Thomas Middleton and the Plural Politics of Jacobean Drama

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Thomas Middleton and the Plural Politics of Jacobean Drama

Western Michigan University ScholarWorks at WMU Late Tudor and Stuart Drama Medieval Institute Publications 5-2021 Thomas Middleton and the Plural Politics of Jacobean Drama Mark Kaethler Medicine Hat College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/mip_ltsd Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Modern Languages Commons, Political Theory Commons, Renaissance Studies Commons, and the Theatre History Commons Recommended Citation Kaethler, Mark, "Thomas Middleton and the Plural Politics of Jacobean Drama" (2021). Late Tudor and Stuart Drama. 7. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/mip_ltsd/7 This Monograph is brought to you for free and open access by the Medieval Institute Publications at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Late Tudor and Stuart Drama by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact wmu- [email protected]. Mark Kaethler Thomas Middleton and the Plural Politics of Jacobean Drama Late Tudor and Stuart Drama Gender, Performance, and Material Culture Series Editors: Cristina León Alfar (Hunter College, CUNY, USA) Helen Ostovich (McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada) Mark Kaethler Thomas Middleton and the Plural Politics of Jacobean Drama ISBN 978-1-5015-1819-5 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-1376-3 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-1399-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2021932134 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: GG 686 workshop, Peter Paul Rubens: Alboin und Rosamunde, © KHM-Museumsverband Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com Contents Acknowledgments VII Illustrations XIII Introduction: Thomas Middleton’s Plural Politics 1 Plural Politics and Poiesis 1 Middleton’s Political Theology 5 Challenging James’s Image as Sovereign 14 Middleton’s Political/Poetical Style and Influences 19 Patriarchy and Middleton 32 From Opera Basilica to Political Awareness, from Parrhēsia to Xenophobia 37 Chapter 1 “He that knows how to obey, knows how to reign”: James as The Phoenix 43 Introduction 43 From Tudor Ashes and Parrhēsia’s Flame 45 Fluid Sovereignty; or, the Boy Actor and the Phoenix 54 Teaching the Monarch to Act 60 Middleton’s Contractual Theater 69 Conclusion: Disguised James 71 Chapter 2 “And in all times, may this day ever prove / A day of triumph, joy and honest love”? The Witch and the Overbury Trials 73 Introduction 73 Middleton’s Earlier Satires of Howard, Essex, and Carr 76 Witches, Aristocrats, and Tragicomedy 82 Blackfriars and the Theatricality of Injustice 90 Providential Theater or the Satire of Containment 98 The Changeling; or, Howard Six Years Later 102 Chapter 3 “Two ways at once”: The World Tossed at Tennis and the Thirty Years War 111 Introduction 111 Middleton’s Political Irony 114 XII Contents War, Peace, White Supremacy, and Middleton, 1616–1620 120 The World Tossed at Tennis as Intended Performance 130 The World Tossed at Tennis Performed 136 Collaborative Governance and Political Awareness 145 Conclusion 151 Chapter 4 “If this be virtue’s path, ’tis a strange one”: A Game at Chess’s Competing Histories 153 Introduction 153 Conflicted Charles and Bad Buckingham 156 Jacobean Janus 159 Allegory in Pieces: Royalty and Pawns 163 Satirizing Aristocracy 166 Unpredictable Providential Morality 176 “She that knows sin, knows best how to hate sin.” 180 “Dissembler! – that includes all” 187 Conclusion: Still Binary 189 Conclusion: “Use but your royal hand” 193 Works Cited 199 Index 219.

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Corrected Final Dissertation
Thomas Middleton’s Middle Way: Political Irony and Jacobean Drama by Mark Kaethler A Thesis presented to the University of Guelph In partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Literary/Theatre Studies in English Guelph, Ontario, Canada © Mark Kaethler, January, 2016 ABSTRACT THOMAS MIDDLETON’S MIDDLE WAY: POLITICAL IRONY AND JACOBEAN DRAMA Mark Kaethler Advisor: Co-Advisor: University of Guelph, 2016 Mark Fortier Paul Mulholland The dissertation examines Thomas Middleton’s political irony in his drama. It differentiates this irony from the broad phrase “Middletonian irony” or the various kinds of irony featured in his oeuvre by observing its connection to what Sir Francis Bacon calls a “crossroads,” which produces opera basilica—works for the monarch to resolve. Middleton and Rowley’s definition of ironia in The World Tossed at Tennis (1620) in which the eye looks “two ways at once” positions the envisioned royal audience at such a crossroads. In doing so, Middleton and Rowley revise rhetorical definitions of irony that promote an inferred meaning which trumps literal interpretations; they instead favour a third meaning with their analogy of the tailor who stitches two previous habits into a new fashion with his needle. Rulers are thus encouraged to abandon singular, entrenched political habits in favour of new and mutually constituted fashions of governance. The course to which Middleton directs rulers and audiences here and elsewhere resembles the tradition of the via media with its projected balance, but its remaining tension infuses that outcome with the ongoing oscillation of the via diversa. In this manner Middleton’s political irony expands upon Bacon’s idea of “perpetual renovation” by seeing governance as a theatrical continuum of historical emulation and revision.
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