes himself in her. Once Britomart dons and inhabits her armor, she emulates her

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exemplar so successfully that she resembles him quite closely. For instance, her visage, like

Artegall’s, is so stunning that the narrator compares her face to a bright celestial body emerging from dark surroundings. Britomart’s face is like “fayre Cynthia, in darksome night…in a noyous cloud enveloped” with only her “silver beams and her bright head” breaking through the clouds, while Artegall’s resembles “Phoebus face out of the east, / Betwixt two shady mountains,”

(III.i.43, 1-4). In Book V, Dolon even mistakes Britomart for Artegall. He attempts to have her killed when she lodges with him “for sure he wend, that this his present guest / Was Artegall, by many tokens plain” (V.vi.34, 1-2). So, just as Artegall’s armor draws Britomart in by reflecting certain parts of her identity back to her, the armor and identity Britomart assumes when she becomes the Knight of Chastity reflect his identity back to him. This is why he loves her the second she reveals her sex. Britomart and Artegall’s relationship, then, drives and is driven by their similar knightly identities and, consequently, the armor which shapes and constitutes those identities. Artegall’s martial apparel forms him into an exemplar in whom Britomart sees herself.

Upon seeing his image in Merlin’s mirror, Britomart falls in love. When she becomes a knight, she models herself after him and draws him to her in the same way she is drawn to him. Much as

Merlin’s mirror confuses the boundary between Britomart and Artegall, Britomart and Artegall’s armor shapes them into knights who inhabit remarkably similar identities. Ultimately, seeing these identities in one another’s armor and faces brings the two of them together.

Warring and Wooing: Britomart and Artegall’s Erotic Battle

Thus far I have emphasized the importance of appearances to Spenserian intimacy. In this final section, I will consider, more specifically, how Spenser’s characters form intimate bonds based not only upon apparel and bodies, but upon the behaviors and dispositions their habits inspire and require. Though Britomart falls in love with Artegall as soon as she sees his figure in

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Merlin’s mirror, and Artegall adores Britomart the second he first glimpses her face within her helmet, the two of them do not come together by viewing one another’s still images alone. They must encounter each other as characters in motion, using their martial garments and acting out their similar identities as skilled and honorable knights. In fact, armored expression plays such an important role in their relationship that Artegall never sees Britomart without her armor, and

Britomart only sees Artegall without his once (a sight she finds quite disturbing for more than one reason). Both lovers remain in their armor when they are betrothed, and when Britomart does see Artegall in the wrong habit in Book V (spinning in a dress rather than brandishing a sword on the battlefield), she can barely look at him. His change of dress and adoption of those behaviors that come along with it make him into a stranger. Britomart arms him as quickly as she can, and it is only once he is properly dressed that she again recognizes the man she fell in love with. Ultimately, then, the battle between Artegall and Britomart and the interactions between them which follow demonstrate how armor binds Artegall and Britomart together through the comportment it necessitates and facilitates

The erotic nature of Britomart and Artegall’s fight has been widely acknowledged; however, the ways this battle, with its sexual undertones, illustrates how materially dependent identities drive attraction, love, and marriage in the Faerie Queene has not.244 Throughout

Britomart and Artegall’s fight, Spenser uses erotic language as he describes in great detail how the soon-to-be lovers inhabit their armor. In doing so, he links combat with consummation—both in the sense that Britomart has finally completed her quest and, of course, in the sexual sense— and suggests that Britomart and Artegall’s romantic bond depends upon the ways armored expression shapes their identities. From the onset of the battle, Spenser frames Britomart and

244 See Silberman, Transforming Desire, 111-2. 201

Artegall’s fight in terms of sexual pursuit. Artegall attacks Britomart “as doth an eager hound /

Thrust to an Hind within some covert glade, / Whom without peril he cannot invade.” “With such fell greediness he her assailed, / That though she mounted were, yet he her made / To give him ground, (so much his force prevailed)” (12, 3-8). The erotic valences of the narrator’s vocabulary—“eager,” “thrust,” “greediness,” “mounted”—and his reference to the myth of

Diana and Acteon immediately position Artegall not only as a knight assailing an opponent but as a lover chasing after a woman he desires. As the battle proceeds, Artegall strikes Britomart’s horse on its “hinder parts,” his sword biting deep” (13, 6-7). Given that the horse is a symbol of passion, the wound it suffers is sexually significant. The horse’s wound is, metaphorically, also

Britomart’s, and the narrator implicitly links Artegall’s “mighty strokes” (12, 9) to Britomart’s desire for him. Finally, the narrator’s description of Britomart and Artegall’s physical struggle suggests intercourse, an indication that their romantic union is bound up in the ways they inhabit their armor. Britomart attacks Artegall so “furiously” that “he breathless was.” She wounds his

“tender flesh” and lands so many strokes that she cuts through his mail and plates to reveal “all his body bare” (15, 6, 9). Eventually her “hasty heat” subsides and her “panting breath begin[s] to fail” Then, Artegall goes on the attack “and gan her fresh assail” (16, 4). And so the battle rages with labored breathing and exposed body parts.

Through his description of Britomart and Artegall’s battle, Spenser illustrates that, in addition to attracting one another sexually, Britomart and Artegall reveal their similarities to one another as they use their arms. By assigning the warlike traits Britomart and Artegall share to the weapons they wield against one another, Spenser emphasizes that these weapons and the ways the lovers use them constitute and communicate their selfhood. He blurs the line between human and habit and signals that the sameness the knights recognize and love in one another comes

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from the arms they carry with them. Artegall’s sword, which he uses to unleash “mighty strokes” upon Britomart, metaphorically takes on his anger toward his opponent when the narrator calls it his “direful deadly blade” (12, 2) and his “cruel sword” (21, 5). The narrator semantically displaces Artegall’s “dreadful” demeanor, “dispiteous ire,” “felonious intent” (11, 4, 6), and

“cruel hart” (16, 6, 8) onto the knight’s “direful” (defined as dreadful or terrible in the OED)245 and “cruel” weapon. The narrator similarly personifies Britomart’s “wrathful weapon” (27, 5) whose “raging rigor neither steel nor bras / Could stay” and whose “cruel dent” Artegall’s “mail yriv’d, and plates yrent” (15, 5-6, 8). Her sword takes on the “wrathful courage” and “fury” (26,

7; 14, 9) with which she fights Artegall. Notably, these traits—Artegall’s ire, cruelty, and dreadfulness and Britomart’s fury and wrath—mirror and complement one another. The heroes can see their own knightly characteristics expressed in the way their opponent uses his or her weapon.

Spenser also draws pointed parallels between Artegall and Britomart’s enactment of their knightly identities, demonstrating further how the lovers are able to recognize themselves in each other during their battle. Most obviously, Artegall and Britomart witness each other’s exceptional strength on the battlefield. As Artegall awaits his turn to fight Britomart, he watches her (very brief) fight with Scudamour, in which she “to the ground…smote both horse and man”

(10, 7). Given the religious connotations of the word “smote” and Artegall’s later assumption that Britomart is a divine being, it seems safe to assume that Artegall witnesses her Minerva-like might here. As their battle rages, Britomart has the opportunity to see her own godlike power in

Artegall. During their struggle, he delivers a blow that glances “adown her back” and wounds her horse so severely that she has to dismount. The narrator compares his strike to “the lighting

245 “Direful, adj.,” OED Online. 203

brand from riven sky / Thrown out by angry Jove in his vengeance” (14, 1-2). Artegall, too, fights with the ferocity of a god.

Artegall and Britomart demonstrate to one another not only their physical strength but their zeal for combat. Britomart strikes Artegall “so furiously” with her “wrathful hand” (23, 2) that he has not choice by to “yield unto her weapon way to pas” (15, 4), and Artegall responds by

“heaping” upon her “huge strokes, as thick as shower of hail / And lashing dreadfully at every part” (16, 5-6). They pursue each other so “furiously” that they, in turns, force one another to retreat. In stanza 12, Artegall attacks Britomart so “eagerly” that “he her made / To give him ground, (so much his force prevailed)” (12, 7-8), and just a few stanzas later “so furiously

[Britomart] strook…That she him forced backward to retreat” (15, 1-3). Inhabiting their knightly identities during combat gives Britomart and Artegall a chance to show each other that they are matched in strength and martial ability. They soon discover that they are evenly matched in more ways than one.

Even after the battle ends and Artegall begins to woo Britomart, the narrator makes it clear that these foes-turned-lovers maintain their martial identities as they begin to establish a romantic relationship. Artegall lays “continual siege unto [Britomart’s] gentle hart,” and he gives her a “wound” which she “pained with womanish art to hide” (40, 4, 7-8). Though it was conventional for early modern authors to frame courtship in martial terms, this particular passage, falling so closely on the heels of Britomart and Artegall’s physical conflict, seems to signify that these lovers war and woo in much the same way. The narrator tells us “well

[Artegall] woo’d her, and…well he wrought her,” using parallel structure to equate courtship and war. While “wrought” could simply mean to persuade, it likely takes on a different meaning—

“to wage (war, a war); to engage in (battle, hostile action)”—here, especially given that Artegall

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wrought Britomart so well “that at length unto the bay he brought her.”246 In the end, Britomart

“relents” and “yields” as one defeated in battle. She concedes and gives her “consent / To be his love,” and the two formerly-opposed parties reach an “accord” (41, 1-9). This episode emphasizes that, in The Faerie Queene, habits impact how characters look, how they behave, and, ultimately, who they are. They constitute one’s identity and make it visible to others.

Apparel is not superficial ornamentation; it is the visible, material part of one’s personhood that makes interpersonal connection possible.

At Artegall and Britomart’s final meeting, Spenser stresses one last time that their armor is not merely a tool that helps them come together, but an integral component of who they are and, accordingly, a crucial part of the long-term intimacy they share. After a lengthy separation, the lovers reunite in Book V. Britomart defeats Radigund to set Artegall free, but she and her future husband do not enjoy the cheerful reunion one might expect. When Britomart finds

Artegall in Radigund’s prison, she discovers that the man she has rescued is not her beloved.247

Instead, she encounters the “lothly uncouth sight” of a former knight “disguis’d in womanish attire” and engaging in activities befitting this habit. Radigund has replaced his sword with a

“distaff…That he thereon should spin both flax and tow” and has forced him to serve her with

“true subjection” (v. 23, 2-3; v.26, 2). Seeing her future husband so “deformed” by his

“disguise,” Britomart “turned her head aside, as nothing glad/ To have beheld a spectacle so bad”

(vii.38, 2-5). She cannot stand to see him so transformed by his new apparel. He does not appear

246 “Work, v.,” OED Online. 247 Joanna Thompson also notes the link between Artegall’s clothing and his identity. She argues that “Artegall displaces normative dress codes by wearing women’s garments and, in so doing, his identity automatically becomes a site of ambiguity.” See The Character of Britomart in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (Lewiston: Mellen P, 2001), 88. 205

like himself and cannot inhabit the identity of the knight Britomart loves so dearly while spinning in a dress. Worried that she has lost Artegall, Britomart asks urgently,

Where is that dreadful manly look? Where be Those mighty palms, the which ye wont t’embrew In blood of Kings, and great hosts’ to subdue? Could ought on earth so wondrous change have wrought? As to have robbed you of that manly hew? Could so great courage stooped have to ought? Then farewell fleshly force; I see thy pride is naught. (40, 2-9)

Plainly put, Artegall is not the man she loves without his armor. Just as Redcrosse is “of [him] self…berobbed” when Orgoglio takes his arms, Artegall is “robbed of that manly hew,”

“courage,” and “pride” Britomart adores when Radigund replaces his armor with a dress, his sword with a distaff. The “manly” face that first awed Britomart when it appeared in Merlin’s mirror has disappeared along with Artegall’s “manly look” and “manly hew.” The “great courage” and manly virtue his armor highlighted seem to have vanished. Without his martial trappings, his body alone—his “fleshly force” and “mighty palms”—is not sufficient. Luckily,

Britomart knows exactly how to fix this problem. Since the clothes make the man, she will find

Artegall a more suitable habit.

Spenser pointedly sets the scene of Artegall’s re-dressing in a bower, a site well-known for intimate encounters in early modern literature. Britomart takes Artegall there to remove his clothing, not so that the two of them can “pour themselves out in looseness” as young lovers are wont to do, but so that they can renew their intimacy in a different way. In the bower, Britomart exchanges Artegall’s “maids attire” for a “massy habergeon” so that she can return her husband to his former self:

Thenceforth she straight into a bower him brought, And caused him those uncomely weeds undight; And in their stead for other raiment sought, Whereof there was great store, and armors bright,

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Which had been reft from many a noble Knight; Whom that proud Amazon subdued had, Whilest Fortune favored her success in fight, In which when as she him anew had clad, She was reviv’d, and joyed much in his semblance glad” (41)

After Britomart has “caused him those uncomely weeds undight” and “him anew ha[s] clad” in armor suited to a “noble knight,” she recognizes Artegall again. He has been remade “anew” for her by donning his former habit (and his former identity along with it), and she is “revived” and feels joyful seeing his “semblance glad.” Soon, Artegall has recovered enough to return to his quest. As she was at their last parting, Britomart is “full sad and sorrowful,” but, rather than begging him to stay as she did before, she “wisely moderated her own smart / Seeing his honor, which she tendered chief, / Consisted much in that adventures priefe.” Her “hope of his success /

Gave unto her great comfort and relief” (44, 1, 4-7). She knows completing his quest will return

Artegall to the man he once was, the knight she first saw in her father’s enchanted glass, and she takes comfort in the knowledge that Artegall will be himself when she sees him again.

In the end, Britomart and Artegall’s relationship demonstrates that, in Spenser’s work, the visible and material components of one’s identity are a crucial part of who they are. An individual is more than an immaterial psyche. What’s more, the boundary between person and object is not a rigid one. Rather, humans and the materials they carry with them exist in a reciprocal relationship, shaping and reshaping one another over time. Certain aspects of a person’s appearance (the tools of their trade, their style of dress, the way they wear their hair) become as much a part of them as their hand or foot, mind or heart. Materials make a person who they are, and they also show everyone else who that person is. They enable friends and lovers to see their similarities in one another’s appearance, and they, thereby, bring people together and keep them together. That this theory of identity and intimacy exists in such a prominent

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Renaissance text indicates that many early moderns thought of personhood and love much differently than we do today. Though the interiorization of intimacy was beginning to take place in Renaissance England, at least some early moderns still understood what we often forget and could stand to remember: intimacy is not only about what’s on the inside. It does not always necessitate the sharing of hidden secrets or one’s inmost thoughts and feelings. Taking into account the material components of another’s identity may not be as superficial as we think.

Perhaps doing so would simply open up opportunities for intimate connection that we often fail to recognize today.

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Chapter 4

‘Keep in thy skin this testament of me’: Tree Carving, Intimacy, and Publication in Lady Mary Wroth’s The First Part of the Countess of Montgomery’s Urania

While early modern literature often depicts affective bonds that are based entirely on the visible and exterior—as Spenser’s The Faerie Queene presents a model of intimacy based solely upon habits and bodily surfaces—Lady Mary Wroth’s The First Part of the Countess of

Montgomery’s Urania takes the opposite approach. For the characters of the Urania, intimacy requires the sharing of private thoughts and feelings. Given that Wroth published her romance over two decades after Spenser, her focus on the human interior may be the result of the shift in narratives about and understandings of intimacy which began in late sixteenth-century England.

As I have mentioned throughout this project, the tendency to tie interpersonal connection to the sharing of interior thoughts and feelings grew increasingly more common as the seventeenth century wore on. Wroth’s perspective on intimacy may also have been informed by her gendered experience of love, which was, undoubtedly, different from the experiences of the male authors whose work I have considered thus far. Or, Wroth may have simply disagreed with Spenser and other authors in his camp. Whatever the reason, the first part of Wroth’s prose romance focuses closely on the ways friends and lovers bind themselves to one another by sharing their private beliefs and desires. It also illustrates the risks and rewards of doing so. The Urania explores a major contradiction that accompanied the early modern interiorization of intimacy: at the same time that intimacy required the joining of loved one’s interior selves, it needed to be strengthened and validated via public recognition. Through her protagonist, Pamphilia, Wroth acknowledges the potential harm of publicizing one’s connections to her loved ones but also insists that deep interpersonal bonds cannot be sustained if they are not made publicly legible. In doing so, she

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defends her own decision to publish a roman à clef about her social circle and positions her book as a memorial to the intimacy she and her loved ones share.

From its first instance of poetic production, Lady Mary Wroth’s The First Part of the

Countess of Montgomery’s Urania presents writing as an activity that is both risky and necessary for suffering lovers. In Book I, “heavy” with sorrow and “tyrannically tortured by love,” the romance’s central author figure, Pamphilia, goes to her bedroom “not with hope of rest, but to get more liberty to express her woe.” Her secret love for Amphilanthus has become so great a burden that she can no longer contain the sadness it causes. So, she writes poetry. Once in her bedroom, Pamphilia takes a “cabinet” full of her own “papers” with her to bed. She reads over some of her previous work, but, because this does not assuage her sorrow, she takes out “pen and paper, and being excellent in writing” composes new verses to relieve her pain. Yet, “as soon almost as she had given them life, she likewise gave them burial.” She burns what she has just created to ensure that her feelings remain hidden from the outside world. Why does Pamphilia utterly destroy this poem rather than locking it away in her cabinet like the others? As a direct result of her feelings for Amphilanthus, it offers material evidence of a love Pamphilia would prefer to keep to herself.

Immediately before she “buries” her newly penned work, the princess articulates the damage this poem might do. She rails against the emotion that drove her to write, asking “Fie passion…how foolish canst thou make us? And when with much pain and business thou hast gain’d us, how dost thou then dispose us unto folly, making our choicest wits testimonies to our faces of our weaknesses, and, as at this time dost, bring my own hands to witness against me”

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(63). 248 Even though Pamphilia encloses herself within her bed chamber and her poetry within a small chest, she understands her decision to write as “foolish”; it “disposes her to folly.” Her verses, written in direct response to her ill-fated love for Amphilanthus, serve as “testimonies” and “witnesses” of her deep affection for him, evidence which might be used “against” her if discovered. Though, in this moment, Pamphilia’s poetry only makes her “folly” painfully apparent to her, it might, if circulated, reveal her supposed foolishness to anyone who reads it.

