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University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/51462 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. ‘Memory Wrapped Round a Corpse’ A Cultural History of English Hecubas By Claire Kenward A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature. University of Warwick Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies June 2011 2 CONTENTS List of Illustrations 4 Acknowledgements 5 Declaration 6 Thesis Abstract 7 Prefatory Note 8 Prologue: Introduction and Methodology 9 1. Songs of Rage 9 2. Time and History 20 Chapter One: Enter Hecuba 41 1. ‘The Queen of Knives’ 41 2. ‘The News that Stays News’ 63 3. The Thrice Mobled Queen 96 Chapter Two: ‘What’s Hecuba?’ 104 1. ‘Empty Dreams, Empty Words. All Rots into Nothing’ 107 2. ‘The Mother Bird at her Plundered Nest’ 125 Chapter Three: Memory by Other Means 140 1. Matres Dolorosae 140 2. ‘Mirror upon Mirror, Mirrored is all the Show’ 142 3. Our Lady of Sorrows 164 Chapter Four: Early English Hecubas 179 1. A Tale of Two Troys 181 2. Hecuba, ‘as myne Auctor recordeth eke also’ 195 3. Hecuba, in ‘Oure Englissh Tonge’ 212 3 Chapter Five: Hecuba, Humanism and Hauntings - Part One 224 1. ‘O Hecuba let not thy ghost so fret’ 224 2. Beloved Black Earth 229 3. Homework Hecubas 242 Chapter Six: Hecuba, Humanism and Hauntings - Part Two 257 4. Beyond the Schoolroom 257 5. Hecuba and the Men of Letters 277 Chapter Seven: Hecuba, History, and Playhouses 295 1. ‘Neither right Tragedies, nor right Comedies’ 295 2. Invisible Hecubas 300 3. ‘The Wombe of Fifty Princes’ 312 4. ‘Sights to Make an Alexander’ 328 Chapter Eight: ‘and Hecuba Afterwards Foundered’ 333 1. ‘Behold the Pageantry of Death’; or, The Horse’s Tale 334 2. ‘The Comeback Queen of Tragedy’ 346 Epilogue: The Hecuba Gap 356 Bibliography 359 4 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. (p.35) William Caxton’s The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (Bruges: Caxton, 1473). 2. (p.46) Agamemnon (Tim Pigott-Smith) surveys the backwall in the Donmar Warehouse’s Hecuba, 2004. (Photograph by Ivan Kyncl). 3. (p.48) Clare Higgins as Hecuba at the Donmar Warehouse, 2004. (Photograph by Ivan Kyncl). 4. (p.68) Richard Tatum and Tracy Eliott in Ark Theatre Company’s filmed production of Trojan Women, 2004 (dir. by Brad May, California). 5. (p.72) Front-cover of Tony Harrison’s Hecuba (London: Faber & Faber, 2005). (Photograph by Dewynters, plc.). 6. (p.81) Film poster advertising Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy with Brad Pitt as Achilles (Warner Bros. 2004). 7. (p.89) Quotations from Rudolph Giuliani and George W. Bush in NerdzRkool’s YouTube video (2006). 8. (p.90) First and last frames of NerdzRkool’s video (2006). 9. (p.90) Hecuba’s lamentations from Trojan Women in NerdzRkool’s video (2006). 10. (p.202) Left to right: woodcuts of the Trojan War accompanying the 1503 edition of Caxton’s Recuyell (EEr) and the 1513 print of Lydgate’s Troy Book (U3r). 11. (p.205) ‘Of the complaynt that Lydgate maketh for the deth of the worthy Ector’: woodcut from the 1513 edition of Lydgate’s Troy Book (R6v). 12. (p.315) The epic clash between Hector and Ajax, frontispiece to Thomas Heywood’s The Iron Age (London: Nicholas Okes, 1632). 13. (p.339) ‘Southwark Fair’ by William Hogarth, showing Mrs Mynns’s Siege of Troy advertised at its centre (painted in 1733, engraved in 1735). 14. (p.345) Advertisement for The Siege of Troy at Astley's Circus, April 1833 (London: T. Romney, 1833). 15. (p.353) ‘League of Nations Performance of The Trojan Women’ by David Alexander Cecil Low (Unknown UK Newspaper, 7 December 1937). 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost I must thank my supervisor Carol Rutter for her belief in my project, her interest and insight into Hecuba, her personal support and encouragement over the years, and her faith that there was method at work in the madness. Thanks also to Cheryl Cave for her kind assistance, the subject- librarians of Warwick, Wolverhampton and Birmingham university libraries, and Oxford’s Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama. I would also like to extend my thanks to my examiners, Dr Richard Rowland and Professor Peter Mack, for their thought-provoking insights into my work and invaluable comments during the viva. The Arts and Humanities Research Council and Warwick University’s Fellowship Scheme made this study possible with their generous funding for which I am most grateful. On a more personal level I would like to thank all the dear friends who have supported me along the way, especially Lee, Miho, Lorraine, Mehrangez, Jorge, Eugenia, Hsiao-ling, Anna, Gregor, Sebastian, Anouk, Andrew, Tom, Spyros, Maria, Matt, Lewis and Laura; and Nick and Joe at Trinity School for their incredibly generous