Education and Discontent in Early Modern England
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 6-26-2021 Eloquence in Talke and Vertue in Deedes: Education and Discontent in Early Modern England Mary Alison Webb Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Webb, Mary Alison, "Eloquence in Talke and Vertue in Deedes: Education and Discontent in Early Modern England" (2021). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 5569. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/5569 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. ELOQUENCE IN TALKE AND VERTUE IN DEEDES: EDUCATION AND DISCONTENT IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Mary Alison Webb B.A., University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 2014 M.A., University of Chicago, 2016 August 2021 Here now have you … this idle work of mine, which, I fear, like the spider’s web, will be thought fitter to be swept away than worn to any other purpose … I hope … it will be pardoned, perchance made much of, though in itself it have deformities; for, indeed, for severer eyes it is not, being but a trifle, and that triflingly handled… Read it, then, at your idle times, and the follies your good judgment will find in it blame not, but laugh at; and so, looking for no better stuff than, as in a haberdasher’s shop, glasses or feathers, you will continue to love the writer, who doth exceedingly love you, and most, most heartily prays you may long live … —Sir Philip Sidney The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia ii Acknowledgements To write acknowledgements is to delve into a strange genre. To thank everyone is impossible; to even try is more futile. If I have ever promised in passing to thank you in my “Acknowledgments Section,” consider that sorted. I will specifically mention Andy, Tiffers, Darby, Vicki, and Kathie for support, distraction, free food, and company during Razorback games. WPS! I would like to offer thanks to the English department at Louisiana State University – especially Emily King and Chris Barrett. I would also like to offer thanks to Kate Jensen from the French department. For my undergraduate thesis I got the following feedback: “you said ‘patient’ twice. It sounds insincere.” I won’t make that mistake again so if you have been patient, know that I appreciate it. Chapter 3 is dedicated to Hunter Parham, who wanted to trap me in a bottle for being a witch when we were at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and at the same time wanted me to use my “witchy powers” to make it snow so he could go snowboarding. Maybe Zabelle Stodola should not have assigned him a paper on Cotton Mather; it turned him into a regular Matthew Hopkins. This project and, in fact, all my writing is influenced by bacon and eggs and concrete trucks. And because I promised: Hey David Koon, son of Wexstan, Shakespeare wrote his plays! iii Table of Contents Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………. iii A Note on Spelling……………………………………………………………………………….. v Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………….. vi Chapter 1. Setting the Stage……………………………………………………………………… 1 Chapter 2. The Performance of Pedagogy in Love’s Labour’s Lost……………………………. 24 Chapter 3. Dangerous Rhetoric…………………………………………………………………..68 Chapter 4. “Brutish Utteraunce”: Barbarism and Imitation in Titus Andronicus……………... 112 Chapter 5. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………..161 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………... 170 Vita…………...…………………………………………………………………………………219 iv A Note on Spelling I have opted to retain the original orthography when quoting from primary texts and scanned documents. An exception to this is the long S. The reasons for this are both functional – my keyboard does not have such a character – and for reader clarity. I have, additionally, modernized i j, u, v, vv, and uu. I’ve changed “ye” to “the” and made additional changes to the printing practice of substituting a “-” for an “n.” In such cases, I’ve removed the dash and added the “n.” In other, edited, editions I have followed suit with the particular book’s editorial decision where they have either modernized the spelling or retained the original spelling. The standard for standardization in these cases has been deferred to the original editor. v Abstract The title for the project, Eloquence in Talke and Vertue in Deedes, comes from educational theorist William Kempe’s claim that the early modern humanist educational system was guaranteed to produce eloquence and virtue. It is, however, my argument that the educational failed in its promises. This project seeks to dissect the educational practices of the early modern period and reanimate the pieces to show how these practices were regularly critiqued on the early modern stage. More than showing the influence of the educational system in the production of drama, I point out that these practices are re-represented as rebuttals of the educational system. As such, Eloquence in Talke, and Vertue in Deedes is a series of essays united by the theme of discontentment with an educational system that failed to meet its promises. vi Chapter 1. Setting the Stage Introduction Advocates of the early modern educational system had lofty goals and expectations for their program of study. For some, education produced an eloquence that could be put in the service of a broader public. William Kempe, schoolmaster at Plymouth, suggests that the goal of education was to “teach all things, framing him to eloquence in talke, and vertue in deedes” (Education of Children E6).1 Education, for Merchant Taylors’ schoolmaster Richard Mulcaster, equips students to “execute those doings in life, which the state of his calling shall employ him unto, whether publike abrode, or priuate at home, according vnto the direction of his countrie, where unto he is borne, and oweth his whole seruice” (Position 185). For others, education led specifically to skill in governance. Roger Ascham, tutor to Elizabeth I, says education can create students who are “easily … brought well to serve God and country both by virtue and wisdom” (Schoolmaster 11). For Mulcaster, the goal for school is that students “be set to school to qualify themselves, to learn how to be religious and loving, how to govern and obey, how to forecast and prevent, how to defend and assail” (Positions 133). Juan Luis Vives, tutor to Mary Tudor and educational theorist, had a similar expectation. For Vives, “the fruit of all studies” is to “employ [education] for the common good” (On Education 283). Vives says that “study must be attuned to practical usefulness in life” and encourages students to “turn [their studies] to the use and advantage of other people” (On Education 284). For others, education was thought to lead to employment opportunities. Education, for rhetorician Leonard Cox, offered employment opportunities for those who will “be advocates and proctoures in the lawe,” those who will be in 1 Similarly, Dean Colet claims the goal of education is for students to be “learned in Laten tung, but also instructe & informed in vertuouse condicions.” Quoted from Michael F. J. McDonnell’ A History of St. Paul’s School, 14. 1 diplomatic service in case they are “sente in theyr prynces Ambassades,” and those aspiring “to be techars of goddes worde in suche maner as maye be moste sensible and accepte to their audience” (Cox 41-42). Perhaps, though, Kempe offers the simplest explanation when he suggests that the goal of education is to “set the common wealth in good order” (Education of Children D). For all of these, though, education was a means to a glorified end, one that was publicly visible and admirable. Despite the promises the educational system offered, there is a marked lack of consensus among early modern theorists and recent critics alike about the success or failure of the early modern humanist educational system. Rebecca Bushnell suggests looking at the educational system with an “ambivalence” that “was a symptom of a world of uncertain hierarchies, shifting relations, conflicting authorities, and contradictory values” (19-20). Neil Rhodes proposes a different approach to understanding the success of the educational system. For Rhodes, the early modern education system failed to meet its most basic promises. Rhodes points out that the educational system was producing “increasing numbers of the unemployably eloquent” (46). Jeff Dolven, similarly, points out that those educated under the humanist system felt like “that they had been betrayed by that training and the promises it had made them” (3).2 This type of ambivalence is not isolated to the retrospective gaze of twenty first century critics. Contemporary works also reveal the same kind of ambivalence. John Brinsley acknowledged that material gains where available for educated men. Brinsley specifically lists “riches, honours, dignities, favour, 2 Dolven notes that “As early as the 1560s, the great success of humanism as a reform movement is accompanied by a gradually rising tide of dissatisfaction with its methods, dissatisfaction particularly with the ways its students were trained to read. Such restlessness stems at least partly from testing its program in an ever-wider field, and giving its students time to age into disillusionment. The consequence is a loss of faith in the forms of understanding that had been cultivated day to day in institutions where an increasing proportion of privileged Englishmen spent their formative years, and where they learned not only to read but (to the extent that these can be separated) also to write, and to think” (8).