The real danger lies not in writing per se, then, but in publication—“the action of making something publicly known”; “the…fact of making a thing public or common property”; “the action of making material publicly accessible”; and, of course, “the issuing of a book, newspaper, magazine, or other printed matter for public sale or distribution.”249 In this moment, what Pamphilia dreads most is the publication—in all senses of the word—of her feelings for

Amphilanthus. She fears the consequences of making her emotions “publicly known” to her court, her people, and the nobility of foreign nations. She worries that her intimate desires might become “common property,” a commodity, or a “material made publicly accessible.”

Pamphilia’s emotional and intellectual state has become so closely linked to her act of poetic expression that the “public distribution” of her work would expose her heart and mind to anyone with access to it. Losing ownership of her written words could, in a way, make her (or at least parts of her) public property, accessible to anyone who reads them.

And yet, Pamphilia continues to produce poems and other writings about her love for

Amphilanthus throughout Part 1 of the Urania, most of which she does not destroy, a few of

248 All Urania Part 1 quotes are taken from Josephine Roberts’ edition of The First Part of The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania (Binghamton: Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1995). 249 “Publication, n.,” OED Online.

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which she intentionally (though selectively) shares with others, and some of which she carves into trees within and without her not-so-private, private garden. On top of this, at the very moment in which Pamphilia attempts to hide her work from the outside world within the narrative of the Urania, Wroth’s audience reads the exact verses the heroine seeks to “bury.” 250

Wroth includes her protagonist’s sonnet in the printed text of the 1621 Urania, making

Pamphilia’s work publicly accessible despite the princess’ best efforts to keep it hidden. In this way, Wroth comments upon Pamphilia’s hesitance to publicize her love for Amphilanthus.

Through the princess’ concerns and experiences in the Urania, Wroth acknowledges that publication can expose one’s thoughts and feelings to the detriment of her interpersonal relationships, but, by printing Pamphilia’s verses at this narrative moment, she also insists that intimacy (when textually constituted) requires “publication.” To connect with and understand the poet-protagonist, readers (within the text and without) must be able to peek inside her heart and mind, a task which only publication makes possible.

Of course, in publishing Pamphilia’s verse Wroth also publishes her own. She draws attention to her role as author and suggests that, like Pamphilia’s poetry, her work publicizes truths about her intimate life. Given that the 1621 Urania’s publication was met with a “storm of criticism from powerful noblemen, who claimed that the author had presented thinly-veiled accounts of their private lives under the guise of fiction,” it does seem likely that Wroth included

250 Bernadette Andrea also notes the contrast between Pamphilia’s stance toward publication and Wroth’s. She stresses that “the central paradox our introduction to Pamphilia as poet” is that even as her poem is preserved at the metanarrative level, thus preventing her erasure as the Urania's prototypical woman writer, the local narrative framing her poem reinscribes the contained position of the woman writer in the romance (and, by extension, in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English culture). She may write, but only from the limits of her own room; she may preserve her writing, but only within the confines of her own mind.” See “Pamphilia’s Cabinet: Gendered Authorship and Empire in Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania.” English Literary History 68.2 (2001): 335. 212

details about her loved ones in the romance.251 If, as many scholars have suggested,252 Pamphilia is a figure for Wroth herself, then, perhaps, in publishing the verse Pamphilia attempts to destroy, Wroth stresses that publication is not only necessary for Pamphilia but for her. Perhaps

Wroth’s book was meant to connect her to her readers (both those who appear as characters in her book and those who do not) much like Pamphilia’s carvings create intimate ties between herself and those who encounter them. Maybe in publishing her romance Worth hoped to create new intimacies with unknown readers and strengthen the bonds she shared with those closest to her in the same way that Pamphilia’s publicly accessible poems and ciphers enable and fortify the interpersonal relationships the heroine cherishes the most. If so, Wroth fictionalizes the bonds shared by the members of her social circle to memorialize them. As a monument to the emotional ties between Wroth and her intimates, the Urania Part 1 forges affective connections between Wroth and generations of readers who, in turn, keep alive the intimacies Wroth shared with her loved ones by reading and engaging with their stories.

In this chapter, I examine Wroth’s representations of print publication to explore the relationship between publication and intimacy within and without the Urania. I argue that Wroth

251 See Josephine Roberts, “Lady Mary Wroth's Urania: A Response to Jacobean Censorship,” in New Ways of Looking at Old Texts: Papers of the Renaissance English Text Society, 1985-1991, ed. W. Speed Hill (Binghampton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1993), 126. 252See Gavin Alexander, “Constant Works: A Framework for Reading Mary Wroth.” Sidney Newsletter and Journal 14, no. 2 (1996/1997): 5-32; Nona Fienberg, “Mary Wroth and the Invention of Female Poetic Subjectivity,” in Reading Mary Wroth: Representing Alternatives in Early Modern England, eds. Naomi Miller and Gary Waller (Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1991), 175-90; Helen Hackett, “Courtly Writing by Women,” in Women and Literature in Britain: 1500-1700, ed. Helen Wilcox (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), 169-89; Maureen Quilligan, “Lady Mary Wroth: Female Authority and the Family Romance,” in Unfolded Tales: Essays on Renaissance Romance, ed. George M. Logan and Gordon Teskey (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989), 257-80; and Paul Salzman, “The Strang[e] Constructions of Mary Wroth's Urania: Arcadian Romance and the Public Realm,” in English Renaissance Prose: History, Language, and Politics, ed. Neil Rhodes (Tempe: Arizona State UP, 1997), 109-24.

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represents print publication through Pamphilia’s tree carvings and uses those carvings to assert that, even though making personal information publicly accessible can imperil intimacies, it is also necessary to their formation and preservation. Publication can enable, strengthen, and maintain interpersonal bonds as easily as it can dissolve them. To make this assertion, Wroth draws upon the long literary history of tree-carving lovers—a tradition which celebrates the public nature of such carvings and their ability to initiate, strengthen, immortalize, and memorialize the intimate bond between lover and beloved, carver and reader. Wroth demonstrates how her protagonist’s tree engravings bind her to her closest female friend and to the man she loves. She also connects the tree-carving tradition to print, suggesting that her published book might support interpersonal intimacies between herself and her loved ones and readers (two groups that are not mutually exclusive) as the trees do for Pamphilia. Her book becomes the tree whose bark records and preserves her most cherished intimate bonds (though the identities of her intimates remain somewhat hidden) for all readers to see. In this way she justifies her decision to print her work despite the personal nature of much of its content. 253

While tree carving is only one of multiple forms of writing featured in the Urania— characters frequently write on paper and Amphilanthus and Pamphilia’s names are literally burned into one another’s hearts—I consider this type of self-expression as a representation of

253 While some scholars read Wroth’s claim—in a letter to the Duke of Buckingham—that the Urania was published against her will as genuine, others find this evidence unconvincing. They explain that Wroth only made this statement after Lord Edward Denny, angered by what he assumed were references to him and his family in the Urania, published a poem attacking Wroth for slander and after his angry letters (which made the same accusation) to her reached James I. These scholars make the compelling argument that Wroth denied any role in publishing her romance to avoid facing legal and social repercussions. For more details about the scandal surrounding Wroth’s romance see Roberts, “Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania,” 128-8; John J. O'Connor, “James Hay and the Countess of Montgomery's Urania,” Notes and Queries 200 (1955): 150-52; and Paul Salzman, “Contemporary References in Mary Wroth's Urania,” Review of English Studies 29 (1978): 178-81. 214

print publication for two reasons. First, tree carving is more permanent than other forms of writing in the romance. Manuscript copies of poetry are often burned, hidden, or ripped to pieces, but characters’ tree carvings remain unaltered. Though the tree-texts Wroth’s characters create could die or be carved over or cut down—as does happen in other texts which reference tree-carving lovers—this does not happen in the Urania. In Wroth’s fictional world, once engraved, a tree forever bears the carver’s message for all to see.254 Second, I equate tree carving with print because of its public nature. As Vin Nardizzi and Miriam Jacobson observe, “there is an unyielding aspect to a sonnet and quatrain inscribed into…tree bark that resists…secrecy about amorous verse. Trees are fixtures rooted into the natural world that any passerby can contemplate.”255 While written manuscripts certainly circulated in early modern England, it was typically (though not always) easier to control who had access to them. Just as Pamphilia controls who may and may not read her manuscript poetry, only sharing it with a select few, early modern authors exercised some control over who could view their manuscript texts. Access was often limited to the members of a relatively small coterie, as was likely the case with manuscript versions of the Urania. Once printed, however, an author could not control who encountered her work. Wroth depicts this reality through the unwelcome readers who come across Pamphilia’s tree carvings.

To illustrate that publication and intimacy go hand-in-hand, Wroth shows how tree carving impacts two of the relationships Pamphilia holds most dear: her friendship with Antissia

254Though trees eventually die, early moderns believed that they had extraordinarily long lives and, therefore, connected humans to the eternal. See Leah Knight, “Writing on Early Modern Trees,” English Literary Renaissance 41, no. 3 (2011): 473. 255 Vin Nardizzi and Miriam Jacobson, “The Secrets of Grafting in Wroth's Urania,” in Ecofeminist Approaches to Early Modernity, ed. Rebecca Laroche (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 183. 215

and her relationship with Amphilanthus. It is true that, when Antissia spies on Pamphilia in her garden and reads the sonnet the poetess carves on an ash tree, publication threatens to cause tension in their friendship. Antissia correctly assumes that Pamphilia’s sonnet is about

Amphilanthus and begins to view Pamphilia as a rival. But, when Pamphilia confesses to

Antissia that her poem is about someone she loves and claims this man is not Amphilanthus, her carvings bring the two of them closer, allowing them to bond over their shared affection for an absent man—indeed, the same absent man. After this event, Pamphilia and Antissia both revisit the ash tree at moments of intense sadness to add mournful verses to its trunk. They eventually create a collaborative text composed of their love poetry, forever joining their sorrows in a public testament to the pain of loving Amphilanthus. Over time, then, even as their friendship waxes and wanes, Pamphilia’s ash tree becomes a monument to the intimate experiences she and

Antissia share. Later, Wroth’s printed romance mirrors Pamphilia’s ash tree and further joins these two characters in the eyes of the reader. In Book I, as the two of them compose poems in their minds, their work appears on the same page, memorializing their shared suffering in

Wroth’s text as well as on Pamphilia and Antissia’s tree text.

Print publication also supports the intimacy Pamphilia and Amphilanthus share. Before

Pamphilia tells Amphilanthus of her love or discovers that the prince loves her in return, engraving her ash tree helps her cope with her painful secret. It provides an avenue through which she can work through her sorrow by speaking to an audience (both the tree and future readers) about her trials. As she engraves the tree, she articulates her own feelings, clarifying her emotional experiences for herself, and she shares these feelings with an unknown listener. She transforms the tree into a monument which glorifies and immortalizes her own pain and faithfulness and, thereby, strengthens her resolve to continue faithfully loving Amphilanthus.

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After the two profess their love for one another, carving helps Pamphilia face Amphilanthus’ physical and, later, emotional distance. By carving ciphers and anagrams of Amphilanthus’ name, Pamphilia turns diverse trees into proxies for her beloved. She thinks of her love for him as she carves. In this way, she feels closer to him and renews her faith in their bond. In addition to standing in for Amphilanthus, the trees that suffer alongside Pamphilia memorialize the constancy of her love and provide her an opportunity to re-articulate for herself how deeply she is bound to him. Though Amphilanthus strays, Pamphilia’s steadfastness, aided by her public acts of carving, eventually pays off, and he finds his way back to her by the end of Part 1. While

Pamphilia begins the Urania by hiding and destroying the material expressions of her love,

Wroth ultimately demonstrates that her heroine must publish her poetry to enjoy the intimate unions she so deeply cherishes.

In what follows I closely examine Pamphilia’s acts of tree carving in the Urania to demonstrate how, in these moments, Wroth comments upon the merit of publicizing one’s intimate bonds. I begin by briefly tracing the history of tree carving in Western literature, from

Ovid and Virgil to Wroth’s contemporaries, focusing on the relationship between love and publication as it is depicted in fictional representations of tree carving. I then explain how Wroth builds upon this literary tradition and explores the relationship between love and publication in her romance. Specifically, I treat Pamphilia’s acts of tree carving as representations of print publication and examine them to consider what role publication plays in her intense intimacies with her close friend, Antissia, and her beloved, Amphilanthus. I posit that, through Pamphilia,

Wroth simultaneously illustrates her own anxieties about printing her work and insists upon the necessity of doing so. By frequently depicting episodes of tree carving, Wroth considers how print publication might impact the bonds she shares with the members of her coterie (among

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whom the manuscript version(s) of the Urania circulated). She acknowledges that publication can cause interpersonal tension, but she ultimately depicts print publication as necessary to the preservation of the intimate bonds between authors/carvers and the subjects and readers of their work. Finally, I consider what Pamphilia and Wroth’s acts of publication might suggest about early modern intimacy, and I conclude that, in Renaissance England, interpersonal intimacy relied upon public as well as private signs, gestures, and forms of communication.

While Wroth scholars have been discussing the Urania’s tree-carving scenes since the

90’s, few have considered how the tree texts Pamphilia and other characters create shape their intimate lives. Instead, critics have looked to these episodes to establish that a particular tree- carver (usually Pamphilia) is an author figure and/or avatar for Wroth. They investigate what these author figures reveal about Wroth’s life and writing career256 and about female authorship in early modern England.257 These scholars often argue that Wroth uses her female characters’ acts of writing to question and/or subvert early modern gender norms and hierarchies 258 or to

256 See Alexander, “Constant Works,” 5-32; Margaret P. Hannay,“Lady Wroth: Mary Sidney,” in Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Katharina M. Wilson (Athens: U of Georgia P, 1987), 548-65; Christina Luckjy, “The Politics of Genre in Early Women's Writing: The Case of Lady Mary Wroth,” English Studies in Canada 27 (2001): 253-82; Rosalind Smith, “‘I thus goe arm’d to field’: Lindamira’s Complaint,” Meridian: The La Trobe University English Review 18 (2001): 73-86. 257 See Hackett, “Courtly Writing by Women,”169-89; Shannon Miller, “Textual Crimes and Punishment in Mary Wroth’s Urania,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 35 (2005): 385-428; and Carolyn Ruth Swift, “Feminine Identity in Lady Mary Wroth’s Romance Urania,” English Literary Renaissance 14, no. 3 (1984): 328-46. 258 See Andrea, “Pamphilia's Cabinet,” 335-58; Sylvia Bowerbank, “Radical Nostalgia in Mary Wroth’s The Countess of Montgomeries Urania,” in Speaking for Nature: Women and Ecologies of Early Modern England (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 2003), 25-51; Nona Fienberg, “Invention of Female Poetic Subjectivity,”175-90; Helen Hackett, “‘A Book, and Solitariness’: Melancholia, Gender and Literary Subjectivity in Mary Wroth’s Urania,” in Renaissance Configurations: Voices/ Bodies/ Spaces 1580-1690, ed. Gordon McMullan (New York: St. Martin’s, 1988), 64-88. For scholars who do not see Wroth’s depictions of female authors as empowering see Susan Donahue, “‘My Desires … Lie … Wrapt up Now in Folds of Losse’: Lady Mary Wroth’s Baroque Visions of Female Community in the Enchantment Episodes of The 218

illustrate how Wroth engages with “masculine” literary traditions (typically Petrarchism) and the male authors of and before her time.259 Building upon conversations which frequently consider tree-carving characters as author figures, scholars have recently begun to treat the Urania’s tree carving episodes as representations of early modern manuscript circulation and, in a few cases, print publication. Because many of these scholars find that Wroth links circulation and publication with the undesirable exposure of a writer’s thoughts and feelings, this branch of criticism has enabled important discussions about how Wroth’s work comments upon the relationship between material texts and the emotional interiority of their creators.