help with Renaissance Latin. Thanks also to Jill, Denis and Elise for their interest and encouragement, and to Thom for his love and mischief. I would like to express my deepest gratitude and love for my family - Caroline, Ken, Mike, Janie, Jessica and Jasmine – whose constant love, care and conviction kept me going. Jess deserves a big thank you hug for brightening up the ‘loon-adversity’ every summer. Caroline, who believes I can do anything if I will just sit still for long enough, is owed the greatest debt for her infinite patience, understanding and encouragement. I cannot thank you enough for your belief in me and your love. This thesis is happily dedicated to you. 6 DECLARATION I declare that this thesis is entirely my own work and that neither the thesis nor any part of it has been submitted for a degree at any other university. Three modern theatre productions of Euripides’ Hecuba, by the Donmar Warehouse (2004), Foursight Theatre (2004) and the Royal Shakespeare Company (2005), formed the subject of a dissertation – ‘The Pitiless Gaze: Euripides’ Hecuba and the War on Terror’ – which constituted half of my Master of Arts degree (awarded by the University of Warwick in 2005). I analyse these three productions in chapter one of this doctoral thesis but to a different purpose; any reproduction of material from the MA is clearly indicated. 7 ABSTRACT This thesis investigates “English Hecubas” as they appear in the recurring stories my culture tells itself about legendary Troy. Analysing a necessarily select number of Hecubas, spanning from the twelfth to the twenty-first century, I uncover a history of intricate cultural negotiations as theatre, literature and pedagogy attempt to domesticate the grief-stricken Trojan queen and recruit the classical past into the service of an ever-changing English present. My interest lies in the performative potential of texts. I therefore consider the reception of English Hecubas as they are culturally activated, looking to text- books and classrooms, play-texts and theatres, print material and their readerships, insisting that schoolmasters, pupils, actors, authors, spectators and readers remain visible as the creators of meaning. Adopting ‘Presentism’ (as developed by Terence Hawkes) as my theoretical approach, the thesis is structured achronologically. This configuration gestures toward a more synchronic reading of Hecuba, replicating twenty-first century encounters with ancient mythological characters, by starting with our present “situatedness” yet juggling accumulations of history gathered with each prior acculturation. Classical Hecubas (of Homer’s Iliad, Euripides’ Hecuba and Trojan Women, Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Seneca’s Troas), entered England in the Renaissance via the imported texts and tenets of continental humanism. Pre-existing Hecubas of England’s oral tradition, medieval romance epics and indigenous Troynovant myths were forced into dialogue with their long-lost textual origins. This clash of Hecubas occurred within a crisis of mourning, resulting from the Reformation’s radical alteration of English funeral rites, which left maternal grief a culturally contentious site of anxiety. Thus, within its eight-hundred year span, the thesis repeatedly returns to the Renaissance to investigate the origins of the modern English Hecubas with which I begin. Hecuba’s grief can lead her to gouge out men’s eyeballs and murder their sons; tactics of accommodation and assimilation have been necessary to render this potentially violent ‘alien’ valuable within England’s cultural lexicon. By exposing the systemic marginalisation, mitigation, suppression and sublimation of Hecuba’s maternal grief and fury, this study hopes to recuperate the value of Hecuba’s essential mourning work. 8 PREFATORY NOTE As my interest lies in manifestations of the Trojan queen in England I refer throughout to ‘Hecuba’, the most common English spelling of the character also known as Ekavi, Ekave, Hecabe or Hekabe; although variations are of course retained in any quotations. Accordingly I have adopted the most prevalent Anglicisation of names for all mythological characters referred to within this thesis. Extant manuscripts containing Seneca’s Trojan Women record the tragedy under both a singular and plural title, Troades and Troas. To avoid confusion with Euripides’ Trojan Women Seneca’s play will be referred to throughout this thesis by its singular Latin title, Troas, since this was the only title known to Elizabethan translators. To complement my methodology I have endeavoured to use English translations of ancient Greek and Roman texts which are specific to each time-period being discussed. Thus, no single translation is used as a master or key edition; the various translations are clearly referenced.