9 PLURAL SPACES, FICTIONAL MYSTERIES

АLLEGORIC IMAGERY IN ENGLISH EARLY TUDOR DRAMA

OLENA LILOVA

University “Mediterranean”, Podgorica

Abstract: The paper deals with the role and content of allegorism in the plays of early Tudor dramatists (John Skelton, John Heywood and Nicholas Udall). In the English drama of the first half of the 16th c., allegorical characters are mainly correlated with the ethical canons of Christianity, though reference to the cultural heritage of classical antiquity is made evident in them, too. What distinguishes allegoric characters in early Tudor plays from medieval allegory is their reference to topical subjects. Keywords: allegory, classical heritage, early Tudor drama, legitimacy of power, Renaissance, Tudor dynasty

1. Introduction. The role of allegory in English medieval drama

The theocentric drama of the Middle Ages was based on the allegoric imagery that implied rendering abstract (mainly Biblical) ideas and concepts through concrete, objective, and sensuous images. By means of allegoric imagery, medieval drama was talking to its viewers about timeless notions, such as life in God, eternal truth, sin, salvation, etc. The morality play, as one of the brightest manifestations of this kind of drama in medieval England, used allegoric images to disclose to the audience the main goals of human existence as well as the basic perils that a human being may come across in his/her earthly life. The figures of Vices and Virtues appeared on stage to carry on their constant fight for the main character’s soul (usually named Everyone or Mankind, or simply Man, etc.). With time, these allegorical characters, Vices in particular (e.g. Sloth, Avarice, Pride), got really recognizable to and popular with viewers. If a stout character appeared on the stage, with a slice of cheese and a bottle of wine in his hands, with pockets full of food, eating and drinking when a battle was just about to start, one could easily recognize the Vice figure of Glotony (Medwall 1980: 2276). This is how Henry Medwall represents this character in his morality play Nature (written in the late 1490s). This corporeal, fleshly representation of abstract ideas (quite often qualities and traits of human nature) in allegorical drama contributed a lot to its “iconographic dimension” (Walker 1991: 12), thus determining its ability to render knowledge about Christian ethical norms through very vivid physical images (“tableaux vivants”).

2. Transformations of the allegoric content in the early Tudor plays

This artistic principle of dramatic representation remains extremely popular in English theatrical practices up to the New Age. At the same time, the nature of allegoric images is undergoing some crucial transformations caused by the cultural

B.A.S. vol. XXV, 2019 10 shifts that mark the passage from the Middle Ages to the New Time – this intermediary and amazingly prolific period in the history of the European culture, called Renaissance. But before outlining the essence of these changes in the representation of allegoric images, let us look at one example from the play Magnyfycence by John Skelton, written in the years 1519-1520. Skelton was an outstanding poet and playwright, who belonged to the first generation of English men of letters, serving as courtiers at the royal courts of the Tudor monarchs Henry VII, Henry VIII, Queens Mary I and Elizabeth I. One of the characters belonging to the group of Vices in this play is named “Counterfeit Countenance” (or “false, pretended look”). His garment has many layers, allowing him to take off some of his clothes in the course of the performance, turn them inside out and put on again, thus illustrating the concept that he embodies – “everyone pretends to be someone else and you can never know what they really are”:

Counterfet prechynge, and byleve the contrary; Counterfet conscyence, pevysse pope holy; Counterfet sadness, with delynge full madly; Counterfet holynes is called ypocrysy; Counterfet reason is not worth a flye; Conterfet wysdome and workes of foly; Counterfet Countenaunce every man dothe occupy (lines 466-472).