Scholars who examine the relationship among text, author, and interiority in the Urania frequently explore the romance’s prominent themes of privacy and concealment as they relate to the threat of publication. They typically assert that this threat exists because published works

Countess of Montgomery’s Urania (1621),” in Female Communities 1600-1800: Literary Visions and Cultural Realities, ed. Rebecca D’Monte and Nicole Pohl (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), 1-27; Clare R. Kinney, “‘Beleeve this butt a fiction’: Female Authorship, Narrative Undoing and the Limits of Romance in The Second Part of The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania,” Spenser Studies 17 (2003): 239-51; Mary Ellen Lamb, “The Heroics of Constancy in Mary Wroth’s Countess of Montgomery’s Urania,” in Gender and Authorship in the Sidney Circle (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1990), 142-93 and “Women Readers in Mary Wroth’s Urania,” in Reading Mary Wroth, 210-25; Kim Walker, “‘This strang labourinth’: Lady Mary Wroth,” in Women Writers of the English Renaissance (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996), 170-90; Daniel Juan Gil, “The Currency of the Beloved and the Authority of Lady Mary Wroth,” Modern Language Studies 29, no.2 (1999): 73-92. 259 See Rebecca LaRoche, “Pamphilia Across a Crowded Room: Mary Wroth’s Entry into Literary History,” Genre 30 (1998): 267-88; Jaqueline T. Miller, “Lady Mary Wroth in the House of Busirane,” in Worldmaking Spenser: Explorations in the Early Modern Age, eds. Patrick Cheney and Lauren Silberman (Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2000),120-37; Naomi Miller, “Engendering Discourse: Women’s Voices in Wroth’s Urania and Shakespeare’s Plays,” in Reading Mary Wroth, 154-74; Shannon Miller, “‘Mirrours More then One’: Edmund Spenser and Female Authority in the Seventeenth Century,” in Worldmaking Spenser, 125-47; Paula Payne, “Finding a Poetic Voice of Her Own: Lady Mary Wroth's Urania and ‘Pamphilia to Amphilanthus,’” in Pilgrimage for Love: Essays in Early Modern Literature in Honor of Josephine A. Roberts, ed. Sigrid King (Tempe: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1999), 197-210. 219

give reading characters access to writing characters’ interior thoughts and feelings, with or without their knowledge and/or consent. Most recently, Laetitia Coussement-Boillot has observed that, in the Urania, “the act of writing requires secrecy and all along….we are reminded of the dangers inherent in the circulation of writings.” The danger, as she explains it, lies in the potential revelation of one’s private, interior feelings: “If love appears as the primary impetus for writing, the relation between the two is a complex, even contradictory one; writing is both seen as a necessary, privileged means for disburdening one’s heart from the pains of love and yet the publishing of one’s feelings endangers the necessary concealment of one’s passion.”260 To write is to imbue that writing with your “passions” and to risk that this writing and the personal meanings attached to it will be discovered. Sarah Rodgers similarly argues that the Urania’s tree carving episodes register Wroth’s discomfort with “the dangers inherent in the circulation of writings.” She asserts that these episodes fictionalize the culture of manuscript circulation within Wroth’s coterie and register her uneasiness with her literary network’s tendency to mine her romance for hidden meanings and information. According to Rodgers,

Pamphilia’s decision to write in ciphers later in Urania Part 1 evidences her increasing concern that others will see and understand the meaning of what she publishes on various trees. Rodgers further conjectures that Wroth intentionally printed the Urania because she herself sought an audience (unlike the members of her coterie) who might read her “work for its literary merit rather than attempting to ‘decipher’ it for personal information.”261 Unlike Coussement-Boillot and Rodgers, Vin Nardizzi and Miriam Jacobson assert that Pamphilia’s acts of carving represent

260 Laetitua Coussement-Boillot, “‘Then Tooke She a Knife, and in the Rine of an Oake Insculped a Sypher’: Acts of Writing in Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania,” Etudies Epistémè 21 (2015): paragraphs 9, 13, accessed June 16, 2019, https://doi.org/10.4000/episteme.410. 261 Sarah Rodgers, “Embedded Poetry and Coterie Readers in Mary Wroth's ‘Urania,’” Studies in Philology 111, no. 3 (2014): 470. 220

not manuscript circulation but print publication. They argue that Pamphilia’s acts of carving “re- work the material practice of plant grafting.” Rather than creating a new species meant to bear

“literal fruit,” though, she “grafts into the tree an amorous secret that she would prefer to keep hidden.” Pamphilia’s “poetic grafting” embeds her secrets in the bark of the trees she carves upon, imbuing them with her passions as she forces the trees to mimic her own painful experience. As such, “Pamphilia’s poetic grafting emerges as a metonym for Wroth’s book of secrets about the Jacobean court.”262 Both Pamphilia’s carvings and Wroth’s book contain hidden meanings which readers are constantly attempting to decipher.263

While these analyses of the Urania reveal a great deal about the relationship between a writing character’s interior state and the material texts she creates, they rarely consider what representations of circulation and publication suggest about the impact of public texts upon interpersonal intimate bonds in the romance. Criticism almost exclusively focuses on the harmful effects of publication and circulation (especially for female characters) and often ignores how both can support intimate connections. In this chapter, then, I intend to demonstrate not only how

Wroth’s characters relate to their own writing, but how their writing plays an integral role in the interpersonal bonds most important to them. I will challenge the general assumption that, for

Wroth, publication yields only negative consequences. I do not deny that publication sometimes

262 Vin Nardizzi and Miriam Jacobson, “The Secrets of Grafting in Wroth's Urania,” in Ecofeminist Approaches to Early Modernity, ed. Rebecca Laroche (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 176-7. 263 For more on the connections between writing and privacy in Wroth’s work see Hackett’s “Courtly Writing by Women.” She suggests that all writing in the Urania represents manuscript circulation and posits that Pamphilia prefers to keep her writing and her feelings hidden, only revealing them to those with whom she shares an intimate connection. See also Jeffrey Masten, “‘Shall I turne blabb?’: Circulation, Gender, and Subjectivity in Mary Wroth's Sonnets,” in Reading Mary Wroth, 67-87. Masten argues that Pamphilia designates her garden as a private, feminine space and writes there to maintain privacy and avoid the circulation of her work. 221

strains relationships in the romance, but I also hope to illustrate that writing-made-public forges and strengthens intimate bonds just as often, if not more often.

Two scholars have spoken to the ways publication binds people together in early modern romance, but they have only done so in passing. In their respective analyses of the Urania and the Old Arcadia, Helen Hackett and Max Thomas both observe that publication within these texts binds lovers together by providing them with a shared secret which others can witness but cannot access. Hackett notes that the private nature of writing makes an author’s decision to

“grant disclosure” a “token of…intimacy.”264 She claims that, because Pamphilia guards her written work so closely, her decision to show it to Amphilanthus strengthens the intimacy between them. Others may know that Amphilanthus has been to Pamphilia’s chambers and perhaps even that she has allowed him to read her poetry. However, only Pamphilia and

Amphilanthus know what this poetry is about and that it has enabled them to declare their love for one another and bind themselves together. Speaking more explicitly about tree carvings, Max

Thomas argues that the poems Pamela and Musidorus engrave in the trees of the Old Arcadia bind this couple together by publicly preserving a secret that only the lovers fully understand:

Although the texts are carved upon trees by which anyone might pass, their

efficacy…depends upon the extent to which they display the lovers' secrets (to one

another) without declaring them (to anyone else). The lovers believe they participate in a

game which places them above suspicion and in complicity insofar as only certain

interpreters within the story can untangle the codes. Entirely conventional in its conceit of

sweet suffering and dolorous passion, the poetry remains unfixed in its signification.

264 Hackett, “Courtly Writing,” 184. 222

Interpreting it is a function of a shared lexicon of referents, and not upon the signifiers

themselves.265

According to Thomas, Musidorus and Pamela’s tree texts both are and are not public, and therein lies their power to bind the lovers together. Only Pamela and Musidorus can fully understand the meanings of these carvings. In contrast to all who may see their engravings, these lovers have the

“codes” with which to decipher them. Their knowledge sets them apart from the rest of the world and, thereby, keeps them close to one another. Because the carvings they create remain “upon trees by which anyone might pass.” Their secret is displayed for all to see, and, like an inside joke, their knowledge that others will see but not understand their carvings binds them together.

This observation is also applicable to the Urania as Pamphilia and Amphilanthus write in codes and ciphers that only they (and perhaps a few others) understand. In this chapter I will expand upon Hackett and Thomas’ comments to paint a more comprehensive picture of the ways tree carvings bind both lovers and friends in Wroth’s romance.

Traditions of Tree Carving

It may seem counterintuitive to think of public acts like carving a tree or printing a book as deeply intimate; however, the long literary tradition surrounding tree-carving—which “finds its origins in classical literature beginning with Aristophanes, Callimachus, and Theocritus and continues through Virgil, Propertius, and Ovid, who provided it with a pastoral and amatory context that would be carried into the Renaissance”266— does present the intimacy between carver and beloved as one which relies upon public legibility and visibility. As Nardizzi and

265 Max W. Thomas, “Urban Semiosis in Early Modern London,” Genre 30 (1997): 18. 266 Eugene R. Cunnar, “Names on Trees, The Hermaphrodite, and ‘The Garden,’” in Celebrated and Neglected Poems of Andrew Marvell, eds. Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth (Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1992), 122-3. 223

Jacobson put it, “From Ariosto to Shakespeare, sonnets, graffiti, names, and posies engrafted into barky codices are public proclamations of love.”267 In fact, poets explicitly and consistently identify the public and accessible status of tree carvings as one of their most important qualities.

Their work illustrates that the engraved tree’s power to bind lovers together comes from its ability to make their connection more intelligible and more conspicuous. Below, I will discuss four ways that public tree carvings help poets and their intimates maintain emotional connections: they become monuments which sustain the bond between poet and friend/lover beyond their own lifetimes; they evoke binding contracts (marital and otherwise) between carvers and their loved ones; they display and celebrate—without revealing—secret knowledge shared between the poet and beloved; and they stand in for an absent loved one, thereby helping a friend or lover feel close to her or him despite physical or emotional distance. While there are other ways tree carvings bind people together, I have chosen to focus on these four because they appear most frequently in Wroth’s romance.

In most carving episodes, poets transform trees into monuments which celebrate the beloved’s worth and, sometimes, the poet’s skill. As Leah Knight observes in her comprehensive analysis of tree-carving scenes, engravings are often made with the goal of “preservation and perpetuation.” They are meant to protect “the memory of the poet’s subject: usually the beloved, although sometimes an admired friend or bigwig and sometimes even the poet himself” from

“the depredations of time.”268 Monuments are, after all, made so that others might see and admire them long after both their creators and subjects are dead. In “Canzionere 30” of Petrarch’s Rime

Sparse the speaker hopes that “someone who will be born a thousand years from now” will see

267 Nardizzi and Jacobson, “The Secrets of Grafting,” 183. 268 Knight, “Writing on Early Modern Trees,” 473. 224

the image of Laura he has carved in “living laurel” (88).269 He anticipates that both his work and his love will live on in this viewer. Nico, a shepherd in Sir Philip Sidney’s Old Arcadia promises

Leuca, that, because her “monument is laid in many a tree” the “after-folks shall wonder still at thee” (128).270 In the same romance, Pamela asks a tree to “live long, and long witness my chosen smart” as she cuts into its bark (174). These poet figures share the belief that “after-folks” will see their carvings. Their engravings will “long” remain a “witness” to the poet’s muse, celebrating her worth “a thousand years from now.”

In addition to protecting the poet’s work and the memory of his beloved, tree monuments also increase their fame as the years pass: “According to poetic logic…as the tree grows, so should the fame or love or beloved or poet (or some configuration thereof), with the text piggybacking on the trunk’s broadening girth.”271 As the tree grows higher and broader, the poet’s carvings are enlarged and elevated so that both present-day passersby and “afterfolks” can easily see the poet’s engravings and must literally look up to them. As Oenone says to Paris in

Ovid’s Heroides, “You carved my name on beech trees and I / Can read there 'Oenone', product of your hand. / As those trees grow the words likewise grow. / Grow high and straight so that everyone will know / My name and the honor that is mine” (28-32).272 Oenone recognizes that, because her name will “grow high and straight” and be seen by “everyone,” Paris’ tree carving will add to her fame and “honor.” Like Paris, Pamela carves Musidorus’ name into a tree, and intends for it to “lift up thy stately line” to honor him. Given that “line” here refers both to the

269 All Petrarch quotes are taken from Robert Durling’s edition of Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The Rime Sparse and Other Lyrics (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1976). 270 All Sidney quotes are taken from The World’s Classics edition of The Old Arcadia, ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985). 271 Knight, “Writing on Early Modern Trees,” 478, 474. 272 Ovid, Heroides, trans. Harold Isbell (London: Penguin, 1990), 41. 225

lines of Pamela’s poetry and Musidorus’ line of decedents, Pamela’s carving makes the tree into a monument to her own poetic skill and Musidorus’ genealogical legacy. Even Spenser’s Colin

Clout promises to “endosse” Cynthia’s name “in every tree” so that “as the trees do grow, her name may grow”273 (Colin Clout’s Come Home Again, 631-2). So, the carving poet preserves the memory of his beloved in the bark of a tree and ensures that his words and her worth will become more and more visible as the tree grows taller and thicker.274

The carved tree is not only a testament to the beloved’s worth but to the intimate feelings, thoughts, and desires which the poet grafts into it as he carves. In this way, the tree monument enables a poet’s internal experiences and intimate ties to the beloved to transcend time along with her memory. Engravings become a means through which audiences can witness the poet’s experience of love and imaginatively revivify the poet’s feelings long after both carver and subject are dead. The poet’s carvings make his devotion to his loved one never-ending, publicly celebrating his adoration while he lives and long after he dies. Petrarch’s speaker demonstrates his nearly religious devotion to Laura by creating an “idol” of her image “carved in living laurel.” This idol so thoroughly conveys his love for her that he expects “pity [will] perhaps come into the eyes” of those who see it in the future as they contemplate how painful his longing was (88). Similarly, Sidney’s shepherd Nico promises Leuca that he has praised her so

273 All references to Spenser’s poetry are taken from Edmunds Spenser: The Shorter Poems, ed. Richard McCabe (London: Penguin, 1999). 274 The monuments these carvers create, though ostensibly made solely for the beloved’s benefit, do sometimes celebrate the poet and his work as well as (or even instead of) their supposed subject. Like any good Petrarchan poet, carvers do sometimes focus on their own feelings and literary fame. For example, in Tasso’s Aminta his speaker focuses on Thrisis’ literary fame rather than the glory of this shepherd’s beloved: “He writ it [love poetry] on the barkes of sundry trees, / and as the trees, so grew his verse” (I.i.207-8). Unlike Ovid who, through Oeneone, connects the growth of Paris’ “words” with the elevation of his beloved’s “honor,” Tasso’s speaker focuses on Thrisis’ “verse” which grows with the tree, advertising his poetic abilities. 226

thoroughly the “after-folks” will “wonder still at thee.” His “wonder” of her is so vividly illustrated by his engraving that future readers will experience it as well (128). Shakespeare’s

Orlando praises Rosalind—“the fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she”—in the bark of many a tree so that “every eye which in this forest looks / Shall see thy virtue witnessed everywhere”

(III.ii.7-8).275 Because he so effectively “witnesses” how “fair, chaste, and unexpressive” he finds her, those who come across his engraved trees will know how great his love for Rosalind is or was. In its celebration of the beloved’s worth the carved tree captures a permanent snapshot of the poet’s adoration. No matter what has happened or will happen between the lovers, within the bark of the tree, the poet always remains enamored and the beloved admired. The intimate connection the poet feels to his beloved during the act of engraving cannot be altered or erased while his monument stands.276

Engravings also memorialize and preserve the poet’s emotional experiences for him or her. By visiting a past carving, a poet can relive the feelings that drove her to create it. The act of carving is so emotionally charged that it leaves traces of the poet’s psyche in the bark of the tree.

She infuses the tree’s rind with her intimate thoughts and feelings, leaving a bit of herself behind.

Virgil and Sidney both employ corporeal metaphors to convey the intensity of the transfer

275 All Shakespeare quotes can be found in The Norton Shakespeare: Second Edition, Ed. Stephen Greenblatt (London: Norton, 1997). 276 It is not always the case that a male carver celebrates a female beloved. For example, Theocritus’ Six Idillia depicts Spartan virgins who, in singing Helen’s epithalamion, announce their intent to honor her by carving the phrase, “doe humble reverence, for I am Hellen’s tree” (II. 47-8). Virgil’s fifth eclogue presents a shepherd who praises his deceased friend and fellow shepherd, Daphnis, by carving songs in his honor “on the green bark of a beech.” See Theocritus, Six Idillia, Chosen out of the Famous Sicilian Poet Theocritus, and Translated into English Verse (Oxford: 1588), http://ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/login?url=https://www- proquest-com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu; and Virgil, The Bucoliks of Publius Virgilius Maro. trans. Abraham Fleming (London: Thomas Orwin, 1589), http://ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/login? url=https://www-proquest-com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu. 227

between poet and tree. Virgil’s eclogues end with Gallus’ proclamation that he will “grave in tender trees my bones” and that as “these trees shall spring and grow…you my loves shall spring and grow” (68-70). Virgil registers the poet’s interaction with the tree as one in which he leaves parts of his body (his bones) and his mind (his loves) behind. Pamela likewise leaves some of herself in the tree upon which she praises Musidorus. She tells the pine, “And in this growing bark grow verses mine. / My heart my word, my word hath giv’n my heart. / the giver giv’n from gift shall never part” (174). Pamela claims she has literally put her heart into her work. If heart and word “shall never part,” then, as long as the tree houses Pamela’s verse it also contains the emotions she experienced as she composed this verse. Her thoughts reside in the tree’s bark as well. Pamela explains to the “straight upraised pine” which she injures with her knife,

“wounding thee, my thoughts in thee I grave” (174). Just as Gallus’ “bones” and “loves” become part of the tree he carves upon, Pamela leaves residual parts of her heart and mind within the bark of the Pine. In addition to Gallus and Pamela, Thomas Watson’s speaker in The Tears of

Fancy claims, “my woes [are] engraven in the trees,” 277 and Shakespeare’s Orlando announces of the trees in Arden, “in their barks my thoughts I’ll character” (III.ii.6). These poets suggest that, by touching the tree and cutting into it, carvers leave remnants of themselves and their emotional experiences on and in the bark of their wooden monuments. There will always be a physical place that these poets can visit to relive the memories of intimacy these trees hold for them.

In some instances, a tree preserves more than one carver’s thoughts and feelings. When two lovers each carve into the same trunk, they imbue it not only with their individual thoughts

277 Watson quotes are taken from The Tears of Fancie (London: 1593), http://ezaccess.libraries. psu.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/docview/2147636453? accountid=13158. 228

and feelings but with their mutual love for one another. It becomes a monument of their shared affection, a vehicle through which the lovers preserve their intimacy. In Orlando Furioso

Angelica and Medoro each create carvings which join their names: “Their manner was on ev'ry wall within , / Without on ev'ry stone or shady tree,/ To grave their names with bodkin, knife, or pin: / Angelica and Medoro you plain might see/ (So great a glory had they both therein), /

Angelica and Medoro in ev'ry place/ With sundry knots and wreaths they interlace” (XIX.28.2-

8).278 These lovers join their names with a conjunction and communicate their unity by interlacing their engraved names with “sundry knots and wreaths.” Because both lovers carve

“Angelica and Medoro,” the “shady trees” bear the same interlaced names in two different hands, evidence that both Angelica and Medoro experience their love as mutual. Following Ariosto’s lead, Sidney depicts Pamela and Musidorus behaving similarly. Pamela also carves “pretty knots which tied together the name of Musidorus and Pamela, sometimes intermixedly changing them to Pamedorus and Musimela” (174). Again, the carving lover joins her own name and that of her beloved by carving them together with “pretty knots.” More interestingly though, she confuses the distinction between herself and Musidorus by combining parts of their names to create two new identities, both composed of Pamela and Musidorus’ names. In doing so she suggests that the two of them intermingle within the bark of the tree. There they will always be intertwined.

