Tudor Musical Theater: Staging Religious Difference from Wisdom to the Winter’S Tale
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Tudor Musical Theater: Staging Religious Difference from Wisdom to The Winter’s Tale by Katherine Steele Brokaw A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (English Language and Literature) in The University of Michigan 2011 Doctoral Committee: Professor Theresa L. Tinkle, Co-Chair Professor William B. Worthen, Co-Chair, Barnard College Professor Peggy S. McCracken Professor Michael C. Schoenfeldt Associate Professor Steven G. Mullaney Dedicated to the memory of Dr. Minor Myers, jr. 1942–2003 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Tudor Musical Theater was developed under the influence of the unfailing brilliance and support of my dissertation committee, W.B. Worthen, Michael Schoenfeldt, Steven Mullaney, Peggy McCracken, and most especially, the best mentor and friend a graduate student could hope to have, Theresa Tinkle. Financial support from James A. Winn and the Michigan Institute for the Humanities, the University of Michigan English department, and the Rackham graduate school has made it possible to finish the project. Chapters of this dissertation have been presented to or workshopped by the 2010– 2011 Humanities Institute fellows, the UM Premodern Colloquium, the UM Early Modern Colloquium, the Shakespeare Association of America, the International Medieval Congress, the American Society for Theater Research, and the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference. Chapter 2 benefited from publication in Comparative Drama and the editorial guidance of Eve Salisbury. A travel grant from the Making Publics 1500–1700 Project enabled me to see the Royal Shakespeare Company productions of the history plays that initially inspired this project. While at Michigan, I have learned from the intelligence and guidance of several faculty members, including Catherine Sanok, Karla Taylor, Barbara Hodgdon, Douglas Trevor, Linda Gregerson, William Ingram, Ralph Williams, Elizabeth Sears, and John Whittier-Ferguson. This work has also benefited from conversations with a number of scholars, including Linda Austern, Erika Lin, Sarah Beckwith, Bruce Holsinger, Bruce Smith, John Parker, Michael Dobson, and Carla Mazzio. iii Many teachers have nourished the passion for literature, theater, and music that inspired Tudor Musical Theater. My high school English teacher Kathy Clesson taught me reading and writing skills that I will never forget. At Illinois Wesleyan, the theater, English, art, and music departments cultivated my curiosity, especially with the teaching of professors like Roger Bechtel, John O‘Leary, and Wes Chapman. James McGowan‘s class on poetry convinced me to be an English major, and I decided to pursue academia when I realized that I wanted to be like Kathleen O‘Gorman. My undergraduate learning was continually inspired by President Minor Myers, jr, whose vision of my potential always exceeded my own; I owe much of my academic success to my attempts to live up to Minor‘s version of me, and dedicate my dissertation in his memory. At Cambridge, Charles Moseley‘s challenging teaching and loving mentorship led me to pursue early English literature, and his influence is felt throughout my dissertation. My dissertation and my graduate career have been infinitely enhanced by the friendship of a number of medieval and early modern graduate students, including especially Linda Bates, Kathryn Will, and Rebecca Wiseman, as well as Leila Watkins, Steve Spiess, Amy Rodgers, Ari Friedlander, Angela Heetderks, Sarah Linwick, and Andrew Bozio. The additional friendships of Asynith Malecki, Caroline Miller, Sarah Ehlers, Sarah Moss, Mathilde Köstler, Joanie Lipson Freed, and Daniel Francis have kept me sane throughout graduate school. Nicholas Allen Harp‘s loving support and quick humor has steadied and sustained me through the ups and downs of dissertating. Finally, the love of my family—Nancy Steele Brokaw, Thomas Brokaw, Stephen Brokaw, and Ruth Steele—continues to make all things possible. iv CONTENTS Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii Introduction 1 CHAPTER 1: RE-PRESENTING REPRESENTATION IN EAST ANGLIAN DRAMA 17 Solemnity and Sin in Wisdom, Who is Christ 23 Liturgy Re-Accentuated 26 Juxtaposing Sacred and Profane 33 Theological Supplementarity 41 Satire, Silence, and Sacrament in the Digby Mary Magdalene 47 Musical Entertainments and Parodic Sacramentality 50 Silence and Community Songs 61 The End of Sacramental Theater 69 CHAPTER 2: REFORMING AURALITY IN JOHN BALE‘S PLAYS 73 Three Laws: Solemnity and Sin Redux 80 King Johan: Killing Kings and Ceremonies 95 God’s Promises: Musical Compromise 108 CHAPTER 3: SOUNDING OUT UNCERTAINTY IN DOCTOR FAUSTUS 117 ―Divinity, Adieu‖: The Sounds of Falling 122 Shows for a Wavering Soul 128 Faustus‘s Musical Shows 138 Sounds of Heaven and Hell 152 CHAPTER 4: MAKING MUSIC AND DIVINITY IN THE WINTER’S TALE 161 Sicilia‘s Silences 168 ―Songs for man, or woman, of all sizes‖ 172 Bohemian Rhapsodies 184 Resurrection and Reconciliation 191 Epilogue 201 Bibliography and Sound Recordings 205 v INTRODUCTION In the 1630s, Sir Thomas Browne wrote about the power of profane music to inspire a religious experience: ―for even that vulgar Taverne Musicke, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in mee a deepe fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first Composer, there is something in it of Divinity more than the eare discovers.