In this way, the allegorical Vice-character conveys the idea of falsehood and pretence. It is remarkable that such figures were usually endowed with astonishing artistic energy and charisma. It not only originated in the characters’ vivid iconography, appearance and outfit, but it also resulted from their acquired features of real prototypes – English statesmen and courtiers of the day. As scholars of English drama assume, the plot of Skelton’s play is based on some real-life events, with the negative characters of the interlude being counterparts of the members of the Privy Council that was with much scandal dismissed on a charge of embezzlement in May 1519. The Council’s responsibilities were handed over to another state body, while the councillors themselves were expelled. King Henry VIII found himself in the centre of the political scandal caused by the mean advisors usurping his authority in the country. The conflict was settled with “the expulsion of the minions of 1519” (Walker 1991: 66), which demonstrated the sovereign’s readiness to correct his own faults and stay faithful to the interests of his people and his country. Thus, J. Skelton’s Magnyfycence, just like court dramas written and staged by his contemporaries and successors at the Tudor royal court, offers a somewhat different approach to the allegoric imagery. The playwright still goes by the eternal truths of Christianity, but, at the same time, he makes his characters be involved matters of current interest – the contemporary social and political context, thus aiming to represent the topical issues in his play. Such transformations of the nature of allegoric imagery seem to be quite adequate to the new Renaissance ideology of humanist anthropocentrism that engendered new artistic goals and ideals; these got reflected in the works of art of various kinds and genres, including drama. In the new historical period, it was the

11 PLURAL SPACES, FICTIONAL MYSTERIES earthly existence of a human being in all its amplitude and contrariety that became of central interest and the main subject matter of artistic representation. The consequence was that the abstract categories that early Tudor playwrights use in their plays do not fail to refer to the earthly matters of the day, at the same time preserving the eternal and abstract Biblical content that was of primary interest in the theatrical allegories of the previous epoch. It does not mean, however, that the new allegorical content in the early Tudor dramas evoked the same associations with real people or events in the viewers’ minds. Those allegorical images were neither straightforward nor indubitable. Theatrical allegories as stylistic figures offered scope for the viewers’ imagination, allowing the possibility of various interpretations of the same characters or events represented on the stage.

3. Allegorism as a means to avoid directness

Evidently, rendering abstract ideas by means of allegoric images remained extremely popular in Tudor England – the old cultural tradition did not give way to the new methods of artistic representation so easily. Besides that, courtly etiquette as well as courtly theatrical practices themselves represented an especially auspicious basis for exercises in allegoric expression. One of the central topics and ideologemes of this time that sought for allegoric representation was the concept of supreme power. In times past, the sovereign who came to power after defeating his opponent on the battle field had all the legitimacy of authority – by right of conquest. What mattered more to the newer generations was the right of succession. But if Henry VII, the sovereign who laid the foundations of the Tudor dynasty, had observed this right, he would not have become the king of England in 1485. So, the question of legitimacy of power was not an idle matter for the first monarch of the Tudor family, or for his successors. That is why it is not surprising at all that the concept of power gets so widely discussed and so thoroughly studied in the plays of English court dramatists in the late 15th – 16th centuries. Besides, being a part of courtly culture, early Tudor drama adopted the aesthetic principle ars est celare artem (“art is concealing art”), which helped court artists to avoid censorship and keep their official positions (Mucci 2003: 301). What rhetorical figure could better serve the purpose of disguising the subject matter and representing it “without pain”, according to the courtly code of behaviour, than allegory? That is why, when talking to their audiences about the topical issues of power and authority, early Tudor playwrights used allegory, in order to avoid directness in the representation of the play’s theme. The epoch’s avid interest in the classical heritage and the true cultural boom, intensified by the revival of antique ideals of beauty, as well as the introduction of studies in classical philosophy, rhetoric, languages and literature at English Universities and schools inspired early Tudor playwrights to use classical imagery in their plays. One of the best examples of such imagery in early Tudor drama is given in J. Heywood’s Play of the Weather (1533), in which eight petitioners apply to the Olympic God Jupiter, requesting the weather conditions they consider to be highly desirable for themselves. As to the figure of Jupiter, who embodies state power in the play, it definitely bears some resemblance to the personality of King Henry VIII, thus allowing the playwright to touch upon some topical issues of the political

B.A.S. vol. XXV, 2019 12 life in the country. One of them is that of the increased power that the English monarch received in 1529, after Cardinal Wolsey’s dismissal. His newly acquired prerogatives (in Heywood’s play, they are discussed at the very beginning, in lines 35-45) led to his becoming the Supreme Head of the Church and, finally, to the Reformation that proved to be a really dramatic period in the history of the country. In one of the scenes, where we learn that Jupiter is away, as he is busy making a new Moon