The love poetry Musidorus carves next to Pamela’s verses confirms that he returns her love. As in Angelica and Medoro’s case, when both Pamela’s and Musidorus’ handwriting appears on the same tree, they transform it into a timeless monument to their intimate connection. Even after

278 All Orlando Furioso quotes are taken from Guido Waldman’s translation. See Ariosto, Lodovico, Orlando Furioso, trans. Guido Waldman (London: Oxford UP, 1974) 229

their deaths, their emotional attachment lives on in the tree itself and in those who bear witness to it by viewing what has been engraved in its bark.

Because a poet puts so much of her emotional experience into her carvings, engraved trees help many fictional lovers maintain a sense of closeness in the face of physical or emotional distance. Carving poets either make the trees they engrave into substitutes for their loved ones or use them to (re)articulate the feelings which tie them to their loves. The subjects of these carvings can visit the tree texts made in their honor to reassure themselves of the poet’s devotion, to interact with an object which retains traces of her or him, and/or to rekindle those feelings of closeness that may have started to wane in the poet’s absence. In the Rime Sparse, Petrarch’s speaker makes and worships an “idol carved in living laurel” because Laura will not return his affection (88). He imagines that the laurel’s “lovely tender bark…[is] where, today that noble soul dwells who makes every other pleasure vile to me” (250). By carving her image into the tree’s bark, the speaker copes with Laura’s rejection and her death. He imagines that her soul lives in the laurel tree and that, by being close to the tree, he can be close to her. Shakespeare’s

Orlando similarly associates the trees he cuts into with Rosalind. Exiled to the forest of Arden,

Orlando resolves to “carve on every tree / The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she” (III.ii.9-

10). Read literally, it sounds as if Orlando plans to carve Rosalind herself onto the trees. Because he cannot be near her (or so he thinks), his tree carvings serve as proxies, helping him maintain his intimate connection to the “unexpressive she.” In addition to creating a substitute for the beloved, carving also concretizes and, thereby, clarifies and intensifies a poet’s emotional ties to a loved one. Pamela, for instance, tells the “straight upraised pine” that “wounding thee my thoughts in thee I grave; / Since that my thoughts, as straight as straightness thine, / No smaller wound-alas! far deeper have” (173). “Wounding” the tree, Pamela puts her “thoughts” into

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words and causes the tree to visually mimic her pain. Her pause before “alas!” suggests that this act helps her more fully see and understand the intensity of her emotional pain. Her wounds are not simply equal to those she gives the tree but “alas! far deeper.”

The subjects of engravings can also engage with their tree monuments to regain a sense of closeness to their loved ones in the face of physical or emotional distance. They can touch the marks their lovers made while engraving the tree and place their hands on the bark that he or she touched while carving into it. They can imagine what their lover was feeling for them as she or he made these marks. Thus, being physically close to an engraved tree often enables a lover to feel emotionally close to the loved one who engraved it. Perhaps this is why, after learning that

Paris has forsaken her, Oenone recalls the beech tree upon which Paris carved her name. She tells him “I can read there ‘Oenone,’ product of your hand.” Though he has left her for Helen,

Oenone can visit the beech tree to see the physical evidence that he once loved her, and she can, for a moment, relive the intimacy they shared before he betrayed her. Musidorus likewise values the tree that Pamela has deigned “with her faire hand, your tender barks to cleave.” He notes the contact between Pamela’s hand and the tree, between her feelings for him and the carvings she has left, and for this reason he calls the tree “blessed.”

In addition to serving as monuments and substitute lovers, carvings can also constitute a public contract between poet and beloved. Engraved verses, words, and symbols become testimony of a bond that might otherwise be completely private and, consequently, easy to dissolve. These contracts strengthen lovers’ claims to one another, protecting against those who would question their union and, ideally, making it more difficult for one of them to stray. Take, for example, the stress Oenone places upon the promise Paris engraves in the “poplar growing beside a stream.” Angered by Paris’ betrayal, she reminds him that the Poplar bears “lines carved

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by your eager hand: / ‘If Paris rejects Oenone and still lives, / Let the Xanthus flow back to its spring” (33-6). Unfortunately for Oenone, this contract was not enough to keep Paris from

Helen. Still, her reference to it does demonstrate a belief that the graven contract, written in

Paris’ “hand,” should have kept him faithful.

Ariosto, Sidney, and Greville explore the contractual nature of tree carvings by associating them with marriage. In Orlando Furioso, Angelica and Medoro compulsively carve their names together in walls, stones, and trees, interlacing them with “sundry knots and wreaths” after their clandestine marriage. In part, the intensity of their love for one another drives them to carve so profusely, but they may also do so to undermine the pre-existing betrothal between Angelica and Orlando. As I mentioned in chapter 2, when ecclesiastical courts were tasked with resolving competing marital contracts, the prior claim generally held more weight unless proof of the first contract was significantly less compelling than proof of the second. In this case, then, Angelica and Medoro create a proliferation of evidence (in the form of engraved trees, walls, and stones) that testifies to their bond and gives it more weight. Orlando’s initial reaction to these carvings does seem to suggest that they will prevent him from questioning Angelica and Medoro’s marriage. When Ariosto’s hero discovers the grove where

Angelica “to boast of that that was her shame / Used oft to write her and Medoro’s name, / And then with true love knots and pretty poses / (To shew how she to him by love was knit)/ Her inward thoughts by outward words discloses” he experiences great “fear and malcontent”

(XXIII.78.7-8, 79.1-3, 80.7-8). Because he recognizes Angelica’s “pretty hand” (80.1), Orlando knows that, by carving “true love knots,” she has “knit” herself to Medoro, invalidating her agreement to marry him and entering into a new contract with someone else.

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Under different circumstances, Pamela and Musidorus also attempt to solidify their union with engravings. Though Pamela has made no previous marital agreements, she has eloped with

Musidorus against her family’s wishes. The two of them have not solemnized their union in any way—not through a ceremony or intercourse. Thus, their ties to one another remain insecure.

Pamela’s carvings, then, function as a substitution for marriage. Rather than uniting themselves through sex or ceremony, Musidorus and Pamela become one in the bark of various trees as she

“ties” their names together with “pretty knots” and changes them “intermixedly…to Pamedorus and Musimela.” This melding and tying together of identities evokes the common sentiment that, through marriage, husband and wife are so closely bound to one another that they become one.

Finally, in Sonnet LI, Greville’s speaker associates tree carving with the exchange of love tokens: “My songs they be of Cynthia's praise, / I wear her Rings on Holy days, / In every Tree I write her name, / And every Day I read the same” (13-16).279 Wearing Cynthia’s ring and writing her name “in every tree” appear as equally valid ways in which the speaker and his beloved bind themselves together. Cynthia proves her devotion by giving the speaker a love token and, in turn, he carves her name on trees to proclaim that he returns her affection. Greville further equates tree carving with marital agreements when his speaker threatens, “If Cynthia crave her Ring of me, / I blot her name out of the Tree” (19-20). If Cynthia breaks their bond by taking her ring back (an act with the power to dissolve a marriage contract in the early modern period), the speaker too will have to dissolve his bond to her by removing her name from the tree.

While lovers’ carvings solidify their bond by publicly proclaiming their love, these engravings also bring couples closer because they contain meanings which other readers cannot

279 Greville quotes are taken from Certaine Learned and Elegant Works of the Right Honorable Fulke Lord Brooke Written in His Youth (London: Elizabeth Purslowe for Henry Seyle, 1633). 233

decipher. As a result, tree carvings allow couples to see themselves as separate from the rest of society—only they have the knowledge necessary to fully understand the meaning of their engravings—while simultaneously calling for all who see the carving to recognize this separateness. As Thomas observes, tree carvings contain within them codes the lovers have devised to communicate their feelings. So, especially in the case of engraved poems and ciphers, tree carvings publicly announce the connection lovers share while simultaneously withholding the exact content and significance of their communication. They bind lovers together by providing them with a shared secret. Those who see the carvings know that they contain secrets and that only the lover who produced the carving and the beloved for whom it was produced know the contents of those secrets. The lovers’ public secret asserts the value of their connection by demonstrating to any observers that they will never understand the carver as well as the person her or his message was written for. This public secret creates and strengthens the intimacy carving lovers share. Musidorus, for example takes Pamela’s carved verses as a message written specifically for him. Speaking to the tree upon which she engraves her poem, Musidorus observes that Pamela “by you (O blessed you) hath sent / Such piercing words as no thoughts else conceive” (175). According to Musidorus, Pamela intentionally “sends” her words (and the thoughts and feelings attached to them) to him through the “blessed” tree. Though anyone can read her words, they are there for Musidorus, the only one who can fully understand their meaning. One of Greville’s sonnets (LXXV) also presents lovers who send secret messages via tree bark. Reflecting on the past, before Philocell was false to her, Caelica remembers, “I bid you in the tree / Cipher down your name by me” (l61-2). Rather than simply asking Phiocell to carve his name into the tree next to hers, Caelica urged him to “cipher it down.” When these lovers were still close, they communicated their feelings for one another through a secret code. Finally,

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in some instances, the lover’s handwriting serves as a code itself. Only those who know him and his hand know who has carved the tree text they encounter and who it is for or about.

While the authors of these texts include tree carving episodes and consider what the public status of those carvings means for the intimate relationships they memorialize, none of them do so to the same extent as Wroth. Many authors include a single tree-carving episode or mention the act in passing, but the first part of the Urania is filled with women who cut verses, symbols, and ciphers into bark to cope with their fraught relationships to the men they love.

Wroth’s sustained treatment of tree carving enables her to expand upon the ways tree texts bind lovers together and to suggest other ways the public nature of these carvings might forge bonds between an author and the subjects and readers of her texts.

Collaborative Carving and Female Friendship

Like Ariosto and Sidney, Wroth investigates how an act of collaborative carving can bind two people together. Whereas their tree carvers are lovers of the opposite sex, though, Wroth’s collaborative authors are female friends. Pamphilia and Antissia do not use their knives to

“interlace” their names together with “pretty knots” or combine parts of their names to form new ones, but they do carve melancholy poetry about the same man on the trunk of the same tree.

Pamphilia is the first to “publish” her work. Inconsolable after Amphilanthus’ departure, the princess visits her garden and finishes a sonnet she has been carving on an ash tree there. This act of publication makes her sorrows legible to Antissia who watches in hiding as Pamphilia completes her work. Though these printed verses threaten to pit the women against each other, they bind them together instead. Because Pamphilia’s published poem stands as evidence of her heartache, the princess cannot deny that she, like Antissia, is a suffering lover (though she does deny that Amphilanthus is her beloved). Upon discovering this, Antissia confides in the Princess

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completely, and the two women grow close through their shared sorrows. Later, Antissia adds her own verses to the ash tree and, later still, Pamphilia revisits the tree to carve more verses upon its trunk. Because Pamphilia and Antissia cut into the same tree in response to the sting of

Amphilanthus’s ever-changing affections, they create a single monument which expresses the anguish of staying faithful to an inconstant man. Within the bark of the tree, their verses mingle and speak empathetically to one another, two voices forever sharing the same longing and sorrow. Like “Pamedorus” and “Musimela,” the two women’s identities merge, their verses combining to form a single testament to the rejection and abandonment they face together. The ash tree becomes not just a monument to their shared pain but a site both women seek out when in need of an understanding companion. Pamphilia and Antissia can visit the tree to feel a sympathetic bond with a fellow sufferer—another female or the tree itself. Just as their poetry joins within the bark of the ash, Pamphilia and Antissia’s verses merge on the printed leaves of

Wroth’s text—appearing on the same page, repeating words and themes, and expressing the same emotions. In this way, Wroth stresses that Pamphilia and Antissia’s collaborative creation cements their ties to each other within the fictional world of the Urania and in the printed book which will tell their story for years to come. The tree and the book are monuments not only to

Pamphilia and Antissia’s ill-fated love of Amphilanthus or the pain he causes them but to their shared experience as suffering lovers and the friendship they forge in the face of this suffering.

At first, it seems as though Pamphilia’s carvings will make Antissia into an enemy rather than a friend. Upon one of Amphilanthus’ many departures, Antissia observes that Pamphilia

“did with as feeling an affection accompany [her] sorrow when he went away, and more nearly…then pity of [Antissia’s] grief could have procured.” Suspecting that the princess’ grief is like hers because it has the exact same source, “suspicion creep[s]” into Antissia’s heart. She

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faces “the loss of [her] content” and begins to feel jealous of Pamphilia’s “perfections.” She goes so far as to follow Pamphilia when she withdraws to her (supposedly) private garden. Hoping to sneak up on the princess so that “she might by chance over-hear her secret complaints, and so…be sure of her most troubled knowledge,” Antissia uses the key Pamphilia has given her and secretly observes the poetess. A rather inept spy, Antissia does not remain concealed long. She accidentally reveals herself by rustling the bushes she hides behind, but by the time Pamphilia has spotted her, Antissia has already obtained the proof she needs to “be sure” that her suspicions are valid. In addition to overhearing Pamphilia’s complaints, she has watched the princess carve love poetry into the bark of an ash tree. This act of publication makes it impossible for Pamphilia to keep her intimate feelings hidden from her audience. Her carvings become visible proof that she is in love. Though Pamphilia makes a weak attempt to persuade Antissia that “many Poets write as well by imitation as by sense of passion; therefore this is no proof against me,” Antissia tells her, “You cannot…dissemble…your own hand in yonder faire ash will witness against you.” Pamphilia’s carving, once created, makes her intimate thoughts and feelings publicly accessible. Her secrets are no longer solely her own. Recognizing the strength of this evidence,

Pamphilia soon admits, “It were to small purpose…to deny it, since you have discovered me.”

Pamphilia’s poetry does, in fact, “witness against” her.

The princess’ carved verses threaten to ruin the friendship she and Antissia have begun to develop. For a moment it seems as though Antissia will have no choice but to “rival with the rarest Princess Pamphilia” for Amphilanthus’ love (93-6). Instead, through a great deal of equivocation, Pamphilia convinces Antissia that, though she loves, she does not love

Amphilanthus. Her carvings make it impossible for her to deny the existence of her feelings, but, because she does not identify Amphilanthus in her poetry, she can, for the moment, keep the

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object of her affections to herself. In a surprising turn of events, Pamphilia’s carvings bring the two women closer rather than tearing them apart. “Thoroughly satisfied” with Pamphilia’s explanation, Antissia begins to pour her heart out to her friend. Pamphilia’s outpouring of emotion encourages Antissia to follow suit. Overcome with joy and relief, she cannot keep herself from

Taking the Princess in her arms, protesting her life too little, to pay for requital for

this royal freedom she had found in her, and the favor received from her;

expressing then her love in the best manner she could, plainly making confession

of all to her; concluding, that had not her incomparable virtue bound her best

respects to her, yet the resemblance which she had in her face of that famous

Prince, and her only beloved, would have forced her to love her. (97)

The rapid rhythm of Wroth’s sentence emphasizes the intensity of Antissia’s emotional outpouring as she quickly shifts from suspecting Pamphilia to making the princess her closest confidant. She initiates physical contact by taking Pamphilia in her arms, she freely “expresses her love” for Amphilanthus, and she tells her friend that both her “incomparable virtue” and “the resemblance which she had in her face” to Amphilanthus “force” her to love the princess as well.

Pamphilia, touched by Antissia’s affection, returns it, and the two women “rising and holding each other by the arm, with as much love, as love in them could join…took their way back towards the Palace” (97). So, Wroth introduces the potential threat Pamphilia’s act of publication poses only to subvert the reader’s expectations. Instead, Wroth uses Pamphilia’s printed work to demonstrate how a physical “testament” of one’s feelings can bind those who recognize and identify with those feelings to the testament’s creator. Though, of course, the lie Pamphilia tells about her sonnet—it is, in fact, about Amphilanthus—complicates the friendship she and

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Antissia share, this does not make the intimate bond this poem helps the two women forge less meaningful. The princess’ lie may make Pamphilia and Antissia’s friendship precarious. Antissia could discover, at any moment, that Pamphilia has not revealed the complete truth of her emotional pain in the same way that she has, but Pamphilia’s secret does not make their friendship less valuable or genuine. Their shared experience of heartache remains the same whoever Pamphilia loves.

Antissia and Pamphilia’s intense friendship proceeds without conflict until Pamphilia’s brother, Rosindy, comes home in disguise. To maintain his anonymity, Rosindy asks

Pamphilia—via his squire—to meet him in her garden. A secretive exchange between Pamphilia and the squire reawakens Antissia’s suspicions, and she follows the princess a second time. In the garden, she sees Pamphilia affectionately embracing a knight “so like in proportion to hers” that she mistakes him for Amphilanthus (107). Antissia rushes to her chamber where she curses her “miserable fate that brought me to be lost, and found by him who now ruins me,”

“Treacherous Love,” and her “more treacherous Lover” (108). Distraught and unable to unburden herself to her closest friend—who she, notably, leaves out of her curses—Antissia revisits “the same Ash, wherein the other affectionate afflicted Princess had written the Sonnet” instead. Because Antissia believes Pamphilia has replaced her in Amphilanthus’ heart and, therefore, cannot provide her the comfort she seeks, she relies upon the ash tree to serve as her confidant’s proxy.

Antissia visits the tree where she and Pamphilia first cemented their deep love for one another to feel close to the speaker of the poem engraved there. This speaker is an iteration of

Pamphilia—the “affectionate afflicted princess”—that experiences the same pain Antissia currently suffers. The message carved on the ash’s roots—“My thoughts thou hast supported

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without rest, / My tired body here hath lain oppressed / With love and fear”—reminds Antissia that Pamphilia’s restless mind and “tired body” have been exactly where she sits now. Antissia can physically touch the roots upon which Pamphilia’s weary limbs rested and her tears fell as she engraved them. If, while sitting under the tree, Antissia rests upon these roots, she and the

“other affectionate afflicted Princess” occupy the same space and share an overlapping emotional experience, separated only by time. The ash is also the site where Antissia and this version of

Pamphilia first shared their afflictions with one another and bound themselves together “with as much love, as love in them could join.” Thus, the tree puts Antissia in contact not only with a version of Pamphilia who shares her emotional experience but with the intimate bond the two women forged beneath it. In part, then, Antissia seeks the tree out for comfort because it retains traces of Pamphilia and of the intense understanding she and Pamphilia once shared.

