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Civilizing the Masculine the POLITICS of PASSION in the PRIVATE THEATRES

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Civilizing the Masculine the POLITICS of PASSION in the PRIVATE THEATRES CHAPTER 5 Civilizing the masculine THE POLITICS OF PASSION IN THE PRIVATE THEATRES But, Stoique, where (in the vast world) Doth that man breathe, that can so much command His bloud, and his affection? Ben Jonson, Every Man in his Humour (1599) In 1632, in the private theatre of Blackfriars a play was about to begin.1 Blackfriars was one of the private commercial theatres that became increasingly successful in the seventeenth century. �ese indoor venues were smaller than the open-air amphitheatres, and asked a higher price of admission. In the hall of the former monastery, playgoers were taking their seats in the galleries and in the pit. �e Countess of Essex, accompanied by her stepson, Captain Essex, was seated in one of the boxes that flank the stage, the seating area frequented by the wealthier patrons of the theatre. In front of the boxes, young male gallants were seated on the stage itself, in stools hired for an extra sixpence, as was customary in Blackfriars. �e number of chairs for hire was limited, however, and when the Irish Lord �urles arrived, the store of chairs in the tiring house had in all probability been depleted. �erefore, Lord �urles took up position on the edge of the stage. Captain Essex in the box behind him did not appreciate this, however: �is Captaine attending and accompanying my Lady of Essex in a boxe at the playhouse at the blackfryers, the said lord coming upon 151 the stage, stood before them and hindred their sight. Captain Essex told his lordship they had payd for their places as well as hee, and therefore entreated him not to deprive them of the benefitt of it. Whereupon the lord stood up yet higher and hindred more their sight. �en Capt. Essex with his hand putt him a little by. �e lord then drewe his sword and ran full butt at him, though hee missed him, and might have slain the Countesse as well as him.2 �is example of aristocratic revenge for injured honour, performed on stage and in full view of the spectators at Blackfriars, confirms an image of the private theatres as decadent playhouses. In his Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions, Harbage famously con- trasts the public playhouses as the theatre of the nation, to the private theatres that he sees as catering only to a decadent coterie audience. �e latter theatres ignored political and social pressures, and withdrew into a world of escapism, fantasy, and romance. �is escapist attitude fostered a rift between the populace and these coterie audiences, Harbage argues. In his view, this rift resulted in the Civil Wars that were to close all the theatres in 1642.3 If our period of study began with the memory of the Wars of the Roses still imprinted on the memories of the governors of the Tudor state, it is rounded off with this closure of the theatres at the outbreak of the Civil Wars in 1642. �is chapter analyses the representation of revenge in the private theatre of Blackfriars, to re-examine the role of the private theatre in discourses of revenge in the decades before the civil war. �e division between Roundheads and Cavaliers, Parliamen- tarians and Royalists, was not only based on political and religious concepts, but also pivoted on conflicting ideas on manners and civility. �e concept of revenge plays a central role in what has been called the ‘Cavalier mentality’ supposedly produced in the drama of the private theatres. Mervyn James has described how in the course of the seventeenth century processes of state formation pressured traditional gentry politics to such an extent that the traditional aristocratic sense of honour came to be contested. In its place, a new concept of individual, personal honour was established: influenced also by Italian books of courtesy, honour increasingly came to be regarded as a reward for individual virtue rather than a quality inherited through aristocratic lineage. With aristocratic feuding and blood revenge on the wane, the concept of individual honour introduced a novel threat to social stability. 152 �e sense of masculine identity derived from deeds of honour was not as secure as the intrinsic aristocratic honour that it replaced: masculine reputation was a fragile notion that could swiftly come to be injured or lost.4 �is new sense of masculine identity called for ways to defend one’s honour if insulted, a need that was answered by the practice of the duel. �e duel as a means to defend masculine honour quickly gained ground in England in the first decades of the seventeenth century. “�ese times have begotten this idele beliefe in the brave ones, and they will owne it, that who is stained by any abuse is bound in honour to scoure it by a challenge,” complains the anonymous author G. F.5 Elizabeth Foyster describes how the ritual of the duel