Even now is he makynge of a new moone: He sayth your old moones be so farre tasted that all the goodness of them is wasted (lines 793-799), there is clear reference to Henry’s personal life: in this way, the dramatist talks about the king’s decision to divorce Katherine of Aragon and marry Ann Boleyn, who was already pregnant at that time (Heywood 2000: 471). Jupiter’s godly image in the play combines authoritative traits with really humane features, thus secularizing the character, making him a rather worldly figure. The use of allegory as the structuring principle of the play is made evident in another piece of early Tudor drama – Nicholas Udall’s Respublica, which was staged for the first time in 1553 in the presence of Queen Mary I. As it is stated in the following lines of the prologue,

the Name of our playe ys Respublica certaine oure meaninge ys (I saie not, as by plaine storye, but as yt were in figure by an allegorye – the bold type is mine – O.L.) To shewe that all Commen weales Ruin and decaye from tyme to tyme hath been, ys, and shalbe alwaie, whan Insolence, Flaterie, Opression and Avarice have the Rewle in theire possession. (Udall 1952: 2)

The allegory in Udall’s play is used to comment upon the state of the English society at the time. The central figure in the play is Respublica, and her despair and abashment reflect the situation of chaos and disorder caused by the carelessness of the country’s former ruler Edward VI. (Edward VI was nine years old only when he became the king of England, so his authorized representatives acted on his behalf for six years, which proved to be extremely harmful for the country). In this play the Vice is embodied in the figures of Avarice, Insolence, Oppression and Adulation, confronted by Misericordia (or Compassion), Veritee, Pax (the goddess of peace from the Roman mythology) and Nemesis. It is noteworthy that in Respublica Nemesis, the old Greek goddess that personifies divine punishment for wrongdoing or presumption, is associated with Queen Mary I. As the playwright indicated in the prologue, God had sent Queen Mary I to the Englishmen to put right all abuses and misdeeds of the former sovereign,

She is our most wise and most worthie Nemesis Of whome our plaie meneth tamende that is amysses. (Udall 1952: 3)

In Respublica, one may observe the combination of Biblical and classical allegoric images, which testify to the author’s knowledge of the Christian ethos as

13 PLURAL SPACES, FICTIONAL MYSTERIES well as his humanistic bias – the two pillars or two main sources of Renaissance aesthetics.

4. Conclusion

Allegory was a very popular theatrical device in early Tudor drama. Moreover, it defined people’s way of thinking that got reflected in the “textualization of the world” – as Mucci (2003: 301) points out, “an allegorical mode of thinking was structural in Renaissance and baroque culture”. It meant turning rhetoric into a metatext that penetrated all spheres of the social life. As the majority of texts in the 16th c. England were created at the royal court, courtly code of behaviour and courtly etiquette greatly influenced the rhetorical practices of the epoch. The allegorical dimension of English Renaissance art got even more expressive due to the artists’ concentration on the issue of the Tudor royal family legitimization. English sixteenth century drama made serious attempts to secularize its subject matter, with religious topics and concepts giving way to mundane events and situations played out on stage. It resulted in endowing allegorical images with content that early Tudor playwrights sought for and found in the cultural heritage of the antiquity. In these artistic experiments carried out by English court dramatists, allegories demonstrate their extraordinary plasticity and flexibility. In their interpretation of the basic ideologeme of the Tudor England – that of supreme power and its legitimacy – early Tudor men of letters relied upon both Biblical and old Greek and Roman images, revealing the eternal topicality of this issue for any society.

References

Heywood, John. 2000. “The Play of the Weather” in Walker, Greg (ed.). Medieval Drama: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 457-478. Medwall, Henry. 1980. “Nature” in Nelson, Alan H. (ed.). The Plays of Henry Medwall. Tudor Interludes, 2. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. [Online]. Available: http://ota.oucs.ox.ac.uk/scripts/download.php?approval/=ed65c44439cccfd4ca4. [Accessed 2014, March 3].) Skelton, John. 2000. “Magnyfycence” in Walker, Greg (ed.). Medieval Drama: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 352-407. Udall, Nicholas. 1952. Respublica: an Interlude for Christmas 1553. Greg, Walter Wilson (ed.). London: Oxford University Press. Mucci, Clara. 2003. “Allegory” in Hattaway, Michael (ed.). A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture. Malden, MA, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 298-306. Walker, Greg. 1991. Plays of Persuasion. Drama and Politics at the Court of Henry VIII. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.