The ash tree serves as an ideal stand-in for Pamphilia not only because it enables Antissia to occupy the same physical space as the “afflicted princess” but because it retains the poetess’ pain and sorrow. By visiting the tree, Antissia can at least ensure that her misery has company.

The verses which remain upon its bark preserve traces of Pamphilia’s suffering for any reader who sees them; however, because Antissia actually watched the poetess as she uttered her laments and cut into the tree, the verses have a slightly different meaning for her. Rather than simply seeing a testament to an unknown poet’s sadness, Antissia sees those engraved sorrows which initiated an empathetic connection between herself and Pamphilia. She can read

Pamphilia’s sonnet and remind herself that, once, her friend shared in and understood her pain so thoroughly that the two of them could confide (almost) completely in each other.

Pamphilia’s poem explicitly identifies the tree as a memorial to those woes that first drew

Antissia to confide in her and claims that Pamphilia’s sorrows will forever remain recorded upon

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the ash’s trunk. In the first stanza, the speaker asks the tree to “Keep in thy skin this testament of me” and in the final line she expresses her hope that the ash will “outlive me and testify my woes.” As a “testament” to her woes, the tree visually bears witness to the anguish she experiences. Pamphilia opens her sonnet by telling the ash, “Bear part with me most straight and pleasant Tree, / And imitate the Torments of my smart / Which cruel Love doth send into my heart.” In the final stanza, she reiterates the connection between the tree’s physical injury and her emotional one: “Thy sap doth weepingly bewray thy pain, / My heart-blood drops with storms it doth sustain.” The tree, then suffers physical injury as Pamphilia cuts into its bark, and this injury serves as a “testament” of Pamphilia’s invisible wounds. Whereas Pamphilia’s pain produces internal “woes,” “torments,” and “heart-blood drops,” the tree’s gashes yield visible tears of sap. By forcing the tree to physically mimic her pain, Pamphilia leaves evidence of her suffering on its bark and in its open wounds. She represents her abstract emotions concretely and visibly upon the tree’s trunk and, thereby, ensures that her sorrows can be easily witnessed and understood by those who encounter her verses. By looking over these verses, then, Antissia can comfort herself with the knowledge that she does not suffer alone.

In addition to ensuring Antissia that she is not alone in her emotional turmoil,

Pamphilia’s poem presents the tree itself as a companion. She asks it to “bear part” with her and forces upon it an empathetic relationship. Both suffer, and Pamphilia takes comfort in this. In the verses she carves upon its roots, Pamphilia presents the ash as a source of literal and emotional support: “My thoughts thou hast supported without rest, / My tired body here hath lain oppressed

/ With love, and fear: yet be thou every blest.” Like a reliable companion, the tree has provided her refuge from the emotional torments love and fear have caused her. This poem may suggest to

Antissia that, even if no one else will accompany her in her pain, the ash will. Pamphilia’s

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emotional proximity to the tree might also provide Antissia with an indirect way to be close to her. If Antissia, like Pamphilia, makes the tree her companion, the three of them—Pamphilia,

Antissia, and the tree—can become a community of suffering beings.

Pamphilia’s sonnet even goes so far as to blur the line between herself and her leafy companion, suggesting not only an intimate attachment to the tree but a transference or union between the princess and the ash. When she asks the tree to “Keep in thy skin this testament of me: / Which Love engraven hath with misery,” she smudges the line between the tree and herself, both of which have been marked by Pamphilia’s misery. Love has “engraven” sadness in

Pamphilia’s heart, but it has also driven Pamphilia to engrave the tree with her woes. Both become living entities that Love injures. Moreover, Pamphilia suggests that, through their contact, the ash tree takes on human qualities as Pamphilia becomes more tree-like. Her heart becomes a type of bark as it is engraved by Love, and the ash becomes more human as its bark becomes “skin” and its sap becomes tears which express its pain. Pamphilia takes on a passive role by being carved upon. She resigns herself to her fate and plans to “unpitied, and unthought on, wounded cry.” She submits to conquering love and accepts that the “wounds still cureless”

Love inflicts “must my rulers be.” The tree, on the other hand, must actively live on and testify to Pamphilia’s woes. In these ways, Pamphilia rhetorically positions the tree and herself not as two independent entities but as two hybrid creatures, like Pamedorus and Musimela. By retaining and testifying her woes and sharing a companion-like intimacy with her, the tree has become part

Pamphilia. So, for Antissia, being close to the ash also means being close to the princess.

As she sits beneath the ash, Antissia feels “invited, either by her own passion, or the imitation of that excellent Lady, to put some of her thoughts in some kind of measure”—a multifaceted pun indicating the meter of the poetry Antissia will create, the ways this poetry will

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help her measure the magnitude of her emotions as she articulates them, and her hope that expressing her emotions in this way will help her moderate them. Writing her own sonnet,

Antissia joins her thoughts and feelings with those Pamphilia has already engraved, expanding the tree text to include two female voices which issue similar laments. Like Pamphilia, Antissia speaks of Love as a conqueror. Pamphilia portrays “cruel” Love as her “ruler” who “neither good nor mercy knows.” In Antissia’s poem, Love “conspires” with obedience and fear “a worthless conquest gain’d to ruin me.” Both women also provide visceral descriptions of the torments

Love inflicts upon them. He tortures Pamphilia by sending “torments of smart” into her heart,

“engraving” her with “misery,” “cutting with grief [her] unresisting part,” and forcing her to endure “wounds still cureless.” Love forces Antissia to “remain like one that's laid in Briers, /

Where turning brings new pain and certain woe, / Like one, once burn’d bids me avoid the fires,

/ But love (true fire) will not let me be slow.” Most strikingly, both women compare lovesickness to being pierced with sharp objects, much like the knives with which they, in turn, pierce the bark of the tree. Just as the princess describes Love as “cutting [her] with grief” and making her heart bleed, Antissia’s reference to briers also evokes the image of being stuck. Together, these women create a cohesive text which illustrates the dangers of love and the pain associated with the loosening or severing of intimate ties. Their voices mingle within the tree’s bark as they both speak about loving Amphilanthus. Within the bark of the ash, Pamphilia and Antissia are permanently united through their shared suffering just as their verses join there for all to see.

Because their verses are printed together on the ash tree, it now serves as a memorial of the emotional experience they share. Anyone who comes across the collaboratively created tree text can see that all of the verses it bears touch on the topic of love and speak about the pain love often brings in similar ways, but they can also see that the text expresses the thoughts of two

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different voices. Pamphilia and Antissia’s unique hands make it clear that at least two people have carved their sorrows into the ash tree. Though future readers may not know who these women are, they will see that they both loved and lost and experienced similar emotions in the process.

Later in the romance—after Pamphilia and Amphilanthus have shared their feelings for one another—Pamphilia returns to the ash tree to process some disappointing news. The prophetess, Melissa, has just informed her, “I cannot find that you shall marry yet, nor him you most affect” (190). Though saddened, the princess encourages herself, “Joy then Pamphilia, if but in thy choice, and though henceforth thy love but slighted be, joy that at this time he esteemed me.” Willing herself to be happy, the poetess carves the following verses under her

“sad sonnet”: “Tears sometimes flow from mirth, as well as sorrow, / Pardon me then, if I again do borrow / Of thy moist rind some smiling drops, approving / Joy for true joy, which now proceeds from loving” (191). She thus records her temporary happiness, under the “testament to her woes,” making the ash into a monument not just to the “sorrow” love can bring but also of the “mirth” it can inspire. In carving these verses, Pamphilia unwittingly narrates another emotional experience she shares with Antissia. At the time Pamphilia finished carving her “sad sonnet” Antissia was the one who Amphilanthus “esteemed” and the one to experience the “true joy which…proceeds from loving” and being loved in turn. Now, she has been rejected for

Pamphilia who, in turn, will be rejected for Musalina. So, Pamphilia adds to her tree monument another emotional experience that connects her to her friend and broadens the portrait of female love that the tree text presents to its readers. The ash tree becomes a collage of those emotions

Pamphilia and Antissia both experience as their intimate bonds to Amphilanthus form and dissolve.

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After Antissia and Pamphilia have both carved their verses into the ash tree, fusing their shared thoughts and experiences in its bark, Wroth spatially joins their hearts and minds in a single printed page of the 1621 Urania. Near the end of Book I, as Pamphilia and Antissia are about to part, the two of them resolve to “spend this little time in such content as our hearts can permit us…and go into the solitary wood, where we may unheard, and unperceiv’d, better discourse our woes, sadly, and freely complaining” (145). In the woods, both women are driven by their

“passions” to compose verses—Pamphilia creates a poem and Antissia fashions a song—yet, rather than carving their work upon the same tree, they compose poetry in their minds. Wroth, however, recreates the ash tree within the 1621 edition of her book, ensuring that their work touches and overlaps by printing their verses on the recto (121) and verso (122) sides of the same sheet of paper.

Figure 1. Images of the recto and verso sides of page 121-22 from the 1621 Urania. 245

On the recto side, Wroth prints the verses Pamphilia “brought…to her mind, wherein she imprinted them” (146). By placing Pamphilia’s poem directly underneath the word “imprinted,

Wroth stresses that she prints Pamphilia’s poetry (and her own) in her book. Wroth also equates the page “wherein she then imprinted” Pamphilia’s verse with the princess’ mind, which is also

“imprinted” with her poetry. Such a parallel suggests that, just as the bark of various trees holds traces of Pamphilia’s thoughts and feelings, so does Wroth’s page.

Beneath Pamphilia’s poem, Wroth introduces Antissia’s song (which appears at the top of the verso side of the page), making it clear that her mental and emotional state mirrors

Pamphilia’s. Worth explains that, after composing her poem, Pamphilia “being ready…went into the Garden woods, where she saw Antissia sadly walking, her eyes on the earth, her sighs breathing like a sweet gale claiming pity from above, for the earth she said would yield her none, yet she besought that too, and at last passion procured alteration from mourning, she began to sing a song, or rather part of one, which was thus” (146-7). The similarities between these friends’ emotional states make it seem as though they are of one heart and mind in this moment.

While Pamphilia sheds “tears of never resting pain” and chastises Love—“you no pity take on me”— in her poem, Antissia walks “sadly, her eyes on the earth, her sighs breathing like a sweet gale” and fails to elicit pity from the earth who “would yield her none.” As Pamphilia enters the

“Garden Woods”—the site of Pamphilia’s ash—to find Antissia, the distinction between these female friends blurs and their emotional experiences overlap. With the flip of the page the reader encounters Antissia’s song which, though shorter than Pamphilia’s, explores the same themes

(sorrow, loss, and pity) and images (body parts made of rock, floods of tears). As in the ash tree,

Antissia and Pamphilia’s shared thoughts and feelings mingle on the page. Their work touches

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and interlocks. Thus, Wroth’s page spatially and visually recreates the ash tree which unites these friends.

Whereas the poems on the ash tree are clearly created with Amphilanthus, and only

Amphilanthus, in mind, the verses composed in Pamphilia and Antissia’s minds—bookended by their verbal expressions of love for one another—are more ambiguous. Wroth’s printed “tree text” memorializes these women’s love for one another in addition to their love for

Amphilanthus. Before they go into the woods, Pamphilia and Antissia express the sorrow they face as their separation approaches. Antissia tells Pamphilia “My heart doth break to think of it, my soul is tortur’d so, as it enjoys no peace for griefs additions.” Pamphilia counters,

The loss of your company is much more to mee…For you gone, who shall I have

the blessing to converse withal? With whom or to whom may I freely say my

mind? To whom speak my pain? To whom wail my misfortunes” Thus is the loss

most in me; for…I lamenting, spend my time I am to tarry here; which since you

go will seem ages to mee. (145)

Sounding a bit like lovers themselves, Pamphilia and Antissia venture into the woods to “better discourse our woes, sadly, and freely complaining” (145). In other contexts, it would be safe to assume that these friends intend to “complain” about Amphilanthus as they have before, but given the strong proclamations of love they have just exchanged it is likely that their laments are, at least in part, fueled by their love for one another and their reluctance to part. Pamphilia’s lyrics to “Dear Love” do, of course, pertain to her love of Amphilanthus. When she tells Love

“to move me it was alone your power / None else could ere have found a yielding hour. / Curs’d be subjection, yet blest in this sort, / That ‘gainst all but one choice, my heart a fort / Hath ever lasted,” Pamphilia almost certainly references her decision to remain constant despite

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Amphilanthus’ faithlessness. When she thinks of her “never resting pain, / Carv’d with the sharpest point of curs’d disdain” she refers to Amphilanthus’ seeming indifference to her feelings for him. Yet, the opening to Pamphilia’s poem could very well apply to Antissia as well as Amphilanthus: “Dear Love, alas, how have I wronged thee, / That ceaselessly thou still dost follow me? / My heart of Diamond clear, and hard I find, / May yet be pierc’d with one of the same kind, / Which hath in it engraven a love more pure.” The heart that is “the same kind” as

Pamphilia’s “heart of Diamond clear” could be Antissia’s. They share so much, as a result of loving Amphilanthus, that their metaphorical hearts may very well resemble each other. What’s more, a female friend might “pierce” the princess’ heart of stone as well as her lover, and their love could “engrave a love more pure” into Pamphilia’s heart. Pamphilia also complains to Love

“Yet worse than foes your slightings prove to be, / when careless you no pity take on me” (146).

On one hand, these lines might concern Amphilanthus’ failure to return the poetess’ affection, but Love may also “slight” Pamphilia and fail to take “pity” on her by separating her from her closest friend and confidant, the only person who can help her bear the pain of loving an unattainable man.

Antissia’s song similarly reflects the dread and sadness she faces as she prepares to leave her only source of comfort. She begins, “Stay mine eyes, these floods of tears / Seem but follies weakly growing, / Babes at nurse such wailing bears, / Forwardness such drops bestowing.”

Surely leaving her friend might make her cry just as easily as missing her beloved. In the second verse she compares herself to Niobe claiming, “My sorrows like her Babes appear / Daily added by increasing; / She lost them, I lose my Dear, / Not one spar’d from woes ne’er ceasing” (147).

Antissia’s “lost dear” could be Amphilanthus—she does worry that he no longer loves her—but,

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Antissia is also losing Pamphilia as she leaves Morea, a loss which, as she tells Pamphilia, breaks her heart and tortures her soul. This loss, too, could cause “woes ne’er ceasing.”

After Pamphilia interrupts Antissia’s sorrowful song, the two of them again express their love for one another. Pamphilia asks Antissia to “leave these dolorous complaints” and suggests that they should wait until they are actually parted to “let our hearts bleed tears” and “mourn,” and Antissia worries that “once being gone, gone will my joys bee altogether” (147). By bookending Pamphilia and Antissia’s verses with their mutual proclamations of love for one another, Wroth recreates Pamphilia’s ash tree with a difference. Whereas the ash preserves the similar pains Pamphilia and Antissia feel for Amphilanthus, Wroth’s book preserves the friendship they share and the love they feel for one another.

“Ingrav[ing] a love more pure”: Pamphilia’s Public Devotions

In addition to forging a platonic bond between Pamphilia and Antissia, Pamphilia’s acts of carving also bind her to Amphilanthus. Reversing the gender roles her literary predecessors typically assign to carver and subject, Wroth positions her protagonist and other female characters as poets driven to carve verses, anagrams, symbols, and ciphers onto trees by the men they love. In doing so she makes the Urania “the only example in English…to feature in detail an unmarried aristocratic woman in melancholy solitude inscribing love poetry into a tree’s bark without a partner by her side.”280 Perhaps even more striking is that, despite being the most prolific of these “unmarried aristocratic women” carvers, Pamphilia is the most private, or, as

Wroth says, the “most distressed, secret, and constant Lover that ever Venus, or her blind Son bestowed a wound or dart upon” (92).

280 Nardizzi and Jacobson, “The Secrets of Grafting,” 177. 249

For the first half of Part 1, Pamphilia manages to keep her love for Amphilanthus a secret. Though some, like Antissia, discover that she loves someone, they do not know who.

Even when Amphilanthus learns the truth and requites her love, he and Pamphilia tell no one of their romantic connection. Why, then, does Pamphilia print her feelings for him upon increasingly more public trees? Why does she risk announcing (though in a manner few can understand) her ties to Amphilanthus and providing material proof that he is her love? As she struggles to establish and maintain an intimate connection with Amphilanthus, she carves to prevent herself from being overcome with the burden of keeping her sorrow to herself. She also ensures her own constancy by publicly proclaiming her devotion to the man she loves. Before she shares her feelings with Amphilanthus, the princess engraves her ash tree to vent her sorrows and to celebrate the value of her pain, steeling herself for (what she fears will be) a lifetime of constancy and unrequited love. Perhaps, she also engraves the tree in hopes that she will be found out and that this outing will bring her and Amphilanthus together. Even after

Amphilanthus has proclaimed his love for her, distance and time soon weaken his devotion and leave Pamphilia in doubt of his ability (or willingness) to remain faithful. Accordingly, the princess engraves various trees with the letters of his name and the symbols she associates with him, making them into proxies for her lover. As she carves into these trees, she immerses herself in her feelings for Amphilanthus and in memories of the intimate moments they have shared, affirming for herself that she and Amphilanthus share a real, though secret, intimate bond and strengthening her resolve to remain constant to her straying lover.

Wroth never clarifies why Pamphilia and Amphilanthus decide to keep their love a secret, but she does illustrate how this secrecy puts their intimacy at risk. In Book 1, because Pamphilia has not yet expressed her feelings to Amphilanthus, he pursues Antissia instead, leaving

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Pamphilia to silently suffer. In the Urania Part 2 Pamphilia and Amphilanthus finally marry; however, their marriage is clandestine, and its private and insecure nature eventually results in their more public and formal marriages to other people. Wroth also uses her narrator and characters to overtly criticize Pamphilia’s secrecy throughout the Urania. They often identify her desire for privacy as the cause of her pain. Immediately before Pamphilia’s first carving episode, the narrator chides her for concealing her affections. Saddened that Amphilanthus has fallen for

Antissia and left Morea, Pamphilia walks in her garden, “blaming her fortune, but more accusing her love, who had the heart to grieve her.” Rather than expressing sympathy, though, the narrator points out that “she might more justly have chid her self, whose fear had forc'd her to too curious a secrecy” (91). In Book II, the prophetess Melissa tells Pamphilia of her future: “you might be happy, had you power to wed, but daintiness and fear will hinder you” (190). In Book III,

Urania, suspecting that unrequited love is the source of her friend’s emotional distress, asks

Pamphilia, “Will you lie here wasting your days and hopeful time in this tormenting fashion, keeping that secret, which told, it may be would help you?” (468). Wroth points out, again and again, that Pamphilia and Amphilanthus might be together, if only she could openly acknowledge her feelings for him. Because the poetess cannot bring herself to verbally announce or acknowledge her feelings, she carves them into the bark of numerous trees instead.