was idiosyncratic among the gentry as a means of defending and restoring honourable manhood, and fencing schools as well as fencing manuals were highly popular in London. In the private honour system, masculinity is defined by the preparedness to engage in retribution when one’s reputation is injured. “Refusal to fight,” writes Foyster, “could render a man open to mockery and insult.”6 �e notion of revenge for honour in the seventeenth century became prominent in the drama as well. C. L. Barber writes that: “sensitivity to affront or injury, the taking of revenge, [...] all become almost everyday matters in the drama during the century, whereas they play a relatively minor part in Elizabethan [sixteenth- century] drama: even the villain-heroes of Elizabethan revenge tragedy seldom claim that their deeds are motivated or justified by honour.”7 �e drama of the first half of the seventeenth century, Barber points out, uncritically accepted the code of honour as the basis for gentlemanly conduct, and this resulted in a frequent and positive representation of the duel for honour. �e Puritan anti- theatricalist William Prynne in his Histriomastix (1633) makes a crucial connection between the theatre, the aristocratic duel for honour (as practiced both by actors and spectators), uncontrolled passion, and tyranny: Our owne experience can sufficiently informe us; that Playes and Play-houses are the frequent causes of many murthers, duels, quarrels, debates, occasioned, sometimes by reason of some difference about a box, a seate, or place upon the Stage: [...] Many have been the murthers, more the quarrels, the duels that have growne from our Stage-playes, whose large encomiums of rash valour, duels, 153 fortitude, generosity, impaciency, homicides, tyranny and revenge, doe so exasperate mens raging passions, and make them so impatient of the very smallest injury, that nothing can satisfie, can expiate it but the offenders blood.8 Prynne thus not only sees the theatre as a place where aristocrats fought over a box or a seat on the stage (for it was the nobility who sat in these conspicuous areas), he also accuses the drama itself of producing such passions as lead to a desire for revenge. In a sense, Prynne’s view of the dangers of drama accords to Harbage’s political interpretation. He too sees revenge as one of the examples of the decadent patterns of Cavalier behaviour fostered at these theatres. �e moral attitude to revenge propagated in plays such as Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge, in his view is “debased.”9 �is view of the role of the drama of the private theatres has come to be criticized, however. In the first place, the assumption that the private theatres were frequented exclusively by the aristocracy is now challenged.10 Although critics agree that the largest part of the audiences of these more expensive commercial theatres were those with status, wealth, education or achievement, they do not categorically rule out the presence of many others at these playhouses as well. �e audience of these private theatres did not consist of courtiers only, but also attracted the gentry, including its newer members who had acquired education, achievement and wealth, and could afford the price of a ticket as well as the aristocracy could.11 Apart from this challenge to the traditional view of the audience constitution, critics like Martin Butler have commented that the association between Cavalier culture and the theatre is precisely what Puritan propagandists like William Prynne sought to foster. Butler has demonstrated that the drama of the period was not escapist at all, but very much engaged with the political issues of its time.12 �is political context was not as polarized as was long thought, as historians of the Civil Wars have recently argued.13 �ere was no monolithic source of power that produced a unified discourse, but neither were there two unified discourses opposed to each other. Instead, as Martin Butler argues: ‘Cavalier’ and ‘puritan’, ‘court’ and ‘country’ were not fixed norms of sensibility or behaviour to one or other of which every individual conformed, but values in a continual state of flux or dialectic, each 154 perpetually modifying and modified by the other as they issued into the experience of their time[.] [...] �ere is here a society seriously at disagreement with itself; but the disagreements have not yet entirely polarized into mutually exclusive counter-cultures.14 �e historiography of the first half of the seventeenth century, then, has recognized the importance of discursive structures and their relation to processes of power and the formation of meaning. �ese new developments in historiography as well as in theatrical research call for a re-examination of the private theatres’ representations of revenge. �is chapter examines the cultural politics of gender and revenge in the London private theatres in the first half of the seven- teenth century.
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