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The Uses of Melancholy Among Military Nobles in Late Elizabethan England

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The Uses of Melancholy Among Military Nobles in Late Elizabethan England 10.6094/helden.heroes.heros./2014/QM/04 36 Andreas Schlüter Humouring the Hero: The Uses of Melancholy among Military Nobles in Late Elizabethan England The interest of this article is twofold: fi rst, to aggressive foreign policy against Spain that establish and explore the intricate connection involved England with military on the continent between two key concepts in the fashioning of from the mid-1570s (“Leicester-Walsing ham English military nobles: the hero and melan- alliance”, Adams 25 and passim). The queen choly; and second, to explain their usages and herself referred to Sidney once as “le plus ac- usefulness in the last decades of the sixteenth compli gentilhomme de l’Europe” (Sidney, Cor- century, when both terms were used a lot more respondence II 999). He travelled Europe exten- frequently than ever before in the English lan- sively and brought many ideas and practices of guage (see, for hero, Simpson et al. 171 and the Mediterranean Renaissance and of the Euro- Low 23–24, and for melancholy, Babb 73). It is pean republic of letters into the practical life and possible to link this increase at least partially to behaviour of his generation of fellow court hope- the advance ment of one particular social fi gura- fuls, such as Walter Raleigh, Robert Devereux, tion1: the generation of young courtiers of Queen the 2nd Earl of Essex, and Fulke Greville. In this Elizabeth I who were born around 1560 and climate of “intellectual bombardment” by human- stepped into the courtly sphere in the 1580s and ist ideas as well as by Calvinist beliefs (Waller 1590s. As I will argue, the use of both terms by 331), Sidney used and exploited both heroics these persons and for these persons was con- and melancholy for his self-fashioning: He “set nected with the way they fashioned themselves the English Renaissance on its course” (Buxton and the way they were fashioned by others. I will 255) and was soon to be followed by his circle of use the term self-fashioning from Greenblatt to friends and clients, but also by courtiers of rival- refer to the ability of early modern individuals to ling factions – a social fi guration adapting to a produce fi ctions or performances of the self in new mode of self-display in the context of the order to infl uence hierarchical power relations court. between persons (1–9). Thus, I will propose that fashioning oneself as heroic or as melancholic The essential text that prescribed how the Euro- could be used as a resource for a person’s social pean nobility imagined the perfect courtier was advancement. the Cortegiano by the Italian humanist Baldas- sare Castiglione (1527). Only in the second half of the century did it begin to infl uence English court society profoundly. In his role as a commu- 1. A Social Figuration and Its Use of nicator and adopter of new ideas and practices, Heroics Philip Sidney was considered by contempor a- ries as one of the most perfect personifi cations This article will focus on the paradigmatic fi gure of the cortegiano (Duncan-Jones 156), and it of Philip Sidney (1554–1586) who, from adoles- was rumoured that he never left this book behind cence, was viewed as being extremely gifted when travelling (Matz 59). In essence, being a and charismatic and happened to be the nephew cortegiano meant trying everything to appeal of the ageing queen’s childless and ageing fa- to the prince, withholding any grudges or frus- vourite, the Earl of Leicester. Thus, Sidney was trations, and always acting with sprezzatura, a wide ly expected to eventually succeed to the po- form of nonchalant grace, without ever exposing litically important and economically reassur ing any strain from pressure. The court became the role of the queen’s favourite. He became the fo- space of dissimulation (Asch 56). By the 1590s, cal point of a political faction in favour of a more the ideal of the cortegiano had assumed a fi rm helden. heroes. héros. Andreas Schlüter – Uses of Melancholy 37 cultural infl uence over the late Elizabethan court their behalf and with the will to sacrifi ce himself. fi guration, shaping a “dramatistic identity” for the The hero also has the transgressive element of courtiers, who “each, in his own way, emulated the liminal fi gure who is able to collect, focus and the queen’s artistic self-display” (Javitch 74). The transcend the values and imaginations of a given male courtiers presented the theme of politicised group of admirers (von den Hoff et al. 8). Thus, love in gendered terms to the female mon arch, the hero may embody the frictions and problems the target of the sublimated erotic longing of the of social groups and may