Despite her desire for secrecy, Pamphilia eventually grows weary of carefully concealing her intense emotions and turns to carving upon the trees in her garden to make her sorrows publicly legible. In Book I, saddened that her beloved adores another woman, the poetess carves the end of a sonnet on an ash in her garden. Pamphilia knows that Antissia and anyone else who gains entry to her garden can see the evidence of her affection engraved in tree bark, but she proceeds anyway. Actually, making her pain visible seems to be the point. Like Pamela, who

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asks the Pine tree to “live long, and long witness my chosen smart,” or Greville’s speaker, who hopes that someone will “read my woes engraven on the trees,” Pamphilia engraves her verses to preserve them, precisely so that others might see and understand her suffering. Calling to mind those written verses she destroyed precisely because they “expressed her woe,” served as

“testimonies…of [her] weaknesses,” and brought her “own hands to witness against” her,

Wroth’s protagonist orders her living canvas to “keep in thy skin this testament of me” and to

“out-live me, and testify my woes.” After being confronted with the consequences of her silence,

Pamphilia decides to “testify”—though admittedly in her personal garden—rather than conceal her sorrows. She even visually represents her internal pain. As she cuts into the tree, she asks it to “imitate the torments of my smart” and connects its sap which “weepingly bewray[s] they pain” to her “heart-blood drops” (92-3). So, the tree communicates—both verbally and visually—to potential readers what Pamphilia cannot say herself, and it externally represents the pain she experiences internally. Its very purpose is to preserve and publicize Pamphilia’s emotional experience without explicitly revealing her identity. Those who recognize her poetic style may guess that the princess has created the poetry carved on her ash tree, but they cannot know for sure. Still, it brings Pamphilia some comfort to know that her suffering, if not her identity, will be recorded on a publicly accessible monument.

In articulating her pain and watching the tree demonstrate physically what she feels emotionally, Pamphilia visualizes and verbalizes her affective experiences for herself as well.

Looking at her own urgently carved words—cut into the tree after she “hastily” rises from her

“low green bed,” frustrated that she can “find no redress”—she can see in the tree’s wounds and the verses it bears the distress she feels. Her knife strokes likely convey an emotional turmoil she will always remember as she looks upon her engraving. Her verses express precisely what she

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feels, making those emotional experiences more real, concrete, and memorable. These experiences are then preserved and monumentalized in the bark of the tree. Pamphilia thus creates a memorial to her own pain, making her love for Amphilanthus something she can never deny—at least not to herself—and glorifying not her poetic abilities or her beloved so much as her “woes.” When Pamphilia revisits the tree, she will confront anew the intensity of her feelings. Finally, because of her investment in constancy, these tree carvings, made to articulate and celebrate her pain, serve as contracts she has made with herself and potential readers. They strengthen her determination to remain constant to Amphilanthus despite the suffering this faithfulness causes her.

The engraved tree also provides Pamphilia with a site where she can immerse herself in her love for Amphilanthus and renew her devotion to him—as she does after Melissa delivers her prophecy. After learning that “daintiness and fear” will keep her from marrying the man she loves, Pamphilia laments that she “must but have a virtue, and lose all thereby.” Ultimately, though she determines to keep loving Amphilanthus and asks, “Dear love, maintain thy force well in my heart and rule as still thou hast.” To ensure that love does “maintain” its force and continue to “rule” in her heart, the princess goes “to the ash, where her sad sonnet was engraved” and carves more verses underneath it. Unlike the verses of her sonnet, these do not dwell on sorrow and pain but assert (perhaps wishfully so) that loving Amphilanthus, even unrequitedly, brings Pamphilia great joy: “Tears sometimes flow from mirth, as well as sorrow, / Pardon me then, if I again do borrow / Of thy moist rind some smiling drops, approving / Joy for true joy, which now proceeds from loving” (191). By carving these verses, Pamphilia renews her devotion to constancy by adding yet more evidence of her love to the ash tree. She also further celebrates her own faithfulness as the bringer of joy “which now proceeds from loving.” Here, carving

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helps the poetess place value upon her devotion and strengthens her resolve to continue her ill- fated adoration.

After Pamphilia and Amphilanthus reveal their feelings for one another, the princess’ carved trees also become her beloved’s proxies. Upon one of Amphilanthus’ trips away from

Morea, Pamphilia dulls the pain his absence causes by carving a “cipher, which contained the letters, or rather the Anagram of his name she most and only lov’d” into an oak tree (325).

Thinking of him, Pamphilia transforms the tree into a proxy for Amphilanthus, much like

Petrarch carves Laura’s image into “living laurel” to feel close to her. She labels it with his name and immerses herself in adoration of her absent beloved as she carves. By focusing on the letters of his name, Pamphilia can shut out the rest of the world and think only of Amphilanthus so that, in her mind at least, he is there with her. This carving also provides a medium through which

Pamphilia can feel emotionally close to Amphilanthus by announcing her love to the world in a language that only he (and perhaps a few others) can understand. Though codes can be (and are) deciphered in the Urania, and, more generally, in the world of romance, Pamphilia’s carving will likely remain an enigma to most people who encounter it. Those who know the princess’ hand and know of her and Amphilanthus’ longstanding friendship, may be able to determine the name those ciphered letters spell, but, because Pamphilia’s cipher will only be legible to a select few, her engraving becomes a public secret she and Amphilanthus share. As with Phiocell and

Caelica, Pamphilia attempts to bind herself more closely to Amphilanthus, placing herself and

Amphilanthus in the camp of those who know what her carvings mean and (almost) everyone else in the camp of those who do not.

A few pages after Pamphilia carves her cipher, Wroth contrasts the princess’ tree carving with the verses Amphilanthus has given Antissia to show that manuscript writing does not bind

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people together in the same way print does. After observing the princess as she carves into the oak tree, Antissia realizes that she has been replaced. To comfort herself, Antissia reads “the papers she had gained from him in his own hand, and of his making…many millions of times, then lay them up again, and (as her greatest priz’d and only blessing left) kept them still near.” In some ways the written verses do seem to work like Pamphilia’s Oak tree, standing in for an absent beloved. Yet, unlike Pamphilia’s carved tree, Antissia’s written verses can be taken back.

In reading his poetry over Antissia “flatter[s] her poor self with hope that he had not clean left her, who did so kindly let her keep those things, contrary to his manner with others, as he reported to herself, for from them he took at varying all they had of his” (328). Unlike a tree carving, manuscript evidence of Amphilanthus’s love can be revoked, erasing his love as if it never happened. Perhaps this is why, after she admits “she was deceived,” Antissia leaves

Amphilanthus’ poems behind and seeks out a Willow tree. She “carved…in the trunk of that tree, till she had embroidered it all over with characters of her sorrow” (328). Like the ash tree in

Pamphilia’s garden and the Oak Pamphilia has just carved, Antissia’s Willow becomes a monument to her love for Amphilanthus and the pain it causes her. Her carvings are all that is left of the intimacy she shared with Amphilanthus but, thankfully, they are a remnant which cannot be easily hidden or disposed of.

While Amphilanthus does not carve his love for Pamphilia upon a tree, he does make his shield a proxy for her by engraving her name (in code) upon it. As the third book opens,

Amphilanthus names himself “the Knight of the Cipher” and makes his “device only a cipher, which was of all the letters of his Mistress’ name, delicately composed within the compass of one.” His cipher is like Pamphilia’s in that the letters of her name are contained within a larger shape. Pamphilia arranges the letters of Amphilanthus’ name within the outline of a zero, and

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Amphilanthus creates a device in which the outline of one letter contains the remaining letters of

Pamphilia’s name. Wroth makes it clear that Amphilanthus values his device. When a princess insults it, Amphilanthus replies “that although a cipher were nothing in it self, yet joined to the figures of her worth, whose name was therein, it was made above the value of her self or

Country” (339). So, like Pamphilia’s public carvings, Amphilanthus’ engraved shield displays a secret he shares with the princess and becomes her proxy. While Amphilanthus keeps the shield with him, it sustains his emotional bonds to her and helps him maintain his devotion. Unlike the ash tree that Pamphilia visits on a regular basis, though, Amphilanthus’ shield can be put aside, and his devotion to Pamphilia along with it. When Amphilanthus does remove his armor, he leaves Pamphilia and her proxy behind for another woman. Charged with conducting Musalina,

“one of his first loves in his youthful travails” during her travels from Neapolis, Amphilanthus falls in love with her a second time (397).

Despite Amphilanthus’ faithlessness, Pamphilia continues carving. The final reference to

Pamphilia’s carving is oblique yet quite important as it again illustrates both the danger and the necessity of publicizing one’s intimate ties. During a hunt in the forest “once enriched with

Pamphilia, and her love,” the Queens of Naples and Cicely, Limena, and Perissus come across

“many knots, and names engraven upon the trees, which they understood not perfectly, because when they had decipher’d some of them they found they were names feigned and so knew them not. But Perissus remembered one of the ciphers, yet because it was Pamphilia’s he would not know it” (490). Wroth’s reference to Perissus reminds the reader that publication might expose one’s thoughts and emotions to anyone. Because Perissus can read and decipher Pamphilia’s cipher, he might reveal her secret to his companions. However, he does not share Pamphilia’s secret. Wroth again introduces the threat associated with publication only to neutralize it. Wroth

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also makes it a point to state that Perissus and company encounter Pamphilia’s cipher in “the same grove, and place where Pamphilia had first found Silviana” (490). Silviana, like Pamphilia, suffered greatly because she was either too modest or too shy to tell her beloved shepherd how she felt about him. So, Wroth reminds her readers that while publication can imperil one’s intimate life, privacy can as well.

“The Bark my Book shall be”: Carving Poet Figures and Published Authors

Wroth closes the 1621 Urania with a sequence of songs and sonnets titled Pamphilia to

Amphilanthus, in which Pamphilia—along with an anonymous shepherdess—continues to lament her lover’s faithlessness and profess her own constancy. By speaking through her poet- protagonist in this genre (the sonnet sequence), Wroth highlights her own position as a poet—the first female author of a sonnet sequence in English, no less. Using the first person, she, like her

Petrarchan predecessors, connects her own authorship with that of the writing and suffering speakers within her text whose authorship is, in turn, associated with tree carving. Through those sonnets in which her speakers compose poetry, she writes about writing as well as love. Like

Shakespeare, Spenser, and her uncle, Sir Philip Sidney, she uses her poet figures to reflect upon the preservation of her work and of its fame. The speakers in her sonnet sequence, however, approach writing not primarily as a means to ensure their own authorial fame and glory—like those created by most male sonneteers—but as a way to preserve their intimate connections to those they love. In this way, they behave like the female carvers in Wroth’s prose romance. Their engravings serve as monuments that record their steadfast devotion to their male lovers and attest to the heartache they experience when these men do not return their affection. By carving into trees, Wroth’s female poets also transform them into memorials that—as in the case of Pamphilia and Antissia—bear witness to the female bonds that they form as a result of their shared

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suffering. For the speakers of Wroth’s sonnet sequence, too, their work is the means by which they record and protect the love they share with those closest to them, rather than a source of personal glory and literary fame. Through these speakers, Wroth suggests that an author might create her work to bind herself more closely to the loved ones who inspire this work and to preserve the intimate bonds she cherishes for posterity. Wroth suggest that, within the pages of her own book, the intimacies dearest to her will never fade. She communicates to those within her social circle that the intimacy she shares with them will survive in print long after they are gone. In this way, Wroth positions her roman à clef as a monument to her most cherished intimate relationships.

By ending her romance with a sonnet sequence, Wroth invites a comparison between herself and those Petrarchan poets who have come before her. She also returns to the literary genre (lyric) in which the trope of tree carving emerged and revisits the connections her predecessors have drawn between carving and publication, publication and intimacy. Beginning with Petrarch himself, the male-authored lyric poetry that Wroth draws upon presents tree carving as an act of publication. It is no accident that Petrarch’s speaker loves a woman named

Laura or that he carves her image upon a Laurel tree, the tree whose branches are used to make the poet laureate’s crown. Though less explicitly, other authors also link tree carving with public writing. Greville’s Caelica asks Philocell to “blot my love out of thy heart, / Cut my name out of the tree” once their love has died (173-4). That Greville parallels “blot my love out” with “cut my name out” suggests a link between circulated writing and engraved trees. Caelica wants her name blotted for the same reason she wants it removed from the tree: to erase the love she and

Philocell shared in the public eye and, thereby, erase its existence in the public memory (and perhaps her own as well). Dickenson’s anonymous shepherd applies identifiable writing

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practices to his tree carvings. “Within a grove encompassed round with trees,” he composes a

“sad elegy which in few lines comprised: / Much care.” He carves it on so many trees that the speaker of the poem encounters it “every way I glanced my roving eye” (19). Like a poet who intends to circulate his work, the shepherd writes (or carves) in lines as he would write on a page, composes in a recognizable literary form (the elegy), puts “much care” into this art, and distributes it as broadly as possible. In “To Penshurst” Ben Jonson associates an engraved tree with the poetic muses. His speaker mentions a tree in whose “writhèd bark are cut the names / Of many a sylvan” and describes the tree as having a “great birth where all the Muses met” (14-

6).281 He links the act of carving with artistic inspiration. When coupled with his description of the tree as taller than the others, this detail suggests an aspiration to literary fame. Finally,

Orlando speaks of his tree carvings as literary creations when he proclaims, “these trees shall be my books, / And in their barks my thoughts I'll character” (III.ii.5-6). Clearly then, Wroth is in good company as she connects her character’s carvings to published writing,

While these male poets’ speakers ostensibly write to celebrate their love and proclaim it publicly, they tend to dwell upon themselves and their reputations as poets when they imagine others reading their work. In the Rime Sparse, the speaker’s desire for Laura and his attachment to the laurel tree communicate his search for literary fame more than his love of a woman. The speaker’s assertion that his engraved idol of Laura might make someone pity him thousands of years in the future indicates more than a desire to keep the love he and Laura shared alive; it communicates a hope that his work will survive and move future readers. Similarly, in sonnet

XXXII, Watson’s speaker focuses on “those whose kind harts” lead them to “pity” him after

281 Jonson quotes are taken from The Complete Poems, ed. George Parfett (New Haven: Yale UP, 1982).

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reading “my woes engraven on the trees.” In Tasso’s Aminta Daphne speaks of Thrisis who

“writ” his poetry “on the barks of sundry trees / And as the trees, so grew his verse” (I.i.207-

8).282 In contrast to “Oenone to Paris,” in which Paris’ engraved words “grow high and straight so that everyone will know [Oenone’s] name and the honor that is [hers],” what grows here is the speaker’s poetic creation. There is no mention of a woman’s name, only Thrisis’ expanding verse. In the same poem, Aminta, anticipating death at the hands of an unrequiting woman, asks

Thrisis to “relate th’occasion of my death, / And leave it written on some Beech-tree bark,/ Near where my bloodless carcass shall be laid” so that the woman he loves might “with some compassion rue / The loss, of him dead, whom she living slew” (I.ii.47-9, 60-1). The tree, then, becomes not a monument to the beloved but to the poet himself and to his tragic end. Even

Orlando, who does write “in witness of my love” considers the visibility of his work. He instructs his carvings, “Hang there, my verse” and proclaims, “these trees shall be my books, /

And in their barks my thoughts I'll character” (I.ii.1, 5-6). He takes ownership of his poetry—

“my love,” “my verse,” “my thoughts,” “my books”—and, in doing so, directs attention to himself and his poetic (in)ability as well as to Rosalind and his love of her.

Wroth inverts her predecessors’ priorities by creating speakers who use their work to glorify their intimate connections, rather than speakers who write about their loved ones to seek literary fame. “Song 1” demonstrates this most clearly. In this poem—the only poem in which

Pamphilia is not the speaker—an anonymous shepherdess “with grief oppressed, / For truest love betrayed,” (18-19) carves upon a willow tree to make a monument to her faithfulness:

The bark my book shall bee, Where daily I will write,

282 All Amina quotes come from Torquato Tasso’s Aminta Englisht, trans. Henry Reynolds (London: Mathews, 1628), http://ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest- com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu. 260

This tale of hapless me, True slave to fortunes spite. The root shall be my bed, Where nightly I will lye Wailing in constancy, Since all true love is dead.

And these Lines I will leave, If some such Lover come, Who may them right conceive, and place them on my tomb: She who still constant lov'd Now dead with cruel care, Killed with unkind Despair, And change, her end here proved. (33-48)

Though the shepherdess’ carvings do “preserve the tale of hapless me,” leaving her lines for

“some such lover…Who may them right conceive, / And place them on my tomb,” they are not meant to win her recognition after her death. The lines she hopes to preserve are a testament to her undying devotion. They will assert that, while she lived, she “still constant loved,” that her love was so intense “cruel care” and “unkind despair” killed her, and that she met her “end” loving the same man despite his “change.” If she does win fame for herself, it is for being a constant woman, for refusing, even in death, to let her love end. She does not imagine that the lover who reads her work will be moved by it or admire her poetic skill. She only hopes that he will “conceive” her verses the “right” way and transfer them from the Willow to her tomb so that her love is recorded upon stone, an even more permanent monument than a tree trunk.