‖1 Born in 1605—the year the Catholic Gunpowder Plot against King James I demonstrated that the business of the Reformation was very much unfinished—Browne grew up at a time when the power and proper roles of sacred and profane music were constantly in dispute. Seventeenth-century debates flowed directly from previous generations‘ dissension about religious and popular music. This perpetually contentious music was everywhere: Music was performed in taverns, streets, churches, and playhouses; divergent ideas about music were expressed and exchanged in pulpits, printed tracts, poetry, and plays. These conflicts had profound consequences for church and stage alike, shaping ecclesiastic reforms as well as the English theater. Concerns about the harmful religious and spiritual consequences of music and music-making were nothing new. English Lollards had worried about the vanity of religious music and the profanity of popular entertainments since well before Henry VIII‘s complicated version of Protestantism became the law of the land. Early Protestant reformers took up similar concerns, and when the Anglican compromise retained more musical 1 Sir Thomas Browne, ―Religio Medici,‖ in The Major Works, ed. C.A. Patrides (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), 149. Religio Medici was composed in the mid-1630s and first published in 1642. 1 ceremony than many reformers had advocated, adherents of Puritanism and other extreme forms of Calvinism continued to write and preach about the dangers of music. Against continued skepticism and protests of music, many English men and women sang, danced, played instruments, and patronized musical plays; they also advocated for music‘s spiritual efficacy and thus for its retention in church services. Browne, for instance, champions music‘s spiritual power when he writes: ―whatsoever is harmonically composed, delights in harmony; which makes me distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaime against all Church musicke.‖ 2 ―Those heads‖ to which Browne refers were primarily seventeenth- century Puritans who decried the dangers of music. In a time of unprecedented religious turmoil and burgeoning but contentious theatrical activity, people‘s ideas about the sacred and social functions of music were mixed, and were constantly in flux. ―Tudor Musical Theater: Staging Religious Difference from Wisdom to The Winter’s Tale‖ argues that the theater‘s representations of contentious music—from liturgical processions to ballads and dances to parodic rites—often expressed a social compromise among contemporary religious arguments. The theater is a ―form of embodied social thought,‖ in Steven Mullaney‘s phrase, allowing communities to give voice to their concerns, excitements, and equivocations.3 That voice is often a musical one. The theater‘s unique ability to juxtapose sacred and profane music makes dramatic representations of church music and popular songs powerful performance tools.4 Theatricalized music is effective and contentious precisely because it re- 2 Ibid. 3 Steven Mullaney, ―Affective Technologies: Toward an Emotional Logic of the Elizabethan Stage,‖ in Environment and Embodiment in Early Modern England, ed. Mary Floyd-Wilson and Garrett Sullivan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 73. 2 presents both profane and sacred musical forms with actors‘ bodies and voices. Musical performance exposes the performativity of all kinds of music; actors can sings like priests or balladeers. Chapter 1 of this dissertation begins in late fifteenth-century East Anglia, a center of Lollard thought, by considering the liturgy and profane songs represented in religious drama. Moving to the 1530s, chapter 2 focuses on the surprisingly musical plays of early Protestant theatrical polemic. Chapter 3 addresses ways in which Elizabethan amphitheater drama expressed late sixteenth-century concerns over music‘s power in Christopher Marlowe‘s Doctor Faustus, and the final chapter explores music‘s community-forming function in Shakespeare‘s Jacobean Winter’s Tale. My overarching argument is that these plays present ambivalent musical moments that remain open to a variety of conflicting interpretations by their diverse audiences. Performing