open up perspectives courtiers. The different forms and means of fash- to re solve them. This is not easily reconciled with ioning oneself as a courtier constituted the Re- the well-functioning courtier, who is constructed naissance ideal of the uomo universale, the man as subordinate to an authority with whose de- well versed in any graceful kind of activity, which mands he eagerly tries to comply. As Alan Hag- could comprise the erudite sphere of literature er puts it: “The courtier works by indirection, the and the arts as much as the military sphere. In hero not” (33). fact, the cortegiano was expected to choose his “chief business […] to be arms” (Casti glione 72). In the decades before the 1580s, young, as piring 2. The Late Elizabethan Crisis and the nobles had tended to use an almost exclusively Malady of Melancholy military model of heroics to display their readi- ness to serve for the monarch (for brief sur veys, However, even this courtier mode of the trad- see Low 22–27 and Evans 361). This model itio nal military hero was being challenged in late could provide them a good name and make Elizabethan times (Matz 155 n13). The nobles’ them powerful friends at court as well as among fi elds of action were coming under pressure in the noble elites with their traditional monopoly on the last decades of the sixteenth century. Al- waging war and using violence (especially when though Lawrence Stone’s thesis of a “crisis of the monarch was a woman who could not lead the aristocracy” has been deeply transformed the troops into battle herself). By acting on the – and in military matters fi rmly rejected –, the battlefi eld or training for it in tournaments, an state, religion and society of the late Elizabethan aspiring noble could focus the attention and the age changed profoundly (for an overview, see expectations of a group to his person. By dis- Gajda 13–19). The rise and consolidation of the playing readiness to sacrifi ce oneself while per- early modern state set in motion a dynamic of forming heroic military deeds, the self-fashioned centralisation and put the political spaces and noble warrior hero could accumulate social cap- possibilities of autonomous aristocrats under ital. duress. The pre-modern personalised way of governing, which depended on the cooperation Whilst the Cortegiano prescribed for courtiers of nobles with their monarch, was giving way to a to excel as soldiers, the fi gure of the hero does more hierarchical political style which threatened not fi t the job description completely: When the the role of the nobility. Interlocked with this politi- court ier fi nds himself in a battle, he should do cal development was the increase of confessio- what is constructed as heroic – “do the outstand- nal concerns as a factor of public life in general. ing and daring things that he has to do” – but The struggles between the different confessions only when “in the sight of all the noblest and consolidated the dogma and institutions of the most respected men in the army, and especially respective churches and transformed individual […] before the very eyes of his king” (Castiglione sets of belief into collective ideologies. State and 72). Thus, all success depended on the visibility church required their subjects’ complete adher- of the deed and on the impression given to the ence and extolled pressure on the individuals to superiors, not on the actual accomplishment: “I conform. Alongside these underlying structural have known men who, though very able, were changes, there were problematic developments stupid on this score, and would risk their lives as that burdened the political climate from the late much to capture a fl ock of sheep […] – which is 1570s. The many problems facing late Elizabe- something our Courtier will not do” (ibid.). Dis- than political culture made it “rife with […] political simulation lay at the core of the courtier warrior’s discontent” (Kitzes 15): the fear of an assumed behaviour; not the actual will to sacrifi ce. And Jesuit infi ltration of Protestant England, threats while there is no simple defi nition, a core of ele- of invasion from Spain and rebellions in Ireland, ments that constitute a hero can be determined: and the precarious state of Protestants in the A hero is a fi gure constructed by a community Netherlands and in war-torn France, all of which of followers using him (or her) as a focal point seemed to diminish hopes for the establishment of admiration or of exemplarity; the hero acts on of a peaceful European order. This amounted to helden. heroes. héros. Andreas Schlüter – Uses of Melancholy 38 rising fears of civil war on English soil and con- wrote that “I was very troubled […] that you are tributed to an increase in emotionally expressive not in very good health and even more melan- language among elite writers.
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