As the shepherdess discusses her plans to preserve her experience of love, she directly links engraving and print, presenting both tree texts and printed books as monuments to intimacy. For the first time, Wroth explicitly equates the tree bark upon which her characters carve to a book. As her speaker proclaims “the bark my book shall be,” Wroth also brings the reader’s attention to the printed book which they are currently reading, where “daily” she has

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written the “lines [she] will leave” for future readers. Furthermore, by connecting the willow’s bark, the book’s leaves, and the stone marking the speaker’s grave as surfaces upon which her love is memorialized, Wroth suggests that all three are monuments, created to preserve an author’s emotional experiences. The speaker leaves her lines of poetry for a future reader. She hopes he or she will transfer them from tree to stone, making her tomb into a more permanent monument to love than the willow tree. Instead, Wroth preserves her speaker’s experience for her readers, associating her book with the shepherdess’ tree carvings and suggesting that, like the shepherdess’ carvings, Wroth’s book serves as a testament to the intimacies she holds most dear.

It preserves them for readers far into the future. Through her speaker, she celebrates publication as a sign of love.

As Wroth closes her sequence, she speaks through Pamphilia, creating a sonnet much like her anonymous Shepherdess’ book of bark:

My muse now happy lay thy self to rest, Sleep in the quiet of a faithful love, Write you no more, but let the Phant’sies move Some other hearts, wake not to new unrest.

But if your study be those thoughts addressed To truth, which shall eternal goodness prove; Enjoying of true joy the most, and best The endless gain which never will remove.

Leave the discourse of Venus, and her son To young beginners, and their brains inspire With stories of great Love, and from that fire, Get heat to write the fortunes they have won.

And thus leave off; what's past shows you can love, Now let your Constancy your Honor prove. (1-14)

Just as the shepherdess wants to create a record of her constancy, Pamphilia—having expressed her devotion with a series of poems—can now “sleep in the quiet of a faithful love.” In the same

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way that the shepherdess waits for “some such lover [to] come” and read her poem, Pamphilia expresses a hope that “stories of great love,” like her own (and like Wroth’s romance) will inspire “young beginners” and provide them with “heat to write” their own love stories. Having finished her own poetic narrative, Pamphilia invites her muse to “lay thy self to rest” and “write no more.” She ends her final sonnet by deciding to “leave off.” She need not write any more poetry because “what’s past shows [she] can love.” This, not poetic fame, is the reason for her writing—to preserve her intimate bonds. With a final resolution to “let [her] constancy [her] honor prove,” Pamphilia takes her leave of writing. Wroth, of course, also “leaves off” as she ends her own story of love, a coded story that preserves the intimacy she shares with her closest friends and lovers.

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Coda

The Letter of Love: Dorothy Osborne’s Objects of Affection

As this project has demonstrated, object-centered intimacies featured prominently in the fiction of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. Assignation-based intimacies drive the comedic plot of The Merchant of Venice. Portia and Nerissa’s rings—whose significance derives from their explicitly assigned and implicit, symbolic meanings—create complex and nondyadic bonds among Merchant’s characters as they travel from one hand to another. The suits of armor that Spenser’s characters wear are central to the model of recognition-based intimacy outlined in Books III and IV. These martial habits bring friends and lovers together by enabling them to recognize their shared virtues in the material, exterior components of one another’s identities. The trees of the Urania Part 1 make Pamphilia, Antissia, and Amphilanthus’ memorial-based intimacies possible. Pamphilia and Antissia transform them into monuments by carving poetry and ciphers into them, and, as monuments, the engraved trees become sites of memory and celebration (of love and loved ones) which initiate, sustain, and, at times, endanger the relationships that they memorialize. Like Marlowe’s “Come live with me and be my love,” early modern literary texts not only contained depictions of object-centered intimacy but became objects that forged and deepened literature-based intimacies among the early moderns who read, discussed, and responded to them. Through its circulation as a material book or leaf of paper and as a set of ideas, fiction about intimacy initiated conversations and debates (literary and otherwise) about interpersonal affection and inspired emotional and intellectual connections among readers and authors.

The centrality of object-centered intimacy to Marlowe’s, Shakespeare’s, Spenser’s, and

Wroth’s texts suggest that Renaissance authors and audiences wanted to understand how intimate

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connection worked, how they could manage their emotional ties to others, and how material objects might help them comprehend and shape their interpersonal relationships. In “Come live with me” Marlowe creates a blueprint for utopian intimacy, imagining how it should look and work, and he relies upon the material circulation of his poem to share his idealized vision of love with his readers. The numerous poetic responses to Marlowe’s lyric and the lyric’s frequent appearance alongside those responses in print and manuscript miscellanies indicate that, for

Marlowe’s contemporaries too, books and papers served as physical spaces that facilitated and preserved intellectual connections among authors and readers. The statements Shakespeare’s characters make about the rings that they give and receive, like the enforcement suit depositions these statements evoke, reveal that early moderns were eager to anchor their emotional connections to the physical world, to use tokens as definitive windows into their loved one’s hearts and minds, motivations and intentions. The reciprocal relationship Spenser draws between his character’s identities and their habits illustrates an early modern desire to understand the dynamic between an individual’s interior self and the materials that make up her outward appearance. Finally, Wroth’s representations of carved trees explore a longing to use elements of the material world to keep one’s intimate bonds safe, to hold onto affective connections across time and distance, and to ensure that, even if an intimate connection is severed, it can never be completely forgotten or erased. Thus, Renaissance fiction elucidates how and why early moderns looked to the material world to clarify their abstract and unknowable thoughts and feelings for each other. They were compelled and, perhaps, comforted by the notion that physical objects could help them understand who their loved ones truly were, reveal what their intimates did or did not feel for them, or serve as evidence or a remembrance of affective ties that had been strained or destroyed.

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The same object-centered intimacies represented in the literature discussed here remain a significant presence into and long after the mid-seventeenth century. They appear not only in literary texts but in non-fiction as well. In fact, the object-centered intimacies explored in the preceding chapters emerge in what is, arguably, an even more intimate genre of writing than lyric, comedy, or romance: the love letter.283 In particular, Dorothy Osborne’s love letters to Sir

William Temple, written between 1652 and 1654, provide great insight into late early modern understandings of and discussions about the function of material objects in interpersonal relationships. Accordingly, I will pause over them here as I bring this project to a close. In what remains, I will explore what Osborne’s letters reveal about the object-centered intimacies she and

Temple developed during their lengthy and sometimes tenuous courtship. How did she understand the importance of the objects she and Temple sent to each other? How did she employ them to sustain and strengthen her relationship with the man she loved?

Because Osborne and Temple’s families opposed their union, their courtship was conducted from afar and in secret. The lovers rarely had the opportunity to meet in person. So, exchanged objects (including their letters) served as Osborne and Temple’s primary means of

283 It is important to note that early modern letters, even love letters, were not necessarily intimate, did not necessarily grant readers access to the writer’s private and personal thoughts. As James Daybell and Andrew Gordon explain in the introductory essay of Cultures of Correspondence in Early Modern Britain, one must take into account the “social materiality of letter writing” by considering the “social and cultural practices of manuscript letter writing and material conditions and contexts in which they were produced, disseminated, and consumed” before she can accurately understand and interpret the contents of a letter. See “Introduction: Early Modern Letter Opener,” (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 5. In the same volume, Arnold Hunt observes that most of the early modern letters that survive today are likely not examples of intimate writing as the majority of private letters were burned after they were read and are lost to us. See “‘Burn This Letter’: Preservation and Destruction in the Early Modern Archive,” 189-209. I would argue that Osborne’s letters are an exception to the rule Hunt establishes. Osborne, who burned Temple’s letters upon receiving them, likely did expect Temple to burn her letters too. His decision not to destroy Osborne’s letters grants us rare access to a series of early modern letters that truly were meant to be private. 266

contact and took the place of physical signs of affection and in-person conversations. Though

Osborne burned Temple’s letters after receiving them (to ensure that their courtship remained a secret), Temple preserved over seventy of the letters he received from Osborne. These letters illustrate how objects factored into Osborne and Temple’s relationship as it evolved over the course of three years. The epistles are filled with references to the tokens of affection the lovers exchanged—romance novels, medicines, a lock of Temple’s hair, Osborne’s portrait, letter seals, and even dogs, orange-rose water, and tweezers. Cumulatively, Osborne’s letters demonstrate that she and Temple relied heavily upon exchanged objects to maintain and deepen their affective connection and that Osborne (and perhaps also Temple) understood the objects they exchanged as performing that function.

Even in the earliest of Osborne’s letters, she and Temple begin to forge a literature-based intimacy. Throughout their courtship the thwarted lovers sustain their emotional connection by reading, exchanging, and discussing French romances. Osborne references the romances she and

Temple trade in at least twelve letters (9-11, 13, 21-4, 31, 37, 39, 48, 51). The couple likely favors this genre because the subject matter relates so directly to the precarity of their own romance. The trials the characters of Reine Marguerite, Cléopâtre, and Cyrus endure and the happiness the fortunate ones enjoy reflect the struggles Osborne and Temple face at the hands of their disapproving families and the joyful outcome they hope for. In reality, Osborne and Temple can spend little time in the same place, but the world of romance allows them to meet in the same imaginary location and enjoy the same fictional adventures together. Osborne’s tendency to compare Temple and herself to the heroines and heroes they read about certainly suggest that she saw herself and her lover in certain characters, that she imagined herself and her suitor in their places. In one of her later letters Osborne even speaks of her and Temple’s love story as if it

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were another work of fiction: “Can there be a romancer story than ours would make if the conclusion prove happy?” (Letter 48). It seems, then, that the narratives about love which

Osborne and Temple exchanged allowed them to imagine themselves in romantic scenarios, interacting in ways that they could not. These imaginings, perhaps, served as compensation for the estranged lovers’ lack of in-person engagement.

The romances Osborne and Temple pass back and forth also provide them with a means of indirectly discussing their own intimate relationship and negotiating their roles within it.

When they offer their thoughts and opinions on different narrative events and characters,

Osborne and Temple learn about one another. Reading romances helps them know each other not only as individuals but as romantic partners. Osborne and Temple comment upon the actions and dispositions of the male and female lovers and spouses who appear in the books they read, and, in the process, they show each other what they value in a romantic partner and what type of spouse they aspire be. Ultimately, conversations like these help the young lovers grow together and prepare for the married life they hope to enjoy.

Osborne’s responses to Temple reveal that the lovers frequently solicited one another’s opinion of various characters and volunteered their own. While discussing Reine Marguerite

Osborne begins, “If you will have my opinion of her…” (Letter 9). When asked about

Almanazor, she tells Temple “I do not use to forget my old acquaintances” and goes on to say that the hero “is as fresh in my memory as if I had visited his tomb but yesterday” (Letter 11).

More often, Osborne asks Temple to share his thoughts with her. While discussing Cléopâtre,

Osborne instructs Temple, “If you meet with one Britomart, pray send me word how you like him” (Letter 10). As they discuss the romance further, Osborne expresses her affinity for the story of Delie and asks Temple, “Pray give me your opinion of her and her prince” (Letter 13).

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Similarly, she asks of Cyrus’ Doralise, “Pray tell me how you like her” (Letter 37). Comments like these demonstrate that Osborne and Temple actively sought one another’s opinions of various romance characters and shared their own thoughts on the same figures.

Temple’s thoughts on the romances are lost, but there is evidence that he responded to

Osborne’s inquiries about her favorite and least favorite characters and, thereby, helped her understand his views on marital love. As the previous excerpts from Osborne’s letters indicate,

Osborne often urges him to share his views on the faults and merits of the characters they encounter and the relationships these characters share with one another. It seems reasonable to assume that Temple obliged. Osborne’s letters tell us that he offered his own opinion at least once. In letter 39 Osborne comments that she is “glad you are an admirer of Telesile as well as

I.” Whether Temple has volunteered his thoughts on Telesile of his own accord or at Osborne’s bequest, Osborne is pleased by their mutual admiration of her and the virtues and qualities she possesses.

Though we do not know how Temple spoke of the romance characters he and Osborne discussed, Osborne clearly references characters and plot points to comment upon what makes a good romantic partner and a strong marital relationship. These comments allow Osborne to show

Temple what kind of intimacy she hopes to share with him should they marry and how she expects they will fill the roles of husband and wife. Most frequently, Osborne criticizes and/or compares herself to romance heroines. While reading Reine Marguerite Osborne says that the title figure “had a good deal of wit, and a great deal of patience for a woman of so high spirit.

She speaks with too much indifference of her husband’s several amours…I think her a better sister than a wife, and believe she might have made a better wife to a better husband” (Letter 9).

Of Artemis from Cléopâtre she says “her disposition I like extremely, it has a great deal of

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practical wit” (Letter 10). She condemns Alcidiana for harming Almanazor, elaborating that she

“was so angry with Alcidiana that for my life I could never love her after” (Letter 11). Through these remarks, Osborne communicates her views on wifehood and marriage. She believes a wife should possess great wit and have no capacity or tolerance for betrayal. She also expresses a belief that a husband and wife are both responsible for the health of their marriage. By claiming that a better husband makes a better wife, she indicates that she thinks of a husband and wife as partners, both responsible for the quality of their marriage. Osborne aligns herself most firmly with Doralise: “I am of her opinion in most things that she says in her character of ‘L’honnest homme’ that she is in search of, and her resolution of receiving no heart that had been offered to anybody else.” Here Osborne uses a character to give Temple a sense of who she is as a lover and asks him to “tell me how you like her” so that she can ensure that she is, indeed, the woman

Temple wants to marry and the type of woman who will make a good wife for him.

Osborne paints portrait of her ideal husband for Temple by setting certain male lovers up as positive or negative examples. When she asks Temple to “send word how you like” Britomart,

Osborne does not comment on the hero herself but waits to see if Temple’s opinion of this character aligns with her own. When discussing the lover that Doralise rejects, Osborne conveys that she does not want to marry a man who has loved another woman. She expects to be her husband’s one and only love. In letter 31 Osborne presents another negative example to Temple.

She tells him to read “L’Amant Absente,” “L’Amant non Aimé,” “L’Amant Jaloux,” and

“L’Amant don’t La Maitresse est mort” and instructs him, “Tell me which you have most compassion for when you have read what every one says for himself…Only let me desire you not to pity the jealous one, for I remember I could do nothing but laugh at him as one that sought his own vexation.” Osborne solicits Temple’s opinion on four types of male lovers and

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discourages him from jealousy by sharing that she has nothing but scorn for l’amant jaloux.

Thus, the romances Osborne and Temple exchange not only provide them a fictional world to inhabit or an ideal future to imagine together but offer them opportunities to demonstrate that they will be well-matched spouses and to assure one another that they are continuing their elicit courtship and defying their families for good reason.

Assignation-based intimacies also seem to hold Osborne and Temple together.

Specifically, the ring serves as an important symbolic signifier of love and devotion for the two of them just as it does for the characters in Merchant. Osborne uses the figure of the ring, a widely recognized symbol of enduring love, to communicate her feelings about Temple and the status of their relationship. At the beginning of their courtship, Osborne references the ring to signal the sincerity of her feelings for Temple. As she describes what may or may not have been an actual dream, Osborne uses the figure of the ring to suggest that a marriage to Temple would bring her great joy. She begins the account of her dream by teasing Temple: “Not to confirm you in your beliefs in dreams, but to void reproaches, I will tell you a pleasant one of mine.” She claims that, since he has recounted his dreams for her, she feels obligated to return the favor.

Osborne implies that she does not share Temple’s “belief in dreams,” but her tone is playful and, in reality, her statement primes Temple to read a deeper meaning into her account. Osborne continues, “I dreamt one brought me a packet, and told me it was from you…when I had opened the letter I found in it two rings; one was, as I remember, an emerald doublet…t’other was plain gold.” Even without further information, Temple would likely assume that Osborne’s “pleasant” dream is one in which he sends her their wedding rings and that she shares this dream to show

Temple how happy an event like this would make her. As she continues, Osborne makes an explicit reference to marriage. She explains that the gold ring in her dream is inscribed with “the

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longest and strangest posy that ever was.” Half of the posy is written in Italian, which Osborne admits “for my life I could not guess at,” and the “rest was ‘there was a Marriage in Cana of

Galilee’” (Letter 4). So, Osborne explicitly connects the rings to marriage. In fact, her reference to this particular wedding, one during which Jesus performed the miracle of turning water into wine, emphasizes just how much marrying Temple would please her.

Interestingly enough, when Osborne does request a wedding ring from Temple near the end of their courtship, she asks for a plain gold ring like the one she describes from her dream and instructs Temple to send it via mail. This time, though, her reference to the ring indicates her growing certainty that she and Temple will be allowed to marry. Still employing her playful tone, Osborne tells Temple, “I must have a ring from you…a plain gold one; if I ever marry it shall be my wedding ring” (Letter 48). She avoids specifically identifying the ring as a wedding ring (in case the letter falls into the wrong hands), but, at this point in their courtship, marriage looks increasingly more inevitable. She has also told Temple on numerous occasions that if she cannot marry him, she will marry no one. Thus, the ring she requests can only be for her wedding to Temple. Two letters later, Osborne sends a sample ring upon which her wedding ring should be modeled: “Here is a ring: it must not be at all wider than this, which is rather too big for me than otherwise; but that is a good fault, and counted lucky by superstitious people” (Letter

50). Like Osborne’s reference to the wedding at Cana, her description of an oversized ring as “a good fault, and counted lucky by superstitious people” is a commentary upon the happy marriage she expects to soon share with Temple. Her decision to send a ring and request one in turn conveys that the couple’s plans to marry are, quite literally, becoming more tangible. Osborne’s various references to wedding rings, then, assure Temple that her desire to marry him persists and demonstrate Osborne’s growing confidence that their marriage will come to pass.

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Like the books and rings Osborne mentions in her correspondence, the letters she and

Temple write to one another support and sustain their intimacy materially. In the most basic sense, the couple’s correspondence provides them with a means of communicating that accommodates their physical separation and their need to keep their love affair a secret. More importantly, though, Osborne transforms her epistles themselves into material objects that sustain her ties to Temple. By constantly calling attention to the material qualities of the letters she and Temple send one another, Osborne turns them into visual reminders that she and Temple belong together. They become agents of recognition-based intimacy.

In many letters Osborne observes that she and Temple write similarly (in terms of both style and handwriting), and she frames the material similarities in their composition strategies as visual evidence that their humors and dispositions are compatible. Thus, the letters become somewhat like the armor Spenser’s knights wear. Through their material characteristics, they show Osborne and Temple how their temperaments are reflected in one another’s habits. In terms of their hands, Osborne refers to Temple’s script and her own as “scribbled.” She uses this exact term to apologize for the “strangely scribbled” letters she writes in haste (Letters 5, 15, 17,

26) and to tell Temple to “scribble how you please, so you make your letter long enough” adding

“you see I give you good example” (Letter 38). Thus, Osborne takes care to point out material evidence of a characteristic she shares with her lover.

In a few cases, Osborne specifically conflates the writing style she and Temple share with their similar humors. In one letter, Osborne claims to mistake Temple’s writing for her own. As she reads Temple’s description of his bad humor Osborne claims, “I could not believe but that I had writ it myself, it was so much my own” (Letter 20). Osborne recognizes her own psychological and physiological experience of humoral imbalance and her own writing habits in

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Temple’s account of an ague he suffers and his description of it. A few letters later, Osborne again insists that Temple’s written words demonstrate that he and Osborne are an excellent match. She explains that her “cousin Franklin…said she was confident our humors would agree extremely well” and concurs, “In earnest, I think they do; for I mark that I am always of your opinion, unless it be when you will not allow that you write well, for there I am too much concerned. Jane told me t’other day very soberly that we write very much alike” (Letter 25).

Osborne quickly and seamlessly connects Franklin’s statement that “our humors would agree extremely well” with Jane’s observation that “we write very much alike.” Again, Osborne suggests that the evidence that they “agree” in humor and disposition lies in the writing on the pages they send to one another. Such an observation strengthens her and Temple’s faith in their intimate connection. The letters become a visual reminder that they belong together.

Finally, the letters Osborne and Temple send to one another facilitate a memorial based intimacy that keeps the lovers together in the same ways that Pamphilia’s tree carvings help her maintain her emotional connection to Amphilanthus. First, as they are written and read, the letters serve as proxies for Osborne and Temple. Through them, Osborne and Temple make themselves present to one another, spend time together, and invite each other into their daily lives. Second, the epistles bring Temple and Osborne closer by serving as publicly accessible evidence of their secret love for one another. Though the lovers’ letters are meant for their eyes alone, they pass through the hands of multiple carriers as they travel between Temple and

Osborne. They are folded and sealed but still run the risk of being intercepted or read by those with prying eyes. Thus, the epistles advertise a relation between Osborne and Temple while withholding specific information about their intimacy—at least until someone steals a letter or breaks a seal. The knowledge that they share a secret that others might discover brings the lovers

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closer together by setting them apart from everyone else. Osborne and Temple share the risk of exposure as well as the satisfaction of a shared secret. The two of them will be the only ones to suffer the consequences should a letter fall into the wrong hands. In two ways, then, their letters unite them against the outside world. Third, some of the letters function as contracts of a sort. As

Osborne explicitly states in these letters, they are a “testament” of her feelings for Temple and constitute proof of her affection (Letters 7, 9, 47). Once Temple has read them and while they remain in his possession, Osborne cannot deny that she loves him, to Temple or anyone else.

Osborne positions her letters as proxies for Temple (as she writes to him) and herself (as

Temple reads them) in a number of ways. To begin, she writes in an informal and familiar tone, mimicking the kind of in-person conversations that she and her lover rarely enjoy. She tells

Temple explicitly, “All letters, methinks, should be free and easy as one’s discourse, not studied as an oration, nor made up of hard words like a charm” (Letter 30). And she does, indeed, write to Temple in a “free and easy” manner. She uses simple and direct language and often speaks to

Temple as if he were by her side, sharing her experiences in real time. For example, in one letter she relates, “Just now I was interrupted…and called away to entertain two dumb gentlemen;— you may imagine whether I was pleased to leave my writing to you for their company;—they have made such a tedious visit, too” (Letter 37). She tells Temple what is happening around her at the exact moment she writes to him and adds an aside, asking him to imagine how “pleased” she was to trade his company for the “tedious” company of these intruding gentlemen. Through her aside, Osborne collapses the time and distance between the interruption she must bear and

Temple’s reading of her letters. She writes as though her present and Temple’s are synchronous, though her present will actually be his past by the time her letter arrives. In another letter, as

Osborne mocks a suitor for Temple’s entertainment, she imagines, “Methinks I see you laugh at

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all my threatenings,” as if Temple were in the room, attempting to stifle a chuckle (Letter 40). By writing to Temple as if he were with her, Osborne can easily imagine that he is sharing the experiences she writes about. Similarly, Osborne’s writing style makes it easier for Temple to imagine that the events she describes to him are unfolding exactly when and where he is reading her letters.

In addition to approximating in-person conversation, Osborne consistently characterizes writing to Temple as spending time with him. She asks him to forgive her for “such long epistles” and to “pardon my unwillingness to leave you” (Letter 6); tells him “I’ll leave you, for I find these thoughts begin to put me in an ill humor” (Letter 14); asks him to “pardon me that I am forced to leave you so soon” (Letter 54); and demands his continued presence with phrases like “No, stay! I have another fault to chide you for” and “Stay! I have not done yet” (Letters 31,

49). This language suggests that Osborne feels (or tries to feel) Temple’s presence as she writes to him. As when Pamphilia carves ciphers of Amphilanthus’ name into various trees, Osborne focuses on Temple and her love for him as she fills her sheet(s) of paper with writing.

Conversely, Temple focuses on Osborne, conjuring her presence for himself wherever and whenever he reads her messages.

Given that Osborne and Temple primarily spend time together by reading and writing epistles, Osborne makes it a point to send and request lengthy letters. Ideally, the material length of the letter provides a temporal experience like spending time together. The longer the letter, the more time they share with one another. When Osborne writes to Temple, she presents her long letters as an act of kindness and apologizes for her short letters. In one note she declares, “I believe this letter will be longer than ordinary,—kinder I think it cannot be” (Letter 39). In another she asks, “What think you, have I not done fair for once, would you wish a longer

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letter?” (Letter 49). She hopes that Temple will be pleased that she has given him so much of her time. Osborne even explicitly equates the length of her letters with the time it takes her to write them. She tells Temple that her letters “shall be as long ones as possibly my time will permit” and explains “how long this letter will be I cannot tell. You shall have all the time that is allowed me” (Letters 58, 65). Her letters are her time and, by writing and sending them, she gives her time to Temple.

Osborne comments on the length of Temple’s letters as well. She asks for long letters and gently chides him for short ones. She relishes the time she gets to spend with the man she loves and does not shy from telling him that she wants more. Osborne complains that Temple’s letters are “too easy to read…for I am sure I had done much sooner than I could have wished” and assures him that he can “scribble how you please so you make your letter long enough” (Letters

9, 38). Similarly, she expresses her desire to “hear often from you, and long letters” (Letter 55).

More frequently, though, Osborne teases Temple for spending too little time with her. She tells him, “I shall be even with you for your short letter” and muses “ I wonder with what confidence you can complain of my short letters that are so guilty yourself in the same kind. I have not seen a letter this month which has been above half a sheet” (Letters 59, 66). She avows that her happiness depends entirely upon Temple’s messages. She asks, “Can you…believe that your letters can be so long as to make them unpleasing to me?” and informs him, “You have satisfied me very much with this last long letter, and made some amends for the short one I received before” (Letter 60). Osborne goes so far as to hint that Temple’s epistles impact her psychological wellbeing. In one letter she shares, “I expected your letter, and how cold it went to my heart to see it so short a one” (Letter 39). In another she instructs Temple to “write constantly while I am here, or I am undone past all recovery. I have lived on them [Temple’s letters] ever

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since I came, but had thrived much better had they been longer” (Letter 57). In a third she requests, “If you stay there you will write back by him, will you not, a long letter? I shall need it; besides that you owe me for the last being so short” (Letter 52). Her constant emphasis on the length of Temple’s letters assures him that she still desires his company, that she cannot live without it, and perhaps also reveals how much she relies upon his letters to feel close to him.

Osborne even insists that she and Temple can touch through their letters. In letter 34 she tells Temple “your servant kisses your hands.” This implies that the letter Temple holds physically conveys a kiss from Dorothy’s lips. So, the letters become a space in which Osborne can bestow physical affection upon Temple while they remain apart. As Janet Altman explains in

Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form, “letter writing [is] metaphoric (a metaphor of the lover is generated by the epistolary situation, which conjures up interiorized images and comparisons) and metonymic (the letter itself, by virtue of physical contact, stands for the lover).”284 By merely touching the letter she sends to Temple, Osborne comes into contact with him, and vice versa. By kissing the letter that Temple will hold, Osborne kisses his hands.

Osborne’s references to sleeping, dreaming, and being in bed also suggest that she and

Temple can share physical intimacy through their paper proxies. As Sara Crangle puts it, these remarks approximate an “illicit physicality.” 285 Through statements like the following Osborne invites Temple into bed with her: “I’ll e’en to bed as soon as I have told you that I am very much your faithful friend and servant,” “Once more good night, I am half in a dream already,” and “I hope I am half asleep, nothing else can excuse me; if I were quite asleep, I should say fine things

284 Janet Gurkin Altman, Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1982), 19. 285 Sara Crangle, “Epistolarity, Audience, Selfhood: The Letters of Dorothy Osborne to William Temple,” Women’s Writing 12, no. 3 (2005): 441. 278

to you; I often dream I do” (Letters 8, 12, 39). By keeping Temple’s proxy (the letter she is composing) with her as she prepares for bed, Osborne lays in bed with him. In the same way,

Osborne’s statement that “at this instant you are I believe more asleep than I” places her letter, her proxy, in bed with Temple. By positioning the letters as physical placeholders for Temple and herself Osborne implies that she and Temple can share the same bed by sleeping with one another’s letters.

While Osborne’s letters primarily function as proxies for herself and her lover, they also serve as physical evidence of their intimacy—evidence that could pose a threat if it fell into the wrong hands and evidence that Temple can use to comfort himself if he ever doubts Osborne’s love. Like the trees Pamphilia engraves with ciphers of Amphilanthus’ name, the meaning of this evidence is, ideally, obscured to everyone but the lovers who create it and share it with each other. Whereas Pamphilia’s ciphers are visible but inscrutable to those who see them, the evidence of Osborne’s affection circulates freely among carriers but is safely concealed by a blank paper exterior and protected by wax seals. Osborne and Temple’s letters simultaneously advertise and obscure the love they share. They publicly proclaim that their sender and recipient have a shared secret but do not reveal what that secret is. Osborne and Temple’s publicly visible secret engenders feelings of closeness between them, the only ones with access to the privileged information included in their letters.

As Osborne explains in her first letter to Temple, their love (what she consistently terms their “friendship”) relies upon “mutual confidence.” She and Temple must share their “stories’ and give one another “accounts” of themselves. Thus, their relationship relies upon sharing personal information with each other while refusing to divulge this information to anyone else.

They must trust one another. As their courtship becomes more and more serious, they must also

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protect their plans to be together from the prying eyes of strangers and family members. For this reason, Osborne expresses concern for the “safety” of their letters often and provides Temple with instructions meant to reduce the threat of exposure. While her remarks are certainly practical, they also rhetorically figure Temple and herself as partners in a scheme all their own.

Many of Osborne’s comments about safety and security express only mild concern. As

Temple prepares to set off on a journey, she reminds him that most important “of all things, remember to provide a safe address for your letters when you are abroad” (Letter 9). In a late letter she instructs, “Have a care of all the dispatch and security that can be in our intelligence”

(Letter 57). By using words like “intelligence,” “safety,” and “security,” Osborne characterizes the content of her letters as privileged information (like the secrets a spy might protect) and emphasizes that their safety and security cannot be taken for granted.

In addition to reminding Temple to take general precautions, Osborne also recounts close calls to him in great detail. In one particular instance, Osborne shares that, upon receiving one of

Temple’s letters she “found the upper seal broken open, and underneath where it uses to be only closed with a little wax, there was a seal, which though it were an anchor and a heart, methought it did not look like yours, but less, and much worse cut.” The state of the letter left makes her so suspicious of the carrier “that I chid till the poor fellow was ready to cry.” Osborne makes the severity of the situation clear by describing her treatment of this unfortunate letter carrier and thus invites Temple to share her experience of anxious suspicion and her relief that their secret was not exposed. This is an emotional experience that only the two of them can share. As she finishes describing this event, Osborne counsels Temple, “pray hereafter seal your letters, so that the difficulty of opening them may dishearten anybody from attempting it” (Letter 16). She again emphasizes that she and Temple share a secret worth protecting.

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Osborne’s overprotective brother poses the greatest threat to her and Temple’s hopes and plans to marry. He was the most vocal and determined opponent of Osborne and Temple’s union and endeavored to discover everything he could about his sister’s “friendship” with Temple. He appears as an antagonist in a number of letters. Responding to Temple’s call for precaution

Osborne informs him “Your last came safe, and I shall follow your direction for this, though, as you say, I cannot imagine what should tempt anybody to so severe a search for them, unless it be that he [Osborne’s brother] is not yet fully satisfied to what degree our friendship is grown , and thinks he may best inform himself from them” (Letter 27). Osborne certainly does not reject the possibility that her brother might steal and read her letters from Temple. In one letter she asks

Temple to “change the place of direction for my letters” because Jones, the owner of the shop

Temple planned to address his letter to, knows both her and her brother. She cannot remember whether her brother still frequents the shop and worries that, if he does, Jones might give

Temple’s letter to him (Letter 39). In some senses, Osborne’s brother becomes the villain in her and Temple’s romance. Hiding their plans and letters from him drives Osborne and Temple closer together by giving them a shared goal and a shared enemy.

While the letters’ status as evidence of Osborne and Temple’s love has the potential to be problematic, Osborne also assures Temple that, in possessing her letters, he possesses a

“testament” of her love for him. No one (not even Osborne) can deny her feelings for him while he has her letters. In her seventh letter, Osborne apologizes that she cannot prove her friendship to him with “better testimony…than words.” Two letters later she reiterates that writing to

Temple is “the greatest testimony of my friendship that I could give you” (Letter 9). Using the same word that Wroth’s Pamphilia uses to refer to her poetry, Osborne communicates that the

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letters themselves can “testify” to her devotion. To use another of Wroth’s key words, the letters serves as the only “witness” Temple and Osborne need to prove their love.

As witnesses and testimony, Osborne’s letters take on a quasi-legal role in sealing the promises she makes to Temple. After a tumultuous period in their relationship, Osborne promises Temple that she will never again suggest that they part ways: “the wealth of the whole world, by the grace of God, shall not tempt me to break my word with you, nor the importunity of all my friends I have. Keep this as a testimony against me if ever I do, and make me a reproach to them by it; therefore be secure, and rest satisfied” (Letter 47). The letter, like the poem Pamphilia writes at the beginning of the Urania, will serve as “testimony against” Osborne if she ever attempts to break her word. She instructs Temple to keep it as material proof of her promise and hopes that, with the letter in hand, he can “be secure, and rest satisfied.” In a more jovial mood, Osborne later jokes that, if she drowns on her trip to Kent, “this will be my last letter; and, like a will, I bequeath all my kindness to you in it, with a charge never to bestow it all upon another mistress, lest my ghost rise again and haunt you” (Letter 62). Osborne signals to

Temple that her letters “witness” all of the “kindness” she feels for Temple. By holding and looking at them, Temple can rest secure in the knowledge that Osborne loves him.

Osborne and Temple did, indeed, find a way to marry, and all evidence suggests that their union did, indeed, “prove happy.” It seems reasonable to assume that the object-centered intimacies the lovers established as they exchanged books, rings, letters, and more contributed to the happy ending of their romance. These objects gave the lovers fictional avenues through which to explore their intimate attachment to one another, served as tangible signs of their devotion to one another, helped them see their shared values and characteristics more clearly, and served as evidence of their strong affective connection. Perhaps this is, in part, why Temple

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could not bring himself to burn Osborne’s letters. Whyever they exist, these epistles demonstrate that the object-centered intimacies represented in earl modern literature were more than fiction.

Osborne and Temple, at least, did establish literature-based, assignation-based, recognition- based, and memorial based intimacies that looked a great deal like those Marlowe, Shakespeare,

Spenser, and Wroth explored in their work. Today, readers likely recognize the object-centered intimacies that Osborne’s letters discuss and participate in. Now, as then, material objects bind us to the ones we love. And now, as then, we are still puzzling through the ways the objects of affection we exchange tie us to them in both fleeting and permanent ways.

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Vita

EDUCATION The Pennsylvania State University Ph.D., English, December 2020

Dissertation: “Objects of Affection: Intimate Exchanges in Early Modern Literature and Culture,” successfully defended August 2020

Committee: Dr. Garrett Sullivan (Director), Dr. Patrick Cheney (English), Dr. Marcy North (English). Dr. Tracy Rutler (French and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) M.A., English, 2015

Master’s Thesis: “Comedy, Intimacy, and Petrarchism in Much Ado About Nothing”

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill B.A., English, Romance Languages (Spanish), magna cum laude, 2012

WORK EXPERIENCE

2013 – 2020 Graduate Teaching Assistant As an instructor at Penn State, I helped my students develop crucial reading, writing, communication, and critical thinking skills. I taught 12 classes and maintained high SRTE (Student Rating of Teaching Effectiveness) scores in each of them. I also served as an undergraduate writing tutor, working individually with students who requested or were referred for assistance with their first-year writing course.

2015 – 2018 GWC Coordinator/Consultant As a Graduate Writing Center (GWC) coordinator I oversaw the operations of the writing center (answering calls and emails; scheduling and hosting workshops and other writing events; managing the GWC website, listserv, and Facebook account; collaborating with the leaders of various campus organizations; increasing the visibility and accessibility of the GWC; compiling data to produce semester reports). As a consultant I met with students from a variety of fields (online and in person) to provide feedback on their academic and professional documents. I also hosted workshops, gave in-class presentations, and regularly attended administrative meetings.

2015 – 2017 Public Writing Initiative Fellow As a fellow, I facilitated collaborations between Penn State English instructors and members of the State College community. I arranged for local professionals to meet with interested instructors and to visit their classrooms and speak to their students about the importance of strong writing and communication skills to their professional lives.

GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS ______April 2014 Received an NEH Grant to attend the “Shakespeare and the Problem of Biography” conference at the Folger Shakespeare Library Spring 2019 Awarded a semester-long fellowship by Penn State’s Humanities Institute.